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Sept 20

Page history last edited by Jared 12 years, 6 months ago

Aristotle: "Rhetoric is an ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion..."

 

Plato Rhetoric is "the art of winning the soul by discourse."

 

Burke: "The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents."

 

"Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."

 

 

 

Writing Project One:

 

Workshopping Intro Paragraphs

 

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/images/gmb-workshop.jpeg

 

 On Tap Today:

  • Project One and Project Two in our itinerary
  • Today's task: workshopping introductions as a group
  • Primary challenge of this assignment: making an argument about an argument/making an argument in/with/through an analysis (what is an argument, in this context?)
  • Secondary challenge of this assignment: be interesting to your audience (how will we do this?: by creating the appropriate exigence for our writing (by using an ad or ads as a synecdoche for larger systems; by linking analysis to broader questions; by relating ad to cultural changes or politics; by showing continuity and change in advertising; by teaching the reader something they didn't already know; showing the ad to be a "problem solver" for the advertiser...)
  • Introduction Strategies: the introduction will largely decide both how your writing will proceed and whether or not a reader will continue reading
  • Thursday: Peer-to-Peer workshopping
  • Today: ProjectOne Examples and Rough Draft Intros

 


The Process Mantra: (Donald Murray, Learning By Teaching)

What is the process we should teach? It is the process of discovery through language.  It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language...This is not a question of correct or incorrect, of etiquette or custom.  This is a matter of far higher importance.  The writer, as s/he writes, is making ethical decisions.  She doesn't test her words by a rule book, but by life.  He uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others.  It is an exciting and evolving process.

 

The Five Canons of Rhetoric 

 

By the time Cicero comes about,  rhetoric would be divided into five major categories or canons:

1) inventio (invention) 
2) dispositio (arrangement)
3) elocutio (style)
4) memoria (memory)
5) pronuntiatio (delivery).

The Writing Process is recursive...involving numerous steps and varied skills and strategies that we come back to as we engage in the process.  It looks something like this:

  • prewriting/invention 
  • drafting
  • revision and responding to feedback...and usually more revision...and usually more revision...
  • editing (revision works on the level of thought/meaning/intention, while editing focuses more on grammar, paragraphing, sentence structure and syntax)
  • proofreading (a final check for common errors at the sentence level)

Persuasion is also recursive: occuring through a transactional process involving three major vectors (in a manner similar to the processes of feedback in nature and technology). A rhetor produces a message designed to persuade a particular audience and then (often) responds dynamically to the reactions of that audience, thus altering their message.

 


Introductions Workshop

 

 

You all had to start with an ad or series of ads to begin an intro-graph for today...  

You have flexibility to proceed in a number of potential directions, with different methods for your analysis and and choices for Arrangement or Structure for Project One

 

The following methods and structures should be considered flexible approaches you might take (and they may potentially overlap)

 

1. Content Analysis - you analyze one (or more) "rhetorically rich" advertisement and explain what argument the ad makes and how it makes that argument.

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Thesis statements for this ad will usually identify the argument and mention specific strategies or types of appeals embedded in the ad that forward this argument. A template structure for this type of claim might be something like this (P=ad, Q=argument, R=thing/institution behind the ad, X, Y, Z= strategies): In P, R uses X, Y, and Z to make a powerful case for Q. For instance, consider the WSU ad we discussed in our last class. Our thesis statement for that ad was something like this: "In their "Aim Higher" commercial, Wayne State uses inspirational music, catchy slogans, and images of appealing students and instructors, to make a compelling argument that the university give students the pragmatic skills they need to succeed in their future careers."

 

Benefits: The argument for these kinds of analysis are very straightforward (easy for a reader to follow) and require little research; overall, you need only do a very close reading of the ad and identify what strategies it uses and why the are (not) effective.

 

Drawbacks: Since only one ad is being focused on, you need a very rich ad (one that is complicated or makes sophisticated use of techniques) and a fairly insightful take on that ad in order for the analysis to be impressive.

 

2. Categorical Analysis: In this type of analysis authors focus not on a single ad or campaign, but on a category of marketing techniques.

 

 

For instance, you might take one of the techniques mentioned in our readings and examine (a) contemporary example(s) of the same. You might take the technique of making a "family of products" and analyze how it is used in similiar and/or different ways by Apple computers, toy companies, and furniture makers. Or, you might use advertiser's focus on manipulating memory and identify how it used by Coca-Cola and McDonald's. Or, you might, as one of you are doing, analyze Burger King's creepy "King" character, and contextualize it within the larger history of anthropomorphic "mascots" for products and companies(from "Tony the Tiger" to "The Burger King" or Ronald McDonald vs. The Burger King). Our first student example, (the one on "advergaming") uses this technique in a pretty broad way: it identifies a new category of advertising (product placments in video games) and also evaluates its overall impact (which, for the author, is a negative one). The third student examples also takes a "categorical" approach - identifying the trend in which ads for men's products are increasingly using the same techniques/appeals that uses to be exclusively used in advertising products designed for women.

 

Benefits: There's little problem coming up with material for this type of analysis, as you can find multiple examples of any given trend. If your audience is relatively unfamiliar with the use (or popularity) of this particular technique, you might also have an easier time making your essay an interesting read.

 

DrawbacksThe breadth of this type of analysis is also what might make it more challenging: you need to somewhat cohesively explore a concept, which will require some degree of research to be fully successful.

 

3. Contextual Analysis (Beyond "the sell"):  Advertisements are problem-solving rhetorics - the problem they are usually solving is less than ideal sales for the product they represent. In other circumstances, they might not be so much selling a product as an ideal or a course of action (for instance, one of you is writing about commercials for/against plans for nationalized healthcare in the U.S. - the "problem" here is not low sales, but the possibility that the particular desires of partisans on this issue may not be realized). Still at other times an ad might be trying to solve some problem other than than selling a product or idea or an ad campaign might run into its own problems. For instance, I had posted, but we didn't go over in much detail, this ad for Monsanto:

 

 

On the one hand, this ad is meant to advertise Monsanto as a company and, at least by proxy, its products. On the other hand, given the company's long-standing public relations and legal problems, this ad is certainly meant to sell a certain perception (or counteract a different one) of the company as a whole.

 

As mentioned above, sometimes ad campaigns run into their own problems. Later in the semester, for instance, we'll talk about Calvin Klein's notorious ad campaign that featured young models in states of undress; many people found these ads to border not only on "just" pornography, but child pornography. The third student example - on PETA ads - takes up a very different problem faced by that organization; despite having the funds to pay for them, they were continually unable to air ads during the Super Bowl. That essay provides not only an analysis of the ads under review, but answers the question asked at the beginning of the essay: what was so troubling about these ads that major TV networks were afraid to air them?

 

Benefits: Drawing in context gives you much material to write about. It also makes it much easier to come up with an interesting argument in which to embed your ad analysis.

 

Drawbacks: This type of analysis also requires more research and, perhaps, more creativity on your part.

 


Moving from Invention to Arrangement:

Does any of the above make you think of a potential arrangement of parts for up-coming paragraphs?



Use arrangement carefully...

Certainly, early decisions to continue in a pre-specified direction can lock "writers into a premature solution before they have entered the problem (Flower, 1980). Even though logic and current theory might suggest that the rigid aspects of the typical outline and the more fluid nature of composition may not make the friendliest companions, the following study sought to test this hypothesis in the L2 classroom. To this end, a series of French compositions generated from oral brainstorming followed by the creation of an outline were compared to those resulting from oral brainstorming without an outline.

 

Conclusion

Forcing students to fit their ideas into "preexisting organizational modes" (Taylor p. 6) is not only incompatible with thought processes (Grabe, 2001; Omaggio Hadley, 1993; Scarcella and Oxford, 1992; Walvoord, 1982; Zamel, 1983), but it can also be detrimental to the overall coherence of a piece of writing. In fact, outlines or "inflexible plans" (Rose, 1980) stand in direct opposition with the fluid essence of process-oriented writing instruction. Whereas process writing encourages writers to modify or even "discard chunks of discourse or original plans as they review their writing [and] reconsider its function," (Zamel p. 166) outlines limit the reconsideration of both content and organization.

 

 


Workshop:

Spend 15-20 minutes on your own revising your intro-graphs in preparation for feedback.  Give your introduction a revision with the three following INVENTION and ARRANGEMENT strategies in mind:

 

1 as a resin identification code, used in recyclingONE:     

 

Are you using a specific Introduction Strategy?

 

The list linked above is certainly not exhaustive - different introduction strategies will often be suggested by what you're writing about and by your particular argument about that topic. However, if you're having trouble coming up with an introduction, these categories can be useful as inventional exercises:

  1. Begin with a quotation or an interesting fact, statistic, or definition: all of these strategies are easy (you need only search for a useful quote, sophisticated defintion, or statistic about your topic) and should be successful at getting an audience's interest right away.
  2. Begin with a paradox or a series of questions: both of these strategies attempt to gain a reader's interest by presenting them with something that they can't easily solve or understand. Your essay, then, will solve this problem for them or help them to understand it in a new light.
  3. Being with a contrast: this is a textbook (in two senses of the term) strategy that's covered extensively in They Say/I Say. Starting off with what most people know/think or what most people do (in a particular context) and then introducing the exception, is an easy way to foreshadow your argument from the jump. It might also be particularly useful in an argument such as those you are wriitng for Project One, in which you are drawing on a genre (advertising) that an audience will be (or will think they are) very familiar with.
  4. Begin with an anecdote or a concession: both of these strategies attempt to draw the reader in by adding a "personal" touch; providing an anecdote makes the writer seem more "real" to the reader. Beginning with a concession has the same effect while also letting the reader know (humbly or faux-humbly) what the essay is notgoing to do (i.e., its limitations).
  5. Begin with relevant background material or an analogy: both of these introduction strategies can be useful for an essay that is going to leverage history or context heavily and/or that deals with a complicated topic; background material gives the reader what they need to know before you present your argument and analogies work to make the unfamiliar seem more familiar (and vice-versa).

Seven-segment 2.svg TWO:  Do you have a draft of a thesis for your analysis?

 

You have two broad options at this point for your thesis:

 

Option one: states that you're focusing your analysis on breaking down the ad into persuasive strategies -- using something like the skeletal structure from last week:  

 

Thesis (one sentence preferably, two sentences max)

P = Work being analyzed

Q = Thesis of work being analyzed

R = Author/Company/Advertiser/Director of work

X, Y, Z = Techniques used to forward thesis of work being analyzed  (three is not a magic number...analyze a manageable and appropriate number of techniques)

 

 

option two:

 

You make an assertion or contestable claim with which a "reasonable person" might disagree  (it should be a propositionwhich is arrived at after the consideration of evidencearguments or premises.)  If you can, at this point you might PREVIEW some of your evidence, argument, or premises

 

EXAMPLE OF A "CATEGORICAL ANALYSIS"

(Thesis) One could say that videogames have only improved since their creation, but amidst all of the added realism and engulfing textures the gods of marketing have snuck in the backdoor, and have encrypted their advertisements into the one place that people used to be able to escape them.

 

Three.pngTHREE

Make a statement (or fine a pre-existing one in your current draft) that lets your reader know whether you will proceed through a content analysis, contextual analysis, or categorical analysis


 

Developing your "Feedback Mechanism" -- beginner strategy: Generous and Critical reads

 

  • Good feedback is BASED both CRITICAL AND GENEROUS READING (KEY WORD), and it takes time to practice giving better feedback that is generative, patient, non-directive (where you don't "take over"), and yet as specific as possible.
  • It can come as a surprise to learner-writers to learn that a workshop is as much a reading as a writing activity... and that developing your ability to read other's work is integral to developing your ability to read your own

 

Questions for Readers to ask about another's intro paragraphs:

 

CRITICAL QUESTIONING ABOUT THE INTRODUCTION:

a) Is it clear that the paper is analyzing the ad(s) in question?  Is the author pointing out rhetorical appeals or strategies from the ad in their introduction?   

   

b) Can you identify what you think is the thesis directly in the text?  What seems like the thesis to you?

 

c) After identifying the thesis, try answering the following THREE sub-questions about the thesis.  

Does the thesis make a claim about what the author thinks the ad is saying; about how it is being said, and why the ad might be important to think through this ad?  Does any of these three questions need answering to help develop the thesis?

 

GENEROUS FEEDBACK

Does the paper create exigence for you as a reader?  In other words does the analysis seem like an important one?  Explain why it is (or could possibly be) an important or interesting analysis to you (if you can, quote a short section or sentence that sparks your interest). Try to be helpful in pinpointing an area of writing where more detail can be added. You might suggest how a more content based approach, a categorical approach, or a context approach would be the most interesting to you.

 


 

Due: Rough draft (minimum of 3 pages of your draft) of your execution of ProjectOne

posted to your courseroster page before class on Thursday.  The peer review workshop on Thursday will count for 5% of your project grade. 

 

 

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