Analyzing Context

In this post I will be looking at the big picture of the controversy on Koko the gorilla and answering the questions the textbook poses about the context.

Cornells, Marc "audience" 02/09/13 via flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic

1. What are the key perspectives or schools of thought?

One of the most prominent perspectives is that Koko the gorilla has the language development of a young child and is unique in her development of signing and comprehension of human language, and for this reason is an incredible show of genius amongst animals. Another is that Koko is not as impressive as Patterson claims, and that most of her skill comes from Patterson's selective interpretation of Koko's signing.


2. What are the major points of contention between these perspectives?

Some of the major points of contention are the degree to which Patterson manipulates Koko's words and how much of Koko's signing is just pure luck. Another is how much of Koko's emotional responses are just projected on to her from the humans around her.

3. What are the possible points of agreement or common ground?

Generally it is accepted that Koko has a remarkable skill set for a gorilla. Also they can agree that Koko has been invaluable to the feild of animal communication.


4.What are the ideological differences between the perspectives?

People that believe Koko has a complete grasp of human language generally would ideologically value the more emotional side, which is that animals can be comperable to humans in communication skills. Those that disagree value logic and ideologically see that humans are superior and that Patterson shouldn't put so much of her own interpretation into Koko's words.


5. What specific actions do the perspectives' articles ask their readers to take? 

As seen in "What Do Talking Apes Really Tell Us?" by Jane C. Hu, the skeptics are mostly focused on inducing self-reflection. They want to make the reader think about and doubt what they have been previously told and find a different opinion. On the other side of the argument, the believers want their reader to recognize Koko as a demonstration of how gorillas are just like people, and in doing this hope they will donate to the cause, the Gorilla Foundation.


6. What perspectives are useful in supporting your own argument? Why did you choose these?

I think that both sides of the issue would be important in my argument. I want to take the less published side about how Koko and her stories positively impact the emotions of the public. I would want to use the skeptics to sort of call them out for being too focused on logic and nitpicky over specifics. I would also want to use the believers as an example of the good that can come from Koko and the positive emotional output.


7. What perspectives do you think will be the biggest threat to your argument?

I think that the skeptic side will be a strong opposition to my argument. Especially because in the last project I actually focused on the skeptic argument and saw how effective it could be. But I think with my target audience emotional appeal should be very effective, more so than the logical appeal of the skeptics would be.


REFLECTION

I read and responded to Gabee and Jon's posts about context. Before reading the posts, I was a little nervous about taking the emotional side, especially since I am so logic based and this is a scientific topic. But after reading, I realized that really we can take whatever stance we want, and I think mine might be more interesting since it is so different than the ones that are already presented in the field.

Jon seemed like he had a good grasp on his controversy, and after going back and looking over my own post again, it made me feel like comparably I am pretty established in the ideas that I have. When reading Gabee's post I noticed that she just focused on the extremes of her debate, and that made me think about another perspective in my controversy, which is people that might be torn between the two sides.