Week Five: Critical Reading and Intro to the Thesis

1. Week Five: Critical Reading and Intro to the Thesis How do we connect purpose, audience, and rhetorical choices into a coherent and supportable thesis? How do we determine the difference between an author’s main idea and persuasive purpose?

2. Class Overview • Short Quiz #3 • Review of Last Week’s Materials: Defining Audience, Reading Critically • MLA Citation Format: What You Need to Know • Free-writing: The Most Important Concepts in this Class for the Rhetorical Analysis • Determining the Difference Between An Author’s Main Idea and Purpose • Rhetorical Choices and Their Effects on Audience • Fitting an Audience to a Purpose • Connecting Rhetorical Choices and Their Effects to Audience

3. Quiz #3 • Which of the following is the correct MLA Work Cited format for a work reprinted in an anthology or textbook? a) Fowles, Jib. Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals. Advertising and Popular Culture (1996). Sage Publications, 1996. b)Fowles, Jib. “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals.” Advertising and Popular Culture (1996). Rpt. In First-Year Writing: Writing in the Disciplines. 7th Custom Ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013-2014. Print. 245-60 • In a few sentences, describe Brief Assignment 4. • Which of the following is the correct MLA format for an in-text citation (for a print text with a known author): a. (Fowles, p. 246) b. (Fowles 246) c. (FYW 246) d. (p. 246) • Which of the following would not be a suitable verb to describe an author’s rhetorical purpose and why? a. “persuades” b. “informs” c. “wants to convince” d. “argues for”

4. Review: Identifying Audience • Examine a piece’s greater context: when and where was the work first published? What medium? You must do research and look at the book notes to determine these. • Is there one target audience or a layered audience? Does the author’s persuasive purpose speak to both audiences? • Examine the author’s word choice, references, and examples: are the examples or ideas field- or discipline-specific? • From what ideologies or assumptions does the author write? What are their assumptions about their subject? Their audience? • What sort of background does your audience have? Using details from the text and research, determine qualities like the audience’s educational background, interests, and potential class or economic standing. • What does the author’s persuasive purpose tell you about the audience’s beliefs? (Hint: if you need to persuade someone of something, that implies that they may not initially believe in your purpose.)

5. MLA Citations: the Rundown • A Work Cited entry, which contains the full bibliographic information for any text referenced in a work of research or analysis, should appear at the end of your document. If you include an in-text citation, you must include a Work(s) Cited as well. The two are inextricable. Otherwise, how could you tell which page numbers referred to which text? • In-text citations (also called parenthetical citations) should appear at the end of your sentence or quote but before the terminal punctuation (period or semi-colon). They would look like this: When Gee employs technical terms like “nano-processors” from Deus Ex, he furthers his analogy to education by showing how incomprehensible a text can be without a “situated understanding” of the terms (549). • With in-text citations, the author’s name is not necessary in the citation if you have already mentioned the author’s name in that same sentence. See the previous example.

6. Work Cited Entries • Please use the MLA citation format for a print work reprinted in an anthology or textbook for your rhetorical analysis essays. If you cite, reference, or discuss any details from a text, you need to detail the text in the Work(s) Cited entry. • Example: Gee, James. “Situated Meaning and Learning […].” What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (2007). Rpt. in First-Year Writing: Writing in the Disciplines. 7th Custom Ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013-2014. Print. 547-51. • Note the information included: Authors’ name (as printed in the article heading, last name first). Article or excerpt title. Original work title. Anthology/textbook title. Edition of textbook. Place of publication: year of publication. Medium (print, web). Page numbers for reprinted piece in textbook or anthology.

7. Free-Writing • On a blank piece of paper, please free-write (in organized paragraphs) about the concepts you feel are the most important to this class and to the rhetorical analysis essay. Please try to connect these concepts to the article you have selected for your rhetorical analysis. Note: remember the definition of rhetoric: “the art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others.” (From The Oxford English Dictionary).

8. Distinguishing Between An Author’s Main Idea and Rhetorical Purpose • An author’s main idea is the focus of their discussion: all article’s have a particular approach to a subject and range of ideas they attempt to address. For instance, we might define Gee’s main idea as drawing a connection between “situated learning” in video games and what is lacking in current secondary-school education. • An author’s rhetorical or persuasive purpose is narrower than the main idea and targets a particular audience. For this class, an author’s purpose must be persuasive and connected to action or influence. The purpose of a text is what the author wants his or her audience to do or believe. In order to achieve this purpose effectively, the author must use rhetorical choices. • Remember the difference between the rhetorical choice and the appeal: the choice (specific language or structure) causes or develops the appeal.

9. Practice: Cause and Effect of Rhetorical Choices Sample Rhetorical Choices • Jargon related to technology or engineering in a public op-ed piece about “fracking” would cause… • Use of first-person address in a text attempting to persuade voters to support universal healthcare would cause… • Use of analogy relating a highly-scientific topic to a common or accessible experience like car-repair or exercising would cause… • Contorted or complex syntax in a text stressing the importance of increasing language education at the high-school level would cause… • Use of statistics and research data in a text arguing for the outlawing of texting-while-driving would cause… • Use of a personal experience or story involving injury or trauma regarding texting-while-driving (see previous example) would cause… • A humorous tone used to highlight the difference between a serious topic like the death penalty (effectiveness, expense) and a lighter topic like physical discipline in childrearing would cause…

10. Practice: Fitting an Audience to a Purpose (Can you match the right purpose and audience?) Audiences Purposes Argues for increased funding for hard sciences because the arts are unsustainable and do not contribute to the national infrastructure. Tries to persuade an audience that availability of weapons increases violent crime in times of economic hardship for first-world countries. Wants to restore universal conscription (draft) laws to provide opportunity and discipline to citizens. Compares an anthropological research question to the difficulty of understanding car repair to convince the audience that we must learn about a field in order to communicate questions to experts within that field. • American males, legislators, and registered voters living during the Cold War after the Vietnam Conflict. • College-level students concerned over the economic recession of the 2000s. • Researchers, science-enthusiasts, and the readership of a broad journal like Natural History • Japanese citizens opposed to restrictions on firearms and in support of opening new manufacturers.

11. Introduction to the Thesis • A thesis concisely states the definable purpose of a text. In a rhetorical analysis, a thesis should connect a persuasive purpose to the rhetorical choices an author uses to achieve that purpose. (THIS IS IMPORTANT: REFER BACK TO THIS NOTE WHEN WRITING YOUR RHETORICAL ANALYSIS) • A good, working thesis should have a narrow, manageable scope for the sort of examination. For example, you would not try to examine all the verbs of a 500 page novel in a five-page analysis. What would be a more fitting and narrow thesis question for the above example? • A thesis should be supportable by analysis, reasoning, and evidence. Avoid claims that can simply be affirmed by summary or surface content. (Ex. “The author discusses video games” is simply an assertion about content, not a thesis that can be supported by reasoning and analysis.) • Where do we see theses, and what is their function in research? How do they relate to the organization of a paper or larger work?

12. Thesis Practice: Which of the following is appropriate for a rhetorical analysis thesis? Why or why not? • James Gee uses language and tone to inform his audience about video games and learning. • Gee, a video game player, talks about the connection between tests and video games like Deus Ex. • In his book chapter “Situated Meaning and Learning,” researcher James Gee argues that educators should reconsider the way video games operate as texts. • Gee uses personal experiences with games, technical terms from electronic games, and an analogy between the language of video games and textbooks to persuade educators that the “situated meaning” required of games could help educators better instruct their students. • In his “Post-Katrina Speech,” former-President George W. Bush employs statistics from the relief effort, religious diction, and a metaphor connecting to the people of New Orleans to convince them that his office understands and has effectively reached out to the devastated state in a time of national emergency.

13. Participation Assignment #4 READ: • St. Martin's Handbook: Chapters 8 and 13 • First-Year Writing: Chapter 6 pp. 114-146 • The sample rhetorical analysis on p. 574 of First-Year Writing WRITE: 1. In two full paragraphs, identify the thesis for the sample rhetorical analysis, define the analyzed “purpose of the text, and explain how the thesis structures the analysis as a whole. Pay particular attention to topic sentences and discussion of audience. 2. Write a sample thesis (using at least two rhetorical choices) for your rhetorical analysis over the piece you have selected for the draft/essay assignment. You may NOT use the verbs “informs, explains, tells, says, or describes” unless they are connected to a term involved with persuading the audience (“convinces,” “persuades,” “argues/pushes for, warns that the audience should…”) to do or believe something. Your thesis should be at least one extended sentence; however, try not to go beyond two sentences. Handwritten assignments will not receive credit.