Priya Critically Thinking

I do not know about you, but my friends and I have said this at least once in the past. We have consciously replaced the word Gucci with good. Like the people in the advertising documentary that we watched, who replaced the word for good (or anything positive, really) with Song. "Oh, that's so Song !" But really, what does Song mean? It obviously means something good, but it leaves an air of vagueness that is mysterious and unconsciously intrigues the person who you are talking to. Language is power, as we have learned in our class, and so replacing a positive word in both denotation and connotation with a brand is dangerous. It is ingrained in our subconscious that this brand is not just good, but it also acceptable, excellent, exceptional, favorable, great, marvelous, positive, satisfactory, satisfying, superb, valuable, wonderful, and all of the other synonyms of good. And not just the brand is good, but the whole embodiment of the company is good. It is its being, if...

Artice I reference in this blog found here . I have heard this phrase many times throughout my life, especially in relation to Instagram, or another social media platform. It is almost as if the amount of likes equates to how accepted you are, or how much you are liked by another person. This can be a form of anxiety for many teenagers because we are at an age where we really want to be accepted; to be part of a group. According to Jacqueline Shall, a member of the Department of Psychology in Education in Pennsylvania, "Fitting in, or gaining peer acceptance, is a primary objective of youth in the high school context and, for many adolescents, may be more important than academic goals. Not surprisingly then, perceptions of belonging have been determined to have important effects on adolescent development, influencing both social and academic outcomes. For example, the prevalence of teasing and bullying as perceived by adolescents is predictive of dropout rates among those stud...

I'll have to admit, one of my favorite commercials in the world is one for the iPhone X. It's the one where it is showing different parts of the phone while beautiful colors dance around the screen. Usually, I do not hear it with music because the advertisements are usually muted when they come on, but while I was searching online for the ad I heard the music in the background. It is a very upbeat song by Sofi Tukker called 'It's Here: Colors'. The only lyrics that they include are 'Every time you call on me, I drop what I do. You are my best friend and we have got some things to do.' These are some very specially picked lyrics. They are made to make the phone into more of a person like thing rather than an object. It is kind of like the phone is talking to you. You are the phone's best friend. You can call on the phone and it will always be there and reliable, hence the lyrics 'I drop what I do'. This advertisement appeals to the Need for Aesth...

I'm sure we've all seen this commercial before, the advertisement for the squatty potty. For those of you who have not seen it, I'll give a brief description. It first starts out with a unicorn pooping swirls of rainbow ice cream, and a man in a prince outfit says something like this is where ice cream comes from, from the sphincter of a unicorn. He says that the unicorn is good at pooping, but you are not! He goes on to mention how toilets make a muscle in your body make it more difficult to relieve yourself, which can lead to a lot of problems, such as bloating and hemorrhoids. He says that when unicorns have hemorrhoids, it's especially bad because the glitter gets everywhere. Then, the product 'Squatty Potty' is introduced for the better way to use the bathroom. He says a bunch of outlandish things, still comparing ice cream to people defecating, "I scream, you scream, plop plop baby." Another thing he promises is the "Best poop of your life....

I was at a grocery store with a friend, and we saw these Pepero boxes. On the front of the boxes were pictures of a popular Kpop group, EXO. It was cute (and on sale) so I decided to purchase a couple of boxes (99 cents for two boxes! Sign me up!). While I was in the car home happily munching on my Pepero, I glanced down at the box and was suddenly overcome with astonishment at how well the advertising for this product was. When you are selling something that a lot of other people are selling, you have to be different. You have to make yourself more valuable to the customer than your competitors. Here, the brand Pepero paid the group EXO to use their faces on their box. They became more valuable because oh my gosh my favourite Kpop idol is on the box! I have to buy this box of Pepero over that one because it has Kai on it! This is kind of a way to get into the mind of their customer. Their target audience is a fan of EXO or a person who finds the members attractive. Usually, this is ...

There are two articles I will reference in this blog. Both have the same subject, but they are from two different news sources. The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/03/risk-of-war-with-north-korea-grows-every-day-says-trumps-security-adviser Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/02/h-r-mcmaster-potential-for-war-with-north-korea-increases-every-day.html At first glance, these two articles seem similar. Their titles are extremely similar, some of the beginning quotations from the national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, are the same, but when you read a bit more, you can see that these two articles convey completely different meanings, all because of the diction (or lack of diction). Both articles talk about how we are "in a race" and "North Korea is the greatest immediate threat to the United States”, but in the Guardian article, they specifically mention China, while the Fox News article only mentions US allies. It was later on sai...