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11/14: Ungrading Our Rhetorical Analysis Projects
In Jesse Stommel’s “Ungrading: An Introduction” that you read for homework, Stommel encourages teachers to “demystify grading” by focusing on student learning and content knowledge. My learning goals for you in the Rhetorical Analysis of Local Activism assignment were to gain a greater understanding of rhetorical concepts that are important to all public writing and to see how these concepts are part of large advocacy projects. The way I structured your learning for this assignment was by asking you to work in pairs to create a new website that contains the following parts: All pages were to engage the organization you chose and Keith Grant-Davie’s “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents”…
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10/31: Primary and Secondary Audiences
Last class, we discussed how the rhetor of a discourse is often a complex network “that often involve[s] multiple rhetors” (Grant-Davie 269), ranging from a person or entity responsible for some content to sponsors that deliver or finance that content in some way. Grant-Davie’s concept of audience is no less complex than the concept of rhetor. Grant-Davie notes that audiences, like rhetors, exist in multitudes. He says there can be primary and secondary audiences, “audiences that are present and those that have yet to form, audiences that act collaboratively or as individuals, audiences about whom the rhetor knows little, or audiences that exist only in the rhetor’s mind” (271). In…
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10/26: Adding Rhetors to our list of Constituents
As we start class, ensure you’re sitting with your partner for the Rhetorical Analysis of Local Activism assignment. I’m tracking the groups and their chosen organizations here. We’ll think for a bit about what we understand the word “constituents” to mean. You’ve already taken some time to understand exigence as a constituent in the rhetorical situation, so today we’ll move through Grant-Davie’s text to better understand his definition of rhetors . Access Grant-Davie’s article “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” on our Blackboard site. We’ll use class time to read pages 269-272 and write initial definitions of rhetor. With your partner, begin to apply these definitions of rhetor to the organization…
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10/12: Multimodal Rhetorical Situations
Last week, and over the long weekend, you considered how a piece you chose represented invitational rhetoric. I’d like to spend some time at the start of class today hearing your responses to this prompt from last class. We’ve been building towards your next major assignment–a Rhetorical Analysis of Local Advocacy–and will continue to do so today. (NOTE: I will have the written Rhetorical Analysis assignment for you by next class.) For this next major assignment, you will work in two-person teams to study the rhetorical strategies used on local advocacy, using rhetorical frameworks from the texts we’ve already read and from Keith Grant-Davie’s “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.” We’ll…
