Rhetoric and Tone

1. Rhetoric and Tone

2. You are telling a story of how you accidentally smashed the tail-light of a parked car to... 1) your closest friend 2) your mom 3) the owner of the car 4) on facebook 5) people at a party

3. How do your explanations differ? How did your word choice change? How did you frame the story differently? Did your tone shift? Did you leave anything out? In order to succeed in communication, you have learned to use rhetoric.

4. Rhetoric: “The Art of Persuasion” Rhetoric is the way we make meaning in words Using communication in such a way as to influence your listeners or readers to hear your side, favor you, agree to your position Rhetoric could include non-linguistic signs as well, such as images, photography, gestures, clothing, dance, form, architecture, etc.

5. Why Rhetoric? • Much of English 101 deals with rhetorical awareness because you don’t write writing, you write ideas that are presented rhetorically and that have a rhetorical effect on your readers. • Author’s Intention vs. Effect • We often cannot know an author’s intention, but we can describe the effect of their words

6. The Rhetorical Triangle What is said or written, “logic” of the argument Subject (Logos) Implied character, voice, and values of the writer Audience’s emotions and the response of the reader Reader (Pathos) Writer (Ethos)

7. Rhetorical Stance • How ethos, pathos, and logos are incorporated in a piece of writing • All three are present in any piece of writing • However, some genres lean more to one point of the triangle than the others • Persuasion (reader focused) involves winning the audience’s assent. • Argument (text focused) involves discovering the best reasons, making claims and offering evidence in order to support the writer’s position. • Understanding (writer focused) involves describing how you came to hold a certain belief or perspective and showing how and why you think the way you do.

8. PracticeWhat is Rose’s rhetorical stance? In your notes, draw a triangle to outline Rose’s rhetorical stance in terms of ethos, pathos, and logos What do you notice about his approach?

9. What is tone? • Diction • Word Choice • Detail • Providing specifics • Imagery • Using sensory detail • Syntax • Word order and sentence structure • Figurative Language • Departing from everyday language to achieve comparison, emphasis, or clarity

10. Rhetorical Situations and Tone Different rhetorical situations have different levels of formality associated with them. This affects our choices of language, style, and level of detail. The relationship between writer and reader or writer and subject can be expressed in terms of the distance. W = Writer; R = Reader; S = Subject W R/S (Informal, intimate) W R/S (Formal, distant)

11. Verticality R/S W (Honorific, respectful, favorable, etc) W R/S (Critical, pejorative, disdainful, etc) W R/S (Symmetrical, neutral, equal, etc)

12. PracticeThe tone of Mike Rose • How would you express Rose’s attitude and tone toward his subject and audience? • To what extent does his tone differ from some of the other authors we have read? Do you see any similarities ? • Find passages that you think are good representative examples of: (1) his attitude toward the subject of education and schooling and (2) his tone toward his readers? • Be ready to share and explain your examples

13. Exit With your table, list the top 5-7 most important ideas everyone should have learned about rhetoric and tone.

14. Thinking about tone... • How would you express House, Emmer, and Lawrence’s tone toward the subject of cultural literacy? Toward Hirsch? • How would you express Hirsch’s tone toward the subject of cultural literacy and his imagined audience? • How would you express any of the other writers’ attitude and tone toward their audience and subject? • Bartholomae and Petrosky? Rodriguez? Gee? Shorris? Professor X?