CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold1 Class 18 Midterm discussion Writing for your audience Assign Midterm exam—10/25 Term paper approach—11/1
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold2 Writing for Your Audience
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold3 Logos, Ethos, Pathos Logos Logical structure of reasons and evidence in an argument; make argument internally consistent and logical; find best reasons, support them with best evidence Ethos Audience’s confidence in the writer’s credibility and trustworthiness; present self effectively; enhance credibility Pathos Audience’s sympathies---both real and imagined; make reader open to message; appeal to reader’s values and interests
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold4 Creating Effective Ethos Be knowledgeable about your issue Use examples, personal experience, statistics, empirical data, etc. Be fair Fairness to alternative views Understand and emphasize with other points of view Build a bridge to your audience Ground argument in shared values and assumptions
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold5 Creating Effective Pathos Use concrete language Specific details add interest Use specific examples and illustrations Provide evidence; give presence and emotion Use narratives Grabs attention and leads to claim Choose words, metaphors, and analogies with appropriate connotations
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold6 Meatrix: Does it create effective Ethos? Knowledgeable about issue Fair Bridge built to audience Pathos? Concrete language Specific examples and illustration Narratives Words, metaphors, and analogies with appropriate connotations
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold7 Accommodating Your Audience 1.One-sided versus multi-sided arguments 2.Understanding your audience 3.Treating different views a.Appealing to a supportive audience b.Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience c.Appealing to a resistant audience
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold8 One-sided versus Multisided Arguments Types of arguments One-sided… Multisided… Research suggests when to use each
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold9 Understanding Your Audience (1) Book suggests placing audience on scale May need to “invent” your audience strongly supportive strongly opposed
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold10 Understanding Your Audience (2) Try to assess what audience knows Audience for term paper?? Other examples of audiences for whom you may write??? Determine level of background to give Too little leads to?? Too much leads to?? Determine level of formality Use of “I” or “we” or another actor Use of active or passive voice Understanding audience may take more time than researching topic!!
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold11 Understanding Your Audience (3) Understanding audience is problem for professional rhetoricians (e.g., politicians, advertising executives, researchers) So people since the time of the Sophists have developed a variety of “tricks” to use for assessing and understanding the audience
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold12 Understanding Your Audience (4) Most of the time, you know the audience because you’re part of the audience If you’re part of the audience, what will you know about them? Examples?? If not part of audience, don’t consider individuals, but consider an abstraction of the audience—what they know, what they expect, how they will react Examples??
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold13 Understanding Your Audience (5) Understand discourse conventions Flow of words for that interpretive community who somehow set the rules How can you find out about discourse conventions? What are some examples of interpretive communities and their discourse conventions?
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold14 Treating Different Views (1) Appealing to a supportive audience What approach should you use? What are some examples? Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience What approach should you use?
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold15 Treating Different Views (2) Appealing to a supportive audience What approach should you use? What are some examples? Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience What approach should you use? Toulmin argument: claim reason (grounds to support reason) warrant (backing to support warrant)
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold16 Treating Different Views (3) Rebutting evidence—how?
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold17 Treating Different Views (4) Appealing to a resistant audience Delayed thesis Rogerian
CS 4001Mary Jean Harrold18 Discussion in Groups of 5 Watch the MeatrixMeatrix 1.What is the thesis of the Meatrix? 2.Does this argument create effective ethos? If so, how? Be specific. 3.Does this argument create effective pathos? If so, how? Be specific. 4.What type of audience does it target? Explain? 5.Suppose the audience is resistant, give an outline of either a delayed-thesis or Rogerian argument for the same thesis