A meaning that is
strongly portrayed in this clip is that women are of a lesser social status and
this is shown through the language which is based on folk linguistics, or
stereotypical assumptions. One such example of this is in the phrase ‘something
is going terribly wrong in American Society, it’s hurting our children’ This
phrase implies that women should be at home looking after the children whilst
the men are the ones who should be the ones out at work earning the money. Juan
is the main person who uses these stereotypes or at least emphasises them the
most. He does this by combining this with the use of emotive language and using
negative verbs such as ‘hurting’ so persuade and create emotion the viewers.
Especially as children have been used as they are considered to be a vulnerable
group in society it creates an image of women abandoning this group. However
there are not any women on the panel to be able to defend themselves or present
the benefits of women being in the work place. This is very much a one sided
debate with an all-male panel which is bias. This is showing that males have,
or should have, the power and important roles in society and the fact that they
didn't invite women on the show shows that they didn't want people to
understand both sides of this argument.
Juan is
also very aware of the audience and knows that it is these people that he needs
to convince and therefore he has thought about what he is going to say and used
certain techniques to include them in is argument. One way he has done this is
by using inclusive pronouns such as ‘our’ in the previous quote ‘our children’.
This makes the audience feel included and that what they think is a problem
affects anyone’s children so they all should do something about this.
Similarly, Eric feels that each gender has it’s certain roles but he uses
nature back up his thoughts, but he also is aware of the audience and uses
flattery to influence the audience of his opinion. ‘We as people in a smart
society’. This quote again uses the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ but it combines this
with the adjective ‘smart’ which means he is saying the he and he viewer are
smart people, therefore should share the same opinion.
Lastly,
Juan tries to appeal to the audience and create sympathy for men.
‘Disintegration of marriage, men who were hard hit by the economic recession’.
This quote implies that men can’t find work as women are the ones who are hit
most as women are taking up jobs men should have. The use of ‘hard hit’ tries to show that all
men were hard hit and it was specifically this group. By making this sympathy
it’s trying to show this group as a group you should help and therefore agree
with what he is saying. However a man wanting sympathy goes against the theory
that is presented by Deborah Tanning as she argues that typically it’s the
women who wants sympathy. He also uses the facts of how many abortions are in
America to help show his points. However this statistic could be due to many
more event rather than just women wanting to be in jobs than have a family, he doesn't
mention this but uses this quote to persuade the audience.
These
men are trying to use their influential power of being on television to show
their views on what is going on, and their opinions. But they are telling
people that this is a problem instead of debating whether it is a good or bad
thing.
