3/1: Introduction to Discourse

Okay, so it's week 3. You've written and turned in your narrative essay. You've posted an adaptation of it to the blog. You've done a peer review. By now, the pattern of this course should be pretty obvious:

Class posts that describe an assignment through basic concepts and then describes ways of writing or organizing it.
A draft is due.
A peer review happens.
You revise your draft.
You turn in the assignment.
There's a blog adaptation, too, sometimes.

This post is the first step in the next unit of the course--in preparation for the first major paper.

(But wait, you ask: wasn't the narrative essay a major paper? No--if you look at the syllabus, there's no percentage of your grade allocated to it. Instead, it's graded as a part of your blog and peer review grades. The narrative essay was a "tutorial assignment" meant to model how the class works and to demonstrate the skills you already have. Good news: if you did a good job on this [and all of you did--nice], you got a lot of peer review and blog points and now I can customize the class to your level of ability. Less time-wasting ahead!)

Now we get into the serious business of the first assignment:

P1: The Summary-Analysis-Critique

The first major paper, Project 1 (hereafter P1) is a summary-analysis-critique paper. In this assignment, you will select an essay (more on that below), and write a paper in which you explain your assessment of how good a job that essay does with demonstrating its own point. The purpose of this assignment is to practice (and combine) three critical approaches to texts: summary, analysis, and critique.

Summary is reporting on the topic and main events of a document. Notably, summary (like good reporting) is neutral, meaning you're saying "this happened, then this happened, and then this happened" without passing any judgment or expressing opinion.

Analysis is the practice of taking something apart in order to examine how it works. In analyzing writing, what you're generally doing is taking it apart and explaining how each move or choice in the essay helps that essay convey its main points and accomplish its goals.

Critique is the practice of evaluating without intervening. What this means is you're saying "this essay does a good/bad/okay job proving its points" without worrying about if you agree or disagree with that point. Critique is also often called a "professional opinion" since it requires setting aside your personal reaction to examine something technically*. It's what teachers are supposed to do with your homework--figure out if you did a good job, even if maybe they think you're annoying personally or think your chosen topic is dumb. It's what chefs do when they have to cook something even if they personally don't like it.

*Throwing-Shade Box: Critique is a complicated art that adults in a free society should know how to do, but clearly many do not, or we wouldn't have to deal with *gestures at everything*.

Anyway, the assignment is simple: you'll choose one of last year's prize-winning ENGL110 essays from the Arak Journal--these were written by students in ENGL110 classes who turned their course essay into the essay contest (more on that later in the semester).

Here's a link to the 2020 Arak Journal, the most recent edition. You can also find this (and a PDF copy if you're having internet trouble) on Canvas and Slack, along with the online archive from earlier years and an instruction sheet for this assignment. While the online edition has earlier issues, please use the most recent essays, from 2020.

So, skim the six essays, and then pick the one that you find most interesting.

Over the next 2 weeks, you will outline, summarize, analyze, and critique your chosen Arak article by following along with the class posts. At the end, you will turn these separate activities into a single paper of about 1500 words. In that paper (P1), you will:

State whether or not you think this article did a good job arguing for its main point. This assessment will be your thesis, and will likely be more complex than a "yes or no"--most essays are good but flawed.
Summarize the basics of the Arak article.
Analyze the moves, steps, and trends of the article, in order to explain how it works, or how it does what it does. (This tends to be the longest part of your essay).
Having told your reader how it works, you will then critique the essay, evaluating if these moves, steps, and trends work together successfully or not (thus proving your thesis from step 1).
Conclude with some notes on how the article might be changed (if flawed) and what we might learn about successful writing (if good).

The first draft will be due on 10 March, peer review will be on 11 March, and the final version is due on 14 March. Over the next week, we'll write the paper in steps, so by the time the 14th rolls around, you'll be well-prepared and feel confident in your paper. This paper is worth 10% of your course grade.

Let's Talk Basics: Argument and Style

So, if you remember the lesson from week 1, you remember discourse, arguments, rhetoric and discourse communities. Here, we're going to do a deeper dive into arguments and rhetoric. But first, a note on style.

Style

First off, every person has a particular style, and sometimes multiple different styles depending on audience. Your style, in writing, speaking, and other forms of communication is made up of four basic categories:

Structure is how you prefer to organize information. This includes how you organize your writing, how you do stuff like taking notes, and how you like to put sentences together when talking.
Diction is your choice of vocabulary. This includes slang and dialects, whether or not you're trying to sound smart or relatable in a particular situation, and what words you just generally like using.
Persona is the kind of person or character you're trying to be in a particular situation. In X situation, are you trying to be "chill you" or "teacher you" or "party you"--that sort of thing.
Tone is the emotional vibe of your communication in a situation. Do you sound grumpy, excited, businesslike, et cetera.

You'll notice that these categories overlap and impact each other (your diction, for instance, can really impact persona and tone.)

You can talk about these features in someone else's writing pretty easily, and it's the first step to good analysis. For instance, "butt dial" and "unintended posterior call placement" mean the same thing, but the second one implies a more...technical audience for the person writing it. That tells you something.

If it's not already obvious, we make style choices all the time, based on situation, but some style features are more sticky--more likely to be consistent for you--than others. That's why you can recognize your friends by how they message you, and know when they sound "off" (and how your English teacher figures out whose paper this is when you forget to put your name on it).

Easy? Easy.

Less Basic: Rhetorical Honesty

In addition to style, when writing argumentative stuff (anything trying to prove a point), we make choices about our rhetorical approaches. The first one you make is "do I want to be honest or sneaky?"

A Note on Sneaky Argument

Sophistry is arguing for the sake of purely winning. A good example of sophistry might be an ad for a fast food hamburger: in order to win the argument (get you to go to Burger Town), they show you beautiful but unrealistic pictures of their burgers, and of groups of happy, diverse friends bonding over the eating experience. They know the burgers are greasy and sad, and that you only go there because the dining hall is closed, but they kind of not-quite-lie about it so that you'll go anyway.

Sophistry generally involves using ethical (evidence, good arguments, honesty) and unethical (manipulation, deflection, avoidance) methods to win or to make your opponent look stupid and/or give up. On the internet, this is commonly called trolling, especially if your own argument obviously sucks but you use dishonest or silly tactics to win.

Not all sophistry is bad, though: Lawyers who know their client is guilty, but are bound by duty to defend them anyway, may technically engage in sophistry in order to perform their required job. Their objective is to make the prosecution do the best job they can, so that we know for sure someone's guilty.

We'll actually talk more about the ethics of communication in the short video below:

With the worst face as a thumbnail, of course. Here's a link to the article mentioned in the video.

Essential: Rhetorical Ingredients

The next decision you make is about how you argue. Whether you're doing an honest argument or not, each argument is composed of rhetorical approaches, or different ways of making a point for your audience. Here's the basic categories, along with their traditional Greek names (in case you think that's cool):

Logos, or reason, is the approach that uses organization and clear evidence to make a point. In an argument, this is the quality that makes things feel like they "make sense" or "are reasonable."
Ethos, or authority, is the approach that seeks to establish that the arguer knows what they're talking about. This includes things like clear writing, careful diction, and establishing a persona that feels trustworthy and competent.
Pathos, or emotion, is the approach that uses emotion to convince the audience. This includes things like emotional appeals, human interest, and relatable examples to get an emotional investment from the audience.
Kairos, or relevance, is the "secret sauce" of rhetoric--an argument must connect to the audiences' lives and arrive at the right time, place or occasion in order to work. Nobody likes a stale, out-of-date discussion.

People will often discuss these things by saying something like "X's argument uses an appeal to emotion by doing Y" or "X's argument uses pathos by doing Y."

Like a good burrito, an argument needs to balance these approaches to suit the audience and situation, but usually an argument has all four in some ratio.

An argument with only logic is like a burrito with only rice--boring and starchy.

An argument with only pathos is like a burrito with 100% beans--sloppy.

An argument without ethos is a burrito without protein or veggies--insubstantial. (Is it even really a burrito? Who made this?)

An argument without kairos is a burrito without a tortilla--just a mess of ingredients for nobody in particular.

Some audiences like different ratios in their burritos, but they all want a burrito.

Notice, in the burrito example, that while you can technically have a burrito without rice or without beans--without reason or without emotion--you won't recognize a burrito as a burrito without a tortilla (relevance) and you won't take seriously a burrito without protein or veggies (authority).

The burrito metaphor works. Trust in the burrito.

What to Do Today: Summary

So between now and the next class, pick your Arak article and read it. Then, do the following:

Read the article once, like normal--just read it.
Read the article again, making notes of the author's main points. You could highlight, or make written notes, or whatever works for you.
Put the article away.
Write a summary (no more than 350 words) of the article using your notes.

The reason you want to write a summary after putting your notes away is because a summary should always be in your own words. Summaries are meant as brief recaps of events, and so they don't usually have quotes or direct sentences from the original in them. They should be neutral reports, but they should come from you and your notes.

Mini-Psych Aside: Learning Styles

Many students struggle putting things they just read into their own words because they're still looking at the original, and when we do this, our brain engages in functional fixedness, a psychological phenomenon where, once we've seen something done a certain way, we have a harder time imagining alternative ways. The phenomenon prevents us from wasting brain-time on problems we already have solved, but it also prevents us from understanding and re-processing information in certain situations. Brain likes easy shortcuts. Life not made of easy shortcuts.

This is one reason why trying to memorize your notes or cram for an exam doesn't work. It's usually more effective to be forced to explain stuff to someone else, since then you have to play with/repackage the info. It's also why some of you take notes in class and never have to look at them again--the act of taking the notes forces you to think about and internalize information.

Use this knowledge to trick yourself into studying better. That's why we're teaching something as dumb as summary--because getting good at it means getting good at learning.

Once you've written that summary, keep it in a safe place--it's not due as homework, but you'll need it later, in the paper itself. It's good to put some time and space between summary, analysis, and critique though (since they're very different processes), so write your summary today. Don't wait on it.

Homework: pick an article, make some notes, write a summary, save the summary somewhere.

Don't forget the reading quiz on Canvas.

See you Thursday!