Nice work today on considering a definition of "multimodality" for writing and editing in the public sphere, and starting to apply it to various genres! We will take up the concept and those genres again, but in the meantime, please feel free to send your questions about the <Public Argument> project my way. I am happy to answer any and all of them. (Reminder: the full assignment sheet is in BB.)
The Pinepoint project is linked <here> for your future interest, with some additional context found <here>, and the original commemorative website built by Richard <here> (the site that provided much of the content for the filmmakers' documentary).
Finally, for Tuesday's discussion, please read (thoroughly) the genre samples by Linzey, Lung, and Savio. We will grid again, similar to what we did in the first sphere, and I will probably also include Bullard and Obama in that grid, since we didn't get to finish our discussion of them. So, Tuesday will be a "gridding the public argument genre" day.
I offer you these questions in advance if it helps you to read the genres:
The Pinepoint project is linked <here> for your future interest, with some additional context found <here>, and the original commemorative website built by Richard <here> (the site that provided much of the content for the filmmakers' documentary).
Finally, for Tuesday's discussion, please read (thoroughly) the genre samples by Linzey, Lung, and Savio. We will grid again, similar to what we did in the first sphere, and I will probably also include Bullard and Obama in that grid, since we didn't get to finish our discussion of them. So, Tuesday will be a "gridding the public argument genre" day.
I offer you these questions in advance if it helps you to read the genres:
- places where you see conflict and perspective most clearly (esp. where you notice the conflict at one of Kaufer's 5 levels)
- places where you think you are either included or excluded as a reader
- places where you are convinced (as a believing audience) or not convinced (as a skeptical audience)
- places where one or more "ideographs" could be unpacked
- appeals to time (one of Killingsworth's four types)
- appeals to place
- demonstration of rhetorical velocity
- alternate ways that the argument might be communicated.
Please also bring Style and WWC (as usual) because I'm going to explicitly invite us to revisit Williams/Colomb's lesson on "Ethics of Style," and we might want to use Kessler and MacDonald's grammar section in the back of the handbook. In fact, those might occupy the first spaces in our grid.
Added on 2/26 for synthesis activity: Select one of the authors whose argument you analyzed in detail. What kind(s) of relationships do they construct between humans and their environment (where "environment" could be moral, physical, temporal, or spatial)? How do they promote empathy or shared identification, if they do? How does their argument avoid simplification, promote complexity, or otherwise make complex what has often been seen as a simple stalemate of perspectives?
Looking forward to it,
-Prof. Graban
