Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we’ll be examining the rhetorical strategies at work in the texts we’re reading. We’ll examine how each writer constructs his/her argument, how that argument succeeds, how it fails, what the implications of the argument are, including not only are they applaudable insights, but the terrible dangers implicit (or explicit) in each. In an effort to hone your engagement with these texts, you will learn to recognize and deploy what are called “the rhetorical appeals”. You will be introduced to the three kinds of appeals we see in text—the logical appeal (logos), the ethical appeal (ethos), and the emotional appeal (pathos). As such, for your first paper, you will “read” one of these texts (of your choice from the list below) examining how one or more of the appeals work in that text in regards to the writer’s argument.
To explain, you’ll pick a text you’d like to explore, choose an appeal you think is used in some interesting/effective/dangerous way in the text, and examine how that appeal is used. Your purpose is up to you. There are many possibilities—many which we’ll at least begin to explore in our discussions.
Requirements:
3-full pages
MLA
Reading List:
NH: Rushdy, “Exquisite Corpse”
TSIS: Goldsmith, “Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet”
TSIS: Graff, “Hidden Intellectualism