Gonzalez 1 Valentina Gonzalez Professor Erin Ashley Mink Garvey Composition & Rhetoric I WRD 103 Section 415

5 November 4, 2012 Reflection on Multimodal Forms

My discourse community is the neighborhood that I know better than the back of my hand. I was born and raised in Little Village which is a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood in the Southwest side of Chicago. Little Village is home to me; however, many people do not think it is the safest or best neighborhood. Gang violence is nothing new to the neighborhood, but that is not all Little Village has to offer. The neighborhood is beautiful and full of color and culture. For instance, there are Mexican traditions and food, involvement with the environment and so much more. For these reasons, I chose to make a Prezi presentation. A Prezi presentation would be appropriate to demonstrate how lovely Little Village is because the website allows me to illustrate a bad to good process. I want to change the awful presumptions many people have of the neighborhood. This was a crucial rhetorical decision because my aim is to gradually convince my audience that aside from the gang violence, Little Village is a great neighborhood. Beginning the presentation with the negative aspects of Little Village stresses many peoples presumptions of the neighborhood; however, introducing the beautiful and great aspects of it, might lead them to change their minds. The audience is almost forced to reconsider their opinion because of the great things that are introduced. This essentially appeals to ethos for the fact that I completely support my claim. For example, if I only exposed the positive aspects of the neighborhood, I would be ignoring the way people perceive the neighborhood. I would also be unreliable because I would be biased to only stress my opinion; however, because I include the negative aspects, I acknowledge both sides of the case. For that reason, I included the video of Aliyah Shell. The video demonstrates how deeply the community was affected by the loss of an innocent, little girl due to gang violence.

Gonzalez 2 Additionally, Prezi allowed me to demonstrate a clear process through the size of each slide. In most cases, as the line progresses, the slides become larger. This stresses how the positive aspects of Little Village out-weigh the smaller issues of the neighborhood. Also, the larger slides expose some of the things that people overlook or do not take into account when they think of Little Village. Most people judge the neighborhood solely on the negative aspects of the community. Moreover, Prezi gave me freedom to visually appeal to my audience. For example, the colors of my presentation are red and green. Red is the color of my background while green is the color of each slide outline. Both green and red are colors of the Mexican flag and because most residents of Little Village are Mexican-American, they represent the neighborhood. This appeals to pathos because it demonstrates how proud the residents of Little Village are of their culture. Also, I was able to visually appeal to the audience because I used plenty of images. The images themselves reveal another positive aspect of the community on their own. The images revealed a sense of togetherness and community. The images and videos also help the audience feel as if they actually know the neighborhood. Additionally, because I was in some of the images, I was able to appeal to ethos. My credibility was enhanced because the images demonstrate how involved I am with my community and how I am knowledgeable of Little Villages programs. Furthermore, Prezi allowed me to resize, slant and overlap images. This was especially important for my first slide because I was able to make the picture of Little Village bigger and overlap it with the picture of the violent gang. This appeals to pathos because the beauty, opposed to danger, is emphasized and given more importance. Furthermore, language is an important aspect of the presentation because slides that include Little Villages positive aspects are titled in Spanish. Using the Spanish language stresses the importance of the Mexican culture in Little Village. For instance, the majority of people in the community speak Spanglish. Spanglish is a mix of Spanish and English, meaning that when one is speaking English, a couple of Spanish words may slip out or vice versa. This demonstrates both the communitys adaption to the United States and their attempt to preserve the Mexican culture. Language appeals to pathos because it reveals

Gonzalez 3 how important it is for members of the Little Village community to preserve and be proud of their culture, even when they live in America. Also, for many, the Spanish language is a beautiful reminder of Mexico. Overall, I chose to make a Prezi presentation because I was able to prove my claim using writing, images and videos. It allowed me to prove my claim in a creative and effective manner. I demonstrated the downfalls of the neighborhood but also emphasized how beautiful and cultural it is.