We’ll begin by looking at Myles’ draft together. If anyone else wants to share with the class, we’ll take a look at other projects from our classmates, too.
You’ll then move into pairs to peer review each other’s drafts.
Complete your Persuasion Projects! The final project is due to your WordPress site or via email to me by December 16!
The following students will be offering their projects as in-class presentations:
We are meeting for face-to-face conferences this week, instead of meeting as a class.
Arrive ON TIME to Mason 122 for your scheduled conference with me, so we can discuss your progress on the Persuasion Project.
You can confirm your conference time here.
Today, you’ll move around our room, reading our “gallery” and offering feedback to your fellow rhetors. Your feedback should move the rhetor forward in their Persuasion Project, so while a comment like “interesting” is nice, it’s not super helpful in terms of understanding possible next steps. Here are examples of ways to construct productive feedback:
We’ll spend a couple minutes debriefing and reflecting on what happened during the gallery walk.
We’ll use this document to sign-up for one-to-one progress conferences with me for Nov. 11-13.
Review Chapter 8 on Extrinsic Proofs and start drafting ways you will gather extrinsic proofs through testimonials, interview data, or survey data.
Extrinsic proof, in short, is empirical evidence gathered by doing primary research (Crowley and Hawhee 200). So quantitative data (like statistics generated from surveys), artifacts, and first-hand accounts of events (like spoken, video, and audio testimonies) are all considered extrinsic proofs. The most important thing to keep in my when using extrinsic proofs is to be aware of the trustworthiness of your sources and to evaluate extrinsic evidence carefully.
Crowley and Hawhee offer the following process for evaluating extrinsic sources (208):
Let’s take a look together at the following examples of testimony, or first-hand accounts of an experience that is considered an extrinsic source.
What is happening in each video? How are these examples of The Guardian evaluating their extrinsic proofs?
Work on your Midterm and think about what you want to work on for The Persuasion Project.
I will not be assigning much writing homework between now and our midterm; instead, I will be giving points for class attendance and participation for in-class writing and activities. Our in-class work next week will be intended to help you make strides on The Persuasion Project. So, if you miss class between now and October 30th, you risk missing in-class writing points!
A mere week has gone by since we’ve seen each other, but it still feels like a long time since we’ve sat together in Davison 017. Today, we’ll review where we’ve been and look ahead to where we’re going. Your midterm is due in a week and a half, and I want to ensure that I’ve prepared you to succeed. I’ll hand out a hardcopy of this Midterm Review sheet to work on together in class.
We will also take some time to look at my draft of your final assignment, The Persuasion Project.
READ Chapter 8 “Extrinsic Proofs: Arguments Waiting to be Used” (Crowley and Hawhee 200-221)
NOTE: I mentioned last class that you’d have until today to make up any late blog posts. You’ll see in Blackboard that I’ve graded all material you’ve handed in. If you want to make anything up, you must do so BY TONIGHT, Mon 10/21. If you have questions or concerns, please email me at andrea.r.efthymiou@hofstra.edu. I’m happy to meet with you to discuss our assignments and your progress in the course.
Pathos, in the simplest sense, is an appeal to emotion. When rhetors appeal to pathos, they are arousing emotions in their audience in an effort to be persuasive. Like appeals to ethos, pathetic appeals can affect an audience’s disposition towards a rhetor and to that rhetor’s purpose. “Aristotle realized that emotions are communal in the sense that they are usually excited by our relations with other people” (Crowley & Hawhee 175). Therefore, an accomplished rhetor will know the emotional state of their audience.
WARNING: The upcoming link directs to narratives of reporting sexual assault.
We’ll look together at a vignette from a feature story in a recent issue of New York Magazine titled “Was It Worth It?” that presents victims reflections of disclosing cases of sexual assault. Together, we’ll read Phil Saviano’s first-person account of the personal cost of coming forward as a victim of sexual assault to identify how Saviano uses pathos in his piece.
I’d like us to think together through some non-written ways (music, images, a combination of text and image) rhetors appeal to pathos.
IF WE HAVE TIME, WE’LL WORK ON OUR ETHOS HOMEWORK IN CLASS!
INVENTING ETHOS! One way that the Ancient Greeks practiced ethopoeia was through inventing dialogue, mannerisms, and descriptions, as if composing a play, between different characters. Write a brief play where you represent the voices, language, and characteristics of two different public figures. Maybe you want Trump to talk to Obama, or Kim to chat with Kanye, or Party-Demi to talk to Awards-Show-Demi. Pick any two public figures (alive or deceased) and practice ethopoeia by writing a play where they’re in dialogue. Your play can be related to the issue you’ve been working on or not!
Successful ethopoeia will take time and offer enough details for me, as your audience, to understand your characters in some way. Consider using PATHETIC APPEALS to make your characters even more persuasive.
Post your play as Blog Post 7 by Wed, Oct. 16.
READ Chapter 8 “Extrinsic Proofs: Arguments Waiting to be Used” (Crowley and Hawhee 200-221)
Work Cited
Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th ed., Pearson Education, 2012.
Your homework for Monday 9/9 is to OBTAIN OUR TEXTBOOK, Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students by Crowley & Hawhee, and to create your own blog.
When you sign-up at WordPress, you will be asked to create a title for your blog and web address (or URL). Don’t panic over these initial steps. You can always make changes later. The important thing is to register at WordPress and begin drafting a site where you will compose for this course.
Add a photo header! Compose an About page! For now, just play. We’ll come back to design elements by next class to develop your site.
Email your WordPress URL to me at andrea.r.efthymiou@hofstra.edu so I can include it on our BlogRoll.
Rhetoric 005 | History of Rhetoric | Fall 2019 