This unit's reading acquainted us with two fundamental concepts: the responsibilities of an academic writer and the habits of mind of effective academic writers:
- In academic writing tasks, you are responsible for:
- Defining a situation that calls for some response in writing;
- Demonstrating the timeliness of your argument
- Establishing a personal investment;
- Appealing to readers whose minds you want to change by understanding what they think, believe, and value;
- Supporting your arguments with good reasons;
- Anticipate and address readers' reasons for disagreeing with you, while encouraging them to adopt your position. (2)
- To be an effective academic writer, you must take on the right "habits of mind." According to Greene and Lidinsky, academic writers:
- Make inquiries--observe, ask questions, examine alternatives;
- Seek and value complexity--resist binary thinking, consider all topics open for discussion;
- See writing as a conversation--and demonstrate sensitivity to those involved in the conversation;
- Understand that writing is a process--a continual process of discovering ideas, drafting, and revising.
Most of us are familiar with the notion of writing as a process that involves revision; experience has taught us that the more we invest in our writing, the better it is. But Greene and Lidinsky's first three habits of mind may not be ones we practice consciously. I'd like to suggest that the practice of rhetorical analysis helps us hone these habits of mind, as we seek to uncover things about a text--the rhetorical situation it responds to (the context), the writer's purpose, central message, methods of persuasion, and audience.
In this discussion thread, let's explore together the value of making inquiries, seeking and valuing complexity, and seeing writing as a conversation by discussing some of the rhetorical features of the excerpt from Sherry Turkle's "The Flight From Conversation," which you will find on pp. 49-52 of Greene and Lidinsky's text.
After carefully reading and annotating the text, present your observations of the passage, using the elements of rhetorical analysis presented in this unit's lecture. You could do any or all of the following:
- elucidate the central message the writer is trying to convey;
- identify the rhetorical appeals (appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos) being used to persuade you;
- list your responses as a reader -- what puzzles you or challenges your beliefs and values;
- name the context in which the writer writes;
- mention an alternative way to look at the topic;
- argue for what motivates this writer to write.
In your posts, please make specific references to the text to support your observations, citing the page number in parenthesis next to the references. Make sure you have described the rhetorical situation and the writer's purpose, main claim, and audience.