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.