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Rhetorical Strategies Exercise, Part 1

Here are some helpful resources: - The video "What Genres Are and What They Do" provides an overview of genre and its functions. Pay attention to how genres shape expectations and accomplish social/rhetorical goals. - For each text, focus first on discerning its overall social/rhetorical aim or purpose. What is it trying to do or communicate? - Then analyze structural/formal elements like stages, repetition, roles/positions created for reader/writer. How do these elements support accomplishing the text's aim? - Finally, reflect on the values, worldviews or ideologies implicitly or explicitly communicated. What perspectives does the text seem to naturalize or present as normal/ideal?

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chrisrosser
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715 views2 pages

Rhetorical Strategies Exercise, Part 1

Here are some helpful resources: - The video "What Genres Are and What They Do" provides an overview of genre and its functions. Pay attention to how genres shape expectations and accomplish social/rhetorical goals. - For each text, focus first on discerning its overall social/rhetorical aim or purpose. What is it trying to do or communicate? - Then analyze structural/formal elements like stages, repetition, roles/positions created for reader/writer. How do these elements support accomplishing the text's aim? - Finally, reflect on the values, worldviews or ideologies implicitly or explicitly communicated. What perspectives does the text seem to naturalize or present as normal/ideal?

Uploaded by

chrisrosser
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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“Iron sharpens iron,

 and one person sharpens the wits of

IGBS&IBTR another.” Proverbs 27:17 (NRSV)

INFORMATION
LITERACY AND
ACADEMIC
WRITING

Rhetorical Strategies Exercise, part 1


Instructions:
Purpose:
1.Watch the videos “What Genres In a discussion post, include the
are and What They Do” available To provide students with an
name of the text you selected (e.g.,
in Blackboard content folder for Little Red Hen) and then answer opportunity to engage
this week. the questions associated with the persuasive argument in
exercise. You do not need to various examples of genre.
2.Using information from the video include the questions in your
as a guide, select two (2) of the responses, just your answers.
texts below (p. 2, sidebar) and Please answer in complete
respond to the questions provided. sentences. Be sure to offer a +1
comment to a classmate’s post.

Aims:
• students will understand the nature and function of genre
• students will discern persuasive strategies employed in two distinct
examples of genre by asking significant questions about the text and its
intent
“The path of the righteous is
Select two texts: like the light of dawn,
   which shines brighter and
brighter until full day.
Here, we will not limit The way of the wicked is like
deep darkness;
ourselves to written    they do not know what they
texts, but to oral texts, stumble over.”
Proverbs 4:18-19
songs, and other forms
of persuasive media. Ever think about what this
passage is doing rhetorically?

1. The Little Red Hen, a fable


Access the full text of this fable from
Project Gutenberg.

2. The Apostle Paul’s letter to Philemon


You know where to find the full text of
this correspondence.

3. Regina Spektor’s “Laughing With”


Access the video at YouTube; find the
full text here.

4. Excerpt from a Nadia Bolz-Weber


sermon on “Our Jagged
Edges” (PG-13?)
Access the video clip here.

5. University of Nottingham’s Bibledex


video presentation of your choice.
Access the video online at the
Bibledex Web site.

6. Stephen Colbert’s
2010 testimony before Congress.
Access the video online at YouTube; Respond to these questions for each text you selected:
for full-text of the transcript, try here.
Definitely read the transcript before
tackling the following questions...
1. What does the text try to do? That is, what social goal/
purpose does it try to accomplish?

2. What is the work’s genre? What stages do you recognize


in the story (you don’t have to answer this question with
technical language)? Do any of the stages repeat?

Help...! 3. What reading/subject position(s) does the story


This is a tough exercise! naturalize? NB: Subject positions are the relative roles,
positions, and identities created for the reader and writer
The concepts and language
in a given text; reading positions are the subject positions
here are new to many of us.
of the reader.
Be sure to see the helps
provided in the “Rhetorical
4. What value position and/or ideology is communicated in
Strategies Exercise” folder
the story?
in Blackboard for this week.

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