Rhetorical Education: Revealing and Concealing

Digital Rhetorics: DIY & Participatory Culture

Proposal Workshop

As always, begin with the authors' questions and concerns about the draft. Then move on to your questions and concerns as readers. At some point during the workshop, be sure to also address these issues (offering specific suggestions for revision as you do so):

• Descriptiveness: Is the proposal’s description of the solution detailed/specific enough?
  
• Persuasiveness: Is the proposal persuasive, both in terms of its use of rhetorical appeals and it attempts to address the audience(s) to whom it is speaking?
• Document Design: Is the proposal designed in a professional and rhetorically effective manner?
• Local Level Concerns: Does the proposal read as if one person authored it? Are there any grammar or usage errors? Is there a title that’s specific to that particular proposal?

Digital Rhetorics

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Full Draft Workshop: Preliminary Research Report

Read the draft aloud or allow others to read it before beginning discussion.

Start with the authors’ questions or concerns. If some of their questions regard local level issues (grammar, style, word choice, document design), agree to address those later. Focus first on global issues, such as organization, clarity, emphasis, tone, and depth and breadth.

When responding to the authors’ questions, be specific in the feedback you provide. Point to particular passages in the draft, and offer specific suggestions for revision.

After you’ve fully addressed the authors’ questions and concerns, move on to the questions you have as readers. Again, be sure that your questions are specific, and that you’re referencing specific passages in the draft.

After you’ve addressed all of the global issues identified by the authors and readers, move on to local level concerns. During this stage it would be appropriate to comment on/discuss document design, grammar, word choice, etc.

Audience and the ePortfolio Video Project

From Lannon, John. Technical Communication, 11th Ed. Page 34.

1. Who wants the document? Who else will read it?
2. What is the purpose of the document?
3. Why do people want the document? How will they use it?
4. What is the primary audience’s technical background? The secondary audience’s?
5. What tasks must users accomplish successfully?
6. In what setting will the document be used?
7. Are there any possible hazards or sources of error?
8. What exactly does the audience need to know, and in what format? How much is enough?
9. When is the document due?

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Collective Intelligence: The Wisdom of Crowds

Imagine you’re consulting for a new medical research lab that will employ about 20 researchers and postdocs working in various areas related to disease and disease prevention, from virology to oncology. The lab’s director has little experience building a successful lab from the ground up, and so is looking to you to make recommendations. Drawing on the Hutto article you read for today as well as the Johnson lecture, outline a proposal in which you make specific recommendations based on what you know about how knowledge gets produced in professional settings.

Ede and Lunsford: Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked

1. What’s the essay’s rhetorical situation? What’s the exigence(s)? Audience(s)? Constraints?

2. What do Lannon, Bitzer, and Ede and Lunsford respectively mean by “audience”?

3. What is an “addressed audience”? What is an “invoked audience”?

4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of thinking audience in terms of it being either “addressed” or “invoked”?

5. Technical Writing Examples: What are their respective rhetorical situations? What are their exigences, constraints, and audiences (think “audience” as both addressed and invoked)?

Bitzer: Rhetorical Situation Questions

What is a rhetorical situation?

How does it shape/inform/constitute the ways we speak and write? What are its constituent parts?

President Obama's remarks on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque": What's the rhetorical situation here? What are its specific constituents (exigences, audiences, constraints)? In your estimation, to what extent did President Obama offer a "fitting response to the situational exigence"? Did he, in other words, "hit the mark" in both a timely and fitting way?

Herrick: Overview of Rhetoric

In his "Overview of Rhetoric," Herrick notes the many functions rhetoric holds in professional, social, and personal pursuits (e.g. sports, medicine, love affairs). Where else do we encounter and practice rhetoric?

How does Herrick define rhetoric and what features of rhetorical discourse does he identify? What connections do these ideas have to technical writing? (Draw on Lannon as well as your impressions of what technical means.)

Rhetoric: Public Perceptions