Rhetorical Stance and Public Writing (15-20 min)
-Consider what a “rhetorical balance” means (see page 145 where he uses this phrase over and over).
-Which of the three “perversions” of the rhetorical stance might be most worrisome when writing for the public? Why?
-Booth is primarily talking about writing in freshman composition and not public writing in the wider world (though he certainly is drawing connections between both). Think back to your own experiences in Seminar in Composition: how might public writing be similar to and/or different from the kind of writing Booth is drawing from? Look to the anecdotes and examples and compare them with some of the things we looked at on 8/30.
Ideology, ethics???
Public Interest Showcase (10-20 min)
Take a piece of paper or notecard, and write down three issues that you would be interested in working on for your campaign this semester, and then sign your name to it. To help you get started, read through your Public Interest Narrative. Take 5-10 minutes to do this. When finished, you’ll hold up your card and check out what other people have. Note people who have the same issue or similar ones. Do some mingling and “networking”. You’ll have time later in class to form your campaign teams. For now, just have some stuff to chew on.
Rhetoric, the study of…the practice of…is defined as… (20-30 min)
From Booth’s perspective, how might he define rhetoric, especially when considering the three aspects of his rhetorical stance?
Consider these questions as we watch this video:
Who’s the public for this video? How do you know? What kinds of “moves” are made? How is sound, image, speech, and writing all deployed? What do you think the video-author is going for here?
What is rhetoric???
Here are some sources of definition of rhetoric. Group up, and each group will count the numbers of definitions. Independently, pick one (skim through, don’t have to thoroughly pick one out here) and be ready to explain why you liked it. For Group 4, you will read through the short article and answer what you think think is useful about the definition there but also what you think the definition might be missing out on (how is it limited? how does it leave unexplained certain elements of how people interact “rhetorically”?):
Group 1:
http://davidbeard.efoliomn.com/Uploads/Master%20Definitions%20of%20rhetoric.pdf
Group 2:
http://enculturation.net/5_1/rhetdef.html
Group 3:
http://rhetoric.sdsu.edu/resources/what_is_rhetoric.htm
Group 4:
https://edurhetor.wordpress.com/about/rhetoric/
What differences and similarities did you come across in your groups? How many definitions were there?
Debrief on rhetoric and “possibilities.” Talk “rhetorical intervention” and campaign.
Break (15 min). Feel free to start catching up with people to draft potential campaign teams. I can intervene and help people find teams, but you’ll all have to start coming to a consensus on what you might work on.
The Pitt News and Service Learning (5-15 min)
Forming a team (10-15 min). Meet with your team and start drafting up some ideas on what you might work on. Consider these questions:
- What is the issue and why?
- What is the goal of the campaign?
- Who do you want to reach with your messaging?
- What sorts of writing might you produce?
- How will you reach your audience?
See the “collaborative proposal” prompt in the syllabus. It will be due by 4pm next week on 9/13. Start working on it now, and find some times to meet up this week to talk it over.
White Paper assignment due 9/27 (20-30 min).
This is an independent assignment. Prompt: White papers are a genre of writing that seek to gather research about an issue in order to present to decision-makers (e.g., legislators, community leaders, consumers) a series of informed recommendations for courses of action. For your campaign, you should be informed about your issue and some reasonable outcomes for courses of action for that issue. In this assignment, you will gain practice in a common genre for professional public writing as well as gain insights into your issue that can then inform the design of your campaign pieces and plan. Be sure to imagine writing to an audience of decision-makers that would be relevant to your issue. White papers typically have two crucial components: 1) a review of research on the issue, and 2) a series of recommendations for how the decision makers might act based on this research. You are required to have at least 6 sources that serve as a “review” of the research on your issue. These sources should be credible; that is, they should originate from subject-matter experts. See examples of white papers on our WFP resources page (we will have gone over some of these in class by this point, beginning September 6).
Activity: Go back and find the two white papers from last week. Open them up on your laptop. I’m passing out the first “section” of both of them. Read these sections. Mark them up with a pen as you think about these questions while reading:
- What does each opening want to make you “feel”? How do you know? Point to some example sentences. Anything peculiar or different about these kinds of sentences compared to other genres of writing?
- Pick a sentence at random from both white papers and compare. What do you notice? Can you back that up when looking at other sentences? Where do you typically see these kinds of sentences?
- How does each opening progress? Name what each paragraph “does” and how it connects to the following paragraph. Look at these “namings” and try to come up with the overall goal of the opening part of both white papers.
Now, skim through both white papers, and think about the following questions:
Design: How is the layout different? Why?
Organization: what do both white papers share in common? Skim through each of the sections. If we had to define “what a white paper is” and how it is organized based on these two papers alone, what would you make of it?
Admin. (5-15 min)
Everyone reads Bowdon and Scott (2003) on BB. Some comment, some write blog posts (see BB for blog post schedule).
Blog posts are due Monday at 10am (always due the Monday before class, always at 10am)
Comments always due by 4pm the day of class
Collaborative Campaign Proposal due 9/13 by 4pm. Only one of you has to submit it, make sure you work that out between the two of you. Be sure to have your names on it.