RUNNING HEAD: Homelessness 1

Matilda Tench
University Of Texas At El Paso
Homelessness





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Homelessness does not just depict the fact that someone is living with-out a roof over
their head. A home is not just a physical space it has dimension as well as love and comfort.
Homes provide people with a place of emotional well-being. A large majority of these people
who suffer from homelessness are isolated and are living a destructive and vulnerable life. In
1992 the El Paso coalition was funded to help bring local services together to provide and
address the issues of homelessness that occurs throughout El Paso. Shelters and resources have
grown immensely since the program was formed now with over 30 centers to help with
homelessness. including recovery alliance where individuals can recover from drugs and alcohol,
places they can go during the night and day for shelter and food as well as child crisis centers
where kids aged up to 12 years of age can be nursed and looked after. The vast amount of these
people have been thrusted into homelessness by a life altering event that was unexpected and
unplanned. These dramatic events can caused by the loss of a loved one, loss of job, domestic
violence, drug and alcohol abuse and family issues. Many factors in life can push anyone to
living on the streets. Though not all of the problems that cause homelessness can be stopped
there are ways that we can lower the rate and percent. The first step is to make everyone aware of
how serious homelessness is which hopefully in the future will decrease the numbers. This essay
will analyze two ways in which we can help communicate to our audience how to solve this
issue. A poster and a documentary will be used to get our message across to the audience. The
areas in which the project will be analyzing are audience and purpose, rhetorical issues, structure
and language.

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Audience and purpose:

The poster that was chosen was from the Little red wagon foundation website which is
intended to be not just for the El Paso community but for anyone that lives in a country where
you see people living on the streets on a daily basis. People already know that homelessness is an
issue but do they really know the details on how these people became to live on the streets. A
poster is easy to analyze quickly when walking past and being able to get the gist of what the
poster is about. The discourse community are people who want to help and are interested in
working and volunteering to help decrease the number of homelessness. This poster has very
little words but has a picture that says 1000 which catches the eyes of bypasses, and
automatically makes people feel sympathetic when they see children lying on the ground with
holes in their clothes, no shelter and no food. The purpose of this poster is to inform the audience
that homelessness is an issue around the world and if we don't do something to stop it now it's
only going to get worse in the future. As for the Documentary it is set in the streets of New York
and is intended more at activists and people who enjoy watching real life event shows. The
document will take longer to get its point across to the audience, as it interviews a variety of
homeless people that live in the streets of New York, and has a lot more detailed information
than the poster. The Documentary serves as a good source of information to the audience,
especially to those who prefer more visual pictures and find it easier to watch rather than read.
Both of these genres serve the same purpose to make people more aware of what is happening
around the world in terms of homelessness. They are both easy sources to understand. The poster
focuses more on an audience that would not go out of their way and watch something that they
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do not have too, so the poster is easier for them to see as they are on their way to work or school.
Where the documentary is focused more at people who want to go out of their way to watch a
documentary that revolves around homeless people.


Rhetorical issues
The poster is very understandable, it only has a few words and contains more of a visual
aspect with a picture of a child in the background with her head down. Logos is shown with the
poster being easy to read with strong colors and bold lettering. The pathos that is shown on the
poster is very emotional and heart breaking, which creates people to feel sympathetic. The poster
shows a young girl who looks no older than 10 sitting there with a dog in front of her stating "1
in 9 children are homeless." At the bottom of the poster it has a website that leads to "The little
red wagon" where they explain in more detail what their purpose is and what they are doing to
prevent homelessness. The documentary "Lift the Blindfold" created by Michael Wilken's starts
off showing a quote by Jan Shakowsky saying that There is lot that happens around the world
we cannot control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent droughts and we cannot
prevent conflict. But when we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist. Then we
can help."
Immediately this documentary makes you visualize these people and feel sympathetic towards
them. The documentary compared to the poster is full of credentials because it is a bunch of
interviews that come straight from the source of the homeless. Though the poster is more simple
and straight forward, by watching this documentary it allows you to have a greater understanding
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and shows you what it is like to live in the shoes of someone, who does not have a roof over their
head, something to eat, clean clothes, no-where to shower and stuck begging for money in order
for them survive.

Structure:
The main idea of the poster which is homelessness is gaining the most attention in the
short sentence that is shown in bold letters on the poster, with words such as "despair" and
"hunger" in a light grey color surrounding the text and image. If the poster had more words it
would be too busy, therefore the poster would be harder to read and would not be as affective
towards the audience. However if the poster lacked color and simplicity it would also affect the
message that they were trying to express. With the poster focusing more on the visual and a short
sentence the message is very affective and conveyed easily. The documentary was structured so
it was easily understandable by viewers. Around 10 homeless males and females were
interviewed during the documentary explaining their story and how they became to live on the
streets. The documentary had a main person named Pat who they interviewed thoroughly
through-out the documentary. The structure of the documentary was very easy to understand,
having the visual advantage and being able to see who is talking makes it very clear. Both the
documentary and the poster are structured very clearly and are easy to distinguish.



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Style and Language:
The language shown on the poster is formal, with no slang being used. In bold letters the
poster states "1 out of 9 children are homeless" Straight away this informs the reader that
homelessness is an issue, not only with middle aged and elderly males and females, it is also
affecting children's lives too. The size of the text and the boldness emphasizes how serious
homelessness is. They use dark colors such as red which is associated with blood, war and
danger, black which can be associated with death and evil and grey which is the color of ash and
is more depressing. These colors fit the mood of the poster's image because it revolves around a
sad issue. If they were to use bright colors the purpose of the poster would be ruined. The poster
also has words "impoverished" "despair" "hungry" and "hopeless" faintly shown all over the
poster, which informs the reader on what these people are going through in their daily lives. The
other language that is used is the image of a girl, sitting on the floor, head down, with a dog in
front of her with a somber look on his face. On the other hand the documentary uses a mix of
informal language as well as formal. Through-out the documentary Michael is interviewing
people who other did not go to high school, or never graduated. Therefore their vocabulary is
very limited. Each person that is being interviewed during this documentary uses foul language
to express their anger and how they are feeling instead of talking civilly to get their point across.
As Michael interviews each person he names the speaker down the bottom of the page in large
text, which helps put a picture to the name through-out each interview. The style between the
blog and the poster differ where as the poster only shows the negatives and darkness and the
documentary also looks at the negatives, but tries to show some hope at the end of the tunnel.
A documentary and a poster are completely different ways to get a point across to the audience
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and though they do not both use the same style and language they both get the purpose across.
In conclusion, a documentary and a poster are two completely different genres that help convey
the same idea of homelessness. In this essay a poster and a documentary were used to
communicate how big of an issue homelessness is and how these people are no different from us,
we have the same heart beat, we are the same species yet no one will give them the time or day.
Audience and purpose, rhetorical issues, structure and style and language were used in order to
help convey the information. There was a bunch of differences and similarities shown in both
genres, which makes it more difficult to decide which source would be better to get the message
across. At the end of the day it is the audiences final decision, though I would have to choose
the documentary because it gives you a variety of information on the matter. Just like Gabe
mentioned "Never over think your logic before another man, for that man beats the same
heartbeat as you." No matter if youre homeless or not everyone being should be treated equally.
No one is more superior than someone else. Both of these genres can be seen in different ways
depending on who is taking in the information.







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References
White. C (2009, July 19) Homeless Children's poster. Retrieved from
http://www.coroflot.com/clwhite01/print
Wilkens. M (2012, May) Lift the Blindfold: A documentary on homelessness in New York.
Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/69214856