Tuesday, August 22. Today’s plan:
- Read Lee (3:30-3:40)
- Group up, discuss questions (3:40-3:50)
- Review Questions (3:50-4:00)
- Read piece #2 (4:00-4:10)
- Group up with different people, discuss questions (4:10-4:20)
- Review Questions (4:20-4:30)
- Syllabus
- Attendance and homework (4:40-4:45)
(4:30-4:40)
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?
- 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. When we are done, I have one more question: “who is the audience for this piece?”
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?
- 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:
- We will meet Wednesday in Ross Hall 1240 computer lab
- 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.
