Specifically, I became more intrigued with argumentative pieces. With the purpose of engaging the reader, they present a new idea that the reader may have never properly understood or encountered before. I found this characteristic particularly compelling in social justice argumentative pieces. Often times, these pieces present different opinions on various societal ills. I thought these pieces were especially powerful because they give us a different perspective on ideas and structures that we are already familiar with. In contrast to other argumentative pieces that comment on unfamiliar topics, social justice pieces comment on ideas that have been embedded within and around us. So, the change or reaction that a social justice argumentative piece may incite is very large. It may push someone to take a specific course of action but more importantly, it might challenge the reader to think differently. The reader may be pushed to see other societal problems in a different light. The reader may also be encouraged to be more critical of society by seeing it in a different and new lens.  

 

In my English 125 class, I was granted the opportunity to write an argumentative essay. With this freedom, I decided to choose a social justice topic: gender bias in advertising. While this essay certainly does not exemplify my best work, it was definitely one of the first papers where I was very passionate about the idea. Therefore, I never felt constricted or pressured while writing it. The social justice component pushed me to consider how important my writing could be. It could not only push people to publicly complain about instances of gender bias but also challenge them to identify gender bias in another societal structures. This paper was also one of the first to introduce me to the idea of being "multimodal" or in other words, incorporating other forms of data or media to bolster writing. Even though I only used one image in this essay, it was still integral to how I presented my argument. Since advertisements are the subject of the essay, it was hard to describe advertisements. So, for this essay, showing the image of the advertisement helped support my reasoning. Therefore, I learnt the power of imagery and how I could use it to not only support my writing but also hone its meaning.