Today’s Mission:    

1.  Project 2 Recon

2.  The Decorum  Debate

3.  The Fifth Responses

4.  Inside and Outside of Shooting War

  ProjectTwo Recon:

1. You should have chosen a text from the list of approved texts or should have contacted me by now about your proposed text.

2.  Critical Reading (outlined on page 23 in GR)

          Where did the argument come from?

           What does the argument say?

           Can you trust the writer?

           How does the argument work?

3.  Active Reading:  Your brain on a bicycle

              Using the best tactics:

          Annotating and Mapping (GR 25-26)                                                                                 

4.  Target Acquisition:                                                           

Fallacies of logic and emotion/language (GR 26-28)

The Decorum  Debate

            "Decorum or 'appropriateness': Everything within a persuasive act can be understood as reflecting a central rhetorical goal that governs consistent choices according to occasion and audience" (GR 71).

Some ideas to get your head around. . . From "'Transgressing the Boundaries' of Ethical Discourse: Speculations on the Rhetoric of Decorum" by D. Robert DeChaine.

Before we look at your fifth responses, let's look at what DeChaine says about decorum and see if we can relate some of his ideas to Shooting War.

 1.  What is the occasion?  Shooting War: Making or Breaking Reality   

 Though formally worked out in detail by Aristotle and later refined by Cicero and Quintilian among

 others, the idea that “style should suit subject, audience, speaker and occasion” (Lanham,

 1991, p. 45) assumed a prominent role in the earlier oratory of the Sophists, notably in texts

 such as Gorgias’ “Encomium of Helen.” In such texts, words and stylistic flourishes served to

 create a “world of possibility” (Poulakos, 1984) for the hearer; indeed, a traditionally pejorative

 notion of rhetoric, as Poulakos notes, can be traced to the Sophists and, specifically, to the

 “linguistic spell” which they cast (Id., p. 218). Sophists recognized words as powerful tools of

 discourse, tools which they believed could help to frame reality itself.    (Dechaine 119)

2.  Ethics and Truth

Thus far in the discussion I have advanced an argument that decorum serves as a frame

 for our social reality. Along the way I have pointed to two views of rhetoric which, concomitant

 with “absolutist” and “relativist” views of truth, define our ability to “find our footing” (Geertz,

 1973) in culture. In light of these propositions, it seems to follow that our judgment of the

 propriety of texts coincides with our basic criteria for truth; either “the good” is established

 within the text and through the process of its creation and interpretation, or “the good” is

 measured against the text and its faithfulness to some kind of assumed transcendent

 principles (scientific fact or religious doctrine, for example). They simply represent two

 different sets of criteria. Neither particularly impinges on the other unless we want it to; we may

 choose to make the issue an ethical one, but that is a choice we make. Either way, the

 rhetorical power of a text may compel us to adherence regardless of its “truth.” (Dechaine 123)

3. Who is the audience?  Where is the common ground?

“Our sense of propriety in a text comes not from the text but from our perception” (Dechaine 121).

 The Fifth Responses

Here you'll see student responses classified according to general topics. As we read these responses, I want us to accomplish 3 goals:

1.  Respond to the content of the response: Discuss what claims are being made

2.  Determine the structure of the response: Find traces of a skeletal structure for the thesis and further develop it 

3.  Evaluate the detail in the response: Decide how each student incorporated quotes in order to support his/her claims

1.   Entertainment versus persuasion

2.  Responding to style and tone

3.  Issues of consistency

4.  Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

5.  The central rhetorical goal and its many offspring  

The "skeletal structure" for the thesis will likely be some variation on the following:

A = Author(s)

W = Work being analyzed

T = Thesis of that work

X, Y, Z, Q (etc.) = particular strategies used in making/supporting T

In W, A argues T through X, Y, Z.

 Completing the Mission:

Inside and Outside of Shooting War:  Contextual and Textual Analysis

 Some more topics for discussion (If they haven't come up already):

What is the rhetorical situation?

                    The media

                                The war in Iraq                  

           The Corporate Takeover of America       

                     American Foreign Policy

           Religion and Values                

 1. How effectively do Lappe and Goldman relate these issues?  What works?  What doesn’t work?  (Let's look at some illustrations as well)

 2. What are the claims/arguments of the text? 

 3. What do you think?  The effectiveness of the arguments based on your knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs

 4. What appeals do Lappe and Goldman use?

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 Complete The Sixth Response by 9 a.m. February 12!