Rhetor’s Notebook Post #8

Before class on Monday, your blogging team will need to meet to generate a focus for your team blog. Based upon your shared interests, your task is to identify a topic, issue, or theme around which you can all frame your individual posts. Together, I’d like to you write a proposal for this project and post it here as a comment to our blog. In this proposal, I would like to see you: 1) clearly describe the focus of your team blog and explain how it relates to current debates or discussion on this issue (that is, begin to situate your blog in terms of its kairos), 2) provide a tentative sense of how each individual writer will address this issue and explain what his or her argument might be about it, and 3) give us a sense of the larger significance of this issue and explain how it relates to the notion of the “public good.”

Exploring possible issues to blog about

Identify three topics that you think look interesting from the list we brainstormed together as a class (or from your initial list.) Write a brief paragraph for each issue: explore what you already know about this issue, entertain some possible arguments you might make about it, and explain why you’re interested in possibly writing about it.

Finding and evaluating extrinsic proofs: Part II

Before the end of the class, I would like you to work together in your peer review groups and for each writer, find three promising sources that could help you strengthen your appeals extrinsic proofs in your first essay. Use the search tools we discussed today in class (Academic Search Complete, Access World News, and Google Scholar), and aim to find three different kinds of sources. For example, you might find a news source, an article or study written by an academic expert, and information from a credible non-profit or advocacy organization. In your comment, identify each source (author, title, sponsoring organization or publication) and describe why you think it is credible.

Finding and evaluating extrinsic proofs: Part I

Now that we’ve had a little fun at Wikipedia’s expense, go to its website and look up an entry on a contemporary issue that interests you, and ideally, one you’ve been following in the op-ed pages of the Denver Post. Read through the entry, keeping an eye out for what kind of “extrinsic proofs” or evidence or testimony it uses to support its claims. Pay attention to the footnotes and see where a few of these links take you.

After you explore this entry, write a paragraph evaluating this entry as a source of information. How reliable do you think it is? Why do you think it is or is not credible? What kind of support does it offer for its claims? What seems to be lacking? Do you think you could justify using it as a source for a college paper? Why or why not?

Rhetor’s Notebook Post #7: Arrangement

To prepare for Wednesday’s class, please read Chapter 9 of Ancient Rhetorics, which focuses on the classical rhetorical canon of arrangement. After you read this chapter, I would like you to apply some of its suggestions to your first essay on stress and the high school student and substantially revise your opening paragraph or two. That is, as our textbook suggests, I want you to urge your readers forward into your argument. Frame your introduction in a way that recognizes the stance of your audience more explicitly, as well as the kind of case you are making, whether that is an honorable, difficult, mean, ambiguous, or obscure one. (Please note: You don’t need to identify your case as such, but you should write to your readers in way that anticipates their stance and frame your introduction appropriately.)

To do so, you might consider using one of the topics for making audiences attentive and receptive, or using an insinuation to introduce your piece more effectively. Ultimately, the purpose of this exercise is two-fold. I would like you to demonstrate that you can put into practice some of the suggestions from classical rhetoricians, but also I would like to practice substantial revision. Even if you think your introduction is 100% perfect as is, I want you to try something different. You never know, you might discover something new by trying these suggestions.

Please post both your original introduction and your revision here as comment. I look forward to seeing how you revise your opening to this essay.

Practicing enargeia

To help you practice generating an effective appeal to pathos, I’d like you to use the technique of enargeia in the following situation: Imagine that DU’s student paper, the Clarion, is sponsoring a debate within its editorial pages on our university’s requirement that second-year students live on campus, and you’ve been invited to submit a piece. In the next 15-20 minutes, I’d like you to compose an introduction (a few paragraphs or so) in which you vividly narrate or describe an experience you’ve had living in the residence halls that helps your readers see what’s at stake in this issue. Remember that one of the things you can accomplish by using an appeal like enargeia is that you can stimulate emotions in your reader by representing events so vividly that they recreate the experience for your audience. As you craft this opening narrative, try to invoke your readers' senses—sight, sound, smell, feeling, even taste—and place them in immediate proximity to your past experience as a way to predispose them to accept your position. For an extra challenge, you should imagine your readers to be either hostile (perhaps university administrators?) or indifferent (faculty or students who don’t really care either way) to your position, whichever one you adopt for this exercise.

Post your response here as a comment, and we will review them together as a class.

Rhetor's Notebook Post #6: Pathetic Proof

After you read the chapter on “Pathetic Proof” in Ancient Rhetorics for Wednesday, I’d like you to identify an editorial or op-ed piece from the past week that draws heavily on or features a striking appeal to pathos. In your comment, I’d like you to summarize briefly the main argument of the piece. Then, describe the appeal to pathos and explain how it works. That is, what emotional response or psychological condition does it attempt to cultivate within its readers? How does this state of mind work to the advantage of the rhetor? How does the rhetor’s writing foster this state? As you respond to these questions, please draw on specific phrases or brief passages from the text to support your claims.

Please post your response as a comment to this post on our course blog before class on Wednesday, February 2. Aim for 250 words.