We focused on four things for this module:

1. Reflecting on how your revision went for the Literacy Narrative.
2. Starting to set up (if you haven’t started already!) the writing of your Rhetorical Analysis by focusing on finding your text and useful information about it, taking notes on your text, starting to formulate an argument, and making use of claims and evidence to perform an analysis.
3. Some more focus on style, particularly the rhetorical affordances of punctuation and the readability of our writing through thinking about sentence coherence.
4. Like punctuation, surveys help us pause and think. I wanted you to do some thinking on how the class has been going so we can adapt as needed (and also validate what is working well), so you completed a survey for me to help with that.

For 10/8, you will:

• Read the Mermin chapter on writing about physics. (PDF on Blackboard>Course Documents>Readings)
• Complete a Reading Annotation for Mermin with the old method that we have been doing all semester (we will adapt the Reading Annotation assignment once I have had a chance to look over surveys, which won’t be until Thursday, 10/8, at earliest)

As I mentioned last class (10/1), I want to do a check in on how the class is going so far.

Here is the link to the survey. It should take 5-10 minutes to fill out.

Once you are done, comment below saying “I submitted the survey.”

It is important to comment below! Otherwise I can’t give you credit for completing the survey since it is anonymous.

After commenting, click below to continue in the module

Sentence coherence can best be thought of as ways in which you can position your sentences in ways where a reader can quickly understand why one sentence follows another. One of the best ways to think about coherence is the given/new principle in writing.

Generally speaking, the opening of a sentence (‘given’) contains information that the reader already knows and the ending of a sentence (‘new’) contains new information. The ‘given’ information is based on one of two sources:

1. Something that was referred to in the previous sentence or earlier in the passage.
2. Something that is common knowledge or transition words that signal reference (explicit or implicit—as in, inserting common knowledge at beginning that wasn’t mentioned yet, having a sentence of only new information because the new information implies the old/common knowledge, or a transition marker that refers back)

Here are some examples from chapter 4 of the professional writing textbook Business Writing is for Everyone:

It is easy to let your sentences become cluttered with words that do not add value to your message. Improve cluttered sentences [GIVEN] by eliminating repetitive ideas, removing repeated words, and editing to eliminate unnecessary words [NEW].

You should be especially careful when writing about groups of people in a way that might reinforce stereotypes. For example, [GIVEN; offers inference that example will illustrate point in last sentence] implied in his book Elements of Indigenous Style, Gregory Younging discusses how subtle bias can have a big impact when non-Indigenous people write about First Nations, Metis and Inuit people [NEW].

If you are a writer that frequently gets comments on papers that your writing is “clunky” or hard to follow, this can be one fairly easy method to improve the readability for your reading.

Comment below with the following:

1. Paste two consecutive sentences from a previous piece of your writing that you feel is really cohesive. Insert “given” and “new” like I do above in the examples I provided.
2. Explain what you think really helps with the cohesion and comment a little bit about whether it could be improved or if you have noticed general areas you want to work on at all in terms of readability in your writing.

After commenting, click the button below to continue.

I want you to read a collection of sentences I gathered from a book called Brothers and Keepers by John Wideman. The book is a memoir about Wideman’s relationship to his brother. Wideman and his brother are both Black but lived very different lives, growing up in different places. Wideman spends the memoir talking with his brother, who is in prison, to get closer to him but it also is a way to think about his family history and larger societal issues of race and class in the U.S.

Wideman’s style uses a lot of different punctuation in interesting ways. So, I thought it might be good practice for you to read through some of his sentences and to think about which uses of punctuation stand out to you.

1. The previous summer, 1980, a prisoner, Leon Patterson, had been asphyxiated in his cell.
2. People in Homewood often ask: You said that to say what?
3. Six years later my brother was in prison, and when he began the story of his troubles with Garth’s death, a circle completed itself; Robby was talking to me, but I was still on the outside, looking in.
4. The hardest habit to break, since it was the habit of a lifetime, would be listening to myself listen to him. That habit would destroy any chance of seeing my brother on his terms; and seeing him in his terms, learning his terms, seemed the whole point of learning his story.
5. Because Homewood was self-contained and possessed such a strong personality, because its people depended less on outsiders than they did on each other for so many of their most basic satisfactions, they didn’t notice the net settling over their community until it was already firmly in place. Even though the strands of the net–racial discrimination, economic exploitation, white hate and fear–had existed time out of mind, what people didn’t notice or chose not to notice was that the net was being drawn tighter, that ruthless people outside the community had the power to choke the life out of Homewood, and as soon as it served their interests would do just that.
6. The borrowed pen and paper (I was not permitted into the lounge with my own) were necessary props. I couldn’t rely on memory to get my brother’s story down and the keepers had refused my request to use a tape recorder, so there I was.

After reading through these sentences above, comment below on 2 different uses of punctuation and how it had a rhetorical effect. Think to the last page where we talked about different punctuation is giving different lengths of time for pausing. Why would certain lengths and types of pauses have a rhetorical effect? Why use punctuation in the way it was used, why not just use a bunch of simple sentences that end in periods? Why not a comma rather than a colon? Etc. Try to think that through by throwing out some ideas as you read and react to the above sentences.

To comment, mention:

• the sentence by its number in the list
• the type of punctuation for both usages
• what you thought was rhetorically significant about that use of punctuation for both usages

After commenting below, click on the button below to continue.

So far, we have talked about style in relation to: word choice, sentence length, and sentence type (keying in on using phrases and clauses). These choices help us think about tone, audience, readability, and different rhetorical effects depending on rhetorical choices we make at the level of the word and sentence.

On this page and the next page we will talk about punctuation. After that, we will talk about sentence cohesion.

The Punctuation Guide is a great reference for all of the different types of punctuation and how they are used in writing. There entry on commas can be especially helpful, as commas do so many different things in writing.

On this page, I want you to start to notice different effects of different “pausing” punctuation, these being:

• Comma
• Period
• Semicolon
• Colon
• Parentheses
• Em-dash

For instance, when we talked about phrases, clauses, and sentence type, I used this example for how different sentence types can help keep information far apart or close together:

Very Far: It was a rough day for Melissa. She had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. And now she was stranded. Because her car broke down. Great.

Far: It was a rough day for Melissa. She had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. Plus, now she was stranded at work because her car broke down.

Close: It was a rough day for Melissa, especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work. Plus, now she was stranded at work because her car broke down.

Very Close: It was a rough day for Melissa, especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work; now she was stranded in her broken down car.

Very close with greater pause for dependent clause: It was a rough day for Melissa–especially since she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work; now she was stranded in her broken down car.

Very close with longer pause for rhetorical triplet: It was a rough day for Melissa: she had to cover a second shift for her friend, her car broke down, and now she is stranded.

Very close with a parentheses: It was a rough day for Melissa because she had to cover a second shift for her friend at work and now she was stranded on the side of the road (her car broke down).

Read through each of the above examples. When you read, how long are the pauses?

In a comment below, rank each punctuation mark from shortest pause to longest pause you take while reading and explain why you ranked them the way you did:

• Comma
• Period
• Semicolon
• Colon
• Parentheses
• Em-dash

After commenting, click the button below to continue.

Based on the last page, you might have a small kernel of a possible argument you might make about the text you looked at.

In the assignment criteria, there are a few things to really consider closely when it comes to argument:

1. You will use analysis rather than summary (unless you would like to provide a brief summary to familiarize your audience with the text).
2. You will use evidence from the text to connect to claims you are making about the text.
3. You will have a thesis in the sense of a main argument you are making about the text.

The big scary word here, I would bet money on, for you is what is in #3: The Thesis.

(The below is mostly adapted from Daniel Hengel’s chapter in our textbook, so go there for more information!)

A thesis is simply a statement that holds two pieces of information: the topic and the angle you have on that topic. You need to tell us what you are writing about and the perspective or main idea(s) you have in relation to that topic.

Let me say this very clearly: you should almost NEVER have a thesis before you start writing. A *hypothesis* makes sense to have before you start writing (though even then, probably not, because you are taking all sorts of notes and all kinds of preliminary writing before you get to a place where you have an experiment idea).

Before you even get to a thesis, you should have done something resembling the steps we did on the previous page. That way, you have been fully immersed in the text and you can start to think of questions to ask:

• What do you see?
• What do you make of it?
• Why does it matter?

For what you see, mention some words, characters, images, themes, etc. that grab your attention and interesting you.

For what you make of it, explore what you think about it. Try to move beyond value judgments like “I liked this” or “this is boring.” Really focus on how rather than only what. So, “I liked this because…” is a much better framing. Though, even better would be something like “This theme comes up a lot because…”

For why it matters, think about how your analysis reveals something somewhat new, interesting, important, etc. Questions you should ask: is this too simple? Would anyone already know this in a way that my analysis does not add anything more nuanced to that common knowledge? For instance, if you analyzed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and your thesis ends up being something like “This speech advocates for racial equality,” then this is a thesis that does not have a good answer to “why it matters.” Most would already know this! Now, perhaps you offer up an interesting or unique analysis that says something more specific about how racial equality is presented in the speech as a theme, but, generally, a thesis like that will not make for an insightful essay.

These questions can help you on the path toward eventually having a thesis, which, again is just presenting a topic with your take on that topic (which is then supported by your analysis of evidence throughout the paper).

Things to Keep In Mind on a Thesis

You should also be careful not to do something too broad. This can be tied to issues of scale that we talked about on the last page. Writing a thesis like “hip-hop is protest music” is not specific enough and is an easy thesis to argue against because it is not hard to find many examples of hip-hop that is not protest music. Be more specific or qualify claims to help you here.

A thesis can also be too speculative. Lots of things can’t be proven but can still be written about. However, some things are so hard to prove that writing about them really offers nothing new. A thesis about aliens or the existence of God, for instance, might be too speculative to write about.

A thesis can take many forms. It can be in the first paragraph. It can be in the second paragraph. It can be in the third paragraph. It can be at the beginning or end of a paragraph. It can be one sentence. It can be three sentences. Generally speaking: make sure it is closer to the beginning than the end of the paper, make sure it is small enough that it is an accessible argument someone can read (I would say 1-3 sentences is a good range). Make sure it covers what you are writing about and a claim you are making about that topic (i.e., your angle on it).

Think back to the rhetorical analysis you read for class: What do you think Chau saw? What do you think Chau made of it? Why did you think Chau thought it matterered? What do you think Chau’s thesis is? Is it specific enough? Does it offer a topic that is not too speculative? Where is it? How long is it? Use the essay as a model to think about your own thesis.

Comment below by giving some preliminary answers to the three micro-questions of what you see, what you make of it, and why it matters. Once you comment below, click the button below this to continue with the module.

Your thesis is goin to change as you write–this should happen.

Think of your writing of an argumentative essay (like a Rhetorical Analysis is) as a sort of motion of a tennis match. It goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. You write some analysis, you think about your thesis, you write up a thesis, you do more analysis, you change your thesis a little bit, you do more analysis, you tweak your thesis further. It is not a smooth process (like so much of writing!)

Ultimately: Analysis requires careful examination of evidence and as you become more acquainted with evidence you gather, your argument will likely change! Thus, you will likely tweak your thesis as you write.

Analysis is A Big Ol’ String of Claims and Evidence

Analysis requires the joining of claims to evidence.

A thesis is a large claim with the evidence being the entire essay.

The essay is full of smaller claims that are joined with evidence. In a Rhetorical Analysis, the evidence is parts of the text you are analyzing; the claim is what you think about that evidence. The real work is what happens in the space between claims and evidence–how you . You can quote parts of the text or describe them and you’ll do this to show them as evidence for something you are claiming.

The pattern is generally this when joining claims to evidence (the remainder of this section is adapted from Indiana University of Bloomington Writing Tutorial Service):

• State your claim (for a Rhetorical Analysis, this will usually be about how the text you are analyzing functions in respect to a specific perspective you have)
• Give your evidence, remembering to relate it to the claim. (the evidence will often be parts of the text you are analyzing in a Rhetorical Analysis)
• Comment on the evidence to show how it supports the claim. (an explanation of why you the part of the text you are analyzing is an example of your claim)

Example of “meh” use of evidence:

Today, we are too self-centered. Most families no longer sit down to eat together, preferring instead to eat on the go while rushing to the next appointment (Gleick 148). Everything is about what we want.

A better use of evidence:

Today, Americans are too self-centered. Even our families don’t matter as much anymore as they once did. Other people and activities take precedence. In fact, the evidence shows that most American families no longer eat together, preferring instead to eat on the go while rushing to the next appointment (Gleick 148). Sit-down meals are a time to share and connect with others; however, that connection has become less valued, as families begin to prize individual activities over shared time, promoting self-centeredness over group identity.

Using Models

In the Chau essay, what do you notice about when Chau mentions parts of Crazy Rich Asians or Fresh Off the Boat? Look back and see how there are claims right near those descriptions of the text. How does Chau join those claims and evidence? Use this as a model for your own writing.

You might also explore other Rhetorical Analyses in the Analysis section of our textbook. It is always good to use several models.

Comment below on this page by following these instructions: make a claim about a text you are (or might be) analyzing. Join that to evidence from the text to your claim by following the state, give, comment formula from above to making claims with evidence.

After commenting below, click the button below to continue the module.

So, what is a good text to analyze? There’s plenty of stuff out there–pretty much anything could work with enough care and thought.

You could think about a text you are currently reading/watching/listening to. You could think about something you just really love or are really interested in that you know you wouldn’t mind spending a bunch of hours with.

What do you think might be a text you want to do? We all have a lot that we look at through our lives.

On the prompt for this assignment (see Blackboard>Course Documents>Assignment Prompts>Major Writing Project Drafts>Rhetorical Analysis), here is the list of examples again:

Finding Texts

Your search tools are:

• Your favorite search engine (e.g., Google, Bing)
• Newman Library. Make sure to “Define Your Search” by choosing one of the options from that drop bar (e.g., Books, Articles, Videos). Can also be helpful if you wanted to use any secondary research (i.e., other people talking about similar ideas or the same text in academic journals, books, etc.)
• Newman Library Databases. Browse through these to see if any might help you uncover an interesting text. Can also be helpful if you wanted to use any secondary research (i.e., other people talking about similar ideas or the same text in academic journals, books, etc.). There are ways to get access to periodicals like The New York Times (go to “M-N” to find that, for instance) as an example of finding a primary text to look at.
• Video streaming sites (e.g., YouTube, Netflix)

All of these sources will take you using ways of keywords and filtering.

For keywords, try to think of relevant terms to find interesting texts. For example, I might use keywords like “video games,” “gaming,” “review,” “top,” “best,” “2020” to try to find a list of recent video games that may have been written about to see if any catch my eye.

Notice that I used quotes? Whenever searching with more than one keyword or key-phrase, put quotes around them and use Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT. For example, I could use the following:

• “video games” AND “superheroes”
• “gaming” OR “video games”
• “gaming” AND NOT “tabletop”

The reason you use quotes is so that you capture the exact order of words that you want. For instance, that way you don’t get results that have both “video” and “games” on them but never “video games” together. (I tend to just always use quotes so I remember, but, technically, you don’t really have to use them around single keywords)

Filtering searches can also be helpful. Check out settings that say things like “Advanced Search” and you might be able to filter things by year. This can be helpful if you were looking for possible texts that were only produced in, say, the 1980s or 2010s.

Before moving on, choose something from one of the 4 categories of “search tools” at the top of this page and search. Then, try out some keywords and one of the Boolean options above (i.e., AND, OR, AND NOT).

The point here is not to find a text to analyze, necessarily, but to get some practice finding stuff in general for your writing (e.g., secondary sources that support claims you are making).

Comment below with the first 5 search results and tell us if anything seems worth pursuing and why. It could be a primary text your analyze for the assignment or it could be a secondary source that could help you think through a primary text. Don’t post links, because I think your comment will be flagged.

Once you have commented below, click the button below to continue.

You might not have a text you are set on yet, but this page will address some things to consider once you did. If you have a text to analyze, that’s great!

Here are some good first steps once you have something:

1. Think about scale. Do you want to look at an episode vs. a season vs. the whole series? A chapter or passage of a book or the whole book? A 30 second ad or a years-long advertising campaign? Bigger the scale, than the more narrow the focus (e.g., a very specific theme across seasons, an analysis of one character across one season). Smaller the scale, than the focus does not need to be as narrow. However, a danger of rhetorical analysis is always: let me analyze everything! If *everything* is analyzed to great detail, then it might be hard to have a coherent take away other than “this piece has rhetorical qualities to it.” Of course it does! Every text has rhetorical qualities. Make an argument about the rhetorical qualities, tell me about patterns and themes to say something noteworthy or interesting about the text you are analyzing.
2. Read/view/listen/etc. to it and take notes. Think of this like doing your Reading Annotation assignments. Note things that are interesting, surprising, confusing, note patterns, note things that connect to research interests you have, etc. If you are watching or listening to something, you should mark where the event occurs. Note the timestamp on the video or audio file: something happens that you want to take a note, you hit pause, you look at the time so far (e.g., happened at the 26th minute, happened at approximately 26:31).
3. Review your notes. Look over your notes that you took as you read/viewed/listened. Start to note patterns, themes, connections. What sorts of arguments, images, words, phrases, etc. keep coming up? Start to do some freewriting about these patterns, themes, and connections.
4. Choose a lens or lenses that could help analysis. Go back to the “Tools for Analysis” chapter from our textbook. Review the lenses offered there and start to think about which ones would be most useful for analyzing your text. Don’t just focus on “what” you see, but “how” it is put together. For example: don’t just note topics that come up in your text, but how those topics are constructed (e.g., word choice, sentence structure, the type of imagery, character traits).
5. Read/view/listen/etc. again. You can read closely here or skim a bit (or fastforward). But now that you have your lens or lenses handy, you will look at the text with a new perspective. Take some notes again with your lens or lenses in mind.
6. Context. Make sure you are also listing out any relevant context to consider for your analysis. What media (e.g., a video, online writing, print writing, audio) is used and how does that affect how the text is made? What genre is it? What audience expectations might there be? What is the time period it was made? What cultural context was it produced in?

These considerations can help you think through most of the criteria for the assignment. Below is from the prompt. The above things to do once you find a text will help with most of these as a start, but our next page in the module will help you think through these more completely:

1. You will choose one cultural artifact to analyze using what we have learned about rhetoric so far.
2. You will choose at least one theoretical lens to analyze this cultural artifact. (you do not have to explicitly mention what lens or lenses you are using)
3. You will use analysis rather than summary (unless you would like to provide a brief summary to familiarize your audience with the text).
4. You will use evidence from the text to connect to claims you are making about the text.
5. You will have a thesis in the sense of a main argument you are making about the text.
6. You will consider the medium, genre, and style used in the text in how those contribute to meanings the text makes.
7. You must contextualize the text you analyze. That means considering things like: the time period it was produced, the culture it was produced in, the audience it was for, the material constraints it had, the author and their possible purpose for making it, etc.
8. The word count will be between 1,400-1,600 words.
9. The genre you will be writing in for this assignment is a long-form blog post. We will go over that more in class. You will post this assignment to our course website under the category “Rhetorical Analysis” and you will submit it to Blackboard as Word document or pdf. Use the affordances of the website to add media and other elements! (e.g., photograph, memes, tables, charts, video). I’ll expect you to consider the genre conventions when writing this assignment.
10. Your audience for this assignment is…us! You are writing for your classmates and me here. You know each other well enough at this point, so think about the kind of things your audience would need to know, the style they’d appreciate, and other elements of writing that would accommodate them.

Before continuing in the module, use the tips at the top of the page to help you comment below by doing the following:

1. Identify a specific text (e.g., a specific book, a specific advertisement, as specific episode, a specific season of a show, a specific song, a specific music video) you are thinking about analyzing for this assignment. Use #1 from the tips at the top of this page to help you here. Write that text in your comment.
2. Take 1 note about it. Use #2 at the top of this page to help you think about what to do. Write that note in your comment.
3. Skim through the full text. Think about 1 lens that you think will make sense for this piece. Use #s 3 and 4 at the top of the page to help you here. Write that lens in your comment and EXPLAIN why you think it might be helpful.
4. Skim through the full text again, this time with the lens in mind. Take 1 note about the text with your lens in mind in a way that connects your lens to a specific piece of evidence from the text. Use #5 from the tips up top to help you here. Write that note in your comment.
5. Skim through the text again, and write out any important contextual information that might help your analysis here. Use #6 from the tips but also #6 and #7 from the assignment criteria to help you here. Write that important contextual information in your comment.
6. TO RECAP THEN: there should be 5 components to your comment: the text you are thinking about analyzing, a note about it in a first skim, a lens you might use, a note connected to your lens and the text, important contextual information.

NOTE: this is just practice! I hope you spend a lot more time through these steps in the coming days as you work on your Rhetorical Analysis.

After commenting below, click the “Click to continue” button below to go to the next page.

You did it! You submitted a revised draft of a major writing project for this course. Feel good about it.

Hopefully, you changed quite a bit to align with what you wanted to do better in the piece compared to what you did in the first draft.  I hope you also consulted the Revision Plan Guidelines (in 9/17 lesson plan and also in Blackboard in Course Documents) and feedback you got on the first draft.

Now that it is done, though, let’s take a moment to think about what you did and where you are going next.

There are two tasks to do on this page.

First, comment below on what you were trying to do in your revision:

• Where did you focus your energy most? What were you trying to differently in the most drastic way of all the changes you made? Why? How did you do that? How did you feel about it?
• What do you love most about this revision? What are you most proud of?
• What helped you the most when revising? (e.g., the Liao reading or criteria, models of memoir essays, feedback from your Writing Group, a realization you had, how you structured a Writing Session). Be specific! (e.g., mention a specific comment from a person in your Writing Group)

Second, go to our Slack workspace and in the #writing-practice-and-process channel, post about the following:

• Talk about 2-3 goals that you would like to work on for your writing. Interpret this however you’d like. It can be related to anything about writing–style level concerns, organization, argument, using examples, your writing process, your writing practice, etc. Be specific!!!!!!!!! (say more than just picking 2-3 of the things I just listed and copy/pasting them)
• Respond to others! Read previous posts before you write your own post. If you notice someone has a similar post, comment directly to them and expand on their points if you had similar goals. Prioritize talking about your goals that way rather than formally listing all of your goals.

Once you have completed these two tasks, click on the “Click here to continue” button below.