ENG 319 1.W: Herrick, Lanham

Today’s Plan:

• Review Herrick (15 minutes Max)
• Rhetorical Analysis: David Chapelle

Reviewing Herrick

On Monday I learned that 50 minutes goes by really quickly. If we are going to do all the things today, then we have to do this quick.

Let’s carve up and quickly summarize the Herrick article. Here’s how I usually divide it:

1. Rhetoric and Persuasion (pg. 3-5). How does Herrick attempt to nudge our understanding of persuasion?
2. Rhetoric is Adapted to an Audience (pg. 8-10)
3. Rhetoric Reveals Human Motives and Rhetoric is Responsive (pg. 10-12)
4. Rhetoric Addresses Contingent Issues (pg. 15-16)
5. Rhetoric Tests Ideas (pg. 16-17)
6. Rhetoric Assists Advocacy (pg. 17-19)
7. Rhetoric Distributes Power (pg. 19-21)
8. Rhetoric Discovers Facts and Rhetoric Shapes Knowledge (pg. 21-22)
9. Rhetoric Builds Community (pg. 22-23)

I’ll give you five minutes to review your assigned pages and give us something specific.

Rhetorical Analysis and Dave Chapelle

Our main activity today involves rhetorically analyzing comedian Dave Chapelle’s November 6th Saturday Night Live monologue. I’ve created a handout to assist your note-taking, with the standard questions we associate with rhetorical analysis:

• Logos
  • What is the argument?
  • What evidence is presented?
  • What is the nature of that evidence? Stats, scientific, personal experience, common wisdom, historic example)
• Ethos
  • Who is speaking? Why are they credible? What kind of voice are they? What grounds their authority?
  • Who are they speaking to (and how do you know this)?
  • Who are “we” (are they speaking to us or to another audience through us? Or both?
• Pathos
  • What emotions does the speaker feel? Assume we feel? Assume the target audience feels?
  • How would you describe the speaker’s emotional state/style?
  • What emotions does the speaker attempt to engender?
  • How do you feel as you listen to the speech?
• Kairos
  • Why is now the right time for this speech?
  • What historic/contextual information would someone need to know to understand this speech in 10 (or 100) years?
  • What must we do after the speech is done?

As with any heuristic (system for generating ideas), not every element above might be useful/relevant to our object at hand. But these questions should help us think through the complexities of any rhetorical performance.

Here’s a link to the handout.

The Write Up

For next Monday’s class, you need to read Lanham’s essay “The Q Question” and write a one page, single-spaced response. Let’s revisit what I wrote about Write Ups in the syllabus:

But I also want to run this more like a graduate seminar–in which we are sharing ideas and learning from each other. Every week we do readings, you will be expected to share one Write Up with the class. What is a write up? It is a one-page, single-spaced, response to the day’s assigned readings. I will leave it up to y’all whether you do Tuesday or Thursday (week one everyone will turn in a Write-Up for Thursday). The first paragraph (¼ to ⅓) of the Write Up should offer a cut and dry summary of the reading. Standard stuff: what was the author’s intention/argument? What evidence does she offer? What changes does she conclude are necessary?

The next (⅓) of the Write Up should focus attention on a particular sentence/paragraph/section of the text. What should we, as a group, pay more attention to? What stung you, to use theorist Gregory Ulmer’s term? What resonated? What matters? What is bullshit? What do you want to pull against? Write ups are as much about reflecting on how readings made you feel as they are about logocentric response. Rhetoric, affect, response, responsibility, reflection. Throughout the course I will undoubtedly and obnoxiously thread words together.

Those two ⅓’s might add up to a whole. You might be out of room. Your page might be filled. But if it isn’t, then you can do the final ⅓: put this reading in conversation with something else you’ve read. Maybe a connection to something in this class. Maybe a connection to something from another class.

The aim of this class is learning. Write Ups aren’t formal papers–they are informal takes. They are snapshots of encounter and learning. They document struggle and success. You are free to experiment with style, voice, and language. If you don’t use “I” in these papers, then you are doing it wrong. They are personal engagements with the material. No one should be claiming universal mastery here.

As you read the Lanham, get in the habit of underlying key sentences. Whenever you do, write a word or two at the top of the page. Once you are done reading, flip back through the text and try to find connections between your notes and marginalia. What stands out? What are they key terms? The key themes to the entire essay? What is Lanham’s over-arching purpose?

The first paragraph at a Write Up is perhaps the most difficult: in a few precious sentences, you have to attempt to summarize the entire work. This is hard!

The other paragraphs should be more familiar to literature students; I am asking to close read a specific sentence or to. Contextualize it (place it in the stream of the over all argument), cite it, and then tell us why it grabbed you, why it is important, why you are skeptical, why it is wrong. In essence–what is a section of the text that we should talk about? Why?

The final paragraph can look at a second passage, or it can do something else. You can put the reading in conversation with something you’ve read for this class, or for another class. You can apply the reading to something in the news. Something you saw on a social media feed. As long as you are thinking, you can’t mess this up. You might open this section with “Reading Lanham made me think of…” You might tell us about a term in the reading with which you were unfamiliar, and what you found when you googled it.

For Next Class

I spent quite a bit of time Tuesday reading the Lanham, and I have decided to push back the due date on the first Write Up until Monday. In Friday’s class, we are going to start reading the Lanham together, so I can try and map out his argument and prepare you to read the second half of the essay on your own.

I will have a more detailed calendar for the course ready by Monday.

So essentially, there’s no homework for Friday unless you want to begin reading the Lanham on your own.