Let’s Read: Jim Corder, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love”
I’ve brought copies and there’s a .pdf in Canvas. Questions:
Homework
My homework is to comment on your Rhetorical Analysis drafts. While I work on that, I’d like you to read the Corder and the Blankenship .pdfs that are in Canvas.
My standard questions:
Group One: [sections 1-3]: What does Corder mean by the idea that we make narratives? Why do said narratives complicate traditional notions of argument and rhetoric?
Group Two: [sections 4-6]: How can we describe Rogerian method? Why is Corder skeptical that such a method can be useful to rhetoric?
Group Three: [section 6-7]: Looking at section 7, would your frame Corder as an optimist or pessimist? What do “we” have to learn (and who are the “we” of this section’s final paragraphs)?
Group Four: [Section 8]:What do we make of section 8? Why is this story here? What does it exemplify or reinforce?
Group Five: [Section 9]: What does it mean to be “perpetually opening and closing” (29)? How can such a position help us be better? How does it tie to the other advice offered in this section?
Write-Up #3, due Friday, asks you to respond to Corder and Blankenship. [Note: we will start reading the Blankenship in class together on Wednesday. Finish the Corder before then.]
What is positivism? Why is it a problem for technical writing? What does Miller identify as the most problematic dimension of a non-rhetorical approach to scientific communication?
Miller identifies 4 problems for technical writing pedagogy that stem from the positivist tradition. How do we avoid them?
How does Miller–writing in 1979–describe the epistemology that is replacing positivism?
What does it mean to teach technical writing from a communalist perspective? Why might some students reject a communalist approach to teaching writing?
Your homework for the next couple weeks is listed in the tables in that document above. Submit any materials marked as a Deliverable to Canvas (there is not a deliverable for every class session).
Miller’s essay, published in 1979, speaks to the ways in which writing (and not just technical writing) gets intellectually devalued. Underwriting this devaluing is a positivist epistemology (epistemology is the study of knowledge). In a positivist epistemology, humans can, through various systems, arrive at objective, transcendent Truth. This can be a scientific truth (the earth is round) or a humanistic one (the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness). Writing becomes devalued in a positivist era because writing (supposedly!) is not a way to discover truth, merely a way to communicate it. Furthermore, writing’s relationship to rhetoric makes it more devalued, because historically rhetoric has been seen as manipulation or bullshit, something artificial and duplicitous used to mask the “real” truth. Note that I do not believe any of us. But that’s something we will talk about later when we read the Herrick article.
I’d like a slightly longer reading response here (probably a minimum of 300+ words). First, I want you to wrestle with some of Miller’s harder ideas. Be sure to google unfamiliar vocabulary as you read. Pick one of the following questions:
Why is positivism in conflict with technical writing (and, um, what is positivism?) What does Miller identify as the most problematic dimension of a non-rhetorical approach to scientific communication?
Miller identifies 4 problems for technical writing pedagogy that stem from the positivist tradition. What are they and h might we avoid them?
How does Miller–writing in 1979–describe the epistemology that is replacing positivism? Do you know what we would call this today?
What does it mean to teach technical writing from a communalist perspective? Why might some students reject a communalist approach to teaching writing?
I assert that Miller’s grounds for labeling technical writing a Humanity lies in what she identifies as a consensualist relation to audience. Why do I think this? What does this mean?
So that’s part one. I’d like you to start part two by thinking about your own experiences as a student at UNC.
First, does the argument Miller makes here resonate with readings/ideas/work you have done in other classes? Tell me about that. Tell me about something you’ve read somewhere else that talks about the nature of knowledge, why we teach in the humanities, etc.
Second, to what extent does the classroom and grading practices you’ve encountered in classes reflect a positive tradition? Are texts presented as having one right answer? A range of meanings? Is the meaning of a text completely open to a reader?
For Next Class
Finish and submit the report. Read and post on the Miller.
You should have already ordered one of the three books I listed last class.
I’ve published a few articles that emphasize that writing cannot be taught, only learned. That is, there are few, if any, rules that I can teach you that will make you a better writer. And I can’t teach you them, so much as ask you to learn (understand as abstract concept, translate into repeatable practice) them. I consider Williams and Bizup’s guide to sentence syntax an exception to this claim.
Put simply, W&B ask us to check all of the subjects and verbs in our sentences to make sure that the subjects are characters and the verbs are actions. Those of you who have worked in theater will understand this: I need to be able to block your sentences: that is, I need to be able to imagine your sentences on a stage. Who is standing where? What action are they doing? To do this, the subject of a sentence can’t be some abstraction, some concept, some thing–it has to be a person or animal.
Take the following sentences:
A run to the store was made by a boy named Billy.
It is clear that because the dog found food left on the floor that mistakes were made.
For the rest of the semester, courses are on Discord.
During the self-isolation period, there were lots of people who did not want to follow the suggestions and so it was decided that no one could leave their homes unless essential services were their goal.
Unfortunately, these sentences are grammatically correct. But they are also terrible. They aren’t engaging. They are difficult to parse. Worst of all: they can actually work to obfuscate responsibility. In W&B’s estimation they are bad sentences because they fail to clarify/emphasize who is doing what. If you think back to my “cat came through the window” bit, this is asking your reader/listener to imagine a lot. Likewise, what can get lost in a sentence like this is the agent responsible for the action–who decided courses would be on Discord? We can’t know. This can be a nefarious way to hide responsibility for unpopular (or reprehensible) actions.
What we need to do is to identify the characters and actions in these sentences and make sure they are the subjects and verbs. Think like a theater director–you want to “stage” the action here. You need to know who is standing where and what they are doing.
So:
For the rest of the semester, courses are on Discord.
The subject of this sentence is courses, the verb is are. Courses cannot be put on a stage–they are a concept and not a character.
We begin the revision by identifying what action has happened. That will give us a new verb to replace “are.” Then we figure out who did that action. Give it a try now.
Try this:
Dr Santos determined that courses will be scheduled on Discord.
OR
Dr Santos scheduled courses on Discord.
OR
The University’s administration determined that courses will be scheduled on Discord.
The first sentence has a generic noun as its subject–“courses.” But courses are not a character. They cannot act. Choosing an abstract noun as your sentence subject pretty much ensures a boring sentence. As you can see, when I change the subject of the sentence from “courses” to a character or characters, I not only make a more active sentence (that awful “are” verb is gone), but also I have to clarify *who* made a decision.
And, this can get even worse when you craft an abstraction as a subject. For instance:
During the self-isolation period, there were lots of people who did not want to follow the suggestions and so it was decided that no one could leave their homes unless essential services were their goal.
I bet there’s a bunch of you who couldn’t identify the subject of that sentence! (It is “there”). When you use an abstraction like this, you are making your reader do A LOT OF WORK, since they have to unpack the thought of the sentence to determine who is doing the action. Let me revise the sentence:
During the self-isolation period, Governor Polis implemented a stay-at-home order, meaning citizens could not leave their homes unless they needed essential services, because too many people failed to follow the CDC’s initial suggestions.
Notice how this revision inverts the order of material from the previous sentence. THIS WILL HAPPEN OFTEN, BECAUSE WHEN WE DRAFT WE DEVELOP AN IDEA CHRONOLOGICALLY AND WHEN WE ARGUE WELL WE DEVELOP IDEAS LOGICALLY (CONSEQUENTIALLY). This is why good writing requires revision. We have to dramatize a thought to make it easier to block/play on the recipient’s mental stage.
A few other points:
Notice how I use “because” in the second sentence. When developing characters as subjects and actions as verbs, you might need to develop “If… Then” or “X because Y” syntax. Do not be afraid to use these causal transitions; they help a reader
Often you will have to identify or invent a character. While this sometimes comes from another word in the sentence, other times it requires complete invention (so “Misery was filling the room” becomes “Tyler’s misery filled the room”)
Try to cut out unnecessary prepositions. Prepositions make readers work hard.
My overarching goal here is to use the character/action syntax to make it easier on a reader to visualize and comprehend our prose. Or:
When we use the character/action syntax, readers find it easier to visualize and comprehend our prose.
For Next Week
Last week I asked you to play your game and submit your gaming journal. Now it is time to revise your Sicart summary papers and write your analysis. I have generally commented extensively on the first half of your drafts and have discussed player complicity in depth today. It is your job to revise, compress, and/or document both meaningful choices and (if you discuss it) reflection.
Final papers should be 1800-2200 words. That is a HARD ceiling. This will require that you condense your Sicart summary papers to (probably) no more than 600-800 words. Here is *one* way to arrange the longer paper:
Introduction: 200-300 words (thesis, identify define key terms, road map parts of the paper)
Explicate Sicart: 600-800 words (explicate those key terms, likely to be player complicity, meaningful choices/wicked problems, building space/time for critical reflection–what does a designer do to make you stop and think; examine Sicart pp. X-Y)
Analyze Choice #1: 300-500 words
Analyze Choice #2: 300-500 words
Analyze Choice #3: 300-500 words
I will provide more details on the Sicart Analysis paper next week (working on polishing up APA format). If you can bring a laptop to work on the paper in class next week, that would probably be helpful. Remember that the library allows you to sign out a laptop.
In terms of analysis, let me (again) provide a mini-heuristic to help you generate ideas and reflect on your game play. Not all of these questions will be as equally interesting for every player and every game. There’s even more questions here.
What was my relationship to my avatar? Did the game flush out the avatar as a character? Or was the avatar more of an empty shell that I could more easily step into (was the avatar me, or another character?)?
What did the designers do to make me care about my avatar?
What did the designers to to make me care about the npcs?
Were the designers successful?
Did they do something, try something, that you didn’t think worked?
Meaningful choices: when you made a choice, were the consequences clear? If so, did they seem appropriate or did you cry bullshit? If not clear, did that frustrate you in a good or bad way [meaning, did the lack of immediate closure pull you into the game more?]?
AFTER YOU PLAY: Did you Google that decision to see other possible outcomes? Did you survey other player responses to the decision? Do player forums etc suggest that folks are making instrumental or ethical choices (do you want your paper to incorporate how other people respond to the game? Use Reddit forums as sources? I am cool with this kind of player research!)
Can you find any formal statistics, like you can for he Walking Dead, on how players have made decisions?
What design features helped you pause and think about your decisions (remember that Sicart talks about how important it is that games, in addition to developing complicity and containing wicked problems, also provoke reflection–if you do this in the paper, make sure you bring Sicart in)? Some games, like Walking Dead or Wolf Among Us, are really good at this!
I kept a few notes as I went through the second set of write ups. These were so good!
Jen highlighted Miller’s line “As long as there has been democracy, there has been demagoguery” (and noted how the roots of Hitler’s rise to power lie in the hopelessness experienced by Weimar Germans) and Jessica questioned the meaning of “smart people” if our history is littered with terrible mistakes in judgement. Together reminds me of Churchill’s frustration: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” (1947) (and, hence, Burke’s emphasis that rhetoric deals with the scramble of the human barnyard)
Joshua noted the emotional intensity of demagoguery, noting how “Brewed with passion, fear, and in many cases hate, these two sides are pinned against the other, stuck in their viewpoints that they will never give up ground”
I wrote this as a response to someone’s paper: I think Miller wants us to focus less on *who* someone is, and more on what we can do to help people. We need to talk about specific changes we want to make, and try to debate the pros and cons of those changes. And we need to use facts to support those arguments, not “ideas” or “opinions.” This means we need to be willing to listen to other people’s facts and not dismiss them because of who they are.
Violeta thought through the idea of “infotainment.” This made me think of recent debates regarding censorship/regulation on social media, and how other countries (Canada and UK included) have review boards that certify news organizations. In America, any such regulation is problematized by the spirit of the first amendment (I say spirit since all the first amendment guarantees is that the government will not punish you for speech, it does not guarantee that private entities need endorse or broadcast that speech)
Reviewing Texts
This might wait until Wednesday.
Rhetorical Analysis
Today in class I wanted to work on a rhetorical analysis, to give you some sense of how close reading works and how you might approach using the heuristics I’ve shared / we’ve developed.
Give your text a close read and use the heuristic to begin your analysis. I’m going to ask you to work in socially distanced groups on Wednesday, so please bring 5 copies of a one page handout that includes a selection of your text (it doesn’t need the whole thing) and a question or an idea to discuss in your group (I’m planning on groups of four–so the 5th copy is for me).
Class will be optional on Friday. Your homework for next Monday will be to finish your rhetorical analysis paper. I will provide a rubric for the paper on Wednesday. You can bring a paper on Friday and we can discuss it, or you can stay home and work on the paper on your own time.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on ENG 319 4.M: Rhetorical Analysis
As we prepare for Project 2, I’d emphasize how the syllabus calls on you to buy one of these three books:
Grant Writing: Karsh and Fox, The Only Grant Writing Book You Will Ever Need (Recommended)
Document Design: Golumbiski and Hagen, White Space is Not Your Enemy (Recommended)
Campbell, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit in 90 Days(Recommended)
I met with the Loveland Community Kitchen folks last Thursday and discussed potential projects. They are very interested in a grant writing project that would secure funds for more eco-friendly utensils (moving from plastic to bamboo). They would love students to redesign their existing website (using a new Wix template). They would love students to develop various instagram content campaigns, including interviews with staff and (potentially) with clients (developing a Google Form to solicit feedback and stories and then transforming those into insta stories/posts).
Brainstorming the Discussion Section
Here’s how I described the discussion section last week:
Discussion of Data: Does the writer highlight significant or unexpected elements of the data? Does the writer put the data in conversation with previous research (Brumberger and Lauer)? Does the writer make specific recommendations based on the data?
Here I would emphasize that the target audience for this report is high school seniors interested in majoring in English. On the one hand we want to convince them that majoring in English (or minoring in Writing) will prepare them for the job market.
But, at a more micro level, you are in a position to offer them concrete advice on how to maximize that preparation. The discussion section should offer specific recommendations for how to develop/document the tools, competencies, and characteristics that appear most often in your report.
It might be helpful to identify which of those things they will get from coursework, and which courses provide which things. ALSO, we should identify what other things might not appear in coursework, and how students might develop/document those things through extra-curricular activities. So let’s take 15-20 minutes and do that.
Length: Generally this report is 6-8 pages singled-spaced (this includes a title page, a table of content, and properly sized charts/graphs)
Front Loaded Introduction: Does the intro summarize all significant findings and include specific, actionable recommendations?
Methodology: The methodology section needs to do a few things. First, how did I collect the job ads (I described this process in a blog post, condense my Brumberger and Lauer discussion)? Second, how did you select your 20 jobs from the job corpus? Third, from where did we draw our coding scheme? Fourth, what did we do to ensure that our data was reliable? Could I recreate this work based on this section?
Presentation of Data: Does the section contain a table or graph of data?
Can you understand the table or graph, or is there some mystery meat?
Does the writer make clear what the table or graph says?
Discussion of Data: Does the writer highlight significant or unexpected elements of the data? Does the writer put the data in conversation with previous research (Brumberger and Lauer)? Does the writer make specific recommendations based on the data?
Style and Grammar [commas, run-ons, fragments, tense shifts, agreement errors, etc]
Does the paper reflect our work on style (Williams and Bizup, Characters and Actions)?
Does this paper reflect expectations for business formatting? (Check the ABO book
Title Page
Page Numbers (should not include the title page)
Does the document version history indicate that the paper was given a careful edit? (And/or, is the document relatively error free? Are their sentences in which grammatical errors lead to misunderstanding?)
For business formatting, check the ABO book The ABO book contains sections on:
Feasibility Reports
Formal Reports
Investigative Reports
Tables
Graphs
Look at the sample proposal on 439. Sample feasibility report, 187-188. Sample formal report 202-218. Sample investigative report 291.
Let me stress two things: Single or 1.15 spacing. Block paragraphs [single space between paragraphs, no indent].
Finalizing Our Data
Let’s talk about how to generate the data you need for your report. You have coded 20 jobs, so we need to tabulate how often a code appears in your 20 ads. The simplest way to do this, and to make graphs of your results, is to create a simple spreadsheet.
Here is a blank template to tabulate your data. This is set to view-only, you will need to make your own copy. File > Make a Copy). It has some sample numbers in there–be sure to delete those. Then go through your 20 jobs and simply count and record code frequency.
Once you have that data you can easily generate a graph. I want to show you how to generate a graph. Next week we will talk about creating ethical and useable visualizations of data (how to modify your graphs).
I’d like you to write the methodology section of your report. These can be tricky. The ABO book has some guidelines for writing up a methodology section.
Also, create the three graphs you need for the report (Tools and Technology, Professional Competencies, Personal Characteristics). Write summary paragraphs of each graph (redundancy is important when you write up research).
In Monday’s class, we will do a brainstorming session on how to write the discussion section. We will also talk about report format. In Wednesday’s class, we will assess a few past papers so you have clearer sense of expectations for the final report.
Let me review the assignment details I laid out on Monday:
Your first major assignment this semester will be a rhetorical analysis of a recent “text.” Generally a rhetorical analysis examines a text to identify how it establishes ethos (writer’s credibility, who are “we” [audience]), provides evidence (logos, both in terms of invented arguments, imagining and responding to counterarguments, referencing facts) and negotiates pathos (both what emotions is anticipates you hold entering the argument, and what emotions it attempts to engender). I shared an overview of this earlier in the course.
In addition to maybe thinking about these things, I would like to focus on whether the text appears democratic or demagogic. The paper will have to cite Miller in order to generate 3-4 rhetorical elements relevant to your text. Let me be clear: you have the freedom/responsibility to focus on parts of Miller that are relevant to your analysis (there is not one set of ideas that I feel every paper should discuss). Part of the challenge of this assignment is to figure out what in your text is worthy of / relevant to a rhetorical analysis.
I expect these papers will be between 1500 and 2000 words. Papers can be in either MLA or APA format (they do not need a title page, but do require a title). I’ll go over this kind of stuff a bit more later. (still not the time–let’s focus on the content of the paper today.
Let me clarify two things:
First, this paper is a rhetorical analysis of a text or a small group of texts. Your paper should address whatever characteristics/questions/concepts/ideas from the heuristics below that are relevant.
Second, your paper has to address Miller’s concept of democracy and demogoguery in some form, and has to cite from her work. Do not expect a reader has read her work. Summarize, contextualize, and frame it. Focus on quoting/paraphrasing/explicating a specific concept or two.
Third (I know I said two things, but writing is generative and I thought of a third): there’s multiple ways to organize/arrange this paper, depending on your analysis. For instance, you might find that your text consistently emphasizes how complicated decision are, working to create a democratic, participatory policy process. Cool, Miller would be pleased. This paper would likely open with a summary of Miller and then an analysis of each occurrence. But maybe you see three different but interesting things happening–then you would have three sections, each with a reference to Miller and then some analysis of a specific place (is this obvious? Should I bring in an example paper or do y’all get the overlap between this kind of analysis and a close, literary reading?)
I’d open with this simple definition of ethics: it is the study of how we make difficult choices. To study ethics is to become more self-reflective and self-aware. As the skit from The Good Life implied, this can lead to a kind of paralysis by analysis (philosophers and theorists often are excellent at discovering and mapping complexity, less great at deciding on one definitive course of action). Rhetoricians (some of us) recognize the need for deep analysis, but often insist on a moment of decision, where analysis has to turn into action. That is a lecture for another course.
Given the complexity of human decision making, there’s a lot of different theories and approaches to ethics. Let me lay out 4 of them:
Deontology or Moral Law
Teleology or Consequentialism
Virtue Ethics
Hospitality Ethics
Deontological ethics are based on identifying moral laws and obligations. To know if we are making the right decision, we ask ourselves what the rules are. For instance, if you didn’t lie to Herschel because lying is wrong, then you were invoking a deontological frame. You made a deontological decision. You worked back from the specific concrete moment to a (prior) conviction. Deontological ethics get critiqued because sometimes moral laws come into conflict and because it requires absolute adherence to the law without thought of context.
Consequential ethics look ahead, from the action and decision, to its consequences. You use prior knowledge to make hypotheses about what will happen. Your focus here isn’t on what other people or institutions would declare right or wrong, but on producing “the greater good.” This is called utilitarianism, which strives to imagine what will make the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Another form of consequentialism is hedonism, which strives to make the most pleasure and minimize pain. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you further or kick you out of the farm, then you probably made a hedonistic decision. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you and kick you and Clementine out of the farm, then you made a consequential decision. Consequential ethics get critiqued because they can lead us into hurting minority populations (one can absolutely argue, for instance, that slavery contributed to the “greater good”–I’d say they are wrong–but one can rationalize pain in relation to happiness, which can lead us down dark paths).
Virtue ethics are a bit different–though, like consequential ethics they rely on our imagination. Virtue ethics asks us to imagine, in that situation how a good person would act. This, in a sense, mixes deontology (who is the good here? what rules do they follow? what institutions would they represent?) with the situational flexibility of consequentialism. If deontology operates around rules that govern behavior, virtue ethics begins by establishing the characteristics common to good people (bravery, compassion, justice, etc). If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you believe a good person should tell the truth and be brave, and trust others (etc.), then you are exercising virtue ethics. Note: this is different than deontology, because here you don’t *have* to follow the rules, and there might be times that lying (say, to protect someone from Nazi pursuit), is justified.
Ethics of hospitality also involve an effort of imagination; this time it is our task to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and imagine a decision from their perspective. Is this a decision we would want someone to make if they were in our position? We can think of this as a more radical version of the Christian ethic of the Golden Rule (from Lev. “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), accept here we are self-skeptical enough to realize that the other might not want the same things as us. So rather than assume the other is just like us, we train ourselves to recognize and honor their difference, their alterity. Hence hospitality, since we train ourselves to welcome the strange, the unfamiliar. Ethics, here, trains people to negotiate the unknown and the contingent. Ethics as the impossibility of ever walking in another’s shoes, but trying like hell all the same.
Thinking About the Walking Dead
Okay, so we have four different senses of ethics. Chances are all four reverberate through every decision you make. As a phenomenologist, Sicart is interested in what percolated to the surface as you made a decision. This is why rigorous reflection is so important to his method of ethical analysis: what were you thinking about at the time you made a decision? And how did the game designers reward/frustrate/respond to that decision-making? Did they pull a bait and switch (they anticipated I would make X decision, but surprised me). Did decisions become too predictable? To anticipate what I expect to find in the Sicart Summary papers, did they institute a scoring system that told you when they did good, and, if they did, then what notion of ethics are they reinforcing?
These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself as you play your game. Over the next week, I’ll ask you to play about 6-10 hours of your game. You will keep a gaming journal–after every play session (which really shouldn’t be more than 90 minutes), you should write for 15 minutes. Trace important decisions the game asked you to make, their level of complexity, their consequences. Identify where/how the designers made decisions that either amplify or diminish the ethical potential / impact of your game.
There is no right or wrong reflection here. You have space to articulate something smart about a game in light of Sicart’s theories. You might play a game that *doesn’t* involve ethical decision making, but does (you think) engender high ethical impact (my personal favorite for this is The Last of Us).
You just completed the Sicart Summary paper. I’ll have commented on those papers rigorously by next week’s class. Consider that paper a rough draft for a part of the next paper, the Sicart analysis paper. This paper is meant to expose you to how humanities scholars analyze texts and arrange papers (our next project will show you how you do this in the hard and social sciences). Generally, this involves:
Developing a critical lens (identifying, before you approach a text, what you will be looking for. Hence, the Sicart summary paper). So, you know going into this paper that you are looking for designer choices that amplify or diminish ethical decisions (or experiences). You know you are attempting to identify how designers try to engender player complicity. Etc. etc. I will go over this list more next week when I review your papers
Applying the lens to specific moments in your “text.” I use text pretty liberally here–literally anything you examine is considered a text. Depending on the game you analyze, its mechanics and narrative structure, this can look REALLY different paper to paper. For instance, is your game one linear narrative? Or is it a choose-your-own-adventure, with branching paths? Thus, do decisions have narrative consequences? Or is the impact of decisions more centered on the feelings/reactions of the player? And–as we’ve discussed–do designers do something bad (from Sicart’s perspective) and tie in game powers/abilities/gear to making (what the game decides in advance is) the “right” decision?
I will provide a lot more concrete details about this paper next week. We will read a few papers from last year and grade them as a class. I want you to have a sense of what these look like, what they can do.
First, however, you need to play your game, take notes, and start developing ideas.
If you are a non-gamer, then I would recommend either continuing to play The Walking Dead (the entire game is 10 hours, with a pretty amazing ending).
If you are looking for a unique experience, then there’s A Study in Steampunk. This is more of a grown-up choose-your-own-adventure game; you play Watson assisting a Sherlock Holmes. The range of decision is vast, and there’s definitely complex ethical dimensions to some choices.
For Next Class
Copy paste of the paragraph above: These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself as you play your game. Over the next week, I’ll ask you to play about 6-10 hours of your game. You will keep a gaming journal–after every play session (which really shouldn’t be more than 90 minutes), you should write for 15 minutes. Trace important decisions the game asked you to make, their level of complexity, their consequences. Identify where/how the designers made decisions that either amplify or diminish the ethical potential / impact of your game.
I’ve created a game journal assignment on Canvas. As always, I’d prefer a shareable Google Doc link, but will accept a .docx.
Rhetorical Analysis Assignment and Heuristic Activity
For Next Class
Write Ups
I’m looking for 2 or 3 volunteers.
Rhetorical Analysis Assignment
Your first major assignment this semester will be a rhetorical analysis of a recent “text.” Generally a rhetorical analysis examines a text to identify how it establishes ethos (writer’s credibility, who are “we” [audience]), provides evidence (logos, both in terms of invented arguments, imagining and responding to counterarguments, referencing facts) and negotiates pathos (both what emotions is anticipates you hold entering the argument, and what emotions it attempts to engender). I shared an overview of this earlier in the course.
In addition to maybe thinking about these things, I would like to focus on whether the text appears democratic or demagogic. The paper will have to cite Miller in order to generate 3-4 rhetorical elements relevant to your text. Let me be clear: you have the freedom/responsibility to focus on parts of Miller that are relevant to your analysis (there is not one set of ideas that I feel every paper should discuss). Part of the challenge of this assignment is to figure out what in your text is worthy of / relevant to a rhetorical analysis.
I expect these papers will be between 1500 and 2000 words. Papers can be in either MLA or APA format (they do not need a title page, but do require a title). I’ll go over this kind of stuff a bit more later.
I’d like everyone to add one entry, focused on a passage.
For Next Class
On Wednesday I’ll ask you to select a text for analysis. Between now and then, think about what recent text you’d like to analyze. As I’ve said previously, I’m open to a wide range of text(s).
This is the first time I’ve taught a rhetorical analysis assignment using Miller–I think the emphasis on demagoguery and public decision making will lend itself to texts that concern making decisions (maybe?).
