Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Many specific dates of occurrences of profanity and vulgarity within the more
professional and national field are recorded in this article. This being more of an
ethos appeal in the writing. Leaders such as former Presidents George W. Bush and
Bill Clinton are mentioned along with many others. Sheidlower continues on to
mention a few major news media sources reporting these occurrences such as The
Washington Times and The Atlantic, but makes a striking comment toward their
individual articles concerning those occurrences saying that they "covered widely"
what actually happened. Taking the profane, although relevant, words and replacing
them in all sorts of ways. Either the omission of letters from the words themselves
or even replacing the word entirely with phrases like "an obscenity" or "a vulgarity".
Another ethos example is from the beginning of the article when the story
about Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland making profane comments about
the European Union while on a phone call an ambassador to Ukraine. This incident
was discovered and was covered in the media. But when one reads some articles
that covered this story, you will find yourself not hearing or reading what was
actually said by Nuland, but rather descriptions that make you "read between the
lines" in order to realize what was said. The media wasn't straight forward and
didn't include the vulgar yet relevant words that Nuland was saying regarding the
European Union. Such "reading between the lines" is an example of
"circumlocutions" that may "deprive readers of... news and information". This
example gave credibility to what Sheidlower was explaining.
The points made by Sheidlower are very straight forward and as we have
been able to see, they have great examples to back them up. His style of rhetoric
and tools used are are legitimate in the sense that this is a concern that is real and
has been real for a while. Do we truly want all the information and news as
possible? details and all? Regardless of content?