CT2.0 » Satire http://inquiry.mcdaniel.edu Archive of examples of reasoning for use in Critical Thinking classrooms Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:19:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 People who misunderstand The Onion http://inquiry.mcdaniel.edu/blog/2011/06/10/people-who-misunderstand-the-onion/ http://inquiry.mcdaniel.edu/blog/2011/06/10/people-who-misunderstand-the-onion/#comments Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:07:59 +0000 admin http://inquiry.mcdaniel.edu/?p=3977

Satire, like visual images and works of fiction, cannot be an argument on its own. But it can be used as a powerful persuasive act of speech.  Doing do requires, however, that the speaker and audience understand the satire.

Here are a few examples of facebook users misunderstanding the satirical newspaper The Onion, from ‘Literally unbelievable‘, a tumblr blog dedicated to tracking these misunderstandings.  At this time, the most popular misunderstood stories are about Oprah and Prince William, somewhat not surprisingly.  But I’ve chosen to feature a handful of stories about the mythical Kansas ‘abortionplex’, because so much of American rhetoric and politics revolves around the flashpoint of abortion, it should be easy to tie in to a variety of classes:

tumblr_llkdksssWR1qkt6yoo1_500 tumblr_llnjzvzBUF1qkt6yoo1_500 tumblr_llnk0fM9mO1qkt6yoo1_500 tumblr_llnk0yU0qX1qkt6yoo1_r2_500 tumblr_lloic2joQl1qkt6yoo1_r1_500 tumblr_llu0s4flJJ1qkt6yoo1_r1_500 tumblr_llu0srcWyS1qkt6yoo1_500 tumblr_llzn1xQ6l21qkt6yoo1_500 tumblr_llzn3uSljw1qkt6yoo1_500 tumblr_llzn30gAXj1qkt6yoo1_500

 

]]> http://inquiry.mcdaniel.edu/blog/2011/06/10/people-who-misunderstand-the-onion/feed/ 0