E-Portfolio

Hello, and welcome to my portfolio! I am an undergraduate student at Penn State majoring in Chinese and International Relations. When I first came to Penn State, I was only planning to major in Political Science. I had always been interested in politics, and it just seemed like the natural major for me. To fulfill my foreign language requirement, I decided to take Chinese, because I figured it would be useful. However, I never expected to fall in love with the language the way I did. The very nature and structure of the language fascinated me, and as a result, I became very interested in Chinese culture, which also led me to make friends with Chinese students at my school. Now, I have decided to duel major in both Chinese and Political Science. As of April 2011, I am spending my summer studying Chinese in Shanghai. There, I will take four hours of Chinese classes a day, which will be the equivalent of one year of Chinese. Apparently, I'm the first Penn State student to ever do this program. I can't wait to spend my summer in Shanghai, and I'm eager to improve my Chinese as fast as possible.

Looking back, it was foolish to only major in Political Science. An appropriate duel-major I think is necessary in order to supplement your knowledge, and to distinguish oneself from the legions of political science majors. Chinese I feel is a perfect supplement.

 

Thomas Holt's e-Portfolio 

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College Food

So, while I was waiting for a sandwich at The Big Onion at East Commons the other night, I started thinking about something. Maybe it's just me, but "The Big Onion" seems to be a really unattractive name for a sandwich shop. It doesn't really imply anything about the quality of the food. And then I also realized that "Good 2 Go" and "Fresh Express" are really bland and uninspired names. Not to mention that fact the logos and color schemes for all three shops seem kind of garish and ugly.

As a whole, it seems like universities don't put a whole lot of effort into designing appealing logos and names for their on-campus shops and dining areas. I noticed this both at Penn State and at other universities I visited before applying to Penn State. I'm guessing many universities just think that since students are going to be forced to eat their food anyway, why bother designing an appealing name and logo? The thing is though, if a store has an unappealing name, it's going to make the food seem less appealing by association. Maybe not consciously, but subliminally. And this subliminal association might cause students to unconsciously avoid eating at the commons if possible. I've personally noticed that I've ordered Pita Pit several times rather than just walk down to the commons. Not to mention that this whole laziness regarding design doesn't really leave a good impression on potential students about the quality of a university.

So really, it seems like universities shoud show some pride and actually try to sell their food, rather than just assume we'll eat whatever crap they give us.

More Chinese Rhetoric

So the other day, in my Chinese class, my teacher decided us to give us a worksheet where we analyze different cultural situations. Most of them dealt with different situations like an American teacher teaching in China, Americans having a dinner party with Chinese and Americans going on a tour in China. I can't copy them verbatim but they dealt with themes like how the memorization method of teaching Chinese are used to might conflict with how an American teacher wants to teach, how cultural differences can make socializing with Chinese people seem awkward (for instance, Chinese don't seem to view asking a person's income or age as rude at all), and how the collectivist and hierarchical nature of Chinese society could offend Westerners.

What all of this illustrates is that it's important to keep in mind cultural differences in mind when speaking to people of a different nationality than you. Not just in public speaking, but in normal socializing too. What you consider normal conversation may be viewed as extremely rude and vice versa.

It's of particular concern to me because I'm actually spending two months in Shanghai this summer learning Chinese, and will need to keep cultural differences in mind. I have Chinese friends, but I'm not sure that's going to fully prepare me for living in China. All I can hope for is that the culture shock that doesn't drive me completely insane.

Dunbar's Number

The other day,while I was browsing the internet, I stumbled upon this article by The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/deaths-of-20000-japanese-afford-planet-solid-15-mi,19785/

As cynical as this article is, it does illustrate a particular aspect of human psychology. Specifically how the farther removed a person is from another person in terms of personal relationships, the less they each have the ability to feel empathy for each other. This phenomenon is known as Dunbar's number,  which states that the maximum amount of personal relationships a human being can maintain is around 150. The concept is named for Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist who first theorized the concept. A humorous explanation of the concept can be found here:

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere_p2.html

As David Wong in the Cracked article points out, Dunbar's number causes us to see other humans removed from our social groups in a "us vs them" perspective. It causes us to view different nationalities and subcultures as as identical masses of people with no individual personalities. It's almost psychologically impossible to view that one asshole who cuts us off as a human being with the same feeling as us.

Keeping Dunbar's number in mind can help us avoid grouping people into a bland category. Humans are unimaginably complex and we should remember that each individual human has gone through countless life experience which have shaped their way of thinking and have resulted in each human having a vastly different perspective than another person. Even if two people seem to have a lot in common, they may have very different opinions under the surface.

With all this in mind, it becomes easier to resist simplistic "us vs them" or "good vs evil" arguments. Countless people have been able to manipulate other people because they realize this particular facet of human psychology. Remember, the world is an unimaginably complex place and no problem is ever mono-causal.

Future of Newspapers

As we are all well aware, newspapers have been declining in circulation for years and their demise seems imminent. Most people seem to not view this as a big deal, as we now tend to get all of our news from either TV or the internet. We figure that if newspapers stop putting out print editions, then they'll probably just switch to an all-online format. However, this raises the question if any of the major newspapers will be able to operate entirely online.

Currently, nearly all newspapers have free online editions. Some newspapers require a subscription to access some online content but those are few and far between. If print circulation of newspapers continues to decline, I see it as inevitable that all the major newspapers will eventually require subscriptions to view their online content. And also inevitably, this will raise protests from the online community.

People will say that newspapers should just increase their online advertising rather than require subscriptions. The problem with increasing advertising is that it raises conflict of interest issues, since more and more newspapers will be reluctant to launch investigations of major companies who could also be potential advertisers. Not to mention that increased online advertising will likely be distracting. And may not even help all that much since a lot of people tend to have ad blocker installed on their browsers.

People will also declare that they'll get their news from other sources such as cable TV or blogs. First off, I can't be the only person who prefers to read the news rather than just watch. I usually check Google News every day for stories and I'll only put on CNN for background noise. There's also the fact that the entire purpose of cable news is to be sensationalistic in order to attract ratings. Cable TV generally only broadcasts stories which will attract the most rating while important, but seemingly boring stories get pushed into horrible timeslots. I prefer to be able to search online for stories which interest me and get more in-depth analysis, while cable TV will generally shorten stories to soundbites.

Meanwhile, the problem with blogs is that they usually don't have the resources for investigative journalism or even actual reporting. Usually, they're just reposts of stories from major newspapers. And they tend to be politically biased and I like my news sources to at least try to maintain neutrality.

So, if newspapers decide to make their online editions subscription-based, it'll be interesting to see how it'll affect where people get their news. Maybe they'll just accept it and shell out money for the subscription. Or maybe they'll just switch to blogs and cable TV. Hell, news stories may even become pirated in a way similar to how movie, music and TV shows are pirated over the internet. Whole sites could spring up dedicated to sharing free news stories from major newspapers, creating a whole new issue in copyright law. All in all, the affect it'll have on the public being well-informed will be enormous.

Effortless Friendship

If one thing can be said about Facebook, it's that it has made staying in contact with people infinitely easier. By merely sending a friend request one, through a news feed, can receive constant updates as to what is going on in a person's life. A person can literally spend months without having even a single IM chat with a person but still know everything that happened in those months.

It used to be that staying in touch with people actually required effort. If someone moved away, you would have to call them regularly and write often in order to find out what has happened in their lives. If you wanted to see people from your old high school you lost touch with you would have to go to a high school reunion. Now all you have to do is friend the people you want to stay in touch with, no need for a reunion. To learn about a person's interests, you had to engage them in lengthy conversation. Now, a quick glance at a person's Facebook page usually lets you get the gist of a person.

With all this in mind, it raises the question of what Facebook does to the value of friendship. Because staying in touch with people is now so effortless, does it cause us to view friendship more casually? Or since we can now so easily learn what a person is like, does it cause us to appreciate people more?

Either way, it'll be interesting to see how Facebook continues to affect human relationships. Assuming Facebook is still around then, we could friend a person now and still be Facebook friends with a person sixty years from now. You could watch sixty years of a person's life in the form of Facebook statuses while barely talking to them. I could almost see funerals in the future having a ritual where the most important Facebook statuses of their lives are read aloud.

Gaddafi's Failure of Rhetoric

I'm sure we have all been following the protests in Libya with intense interest for the past week. Hopefully, I'm not the only one constantly refreshing Al Jazeera's live blog of the protests. Of particular interest is Gadaffi's remarks during this whole event. During a speech on Tuesday, he referred to the protesters as "rats" and "mercenaries" and accused them of being on hallucinogenic drugs. Unsurprisingly, this speech has actually been blamed for further angering the protectors, and accelerating Gadaffi's inevitable downfall. Not to mention the widespread condemnation it brought from the rest of the world.

Now, the fact that Gaddafi's speech failed to rally Libyans to his side is unsurprising given his harsh despotic rule and the the fact that he's widely considered to be insane. But it does illustrate a key point when trying to persuade people to your side. Don't insult your opposition. First off, by making the argument personal all you'll end up doing is adding to your opposition resolve, who will be more determined to prove your wrong. A similiar situation was during the Iranian protests of 2009 where the President of Iran referred to protesters as "dust in the wind", which only furthered increased the protests who angrily chanted "we are not dust". And, as Gadaffi showed us, insulting your opposition hurts the legitimacy of your arguments. Granted, Gadaffi had few legitimacy left at this point but worldwide condemnation did seem to increase after that speech.

So basically, when you're in a debate with someone, remember to not make the argument personal. All it will do is hurt any legitimate points you had. This can be applied for a variety of situations, such as an informal debate with a friend, an organized debate with a debate club, or if you end up a leader of a third-world nation through a military coup and are trying to brutally suppress a popular uprising.

Pathos in Mad Men

So, Mad Men is one of my favorite shows. And while reading the chapter on pathos, I couldn't help but remember this scene.

Mad Men: The Carousel

This scene is without a doubt the definition of pathos. The scene starts out with the Kodak representatives asking if the ad Don Draper has prepared makes note of the fact that the projector uses a wheel, an idea which obviously would not have resonated with the ad's audience. The Kodak representative's statement "wheels aren't seen as exciting technology even though they are the original" sounds unbearably dull.

Don then changes the subject and says that while technology can be a "glittering lure...there's the rare occasion where the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash". He never actually uses the word pathos, but he might as well have. When the slide show of Don's family plays, the audience understands fully the powerful effect of nostalgia as a form of pathos. While the slides alone are sweet and sentimental, the music is what does it. Through the music, the audience feels like they are being transported to Don Draper's past and are watching a flashback, not merely a slide-show. By the end of the slide-show, one of the executives, Harry Crane, leaves the room crying and the Kodak representatives are left awestruck.

This scene, which is probably one of the most moving scenes in the history of television, perfectly shows how powerful pathos can be. At the same time, it shows that pathos can be very hard to pull off, as not every object or topic will strike an emotional cord with the audience. Don himself mentions this, and demonstrates how a slide projector is one of the few products for which pathos can be used, since its entire purpose is to relive memories.

So, while you should consider every opportunity to use pathos in a speech, you must carefully consider whether or not your pathos can be used for your topic or if it will resonate with your audience Otherwise, your pathos could fall flat, or even worse, be considered overtly sentimental.

Differences of Rhetoric in China

So, I started studying Chinese last semester and am probably going to end up majoring in it. I'm also hoping to study abroad in China this summer. Since I've started studying Chinese, I've learned a little bit about Chinese culture which deals with personal relationships and rhetoric, both from my class and from my Chinese friends.

One notable instance is eye contact. Our textbooks tells us to look people in the eye when we make a speech. The inability to look people in the eye is often associated with shiftlessness and nervousness. It is completely different in China. It is considered disrespectful to make eye contact with a person. Most Chinese people will look downward when they make conversation.

A big part of Chinese politeness is humbleness. In the west, when someone compliments you, it's considered perfectly acceptable to accept the compliment. In China however, it's expected that you deflect or downplay all compliments directed towards you. For example, if someone complimented your clothes, you would say that you just threw on the first thing you grabbed out of the closet, or that your clothes are old and ratty. In fact, the proper response to "thank you" in Chinese is "bù kèqi" (不客气), which literally means "Don't Thank Me". 

Although, in some ways, the Chinese are more informal than us. There used to be equivalent terms to "Mr." and "Mrs." in mainland China, but they died out with the communist revolution. They were replaced with revolutionary terms, but those too died out. Now, in mainland China, it is common to call adults who are close acquaintances or are strangers of equal or lower status to yourself, and are the same age as your parents, "uncle" and "aunt". For example, you would address your friend's parents as "aunt" and "uncle".

All in all, this helps illustrate to things. One, that guidelines of rhetoric are far from universal, and can vary quite differently from culture to culture. And two, that you must adapt your speech to your current audience. Especially if they are of a different culture than you.

Kairos in the Egyptian Political Crisis

What's interesting to observe, as the Egyptian political crisis continues to unfold, is how delicate many of the involved parties tend to be in their speech, almost downplaying the significance of the crisis. Besides the actual Egyptians, rioting and screaming in the streets of course.

First, we have President Mubarak, who hilariously stated that he decided not to "run" for "re-election" this September, as if he merely has low approval rating, and not actually facing a violent revolution against his thirty year dictatorial rule.

But more interestingly we have President Obama and other members of the White House administration. Since the US is now facing the awkward situation of having a popular uprising against their backed dictator, whom they've funneled about a billion dollar a year foreign aid, the US can't just stay by Mubarak or give their support to the protesters. First, Obama urged "restraint" for both sides. But now that it seems definite that Mubarak will soon be overthrown, Hilary Clinton has said that she wants an "orderly transition to democracy" from Mubarak.

What all of this illustrates is the principle of kairos. How a person's speech must be adapted for present conditions.  Since it was obviously in the US's interest to keep Mubarak in power,  Obama tried to merely diffuse the situation by urging "restraint". But when it became apparent that Mubarak would not be able to stay in power, the US had to begin to voice support for the protestors, otherwise it would look like the US does not support democracy. At the same time, the US has not given vocal support to the protestors, due to the fear in the US that the revolution will overthrow the secularist government and replace it with an Islamist government which will attack Israel.

While it may be morally dubious that the US is not vocally supporting democracy, this whole event does illustrate the importance of being flexible in your speech and being able to adapt to changing conditions. If you don't adhere to the principle of kairos, you could find that your rhetoric harms rather than helps your cause, or could make you look bad in the future.

I Believe in Trampolines

http://www.zshare.net/audio/86004196f4d54236/

Tucson Shooting

So, probably like everyone else in the class, my post is going to mention the State of the Union Address. Obama started off the speech by taking note of the Tucson shooting and praying for the health of Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Obama then takes note of how bitter and contentious public debate in the US has become in the past two years and says that the shooting "gave us pause. Amid all the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater – something more consequential than party or political preference".

Here's something we should be asking ourselves however: What does it say about us as a country when it takes six people shot to death to finally make us realize that actual civil discourse has become nonexistent, and has instead been replaced by hateful, partisan and toxic shouting matches?

The US Congress responded to this tragedy by having a few representatives and senators from opposite parties sit side by side at the State of the Union address. Is that it? How is this one-time gesture going to improve debate in the US Congress?

If the state of public discourse is to improve in this country we need more than half-assed symbolic gestures. We need both parties to stop demonizing the other side as if they're baby eaters. The past two years should have been proof enough that this kind of "debate" does not help in actually passing laws. Look at the health-care bill. By demonizing the Democrats, the Republicans ended up with a bill that had absolutely nothing they liked, rather than a compromise. Meanwhile, Democrats were able to pass very few laws by refusing to compromise with Republicans.

Honestly though, I'm cynical. I think the Tucson shooting will probably be forgotten in months and public discourse will return to its previous toxic level. Because while this kind of "debate" doesn't help pass laws, it sure as hell does help politicians scare voters into supporting them.

Body Language

In public speaking, controlling your body language is a particularly important skill. While its often misquoted from the researcher Albert Mehrabian that only 7% of all communication consists of words itself, it is still important that you give an impression of confidence and sincerity in your speeches through your body language. Many people have been considered poor public speakers due to their body language. Probably the most famous example is the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy Presidential debate, where Nixon looked sweaty, nervous and sickly,while Kennedy looked relaxed and confident. Radio listeners believed Nixon had won the debate while television viewers believed Kennedy had won. Many analysts blamed the debate for why Nixon later lost the election.

The importance of body language in public speaking raises an important question for our generation: how capable public speakers can we really be when our communication is becoming increasingly dominated by written communication? Until only twenty years ago, the main form of written communication between people was mail. Even when people called people on the phone, they could still pick up the tone of a person's voice to read their emotions. But in 2011? It's considered easier to text a person rather than call them. The number of written formats for written communication, such as email, instant messaging, forums, Facebook, chat rooms and blogs, has increased exponentially. We have video chat in the form of Skype, but that's generally only used for lengthy conversations. All in all, technology seems to be reducing the frequency with which we use body language in our daily life.

Mastering public speaking could be a greater challenge to our generation than any other generation before us. If we mainly communicate with people through written communication, how can we be expected to get in front of people and give a relaxed, confident speech? How can we be expected to give off good, nonverbal, cues? As we learn the art of public speaking in this class, extra attention should be given to teaching us proper body language.