Driving Example

Who is a person or a group who represents your issue as a positive role model? What traits and actions make them a great, contradicting example to a negative stereotype (and which negative stereotype)?

Spend 30 minutes brainstorming (word bank?), then draft a descriptive example that can be included in your Essay 3 next draft.

Descriptive Value:

For both Essay 3 and for any revision done on the Midterm, as well as any essay writing you ever do(!!!), you may want to help out the vocabulary of your piece by creating TOPICAL WORD BANKS.

Topical Word Banks, as I call them, are lists of relevant terms you brainstorm, Google (by googling the topic), pull from notes/professors and textbooks that directly relate to the topic and your possible examples to be used.

adjectives
adverbs
nouns
verbs


For instance, in Essay 3, in dealing with SOLVING a PREJUDICE, those two words inspire the start a vocabulary:


oppression, oppressive, misogynist, patriarchal, systemic, social mobility, peaceful protest, Twitter, organize, stage, sit in, privilege, access, historical, agenda, racism, ideology, ideal, cynicism, implicit, explicit, denigrate, exult, equity, equality, justice, humane, decency, moral, immoral, enduring, patient, judgment, better, ...

Aristotle's Appeals

Ethos (ethics/people)

• Making an appeal using one's own credibility/character
• Using things about yourself (personal history, age, race, religion) to make an argument

How to attempt:

• Describe what you think are moral or positive characteristics and actions of a specific person/group of people if you want to show their goodness or authority.

• Describe immoral actions and negative characteristics and actions of a person/group of people if you want to put them in a 'bad light' or have them lose authority.

Logos (logic/facts)

• Making an appeal using your logic, your reasoning skills.

How to attempt:

• Cite facts. Basic facts of life that can found anywhere, or specific facts that give a view of the situation. 
• Explain what your facts mean. Interpret them for your audience. Never let a fact speak for itself! Facts can be distorted into different truths.

Pathos (apathy/empathy/sympathy/feelings)

• Making an appeal to the readers' emotions. 

How to attempt:

• Describe an event that represents an idea to you, and try to describe the actions and details that help build a particular emotion. 
• Using figures of speech like hyperbole (gross exaggeration), anaphora (repeat an important phrase for emphasis), and metaphor may be helpful.
• Try to use words to draw an image. 
• Use dialogue or quotes that represent things said that illicit emotion. 
• Pose questions that illicit an emotion.
• Huge generalizations and huge consequences. Formulate these in a way that comes off syntactically as possibilities. 
• Make sure something or someone is impacted by somebody else's actions, but make sure that you specify who each someone is!

Kairos

• Using time and setting to give context to your argument! What's going on in the world, recently, currently, historically, that supports your points?

How to attempt:

• Write about an event and its known impacts...
• Write a point about the historical aspects of the event--is what is going on today a reoccurrence?
• or, talk about an event and what the results could be if the world doesn't act (and act the way you urge them to!).

***Many times, we mix and match our appeals, and that is fine and dandy. It's most important that you are very conscious about trying to appeal to your audience, thinking of your audience and using language to affect them. 

Writing Gestures in Argument/Persuasive Essays

ATactful, Courteous Language:

• Avoid large, sweeping statements (Everyone, Nobody, All, . . .)
• Avoid boxing in you, your readership, or those with differing viewpoints into overly general teams/categories.
• Avoid personal attacks (ad hominem) or bold judgments of anyone you are speaking about!

• However, one might consider a persuasive way of describing the action of a person/group in regards to TONE
• How do academics like bell hooks  get away with using profanity and obscenity, then? Because they are analyzing that language! One cannot write about an ugly phrase if one doesn't identify the phrase, right? 

Point Out Common Ground: if there is something within the larger argument that you agree with, it is effective to make reader see your open-mindedness.  

• Discussing in your argument where you agree with others will logically be followed by your contrasting interpretation of what sides agree upon.

• Quick Brainstorming:  Write down a couple of ideas that you may share with "the opposition." Specify who this person/group is...

Acknowledge Differing Viewpoints: start with the different viewpoint and use a change in direction transitional word/phrase (however, while, although, in contrast, …) and then go into your viewpoint.

• You may also start with the proper transitional phrase and differing viewpoint, insert the comma at the end of that point, and then go into your viewpoint

Make Reader Aware of the Merits of Differing Viewpoint: beyond just stating different views, adding some of the positives of that other view will enable you to compare and contrast the positives of the other side with the positives of your side! 

Quick Brainstorming:  Write down what you feel is "good" or "right" about "the opposition's" point of views.

Rebut Differing Viewpoints (even published critics/authorities): Many large issues have common arguments made for either side. After acknowledging a differing view, make arguments for why the view is less valid than your own.

• Quick Brainstorming:  Write down what you think "the opposition" is missing or ignoring in their own point(s). 

Confronting Society: Making Provocative Arguments

First, let's read "bell hooks Was Bored by 'Anaconda'" from New York Magazine and discuss just how audacious and yet academically permissible the language can be!  (Warning: profanity and highly sexual language is used--adults only, please)

Finish reading this article and breaking down bell hooks' argument.

• Summarize her main point about sexuality and feminism. 

HW for Tuesday, 10/14:

As far as in-class work, we will be focusing on preparation for and taking of the Midterm over the next week. Make sure to clarify with Professor A. when your class is taking the Midterm if you are absent! 

1. Read up to page 375 in We, the Drowned. As you read, use the following strategies below to help guide your thinking and preparation for the Midterm.

 What are two cultural topics that you find discussed within the setting of Marstal? Which characters are involved, and what are the strongest passages that support your understanding of Marstal?

• Define the general Marstal worldview on each topic. 

• Also, define individual mindsets of Marstallers who discuss these topics. 

Cultural Analysis: Gender Roles as Example

There is a very interesting map on the Washington Post website that gives a brief historical, worldly perspective of Gender. 

How can such a map help your critical thinking about gender, and thus, about understanding more about various world views? 

• What are gender roles? 

• A gender role is a theoretical construct in the social sciences and humanities that refers to a set of social and behavioral norms that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. Socially accepted gender roles differ widely between different cultures. Proponents of gender role theory assert that observed gender differences in behavior and personality characteristics are, at least in part, socially constructed, and therefore, the product of socialization experiences; this contrasts with other models of gender that assert that gender differences are "essential" to biological sex. Gender differences exist in almost all societies. With differences in the norms adopted, this suggests that gender differences are, at least partly, influenced by culture.^[1]

Cultural Analysis of Marstal: gender roles as a subtopic of "way of life"

• What are different general roles in Marstal, and where are those roles constructed--based on the textual evidence? (Such a question is multilayered, of course)

Cultural Analysis of Marstal: other subtopics of "way of life"

• What are other cultural topics that are discussed within the novel? (We have started to discuss culture, already, in a more probative light.)