Project 1 - Rhetoric That Moves Us

The first project of English 1J focuses on how affect or emotion plays a critical role in environmental rhetoric, or for that matter in any type of rhetoric. In this handout more details about the project, deadlines, and point distribution are provided.

This is a working document. I will be adding content to it and/or tweaking the existing content, as my thought evolves on these assignments and as our discussion on rhetoric becomes more clarifying for me. The idea is to make the assignment expectations clearer to you and more relevant to the course.

Table of Contents

Project Description

The first major writing assignment will be a synthesizing and rhetorical analysis essay with a primary focus on how emotion or affect plays a significant role in persuasion. The focus on emotion or affect is strategic in this case. Since in your academic or professional (or primarily Western) understanding of persuasion rationality and “objectivity” are prioritized and emotion/subjectivity is constantly devalued, you’ll take a deliberate approach to reconfigure that thinking. The project is envisioned like this:

  • You’ll identify a piece of text in any genre or in any mode of communication that moves you. Note the critical word “move.”
  • You’ll do a rhetorical and close analysis of that piece of text and try to probe and understand why that text moves you and how emotion works as a rhetorical device to attain the text’s goals
  • You must employ in your analysis the rhetorical concepts you’ve learned in our course readings, and these concepts will focus on the intersections of rhetoric, emotion, and climate activism. Also, in your analysis, you’ll synthesize the concepts from our course readings with your own research. Even though our course readings will be primarily focused on climate activism and ecological consciousness, you can adapt the concepts to the particular text and rhetorical context you’ll analyze.
  • Finally, you’ll use ArcGIS StoryMaps to compose your essay. The expectation is that you’ll leverage the multimodal, immersive, and interactive narrative capabilities of the ArcGIS StoryMaps to make your rhetorical analysis a unique analytical experience.

Expectations of the Project

  • The length of the analysis should be 1200 words or more.
  • You will be expected to do close rhetorical reading of the text. What do I mean by it? By “close reading” I mean engaging in deep and sustained analysis of a minute detail of your chosen text. For example, if you choose a social media post to analyze and you find that the post makes dynamic use of question marks to communicate anger and make an insightful argument. Can you then analyze for 300–500 words why the author is using question marks as a rhetorical strategy and how they are able to develop a persuasive strategy around this punctuation mark? And as you carry out this sort of analysis, can you build your argument and back up your claim by integrating other sources?

Know that since “close reading” is the primary emphasis of this project, I’ll push you to limit your analysis to only 2–3 details of your text. It might seem daunting to compose an extensive analysis on one minor detail like a punctuation mark, color scheme, intonation, or anaphora, but this is an opportunity to see “analysis” as a way to deeply engage with a text, draw new insights, and rely on outside sources to expand your understanding on a rhetorical concept.

  • When incorporating sources in your analysis, you are expected to make use of source integration moves such as paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesis, and/or direct quotations. Ensure that you’re integrating these sources into your writing in an organic and effective manner.
  • When integrating a source, you’re required to use MLA in-text citation. You’re also expected to add a MLA-style bibliography at the end of the paper.
  • You’re expected to incorporate relevant and complementary multimodal components in your analysis to make the essay an interactive and multimodal reading experience.
  • The project will proceed through the stages of a topic proposal, design outline, rough draft, peer feedback, and final draft.
  • Total grade percentage for the project will be 20%.

Why this assignment?

Before you start with this project, I should explain why I am asking you to carry out rhetorical analysis of a piece of text. How will it make you a better rhetor or persuader? In the words of rhetoric and composition scholar Drew M. Loewe, “Rhetorical analysis is worth doing because it can help you to understand the choices that rhetors (and you are a rhetor, every single day) make in their efforts to get audiences to accept some idea, as well as the consequences of those choices and what might be applied in later situations.” To elaborate on Loewe’s point:

  • Rhetoric is about the deliberate way we communicate. We make active choices in our communication to achieve a particular goal. Rhetorical analysis can make us aware of the deliberate choices we make, to what end, and why.
  • By recognizing these deliberate choices and becoming a mindful practitioner of these choices, we can be a cognizant and adaptable persuader.
  • Rhetorical analysis when coupled with close reading can help us become sharp and engaged observers.
  • Rhetorical analysis is a useful way to learn about different rhetorical concepts (like genre, audience, rhetorical appeals, exigency, affect, embodiment, etc.) and how they work in a particular text.

How to get started with the project?

  • Step #1: Choose a piece of text (a poster, a social media post, a documentary, a podcast, a newsletter, an essay, a graph, etc.) on an environmental theme that interests, excites, inspires, or moves you.
  • Step #2: Narrow the scope of your text that you plan to analyze. Meaning, depending on the text you’ve chosen, you may have to select only a small portion of the text to analyze. For example, if you’re a documentary or a movie or a long essay, then you’ve to drastically reduce the slice of the text you plan to analyze. If it’s a documentary or a movie, how about focusing on a single scene to analyze for the project? If it’s a long essay, how about focusing only on the introduction, conclusion, or a single section? If it’s a podcast, how about focusing only on 2-3 minute excerpts of the podcast? On the other hand, if your chosen post is just a tweet, an Instagram post, or a poster, then you can focus on the entire text rather than selecting a portion of it.
  • Step #3: After you have completed the Step #2, brainstorm the aspects of your text or the chosen portion of it that demonstrate a strong use of affective rhetoric, meaning strong use of emotions in persuading the audience. Whittle that list down to 2–3 details to begin your rhetorical analysis. This is where my former advice comes in: “I’ll push you to limit your analysis to only 2–3 details of your text. It might seem daunting to compose an extensive analysis on one minor detail like a punctuation mark, color scheme, intonation, or anaphora…”
  • Step #4: Conduct research on how your chosen rhetorical element acts as a rhetorical device and how emotion is leveraged through such rhetorical action. For example, if you’re planning to analyze the use of question mark in your text, then carry out research on what rhetorical roles question mark plays in general in everyday rhetoric and how affect/emotion plays a constructive role in the process. Carry similar research for other rhetorical elements you plan to analyze.
  • Step #5: Compose your essay in ArcGIS StoryMaps. To get access to Swarthmore’s instance of ArcGIS StoryMaps, follow the link and sign in with your Swarthmore credentials. Here is an introductory tutorial on getting started with ArcGIS StoryMaps. It’s important that as you compose your analysis in this application, you’re also thinking and deliberating over making your analysis more engaging, interactive, and meaningful. StoryMaps offers quite a few storytelling features that might seem overwhelming. And indeed, not all of them might be relevant for a rhetorical analysis assignment. I think depending on your text and analysis these features might be relevant: image, image gallery, video, audio, slideshow, sidecar, and embedded content. You don’t need to use all of them for your analysis. Depending on how your analysis develops, you can use one or more of these storytelling elements to make your analysis lively, organic, interactive, and complementary.

  • Step #6: Publishing and sharing your draft have a couple of options to it.

    a. To share the rough draft: at the rough draft stage, your draft is not yet ready to share with the world. You want to share it with a select few people to receive feedback. Use the Publish button at the top right and set the sharing level to Organization and select the Set group sharing to “English 1J S26 - Persuasion: Environmental Rhetoric & Action,” which is a group already created for you and you’re already a member of it. In the Set group sharing box, as you start typing “English 1J S26…” you will see the group’s name to select. Go ahead and click Publish. The screen will go through the process of publishing and once you get to the confirmation page saying “You’ve published your story”, you will see a “Copy link” icon. Copy the link and paste it to your Word or Google Doc file and upload the document to Moodle.

    b. To share the final draft: when you’re ready to share your final draft with the world, use the Publish button at the top right. Change the Set group sharing to Everyone (Public). Under the Set group sharing box, remove “English 1J S26” as the shared group by clicking the X button. And then click the Publish button at top right again. After receiving the confirmation that your work is published, copy the link using the “Copy link” icon and submit it to Moodle.

Drafting and Grade Distribution

  • Topic proposal: Propose the text you plan to analyze for project 1 by Feb 1. Follow the prompt in Moodle. Grade points will be 2%.
  • Outline: Submit an outline of your rhetorical analysis by Feb 8. There’re no points assigned for this writing task. It’s considered as work/preparation toward the rough draft, so it needs to be completed.
  • Rough Draft: Submit the first 1000 words of your rhetorical analysis by Feb 15 Rough draft carries 5% grade points.
  • Peer Feedback: In-class peer feedback will take place on Feb 17. A questionnaire will be provided in class to structure and compose your feedback. You’ll submit your peer feedback on Moodle by Feb 18. Grade points will be 3%.
  • Final Draft: Final Draft must be submitted by Feb 22. It should be an interactive and multimodal analysis of 1200 words or more. Additionally, the draft should meet the expectations of the project listed above. You can exceed the word count if needed. Grade points will be 10%.

Learning Outcomes

  • Reading Skills: What readings in the class did resonate with you the most and why? What ways were you able to engage with the readings critically? How did the readings help you as a writer, rhetor and stylist? What stylistic and rhetorical strategies did you develop through the course readings?
  • Writing Skills: What new writing skills did you learn or acquire? What new complexities and challenges did you tackle in your writing? What ways did your mental and emotional approach, voice, and style for the project vary? In what ways did you become aware of your writing process and style?
  • Rhetorical Knowledge: How did the concept of style evolve for you in this project? What roles do you think emotion, public, genre, and rhetoric play in shaping your style? Who is the audience for this genre? What sort of audience knowledge is required? What’s the purpose of this genre? How did you apply ethos, logos, and pathos to make your style more persuasive? What roles do you think context, audience, genre, culture, and emotions play in making style situation-specific?
  • Multimodal Literacy: What multimodal contents (audio, visual, etc.) did you read, research, compose, or incorporate for this project? How did the multimodal content choices enrich the style of your essay? How does style and multimodality work with each other in shaping rhetoric?

Student Questions

I expect you to have questions for me in the course for this project. I’ll populate this section with your questions and my responses.