This Is My Syllabus from the Last Time That I Taught This Course

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

This Is My Syllabus from the Last Time That I Taught This Course English A409-001 Bobet 324/x3841 Contemporary Topics: Rhetoric Office: T and Th 12:30-1:30 Katherine H. Adams [email protected] As the catalog indicates, this course examines theories of persuasion and the writing process. Requirements: l. Attendance is required. The final grade will be lowered a letter grade for each absence beyond four. 2. All papers must be completed on time. Grades will be lowered one letter for each day (not class day) that a paper is late unless you make a prior arrangement with me. 3. We will write regularly about the readings, both at home and in class. At-home entries should be typed and turned in on the class day for which they are assigned. 4. No cell phones; no Internet; no headphones: be with us in class. Textbooks: Plato, Symposium & Phaedrus, Dover Press Aristotle, The Rhetoric, Dover Press Syllabus: Aug 27 Introduction Classical Rhetoric: The Triangle Aug 29 Gorgias, Encomium of Helen, Blackboard Reading Plato, Gorgias, Blackboard Reading Sept 3 Plato, Phaedrus Sept 5 Plato, Phaedrus Sept 10 Works concerning Aspasia, RT, 56-66 Sept 12 Aristotle, The Rhetoric Sept 17 Aristotle, The Rhetoric Sept 19 Cicero, Of Oratory, RT, Blackboard Reading Sept 24 Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, Blackboard Reading Sept 26 Exam Speaker and Message Oct 1 Alexander Bain, English Composition and Rhetoric and A.S. Hill, The Principles of Rhetoric, Blackboard Reading Oct 3 Piaget's Theory of Intellectual Development, 26-68, Blackboard Reading Oct 8 Piaget's Theory of Intellectual Development, 69-91, 113-55, Blackboard Reading Oct 10 Janet Emig, The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders, Chapters 2, 3, and 4, Blackboard Reading Oct 17 Janet Emig, The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders, Chapters 5, 6, and 7, Blackboard Reading Oct 22 William Perry, Forms of Intellectual Development in College, Blackboard Reading Oct 24 Peter Elbow, Writing without Teachers, Blackboard Reading Donald Murray, Learning by Teaching, Blackboard Reading Oct 29 Frank O'Hare, Sentence Combining, handout Oct 31 Exam Message and Audience Nov 5 Paper #1 Due—Oral Reports Nov 7 Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, Blackboard Reading Nov 12 Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, Blackboard Reading Film Viewing, Triumph of the Will Franklin Roosevelt, Declaration of War, handout Nov 14 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Knowledge, RT, Blackboard Reading Nov 19 Jacques Derrida, Signature, Event, Context, Blackboard Reading Nov 21 Mikhail Bakhtin, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Blackboard Reading Nov 26 Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Message, 1-160, on reserve Paul Levinson, “The Song of the Alphabet in Cyberspace,” Digital McLuhan, Blackboard Reading Dec 3 Viewing of Richard Nixon’s Checker's speech Study of speech text, Blackboard Reading Obama’s Speeches and Political Web Sites Dec 5 Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa and A Woman Mistress, Blackboard Reading Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution," Blackboard Reading Deborah Tannen, from Gender and Discourse, Blackboard Reading Final Exam: Friday, May 6, 9:00-11:00 Paper #2 Due—Oral Report Assignments and Grading: In-Class and At-Home Writing 30% Paper One and Oral Presentation 20% Paper Two and Oral Presentation 20% First Exam 10% Second Exam 10% Final Exam 10% .
Recommended publications
  • How We Became Legion: Burke's Identification and Anonymous By
    How We Became Legion: Burke's Identification and Anonymous by Débora Cristina Ramos Antunes da Silva A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfilment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in English - Rhetoric and Communication Design Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2013 © Débora Cristina Ramos Antunes da Silva 2013 I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract This thesis presents a study of how identification, according to Kenneth Burke's theory, can be observed in the media-related practices promoted by the cyber-activist collective Anonymous. Identification is the capacity of community-building through the use of shared interests. Burke affirms that, as human beings are essentially social, identification is the very aim of any human interaction. Cyber-activism deeply relies on this capacity to promote and legitimise its campaigns. In the case of Anonymous, the collective became extremely popular and is now a frequent presence even in street protests, usually organised online, around the world. Here, I argue that this power was possible through the use of identification, which helped attract a large number of individuals to the collective. Anonymous was particularly skilled in its capacity to create an ideology for each campaign, which worked well to set up a perfect enemy who should be fought against by any people, despite their demographic or social status. Other forms of identification were also present and important.
    [Show full text]
  • The Machine-Gun Question: an Example of Conv'ersational Style *
    Journal of Pragmatics 5 (1981) 383 ·~-3 97 383 North-Holland Publishing COlnpany THE MACHINE-GUN QUESTION: AN EXAMPLE OF CONV'ERSATIONAL STYLE * DEBORAH TANNEN Scholars in many disciplines have written about style, a tenn Hymes (1974) aptly calls "protean". In a paper originally published in 1927, Sapir includes style as one of five levels of speech contributing "'to judgments of personality, defining it as "an everyday facet of speech that characterizes both the social group and the individual" (1958:542). Robin Lakoff (1979) follows Sapir in identifying speech style with what is popularly perceived as "personality". Ervin-Tripp (1972) places the study of style in the framework of theoretical linguistics. She discusses use of the term by Hymes, Geertz, and Labov, and suggests that linguistic choices are made on two levels. Syntagmatic relations, following rules of co-occurrence, result in idt1ntifiable styles. Paradigmatic relations, following rules of alternation, result in choices among styles and make possible style..switching, on the model of code..switching. Hymes (1974) builds on this work, noting that a speech community is comprised of a set of styles, and asserting that he uses the term in "the root sense of a way or n10de of doing something". Thus speech styles are simply "ways of speaking". He terms styles associated with specific situations registers, thus accounting for what is often thought of as formal vs. informal speech. The sense in which I shall use style is perhaps closest to Hymes' term varieties: "major speech styles associated with social groups". My use of style refers as well to no more nor less than a way of doing something.
    [Show full text]
  • Indirectness in Discourse: What Does It Do in Conversation?
    Intercultural Communication Studies III:1 1993 Sanae Tsuda Indirectness in Discourse: What Does It Do in Conversation? Sanae Tsuda Tokaigakuen Women's College Introduction This paper tries to explore the various aspects of indirectness in conversational discourse. In the beginning, the theoretical frameworks for the analysis of indirectness are explored by examining Grice's theory of conversational implicature and cooperative principles, Ervin Goffman's theory of face, the application of the idea of face to politeness by Brown and Levinson, and Deborah Tannen's theory of conversational style of message and metamessage. Secondly, different functions of indirectness in conversational interaction will be explored in the light of these analyses. In particular, avoidance of confrontation, manipulation of information, joking, and understatement will be examined as manifestations of violations of Grice's cooperative principles. Cultural differences of indirectness will also be explored. I. Theoretical Frameworks for Indirectness in Conversation 1. Conversational Implicature According to Grice (1975), conversational implicature plays an important role in our personal interactions. In conversation, we usually understand what others are saying even when people do not express their intentions straightforwardly. Grice provides a theory which explains how we correctly interpret what others are implying by universal conventions in human interaction which are called cooperative principles. These 63 Intercultural Communication Studies III:1 1993 Sanae
    [Show full text]
  • The Handbook of Discourse Analysis
    The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics This outstanding multi-volume series covers all the major subdisciplines within linguistics today and, when complete, will offer a comprehensive survey of linguistics as a whole. Published Works: The Handbook of Child Language Edited by Paul Fletcher and Brian MacWhinney The Handbook of Phonological Theory Edited by John Goldsmith The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory Edited by Shalom Lappin The Handbook of Sociolinguistics Edited by Florian Coulmas The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences Edited by William Hardcastle and John Laver The Handbook of Morphology Edited by Andrew Spencer and Arnold Zwicky The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics Edited by Natsuko Tsujimura The Handbook of Linguistics Edited by Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory Edited by Mark Baltin and Chris Collins The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton The Handbook of Variation and Change Edited by J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton Copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001 First published 2001 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Blackwell Publishers Inc. 350 Main Street Malden, Massachusetts 02148 USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 1JF UK All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethnicity As Conversational Style* (-
    ,/ Indirectness in Discourse: Ethnicity as Conversational Style* (- ..... ~... "~ tJ _ i S CO u rs..€ i race$<"" t ~ ~'. ~ ~ ~ 9 ~ u _ t'J 1- '? - I." 9 / • f ./ "' <::---"--. ~o /-. f ~ l DEBORAH TANNEN Georg~town University This paper focuses on indirectness in discourse 85 a feature of convcfl\ational style. Reported researcb emphasizes social differences in elpcctations ofindirectness in the contexl ofconver­ Alion between married partners. To discover patterns of interpretation, findings are drawn from (I) interviews with Greeks and Americans about their interactional experience and (2) a pilot study consisting of a ques­ tionnaire based on • conversation reported in (I) and including (a) paraphra~ choices (b) short answers and (c) open-ended interview/discussions with respondenls. Resuhs suggest that Greeks lie more likely 10 expect indirectness in the context pre~cnled, and IhaC Greck­ Americans who may not speak Greek bave retained the innuence of Greek communicalive strategies. Discussion of differences in interpretive strategies focuses on I) the discourse function of questions and 2) the significance of ellipsis, yielding a br~v;ly efftct. associated for Greeks with an ~nlhusUum constraint. 1"heoraical implicationS include an aUernalive 10 Bems(ein~5 hypothc~i5 about restricted and daborated codes, such that restriction and elabor3liun are nOl monolithic. Rather. groups differ with respect to which contexts, channels, and cues require elaboration. I once began a paper on misunderstandings due to differences in conversational style by referring to the following experience. While I was staying with a fa":lily on the island ofCrete, no maUer how early I awoke, nlY hostcs~ nlanagcd (0 have a plate of scrambled eggs waiting on the table for me by the (hnc I was up and dressed; and at dinner every evening, dessert included a pile of purple seeded grapes.
    [Show full text]
  • Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language by Debra Hawhee
    English Faculty Works English Winter 2012 Reviewed Work: Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language by Debra Hawhee Steven J. Mailloux Loyola Marymount University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/engl_fac Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Mailloux, Steven. "Reviewed Work: Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language by Debra Hawhee." Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, vol. 30, no. 1, 2012, pp. 94–97. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Reviews Debra Hawhee, Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009. 215 pp. ISBN 978-1-57003-809-9 “There are only bodies and languages.” Alain Badiou’s proposition at the beginning of Logics of Worlds neatly sums up the rhetorical theory of Kenneth Burke as elaborated by Debra Hawhee in Moving Bodies. Hawhee’s book is an excellent study of Burke’s career-long preoccupation with hu- mans as “bodies that learn language.” Hawhee selectively tracks this pre- occupation from Burke’s earliest fiction through his engagements with bod- ily mysticism, drug research, endocrinology, constitutional medicine, and gesture-speech evolution to his final recapitulations organized around the opposition between nonsymbolic motion and symbolic action.
    [Show full text]
  • Conversational Strategy and Metastrategy in a Pragmatic Theory: the Example of Scenes from a Marriage*
    Conversational strategy and metastrategy in a pragmatic theory: The example of Scenes from a Marriage* ROBIN TOLMACH LAKOFF and DEBORAH TANNEN The question of artistic verisimilitude - the relationship between the representation and the reality - is one of the more intriguing issues in a theory of aesthetics. Until now, linguists have largely been isolated from this area of philosophical speculation because it seemed irrelevant to our interests and impervious to our methodology. But as we get more involved in the formal analysis of naturalistic conversations - through tape recordings or transcripts - we are struck, often, in a perverse way by their apparent unnaturalness, their difficulty in being understood. Com­ pared, say, with the dialog in a play or a novel, naturalistic conversation strikes us as not what we expected, not working by preconceived pattern. We would not claim that constructed dialog represents a reality lacking in transcripts, but rather that artificial dialog may represent an internal­ ized model or schema for the production ofconversation - a competence model that speakers have access to. If, then, we are interested in discovering the ideal model ofconversational strategy, there is much to be gained by looking at artificial conversation first, to see what these general, unconsciously-adhered-to assumptions are; and later returning to natural conversation to see how they may actually be exemplified in literal use. Thus, we are not claiming that the artificially-constructed dialog we are going to discuss literally represents natural conversation, but rather that one can inspect a different level of psychological reality and validity through the use of literary data, and in this paper we will illustrate how such work might responsibly be done.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 DEBORAH TANNEN Department of Linguistics Georgetown University
    DEBORAH TANNEN Department of Linguistics Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057 202/687-5910 Education Ph.D. Linguistics. University of California, Berkeley. 1979 M.A. Linguistics. University of California, Berkeley. 1976 M.A. English Literature. Wayne State University. 1970 B.A. English Literature. Harpur College. 1966 Diploma. Hunter College High School. New York, NY. 1962 Honorary Doctorates University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 2002 St. Mary's College, St. Mary's City, MD, 1998 Weber State University, Ogden, UT, 1997 St. Michael's College, Colchester, VT, 1996 Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 1993 Professional Positions University Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, 1991-present 1989-1991: Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University 1985-1989: Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University 1979-1985: Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University Visiting 2012-2013 Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA June 1997 Faculty, 1997 Linguistic Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 1992-1993 Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA Spring 1992 Visiting Scholar, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ Fall 1991 McGraw Distinguished Lecturer, Council for the Humanities and Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 1986-1987 Research Associate, Joint Program in Applied Anthropology, Teachers College, Columbia University,
    [Show full text]
  • Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse
    Pittsburgh University School of Law Scholarship@PITT LAW Articles Faculty Publications 1994 Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse Bernard J. Hibbitts University of Pittsburgh School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles Recommended Citation Bernard J. Hibbitts, Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse, 16 Cardozo Law Review 229 (1994). Available at: https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/122 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship@PITT LAW. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@PITT LAW. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. ARTICLES MAKING SENSE OF METAPHORS: VISUALITY, AURALITY, AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF AMERICAN LEGAL DISCOURSE Bernard J.Hibbitts* TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: "AN EAR FOR AN EYE" .................... 229 I. METAPHORS IN LIFE AND LAW ........................ 233 II. "MIRRORS OF JUSTICE": VISUALITY AND LEGAL D ISCOURSE ............................................. 238 A . Seeing Culture ..................................... 238 B. Visuality and Power ................................ 264 C. Law and the Phenomenology of Sight ............. 291 III. "FAIR HEARINGS": AURALITY AND THE NEW LEGAL LANGUAGE ............................................ 300 A. Hearing Culture ...................................
    [Show full text]
  • TOWARD a SYSTEMIC THEORY of SYMBOLIC ACTION by PATRICK
    TOWARD A SYSTEMIC THEORY OF SYMBOLIC ACTION By PATRICK MICHAEL McKERCHER B.A., San Diego State University, 1981 M.A., San Diego State University, 1984 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA March, 1993 Patrick Michael McKercher, 1993 ________ ___________________________ In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced Library shall make it degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the agree that permission for extensive freely available for reference and study. I further copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. (Signature) Department of AflJL The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date DE6 (2/88) ABSTRACT Though Kenneth Burke has often been dismissed as a brilliant but idiosyncratic thinker, this dissertation will argue that he is actually a precocious systems theorist. The systemic and systematic aspects of Burke’s work will be demonstrated by comparing it to the General Systems Theory (GST) of biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy. Though beginning from very different starting points, Bertalanffy and Burke develop similar aims, methods, and come to remarkably similar conclusions about the nature and function of language. The systemic nature of Burke’s language philosophy will also become evident through an analysis of the Burkean corpus.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Communication1
    The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Communication1 DEBORAH TANNEN Georgetown University, Washington 1. INTRODUCTION The study of cross-cultural communication is a paradigm example of the insepar- Downloaded from ability of linguistic theory and application. Linguists study cross-cultural com- munication for its applied significance, which is enormous, given the heterogeneity of societies affected by global migrations and the increasingly cross-cultural nature of commerce, diplomacy, and personal relationships throughout the world. And we also study cross-cultural communication because it provides a discourse analog to the starred sentence in linguistic argumentation. By examining interactions in which http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ habits and expectations about how to show what is meant by what is said are not shared, we can see semantic processes—how language means—which are harder to observe in the seamless surface of successful communication. I will illustrate the range of aspects of communication that can vary from culture to culture by discussing and exemplifying eight levels of differences in sig- nalling how speakers mean what they say. These aspects of ways of speaking are not extra-linguistic nor even paralinguistic but are the essence of language. Just as physicists understand the nature of physical elements by observing their behavior in various environments and in interaction with other elements, so we at University of South Carolina - Columbia on September 4, 2012 come to understand the nature of language by observing it in communication and in contact with other systems of communication. In analysing the pragmatics of cross-cultural communication, we are analysing language itself. 2. LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION DIFFERENCES What is it that can be culturally relative in communication? The answer is, just about everything—all the aspects of what to say and how to say it.
    [Show full text]
  • Placing the Poetic Corrective: William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Burke, and the Poetic Imaginary
    53 Placing the Poetic Corrective: William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Burke, and the Poetic Imaginary Stephen Llano St. John’s University To consider language as a means of information or knowl- edge is to consider it epistemologically, semantically, in terms of “science.” To consider it as a mode of action is to consider it in terms of “poetry.” For a poem is an act, the symbolic act of the poet who made it—an act of such a nature that, in surviving as a structure or object, it enables us as readers to re-enact it. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (447)1 Kenneth Burke, in his major work A Grammar of Motives, offers an analysis of Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to demonstrate the potential of dramatistic criticism. The opening quote from that section of Grammar of Motives indicates a key distinction of the dramatist perspective from the scientific: scientific thought views language as representation of an act occurring elsewhere, while dramatism sees language as a particular kind of act, a member of the category “action” instead of action’s weak second. This “symbolic action” is the centerpiece of Burke’s theory not only of the human condition, but of rhetoric—the way we come together and pull apart in our relations with the world and with each other. The analysis is not important for its object, or for the particular critical insights, but vastly important for understanding Kenneth Burke’s unique contribution to criticism across a number of different fields. Kenneth Burke’s output of work as a critic and theorist is massive.
    [Show full text]