The Rhetoirc of Dating

It's often difficult for students to get their heads around how powerful even the basic insights of rhetoric can be. Learning to think of the various facets of the rhetorical triangle--the author/audience/message--and how it can be used in a real world situation often helps.

I'd like you to spend some time thinking of the rhetoric of dating, and participate in a discussion of the subject via comments to this post. Comments are an odd rhetorical genre, and they lend them selves to short entries in which the various authors offer specific insight into the topic of a post or to the thoughts offered by others. The purpose for everyone in the comments is to gain or provide useful information and insights into the subject of the original post.

Let me help you get started.

If we think about rhetoric at all we're used to thinking about the rhetorical situation as static and too often from the author's viewpoint. Many of the most valuable insights of rhetoric, however, come from seeing how the roles of author/audience shift, how each achieves their rhetorical purposes, and how different kinds (genres) of texts are constructed in a dynamic, real world situation.

If you've never thought about the rhetoric of dating, it's a fun topic. To get started, ask your self the basic questions surrounding dating and rhetoric:

What are the purposes each party hopes to achieve?
What kinds of texts do the different parties construct to achieve their purpose?
How do the three appeals of logos, pathos, and ethos work in these texts?
How do the two authors learn about their audience?
What are the needs of the two parties as audience?
What interpretative rubrics do the parties use to get a handle on the other party as author/person?

Think for a moment of the various genres (kinds of repeating interactions which hold common expectations) which govern dating.

There's the first date. There's the first kiss. There's the car. There's dress. There's deciding on topics of conversations at various points in dating relationship. There's the second date and the third. There's the breakup. There's introducing the date to one's friends or to the ex. There's the problem of intimacy. The list goes on.

Think of how you develop ethos with your date. Think of how you use logos and pathos to make yourself appealing. Think of the various opportunities to loose ethos. Think of how you develop identification with your audience. Think of all of these as they apply to the genres of dating.

I think this is enough to get you started. As always...

"The Big Picture, the Rhetoric of Dating, and some logistics.

This afternoon, my wife and I are leaving for Baltimore to pick up a sail boat we bought. Since I don't know if we'll be able to get a room with internet access, I wanted to warn you I may be out of touch for much of the coming weekend.

I've been impressed by how the class has come together over the past week. I've had a chance to comment on almost everyone's work, and the central concepts underlaying the class are now in place. For the remainder of the class, you'll be working on revisions of your portfolio, and an initial draft of the portfolio cover letter is due this Sunday. As you write it, take a few hours to read through the various posts on the blog and to think about what I've said in these posts, in my comments on your papers, and in emails to you. Also, think of the work you've done and, in particular, the advice you've given and received through collaborating with your classmates. As you try to make connections between all of this discussion and work, reflect on how each applies to the outcomes and your inventory of yourself as a writer.

As we move into next week, I want you each to email me with questions you have about what the outcomes mean. I'm hoping to bring the various aspects of the class together over the next week and to provide you with a "big" picture of how you can use the knowledge from the class in your careers and lives. As part of this process, I'll be introducing a post on the the class blog on the rhetoric of dating, and I'd like the class to use the comment feature of the blog to discuss dating a rhetorical situation. Why dating? It's one thing to figure out the fairly straightforward rhetoric of the teacher/student rhetorical/writing situation, but rhetoric gets fun only when you begin working out some ways to make it do useful work for you. If you're married, think of how dating fits and fitted into your current relationship and provide advice for those in the class who aren't in a committed relationship. Finally, as you discuss the rhetoric of dating, spend some time thinking of how the rhetorical situation of dating is similar to those you find in other aspects of your life.

Steve

Craft and Process: How to Enjoy Writing

I return to the idea of process so many times in 101, because shifting one's focus from product to process is at the heart of enjoying writing. Over the years, I've gotten used to students saying, "I hate writing," or "I hate English." Given the kind of instruction many have received and the scanty rewards students too often receive for very good, hard work, it's an attitude which is easy to understand. The attitude is only reinforced by the you're-either-good-at-math-and-science-OR-English rhetoric which exists in our society.

The truth is both math and English are the same craft. Once you've moved through the basics and laid a good foundation, both become ways of describing the world and making sense of it. The problem is, it's usually late in high school or in college where math or writing and communication get to be fun, and by this point, most are just ready to be done with both. For me, math didn't make much sense until I hit physics and learned that math can be used to describe and figure out the world. English didn't make much sense until I began to move beyond thinking that the only kind of writing which mattered was the rhetorical situation in which teacher=audience and purpose=grade.

It helped that I grew up among potters and other craftsmen. The model of work I learned wasn't that of getting the right grades to make it up to the next test. I learned early on that one gains a sense of purpose through one's work--one's craft, and the real challenge and satisfaction in the world is in getting better, not in being the best.

A response I wrote this morning to a near perfect student paper explains better what I mean by this connection between paying attention to process, craft, and enjoying one's work. Think of yourself as a craftperson writer, and writing and English become much more fun. Find my response below:

"We share a love of Tolkien. Over the years, as I ran out of his fiction to read, I’ve read his scholarship. If possible, he was an even better scholar of the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Europe than he was a fiction writer. He’s among a handful of scholars, including CS Lewis and B. Russell, who I can read for fun. The kind of precision he showed in coming up with the languages for his fiction is present in all of his writing, and it's always a joy to read the writing of one who loved the craft as did Tolkien. (And, yes, I am an English geek.)"

In any event, I’m sorry your Rivendell didn’t survive, I would have enjoyed taking a walk-through, and I know how much it hurts to loose a creation which was so right and into which you put so much work. If it’s any help, you share the experience with a number of very good writers. Tennyson once left an entire book of poetry—the only copy he had—in a cab, and Hemingway once left a novel and his best typewriter on a train. In fact, I’ve thought about writing some science fiction in which the main character is a part of a team of time travelers who go back to recover such lost manuscripts. Among the list of lost manuscripts includes those by the likes of Aristotle and Socrates. "

"Now on to more important matters, namely, your writing. You’re a very good writer, much better than all but the top five percent or so of folks entering college. You have a good sense of both sentence and clause boundaries. You understand paragraphing and how to organize your documents in a way which makes sense to the reader. You also have the sense, which very few seasoned writers have, to provide enough information without providing too much. The upshot? I have very little I can tell you to improve this piece, and I will gladly give it an 'A.'"

"As you review this piece, try to figure out all the things you’ve done to make the text so successful, and I’d like to encourage you to think again about the process you used to create Rivendell. How did you learn to do the various tasks involved? What specific steps did you repeat over-and-over again? How did you organize your research? "

"The notion of Kaizen, making the processes you use more effective through continuous small improvements, as it applies to writing involves knowing how *you* create in the same detail as you know how you created Rivendell. To be an efficient writer as well as a good one, you’ve got to get to the point where you know the processes involved in writing. "

"I’d encourage you to look at the processes you used in creating your Rivendell and to find one aspect of a process to change. Let this one change be the start of a lifetime of learning and refining your knowledge of how to work more effectively. Try to identify the change you could make which would have the most impact either on the final product or on saving you work. Implement this change, and after you’ve used the new process, review again. This kind of continuous attention to the tools and processes you use in your craft pays off in having a flexible set of strategies you can use to create and which you can draw on to as you run into loggerheads as you work. With a nuanced understanding of how you work and the repertoire on which you have to draw, you can move around the problems which arise with alacrity. This ability to encounter problems and move around them with the same ease with which you normally create is the measure of a master craftsperson. Spend some time watching an old time craftsperson at work to get a handle on what I mean by an ease and alacrity with how one can work. Folks who have been at their trade for years are a joy to watch as they work. They move with the same practiced ease as an Olympic athlete, and you can find them around you every day. More importantly, you can become such a worker."

"The other main advantage to such an approach to one’s work is that one soon finds that there is always a way to make one’s process better. In fact, you begin to take a lot of pride in your knowledge of how best to work. As your work flows, you know you’re producing a good, solid, beautiful, and useful product. At this point you become a master of your craft."

"What does all this have to do with writing? Writing is a craft. As with most crafts, it's not talent which allows one to create, it's knowledge of the processes, techniques, and tricks involved in the work of creation. Armed with such knowledge and a willingness and opportunity to practice, and anyone can find joy in the creation of the beautiful and useful. Finally, one of the true joys of seeing work as craft is the fact that one is rarely bored with the work. Why? Because you know you always have something you can refine, a new technique to learn and tryout, and new knowledge of the materials, tools, and tricks of your trade. You can get lost in the rhythms of the work itself instead of having to do the work to make the grade."

"As always, write me at prof.brandon@gmail.com with questions,"

Steve

Some further clarification...

A student wrote for clarification about two of the assignments on which you're working this week and when the last day of the course will be:

1. The last day of class will be the 19th. Next Sunday, the 16th, you'll have a draft put together of the *whole* portfolio, and you'll turn this draft in. This week you're working on a draft of the cover letter, which is due this Sunday. The last three days of class, you'll have a chance to proofread and polish your portfolio, and I'll have a chance to answer any last minute questions and provide clarification on concepts and assignments.

2. On the pre-writing exercise: you're to do the pre-writing exercise--the continuing assignment you do in your metadiscoruse blog--for the Sunday formal drafts; this includes the draft of the cover letter due this Sunday and the draft of the process paper you just completed.

3. On the peer editing assignment: I think you may be confusing proofreading with revision. In revision, you make changes to deep level content. Issues of voice, tone, paragraph development, paragraph arrangement, thesis, focus, citation, etc. all fall under revision. In proofreading, you are looking at surface level features, that is, the features of writing which have the least to do with meaning. Here, you look at issues of spelling, sentence structure, minor stylistic changes, and issues of grammar, punctuation, and usage. These changes should be the ones you're making in the peer-editing assignment. In the peer editing assignment you're doing this week, you're dealing with surface issues of the text, so you'll make changes in the sentences of the text instead of making comments at the top of the text. As you do you'll highlight the changes you make in your color. Please note the difference between this editing/proofreading exercise and the collaborative comments you've been making about each other's drafts.

The reason proofreading and revision are usually presented as two different stages of the writing process deal with how best to invest one's time. Think about it, it just isn't efficient to go through multiple revisions of a draft proofreading as you go; instead, you can learn a process to catch most surface level errors and go through the proofreading process once *after* you've stopped changing the text you'll proof.

Knowledge of Conventions: Sources, Ethos, and Wikipedia

Ah, the Wikipedia question. Let me begin by saying, I use it, and it's a good source for starting research on fairly broad questions or for general questions which don't *have* to be right. I rarely use it alone, just as I rarely use the internet alone. Read: when an answer needs to be right, cross check it between several sources.

The problem many in the academy have with Wikipedia is they don't get the fact that Wikipedia is based on the same thing on which all research sources are based, namely, the informed opinion and judgement of the flawed human animal. It upsets some that those writing have agendas of their own. Of course, this never happens in the academy. (Please note the sacrasm.) It upsets some that those writing don't have the credentials to prove they are experts. It upsets some that what is said on Wikipedia isn't vetted by those with credentials given by the academy.
What many don't realize is that there's a marketplace for ideas just as there's a marketplace for other comodities. Academics often adopt the stance that they are above such mundane concerns as the give and take of the market place. In society, bad ideas will be identified, that is, if they are dangerous enough, if there's reward in such identification, or if there's self-worth to be gained.

The real question, however, isn't if Wikipedia is a good source or not, it's if you should use it and, if so, when. As always, the answer is, "It depends on the rhetorical situation." If you're writing for an academic audience, that is, a discouse coummity who doesn't accept Wikipedia as a valid source, then in almost all situations, you should conform to the expectations (the conventions) of your audience. Think of such a view of sources as an ethos appeal. One of these conventions of most in the academy is to reject Wikipedia as a valuable source.

In short, you use the sources your audience values. In the academy, the valued sources are those produced by, well, the academy. This means academic journal articles, the publications of academic and professional associations, and books produced by academic presses. The best of these souces have teams of editors and readers who act as a collective jury as to the value of an article or book. These folks are respected experts. The academy has developed this means of vetting the ideas which they palce into circulation over decades. Wikipedia, which might prove a better model, has only been around years.

Your participation grades...

A student wrote to ask how I would be grading the 40% of the final grade which is tied to class participation in lew of the problems with my getting assess to the course in the first week and the subsequent problems we arose as a result.

With a few edits for the larger audience, here's my response:

"I rarely grade harshly in the first place."

"Considering the first week and subsequent problems in communication and getting the class going, I'm inclined to give everyone full create on class participation if they've done the formal assignments (the ones due on Sunday), helped each other via collaboration, and done the proofreading assignment this week."

"This means most everyone is at an "A" as of now. The rest of the class grade (60%) will be based on the portfolio you put together. Check the recent posts on the class blog for clarification of the portfolio assignment."

"The truth is, I feel somewhat guilty for the confusion at the beginning of class. Students not having access to the correct class shell was a mistake out of my control, but not communicating with the class as you struggled with the first assignment was a teaching tactic which may have worked well in past sixteen week sections; but, it definitely didn't help the learning environment in a five week course in which the first week was pretty much blown. I'm seasoned enough that I should have anticipated the effect of the changed rhetorical situation or, at the least, given it more thought. Instead, I went ahead and did what worked in the past.

Take the situation as a lesson, namely, you have to pay attention to every rhetorical situation, especially those with which you believe yourself so familiar you believe you can work by rote rather than conscious judgment. The other lessons? Own up to mistakes you make, and try your best to learn from them. This is the reason the last step in the rhetorical process is review. You look at what worked and what didn't, and you try to remember. By the way, it's easy to remember the screw ups, but also remember what worked well for use the next time. Just make sure you remember that every rhetorical situation is in some ways a new one.

It's a credit to the students at UAT and in the class that you were able to work under such difficult circumstances, and the class showed a degree of flexibility I've rarely seen among students anywhere else. In any event, I appreciate the class staying with me.

Your personal, metadiscourse blog address.

In a comment, Robert made what I think is a brilliant suggestion, that is, getting your blog addresses all in one spot. The Q&A is getting somewhat difficult to navigate. If you would, enter your metadiscourse blog addresses in the comments to this post. I'll collect them and post them in a separate post. Remember, this is a fairly public forum, so edit out any information you don't want shared with the larger world.

Steve