Day 3: Invention

(First of all, sorry that we have to have coursework on two Saturdays during this class.  Just get some Cheerios, turn on the Saturday Morning Cartoons, and do your blogs!  Your posts won't be due until Monday at noon.)

Is rhetoric to be trusted?

I mean, we use rhetoric to persuade each other all the time.  Buy my product.  Go to lunch with me. Rhetoric shapes our reality.

Just think about magazine covers.  Magazine covers are always trying to sell you a particular reality.  Cool cars = happy.  Nice pretty summer home = happy.  Ripped abs = happy.  Pretty supermodel = happy.

But all these things are rhetorical.  They are crafted.

Check out this website, which is mentioned in Envision in Depth.  It gives some really interesting insight into how advertisements are constructed.

In other words, this chick isn't real...

So, these images that are all around us, persuading us in different ways are shaped by using careful timing of shots, framing of the edges of the images, and then Photoshop.  We'll talk about timing and framing more later, but essentially this is a capturing of a particular time and space...

****

All right, unseemless transition...

***

How do you come up with ideas for a composition?

In rhetoric, there are what's called five canons: Invention, Style, Arrangement, Delivery, and Memory.  Invention allows us different approaches to developing concepts for our writing, and speaking, and other rhetorical work.  The Greeks would come up with ideas for arguments based on opposites, arguing based on definitions, dividing up concepts, looking for opposites, looking for similarities, determining cause and effect, looking for what's possible, or good, or right.

The Greeks would also practice dissoi logoi, which is opposing arguments.  Logoi is essentially the same word as logos that we learned yesterday.  I didn't get a chance to elaborate, but logos is an interesting word.  It can mean argument, logic, or just word.  It's the word in the Book of John, written in Greek, that begins, "In the beginning was the logos.  And the logos was with God.  And the logos was God."  Interesting, no?

Anyway, dissoi logoi is the practice of looking for counter arguments.  So,we'll practice that, like the Greeks did today on your blogs.  But first...

Daily Grammar Review:


Run-on Sentences:

As we mentioned yesterday, each sentence should have a subject and a verb.  But sometimes sentences have more than one subject or verb.

So, think of sentences like this:  Subject-Verb.  S-V.  Johnny runs.  But if the sentence is like this S-V and S-V, it becomes a run-on.  Johnny runs and Jane swims.  That "and" isn't strong enough to hold the two sentences together on its own, so it's a run-on sentence.  So we can make it two sentences: Johnny runs.  Jane swims.  We can put in a semicolon: Johnny runs; Jane swims.  Or we can put in a comma: Johnny runs, and Jane swims.  If the sentence is like this S-V-V, such as Johnny runs and swims.  Then it's okay.  Only if you have a new independent clause with its own new subject do you need to split up the sentence.


Your Daily Assignment:

Take a look at this Crocodile:

Now, to practice dissoi logoi, on your blog write a paragraph where the thesis is:

Crocodiles are majestic, powerful, and amazing creatures.

A thesis is simply your argument.  People sometimes freak out about thesis sentences, but they don't have to be complicated.

Now, on your blog, write a second paragraph with a second thesis:

Crocodiles are ridiculous looking, silly, and lame creatures.

That's practicing dissoi logoi, arguing both sides of an argument.  It can be a useful practice for working through a concept no matter which side your actually taking.


Your first major paper assignment:


Along with your blog posts, you have three major assignments for this class, the first of which I wanted to assign today so that you'd have it as early as possible.  It's a paper, and here's the prompt:

This assignment requires students to develop proficiency in rhetorical analysis and argument by developing a writing piece that closely problematizes one visual text, such as an advertisement, an editorial cartoon, or some other visually interesting rhetorical work.  The aim of your argument is to support a thesis—using the tools of persuasion—concerning how your chosen visual text itself offers a persuasive argument with troublesome issues or tactics.  In other words, you should find an image that you disagree with and analyze it closely.  Using Envision in Depth and the models available there as examples, make an argument that persuades readers of your own thesis, which will be different than the thesis of your object of criticism.  The form of this assignment is an essay that analyzes the visual image and the rhetorical elements of composition, presentation, intended audience, and effect by looking at the image’s logical, emotional, and ethical appeals.  You should quote at least two other sources for your argument other than the primary rhetorical text that you are analyzing.  This assignment should include a Works Cited page, be formatted according to MLA standards (which includes double spacing, 12 point font, and Times New Roman) and be a minimum of 1000 words.

You should e-mail me your draft and your final assignment, though it'd be nice to see the documents linked in the sidebars of your blogs too!

First draft due: July 13, at least 2 pages done.

Final draft due: July 15

Begin finding an image or ad to analyze soon!

Day 2: Visual Rhetorics

All right.   Now that you've got an idea of what rhetoric is, it's time to start applying these new skills of reading and critical thinking.

So, let's consider this piece of rhetoric, which has its own argument, and its own way of making it.

So, it's an ad for Canadian Club whiskey.  And we can look at two triangles of rhetoric to think through this image, which has an argument.

What is the argument?  What is its thesis?

"You should buy Canadian Club whiskey."  Easy.

But then what?

Well, we've got two triangles.  The first triangle that you read about last night is The Rhetorical Situation.

This is the interrelated interaction that goes on in any form of communication.  You've got a text, an author, and an audience, even if you're looking at an editorial cartoon.

So, who is the author, the communicator?  Well, it can be a bit complicated.  There is the company, Canadian Club, the graphic designer who made the ad, and also the person speaking in the ad, which is the persona crafted in the ad who is speaking to us.  Any of these could be said to be the speaker.  We, of course, are the audience.  But most of you aren't 21, so are you really the audience (*snicker snicker mumble mumble)?  Who is the specific audience that this ad is geared toward?  And what is the message, the text itself?

 I mean, this ad is talking about your dad, and how he slept around before he had sex with your mom.  (That anonymous "you," which is the second person, works all the time to make "you" the audience.  Remember, "Ask not what your country can do for you?")  But back to the sex.  Most people don't want to think about any of this, so is the ad misguided?  Is it misdirected?  And then there's this curse word, "damn."  How many audiences would that offend?  So, what audience is this ad targeting, and which audiences is it ignoring altogether?  But there must be someone whom this ad really works for, right?

We said that the message was simple: "Buy Canadian Club."  But there's something more.  There is a particular logic to this argument.  Why should you buy Canadian Club, according to the ad?  Because your father drank it, and he was cool, even if you don't know how "cool" he was (and they're working from a particular definition of cool, one that some people--including Mr. Butts--might disagree with).  So, it communicates some cultural values about being like your father and being cool.

Plus, we could get into little technical details about the ad, like what does the white space do around the images?  And that yellow tinge to make sure that we know these images are old, are vintage, and are real.  Why do all of this to sell a bottle of whiskey?

How might you write about this ad?

Or this one?

***

Tonight you'll also read about logos, ethos, and pathos (we italicize them since they are Greek words we are using in English), which function as a kind of second triangle.

These three things are known as the three artistic proofs in Aristotle's book called, On Rhetoric.  And, here might be a good time to remind you, if you're thinking, I'm a science major, how is rhetoric relevant to my work?  Rhetoric is sometimes known as the art of arts, which means that it's the big daddy of all the other subjects, because it contains them, because all the other subjects are wrapped up in language.  You know your science textbook?  It's all words.  It's rhetorical.  It's communication as much as it is testing.  So, that's why everybody has to take this class.

All right, back to the three artistic proofs.  Logos is logical appeal.  It's usually found very clearly in the thesis of a work, of an essay or whatever form of rhetoric that we're talking about.  Think of it corresponding to the message part of the triangle that we talked about earlier.

Then there's pathos.  Pathos is emotional appeal.  It's like when you see ads like this:

I don't think I need to say much about this, but you need to be able to describe different kinds of emotional appeals when you talk about rhetorical compositions such as happy, sad, nostalgic, frightening, or appalling, and so on.  Pathos might map onto audience from the first triangle, since the audience feels the emotion.

Then, there's ethos.  Ethos is not ethics, which we'll talk about another day.  But ethos is the persona that an arguer, a rhetor, a compositionist makes for him or herself.  These are artistic proofs, so they have to be crafted.  They aren't natural.  So, a good example of ethos is using actors to play doctors in drug commercials.  This builds credibility.  You wouldn't want a bum selling you pharmaceuticals in a commercial.  Doctors have credibility, so ad companies put good looking guys in lab coats and have them tell you about how awesome their product is.  What kind of an ethos did the Canadian Club whiskey ad have?  Ethos is important.  This is also why your professors don't come into class wearing sweatpants, or why you should dress up for a job interview.  These rhetorical approaches aren't lying; they aren't evil and manipulative; they're just the way to function rhetorically in different situations.  This leaves ethos to map onto author or communicator from the first triangle and completes our line of thinking for the day.

__________________________

Grammar Review:

Sentence Fragments:

A sentence always needs a subject and a verb (or a predicate).  This is the rule.

So, some sentence fragments are:

• When I went to the pirate ship.
• And I.
• Meatloaf.
• In the beginning when everyone was calm and grey near the old brick house at the center of town just after the war.

The first example is a sentence fragment because it has that "When."  Take it out and it's a perfectly good sentence.  The "when" makes it into a dependent clause, which can't stand on its own.

An independent clause has a subject and predicate, and every sentence needs an independent clause, but they can also use dependent clauses.

But here's a trick.

What about this sentence?

Love.

Is it a fragment?

No, because it could be an imperative verb, a verb that gives a command.  What's the subject though?

An implied "you."

(You) love.

And one last thing.  <-------  This is a sentence fragment, but sometimes they can actually be useful and used well.  Every grammar rule may be broken if you know what you're doing.  But your readers can tell if your consciously using a sentence fragment or if it's a mistake.  So, be very careful there, and don't use them in formal writing.  (But blogs aren't formal writing.)  So that's your first grammar review for the day.

Take care.


Your Daily Assignment:

Consider messages that you see around you every day and all of the forms of rhetoric, such as comics, ads, cinema, websites, and so on that bombard you and shape your experiences and your culture.  Find an interesting ad or picture that communicates something, and write up a little paragraph thinking through what it's communicating and how it's doing it like we did with the Canadian Club whiskey ad.  (And don't steal my ads, look for your own!  Maybe for a product that you like or don't like!)

Introductions

Welcome, again, to English 103, summertime edition.  This English class is a bit different than many English classes that you may have taken before.  There aren't any novels.  There aren't many poems.  More than anything, this class should help you to think about reading and writing in the most general sense.  We read and write all the time.  We read each other.  We compose in a host of different ways, increasingly online, so there's a lot to be learned even by having this class digitally.

Each day on this blog, I'll have a post that goes over a few points, and has your blog assignment for the day, which will count as your class attendance for the day and count for participation grades based on the grade point worksheet.

I'll also usually have some kind of grammar review attached to each blog post that will help us remember some basic things, like where our commas are supposed to go.  At the college level, you're expected to know and do these things in your writing, but I find that most of the time, students like having different refreshers on that needlessly intimidating thing known as "grammar."  You know who to blame for grammar?  This guy.

Anyways, the foundation of reading and writing was studied by the Greeks and was known as rhetoric.  Rhetoric is a tricky word that most people only associate with politicians who lie, but we use rhetoric all the time.  We use rhetoric whenever we communicate, in our body language, in our drawings, in the way we dress, in printed or spoken language, in Youtube videos.  Check out the Wikipedia entry for rhetoric now.

An essay is quite another matter.  In French, the word essayer means "to try."  The etymologies of words can be really interesting.  Here in this class, each essay will be an attempt at conveying something.  Writing is tough.  But it can be fun if you can find a way of writing something that you care about in an interesting way.  That's the trick.  Compose about topics that you love or hate, and have fun with it.  That's what we'll try to do here.

***

On a personal note, my mom's funeral was yesterday.  Things have been a little crazy with all of that, but  there's a lot of peace with my family here.  We know she's in a better place.  She fought cancer for eight years, and she was a feisty one, so most people wouldn't have ever guessed that she even had cancer, but in the end it was her time.  We'll miss her, but I'm going to try to be tough like she was, keep on keeping on, and enjoy this class with you guys.  Since, we'll be blogging, things can sometimes be a bit personal; that's good.  We'll create a community online together.  I look forward to it.

***

Your Daily Assignment:

1. Read over the syllabus.  That's our class contract.
2. Write a blog post introducing yourself.  Include a picture that represents you.  Tell us something that you hate; it's important to know what you hate.
3. Read chapter one in your Envision in Depth book about rhetoric.  And in case you haven't gotten your teal copy of Envision in Depth yet, I've got a scanned pdf of the first chapter here.  And here's the second chapter.  But that's all I'm giving you!  Get the book!  (Aristotle's definition is in there, and that's the one we'll go by).  There are a lot of basic concepts for this class in that chapter, such as logos, ethos, and pathos... and kairos too.  Most of the time, I'll just have you skim a chapter, and then I'll point out specific things or have you do something related to a chapter's contents on your blogs.