Signal Words and Phrases (20-30 min)

Here is a good list of signal words and phrases: Signal Verbs – Center for Academic Success – University of Illinois Springfield – UIS

This is another good one: Signal-Verbs-and-Phrases.pdf (blinn.edu)

What words could we use here and why?

1. Gail Bederman SIGNAL WORD how this alternative narrative inverted Victorian values of “white men as the embodiment of civilization and manliness” and that for White men to embody these values means that they must necessarily condemn lynching (50).
2. In Trust in Numbers, Theodore M. Porter SIGNAL WORD quantification a “technology of distance,” in that it is a “highly structured and rule-bound” strategy of communication that many people (wrongly) assume “minimizes the need for intimate knowledge and personal trust” (ix).
3. Morrison SIGNAL WORD with an exploration of statistical discourse as an impediment to allowing for the dignity of Black people in the United States.
4. In Data Feminism, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein SIGNAL WORD that many forms of quantitative rhetoric can often rely on an attempt to suppress emotion, but they contend that the most educational and memorable quantitative arguments explicitly activate emotion, leverage embodiment, and create novel presentations for “honouring context, architecting attention, and taking action to defy stereotypes and reimagine the world” (96).
5. Drawing from Quintilian and Erasmus, Jeanne Fahnestock SIGNAL WORD two strands of amplification in rhetorical stylistics: to heighten and to be copious (“of having more to say”) (391).
6. However, Jacqueline Jones Royster SIGNAL WORD that someone like Wells, as a Black woman, had to carefully craft her ethos (Traces of a Stream, 65).
7. Aja Y. Martinez SIGNAL PHRASE “[c]ounterstory functions as both methodology and method for minoritized people to intervene in research methods that would form ‘master narratives’ based on ignorance and assumptions about minoritized people” (21).
8. Wells had a talent to take on an argumentative style that mimicked an authoritative or objective tone that also mixed with a rhetoric that relied on pathos in a forceful way, that “turn[ed] . . . the stomach” as Royster SIGNAL PHRASE (Traces of a Stream, 68).
9. Similarly, Anita August SIGNAL PHRASE how Wells uses a rhetoric of objectivity but in a tradition of AVT [the African American Verbal Tradition].
10. This storytelling was intertwined with an innate quantitative feature of making available to people the scale of violence of the state against Black women; for instance, SIGNAL PHRASE Melissa Brown et al., nearly one-third of #SayHerName tweets between January 2016 and October 2016 contained the names of one or more Black women murdered by the state–with over 100 women mentioned, in total, in this period (1840).

It is going to feel weird at first, but these words and phrases just do what all writing does: they help meaningfully connect ideas together. The difference is that you have to be thoughtful about connecting your ideas and the ideas of others by using quotation, paraphrase, and (sometimes) summary.

Here is answer key (don’t look until we are done!!!): key for signal words and phrases – ENG 2150, Fall 2021: Composing institutions (cuny.edu)

Revise Paraphrase/Quote/Combo

Choose one of the signal words or phrases above (or new ones from resource above) and revise a paraphrase, direct quote, or combination of both in a sentence from your in-progress research draft.

When done, post BOTH the original and the new version to our Discord thread today.

 

Finalizing Podcast Topic (20 minutes)

I went through and listened to all your files and I went back through previous Discord posts. This is what I could make out as the possible focus of the podcast (let me know if anything is missing).

Let’s vote now.

I’ll paste the options into the Discord chat. Like the one you want to vote for with an emoji for first round vote.

Here is the list I heard from your audio files (add any I missed!):

• Achievement gap by race
• Disparities in resources that favor White and wealthier students
• Looking at each school type in NYC: private, public, charter, specialized
• Looking at Honors and Gifted & Talented programs
• Integration/segregation in NYC schools
• Guide for parents and students on selecting schools to go to in NYC
• Specialized schools only
• Charter schools only
• Online classes and transitions made since pandemic started for NYC students
• NYC schools and preparation for college

Once we settle on topic, let’s talk about episode breakdown.

 

Finalizing Roles and Groups (20 minutes)

Here are the roles I’ve settled on, but let me know if something is missing (see notebook):

• Narrator: record self narrating episode while re-recording as needed, to include: monologues, commentary while transitioning between segments, reading end credits.
• Audio Editor: editing multiple audio files together for the podcast episode (e.g., narrator monologues or commentary, interviews, music, sound effects), thinking about volume, audio quality, etc.
• Script Writer: writing and revising drafts of scripts, mapping out organizing the structure of the episode, coordinating feedback from group on script
• Project Manager: coordinate the Team Charter, maintain Task Schedule, create Meeting Agendas, taking Meeting Minutes, coordinate deadlines and reminders for all group members, stay in touch with me (Prof. Libertz) for any group needs.

Other duties to be divided up among these roles:

• Interviewing
• Being interviewed
• Coordinating “tone” and “style” across scripts and audio editing
• Researching new information beyond what is in your Research Projects
• Group feedback on how the podcast is going (e.g., notes on script drafts, music suggestions)
• Transcribing episodes for accessibility (not just providing script, but describing music/sound, transcribing interviews)
• Other things might come up

How many of each role? What do you think?

 

Digital Participation Gap

Several researchers (to name a few: David R. Brake, Jen Schradie, Eszter Hargittai, Gina Walejko, Phlip M. Napoli, Jonathan A. Obar, Katy E. Pearce, Ronald E. Rice) have found that digital content is more likely to be created by, according to Julia Voss, “young, White, male, wealthy, and educated individuals” and that “more generally, non-White, female, poor, less educated, and older users tend to engage in more passive activities (such as browsing) rather than production and agentive practices like composing written or multimedia content, participating in discussion fora, or developing games and apps” (60). Especially, according to Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw, women “underestimate their technical expertise compare to me, which…makes women less likely to compose online digital texts” (60).

Voss highlights that there are “long-standing traditions of multimodal and digital composing by people of color (see Baca; Banks; Haas; Medina), women (see Blair, Gajjala, and Tulley; DeLuca), and other groups” (74).

Baca: Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing | SpringerLink

Banks: Race, Rhetoric, and Technology | Searching for Higher Ground | Adam J. (taylorfrancis.com)

Blair, Gajjala, and Tulley: Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action (Kristine Blair, Radhika: Hampton Press

DeLuca: Kairos 19.3: DeLuca, Can We Block these Political Thingys? – Index (technorhetoric.net)

Haas: Project MUSE – Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and Practice (jhu.edu)

Medina: In this book in chapter “Tweeting Collaborative Identity”: Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication (routledge.com)

So: what influences your choices? What do you want to do and learn about?

Don’t get too caught up in what you feel you should do, or what you are comfortable with, or what you think is easy. Go with your gut on what might be a good investment of your time learning about and doing.

 

See reference list that has entries for each of these researchers on the digital participation gap and other scholarship in Julia Voss’s 2018 research article, ““Who Learns from Collaborative Digital Projects? Cultivating Critical C” by Julia Voss (scu.edu)”

 

What you want and your role/group

So, how can you choose something that *you* want to do? Who might you want to work with? What episode do you want to work on?

Research suggests most effective group projects have an element of self-selection and teacher-selection (see page 1787), so grouping by pairs and then the teacher combining groups has been found to be very effective. Consider both content but most important consider role.

When ready, on this Google Doc, write down each of the following:

1. Your name
2. Choose one role and one alternate role
3. Consider what topic you’d like to work on
4. Consider if there is anyone in class you’d particularly like to work with and submit your “pair”

Example:

Dan, audio editor, narrator, the history of donuts, Otto

 

 

Onboarding Project Managers: Team Charter and Task Schedule (20 minutes)

Project managers, this is what you have to do:

Cliché time:

• Failing to plan is planning to fail
• An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
• What else?

Project Managers are not the *BOSS*, they coordinate teammates to keep things on track and in a good direction. Do not dominate discussion, or content, or ideas. You facilitate.

Check in with each group member as you discuss the team charter below. Some communication styles will talk and interrupt more, drowning out other voices.

Some things to do and ask team members to do (From Team Writing by Joanna Wolfe, p. 93-96):

• Repeat back or restate ideas before disagreeing with time
• Correct interruptions and let other person finish speaking (sometimes some speakers get excited and interrupt–use “I’m sorry, you were saying?” or “I noticed you were finishing a thought, can you continue?”)
• Check in with quiet speakers (e.g., “do you have any thoughts on this?”)
• Pay attention to body language (watch people leaning in, moving arms toward center of group, start to open mouth to talk but stop…watch for that an extend an invitation for them to speak)
• Engage in uncritical brainstorming: assign a period of time where no criticism is allowed, only ideas are offered (a delay for criticism here *not* a ban of criticism).
• Encourage members to prevent or delay interruptions (e.g., “I’m not finished yet,” “one more minute, please”)
• If you notice pattern of quieter speakers, give them the floor to start meetings
• Emphasize no intention to hurt feelings here! Just want to make sure everyone has a chance to share and offer thoughts.
• Watch out for self-promoting vs. self-deprecating speech patterns. Some folks will be like aggressively confident while others will speak in styles that diminishes themselves or their ideas. Encourage honesty with shortcomings without focusing on them too much.
• Consider different problem solving approaches.
  • Action-oriented: jumping into details of problem and immediately working on solution (best time is middle of project)
  • Holistic: considering entire problem as a whole and refraining from engaging solution until full understanding (best time for this is at beginning of project)
  • Some tasks should be more action-oriented and others more holistic. Be prepared to resolve conflicts over these clashing styles

 

Team Charter (from Wolfe, Team Writing, ch. 4)

• Broad team goals (e.g., make original argument, presenting information accurately, following genre conventions of a given podcast type, making something entertaining)
• Specific and measurable goals (e.g., meeting or beating all deadlines for task schedule, making 3 segments in episode, incorporating three different kinds of music for tone, having 2 meetings with class as whole to coordinate tone)
• Personal goals (e.g., improving writing skills, learning how to use effects in Audacity on different audio files, having a productive and friendly group work experience)
• Individual level of commitment (e.g., low, medium high; agreeing that some members will do less work and others more with a grade boost for those doing more, if necessary, to help make this arrangement fair)
• Other information about team members that can impact work (e.g., high workload at job, caretaking of family members, health issues, issues with English so need more time to get writing presentable in ways you feel comfortable sharing, more time to understand technology and how to use it…none of this has to be specifically disclosed, but this can help inform how workload is distributed)
• How team will resolve disputes (e.g., talk until consensus, vote with simple majority, bring it to Prof. Libertz to decide, get anonymous classmate to decide)
• How team will handle missed deadlines (e.g., project manager emails reminder to late team member, they have 24 hours to respond, if no response take to Prof. Libertz but if response that is valid revise deadline; same procedure but if no response the team decides how to make up the work)
• What constitutes unacceptable work and how team will handle it (e.g., project manager says nothing and asks another team member to make it a bit better; project manager decides and gives team member suggestions; team reviews together and decides together with suggestions)
• Communication infrastructure. Will you use email? Discord? WhatsApp? How will reminders be sent, coordination for meetings, etc.?

What are the tasks? Who might be doing what?

Task Schedule and Team Charter due by Tuesday? Shift Research Project draft deadline? Build due date for second draft around your workload for podcast?

 

Audacity Check-in (15-20 minutes)

**FIRST**: where do you save files?

I’m going to pull up Audacity and we are going to troubleshoot some things as needed. Remember: you can always contact me if you are struggling with it and I can pop on for a quick meeting to help.