Doing a rhetorical analysis means saying something about a bunch of parts of something in order to make an interpretation about the whole. The act of analysis is to pay attention to details and think critically about how they add up.

But how might you analyze any given thing? It does not just happen from what feminist theorist Donna Haraway calls “the view from nowhere.” We all view something from somewhere. We all have our theories about how things work, and because knowledge can only ever be partial, we use theories to fill in gaps where we feel it is reasonable to do that.

In rhetorical analysis, these theories, or lenses, can help us think about texts in different ways. They help us think about a text from one perspective in a way another perspective would not let us see.

Task

In the chapter “Tools for Analyzing Texts,” you were introduced to a number of different lenses you could use to help analyze a given text. On pages 102-105 a number of lenses are described and on pages 105-108 there is a sample rhetorical analysis of a photograph using many of these lenses.

Revisit those pages (don’t forget to look over your annotations for these readings) and choose one of the questions asked about the photograph on pages 105-108 and use one of the lenses on pages 105-108 to answer that question in a post in the text channel #feb-24-lenses.

When posting in the text channel #feb-24-lenses, do the following:

1. Put the number of the question from pages 105-108 in your comment (e.g., #3)
2. Tell us the lens your are using.
3. Provide your response in about 50-100 words.

If you notice someone used the same question you wanted to answer, feel free to respond to another classmate to add to their response if you have something new to add! Your response will be credit for the post instead of making your own post.

Also: there are 10 questions and 24 of you, so there will be repeats. BUT: try not to all do the same one so that we have some diversity in responses! (though, even doing the same one could produce different responses, of course).

After posting on Discord, click on the button below to continue.

We have already talked about rhetorical situations from Learning Module 2, so we are going to back up a bit and talk about rhetoric more broadly.

There are many MANY definitions of rhetoric. In our textbook, Graves, Corcoran, and Blankenship define it broadly as “the kinds of choices people make both to interpret and create forms of communication” (95).

Rhetoric, then, might be best thought of in the context of our class as a way of thinking.

That is, a way of considering “why do this and not that? What effect would there be if I did this instead? Why did the writer do that? I wonder what purpose that served their argument or narrative by doing that?” and so on. We can call this rhetorical thinking.

As a way of thinking, to formalize it a bit more, we might use rhetorical analysis to take the time to work out our thinking in our writing as a way to understand any object that is written, designed, composed, created, etc. How that object has a purpose of some kind, an audience it hopes to reach, different constraints that the creator was under, unstated ideologies it serves, and ways we can make meaning with that object.

An Example of Rhetorical Thinking and Analysis

One of my earliest memories of being really purposeful in rhetorical thinking was when I was in high school. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) functioned much like texting and some forms of social media function today. AIM was how we communicated with our friends, whereas people who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s may have used a landline telephone.

image of AOL instant messenger logo on desktop background. Photo credit: Brendan Dolan-Gavitt. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/34715712@N00/174054753

One day, a friend of mine showed me a (printed out!) transcript of an AIM conversation between him and his then-girlfriend. He wanted to show me because they were talking about their relationship and though she confirmed that she wanted to stay together, he got a vibe that something was off.

I read it over and because I knew my friend wanted another perspective on it, I paid really close attention to her specific word choice. I remember lots of hedging (or, qualifying what she was saying in ways that left open the possibility that she was not as committed as she claimed) and an indirect writing style that never quite assertively said that she wanted to stay in the relationship.

My interpretation was that she wasn’t feeling him any more. It wasn’t quite working out.

Well, later on, it turned out that my rhetorical analysis I did after reading the transcript and talking with my friend was pretty accurate! They broke up a few weeks later. It wasn’t working. And though she wasn’t ready to tell him that, a close rhetorical analysis gave me and my friend a more evidence-based perspective on how the relationship was going. When they broke up, I think he was less surprised.

Task

As I said earlier on this semester, you all are experts in language and rhetoric and writing already. You’ve done it all of your life. In our class, we are practicing being more aware of our abilities as readers, writers, and communicators so as to keep improving our developing expertise.

Before moving on, share in the comments below an example where you used some rhetorical thinking or a more formal rhetorical analysis in a way that helped you or someone else the way I helped my friend in my example above.

Give me details about what the object you were analyzing was, what you thought about it, and why you thought about it that way. Be specific! To be substantive, make it about 50-100 words.

Once you commented below, click the button below to move on.

In addition to word origins, another way to think about how clusters of words impact style is register.

Register is a term from linguistics and essentially refers to word clusters or patterns in syntax (i.e., sentence order/arrangement) that frequently re-occur around a specific topic or tone: formality, discipline of study, workplace, industry, etc.

Writing in your academic discipline or industry means learning the appropriate register or registers. For example:

• register for communication among co-workers may be a register slightly or even drastically different from register used in customer service
• register for a lab report may be different from register for a test answer in Biology

Finding the right register for your situation can be important; it can send a message that you are in solidarity with your audience (you are one of us) or that you have expertise on a subject (to know this language is to know this content). Using appropriate register is an important rhetorical skill.

Shifting and Mixing Registers

Shifting and mixing registers can also have rhetorical effect.

Rhetoric scholar Jeanne Fahnestock (2011, p. 87) notes that it could be as little as a word or it could be a phrase or sentence.

For instance, a long academic passage with clusters of words like hypothesis, generality, explanation could suddenly have a word like “bullshit” in there. Such a word draws attention to itself not only by its own force, but by its contrast between a register that word normally occurs in compared to the register it is contrasting with. This is a shift in register.

Register mixing involves a more extensive integration between registers. Fahnestock (p. 88) cites the following example from a money market fund’s seminannual report:

The first six months of 2003 were a good period for both stocks and bonds. Interest rates continued to fall and stock prices rose broadly. In addition, new tax cut legislation was enacted and corporate earnings showed signs of improvement.

American Balanced Fund posted a total return of 10.0% for the six-month period ended June 30. The fund outpaced the Lipper Balanced Fund Index, which had a total return of 8.9%. Stocks, as measured by Standard & Poor’s 500 Composite Index, gained 11.8%. Bonds, as measured by the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index, rose 3.9%. The market indexes are unmanaged. (cited in Fahnestock; American Balanced Fund 2003, 1).

This is a similar move to what you were asked to do on the last page in your sentence rewrite on the previous page, no?

Register Mixing and Translingualism

Thinking back to Learning Module 3 and the part on translingualism, you might also mix registers when mixing dialects or other languages. For instance, if you speak and write in a community that would respond well to versions of African American Vernacular English, New York Latino Spanish, or South Philly English, you could mix in words, phrases, or entire sentences inflected with a dialect or language.

Mixing registers through different kinds of languages that have a lot of associations with one’s identity can:

• make a point of emphasis (like the world “bullshit”)
• build solidarity with an audience that might also speak that language or dialect
• achieve various rhetorical aims that take advantage of the symbolizing effect of using a different language/dialect or just the rhetorical force from a given instance of that language/dialect as compared to the White Mainstream English version. For instance, you might purposefully want to make someone else uncomfortable or underscore something important about the rhetorical situation.

For example, to emphasize urgency to people in a group project from high school, I might do this using my South Jersey/Philly English:

I’m not sure we can do this. Is there any way to complete the report by the proposed deadline? We really gonna get dat jawn goin by den?

It might be even more subtle than this:

I’m not sure we can do this. Is der any way to complete da report by da proposed deadline? We really gonna get it done?

Registers are more commonly associated with really specialized language situations, but they effectively mean “a way of talking/writing” so there is much in common with translingualism and the act of using all of your linguistic resources to communicate in various ways in various settings.

A final point on this is that our bodies are often involved in communicating. Who is speaking and writing can often be tangled up with what is said or written. This can be very important to consider when mixing languages and registers with various audiences.

Task

Before clicking the “Click here to continue” button below, respond in a comment below to the following question about the 2 paragraphs from the seminannual report. Here is the question:

What is the difference in information provided in paragraph 1 compared to paragraph 2? What does that tell you about mixing of registers and why it might have occurred?

To start studying components of style is to start with words. Which words should you choose to help accumulate, for you, a certain style? Word origins may play a role–and these are things you already sort of know just from being a writer and speaker of English, for however long you have been doing that. Below, I outline (mostly with the help of Jeanne Fahnestock’s Rhetorical Style book that is basically my Bible) how word origins relate to different kinds of stylistic decisions writers might make.

Here is what English sounded like about 1,000 years ago:

The influences on English are extensive and are continuing—English has become a global language over the last 50 or so years and there will be/are a lot of borrowings, split dialects, etc. as a result of various world Englishes influencing the more standardized forms we hear and read in the media and in professional contexts.

Three Main Influences

There are three main influences on contemporary English:

Click here to learn more about these three influences from Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian, French, and Greek/Latin.

Take-Aways: “Formality”

Reading more about the three influences might lead you to an overly simplified analysis of language, but the general sense of it holds true.

It is not always true that core words are perceived as “simple and concrete” or French words are always “elevated” or that Latin/Greek are always “scholarly” (e.g., “practice” is fairly simple word from French), but this rule generally applies.

Why think about this? A common stereotype about professional and academic writing is that you should try to sound “formal.” This is sort of true, but it is difficult to pin down exactly what this means.

Further, it often conflicts with another stereotype that professional and academic writing should be “clear, direct, concise, etc.” What is true is that depending on the situation, you might want to be more formal, or more informal, or more concrete, or more abstract…or, well, probably a combination of all of these.

Here are some examples of synonyms across core, French, and Latin/Greek:

walk/ stroll/ ambulate

hate/loathing/antipathy

fix/ correct/ emend

Using more of them or less of any of those categories of words can help build the tone you want. Mixing them, too, can be an asset at strategic moments, as I point out in the below section.

Using different words for tone (click here)

Click the above to learn more about a way to strategize taking on a “formal” tone.

So what is the point here?

The main idea is that, usually, it doesn’t make much sense to get caught up in figuring out if you should be “formal” or “informal.” All languages and contexts for language use typically are a mix of formal/informal, let alone other stylistic labels you might use (e.g., reassuring, warm, intimidating, humorous).

Task

In a comment below, take a sentence that you wrote in your Blog Post or in your Literacy Narrative draft and rewrite it in one of two ways followed by a brief explanation.

You will need to have read the two pages linked above on this page to be able to do the task below.

Choose one of the options below:

1. Rewrite as two sentences. The first sentence will sound more formal/scholarly/elevated. The second sentence will sound more informal/concrete/direct. Feel free to look up some word origins to help you out! Take one or two more sentences to explain how this might be effective and why you made the choices you made.
2. Use synonymia and rewrite a sentence that uses a bunch of synonyms that either uses a bunch of scholarly/elevated words to start before working to core words, or take the other direction and work from the core down. Take one or two more sentences to explain how this might be effective and why you made the choices you made.

Once you did your rewriting and explaining in a comment below, click the “Click here to continue” button to move on to the next page in the module.

During this Learning Module, we explored:

• An introduction to style in writing (a definition of style, voice, audience, and translingualism).
• Checking in on how your process and practice as a writer has been going.
• Thinking more about time management skills and how that applies to making time for writing.
• Getting set up with your writing group (e.g., your role, your group members, your schedule of meetings
• Thinking about the next writing project, the Literacy Narrative Revision.

Next Time

• Read “Defining My Identity Through Language: What I Learned about Literacy Narratives” by Kim Liao, p. 53-60 (textbook)
• Complete the reading response for the Liao reading. Go to Discord and post to the text channel “feb-22-liao-reading-response” under “Reading/Writing Discussion” and post two things:
  1. one thing that stood out to you as notable and why
  2. one question you had
• Complete the Writing Schedule Activity and submit it to Blackboard>Submit Assignments>Process Writing and Reading Responses

The roster of writing groups has been set! Below is each group along with the set roles for each group member. I tried to accommodate preferences as much as I could, but could not always honor that (especially Groups 1 and 3, where I just chose roles…feel free to switch them which we can discuss during our first meeting).

As a refresher for what each role is, please go here: Writing Groups: Part I – ENG 2100: Writing I, Spring 2021 (cuny.edu).

Group 1:

Willy- Activity Accountant

Daiki- Group Historian

Samir- Community Builder

Luci- DJ

Humz- Rotater/New Role

Group 2:

David- Activity Accountant

Peng- Group Historian

Walker- Community Builder

Kevin- DJ

Sal- Rotater/New Role

Group 3:

Andruw- Activity Accountant

Ariel- Group Historian

Sofy- Community Builder

Tia- DJ

Corey-  Rotater/New Role

Group 4:

Alex- Activity Accountant

Darian- Group Historian

Chime- Community Builder

Eric- DJ

Griffin- Rotater/New Role

Group 5:

Eman- Activity Accountant

Zach- Group Historian

Eli- Community Builder

Danny- DJ

We will set up the logistics for writing groups when we meet during our first meeting either on February 17 (Groups 1, 2, and 3) or on February 24 (Groups 4 and 5).

Task

Please go to Blackboard>Course Documents and download the Writing Groups Roster and Schedule document.

Save the document to your device.

Please also update your calendar, if you keep one (you should!), to include the dates/times you will meet with me and you writing group.

After saving the document and updating your calendar, comment below if you have any questions about Writing Groups (e.g., about roles, about how we will meet, about responsibilities as readers). If you have no questions, please write “I have no questions.”

After commenting below, click the button to continue:

Literacy Narrative, First Draft

By 11:59pm on Wednesday, February 17, please submit the first draft of your Literacy Narrative. Feel free to use parts of your Blog Post on Language and Joy to help you complete this first draft. Do your best to follow what the prompt asks (go to Blackboard>Submit Assignments>Major Writing Projects to find the prompt).

When ready, submit it on Blackboard at Blackboard>Submit Assignments>Major Writing Projects and click on “Literacy Narrative, Draft 1” to submit it. Please submit a .doc or .pdf file. Don’t stress too much here! This first draft will mostly be graded about using plenty of examples and just getting the words out.

Literacy Draft Revision Project

In the revision assignment due on March 8, you will take the material you generated in your Literacy Narrative, Draft 1 to start to focus on the things that seemed most interesting. No need to think too deeply about this right now, since you recently submitted (or will soon submit) the first draft.

However, I want you to just look at the prompt before class on February 22.

So, read it over now by going to Blackboard>Submit Assignments>Major Writing Projects and then click on the attachment in “Literacy Narrative Revision Project” which will be a document that offers instructions for the assignment.

We will be learning more before you submit your revision, so here are some of the things that are coming your way:

• More on revision (e.g., revision plans, writing session plans and writing goals)
• More on style in upcoming Learning Modules.
• The Liao reading is due for February 22, which will help this prompt make more sense, too.

Task

In a comment below, please write in any questions you have about this assignment. If you have no questions, please just write “I have no questions.”

After commenting below about any questions you have (or, if you have no questions, post “I have no questions”), click the “Click here to continue” button below.

Style, a definition:

Using certain kinds of sentences and words that serve the your and your audience’s values, expectations, and goals.

Style can be thought of how you manage patterns, repetition, and disruptions of those patterns and repetitions. Deciding on those patterns, repetitions, and disruptions matters when you consider your audience.

In the Blankenship reading, the consideration of audience is what that audience might expect from you and what your audience’s values and expectations are:

• what sorts of words are they used to hearing? (e.g., technical vocabulary, colloquial language) What do they value? (e.g., investors respond well to language that centers a return on investment)
• what kinds of sentences would your audience expect and value? (e.g., long ones, complex ones, simple ones)
• what kinds of organization or paragraphing? (e.g., long paragraphs, short ones)

Here is what we will focus on this semester, more specifically, in regard to style:

• Voice and Audience
• Word origins and tone
• Words and register
• Sentences: Phrases and Clauses
• Sentences: Active and passive voice
• Sentences: Cohesion
• Sentences: Types
• Sentences: Length
• Sentences: Punctuation
• Sentences: Tropes and Figures
• …possibly more, we shall see…

Task

When you think about style, what comes to mind OTHER than writing and speaking? Comment below in response to this question by naming 1-2 things in the comments section below and how style in that domain is similar and/or different from how style is used in terms of writing and speaking.

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

Style can also be associated with voice. Voice is something that is hard to pin down, but one way to think about it is your idiosyncratic patterns that are unique to how you speak and write. Audiences will always expect things in specific rhetorical situations (see previous Learning Module 2), but if they know you, they might also expect ways of speaking and writing from you.

Your voice might be kind of natural and it might change depending on the rhetorical situation (e.g., think of how you speak and write in various different contexts to older family members vs. co-workers vs. friends vs. strangers). Your voice might have shared attributes across rhetorical situations, but it really is very difficult to suggest there is something easily identifiable as Your Voice.

So, style absolutely has to do with audience. But don’t get too wrapped up in writing 100% for your audience. Another part of the rhetorical situation is called the exigence, sometimes called the purpose (exigence usually relates more to a shared problem or issue that calls someone to write whereas purpose is a bit more singular). It is about what you want to do, about what you feel is right in terms of what you say in response to what calls you to speak or write.

What are the patterns, repetitions, and disruptions of words, sentences, paragraphing, etc. that make the most sense for your exigence/purpose? What feels right to YOU?

Three reasons why this is important:

1. It’s your writing, and sometimes audiences need to receive information in ways that they might not be comfortable receiving. Sometimes something comforting is easy to forget or ignore.
2. It is sometimes not possible to know how an audience will receive something. We can’t know until you try something. You know a lot, but you might not know for sure how an audience will receive what you say. Sometimes it might be better to write something in the best way you think rather than worry a lot about how an audience might best receive it.
3. Sometimes you just wanna write what you wanna write, even if you have an audience besides yourself. So, just do what you wanna do.

Task

Has anyone ever made a comment about your “voice” or “style” in your writing or speaking? Do you have a perspective on the kind of “voice” you have as a writer? In 30-50 words, comment below in response to these questions.

After commenting, click on the button below:

Kamal Belmihoub and Lucas Corcoran on pages 61-65 of our course textbook (you didn’t have to read this, but recommend you do so!) sum up the recent linguistic research about how we learn and use language that is called translingualism.

The main gist is this: there really aren’t separate languages, only mix of the ones we use based on the different stores of words and grammar we learn.

So, it might be more accurate to say that we all have our own “language” that we speak, which is a mix of different languages to make up the total communicative resources we have.

We have different competencies.

1. Linguistic competence: knowledge of grammar and vocabulary for a language you speak
2. Strategic competence: using non-linguistic features to help communicate (e.g., body language)
3. Discourse competence: is it coherent, is it complete (enough)
4. Sociolinguistic competence: culturally appropriate to situation

You have this whole wide amount of resources, why not use them all where you see fit and where you want to use them? Feel free to play around with them where you are comfortable. That’s why I wanted to focus on “joy” in your blog post, for instance. You all have many languages and some of them really feel like home. Lean into that when you want and where you are comfortable.

To get a sense of the resources you have to draw from, let’s try to brainstorm all of the linguistic resources you have. This could be a great thing to think through in your Literacy Narrative (either in the draft you turn in on Feb 17 or the revised version on March 8).

Here are my unofficial languages, for an example:

• US White Mainstream English
• “Academic” English (e.g., “let’s unpack that”; “problematize”; “dissertation”)
• US government / military English (e.g., “get the digits for that,” “what are the due outs?”, “shut up and color”)
• South Philly / South Jersey English (e.g., “looka dis strapper,” “wooder,” “don’t need no beggels”)
• Western Pennsylvania English (e.g., “nebby”, “dippy eggs,” “slippy,” “chip-chop ham”)
• Restaurant Work English (e.g., “right behind ya”)
• Italian American English (e.g., “galamar,” “moozarell,” “greaseball”)
• Gaming (e.g., “gg”)
• US Sports Fan (e.g., “defense wins championships,” “establish the run game,” “want the shot”)
• Parenting English (I speak a different way to my young kids!: “potty,” “bye bye”)
• Internet(??) English (from computers in general, Twitter, Reddit, etc.: “evergreen,” “tweet through it,” “tl;dr”, “hard restart”)
• Very Basic School Spanish (e.g., “ir a la playa,”—I liked to go to the beach when I wrote essays for Spanish classes)
• Very Basic School German (e.g., Don’t make me try to remember this 6 week class)
• Italian Curse Words (really, just part of Italian American above) (e.g., “fongool”/”fanculo,” “marone”)

Task

Brainstorm all of the languages you speak/write and post them to our Discord server in the text channel “feb-17-your-languages” in the “Reading/Writing Discussion” category. Try to provide example words/phrases/grammatical constructions/pronunciations with definitions as necessary (see my examples above for me, but you will undoubtedly have different languages than the ones I speak/write).

Respond to each other if you notice you have some similarities!

After posting to Discord, click the button below to continue: