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Showing posts from February, 2022

The Toulmin Method

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What is The Toulmin Method?  The Toulmin Method per page 315 in our textbook is a technique based on the work of Stephen Toulmin that allows the analysis of logic in any argument, including analyzing your own arguments and using the technique as you draft and revise them.  While page 315 has a basic explanation of what the Toulmin Method is, I feel that pages 320-324 have more details for each step of the technique. These are to identify the claim , which is finding out what the author is defending or arguing, and then looking for qualifiers and exceptions . Then you analyze the reasons and evidence for the author's argument by stating the reasons that are used to justify the author's claim or argument, and then finding and examining evidence to support the author's claim or evidence. Then you want to examine any warrants to the author's argument , such as bias. You then want to follow the final step which is noting rebuttals . You want to find out if the author has

Humor in the Workplace

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      In our textbook, Professor Green (2017) defines hedging as  "use of strategic ambiguity and humor to provide a way for both parties to save face when a message fails to achieve its goal ." I do this all the time at work since it is a pretty high pressure job and there are many times that things start to take a negative turn in conversations and meetings. Honestly I'm kind of the joker of my team, and I feel like it is necessary.    So when it came to looking for a podcast based on communication, I was looking for one that actually had some humor to it, as most of the podcasts I listen to, regardless of the subject tend to be a little on the funny side. I came across a podcast called "Think Fast Talk Smart" by Matt Abrahams, a lecturer of strategic communication/organizational behavior at Stanford.    The podcast isn't necessarily a comedy podcast, but it does have some funny moments through several episodes I listened to. I decided to listen to the epi

The Battle for Public Opinion

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     I remember social media being a place for people to connect with each other. I remember having a MySpace profile and being able to edit it any way that I wanted, adding music, pictures of my favorite bands, etc.. You could list your top six friends too, which was always a topic for discussion...positive or negative. I joined Facebook years ago, when you had to be a student at a four year university in order to be eligible to have a Facebook account. It was simple. You connected with classmates and friends from different universities, and posted pictures, statuses, and...you poked each other. You could share private messages too, but that was it. There were no memes, there were no public pages. Just passive aggressive hormonal and confused college students. Even then, the ability to get time away from bullying was almost completely over. Which by the way is one of the reasons bullying is taken so seriously now. I was bullied in grade school. But I got to go home and decompress from

Online Communication, Business Assessment- 90 Miles Cuban Cafe

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90 Miles Cuban Cafe is a little restaurant I go to often that is about a one minute walk from my apartment in Chicago. They also have two other locations in Chicago.  I decided to research their online presence, and see that they have both a website and a Facebook page. First of all, as far as their Facebook page, I do not feel like they have a strong online presence as of today. It looks like the last post made to the page was February 5th, 2021. Almost a year ago to the day. They do however list their business information such as the addresses of their locations, the contact information, and hours of operation. The hours of operation are actually no longer correct. It is listed on Facebook as 8AM-8PM. The hours are now 9AM-9PM. Truthfully? I wished they really did open at 8AM. They serve some amazing breakfast empanadas! Since I work at 9AM I rarely get the chance during the week to get them. Sad face.  There is also a video added from when Guy Fieri visited the location closest to m