How Class Due Dates Work

With the "Week Two" assignments posted below, we are now on the usual schedule for the class. On or before each Thursday, I will post your reading and writing assignments for the upcoming week, that is, the one which will start the next Monday. For example, the assignments just posted below cover the work expected from you through the week running Monday, 26 May-Sunday, 1 June. Each week's work will, in general be due on Sunday by midnight. For example, all the work just posted must be completed by Sunday, 1 June. However, you should also note that some of the work for the week will need to be done prior to Sunday, 1 June, so your classmates (and you) and do some of the writing assignments.

If there are any clarifications or other supporting readings for week, I will post them to the blog; so, do get in the habit of trying to check the class blog every day. This week, most of your reading will be reading the analysis being produced by your classmates and rereading your own. However, I may post an additional article on the three appeals: ethos, logos, and pathos, and I will certainly post a useful resources entry.

As always, write with questions.

Steve

Week Two: Reading and Writing Assignments

Since we all have a long (and, hopefully, fun filled) weekend coming up, I'll try to keep this set of writing and reading assignments somewhat contained. Because we're just getting the class up and off the ground, there is an unsual number of assignments.

Remember to start early. If you do one or two assignments a day, they shouldn't pose a problem; if you try to do them all at once, chances are you'll end up feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. Remember, each of these assignments should be completed by Sunday, 1 June. Some of them you'll need to complete earlier in the week, so your classmates will have material to criticize and to which to respond. Please be curitous, and help your classmates do their work by completing your own as early as possible.

1. This week, I want you to do two new rhetorical analysis, and you should add in these three questions, that is, answer these three, new questions in addition to those from the first week:

• Often, the key to getting a full understanding of an author's rhetoric is coming to understand everything they hope to achieve. Authors usually want to achieve multiple outcomes through a single message. For instance, they may want to establish a sense of identity and community between themselves and their audience AND inform their audience AND persuade their audience to act in a certain way, ALL while entertaining the audience to some degree. The more goals the author has for their message, the more difficult it is to craft. Here's the question/assignment: As fully as possible, analyze the agenda/goals/purposes of the author.
  
• What specific things could the author have done differently to craft a more successful message? Another way to think about this question is to ask, "How would I have changed the message to make it more effective?" List at least two specific things the author could have changed.
  
• What were the needs and expectations of the audience, and were these needs and expectations satisfied? Why, or why not?
  

Once completed, post your two new analysis to the class list. Don't forget to sign your post and lable it as "YourName, Week Two, Two New Rhetorical Analysis."

2. To help you understand just how much you can learn by taking the time to reread and revise previous work, I want you to go back and revisit each of the three rhetorical analysis you did this past week. Add to them using the new questions above. Also, make sure to go back and review the original questions you were to answer in your analysis, and make sure you answered the original questions as completely as possible. Take a moment to completely proofread your revisions before posting them to the class list. Lable these posts: "YourName, Revision of Origianl Rhetorical Analysis."

3. I want you to read *some* of the new and *revised* analysis posted by your classmates. Notice: you don't have to read them all, but you do have to read enough of them to find three places where the analysis could be improved. Your job is to then help your three authors find places where their insights into rhetoric could be more insightful or to recognize aspects of the rhetorical situation they describe which they may have overlooked. In the process, you are learning to judge what constitutes a solid analysis and how to offer advice and help to other authors. Offering criticism to a fellow writer is always a delicate moment. Be completely truthful; otherwise, the writer cannot learn how to improve; but, also be tactful. You want to develop the ethos of being fair and helpful. Remember, it is your job to help them with their analysis, not correct their grammar. Email your criticism both to the author directly and to the list.

4. Write back to those offering criticism of your analysis, and thank them for their help. Explain what you found useful in their criticism and offer advice on how they could have improved their criticism, style, etc. Again, be tackful, greatful, and trueful. Post these thank you notes to the list. Lable them: "Yourname, Thank You note to YourCritic'sName."

5. Between reading introductions, making connections with folks through the list, and receiving and getting criticism, you should be beginning to get a feel for folks with whom you may want to work and with whom you can work (and not). I would like you to form up groups of four or five students. These are groups of students with whom you'll be working all summer. You will work with these groups to: A) learn how to effectively and appropriately use other people to help with your writing; B) learn to work effectively with a group; C) learn how to better come up with ideas to write, to revise drafts, and to proofread, that is, you'll be practicing these skills using the work of the your own work and that of the peers in your group. In any event, your assignment is to form a peer group of four or five students. Do this off list by emailing students directly. If you come up a member short and need an aditional member or two: advertise on the list and sell being a member of your group to your peers. Finally, pick a name for your group; share contact information, including names, email and phone numbers; and, at the end of the week, send me an email with a roster of those in your group, your group name, and contact information for your group.

Remember, write me at prof.brandon@gmail.com with any questions. If you think the group would profit from an answer to your question, write the list or leave a comment on the blog. Also remember to save everything which is coming into your gmail and everything you are writing for the class. All of this work may prove useful later in the class. There is no problem with storage. Google mail (gmail) gives you 6 plus gigabits of space to store your mail, and they have a nifty search feature to help you find old emails.

Resources Posts

At least once a week, I try to write a post to the class blog containing resources students can use either to foster better success in the class or as writers.

For this first post, I thought I would include links to a general overview of Google Groups--the service which hosts our class email list. You will also find tutorial for Gmail--the email program/account you'll be using for the class. Take a moment to look at theses links. They'll tell you other ways you can access the class discussion/email list and some of the finer points of google mail. For those who might just be getting started using computers, I've included a couple of links to the basic things you need to know to do computer based work.



Here are the links:

Overview of Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/intl/en/googlegroups/overview.html

GMail tutorial: http://services.google.com/apps/resources/overviews_breeze/Mail/index.html

Computer Basics, links to tutorials:

http://www.jegsworks.com/Lessons/lessonintro.htm

http://tech.tln.lib.mi.us/tutor/moving.htm

Clarification of First Writing Assignment

I've received a couple of good questions about the first writing assignments. Here are clarifications based on these questions.

Clarification of the second writing assignment:

• While I would like you to read the introductions from all your classmates, please *don't* write a response to every classmate, pick and choose those to whom you have some connection on which to build.

Clarification of third writing assignment:

• For each of the three rhetorical situations you analyze, record the message and then answer each of the questions. This combination of message and your answers to the question constitutes your analysis of the message/rhetorical situation.
  

As always, write with questions.

Your First Writing Assignment

Due: Sunday, 25May by midnight.

1. After you set up your google email account and email me introducing yourself and asking to be added to the class listserv, write a short introduction of yourself and send it to the class email list. You do this by sending an email from your gmail account to:

eng111summer2008reynolds@googlegroups.com

To make it easy for everyone to recognize a message from the list, include the following as part of your subject:

[ENG111Summer2008]

2. Read the introductions posted by your classmates. Find places where you "connect" to a message's author, and send a follow up email--again to the list--in which you briefly explain your connection. What you are doing is attempting to build connection or to get the sender to identify with you. Southerners play this game of connection whenever they get together. Little do they know, they are practicing a simple form of building ethos.

3. Identify three simple, separate rhetorical situations and write about them. As you write about each rhetorical situation, analyze them by using the terms from the reading this week. [Hint: keep the messages you analyze relatively short and simple. For instance: you might analyze an advertisement from a magazine or new paper.]

Begin each analysis by recording the message being sent, and then answer the following questions:

• Who was the author?
• Who was the audience?
• What did the author hope to accomplish? (That is, "What was the author's rhetorical purpose?")
• What appeals did the author use in crafting her message?
• Did the author use logos? If so, how?
• Did the author use pathos? If so, how?
• Did the author use ethos? If so, how?
• Was the author's message successful? In other words, "Did the author's message do everything they hoped it would do?
• What were the sources of noise? That is, "What prevented the audience from understanding and acting/believing/knowing in the way he author intended?

What you are doing here is learning to break down and understand some of the nuances of the rhetoric which surrounds you. As you develop and practice this skill, you will learn how others succeed (and don't succeed) in their efforts to communicate. Each time you observe, you are learning new techniques, sources of noise, what to do, and what to avoid in your own communication.

Post your rhetorical analysis to the class email list. If you create these in a word processor, copy and paste your analysis into the body of an email you send to the list. In your email, don't forget to include in your subject line the text, "[ENG111Summer2008]." Also, don't forget to sign your work with your name. [One of the skills you are picking up is getting used to taking public "ownership" of your opinion and analysis.]

Reading Assignment Two: The Three Rhetorical Appeals--Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.

The article I asked you to read in the last post mentions how Aristotle divided how author/speaker/writer can make appeals to their readers/listener/audience. Aristotle called these ways of affecting one's audience: logos, pathos, and ethos. Here are some working definitions to which you can add as your conception of the appeals becomes deeper and more nuanced:

Logos deals with appeals to the head of one's audience through the use of facts, logic and ideas. If an author is trying to appeal objective, informed, and knowledgeable, chances are, she is using logos appeals.

Pathos deals with appeals to the heart or emotions of an audience. Here, think of how the media or a politician will simplify a difficult, complex problem by using a single person or family to represent it. Appeals through pathos have become so common, they've entered popular culture through such phrases as, "He's the poster boy for...."

Ethos deals with how authors get their audience to identify with them, that is, feel a sense of trust of connection. Another way to think about ethos is how an author will work to establish credibility with an audience. In many ways, ethos is the most difficult but effective of the three kinds of appeals. Ethos is the root word for ethics, the study of how individuals in groups behave in an acceptable manner, and the notion of "ethnic group," literally a group of people who identify with one another and share an ethical system or ethos. How people identify you as part of a group includes everything from word choice to clothing to body posture; so, ethos deals with how you use the various channels of information to send the signal, I am one of you (or not).

Most of you are into gaming. I know next to nothing about digital games. Most of the games I play involve me in setting up a backgammon, go, or chess board, or they are traditional Cherokee or Navajo games. However, I have learned to look at the games I play in terms of rhetoric, and I try to figure out why they are so popular using the tools rhetoric give me.

It's a good technique for understanding games and how they work in terms of doing cultural work (more on this last concept later). The classic games, like go, chess or Monopoly, reproduce in simplified form the social structures and conventions of their culture. The upshot is folks will identify with a game, play it, and make it popular, because the game appeals to many in the culture through a kind of unconscious ethos.

For an example, think about musical chairs. Musical chairs keeps getting played, not just because it is fun, but because it reproduces much of the ethos of modern western culture. There is competition for resources. The resources are becoming more and more scarce. Those willing to compete have a better chance of securing access to the desired resources. Sometimes you are unlucky and cannot, no matter how competitive you are, secure access to the desired resources; so, most folks learn to be "good sports" about loosing. There is only one winner. In short, musical chairs is a perfect capitalist game. It reproduces in simplified form the basic "need" to compete to secure scare resources and gain status through securing them.

Monopoly is in essence the same game played through a real estate metaphor.

One way to analyze an author's message is to try to figure out how they are trying to manipulate their audience. Do they make appeals to the head (logos)? Do they try to manipulate emotions (pathos)? Do they try to gain identification with their audience through a reputation or an act which establishes some sort of kinship (ethos)? Of, most likely, is the message crafted in such a way as to combine two or more of the appeals?

Now, think about a message you've seen an author send to an audience. How did the author use the appeals in crafting their message?

First Reading Assignment

Your first reading consists of this post and a short article found here:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/43674/rhetorical_triangle.html

The article consists of 's a short overview of topics which will come up again and again in this class, topics like: rhetoric, rhetorical triangle, author, message, audience. As you read the posts on the blog and the articles, read actively, that is, take short notes--we call these annotations--on terms which are new to you. After you've read an article and taken notes, if the reading doesn't make sense, go back and review your notes and then reread, this time, not taking notes. Once you are fairly sure you've "gotten" the reading, take a few minutes to think about how it applies in your life and in the class. One way to make sure you've gotten an piece of reading is to write something called a "minute paper." This means you take from one to three minutes and summarize the major point(s) of the reading. If after all of this you have questions, write and ask them.

OK, now onto the reading:

Motley, the author of the article, uses the terms, writer, subject, and reader, but the terms author, message, and audience are interchangeable with Motley's terms. The main point is this triangle gives those who think about rhetoric (read: you, now you're in this class) a convenient way to break down and analyze any situation where people are using language or language like behavior to try and do things. The basic rhetorical situation is this:

author<========message=========>audience

Authors create messages or texts because they want to have an effect in the world by getting their audiences to know, believe, or act in ways they probably wouldn't have prior to reading/listening to the author's message. When you analyze a rhetorical situation, you begin by identifying the message or what is being said. You then go on to identify who the audience is and who the author is.

Author & the author's rhetorical purpose--Every text has an author. Every author has intentions, an agenda, or a set of goals for her text. This set of goals is called a rhetorical purpose or--another way to think about rhetorical purpose is to think about it as what the author wants to accomplish through crafting and sending her message.

Message/Text/Document--Every text is crafted or encoded by the author in such a way that they believe they will achieve their intentions. This encoded text is the message or document. How the message gets encoded involves what the author knows about their audience's expectations, language, culture, etc. The message might be as simple as the nod of a head or as complex as a series of books. Often by looking at how an author encodes or crafts their message, you can tell a lot about what they think about their audience.

Audience/reader/listener--If communication is to happen, texts also have audiences, and not always the ones the author intents. Sometimes an audience is a single person; sometimes an audience is a group. Sometimes the audience agrees with the author and is receptive; and, sometimes an audience is hostile. Sometimes an audience is far removed from an author in terms of experience, culture, gender, knowledge, and perspective; sometimes an audience shares almost everything with their author.

What we'll be talking about in this class is how to encode messages in such a way you, the author, have the effects on your audiences which you intent.

This way of breaking down communication is not limited to just writing. Rhetoric applies every time you use a system of communication and address someone else to achieve some end. Rhetoric is why we know not to wear bathing suits to most job interviews. The way people dress, the gadgets they own, the places they live, their body language, almost everything which reflects a person's intentions involves rhetoric, because each of these involves an author crafting a message to have an effect.

For example, the way people dress involves them in a rich language of nuance and suggestion. Suits mean. Tee shirts mean. The difference between a rhetor, that is, a user of rhetoric, and everyone else is the rhetor is aware he or she is going through life sending out messages, being read, and interpreted by most everyone he or she meets. The rhetor tries to take command of the various messages s/he sends and encodes them in ways the audiences s/he wants to affect will be affected.

One last term, and I'll end this post. Noise. Modern communication theory evolved out of the traditions of rhetoric. One way to think of the rhetorical triangle is as follows:


sender> =======>signal=============> receiver

In between the sender and receiver is a signal which contains information. The sender needs to encode the message in such a way the receiver can decode it. In between the sender and the receiver is both the message and noise.

If you've ever driven a long distance with an FM radio station on and heard it slowly fade into static, then you've experienced noise getting in the way of the signal. Noise is entropy and/or Murphey at work in the world. Noise is all the stuff which gets in the way of the receiver getting the message the sender encodes in the signal. There are ways to work around noise, but there is no way to get rid of it entirely. This is one reason why folks don't understand you completely when you write. Writing is a good technology, but it has severe limitations and inherent noise. Noise in writing can come from such factors as a person's culture, background, politics, gender, ...well, you get the idea. Noise is why when you say a word, the receiver will not understand 100% of what you mean. Noise is always there. One of the things we'll speak about in the class is how to overcome noise.

Here's one of the things you need to know: noise is always there, but we usually manage to make spoken and written communication do what we want anyway.