Rhetoric, Genre, Discipline:

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Rhetoric, Genre, Discipline
Shelley Reid English 325 September 23,
2009 (Font Samples from http//www.houseind.com)
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Warm-up

• Right hand up
• Left hand up
• Finger wiggle
• Partner location
• Introductions names projects

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Brandon
Melissa
Janette
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ine, and http//mediaonsugar.com
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Brandon Rhetoric
Melissa Discipline
Janette Genre
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ine, and http//mediaonsugar.com
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Rhetoric

• Use of available means to reach an audience
  (Aristotle)
• Use of words to form attitudes or induce
  actions (Burke)
• Author, Text, Audience
• Attention to context and purpose
• Situated, negotiated, dynamic

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Rhetoric helps readers

• Spot patterns and strategies
• Analyze argument wholes pieces
• Resist unwanted persuasion
• Address issues of ethics
• Prepare to respond

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Rhetoric helps writers
revisers

• Identify their own purposes
• Join a conversational dance
• Anticipate reader needs and responses
• Plan written elements for maximum rhetorical
  effect

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Lamotts SFDs

• Very few writersgo about their business feeling
  dewy and thrilled,bounding along like huskies
  across the snow.
• Id obsess about getting creamed by a car before
  I could write a decent second draft.

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SFDs

• I would eventually let myself trust the
  processmore or less.(Lamott)
• Writers may need SFDs
• To avoid writing block, lower your
  standards. (Stafford)
• SFD writers need revision moxy
• Rhetorical heuristics may help

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Heuristics Do I want

• Judicial, deliberative, epideictic?
• Irony, paradox, hyperbole?
• Narrative, refutation, confirmation?
• Appeal to ethos, logos, pathos?
• Definition, evaluation, causality, policy?
  (stases)
• Five-paragraph essay?

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Rhetoric as MovesJoseph Harris, Rewriting

• Coming to terms with a work
• Forwarding your/others projects
• Whats next?
• Countering your/others moves
• What else?
• Taking an approach in/from your/others writing

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Re-Vision A Dynamic, Rhetorical Task

• Text See the caterpillar, imagine the butterfly
  (J. Bean)
• Read the text through the audiences eyes
  (greedy readers)
• See what you say, learn what you think, create
  what you know

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Rhetoric for Re-vision

• Kind of argument?
• Appeals, tropes?
• Come to terms?
• Forwarding (next)?
• Countering (else)?
• Audience needs?

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If You Think,You Can Revise
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Brandon
Janette
Melissa
Rhetoric Induce actions in audience Genre Play
to expectations to induce actions in a
particular, repeated scene--a shortcut, a
de-random-izer
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ine, and http//mediaonsugar.com,
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Genre

• The typical rhetorical ways of responding to a
  repeated textual situation (Devitt et al.)
• Reflects and preserves the habits of the
  community
• Tango, hip-hop, waltz, two-step, ballet, Broadway
• Moves, appearances, interactions

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Textual genre diversity

• What genres can you think of?

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Genre-shift Exercise
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Genres

• Are rhetorical, dynamic, audience-focused systems
  (not forms!)
• Create as well as represent knowledge
• Help revisers generate content as well as form

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Revisers use genres

• To name/choose what a text is or is not doing
  (genreaction)
• To imagine audiences (re)actions and needs, and
  meet them
• To decide how/when to surprise an audience

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Discipline
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Brandon
Janette
Melissa
Rhetoric Induce actions in audience Discipline
The knowledge and conventions that enable and
control inquiry, performance, and discussion
related to a particular subject
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ine, and http//mediaonsugar.com
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Writers in a discipline

• Attend to questions and issues
• Select and analyze evidence
• Include perspectives and theories
• Employ genres and styles
• Use terminologies
• that are appropriate to the
• subject and audience in the field

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Writing in Lit. Studies

• Defines a problem in relation to text, culture,
  lens, conversation
• Uses art analysis as evidence
• Attends to the writers stance (post-New
  Criticism)
• Focuses on essays
• Employs precise analytical language insider
  terminology

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Exploring v. Solving

• Contradictions Indeterminacies
• Complexities Difficulties
• Multiple, non-overlapping, non-sequential
  readings of a text less communal/generalizable
  than scientific problem-solving
• Joining (bettering) the conversation
• MacDonald, Problem Definition in Academic
  Writing College English 49.3
• Salvatori and Donohue, The Elements and
  Pleasures of Difficulty
• Frey, Beyond Literary Darwinism Womens Voices
  and Critical Discourse. College English 52
  (1990) 507-26

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Seeing disciplinary moves

• Problem
• Evidence
• Perspective
• Conversation
• Theories/terms
• Structure
• Genre
• Style

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Revising via discipline

• Refine/expand the problem (thesis, argument,
  contribution)
• Provide appropriate sufficient evidence
• Attend to the conversation
• Consider theories, lenses, stances
• Observe genre, style, diction

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Rhetorical revising redux

• What does my audience know?
• What does my audience expect?
• What will affect/persuade my audience? How can I
  get inside?
• How will I and my audience move through my (our)
  performance?
• How will I adapt to the next audience?

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Finale

• When you think rhetorically, you can revise
  deliberately, by choice
• When you believe you can revise, you can write
  SFDs
• When you can write SFDs, you can try something,
  take risks
• When you take risks, you cangrow as a reader,
  writer, rhetor

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Rhetoric, Genre, DisciplineWhen You Think,You
Can Revise