Today’s plan:
- Attendance (11:17)
- Canvas (11:22)
- Reading #1 (11:32)
- Discuss Reading #1 (11:42) in groups using questions
- Reading #2 (11:52)
- Discuss Reading #2 as a class using questions
- Homework
Attendance and Canvas
Let’s make sure everyone is here.
Let’s make sure everyone knows how to find Canvas. You can log into Canvas by going to https://canvas.unco.edu.
Timothy B. Lee’s “Pokemon Go is Everything that is Wrong with Late Capitalism
I’m going to give you about ten minutes to read Lee’s short piece on Pokemon Go.
When folks are done reading, I will ask you to get into groups of three or four and use the questions below to discuss the article.
Rhetorical Analysis Questions
As an introduction to rhetorical analysis (or how arguments are perceived and treated by audiences), I want you to think about the following questions.
- What is the central claim Lee makes? Ultimately, what does this article want to change or make someone do differently? [who is the audience?]
- What evidence does Lee offer to support this claim? What kinds of evidence (statistics, experiments, testimony, hypotheticals, deductive reasoning, anecdotes, etc)?
- Are there any claims in the piece that are unsupported?
- If you could ask the author one follow up question, what would it be?
In technical terms, the first two questions above concern logos, or how we offer rational arguments. The third question gets at ethos, or how the intellectual, social, and spiritual communities to which we belong inform how we perceive arguments and influences what we consider evidence. Or, put more simply, who we are affects what we hear and think.
Farren and Millsap’s “Pokemon Go Represents the Best of Capitalism
Since this is a response to Lee’s article, I want to add one more question:
- What is the central claim Farren and Millsap make? Ultimately, what does this article want to change or make someone do differently? [who is the audience?]
- What evidence does Lee offer to support this claim? What kinds of evidence (statistics, testimony, hypotheticals, deductive reasoning, anecdotes, etc)?
- Are there any claims in the piece that are unsupported?
- How do they summarize Lee’s piece? What part(s) of his argument do they respond to? What part(s) of his argument do they ignore?
- If you could ask the author one follow up question, what would it be?
Homework
Before next class:
- Read They Say, I Say preface and introduction
- Post a 3-5 sentence response to either article read in class to Canvas using a template from They Say, I Say (#1 Pokemon Go They Say, I Say response)
If you need them, then you can get instructions for posting to Canvas here.
I will go over the syllabus in detail on Wednesday and introduce both our semester-long project and the first major assignment.
