1. Chapter 1
Aristotle (4th century BCE) - rhetoric is the ability to see the available means of persuasion in any given situation. (developed to help free men represent themselves in court) 1. rhetoric is any verbal, visual, or multimedia text that aims to persuade a specific audience in a certain place and time. 2. rhetoric as the strategies people use to convey ideas 3. “Rhetoric is the art, practice, and study of human communication.” Andrea Lunsford

2. Analyzing Rhetorical Texts
1. How does it target a specific audience? 2. How has it been composed by a specific author? 3. How does it convey a particular argument. This dynamic relationship is called the rhetorical situation.

3. Writing Rhetorical Texts
As a writer, when you compose persuasive texts, you need to determine which strategies will work to convince your audience in a particular situation. There are many different choices to consider, and that is why rhetoric is both a dynamic and a practical art. In the following rhetorical situations, which strategies would be most persuasive?

4. Exigence
What news article or event on campus or tweet has caused you to want to respond strongly? Why did you want to respond? exigence—the urgent demand that writers feel to respond to a situation, his or her motive for writing.

5. Exigencies of a Situation
exigencies of a situation: the demands put on a writer to respond immediately and urgently in the attempt to take action or raise a concern about a specific problem or issue. Think about tweets sent out in response to the Superbowl, a flash of celebrity gossip, a political situation, or a crisis on campus. These are all contemporary instances of exigency.

6. Rhetorical Exigencies
Exigency happens when change is possible: “An exigence is rhetorical when it is capable of positive modification and when positive modification requires discourse or can be assisted by discourse.” Lloyd Bitzer rhetorical exigency exists when there is the possibility that discourse (i.e., forms of communication) can effect change.

7. Rhetorical Exigencies
Which of the following can potentially be modified through discourse or language? Why or why not? Earthquakes in California A new tax code Restrictions on vaping Cancer Fines for skateboarding on campus

8. Author’s Purpose
Understanding exigence can help us likewise understand an author’s purpose. Purpose can be internal and emotional or objective. 3 clear types of purposes for communication: to entertain to inform or explain to persuade

9. Author’s Purpose
3 less obvious purposes for communication: to describe to define to influence to call to action By examining authors’ motives or purposes—what they wanted to accomplish with the text—we can get a better understanding of the rhetorical choices they made in communicating with their audiences.

10. Rhetoric as Motivator
Rhetoric, since Aristotle, has been linked to action. Rhetoric can motivate audiences to produce particular outcomes. “Rhetoric is a mode of altering reality […] by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.” Lloyd Bitzer

11. Rhetoric as Visual
Learning strategies for analyzing texts develops critical literacy—a life skill that entails knowing how to read, analyze, understand, and even create texts that function as powerful arguments about culture and the world around us. In our twenty-first century world, arguments move across media and genres—whether in a book chapter, a podcast, a blog post, a video, or comic.

12. Rhetoric as Visual
Is it true that the most powerful arguments are those that combine word and image, the verbal and the visual? Why do multimedia texts often have greater persuasiveness and reach a broader audience than words alone?

13. Rhetoric as Visual
when reading visual texts: look for the vivid details (in language might include repetition of phrases/words) concrete metaphors emotional phrases characterization of others together act as what Aristotle would call “available means of persuasion”

14. Pre-reading Work
With your partners, find information on the phrase “Je suis Charlie” Who or what is Charlie Hebdo?

15. Reading & Analyzing
As you read the article, add your own marks on points that you find provocative or interesting. Use the strategies of critical literacy that we’ve been developing throughout this chapter and ask yourself: ■ Who is the main audience? ■ How does David Horsey position himself as author? ■ What is his purpose or motive in response to the exigency of the situation? ■ Where and what is his argument? ■ What rhetorical strategies does Horsey use to persuade the audience? ■ What is your response to the text?

16. 1.1 How to Form Questions Your questions can be based on
headings, key words, pictures, or graphics in the chapter.
comparisons to other writers on the same subject.
your own personal experience.

17. 1.1 Write while Reading Writing while reading is critical because
it helps you
remember what you read.
check your comprehension.
maintain concentration.

18. 1.1 Write while Reading Use any or all of these writing strategies:
Underline key words in sentences.
Use boxes, stars, and circles to highlight key names and dates.
Take marginal notes, jotting down central points.
Mark important passages with double bars, stars, or asterisks.
Identify, perhaps with a “P, ” ideas for papers.

19. 1.1 Step 4: Recall after Completing a Chapter Section
Recalling right after reading can be done in
a number of ways. You can
mentally recite the general point and a few
details.
2. write out answers to questions you posed
during your survey.
3. cover up and try to recall parts of your
outline.

20. 1.1 Step 4: Recall after Completing a reading section
You can also
1. make rough diagrams or drawings.
2. ask a classmate to quiz you on the material.
3. use any other method you can think of to
see how much you remember.

21. A Word to the Wise
The rate of forgetting is fastest right after you finish reading. Recalling by repeating what you just read in your own words slows down the rate of forgetting so you forget less.

22. Another Word to the Wise
As soon as you start a study session,
identify how many pages you plan to read. This is particularly important if you are reading a long chapter. Chopping the chapter into several ten- or fifteen-page assignments will make it seem more manageable, and you won’t give up on it.

23. 1.1 The Goals of the First Review
Reviewing right after you complete the assignment
helps anchor new information in your memory.
gives you a sense of what passages might need a second reading.
lets you focus more on the overall objective, or point, of the material

24. 1.1 Methods of Review
Look at all the major headings and try to recall the general point introduced.
Work with a friend who asks you questions about the headings.
Use the headings to make an outline and write down what you remember about each one.

25. 1.1 Create Diagrams that Highlight Relationships Among Parts of the Chapter
The unfair taxation imposed by the British
The rise of the merchant middle class in the colonies
The forced quartering of British soldiers in American homes and inns
Three central factors aroused American fury against British rule and contributed to the Revolutionary War

26. Staying Focused is Essential
None of the techniques for mastering your textbooks will be effective if , while studying, you are texting and checking your cell, RSS feed, or Twitter. Here’s what one of perhaps twenty studies has to say on the subject of multi-tasking. And for the record, they all say pretty much the same thing:

27. Multi-Tasking and Studying Don’t Mix
According to a group of Stanford University researchers, multi-taskers are “suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them.” The Stanford researchers say that the more people multi-task, the more they lose the ability to separate the significant from the insignificant. The results of the study are currently available at stanford study.
Copyright Laraine Flemming 2009
Copyright Laraine Flemming 2009

28. 1.3 Reading Rate and Reading Flexibility
Make it a point to vary your reading
rate depending on
the difficulty of the material.
your level of familiarity with the author’s ideas.
your purpose in reading.

29. A Word to the Wise It might surprise you to hear that reading too
slowly can be as ineffective as reading too quickly, in part because reading the assignment can take so long, it becomes agonizing. Slow your rate way down only when you feel completely lost. Otherwise push yourself to keep going at around words per minute. If a passage doesn’t seem completely clear, mark it for re-reading (RR). And make sure you really do re-read.

30. 1.4 Using the World Wide Web for Background Knowledge
The more you know about a subject, the easier it is to comprehend what you read. When you are starting a chapter dealing with an unfamiliar topic, use the Web to get some basic back- ground knowledge.