We looked at a number of advertisements today in order to wrap our heads around this “rhetoric” concept. Here’s the slideshow:

We asked a few questions of each piece:

• What does the author want the audience to do/believe?
• How does the author help the audience trust him or her?
• How does the author help the audience to care?

These questions correlate nicely with the three rhetorical appeals we discussed later:

• Logos: an author’s appeal to the audience’s sense of reasonableness or logic
• Ethos: an author’s appeal to the audience’s trust/sense of credibility
• Pathos: an author’s appeal to the audience’s emotions or desires

We’ll discuss these at length throughout this session. If you come across an excellent argument, send me a link in the comments or via email. If you’re looking for written arguments (we’ll begin discussing these next week), here’s a list of places to look.

Unfortunately Google Reader is no longer around, but you can find a list of good alternatives here. I use Feedly, but find one that suits your needs.

For your enjoyment, David Tennant plays Hamlet, Patrick Stewart is Claudius. Let me know what you think!

Watch Hamlet on PBS. See more from Great Performances.

The first casualty of the craziness this session was this website, but as we all rise this too will.

We looked at a number of schemes and tropes today from The Forest of Rhetoric as many of you had questions about figurative language and syntax. The latter is often the most difficult for my students to notice, as it can seem quite abstract. Play through the overview of schemes and tropes for a better understanding of how an author can use structure and figurative language to make his or her argument more appealing.

I also printed your grades from the website to give each of you a better look at what you should focus on in your final analyses. Remember that you can turn in as many as you’d like before the end of the session.

• President Obama’s Nobel lecture
• President Obama’s Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Candidate Romney’s speech at the Clinton Global Initiative (note the “bounce” joke at the opening! What’s he doing there?)

[Couldn’t find transcript, so here’s video of President Obama’s speech.]

…probably enough of the Franken[portmanteaux], yes?

Just a quick overview of our process from start to finish:

1. Read and journal
2. Find patterns and group quotations underneath
3. Make meaning of these patterns
4. Find how these patterns connect with one another
5. Compose thesis
6. Polish outline, ensuring that each point (from thesis to the most basic) is an argument and all arguments are supported with quotations or paraphrasing
7. Begin rough draft

Here’s a diagram of our process showing how each step contributes to the bottom-up creation of your paper:

We’ve set tentative deadlines as follows:

• Outlines should be wrapped by Tuesday/Wednesday of this week
• Final drafts on Monday of next

If you can, please compose your outline and paper in Google Docs, as you can share the live document with me for questions/editing.