Term Paper Thread

[Shek]

Are you writing (or have written) a term paper and want to share your hard work or are looking for feedback? If the topic is geopolitics, international economics, or defense related, post it to this thread and we'll see where the conversation goes.

[bigross86]

Not a bad idea. Have any of you seen any news pieces or image/text (non-video) advertisements that approach women and men in separate ways in the same piece? I need to find something like this, break it down and analyze it for my Language Media course. I've found plenty ads with double entendres, but they can be interpreted the same by both men and women. I need to find something that will have a different in interpretation according to gender lines

[bigross86]

Not quite geopolitics, international economics, or defense related, an analysis of an advertisement according to gender lines:

Analysis of an Advertisement on Gender Lines – Ben Gross -

The advertisement shown is one of a series of billboards and newspaper ads erected by the Tui Brewery in New Zealand, a subsidiary of DB Breweries. Each billboard has a sentence which can be interpreted as funny, sarcastic or naïve, and then the phrase “Yeah, Right!” In this particular billboard, we have the sentence “When Winston says no, he means no.”

We can see that this advertisement falls perfectly within the category of Mass Communications, seeing as how it fits all the criteria, including sending a message to a vast audience. Unfortunately, while the message is humorous, it is just this vastness which can lead to a breakdown in communications, and further on even to criminal behavior. The majority of the billboard has a relatively high level of encoding, since by itself the sentence on the billboard has no relevance whatsoever to beer in general, or to Tui Breweries specifically. It’s only when we look at the entirety of the billboard that we can conclude that there is actually a very low level of encoding if one knows that Tui is a beer, since the brand name appears on the billboard itself. Someone that is not familiar with Tui Breweries, however would not necessarily understand the meaning behind the billboard, or even know that this is an ad for beer. Tui Breweries’ logo falls into the category of a visual icon, since the logo is a Tüï bird, just like the name of the beer. However, even here we notice that is a certain level of required knowledge before we can understand this icon, since only an ornithologists or someone from or someone that had been to New Zealand would actually know what a Tüï is, since the bird is endemic to New Zealand.

In our gender line analysis, we’ll start with male perspective: This ad, like most beer ads, is aimed mainly at men of the 18-45 demographic, the traditional beer drinking crowd (Chapman and Hall, 1992). To them, the ad is humorous in content and nature, and has connotations of a good time and the “chase”, flirting with a girl, where the innuendo can be quite different to reality. This encourages young men into thinking that by buying this beer they will end up having a good time, most probably ending up with a girl to take home for the night (Baker and Churchill, 1977).

Looking from the female perspective, again the demographic is the young beer drinking crowd. We also notice the usage of the popular phrase “No means no”, a slogan against date rape. The age group the advertisement is aimed at is the age group that is most identified with date rape. According to Curtis, a myth that men use to legitimize date rape is that women who say "No" really mean "Yes" (Curtis, 1997). What the ad does is legitimize this sort of behavior and thinking in the minds of the young men this advertisement is aimed at, thereby adding to the Socialization process as well.

Bibliography:
Baker, M. J. & Churchill, G. A. (1977). The impact of physically attractive models on advertising evaluations. JMR, Journal of Marketing Research, 14(4), 540.
Curtis, D. G. (1997). Retrieved Dec. 23, 2010, from Perspectives on Acquaintance Rape
Lee, B. & Tremblay, V. J. (1992). Advertising and the US market demand for beer.. Applied Economics, 24(1), 69-77.

Lemme know what you think. My first paper ever written, so be brutally honest

[zraver]

Quick paper from last semester, in it I argue that the period from the Somme to the end of Passenchdale ushered in a completely new era of warfare where men support technology and not vice versa. Although not mentioned in the paper, I feel this is a situation we would not see again until the Drone Wars in Pakistan. Although the situation in Pakistan and Flanders are vastly different both militarily and politically. If any are Haig fans, I apologize but I am not and think he is one of the worst commanders in history.

False God, False Prophet:
Artillery and Sir Douglas Haig

Jason Belcourt

Dr. Jones
World War I
University of Central Arkansas
21 November, 2010

False God, False Prophet: Artillery and Sir Douglas Haig.

Condemnation of Sir Douglas Haig is an easy task. As Stone records, “the best Scottish general it was said- in that he killed the most Englishmen.” His greatest failing was the faith and blind acceptance he placed in the power of artillery, and his steadfast loyalty to it when the god it claimed to be was revealed to be false. Haig’s devotion to the cult of artillery lead to more than 20,000 British dead in a single day. Haig had attempted to usher in a new type of war, a war he planned at Chantilly and fought from the end of June 1916 until the end of the battle of Passchendaele in the middle of 1917. What sets the period started by the Somme apart is not the use of technology to kill men, but the use of technology in place of men. From the time man first picked up a rock to throw at another, man has used technology to kill. This new type of war, and the killing it unleashed was without precedent. Even inside of the Great War this period of time stands out as especially brutal. The period saw a type of fighting never before seen, and never seen again on land, not on that scale Haig unleashed.

Given the destruction of the original BEF since the start of the war, and the unknown quality of the men who had replaced the “Old Contemptibles”, it is no wonder Sir Douglas Haig wanted to use a means of war fighting that did not pit his untrained men against the cream of the German Army. Yet his pursuit of victory does not absolve him of the many sins he committed.
His sins all stem from his misplaced faith in the ability of technology to replace man. From these flow the failures to achieve breakthrough, verify the ability of shells to actually explode, cut wire, and reach the deepest of the German bunkers. Also flowing from his misplaced faith, is his failure to properly train the troops to make use of the barrage. His final failure was to continue the battle past the first day when all claim to preserving national honor lay dead on the field with the cream of Kitchener’s New Army.

The first of the failures lies in the inability of technology to replace man. The hallmark of the Somme is this failure, and Haig’s inability to grasp the nature of it. Or to adapt his thinking quickly enough to save hundreds of thousands of men from death or crippling wounds. Haig took on faith, Rawlinson’s assumption that a barrage could both cut the wire and smother the defenders enabling the attackers to simply walk across and occupy the enemy’s position. Haig thought a five day bombardment (stretched to seven days) using mostly light weight field guns could exterminate a dug in enemy. By betting everything on this belief he consigned a huge number of souls to the hereafter. He should have known better.

In fact, given Haig’s own experience leading British attacks earlier in the war, he did know better. He was the commander at both Nueve Chapelle and Loos. In both these attacks, the assault stalled because supporting units could not reach the captured sections of German trench before the Germans could regroup and counter. He had the first hand knowledge that artillery bombardments might allow the capture of the first trench, but also prevented the exploitation phase of the battle. Given his experience, his comments recorded in his diary make no sense at all. As he began planning the battle that would become the Somme he had high expectations. Breakthrough, getting through the trenches and into open country to restore a war of movement was his initial goal. It only changed later when the French seemed unable to support this lofty ambition since they were consumed with the Battle of Verdun.

On April 5th, 1916 he recorded,
“I studied Sir Henry Rawlinson’s proposals for attack. His intention is to merely take the enemy’s first and second line of trenches… I think we can do better than this by aiming at getting as large a possible force of British and French across the Somme and fighting the enemy in the open.”

Knowing that the artillery would prevent a breakthrough, he pursued the cult of the artillery anyway. This may in part be due to the fact that the French were exhausted by Verdun. In fact he had been told by Joffre sometime after January 1916 that the French had full companies of men, but no reserves behind them. Only days later, the German assault on Verdun would begin and the ordeal of 1916 would be well under way. The pressure placed on the French Army by the Germans promised a collapse of the French Army. This pressure caused Haig to change his plans. Whereas in April he had recorded that Rawlinson’s plan were too timid, now in May he told his commanders it was now unsound to expect victory in 1916. Rather, the BEF would have three objectives: relieve the pressure on Verdun, attrit the Germans and place the British Army in a position favorable to later victory. Presumably because he felt the French were incapable of supporting the British, not that the British could not break through.

While the Battle of the Somme did achieve the first two goals, it denied the British any hope of achieving the third. If not for the Americans, the only path to victory for Britain would have been by sea. Perhaps the result would have been different if Haig had exercised due diligence. A British POW being lead back to the German rear recorded hundreds of duds littering the ground. Poor construction meant as many as one third of the shells fired at the Somme failed to explode. One third means the barrage already underweight was not nearly as heavy as planned. It was also a fault easily detected by even modest quality control measures.

The real story of the bombardment is almost the complete inversion of what was promised. Besides poor quality control, there was poor shell selection and/or gunner training. Most of the guns were light weight Royal Ordnance Mk. I and II 18 pounder quick firing field howitzers. These guns were tasked with cutting the coiled mass of barbed wire in front of the German trenches. The guns had been issued shrapnel shells for this purpose. Unlike conventional high explosive shells, shrapnel rounds had a smaller bursting charge, saving more weight for use in the casing which would be scattered to wreak havoc when the charge went off. Using shrapnel to cut wires requires a high degree of precision. If the shells went off too early, the blast pattern was too spread out to cut the wire. If too late, the shrapnel round buried itself in the ground. The inability of the British artillery to cut the wire was known before the men went over the top. Several reports had been passed back from the assault divisions that the wire was mostly or totally uncut in multiple sectors. Haig as commander, with so many men’s lives riding on the wire being cut should have had a policy in place to verify that the wire was being cut, and if it was not, a Plan B for the assault troops.

The huge number of dud rounds and uncut wire created a death trap for any attacking troops for the German defenders who were very much alive. They had ridden out the bombardment protected by deep bunkers where only the heaviest guns could reach them. A British mining team had accidentally entered such a bunker while tunneling under the lines. This proves the information was available to Haig that the field guns were not heavy enough. In fact the British ratio of heavy guns was among the lowest of the major combatants in 1916. In fact the British had been forced to borrow 17 super heavy guns from the French for the heaviest bombardments, half of the total available to them. 34 super heavy guns, some of them Royal Navy guns crewed by sailors were too few to reach enough of the deeply buried defenders.

When the bombardment stopped and the German’s emerged from their holes, the failure of the artillery would combine with the Haig’s failure to properly train the men. The results are now seared into the memory of the nations that fought under aegis of the United Kingdom in WWI. Sir Edward Spears, watching from the seam along the Somme River where the British and French armies met up, was able watch both the New Army and the French go into action. He watched the French flow forward using terrain and speed to close on the Germans. While at the same time, the British advanced in a parade like walk. He records the German’s focusing on the neatly packed ranks of Tommies with massed machine gun and artillery fire to devastating effect. 57,470 men would fall in one day, including 19,240 confirmed dead and 2,152 missing presumed dead. Over 21,000 men forever sacrificed when Haig had at his disposal the information that the attack was doomed.

If Haig had instructed his trainers to have the men use speed and flexibility the scale of the losses while horrible might have been lessened, or the gains paid for at such price slightly greater. However, for as much faith as he put in artillery, Haig did not trust his men to be able to do the job. Later the survivors of the Somme would display a will to battle and skill at arms that belied the nature of their peace time occupations.

The scale of the losses caused by the misplaced faith in the artillery and lack of faith in the men created a meat grinder that decimated a generation. Testament of Youth could not have had the impact it did if Vera Brittain’s tragedy was merely local. Edward Brittain’s surprising but painful survival notwithstanding. Her loss reflects the norm rather than extreme of WWI and is why her book is so moving. She was painfully truthful when she recalls the war ending the world as she knew it.

One reason the compressed wholesale loss she records is so common was the way Haig handled the new Army given him by Kitchener. When looking at the New Army, it must be noted that the lack of martial skill was not the fault of the troops. The scale of the losses was not pre-ordained, several options existed to Haig. Simple solutions like having the men advance at a run or common sense solutions to postpone the attack when it became clear the wire was not cut. But Haig was wedded to the idea that artillery could win the battle and no proof to the contrary was allowed to stand. Not even the cries of the French for assistance can serve as a mitigating factor.

The casualties suffered on the first day equal or exceed those suffered at Loos. National honor, if sacrifice was in fact required of it, was satisfied. In fact the sacrifice given only wetted the appetite of the death god. The power of the bombardment unleashed at the Somme was impressive but only on paper. The Somme would see twice as many guns and six times as many shells than at Loos. In fact there was a gun, howitzer or mortar for every 17 yards of trench.

Following the failure of the Somme offensive, Haig would not rethink his faith in artillery; rather he went for even more on paper impressiveness. At Passchendaele, General Gough would employ over 3000 artillery pieces firing for nearly two weeks before the troops went over top. As at the Somme, the brave men went to their deaths, as the German defenses had not been beaten down enough to allow the attack to succeed. It took the blood and mud of Passchendaele, for Haig to finally set aside his false god and return to the use of technology in the support of man. Later battles like Cambrai would show that when used properly technology could break the stalemate of the trenches.

Cambrai, the German Spring Offensive of 1918 and the final Hundred day’s Offensive stand as witnesses to what might have been. With more deliberation and forethought the Somme might have seen a different result. While there were not enough tanks for a Cambrai style attack. There was evidence of the effectiveness of hurricane bombardments, open order drill, infiltration tactics and enough of the new tanks to offer an alternative path to a limited but still more tangible victory. Instead of the death of a generation the Somme might be remembered as the birth of the mechanized warfare. In the end man could not be replaced, it was not a matter of Haig’s faith in more or heavier guns firing for longer and longer periods that broke the stalemate. It was technology like the tank that fought alongside men and the hurricane bombardment and creeping barrage that closely covered the advance of men that found the way to use technology to help men to break the power of the trench and allow an allied victory.

Work Cited.
Primary Source
Brittain, Vera. Testament of Youth. (New York: Penguin, 1933)

Secondary Source.
Duffy, Micheal. Battles: Battle of Third Ypres, 1917. Firstworldwar.com. (22 August 2009) accessed 20 Nov 2010. First World War.com - Battles - The Third Battle of Ypres, 1917
Middlebrook, Martin. The First Day Of The Somme: 1 July 1916. (New York: WW Norton, 1972)
Stone, Norman. World War One. (New York: Perseus, 2009)
Terraine, John. Ordeal Of Victory. (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1963)
Warner, Phillip. The Battle of Loos. (Great Britain: William Kimber, 1976)

[Tarek Morgen]

@Zraver:

Regarding your Bibliography, the following is based on how I did learn it at my university, hence if they teach it differently at yours it is of course completely irrelevant.

1.Write out the names, don't give initials. Not even for middle names.
2.You have to give the place of publication (meaning the city). In case you use a sort that does not have such a thing use N.p. to indicate this.
3.A lot of profs HATE online sources. Nevermind how well it is, or where it is from. Make sure to only use them if they don't get you into trouble and it does not hurt to make a complete copy of source.
4.Your structure is “off” (in regard to how we learn it). It should be(for a typical book source):
Author Family name, Authors First name. Title of the Source. Place of publication. Name of the publisher, year of publication.


Again, maybe you are doing it perfectly right in regard of your university and what I wrote would be completly wrong.

[bigross86]

There's a couple methods to write out a bibliography. Tel Aviv University uses the APA method

[Tarek Morgen]

wait..you have a choice and don't get condemned if you stray from the sole acceptable option??

Ok in that case it is very different from here...

[bigross86]

In TAU you're only allowed to use APA, as far as I'm aware. I'm pretty sure there's Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) and Council of Science Editors (CSE). Most universities stick with one method. So far, every paper I've had to deliver was APA

[zraver]

@Zraver:

Regarding your Bibliography, the following is based on how I did learn it at my university, hence if they teach it differently at yours it is of course completely irrelevant.

Uhmmm.... my citation is exactly as you laid out except for WWI.com

1.Write out the names, don't give initials. Not even for middle names.

The only intials are from the publishing house and that is how it was listed in the book.

2.You have to give the place of publication (meaning the city). In case you use a sort that does not have such a thing use N.p. to indicate this.

Listed

3.A lot of profs HATE online sources. Nevermind how well it is, or where it is from. Make sure to only use them if they don't get you into trouble and it does not hurt to make a complete copy of source.

The paper allowed 1 online source. WWI.com and its primary author are peer reviewed

4.Your structure is “off” (in regard to how we learn it). It should be(for a typical book source):
Author Family name, Authors First name. Title of the Source. Place of publication. Name of the publisher, year of publication.

The only mistake I see is that publishing city, publisher and date should be in parathesis for the notes per chicago style manaul but not in the work cited.

Again, maybe you are doing it perfectly right in regard of your university and what I wrote would be completly wrong.

We use Chicago style and you did catch one mistake. Luckily he liked my argument and I got an A.

[zraver]

In TAU you're only allowed to use APA, as far as I'm aware. I'm pretty sure there's Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) and Council of Science Editors (CSE). Most universities stick with one method. So far, every paper I've had to deliver was APA

its not one style per school, but one style for discipline.

[Tarek Morgen]

uh my comment was directed at Bigross..when I wanted to post it I saw that Zraver wrote something..and obviously got confused, sorry.

[bigross86]

Like I said, everything I've had to deliver was APA

[zraver]

uh my comment was directed at Bigross..when I wanted to post it I saw that Zraver wrote something..and obviously got confused, sorry.

Sorry, np although it did catch a mistake I made lol.

[USSWisconsin]

We use Chicago style and you did catch one mistake. Luckily he liked my argument and I got an A.

Nice job, I'd rate it as A work as well. Haig should have won the Iron Cross for his efforts.

[bigross86]

Tarek, everything I've read so far about APA, n.d. is only if there is no data about the author. From what I understand, APA has nothing to do with location of publication.