RWS 100: Lecture Day!

In your introduction to all of your papers: You need to introduce the “Rhetorical Situation” of any text(s) you analyze, or for the purpose of explaining why you are presenting your argument. (turn to page 15 of your CR)

The Rhetorical Situation consists of: Audience: Got this pretty well cornered. Purpose: Ditto. Constraints: For the purposes of this class, this isn’t that important, actually. Context: This is huge…let’s talk about it. Genre: This means saying what the text is (book? Article? Limerick? Where was it published…?) Kairos: You know this one, too.

So, what is context? “…a writer needs to indicate clearly not only what his or her thesis is, but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to.” (pg 20, Graff)

For instance, What do we think the context of Thompson and Carr are? How are they the same? How are they different?

How do I include context in my paper? Where do I include it?

That’s somewhat up to you…but where did you see some templates to use?

Page 28 of Graff and Birkenstein: “In discussions of X, one controversial issue has been ______________. On the one hand, _____________ argues _____________. On the other hand, _____________ contends ______________. Others even maintain ________________.” Graff and Birkenstein are GREAT for when you don’t know how to approach a topic. Use it!

Why is it important to establish the rhetorical situation? Why does it matter?

No paper for Unit #2 will have a passing grade without identifying the Rhetorical Situation… …or a properly formatted Works Cited page. Period. (If you’re not sure of either, ask your classmates, ask your teammates, see your instructor during his office hours.)

Evaluating Evidence  Next week, we will learn all about rhetorical strategies, which use evidence. We have talked about evidence before. On your papers, folks did an excellent job identifying evidence, but I would love for us to raise our game on critical thought on the three things that need to be considered in determine if how strong or weak the evidence is.   What are they?

Is the evidence SUFFICIENT?

(btw, what type of evidence is this?) You should eat pizza because I ate a pizza once and it was delicious! (btw, what type of evidence is this?)

(btw, what type of evidence is this?) I am a pizza chef and I personally have eaten at over 3,729 restaurants in my life, and I promise you, you should eat pizza, it’s delicious! (btw, what type of evidence is this?)

Is the evidence CREDIBLE?

Things to think about: Where was it published? Who wrote it? Do they have any biases? Is this an objective source…? (Keep in mind, some sources might be biased, that doesn’t always mean they’re wrong, but you need to consider that when evaluating any evidence they provide) How was it presented?

…but it’s not always that obvious:

Holy @(*!, there’s actually a Ramones reference on the front page of the National Review!

So how do you know if you can trust a source? What are some ways to find out?

Finally, you need to ask: Is the evidence RELEVANT?

By relevant, we mean: does it directly support the claim we are analyzing?

(btw, what type of evidence is this?) I think you should listen to The Ramones because Rock critic Robert Christgau believes popular music is atrocious. (btw, what type of evidence is this?)

I think you should listen to The Ramones because the University of Toronto conducted a peer-reviewed study in 2008 which demonstrated that 98% of people who listen to the NYC rock group became significantly groovier.

Let’s take a quick look at ways you can examine evidence from the major types we have reviewed in this class (all of this is in your Course Reader):

Historical Evidence: How is this historical example relevant to the current situation? Are there significant difference between the two situations that would suggest another possible claim? Is the evidence sufficient? That is, if there is one specific historical example of something happening, is that enough to support the claim? Does the historical evidence seem to come from a credible source? Does the historical evidence seem to have been interpreted correctly?

Statistical Evidence: Were the numbers specific? Does this information come from a credible source? Does the information appear to have been gathered in a way that’s appropriate? Why are these numbers relevant to the claim being made? Are the numbers significant? (Keep in mind that this depends on a number of factors; a 3% decrease in heart disease may not seem like much, but if it is 3% in a nation of 150 million people, that’s a very significant number.) Is the information recent relative to the time the argument was written?

Research Studies: Is the source of the study credible, meaning both are they experts in this field and are they unbiased? Was the study well-designed? How is the study relevant to the claim it supports? Are there other ways to interpret the research findings that have been ignored and that contradict or fail to support the author’s claim? Is the research recent relative to the time the argument was written?

Expert Testimony: Is the source credible, that is, are they experts in a relevant field and do they seem to be unbiased? Dose the expert’s opinion appear to be itself founded on strong evidence?

Anecdotal Evidence and Personal Anecdotes: Is the anecdote detailed enough to persuade a reader that it actually occurred? Does the anecdote appear to be representative of the experiences of a significant number of other people? How is the anecdote relevant to the claim being supported?

(What were the three areas you have to examine?)

While you do need to critically evaluate every piece of evidence for each claim, you don’t always have to evaluate every piece in your paper(s) But – when you are evaluating a claim and argument, and making a statement that a claim is particularly strong, you should explain why the evidence is so persuasive (was it the amount (sufficiency) that made the argument strong? Was it the credible source (credibility) that made it so persuasive? Was it the fact that the evidence perfectly supported the argument (relevancy)?

Vice versa, when you find a claim particularly weak because of the evidence, call it out: “Thompson’s argument would be a lot stronger if he had more evidence to support it – a couple of quotations from so-called ‘experts’ is simply not enough, especially when their statements don’t directly relate to his main claim.” (see how I just called out Thompson on all three things: sufficiency, credibility, and relevancy. That’s why I’m the #($* instructor.)

When you analyze evidence, you also need to consider why the rhetor/author chose it for his audience. I think about 83% (estimated) of the visits I had during office hours that I had, I told folks to remember to Connect the Evidence to the Audience What did I mean by that?

We identify the audience in the first paragraph to “set the table.”

Always be sure When analyzing and evaluation, you always think about how it will affect, or how it was intended to affect the intended audience. Sometimes that’s us, sometimes it’s not.

Often, this means we need to roleplay.

And sometimes, We won’t get it right. It’s okay to be wrong about how an audience might react, but it’s not okay to NOT TRY to work it through.

Sweet! That was cool and fun. Now let’s take a quiz on it! Get your smart phones, or tablets, or laptops, out!