Rhetorical Analysis: Linking All Analysis to Argument (30-45 min)

Take out your journals so I can give you credit for them.

I’m passing out a copy of rhetorical analysis draft. I think in light of a recent court decision about copyright and AI training data, it could be interesting to discuss this. I also think this is an interesting paper to discuss because it gets close, but maybe falls a little short, of grounding itself in a stance and then using that to have a coherent argument throughout the text supported by rhetorical analysis.

So, as you read, note the following:

• What do you think about copyright and AI? What is made clear by the writer? Are you confused at all?
• Building from the texts outward, what do the analyses say about AI and art? Do these analyses talk to one another? How so?
• What is the main argument of the paper right now? Where could it go next? Why?

Finding and Evaluating Sources (30-45 min)

I need a volunteer to offer up a topic. Right now, we are going to try to find a source on Google and then later on Baruch’s library website.

Okay, open up Google or any other popular search engine. Let’s think about some keywords for this topic (below tips adapted from former student Maria Frants’ project for ENG 2150 to come up with tips for finding information online):

• Think about your topic. What are some words or small phrases that can describe what you are trying to research? Tip: Think of synonyms!!
• In searches, use quotation marks around a short phrase “” and all results populated will include that phrase
• In searches, use Boolean Operators- simple words (AND, OR, NOT or AND NOT) used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search
• AND: both keywords will be present in all result documents
• OR: one or both keywords will be present in all result documents
• NOT or AND NOT: all result documents will contain the first keyword but will specifically exclude documents that also contain the second

Tip: Use parentheses () as a way to combine boolean operators for an even more specific search

Example: Searching (pollution or deforestation) and climate change returns documents containing: pollution and climate change; deforestation and climate change; pollution and deforestation and climate change; but does not return pollution or deforestation when climate change is not mentioned.

Let’s see what comes up. How do we decide what to click on? How do we decide how to adjust our search?

Try finding some sources on your own that could be useful for your next paper. Do this for 5 minutes. Share with a partner what you found and why you think it might be a good source to use.

Okay: ACADEMIC SOURCES!

They will likely be more challenging to read because they are written primarily for other experts, while you are experts-in-training as students pursuing a bachelor’s degree. You will have to take things slow and learn a kind of reading that we have talked about before when reading difficult things. This kind of reading are almost exclusively arguments about trying to claim (albeit partial and limited) knowledge about something after an extensive effort and trying as hard as possible to understand it.

Since this work is so much effort and so much care is put into it, lots of safeguards are utilized, namely peer review. Academic books and journal articles have editors who review submissions and then, if they deem that it fits the journal’s mission and they see it as potentially good work, they send it off to reviewers. Reviewers are other experts who review what is sent to them and decide if the submission should be rejected, accepted, or if they have feedback for the author to use to revise and resubmit the piece. Quite often, submissions are either rejected or the submission is sent back to the author to revise. This review process gives another layer of scrutiny to these scholars’ work, which is why writing produced by academics is more likely to be of higher quality than popular sources. However, that high quality comes with a price of being fairly technical.

So how do you know if something is an academic source? Well, two questions to start, depending on what type of text it is:

1. Is it a book? If so, it should be published by a book press housed at another university (e.g., University of Minnesota Press, Harvard University Press, University of Pittsburgh Press) or by one of the few private academic publishers (e.g., Routledge, Parlor Press). These presses have different “series” that correspond with different academic fields (e.g., sociology, economics, Black studies, rhetoric, biology) and these different series have editors who work with reviewers.
2. Is it an article? If so, it should be an academic journal that is usually housed at a university or non-profit. For instance, a journal in my field called The Journal of Basic Writing is housed at CUNY and is co-edited by two professors at CUNY, one of whom is Cheryl C. Smith from Baruch’s English department (and another Baruch professor, Lisa Blankenship, is an associate editor). Academic journals always have editors who are academics in a field that the journal specailizes in. There is usually an editorial board with several other academics who help out, as well.

So, you could, of course, just skim journals and book series that are in fields related to your topic to find academic sources. You could also use different combinations of keywords and Boolean operators like we went over earlier to find them through the library’s website.

So let’s do that now. Let’s throw out a keyword and try it out.

First we:

• Define our search (usually “Books + Articles” works)
• Type in some keywords
• Hit enter
• And then start browsing the lists. Make adjustments just like we talked about when looking at popular sources (e.g., using quotations, using Boolean operators). You can also use filters on the side or “Advanced Search” to add more criteria to focus your results. If you select “Articles,” you can check the box that will only include academic journal articles.

Next Time

-Keep working on your revision.

-By end of day tomorrow, I need your revised research question.

-Start looking for sources

-Journal for next week (Nov 20) is this: What is something you are proud of so far this semester? Something you have created (in school or outside of school)? Risks you have taken (e.g., joined a club about something you don’t know much about, went up to talk to people you ended up making friends with, spoke up for yourself or others about something important to you)? A performance you feel you nailed (e.g., an exam, a speech or presentation)? What makes you proud of it? Also: do you find yourself talking yourself down even when you are proud (e.g., “it wasn’t that big of a deal, but” or “it’s a small thing, but” or “I know lots of people do this well”)? Why are you doing that, if so? By contrast, do you worry that pride can make you too comfortable and not “hungry” enough to get better at things? What’s going on with both under- and over-confidence? (You don’t have to respond to all of these questions but I find them interesting, overall!)

-Some of you have missed homework assignments in the last two weeks or so (or longer ago, in some cases), probably while you were getting busy and stressed with heavier workloads as the semester has progressed. Look at the schedule and make sure you have everything submitted. I’m going to make sure you can see this on Brightspace, too.

-Anyone who completed extra peer reviews for the grade boost, please submit them to Brightspace in the “Grade Boost” assignment and NOT the peer review section (only your required peer review letter goes there).

-Need to talk to Natanael L. and Kareem