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Read in Mirror!
The professor's blog for English 4304, the Writing and Culture Capstone Course for English Majors, Spring 2008. The topic for this capstone course is "Rhetoric(s) of Information, Reading, and Writing in a Digital World."
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Dr. Lilly
Read in Mirror!
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2008
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02/17 - 02/24
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- ALT Chapters on Speaker and Text
- Flynn on "Composing as a Woman"
- Feminist Criticism
- Next Week in Dr. Rollins' Class
- Bush Video Compilation
- Your midterm will be "open-book."
- Order for Thursday
- ALT Overview, Context, Audience (Catherine)
- Continental Criticism (Patrick)
- Rhetoric is BAAA-AK (Lillian H)
- Political Criticism (Eagleton) by Leah C
- Doing Rhetorical Criticism (Amanda D)
- The Nature of Rhetorical Criticism (Lacey)
- ► 02/10 - 02/17 (7)
- ► 02/03 - 02/10 (3)
- ► 01/27 - 02/03 (7)
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- ► 01/13 - 01/20 (4)
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2007
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- ► 12/30 - 01/06 (1)
3 comments:
Chpt.3 The Speaker
& Chpt.4 The Text
Defining Ethos:
Ethos is the perception the audience has of the speaker.
"Knowing" any person is extremely
hard.
Role playing
-All of us present different pictures of ourselves to different people in different circumstances.
-The roles we play, the settings in which we find ourselves, the expectations of others, our own motives-all contribute to the extremely complex whole that makes up the "real" person.
-When we communicate with others, most of us tend to manipulate, consciously or unconsciously, the aspects of ourselves that we wish others not to see, and those who communicate with us form impressions, intended or unintended, of who we are.
Context and Ethos:
Certain events and trends that give rise to rhetoric in the first place may affect attitudes towards speakers.
-The Watergate scandal
Social and cultural elements within a context also can bear on ethos.
-potential listeners may not know the speaker, they may associate him or her with a group or cause that suggest a network of values.
The Speaker's reputation:
If a speaker is identified in a particular way with a particular issue, he or she takes on a generalized reputation that audiences may associate with other individuals who also identified the same way with the same or similar issue.
Matters in which the audience is likely to have information is the speaker's:
issue orientation
public character
intelligence and experience
Audience Priorities
Authority can be spread and misplaced.
Ethos and the Message
It is essential that the critic search for and explicate the ways in which the speaker both uses and creates ethos in his or her speech.
The text of the speech itself can reveal the use of existing ethos as a persuasive device.
The critic searches for the speaker's attempt to promote identification by discovering:
1. the ways in which the speaker associate himself or his position with an audience's values, and conversely, pictures he opposition as linked to positions upon which an audience looks unfavorably
2. the ways in which the speaker refutes or minimizes unfavorable aspects of his or her ethos
3. the extent to which the speaker capitalizes on the positive ethos of those with whom the audience does identify
4. the ways in which the speaker shows a grasp of the issues that are most important to the audience and a command of facts, information, and interpretation of those issues.
5. the ways in which the speaker seeks to convince audience members that she understands their problems and share their aspirations and concerns
6. the ways in which the speaker reveals his motivations in order to counter impression of self- interest
Ethos and Divergent Audiences
No matter what position the critic takes, the fact remains that he or she must grapple with the complexities of ethos, describing and explaining the many facets of the problem as it is faced-or ignored-by the speaker
The Speaker in Action: Assessing Delivery
The crucial point is that although delivery does not seem to influence audience perceptions, it does not seem to be critical determinant of the audience perception in and of itself.
Chapter 4: The Text
The Whole and Its Parts
The text is the heart of the critic's work
The text of a speech is an organic whole
Analytical categories
o Argument
-Data
-Claim
-Warrant
-Backing
-Reservation
-Qualifier
o Structure
o Style
-topical
-cause-to-effect
-problem -solution
-climatic
-tone
-level of generality
-level of complexity
-diction
o Interpretation
* the process of inferring how the discourse works
o Judgment
Supporting Materials:
-example
-definition
-analogy
-testimony
-statistical data
-scientific results
related links
(Watergate Scandal)
http://www.watergate.info/
(Ethical Appeal: Ethos)
http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/comp1/ethos.htm
I believe that ethos is the foundation of communication. I believe that it controls everything we say and do in our society, blending and throwing our views, opinions and beliefs like wind plays with leaves. Focusing on context and ethos,an event besides the Watergate scandal that best exemplifies rise to rhetoric and ethos is the horrific occurrences of 9/11/01. I am not just stating this because I am a New Yorker, I believe this because I have been all over the country and have heard and read a wide range of ethos and rhetoric concerning this subject personally more than any other subject. Not to mention, people all over the world have different levels of ethos of the events on that day. This corresponds more with context and ethos concerning how social and cultural ingredients within a context have an affect on ethos.
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