3/4 Common Knowledge

It's amazing how common knowledge, stereotypes, and understandable "life scenarios"  have embedded themselves into our culture. So much that we can quote the general public and use it as evidence for the points we want to express. The author's of this weeks blogs were able to use completely different situations, which they came across in different ways, to express their opinions. Each subject was entirely different, but the method worked for all.

In the first blog, by Marion Roach Smith, she used a Walmart scene to describe how she felt about the writing process. If we didn't know what Walmart was, we still may have understood the scenario she uses to show her analogy, but we would have missed the fullness of her argument. Walmart is a commonly known chaotic store which has everything imaginable in it. A place that's hard to just go in and pick out exactly what you came in for. She uses pop culture to her advantage.

The next blog, by Akiba Solomon, uses pop culture in a different method. She uses a celebrity relationship and a book to portray a racial appearance issue. Readers understand where she is coming from because there is a general knowledge of the characters she uses. Although the book is a little harder to understand as it isn't quite as popular as Jay- Z and Beyonce, she talks about a subject which people know enough about to see where she is coming from. It's sad we understand where she is coming from, but the author uses the general knowledge to her advantage. 

In the last blog, I found it more of an unfortunate stereotypical downfall story. The subject was put into a category where she automatically was put into a position of doubt because of her career choice. In this story there a lot of pieces of information which people probably have never heard of. But because people understand that prostitutes have this view that people portray, they understand the unfortunate placement of the character in this story.

The technique used in this weeks blogs proved to be effective. It is satisfying to the readers because it gives them some credit for needing to use some of their common knowledge to decipher the meaning behind the text. Each writer was able to take a different approach with it, but used it to their advantage, and came out strong.