Inventing a Public Assignment

8/6/2019 Inventing a Public Assignment

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Guidelines

In this project, you’ll intervene — right now — in a rhetorical situation that you’ve invented yourself. This project will be largely self-created and self-directed; your classmates and I are here to help you, but the

responsibility for developing and completing the project is principally your own.

What do I mean by “intervening right now in a rhetorical situation that you’ve invented yourself”? Briefly,that you’ll use your research and writing skills to persuade others to join you in making an important change

happen. Less briefly:

• You’ll identify a public exigence, i.e., something affecting your community that

you believe needs to be changed. Your community can be defined variously: it might be the campus community, or your hometown, or your country, or the global community. The change you seek can take various forms, too: you might

aim to aim to decrease your dorm’s carbon footprint, or to bring a brutal dictator to trial. The importantthing is to aim to take action through your research and writing, right here and right now.

• To launch your action, you’ll create whatever documents your strategy dictates. For example, you might find yourself writing a piece of environmental legislation; or you might createa film to persuade DU faith groups to combat homelessness.; or you might write a speech you’ll give at

a town hall meeting, proposing a tax revolt. The possibilities are endless, and each of you will becreating very different kinds of documents. What determines the kinds of documents you’ll need to

create is the nature of the action you’re trying to take.

• To make change effectively, you’ll create a rhetorical situation for yourself.

In order to intervene effectively in the public sphere, you need to have a clear, complex, vividly

imagined sense of your rhetorical situation: Whom will you need to persuade? What’s the best mediumthrough which to communicate with them? What arguments are likely to prove convincing? How do

you want your audience to perceive you and to perceive themselves? When evaluating your project, I’ll pay as much attention to the quality of the rhetorical situation you’ve created as I do to the editorial,

video, web site, magazine article, etc., by which you intervene in it.

Due dates

Your plan is due on Google Docs by the start of class on Monday, May 2. u The audience assignment is dueat the end of class Monday, May 9.u Your annotated Works Cited page is due by the start of class on

Wednesday, May 11.u First drafts are due in class on Monday, May 16. u Revised drafts are due by the start

of class on Wednesday, May 20. u The final of the project is due on Friday, June 3.

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Inventing Your Rhetorical Situation: Your Plan

Write a 500-750-word, 4-paragraph essay in response to the following. Be sure that

your essay addresses all parts of all four prompts.

• Describe the exigence to which you’re responding, and describe your plan for addressing it. Be sure to

discuss what specific pieces of writing will you need to create to execute your plan. (We’re defining“writing” broadly here: it could mean something conventionally understood as writing, say, a letter to theeditor; it could mean something less conventional, e.g., a wordless poster.)

• Describe your audience. What groups or individuals are affected by exigence you’ve identified, andhow? How can each group affect the situation? Which will be relatively easy for you to bring on board,and why? Which will be difficult to persuade, and why? Which will be somewhere in the middle, and

why? And which specific groups do you intend to target, and why?

• Given your purpose and your audience, why do you believe that the specific kinds of writing you plan tocreate are likely to be effective?

• What information will you need to gather through research to complete the writing you’ve planned? Howwill you get it?

Due on Google Docs by the start of class on Monday, May 2

Name the document as follows: Your name Project 3 Plan

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Inventing Your Rhetorical Situation: Your Audience

Perhaps the biggest mistake a rhetor can make is to fail to think about his or her audience. But to identify anaudience is one thing; to devise strategies for persuading them is quite another. We sometimes fall into a

double-edged trap. We envision an audience that oscillates between unremitting hostility and perfect pliability, alternately so closed to persuasion that it’s pointless to talk to them or so open to persuasion that

they agree with us even before we speak. Neither of these personsae are very helpful to us as arguers. If we’re going to persuade the people we actually need to persuade, we need to envision our audience as

persuadable.

However, envisioning such an audience can be difficult to do when we’re thinking about our audience in the

abstract, e.g., as “voters,” or “physicists,” or “homeowners,” etc. So here’s a little rhetorical trick (a self-trick, so to speak, since you play it on yourself):

• First step: Create a handful of characters that represent your audience, and

make them as concrete as you would if you were writing a novel or a play.

Rather than imagining your audience only as abstractions — “voters,” “physicists,” etc. — try imagining

a concrete representative from each group. Give them names, faces, families, professions, dwellings,religious beliefs or disbeliefs, political preferences, tastes in art, past histories, hopes and dreams, likesand dislikes, etc., just as you would if you were creating a novel or scripting a film. Ask yourself: What

does Fred eat for breakfast? What car does Ellen drive? Where did Laurie go to high school? and so on.

• And then, the second step: Ask yourself: How would I need to present my

argument in order to persuade these particular people?

I don’t mean to suggest that you should actually address these imaginary characters in your writing (“Dear

Fred: . . . .”) Rather, the idea is to painting a picture of them for yourself, a portrait of the kinds of persons on

the receiving end of your discourse. Writing as if these (imaginary) people were going to read your piecehelps focus your rhetorical energies.

So, please write a one-paragraph description of each of THREE imaginary characters as vividly and in as

much detail as you can muster. Your characters should be representative of the three most importantsegments of your audience, including the segment that you believe will be most difficult to persuade.

See the sample we used in class: http://scr.bi/eJIhf4

Due by the end of class Monday, May 9

Name the document as follows: Your name Project 3 Audience

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Inventing Your Rhetorical Situation: Your Research

Your need to incorporate into your project at least THREE sources gathered via the library’s catalog anddatabases: one of which is to be a MODEL (i.e., an example of the kind of text you plan to create), at least one

of which is to be a BOOK from the library, and at least one of which is to be a newspaper, periodical, or journalARTICLE. You may use more than three such sources; you may also use websites, blogs, etc., as your project

requires; and you may conduct other forms of research, too (interviews, observations, surveys). However, youmust use AT LEAST THREE sources gathered via the library’s resources, no less.

You will record your research by creating an annotated Works Cited page. This page should record the relevant publication data for ALL of your sources using in MLA citation style. At the end of each Works Cited entry,

write a paragraph explaining how each the text you’ve cited will help you with your project.

Due in class Wednesday, May 11

See the sample Works Cited page at http://tinyurl.com/446ol3s.

For help with MLA style, see http://tinyurl.com/yj46b65.

Name your document as follows: Your name Project 3 Research

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A draft of your project is due in classon Monday, May 16.

A revised draft (including revisedversions of your plan, audience, andWorks Cited page) is due by the start of

class on Monday, May 20.

Documents

Inventing a Public Assignment