Winter Hiatus

Here's wishing everyone a warm, safe, relaxing, and productive winter break.

A new section of Engaging the Polis will begin January 20, 2009. Please join us for more thoughtful discussions about rhetoric, writing, and civic engagement . . . and a wellspring of other unique topics.

Next Week's Conference Schedule

Below you will find the appointments I have available for conferences. Meeting with me during this last week of class is not required, but please feel free to sign up for individual or group conferences (or both) if you would like to talk with me about your work, which I am always happy to do. If none of the times available work for your schedule, e-mail me so we can work out an alternative.

You may claim a spot by either e-mailing me or by posting your request as a comment; I will schedule appointments in the order I receive your requests and will update the schedule regularly to reflect availability.

Tuesday, December 9 conferences have been suspended due to our current weather conditions. Please contact me if you have any concerns or would like to schedule an appointment for later in the week.

Wednesday, December 10

11:00 Ally

11:30

1:00

1:30

2:00

2:30 Emily

3:00 Helen

Thursday, December 11

11:00

11:30

12:00

1:00

1:30

2:15

2:45

3:15

Consider this . . . last thoughts

For your final(required) blog post for the semester, you may post anything your heart desires. Perhaps you'd like to offer some final thoughts on the semester. Maybe you've had something you hoped to talk about but never had the opportunity--this is your opportunity. Maybe you've written a poem or song or essay or . . . interesting grocery list? Maybe you'd like to offer your own writer's guide or try your hand at crafting a periodic sentence. Whatever it may be, this is your time to do it. All are invited to post and respond.

Please note, all blogs should be complete by December 15 by 5 p.m.

For my part, I want to thank you all for an outstanding semester. Yours is a class I will remember for the duration; you reminded me of the challenge, excitement, and joy that comes from teaching writing and rhetoric. Thanks, truly.

Looking forward to your awesome portfolios!

All best,
CrS

P.S. These blogs, though attached to our course, are yours. You are welcome to return to them after the semester ends or to comment on the work of future cohorts.

You asked for it . . .

In yesterdy's class, during our discussion of sentences (see rule #4, below), Dave asked to see the loooong sentences I mentioned, and most of you seconded that request. So if you're interested, here goes . . . enjoy!

Example #1

Thick with red beans, grade A-GEN-U-INE Black Angus beef, and "the finest smoked hog this side of Cumberland Gap," the chili stuck to the wooden ladle like Great Aunt Francis' "concrete Christmas taters"---a mashed concoction of potatoes and canned cream of mushroom soup---before dribbling, chunk by juicy chunk, onto the square slab of cornbread in his Fiestaware bowl: first a cohesive mass of kidney beans, then one of Uncle Fred's home-grown hot peppers and a meaty mass of beef, pork, and sauce that splashed its hot and spicy bouillon onto John's white tee shirt before he could say, "but I'm a vegetarian."
(word count: 105)

Example #2

Though I told him there was no one with whom I would rather spend my 25th birthday and that the six hour drive meant little when compared with the six weeks we had spent apart--the longest we'd passed since meeting at his sister's wedding in May-- I could not tell him just what the birthday signified for me (because I did not yet know) nor could I explain his importance in the event; I only told him, in half jest, that I expected some grand epiphany to occur in passing my 25th year, some old oak door to creak open into an illuminated room of wisdom and grace in which my mind had locked, until this day, the traditions of all that had come before me and the hope of what should follow after, and I with held from him the fact that, as we walked around the Chicago Botanical Gardens on that day, that epiphany actually occurred and the change transformed me--a change so slight that one might easily mistake its significance, a change that he precipitated as he took my hand and we walked among the roses, asters, and chrysanthemums--and the old oak door that had opened was not as heavy as I anticipated, and the room was filled with sweet autumnal perfume.
(Word count: 217)

A Few Last Thoughts about Writing . . .

An electronic version (with a few small additions/changes). Enjoy.

A Completely Idiosyncratic, Slightly Off-Beat, Not Necessarily Original but Potentially Helpful Collection of Writing Advice

~or~

A Few Tips about Writing I’ve Picked up along the Way

Everyone in a complex system has a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather, the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole.
~Margaret J. Wheatley

To my mind, there is no system more complex—or more beautiful, intriguing, and beguiling—than our system(s) of language. Through the years, I have gathered a few little gems that I have taken to heart, made my own. What follows (in no particular order) is not formal advice; it is, perhaps, a revealing portrait of my own mind—but these scraps of writing wisdom, quilted together, inform my own writing practice, so I thought I’d share them with you. The point, of course, is not to ask you to adopt my criteria, but to inspire you to gather your own.

1. The better you understand the rules, the more liberated you are from them. This is a variant of the “you gotta know a rule before you can break it” philosophy, and there is something to it—making the conscientious decision to break/disregard a writing rule or to utilize a particular figure ‘reads’ very differently than haplessly stumbling onto something. Learn the conventions. Write with purpose. Break the rules with purpose. Make writing decisions, and be able to back them up. Doing so will give you confidence and will give your writing presence.

1 ½ . And yet . . . welcome, embrace those ‘happy accidents.’
Maybe it is your subconscious at work or maybe it is just serendipity, but every so often, despite one’s best intentions, a word comes out not as we intended . . . but so much better. Rule 1 ¾: Read your work aloud: sometimes what you say differs from what you wrote . . . and it is much, much stronger. A simple detail can change the efficacy of entire piece of writing.

2. Heed this gruesome advice: murder your darlings.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch penned this little gem in 1914, and it has since been picked up by Faulkner (as “kill your darlings”), Mark Twain (allegedly), and countless creative writing instructors. Writing is sometimes about tough decisions; ‘cutting the fat,’ or culling your hard work may be the toughest of them all, but it is often the right thing to do. The moment we become enamored of our own brilliance, we have lost our objective edge. Take one for the team, and all that . . . very noble, very valuable.

3. Eschew Obfuscation.
Huh? Exactly. This is an oldie but a goodie from the classic Elements of Style by Strunk and White (originally published in 1919):

Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. [. . .] In this, as in so many matters pertaining to style, one’s ear must be one’s guide: gut is a lustier noun than intestine, but the two words are not interchangeable, because gut is often inappropriate, being too coarse for the context. Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason (76-77).

4. To know and know well: the nature of the sentence and the power of strong verbs.
To my mind, sentences and verbs are the DNA of writing—stunning in their simplicity, awe-inspiring in their logical complexity and potential. If one can master not only the grammatical types of sentences (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) but also stylistic forms or modes (i.e. the periodic and the final free modifier) AND if one can come to understand the inherent power of verbs and their role in the internal logic of the sentence, then one can create life . . . on the page.

5. Appreciate the marriage of sound and sense.
There is a reason Plato banned the poets from his utopia: language is inherently musical and music is mesmerizing, persuasive. Pay attention to how language works, what it does, how it sounds—not just what it means. As the poet Edward Hirsh observed in How to Read a Poem an Fall in Love with Poetry, “writing fixes the evanescence of sound”— what an extraordinary phenomenon. Never underestimate the power of the auditory imagination.

6. Grammar is a part of language . . . and it can be fun (like a puzzle).
Consider Joan Didion’s argument for grammar: “All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.” Details make all the difference (i.e. ‘the devil is in the details’), and grammar represents one of the most nuanced, most influential, subclasses of ‘details.’ When it works, it supports and defines your writing; when it is flawed, it is distracting, like white noise or static.

7. Read!
From Richard Hugo: “a writer learns from reading possibilities of technique, ways of execution, phrasing, rhythm, tonality, pace” (The Triggering Town, xi). Read what you like, what you admire. Read the work you wish you had written. Don’t imitate, per se, but come to understand the nuances, the culture, of your favorite (or most serviceable) form or genre.

8. Don’t be lazy.
Rhetorical questions try to be provocative without taking the time to craft an appeal . . . lazy. As Hugo notes, “If you can answer the question, to ask it is a waste of time.” Other ways to be lazy: relying on clichés, drawing on ‘canned’ arguments, using gratuitous slang. The choices you make affect your ethos—choose wisely.

9. Always consider ethics.
Language can be incredibly powerful, and there is an inherent trust between writer and reader that must be honored. To paraphrase Andrea Lunsford, language use must be principled, accurate, and fair.

10. Learning opportunities present themselves in unexpected places and ways.
I learned much of what I know about rhetoric I learned from poetry. Much of what I know about poetry I learned from . . . sports. My writing education is grounded in what I learned in chemistry and pre-med (consider the beauty and extraordinary grace of molecular geometry). With that in mind . . . a few favorite, random (but nonetheless valuable) quotations (some about writing, some not) that guide my writing:

An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.
~F.Scott Fitzgerald

Make your own kind of music.
Sing your own special song.
Make your own kind of music—
Even if nobody else sings along.
~ ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot, 1969

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.
~Earnest Hemingway, The Paris Review

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER—itty bitty living space.
~Robin Williams
as ‘Genie’ in Walt Disney’s Aladdin

To write [. . .] you must have a streak of arrogance—not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice.
~Richard Hugo

The language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time.
~Strunk and White

You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.
~Robert Frost

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
~E.L. Doctorow

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightening and the lightening bug.
~Mark Twain

Verse forms do not define poetic forms: they simply express it. It is an important distinction. For many people what is off-putting about poetic form is the belief, sometimes based on an unlucky class or exam, that these are cold and arbitrary rules, imposed to close out readers rather than include them. [. . .] poetic form is not abstract, but human. [. . . ] This is the charm and power of poetic form. It is not imposed; it is rooted.
~Mark Strand, The Making of a Poem

The poet may legitimately step out into the universal only by first going through the narrow door of the particular.
~Cleanth Brooks, Irony as a Principle of Structure

And now for a bonus rule, one that is perhaps my favorite . . .

Embrace your own weirdness.
I believe this, too, comes from Hugo, but I first learned it at the feet of my first true mentor, the poet and professor Dr. Jonathan Johnson. What does it mean? Well, my friends, that's the point: that's for you to decide, as only you can.

3QE: Beyond the Academic Essay

Earlier in the semester, I posed the following question: can writing ever capture the enormity of experience? As a consequence, we have examined several forms and genres and have analyzed, from a rhetorical perspective, the way each presents a unique argument—or, perhaps more accurately, how different forms or genres offer unique opportunities, unique presentations, of specific claims and thus employ different types of appeals. For your third quarterly essay, I would like you to return to that question in the attempt to capture your own “enormity of experience” and to advance an argument—either explicitly or implicitly—through the genre of creative nonfiction.

The work you have done thus far this semester has been analytical, formal, academic; this assignment offers you the opportunity to ‘play’ with language a little by exploring writing as a craft rather than as a mere vehicle for communication. The writing you will do for this assignment does not depart entirely from the practice you've had through the first two quarterly essays nor from the work you have been doing in your cohorts toward the research project; in fact, writing creative nonfiction relies on or draws from many of the principles that guide formal academic writing and research. The difference lies in the subject matter, approach, style, and delivery—in brief, the writer's rhetorical situation and purpose.

Lee Gutkind, himself an acclaimed creative non-fiction writer and editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine, cogently describes the genre of creative nonfiction thus:

Dramatic, true stories using scenes, dialogue, close, detailed descriptions and other techniques usually employed by poets and fiction writers about important subjects - from politics, to economics, to sports, to the arts and sciences, to racial relations, and family relations. Creative Nonfiction heightens the whole concept and idea of essay writing. It allows a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined wordplay of a poet and the analytical modes of the essayist.

Thus, this assignment offers you the opportunity to merge the discipline of research and analysis with the aesthetic qualities of creative writing and to write about a subject from a perspective and in a style that is entirely your own. As Gutkind advises, “Ultimately, the primary goal of the creative nonfiction writer is to communicate information, just like a reporter, but to shape it in a way that reads like fiction.” In this regard, our work with rhetorical tropes and schemes, types of appeals, kairos, and forms of public argument should serve you well; in short, rely on your rhetorical awareness when crafting your essay.

Your essay should run approximately 4-6 pages in length. It should be typed, double-spaced, with clean and consistent formatting (i.e. name, title, page numbers). No formal research is necessary, but the details and information you include in your essay must be presented in good faith; that is, they must be accurate and truthful given the limitations of memory and complexity of perspective.

In order to accommodate your schedule, you may submit your essay at your convenience,
before or after Thanksgiving break:

Tuesday, November 25 or Tuesday, December 2

Luttrell Interview

During today's discussion of Luttrell's Lone Survivor, Alex mentioned an interview with Luttrell about the book in which he references his reasons for writing it. During the interview, as Alex pointed out in class, Luttrell notes that "the top Navy Brass gave me a special mission to write a book about [Operation Red Wing]."

You may listen to the interview here.

As we began to discuss in class, Luttrell's situation as a service member writing about a classified mission complicates ethos in fascinating ways; this situation reveals, perhaps in a way we had not yet considered, the complexity of the rhetorical situation and the dynamic between participants involved in the situation, and the intricacy of composition.

Thanks, Alex, for passing along this clip.

Group Conference Schedule

Below you will find a list of both the open and confirmed time slots available for our conferences. If you have not yet signed up for a time, please get in touch with me so I may adjust the schedule or, if none of the available times work for your group, help you negotiate an alternate appointment.

Wednesday, November 12

[1:30] HAM Radio

[2:15] available

Thursday, November 13

[12:30] Dashboard PA

[1:15] available

[2:00] available

[2:45] available

[3:30] I.D.E.A.

Monday, November 17

[11:30] Advocatus Diaboli

Tuesday, November 18

This is a designated work day; however, I am available during our scheduled class time or until 3 p.m. by appointment.

Hold That Thought!

Dear 201 Bloggers---

I, your humble and imperfect instructor, have committed a fatal rhetorical error: I have given you a blog prompt that ignores kairos! Shame on me. Mea culpa. I would like to remedy that error now*.

I asked you, for this week, to consider form and genre and its inherent rhetorical power---

DURING AN ELECTION?!

Stop, please. Hold that thought. Genre will still be there for us to consider next week (week 11).

For THIS week (week 10), please blog about your response to and thoughts about the election. All are welcome to post, but all are also encouraged to read and respond.

All best,
Christine


*Kudos for revision!

On Form and Genre

In class on Thursday, I briefly introduced George Campbell’s definition of rhetoric, which we will discuss in greater detail next week:

Rhetoric is that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.

~The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776

Campbell’s definition, like understanding the full extent of Aristotle’s ‘available means,’ points to the complexity of crafting an effective rhetorical appeal. We’ve already discussed the value of atechnic and entechnic pistis (support, or proof); the centrality of ethics in manipulating language to achieve a desired outcome; the value of rhetorical figure (tropes and schemes) in the marriage of sound and sense; the importance of audience and maintaining clarity of purpose; and the ‘situatedness,’ including awareness of expectations and conventions, of any rhetorical act. Now is the time to take that analysis one step further: now is the time to consider genre and form.

While it is not entirely correct to use the terms genre and form synonymously, form and genre are related in that both give shape to a text and are, themselves, rhetorical.

The important thing to understand about genre and form is that they are expressions of thought rather than impositions on thought; they are organized systems of conventions, and in this may be considered cultural artifacts, and each performs a unique function. They are not, as is often presumed, prescriptive, but tools at your disposal; in other words, once you understand a form, or genre, you—as author/composer—engage it. You harness its rhetorical power as an 'available means.'

Still—and this is where it gets tricky—you must consider kairos when considering form and genre: what is the most appropriate expression, relative to your purpose, for your audience at a particular moment? In this, we begin to see that form is not imposed on thought but, in Edward Hirsch’s words, a significant “technical accomplishment.” As the poet mark Strand explains, forms are not comprised of “cold and arbitrary rules, imposed to close out readers rather than include them [. . .] form is not abstract, but human.” This is an idea we will spend more time with in the coming weeks.

For now, it is useful enough to think about form and genre as we’ve seen it thus far this semester: the candidates’ uses of rhetorical tropes and schemes to affect their appeals; the evolution (devolution?) of presidential campaign ads from 1952 to those associated with the present election cycle; and Ellison’s brilliant use of symbolism and surrealism available to him through the genre of fiction to make cogent arguments about identity, race, freedom, and democracy.

Taking the time to consider genre as an important rhetorical element revisits the idea presented by Samuel Johnson, channeling the poet Horace, in his 1765 Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare that the writer’s purpose is to “instruct and delight” to “combine education (especially moral instruction) with pleasure.”

Week 10: Consider This . . .

Consider FORM and GENRE

Vis-à-vis our recent class discussions and the above class notes, this week’s blog asks that you think critically about form and genre as a rhetorical ‘means.’* Specifically, I would like you to choose any text in any form that has moved you and consider its form or genre from a rhetorical perspective. What does the form/genre lend to its impact or appeal? How does genre affect its rhetorical efficacy, its meaning? Why is the form an appropriate expression of its meaning?

Please note that in the selection of your example, ‘text’ may be considered broadly to include any form that makes a rhetorical statement, i.e. movies, music, poetry, photography, painting, sculpture, speeches, ads, a work of fiction, drama, a skit, a nonfiction essay . . . an animated series or short?—

In brief, please select a favorite or memorable movie, song, poem, book, painting, etc. and examine its form or genre in relation to its rhetorical appeal.

For example, in Invisible Man^ Ellison uses surrealism, flashback, and symbolism—available to him through the genre of fiction—to present and lend strength to his arguments. It allows him to 'play' with his argument, present it through an artistic medium and make a powerful, pathetic appeal. His argument would look very different if it were a speech or an academic argument and would probably favor a more explicitly logical approach. In other words, genre itself makes an argument and works in tandem with content to achieve a particular rhetorical objective.

So think about a time when you have been, in George Campbell’s language, enlightened, pleased, moved, or influenced by a text . . . and then consider what form or genre had to do with your reaction.

NOTES:

*This is, by any measure, a challenging assignment. I am willing to allow additional time, beyond our usual Tuesday-by-midnight deadline, for its completion; this will also give us the opportunity to discuss it in class on Tuesday, should you so desire.

^I have—with apologies—been delinquent in posting our class notes from our discussion of Invisible Man, so please refer to your notes from class to remind you of our collective observations and the arguments we teased out of the novel.

A little something extra . . .

Given the context of yesterday's discussion of Jones and his (and our) arguments about the convergence of popular culture and politics, I thought you might be interested in the following Jill Serjeant article (via Reuters):

Stone says no malice intended in "W."

Oliver Stone's film portrait of President George W. Bush was always going to be controversial given the director's liberal leanings.

So Stone decided to open "W." in U.S. theaters less than three weeks before Americans select their next president -- a calculated move aimed at prodding voters to think about the past eight years and the future. [More . . .]

The political becomes popular; the popular becomes political . . .
an interesting rhetorical dynamic, indeed.

Week 7: Consider This . . .

The convergence of popular culture and politics offers a new, compelling approach to understanding and advancing public arguments. For this week's blog, then, please reflect on the implications of Jones' observations, and our class discussion, regarding the convergence of these two public discursive spheres. Specifically,

What is gained or lost in merging politics and popular culture?

and/or

Does the convergence of politics and popular culture support or undermine democracy? How so?

Please don't feel limited by these questions: you may address them explicitly or implicitly, in whole or in part, in your post as you see fit. The questions are only provided to prompt, guide, and frame your thoughts.


Those who are posting this week, please complete your posts by midnight Tuesday, October 14th; all others have until midnight Saturday, October 18th to respond.

Politics and Pop Culture

As we discussed in class today, Jones' "Forums for Citizenship in Popular Culture" raises several interesting questions about the convergence of politics and popular culture, revealing, ultimately, that civic engagement largely depends on public trust; how that trust is established, or violated, is particularly intriguing when the notion of the informed citizen participant is complicated by competing assumptions, interests, and expectations. Jones argues, and you observed, that while popular culture provides an access point for engaging political discourse, the assumptions and types of appeals traditionally ascribed to each discursive realm may differ. For example, Aristotle notes in the Politics that "the law is reason unaffected by desire"(III.1287a32)--quoted in popular culture in the Reese Witherspoon film Legally Blonde as "The law is reason free from passion"; likewise, we observed (vis-a-vis Jones' argument) that politics is concerned with governance and governance ostensibly relies on logos/logical appeals in making and negotiating policy (text)and in advancing public arguments. By contrast, popular culture is comprised of and concerned with audience; it relies primarily on pathos and multifaceted pathetic appeals.

These distinctions often hold . . . until, that is, a scandal, a heated or evocative issue, or an election campaign emerges. Presidential campaigning, as we have seen in examining historical and current campaign ads, is one unique site where we see the explicit convergence of the political and the popular. This seems to suggest that the popular is more persuasive, keeping in mind the intellectual/rhetorical distinction between argument and persuasion we read in Lunsford, a notion worthy of further investigation.

In the vernacular of our class, this convergence of politics and popular culture shifts the rhetorical situation and reframes the way we experience and understand whatever it is at stake, whatever public argument is being advanced or challenged. Further, the assumptons that ground the political often differ from those which ground the popular, which Jones illustrates nicely through his contrastive examples from This Week with Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts and Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect and their respective analyses of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal.

In understanding the rhetorical significance of the political and the popular, then, it is important to explore the implications for bringing together the popular and the political . . . for governance and for public trust, for civic participation and for democracy.

Week 6: Consider This . . .

We have spent the last several weeks immersing ourselves in rhetorical theory while examining a variety of texts for their rhetorical value and efficacy. As we now begin to shift from foundational or structural rhetoric, if you will, to the rhetorics of style and form, now is a good time to reflect on the process of rhetorical analysis. For this week's blogs, then, please answer this:

What, in your opinion and experience, is gained through rhetorical analysis? Why do it? Does it offer more than intellectual exercise or not?

Please try to offer a specific example or two to illustrate your point, as we have done in class when reviewing the different stump speeches, quotations, historical campaign ads, et al. texts.

Responders, please consider what our posters have to offer, and see if you agree, disagree, or can expand on their answers---or feel free to offer your own unique perspective.

2QE: Second Quarterly Essay

For the past three weeks, we have been surveying rhetorical theory in order to better understand how language, and specifically argumentation, ‘works.’ We have focused on understanding rhetoric as a method for analysis, identifying types of appeals and their efficacy, and evaluating the validity and ethicality of arguments.

Your second quarterly essay asks that you apply these principles and attempt (essayer) a rhetorical analysis of your own; thus, the 2QE is, in essence, a deepening of the blog prompt you completed for week 4 and, in fact, may be an expansion and revision of your blog exercise.

In short, you should select any public argument that interests you —that is, a specific, supported claim advanced in the public sphere—and evaluate it from a rhetorical perspective. In your analysis you should consider elements including, but not limited to kairos, rhetorical purpose, audience, type(s) of appeal(s), legitimacy of support (is it fallacious?), and overall effect (does it work?).

Please refer to our class notes r/t rhetorical analysis to help support or guide your approach. This essay should result in a project that is approximately 4 to 6 pages in length (double-spaced) to start, but as always, please honor the content of your work over the length of the project: quality over quantity is our gold standard. If you have written a thorough, substantive analysis in three pages, or if you require eight, so be it. Please refrain from ‘fluffing’ or abridging your work at this stage in the drafting process.

Gnothi Seauton

Gnothi Seauton: Know Thyself

In Tuesday’s class I argued that perhaps one of the most important and authentic things you can do as a rhetorician is to know your own stance, your own positions and biases, when you approach a rhetorical situation; whether you are advancing a claim, analyzing an argument, or engaging another’s rhetorical act, awareness of your own unique ‘recipe’ of assumptions—those that likely inform your values, positions, ideology, and perhaps identity—greatly influences your approach. Equally important: attempting to understand the complexity of assumptions that inform the claim of the ‘other.’ This led us to a discussion of what Stephen Toulmin appropriately termed ‘grounding,’ the assumptions that inform and/or contextualize the argument.

In order for an argument to function well it is important that all members of the exchange share the assumptions, related to the argument, of the one who advances the claim (the claimant). When the audience or interlocutor does not share the assumptions that inform the claim, the effectiveness of the argument is compromised; such a case requires a rhetorical strategy that addresses and acknowledges such difference. In analysis, then, it is useful to know your own biases and preferences in order to suspend them—if necessary—in order to assume the ethos of the claimant and assess the validity of the argument from within its contextual frame. If the argument proves valid from within the given contextual framework, then you may address the complexity of the argument with greater purpose and clarity, demonstrating the ways in which the argument fails when challenged by alternate or competing contexts or assumptions if those contexts are germane to the argument.

It is important, then, in evaluating a rhetorical act to attempt to understand not just the claim and support, not just the logical relationship that exists between the claim and the support (that which warrants the connection—i.e. the ‘warrant’ in Toulmin’s terms), but also all that implicitly informs the argument, as all of these elements, working together, effect the validity of an argument.

Bottom line: as an analyst or as an interlocutor, as a claimant or as a member of an audience, you are a part of the rhetorical dynamic. To ‘know thyself,’ is to cultivate awareness about your assumptions and to acknowledge that what grounds your position(s) factors in to your rhetorical engagement with others.

Week 4: Consider this . . .

Rhetoric is always concerned with ethics. An argument or appeal that employs tactics that are (to paraphrase Andrea Lunsford) unfair, inaccurate, or unprincipled in order to achieve a desired outcome violates the trust that exists between participants of an exchange. Logical, pathetic, and ethical fallacies, as we discussed in class today, do just that.

It is important to note, however, that identifying a fallacy is not always straightforward: like any rhetorical act, a fallacy is situated. It is, therefore, important to remember to assess before you judge: what may seem like a fallacious argument in one context could be a valid argument in another—depending on the audience, purpose, and underlying assumptions that inform the claim. With that in mind . . .

Bloggers this week should seek out a public argument and examine its rhetorical impact, validity, and ethicality. Selection criteria is wide open: you may select an argument that address a local, national, or global issue; you may select an argument from a speech (past or present), a campaign (presidential, advertising, et al.), an opinion/editorial column, or an offering from the ‘comments’ of an online news & opinion forum. You may examine any argument, from the serious to the absurd, as long as it engages in some meaningful way public affairs.

Respondents should examine both the argument selected by those posting blogs this week as well as their treatment of the argument. You may second their analysis, offer additional points to consider, or counter their analysis.

Rhetorical Analysis: An Informal Methodology

As we have been discussing in class, rhetorical interaction involves complex relationships between time, place, purpose, participants, assumptions, information, symbols, and ideas. Because nearly any rhetorical situation is thus multifaceted, a systematic approach to analysis will greatly aid your efforts in interpreting, responding to, or crafting arguments.

Below you will find the series of considerations related to approaching rhetorical analysis that we discussed in class. Please remember that this list is not prescriptive, nor is it necessarily linear; you may find that a particular problem or task is best served by focusing your efforts one aspect of the argument you are analyzing. You may also find that once you have examined the pistis (support), for example, you want to revisit your own response to the piece. This act of revisiting can be particularly effective and revealing.

Bottom line: let your purpose in conducting an analysis determine your approach; analysis is, after all, also a rhetorical act and is situated. This list, written in our classroom vernacular, serves only to remind you of key points, guide your efforts, and help you organize your analysis.

Points of Approach:

• Identify the Claim. What is it that the author/composer is advancing? What is the point he or she (or they) attempts to make?

• Assess Your ‘Gut’ Reaction. Often we neglect to acknowledge our own stances, assumptions, and convictions when analyzing another’s work. Understanding your own position (or lack thereof) in relation to the author’s can be the difference between acting as an analyst versus acting as an interlocutor. Objectivity is rarely one’s default personal stance; often it must be cultivated and protected. Here, it is wise to thoughtfully consider the inscription on the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi: ‘know thyself.’ Don’t underestimate the power one’s own views have over reason and the imagination.

• Assess the Rhetorical Situation/ Assess Kairos. What is the time, the place, the purpose of the argument? Is the author advancing a claim in the most appropriate forum at the most opportune time? To what end? And finally, to whom? (a question that nicely introduces the next point . . .)

• Identify/Assess/Evaluate the Audience. The dynamic between the claimant and his or her audience is critical in assessing the effectiveness and appropriateness of an argument; in crafting or advancing an argument, understanding your audience will shape your approach. It must. In the end, a rhetorical act is an exchange: the audience is as much a part of the argument as the claim itself. An argument that fails to consider its audience is incomplete, at best, and, at worst, fails.

• Identify the Types of Appeals. The dynamic between ethos, pathos, and logos reveals the mechanism, if you will, of the argument. It is what gives the argument momentum and impact. It is important to realize that these types, or categories, of appeals are rarely mutually exclusive: they work in tandem to give the argument shape, to drive it along, and to make it (and the author) convincing and/or memorable. That said, appeals do not always contribute to the argument in equal measure, and the emotional, logical, and ethical affect of an argument depends on the balance of these types of appeals.

• Examine the Evidence (Pistis). Aristotle identifies two types of support; atechnic (without craft, things we do not create but, rather, use) and entechnic (crafted, invented, the way one uses the atechnic support and other means that are at one’s disposal to craft the argument . . . including schemes of reasoning such as deductive or inductive). Accuracy, validity, and precision— as well as a keen awareness of underlying assumptions that inform the claim—are paramount in evaluating evidence. Trust, but verify.

• Evaluate the Logic, Language, and Style. Closely related to appeals and pistis, the evaluation of logic, language, and style explores the how of the craft; this process takes a very close look at specific details and choices made by the claimant and assesses their impact. Often, this is done in the process of examining the appeals and the evidence, but it is important to highlight the impact of nuanced detail: things like word choice, sequence, and example selection can make or break an argument. As is often heard in American folk-wisdom, “The devil is in the details.”

• Provide Commentary. Present your findings, or, if you are inclined to act as an interlocutor, counter the argument. What is revealing? What is useful? What have you gained in parsing the argument?

For me, the value of rhetorical analysis lies in its ability to make accessible complicated ideas or positions and to present, for consideration, multiple facets of a particular problem; the joy of rhetorical analysis is that it allows me to treat language as I did my toys as a child—it allows me to take apart the language to see how it works.

Consider this . . .

As we spend more time talking about the importance of assessing kairos and types of appeals, it is useful to consider the situation in which we are currently immersed. For week three, then, please address the following question:

How has 9/11 affected, influenced, or otherwise shaped the rhetorical situation in which we currently engage public arguments?

Please remember that posts are due by Tuesday, midnight. Responses to posts are due by Saturday, midnight.

Good to Know: Synecdoche and Metonymy

Synecdoche is a rhetorical figure, a trope, that allows a whole to be represented by one of its parts.

Metonymy, also a figure of division, refers to something by naming one of its attributes.


Example: as we recalled the events of September 11, 2001 in class, we created a complex compilation of memories, images, and emotional responses—some specific, some broad, some personal, some shared, some local, and some distant. The collective memory and associations related to the day and its events, combined with each individual testimony from the day—reports of shock, confusion, misinformation, speculation, horror, disbelief, anger, silence, interruption of routine, overwhelming emotion, and (especially among those who were on the cusp of adolescence) a sense of being protected or shielded—has come to be represented cogently and succinctly by just four characters: ‘9/11.’

The complexity that is revealed in compiling our memories and experiences specific to 9/11 raises an important question that we will revisit throughout the semester: can language, and specifically writing, capture the enormity of experience? This is a question posed some time ago by one of my dissertation directors, Dr. Michael Bernard-Donals, during a graduate seminar, and I have found it useful in thinking about the function of rhetoric and its related figures and moves.

I would argue that one way language attempts to capture the enormity and complexity of experience is through the employment of rhetorical figures, which ‘carry’ the complexity of the experience through the deliberate use of language. In our example from today, the use of the phrase ‘nine-eleven’ represents one part of the day, the date itself, and has come to stand for the whole of the experience: this is an example of synecdoche, and it is one example of how rhetoric ‘works’ to achieve a desired outcome.

By point of comparison, the naming of September 11th as ‘Patriot Day’ employs metonymy, as it recalls an attribute (or set of attributes) of the day—the way first responders and other sacrificed their lives to help others, the way firefighters raised the flag on the tilted spire in the ruins of the World Trade Center, the way members of Congress came together to stand on the stairs of the U.S. Capitol to sing “God Bless America,” the way the French newspaper Le Monde ran a headline that announced, “Today we are all Americans,” or the way the U.S. flag draped over the gaping hole in the Pentagon—now iconic artifacts that conjure a sense of patriotism and community.


For more on synecdoche and metonymy, check out Silva Rhetoricae, an excellent resource for anyone interested in rhetoric and rhetorical devices.

What, exactly, is rhetoric?

Not an easy question, to be sure, but one we will explore in all its complex and multifaceted glory over the next 15 weeks. For purposes of introduction, please consider the following:

Aristotle defines rhetoric as having the ability, in each case, to see the available means of persuasion (Rhetoric I.2.1), and this definition reveals much about the nature and function of rhetoric. So often in contemporary public discourse we hear of rhetoric as a product (i.e. political rhetoric) or used in a disparaging way (i.e. nothing more than empty political rhetoric), but Aristotle offers that rhetoric is an ability. Not merely a product, nor a particular ‘gift’ that some, by accident of birth or nature, have and others don’t. Not just a ‘knack’ like ‘cookery,’ as suggested by Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias , rhetoric is something one may have or learn to have, a techne or craft—and as a craft, rhetoric is something that may be acquired and honed.

This is, perhaps, a particularly helpful distinction, because too often folks have anxiety about writing because they don’t feel they have “the gift.” Too often, folks believe that they “just aren’t” writers. While talent should not necessarily be completely discounted, rhetorical awareness and ability does not come from innate talent alone, a notion Aristotle’s description of rhetoric as a techne implicitly advances.

Further, Aristotle’s caveat, in each case, suggests that rhetoric is situated and dynamic. It responds to kairos—the time, place, and purpose of the rhetorical act. In each case communicates the importance of the opportune or appropriate moment in determining the effectiveness of an utterance. Advancing a claim in one situation, to a particular audience, at a given moment, under a certain set of particular circumstances will affect, perhaps even determine, its outcome. A shift in kairos will almost certainly alter the effectiveness of an appeal. It is, therefore, imperative in understanding, assessing, and crafting a rhetorical appeal that one learns to ‘read’ or assess the rhetorical situation and the appropriateness, the timeliness, the ‘situatedness’ of the rhetorical act.

Finally, available means, while certainly for our purposes as writers indicates language, may also include a variety of available resources. The power of sensory perception—light, color, shape, sound, scent, touch—should not be underestimated . . . and may be used independent of or in conjunction with language to make a rhetorical appeal. It is for this reason that I expand Aristotle’s definition somewhat to say that rhetoric is concerned with understanding the ways symbols achieve efficacy in a particular time and place and for a particular purpose and audience. This concept of rhetoric reveals that language carries significant symbolic/referent power and suggests that it may be crafted or manipulated to achieve a particular outcome.

While certainly not the last word on rhetoric, it is my hope that Aristotle’s approach, when applied to writing, offers incredible accessibility and demystifies, or at least works toward demystifying, the process and provides a valuable frame through which you may approach your writing.

Use of this Space

The most important function of this site is that it serves as a 'hub' for our class blogs, but I would like it to do more. Periodically, I will post to this space class notes and observations, discussion prompts, and other class news appropriate to the open-access forum of the blog.

I will also begin to compile a list of useful links to resources available on the web. Classroom members and friends of this project, please feel free to engage these posts as you would any other blog; if this becomes a space where we can engage public arguments publicly, in the service of promoting and cultivating rhetorical awareness, then I will consider it a success.

Getting Started

Our Fall 2008 Semester begins on September 2nd, and I hope to have our blog community up and running by the end of the second week of classes.

Please check back soon for more updates!