SYNTAX ANALYSIS:

1. SYNTAX ANALYSIS: Stories of Manipulation

2. What rhetorical strategies make this sentence effectively fulfill its purpose? • “The attempt therefore, to determine the effect of a single teacher on the performance of a single student over the course of a single school year in a single subject using an assessment that tests only the components of the curriculum that are conveniently assessable, is a fool’s errand.”

3. Powerful syntax: • “Those who desire true accountability for teachers may do well to remember a few things: no competent administrator would grant tenure to an ineffective teacher; no responsible community would withhold resources from schools that would attract and hire the teachers most likely to succeed in the classroom; and no capable government agency would issue certificates to prospective teachers who have not undergone rigorous preparation that is aligned with the challenges of the modern classroom.”(75 words) • How does the writer use parallelism, punctuation, ever-lengthening clauses and negation to build a solid argument? • Identify her tone. Which rhetorical element conveys it most powerfully?

4. And now for something different…(syntax & analogy) • The following slides are from a column by Paul Krugman. He uses an analogy, criticizing President Bush’s war in Iraq through the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. =

5. Hans Christian Anderson • “Hans Christian Anderson understood bad rulers. ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ doesn’t end with everyone acclaiming the little boy for telling the truth. It ends with the emperor and his officials refusing to admit their mistakes.” • What type of sentence begins this paragraph? • Which is the longest sentence, and how is its placement effective? • How does the writer use negation effectively?

6. The power of innocence: • In the original story, a king was convinced that he was wearing beautiful clothes, but he was really wearing nothing at all (or long underwear here). • An innocent child points this out to the king during a parade, causing great embarrassment for the tailor and all the king’s men.

7. How does the writer use quotes and a switch from semi-formal to colloquial diction to maintain emotional distance? • “I’ve laid my hands on additional material, which Andersen failed to publish, describing what happened after the imperial procession was over. • The talk-show host, Bill O’Reilly yelled, ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ at the little boy. Calling the boy a nut, he threatened to go to the boy’s house and ‘surprise’ him.”

8. How does the first sentence create emphasis? How does the subordination function in the second sentence? • “Fox News repeatedly played up possible finds of imperial clothing, then buried reports discrediting these stories. Months after the naked procession, a poll found that many of those getting most of their news from Fox believed that the emperor had in fact been clothed.”

9. The power of “but”… • Imperial officials eventually admitted that they couldn’t find any evidence that the suit ever existed, or that there had even been an effort to produce a suit. But they insisted that they had found evidence of wardrobe manufacturing-and-distribution related programs. • What is the “suit”? • What is the “evidence”?

10. Clause placement power! • After the naked procession, pro-wardrobe pundits denied that he emperor was at fault. The blame, they said, rested with the CIA, which had provided the emperor with bad intelligence about the potential for a suit. • Would the impact of the first sentence be reduced if the clauses were switched?

11. Remind readers of your analogy now and then: • Even a quick Web search shows that before the procession, those same pundits had written articles attacking CIA analysts because those analysts had refused to support strong administration assertions about the invisible suit. • What three words remind you that you are looking at WMD’s in Iraq through a fairy tale lens?

12. How is a dash powerful here? • Although the imperial administration was conservative, its wardrobe plans drew crucial support from a group of liberal pundits. After the emperor’s nakedness was revealed, the online magazine Slate held a symposium in which eight of these pundits were asked whether the facts that there was no suit had led them to reconsider their views. Only one admitted that he had been wrong—and he had changed his mind about the suit before the procession. • How are we reminded of the analogy? • How does the dash function?

13. Is Helen Thomas the little boy in the fairy tale? • Helen Thomas, the veteran palace correspondent, opposed the suit project from the beginning. When she pointed out that the emperor’s clothes had turned out not to exist, the imperial press secretary accused her of being, “opposed to the broader war on nakedness.”

14. How is a resigned tone achieved? • Even though skeptics about the emperor’s suit had been vindicated, TV new programs continue to portray those skeptics as crazy people. For example, the news networks showed, over and over, a clip of the little boy shouting at a party. The clip was deeply misleading: he had been shouting to be heard over background noise, which the ambient microphone didn’t pick up. Nonetheless, “the scream” became a staple of political discourse.

15. Does Krugman over work the analogy? • The emperor gave many speeches in which he declared that his wardrobe was the “central front” in the war on nakedness. • So who is the emperor, what is the wardrobe, and what is nakedness?

16. Would “unabashed” work better in another part of the sentence? • The editor of one liberal but pro-wardrobe magazine admitted that he had known from the beginning that there were good reasons to doubt the emperor’s trustworthiness. But he said that he had put those doubts aside because doing so made him “feel superior to the Democrats.” Unabashed, he continued to denounce those who had opposed the suit as soft on sartorial security.

17. Some…most… • At the Radio and Television Correspondents’ annual dinner, the emperor entertained the assembled journalists with a bit of humor; he showed slides of himself looking under furniture in his office, searching for the non-existent suit. Some of the guests were aghast, but most of the audience roared with laughter.

18. How is the last clause in the last sentence strategically placed? • The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee oversaw an inquiry into how the government had come to believe in a nonexistent suit. The first part focused on the mistakes made by career government tailors. But the second part of the inquiry on the role of the imperial administration in promoting faulty tailoring, appeared to vanish from the agenda.

19. How does the adverb “deliberately” affect the tone of this passage? Does syntax affect it in any way? (Hint: clause placement) • Two and a half years after the emperor’s naked procession, a majority of citizens believed that the imperial administration had deliberately misled the country. Several former officials had gone public with tales of an administration obsessed with its wardrobe from Day One.

20. How does “after all” affect the tone? • But apologists for the emperor continued to dismiss any suggestion that officials had lied to the nation. It was, they said, a crazy conspiracy theory. After all, back in 1998 Bill Clinton thought there was a suit. • How does the insertion of “they said” in the middle of the second sentence, convey tone?

21. How does the dash convey a skeptical tone? • And they all lived happily ever after—in the story. Here in reality, a large and growing number are being killed by roadside bombs.