Overview of Rhetoric

Here is an outline of the material we have covered (or have yet to cover) in English 1101:


Rhetoric is the study of the language or arguments. Arguments are composed of claims and their proofs. An argument can serve one of three purposes: to inform, to convince, or to move to action.

Arguments and time:

Arguments are either forensic (past), epideictic (present) or deliberative (future).

Arguments and perspective:

Arguments can focus on emotions, shared values, questions of character, or facts.

Arguments and purpose:

• Fact—Reporting what happened (articulating a central claim)
• Definition—Establishing core terms and values (claims + warrants)
• Evaluation—Assessment by Ranking (criteria--warrants)
• Cause/Effect—Understanding chains of events (reasons + warrants)
• Proposals—Understanding used to produce action/change (significance--warrants)

Structuring Arguments

All arguments begin with claims. Claims are assertions (statements) that are open to disagreement and that deal with topics of some significance. In structuring an argument, it is important to know how to order the claims you’re making. Is it best to give your biggest claim first or last? Knowing your audience helps you decide how to order your claims and your proof.

Classical Rhetoric

Enthymeme: Claim + Proof
Syllogism: Premise + Premise = Conclusion

Toulmin Rhetoric

Claim
Reason
Warrant
Evidence
Backing
Rebuttal
Conclusion

In classic rhetoric, the focus is on stating claims carefully and artfully. In Toulmin rhetoric, the focus is on understanding how to structure a discussion that shows how reasons and evidence support the claims fairly.

Evidence

In professional life, arguments generally aren’t complete unless they include carefully chosen evidence offered to support the claims being made. Evidence must be pertinent, accurate, authoritative and fairly represented. In presenting evidence, it is usually most effective to arrange evidence starting with least important and moving towards most important.

Evidence can be offered in several forms:

Scientific data
Expert opinions
Personal anecdotes

Arguments and audience

Knowing audience expectation

How much does audience know? Determines level of detail and complexity
What is audience expecting from you: “quick and dirty” or detailed analysis?
How receptive is audience to your case?
Receptive: deductive style (claim followed by proof)
Non-receptive: inductive style (proof followed by claim as conclusion)

Elements of Clear Writing

Writing is storytelling: Who are the characters? What are the actions? What is the order of events? All good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Clear writing:

• well-researched and planned
• formally correct
• most actions expressed as verbs
• most characters expressed as subjects
• concise
• cohesive and coherent
• ordered to express proper emphasis
• judiciously revised

Schadenfreude

"Schadenfreude" is a German word that means, "taking delight in someone else's misfortune." While it bears no explaining that Germans came up with such a word, I think the word has, thanks to the realities and oddities of modern life, become a permanent resident of the public domain throughout Western culture. Though gloating over someone else's foolishness may sometimes just be an exercise in meanspiritedness, it may sometimes be defensible to look on with awe at a disaster someone else has precipitated and marvel at the sheer perverse craftsmanship involved.

In the spirit of this special sort of (post?)modern regard for the mistakes of others, I offer a link to a website on which an advertising agency features spectacular instances of bad writing. The examples are instructive for at least two reasons: first, to let you know that bad writing really does block you from moving upward in the world; and second, to let you see how bad an ill-considered piece of writing can make a person look. Perhaps the people who wrote these howlers weren't idiots, but I fear it's likely that no one will ever know for sure. Unless you see your future as being centered around operating a Slurpee machine, you should avoid the kind of writing displayed in the examples offered by Killian Advertising.

While we're on the subject of spectacularly bad writing, no one should leave college without knowing about the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. This contest awards prizes to the worst opening passages of a piece of fiction. As far as I'm aware, all you get for a Bulwer-Lytton prize is the distinction of using some of your fifteen minutes of fame as a bad writer.

Another Great Source for Material

I've found another great source for material you can use to write your papers. The PBS series NOVA offers online viewing, like Frontline. Click here to go to NOVA's website and browse topics for viewing. I'm also adding NOVA to the list of links related to Rhetoric on the class blog's main page.

Using quotations in your papers

When you use a quotation from an outside source in your paper, the quotation needs to be logically incorporated into your own comment. If you insert a quotation without linking it properly to your own comment, you're using the quoted material improperly, and you're creating a problem of understanding for your reader.

Right use of quote:

Ariel Hart notes in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution that between 2000 and the present, Atlanta's commute increased "from 26 minutes to 31.2 minutes, the highest jump in the nation."

Wrong use of quote:

Ariel Hart notes in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Atlanta's commute got worse in the past six years. "Atlanta's average commute rose from 26 minutes to 31.2 minutes, the highest jump in the nation."

In the first example, the quoted material links smoothly with other material, and the way the link is done, I know where the quote came from. In the second, WRONG version, the quotation has been thrown into the text without making it truly clear who is speaking.

For more information about using quotations properly, see "Using Quotation Marks" in the St. Martin's Handbook, 5th ed., Pp. 771-778.

Sample Evaluation

16 October 2006

An article in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution confirmed my own observation about Atlanta traffic: namely, that local driving commutes are becoming more difficult and more lengthy. The article, “Atlantans crank up commute times” by Ariel Hart, reports results of a study that show that since 2000, Atlanta has experienced the highest jump in commuter times in the nation, going from an average commute time of twenty-six minutes in 2000 to a current average commute of a little more than thirty-one minutes. To add insult to injury, Ariel reports, Atlanta has some of the country’s worst bottlenecks, with “the Downtown Connector and two choke points on the northern end of I-285, where it crosses I-75 and I-85.” This ranks Atlanta only second to Los Angeles, where there are five major commuting bottlenecks. The study from which these results was taken was produced by the Transportation Research Board, which Hart tells us is associated with the National Academies. As a non-profit foundation with an extremely well-proven track record of reliability, the report of the Transportation Board is worthy of attention.

While it is significant that the report confirms that Atlanta has one of the worst commutes in the country, a few other details that have emerged from the report are even more interesting. First, the report shows that more people are using telecommuting in Atlanta than are using public transportation. In fact, the number of people using public transportation in Atlanta has declined in the past six years, while the number of telecommuters has risen from 3.5% in 2000 to 4.7% in 2006. This series of number suggests two things, as I see it: first, that people are not finding public transportation a useful way to get around, and second, that by moving towards telecommuting, individuals are clearly taking matters in their own hands to come up with creative solutions.

Though it doesn’t take a report from a think tank to show how bad Atlanta’s commute is, it certainly does help to have some validation of my own experience. Driving from Grant Park to Kennesaw, I go through one of the city’s worst bottlenecks—the Downtown Connector—and have been puzzled to see how, as the state Department of Transportation continues to work on that stretch of road, it keeps becoming a harder, more hazardous drive, rather than a better one. It seems fairly clear to me that, despite the fact that transportation needs have been a subject of much discussion in the Atlanta area as far back as I can remember, our leaders are failing us in providing for the region’s very real transportation needs.

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This much text totals around 385 words. I could, of course, continue discussing this evaluative argument, but I'm going to leave to your imagination how one might extend a discussion of this topic.

Help with your Evaluation Paper

In case you're having trouble finding something to write about for your evaluation paper, I'd like to offer some help. Actually, I already have, by introducing you to two pieces that function as evaluative arguments--the video on meth and the article reprinted in your book by Navrot on the return of native American remains. Aside from these two pieces, I can tell you that the readings in Chapters 27 and 28 focus on evaluative arguments, so you can browse them to look for something that will work for you.

In case you're not clear about what I'm asking of you, I want you to browse and explore to find sources to write on, and that is why I've left it up to you to hunt for texts. This kind of hunting is basic resarch. You need to be thinking about and practicing your research skills as you get deeper into your college career. You need to be ready to do research when you get into English 1102. I've introduced you to resources to help you find good ways to do research. I hope you will use them and find them helpful. If you need more guidance, all you have to do is ask for it.

Thanks for reading, and good luck in your work.

Evaluation Paper

This paper requires you to write a bit more than the first two did. In this paper, I want you to produce at least three full pages (about 750 words) of discussion.

In your professional life you are likely to be asked to evaluate something. For example, your boss might come to you and tell you to go out and research a database software, a production process, a new type of office equipment, or the market conditions relating to investing or opening an office in a certain city. In all these situations, you're being asked to choose the best of something, and sometimes there's an implicit request that you tell how to avoid the worst of something. The point is this: evaluations are very likely to be one of the more important and often-occurring tasks you are asked to perform as you go out into the real world of work.

What I'm asking you to do in the evaluation exercise, then, is intended to prepare you for what your work life--in or out of academe--is very likely to ask of you. This exercise is meant, in other words, to have a practical application.

What I want you to do, then, is to choose EITHER three readings from Everything's an argument OR at least two readings from your text PLUS an outside source or reading (it can be an article, a film, a work of visual art, a poem, a song, or any other coherent statement that functions as an evaluative argument) and use the many ideas I've presented to you in class to respond to the evaluative arguments you find. In other words, I want you to analyze the evaluative arguments you find. You should be very careful to tell me explicitly what pieces from your text you are using, and you should be equally as clear in telling me what outside sources you are consulting.

Here's the hard part: the sources you evaluate don't have to all be evaluating the same thing, the same topic; they can be evaluating very different things. One could be evaluating what it means to be a patriot, for example, and another could be evaluating what is the worst thing about how women (or men) are presented in popular media. What I want to see you do, for the sake of the exercise, is to tie together different types of evaluation as you build your discussion.

If this sounds challenging, then that's a good thing. Based on what I've seen in your writing, I think you can do what I'm asking you to do. What I'm asking is that you choose some evaluative arguments and focus on telling me how the evaluations work--in the space of a three-page paper. If you use outside source(s), remember to document them properly.

If you are at all unclear about what I'm asking from you, please ask for clarification. Thanks for your hard work!