Notes Emilie Brouse

Backpacks vs. Briefcases - an article by Laura Bolin Carroll:

The article begins by stating that we all make a lot of observation without any conscious thought. It says that many of the people we encounter in a day are subject to this kind of quick analysis.
Next, we quickly take in the information and make an informed, likely somewhat accurate, decision about that person.
Over the years, as we interact with others, we build a mental database that we draw on to make conclusions about what a person’s looks tell you about their personality.
Rhetoric—the way we use language and images to persuade.
Media is one of the most important places where this kind of analysis needs to happen.
Understanding rhetorical messages is essential to become an informed consumer. It also helps us evaluate the ethics of messages, how they affect us personally, and how they affect society.
Our worlds are full of social influences. As we interact with others & with media, we are continually creating and interpreting rhetoric.
According to rhetorician Kenneth Burke, rhetoric is everywhere: “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning,’ there is ‘persuasion.’"
Most of our actions are persuasive in nature. What we choose to wear ( ex. tennis shoes vs. flip flops), where we shop (ex. Whole Foods Market vs. Wal-Mart), what we eat (ex. organic vs. fast), or even the way we send information (ex. snail mail vs. text message) can work to persuade others.
We have grown up learning to interpret and analyze these types of rhetoric. They become so commonplace that we don’t realize how often and how quickly we are able to perform this kind of rhetorical analysis.
Rhetorical messages always occur in a specific situation or context. Ex. the president’s speech might respond to a specific global event, like an economic summit; that’s part of the context. You choose your clothing depending on where you are going or what you are doing; that’s context. A tv commercial comes on during specific programs and at specific points of the day; that’s context. A billboard is placed in a specific part of the community; that’s context, too.

In an article called “The Rhetorical Situation,” Lloyd Bitzer argues that there are 3 parts to understanding the context of a rhetorical moment: exigence, audience and constraints.
Exigence is the circumstance or condition that invites a response. You can begin to understand a piece’s exigence by asking, “What is his rhetoric responding to?” “What might have happened to make the rhetor (the person who creates the rhetoric) respond in this way?”
Another part of the rhetorical context is audience, those who are the (intended or unintended) recipients of the rhetorical message. The audience should be able to respond to the exigence. In other words, the audience should be able to help address the problem.
The last piece of the rhetorical situation is the constraints. The constraints of the rhetorical situation are those things that have the power to “constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence”. Constraints have a lot to do with how the rhetoric is presented. They limit the way the discourse is delivered or communicated.
The exigence, audience and constraints are only one way to understand the context of a piece of rhetoric, and, of course, there are other ways to get at context.
An analysis using the rhetorical triangle would ask similar questions about audience as one using the rhetorical situation, but it would also ask questions about the writer and the purpose of the document. Asking questions about the writer helps the reader determine whether she or he is credible and knowledgeable.
The rhetorical situation and rhetorical triangle are two ways to begin to understand how the rhetoric functions within the context you find it. The key idea is to understand that no rhetorical performance takes place in a vacuum. One of the first steps to understanding a piece of rhetoric is to look at the context in which it takes place. Whatever terminology you (or your instructor) choose, it is a good idea to start by locating your analysis within a rhetorical situation.

The rhetorical situation is just the beginning of your analysis, though. What you really want to understand is the argument—what the rhetor wants you to believe or do and how he or she goes about that persuasion.
Aristotle articulated three “artistic appeals” that a rhetor could draw on to make a case—logos, pathos, and ethos.
Logos is commonly defined as argument from reason, and it usually appeals to an audience’s intellectual side. As audiences we want to know the “facts of the matter,” and logos helps present these—statistics, data, and logical statements.
appeal to emotion is called pathos. Pathetic appeals (as rhetoric that draws on pathos is called) used alone without logos and ethos can come across as emotionally manipulative or overly sentimental, but are very powerful when used in conjunction with the other two appeals. Emotional appeals can come in many forms—an anecdote or narrative, an image such as a photograph, or even humor.
Ethos refers to the credibility of the rhetor—which can be a person or an organization. A rhetor can develop credibility in many ways. The tone of the writing and whether that tone is appropriate for the context helps build a writer’s ethos, as does the accuracy of the information or the visual presentation of the rhetoric.
Aristotle’s artistic appeals are not the only way to understand the argument of rhetoric. You might choose to look at the claim or the unstated assumptions of a piece; someone else might consider the visual appeal of the rhetoric, like the font, page layout, types of paper, or images; another person might focus on the language use and the specific word choice and sentence structure of a piece. Logos, pathos, and ethos can provide a nice framework for analysis, but there are numerous ways to understand how a piece of rhetoric persuades (or failsto persuade).
Once you have established the context for the rhetoric you are analyzing, you can begin to think about how well it fits into that context.
One of the reasons you work to determine the rhetorical situation for a piece of discourse is to consider whether it works within that context. You can begin this process by asking questions like:

•Does the rhetoric address the problem it claims to address?

•Is the rhetoric targeted at an audience who has the power to make change?

•Are the appeals appropriate to the audience?

•Does the rhetor give enough information to make an informed decision?

•Does the rhetoric attempt to manipulate in any way (by giving incomplete/inaccurate information or abusing the audience’s emotions)?

•What other sub-claims do you have to accept to understand the rhetor’s main claim?

•What possible negative effects might come from this rhetoric?

The bottom line is that the same basic principles apply when you look at any piece of rhetoric (ex. your instructor’s clothing, an advertisement, the president’s speech): you need to consider the context and the argument.
there are lots of different types of rhetoric you might encounter in a college classroom, such as:

•Political cartoon

•Wikipedia entry

•Scholarly article

•Bar Graph

•Op-Ed piece in the newspaper

•Speech

•YouTube video

•Book chapter

•Photograph

•PowerPoint Presentation

All of the above types of discourse try to persuade you. They may ask you to accept a certain kind of knowledge as valid, they may ask you to believe a certain way, or they may ask you to act. It is important to understand what a piece of rhetoric is asking of you, how it tries to persuade you, and whether that persuasion fits within the context you encounter it in. Rhetorical analysis helps you answer those questions!

much of the reading and learning in college requires some level of rhetorical analysis: as you read a textbook chapter to prepare for a quiz, it is helpful to be able to distill the main points quickly; when you read a journal article for a research paper, it is necessary to understand the scholar’s thesis; when you watch a video in class, it is useful to be able to understand how the creator is trying to persuade you.
But college is not the only place where an understanding of how rhetoric works is important. You will find yourself in many situations—from boardrooms to your children’s classrooms or churches to city council meetings where you need to understand the heart of the arguments being presented.

Ch. 2 of Writing With Sources— Integrating Sources:

Make clear the sources' relationship to your own thinking! Some ways of bringing a source in:
reduce a source to its main point and aspects, using your own words, but sometimes including quoted words or phrases from the source.
key requirements are that a summary both be accurate and concise, as well as to make clear whom or what you are summarizing and to put your summary in your own words (except for phrases you place in quotation marks).
you must recast both the language and the sentence structure of the source!
encapsulate by paraphrase, rather than summary, when the particular logic or order of a source's presentation is important to your argument.
such interpretive or explanatory paraphrasing is especially useful when writing about artistic or philosophical texts.
give the "gist" of the work or argument— the main claim or thrust of the work. Use a sentence or so without indicating many or any of its aspects or reasons.
refer to the source in passing, invoking it as part of a general characterization.
relegate the name of the source to a parenthetical citation or footnote.
replicate exactly an element of another source, such as a data table or figure (ex. chart, diagram or map), or quote exactly the words of the source by embedding those words into one of your sentences, or *if more than 4 lines of type) quoting them as an indented block. Reasons to quote a source directly: the source author has made a point so clearly that it can't be expressed any better, a certain phrase/sentence in the source is particularly vivid or striking, or especially typical or representative of some phenomenon you're discussing, an important passage is sufficiently difficult, dense or rich that it requires you to analyze it closely, which in turn requires that the passage be produced so the reader can follow your analysis, or a claim you're making is such that the doubting reader will want to hear exactly what the source said.
Mentioning a title in a paper: italicise the title of a book, collection, journal or newspaper, play, long poem, film, musical composition, or artwork. Put in quotation marks the title of an individual article, chapter, essay, story or poem.
3 Basic Principles of sources: 1). Use sources as concisely as possible, so your own thinking isn't crowded out by your presentation of other people's thinking and your own voice lost in your quoting of other voices. 2). Never leave your reader in doubt as to when you are speaking and when you are relying on material from a source. 3). Always make clear how each source you introduce into your paper relates to your argument.

notes

Argument and Exposition

ENGL 2152