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Loaded Language
This is a great way to introduce a unit on the power of language and rhetoric. Students learn about euphemism. The teacher will provide students with a list of euphemisms, such as those listed by George Carlin in Brain Droppings. They are challenged to figure out the actual words and phrases to which these euphemisms are referring. A goal of this lesson is to have students learn the power of carefully chosen language.
Let’s Eat!
Students will understand the deceptive nature of advertising by analyzing the nutritional information of popular food items against the publicized claims. The teacher will provide students with some food labels taken from “regular” and “slim” versions of popular snack foods. Students will discover that “slim” food products are often not that much healthier than their “regular” counterparts. They will learn to look for reduced portion sizes, hidden fats, and added sugar or sodium. Given our nation’s high obesity rate, this lesson is also very important for young people in their daily lives. They need to be taught to be more critical consumers of information (and food!).
Reading Political Cartoons
The teacher will select a particularly scintillating political cartoon and share it with their students. Students will practice analyzing this political cartoon as a class. They will be asked to list all of their first impressions of the cartoon in order to identify its more literal elements. Afterwards, the teacher will pose some deeper questions about the cartoon:
What is the subject of this cartoon?
What is the context of this cartoon?
What is the cartoon’s purpose?
Who is the intended audience? Why are they the intended audience?
What is the thesis of the cartoon? What point is the cartoonist trying to make?
What is left unsaid in the cartoon? What opposing views are left out?
Once students have gained some experience reading the political cartoon, the teacher should show them two new cartoons with opposing views on the same subject. Class discussion should ensue. Students are then to find their own opposing political cartoons to analyze. Two websites that may prove useful to them in their quest are Daryl Cagle’s cartoon index at Cagle.slate.msn and the New York Times website at NYTimes.com. Some cartoonists that are worthy of investigation include: Jeff Danzinger, Bill Deore, Doonesbury, Glenn McCoy, Rudy Park, Pat Oliphant, Ted Rall, Ben Sargent, and Tom Toles.
Figure 9.4
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