Major assignment 3 lecture one_the prompt
- 1. MAJOR ASSIGNMENT 3: RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF A SCHOLARLY ARTICLE Lecture One: The Prompt
- 2. BEFORE YOU READ THIS LECTURE, BE SURE TO READ THE PROMPT FOR MAJOR ASSIGNMENT 3. You can find it on Blackboard in the “Major Assignments” section or on page 501 of your textbook.
- 3. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LECTURES • Because I, too, find myself a little at sea regarding this assignment—I’ve never done a rhetorical analysis like this, either—I’m going to take you through the steps I would take if I were writing this essay. That way, you’ll get to walk through the process of a professional writer, and perhaps pick up some tricks for addressing other writing contexts you encounter as you move through your college experience. • This first lecture deals with reading the prompt, because that’s obviously the first thing you should do when you approach any writing assignment.
- 4. THE STRUCTURE OF THE LECTURES (CONT’D) • I’m going to take you through the various parts of the prompt, modeling as I go my own thought process as I encounter each piece of instruction. The text of the prompt will appear on the left side . . . • . . . And my thoughts will appear over here, on the right side. Ready?
- 5. THE PROMPT: TITLE • “Rhetorical Reading Analysis: Reconstructing a Text’s Context, Exigence, Motivations, and Aims” • The first things I’m thinking about have to do with vocabulary. I’m thinking, I understand what these words mean, but will my students? You may not know what “rhetorical” or “exigence” mean, particularly in this context, and you might also not know the difference between a motivation and an aim. Let’s break a few of these words down on the next few slides.
- 6. DEFINITION: “RHETORICAL” • Rhetorical: expressed in terms intended to persuade or impress • When you read rhetorically, you ask yourself, “Why would someone say this thing? Why would someone say this thing this way, in this format, in this place, to these people?” • If you’ve ever looked at someone’s outfit and thought, “Why in God’s name are they wearing that?”, you have performed rhetorical analysis.
- 7. DEFINITION: “RHETORICAL” (CONT’D) • Think about what happens next, in this outfit analogy. You see someone wearing something you view as strange or inappropriate to the occasion. You start asking yourself a series of questions—where did they even get that thing? Do they think it’s cool? Is it all they had to wear? Is it laundry day? Did they lose a bet? These are rhetorical analysis questions. You’re trying to figure out what someone is trying to say with their outfit, and why they’re trying to say it. Rhetorical reading asks you to do the same thing with a piece of writing, in order to become a savvier consumer of other people’s writing.
- 8. DEFINITION: “EXIGENCE” • Exigence, or exigency: an urgent need or demand • In rhetorical reading analysis, we try to figure out exigence—why someone wrote something—in order to help us understand their motivations. • To return to the outfit analogy: if you remember, as you’re staring at someone’s crazy outfit, that it’s Halloween, then all of a sudden the situation is clearer, because you’ve figured out the exigence (it’s Halloween).
- 9. DEFINITION: “EXIGENCE” (CONT’D) • Exigence is what prompts writers to write something. You’re writing this essay because I told you that you had to in order to earn an A in this class, because you’re interested in the idea of rhetorical analysis, because you enjoy learning in general, because you’re a college student and that is your job. That’s your exigence. This is different from, though related to, your motivation. I’ll cover that in the next slide.
- 10. DEFINITION: “MOTIVATION” • Motivation: the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way • If exigence is what prompts you to do something, then motivation is the reason you choose to respond. Exigence can exist with no one acting on it—for example, this essay prompt exists, but if you have no motivation to respond to it, then you won’t.
- 11. DEFINITION: “MOTIVATION” (CONT’D) • A writer’s motivations are related to the exigence to which they respond, but there’s a difference. Let’s go back to the outfit analogy: • So you’ve remembered it’s Halloween, and all of a sudden that person’s outfit (let’s say it’s a Pikachu onesie) makes a lot more sense. You now understand that they’re responding to the exigence of Halloween. Thing is, they could have responded to the exigence of Halloween in a million different ways, but they went the Pikachu-onesie route. To understand why, you have to try to get at their motivations. • They might just really love Pokemon. The onesie might be warm af, and Halloween a convenient excuse to be extra cozy all day. They might be awash in the nostalgia of childhood Halloweens. These are all different possible motivations responding to the same exigence.
- 12. DEFINITION: “AIMS” • Aim: a purpose or intention; a desired outcome • If exigence is the thing you respond to, and motivation is why you respond to it, then your aim is what you hope to accomplish in responding.
- 13. DEFINITION: “AIMS” (CONT’D) • Let’s take this Halloween costume analogy one step further. We know the exigence (Halloween), and let’s say we know the person’s motivations (extra cozy onesie). Their aim, then, is to be cozy throughout the day. • Now let’s apply this directly to writing.
- 14. DOGGO BREAK! This is my sister’s dog, Rufus. He is a very good boy.
- 15. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: EXIGENCE, MOTIVATION, AND AIMS Here’s the situation: a journalist has been told to write an op-ed (opinion-editorial) about the current COVID-19 pandemic. The op-ed’s exigence, then, is the current COVID-19 pandemic. In understanding the exigence, you understand the wider context, the historical moment, in which this op-ed will get written: a historical moment where social distancing is a term we all know now; where you might see videos of Italian musicians playing concerts on their balconies; where people are fighting each other in the TP aisle at Costco; where college campuses have closed; where the world is experiencing an almost unprecedented level of anxiety and upheaval. Not all exigences are this nuts, but understanding exigence will always help you figure out what the wider context is of a piece of writing. (We’ll get into why that’s useful in another lecture.)
- 16. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: EXIGENCE, MOTIVATION, AND AIMS • So our hypothetical journalist, understanding the exigence, can choose to respond in any way they want. Let’s say they’re motivated by their horror and embarrassment at the existence of that Instagram video where Gal Gadot and company each sing a line of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Their aim might be to throw shade, or to suggest these celebrities actually do something helpful, or challenge others to make a better video. All of these things are different aims, supported by the same motivation and responding to the same exigence. • The next question you may be asking yourselves is: how do I know what this journalist’s motivations and aims are without talking to them? That question takes us to the subject of analysis.
- 17. ANALYZING A PIECE OF WRITING TO DETERMINE MOTIVATION AND AIM “It’s nice to see everybody come together in a time of crisis. And for once, regardless of age, gender, race, faith, or political party, we can all agree: Gal Gadot’s video of self-isolated celebrities singing “Imagine” is one of the worst things to have ever happened.” - Heather Schwedel, Slate.com, 3/19/20 From the article “A Video of Celebrities Singing ‘Imagine’ So Bad it Can Bring Us All Together in Hatred: Twenty-two Hideous Performances, Ranked” This is the first line of an article that appeared on Slate.com on March 19. Its exigence? The existence of this Instagram video. Its aim? Well, look at the title: “Twenty-two Hideous Performances, Ranked.” Its aim is to mock these celebrities for having engaged in what the writer sees as a mock-worthy act. She’s motivated, in other words, by her disgust at these celebrities’ actions.
- 18. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THIS ESSAY? Let’s go back to the prompt and see how all these definitions and examples apply to the essay you’ll be writing.
- 19. THE PROMPT: PAGE ONE • “This assignment asks you to practice the rhetorical reading strategies that Haas and Flower describe in ‘Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning’ (p. 432) • “For this project, the object of your analysis will be a scholarly journal article or book chapter. . . . Your task is to rhetorically read a text and compose a four- to five-page piece that explains your interpretation of what the writer meant the text to accomplish, and why.” • At this point, I’m not too worried about these reading strategies described by Haas and Flower. I have plenty of time to go back and figure out what those are, so I’m going to ignore that for now. • At this point, I figure my first task, after reading the prompt, is going to be to push all other concerns aside and focus on finding a scholarly article. My first instinct would be to use an article from the textbook, perhaps one I’ve already read, or one I used in the synthesis essay.
- 20. THE PROMPT: PAGE ONE (CONT’D) • “Select a Text. . . . You’ll probably be more engaged in the project if the subject is of interest to you, so be sure to pick an article about something you care about. Whatever text you choose, you must be able to trace where it was published, when, and by whom.” • I figure I’ve got a pretty simple choice to make here. Either I can choose an article I’ve already read, or I can go find one I haven’t read but that might interest me more. If it’s all the same to my instructor (note: it is; read what you want), I’ll probably choose an article I’ve already read.
- 21. THE PROMPT: PAGE ONE (CONT’D) • “Summarize the Text. The first rule of rhetorical reading is: read in order to first be able to write a summary of about one page.” This is where the sarcastic part of my brain pipes up like: “The first rule of rhetorical reading is: you do not talk about rhetorical reading. The second rule of rhetorical reading is . . . ” You know, like from Fight Club? No? . . . Seriously, though: the first step to performing any kind of analysis, rhetorical or not, is summarizing. If I were writing this essay, this would make me very happy, because I know that summary is a thing I’ve done before, and if this five-page essay calls for a one-page summary, then once I’ve got that down, I’m one-fifth of the way done.
- 22. THE PROMPT: PAGE TWO • “Historicize the Text. Along with summarizing what the text says, you’ll need to collect some basic information on the text’s origins. Most of this information is contextual, meaning that it lies outside of the text itself and you can’t just read the text to find what you want to know. As you look for origins, try to answer these questions . . .” • This is the kind of research that will reveal to you the text’s exigence, as well as its wider context (of which the exigence is part), which will then help you analyze the writer’s motivation and aims. Answering all of the questions in this section of the prompt may look like a real revolving pain, but if I were writing this essay, I might think, “I can just add a heading in my essay that reads ‘Historicizing the Text’ and put the answers to these questions there. I’ll bet I could get at least half a page out of that. Add in the summary and I’m whatever one- fifth plus one-half of a page is done writing.”
- 23. THE PROMPT: PAGE THREE • “There is no set format for your rhetorical analysis, but you want to be sure you do the following . . .” • No set format. Fantastic. That means I’ll have to figure out how all these pieces fit together and make them flow well. • Or not! If you’re working with a bunch of separate parts and you aren’t exactly sure how they’re going to fit together, you can always, always use headings to separate sections out. That’s precisely what I would do in this situation.
- 24. THE PROMPT: PAGE THREE (CONT’D) • “Describe the writer’s main argument: their central claim, the support for that claim, and any major warrants that readers must agree with in order to build adherence with the argument. (If any of this language is confusing to you, read or reread Downs, p. 369.)” • Yes. This language is confusing to me. I haven’t read Downs. But, like Haas and Flower (remember them?), I’m going to ignore Downs for the moment, because my first order of business is still selecting a text. All other concerns, for the moment: ignored.
- 25. TRANSFERABLE SKILLS Hopefully, this lecture has demonstrated to you the following transferable skills: • Reading a prompt carefully, more than once, and prioritizing the information contained in it • Looking up words you don’t know • Making preliminary planning decisions about an assignment • The magic of headings
- 26. THE PROMPT: FINAL THOUGHTS • Once you have read the prompt all the way through, give it a day or so and go back and read it again. Pay attention to what happens to your body as you’re reading this prompt. Does it make you anxious? Excited? Bored? (Ngl, it made me a little anxious.) • Whatever you feel in response to this prompt is completely valid. Let the emotions arise, but try not to let your mind contract around them. Let them be uninteresting. The interesting thing is: you’re going to try a new kind of writing, a new kind of thinking, a new way of encountering a piece of writing. • Remember, too, that some of this is new to me also, so I’m going to lead the way into this new territory. • Trust me.
- 27. WHAT’S NEXT In the next lecture, I’ll talk about how I went about choosing a text.