Rhetorical Defense

Tucker Sorrell Sorrell 1

Melissa Mudd

English 151

2 October 2010

Rhetorical Defense

I originally decided to do my campus history project on our very own Ellis Hall. I figured that would be cool because that is where our English 151 class takes place. I wanted to inform the class on the history of the building. It also appealed to me because I don’t think anyone else had the idea to do the project on Ellis Hall. I looked up information on Ellis Hall and went to the library to find out about the buildings history. Nothing really stood out to me as being that interesting. I found myself becoming bored with the project and realized that I needed to make a change in what building I was doing. I then decided to do the project on the Ping Center. The Ping Center appealed to me because, aside from Baker Center, Ping is the most up to date and state-of-the-art building. Aside from my dorm, Crawford Hall, and some of the buildings that I have classes in, Ping is probably the one place where I spend most of my time. I love going to Ping to work out and play basketball so it seemed only right to do my project on the Ping Center.

For my promotion piece, I at first decided that I really wanted to do a video/commercial. I thought that would be the most entertaining and attention grasping. I wanted to make it funny but also informative at the same time. I wanted to interview people that work at Ping because they probably have a lot of useful information to share with the audience. I also wanted to interview students who were using the ping facility to ask them what they think of the facility, what they

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know about the facility and any thoughts or comments they would have liked to share about Ping. Even though I ended up doing a brochure, I still feel as though doing a video would have been the best possible promotional piece. I ended up running into problems doing the video. I could not find a video camera and I tried using a digital camera to record the video. I could not figure out how to cut and edit certain parts of the video. Given the opportunity to go back, I probably would have made better use of my time and figured out where I could get a real video camera and help from someone on how to cut and edit the video. This was absolutely necessary because I did not want to just have an ongoing video that looked unprofessional and sloppy. I then chose to do a brochure because, to be honest, I was crunched for time and I figured it would be the easiest and fastest way to go about getting my promotional piece finished.

My audience for my promotion piece would be any Ohio University student/faculty member. I catered to this audience by having an Ohio University colors themed brochure. I also used diction that would make any OU student/faculty member feel like I was directing this brochure at them. The purpose of my brochure was to inform people about the Ping Center and try and make it appeal to them so they would want to take advantage of the opportunity to use this state-of-the-art facility. My piece fulfilled this purpose by pointing out the most appealing parts of the Ping Center. For example I chose to put pictures in of the most popular aspects that Ping has to offer such as the rock wall, the group workout classes and the elliptical machines that support sustainability. My piece also included the brief history of the Ping Center as it has only been around since 1996. It has a picture of the man who the Ping Center is named after, Charles J. Ping. The genre of my piece is informative. It is filled with information about the Ping Center

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as to inform the audience. I stuck to the genres conventions by putting informative information in my piece that would give the audience insight about the Ping Center. I appealed to pathos, logos,

and ethos by appealing to the demands of the audience. I also used statistics and facts about Ping that would appeal to logic. I made my piece look very professional and legitimate as to appeal to ethos. I chose to include the information that I did because, in my opinion, they are the most interesting aspects of the Ping Center. These aspects are the ones that I feel would appeal most to my audience.