Background: Satire is a style of argumentation that uses humor to draw attention to/show that someone or something is foolish, weak, or needs improvement, and can be directed at specific people, like the President/monarch/ruler of a country, or at larger institutions/businesses, like Pepsi or Starbucks. Authors and critics tend to employ satire when traditional or direct styles of argumentation prove ineffective.
Background: Satire is a style of argumentation that uses humor to draw attention to/show that someone or something is foolish, weak, or needs improvement, and can be directed at specific people, like the President/monarch/ruler of a country, or at larger institutions/businesses, like Pepsi or Starbucks. Authors and critics tend to employ satire when traditional or direct styles of argumentation prove ineffective. Assignment: Using Swift’s text as a guide, write your own modest proposal that 1) identifies a real and current social problem and 2) provides and argues an exaggerated/oversimplified, sarcastic, ironic, and satirical solution for the problem. Remember that with satire, the goal is not to provide a logical solution; conversely, it is to provide an over-the-top/extremely minimized and unrealistic – yet still plausible – solution in the hopes of drawing attention back to the original problem. (For example, if you actually feel that the prevalence of body modifications due to plastic surgery has gotten out of hand, you must instead create a satirical proposal for why plastic surgery is a good idea, perhaps even necessary as it is an easy way to eliminate ugly people from society.)