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Rhetorical Modes
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These are the common, time-tested patterns of organizing information. Because they are common, other people are more likely to be able to follow them. Because they are time-tested, we give them a lot of legitimacy as a way of organizing our thinking and writing. You've been doing this kind of thinking all your life. Now is the time to organize it in writing more self-consciously.
The first word, rhetoric, means using the basic unit of discourse in order to demonstrate for your audience the strength of your claims. If they had disagreed with you before they read the essay, perhaps you changed their minds by telling them how to think about the evidence you brought to support your claim. The second word, modes, is like having different weapons in a war or offensive formations in a football game or strategies in a marketing campaign. You change modes when the "rhetorical situation", your audience and purpose, make one mode more efficient than another.
In Eng 100, you are going to ask questions of your research. You and I are then going to narrow that list of questions and decide which rhetorical mode would best answer each question. I strongly recommend that you not think too much about this list until you have the questions that the audience would naturally ask.
That is, let your audience's needs determine the questions and then let the questions determine how you organize your research. That may mean that you use some of these modes more than once and others not at all. You and I will decide that together.
The organizing principle is how you decide what to do and in what order.
The transitions are the phrases within the paragraph (and between paragraphs) that connect the parts and reveal the organizing principle.
The questions section has the kinds of questions and examples of questions that your audience might ask about your research topic. They will help you decide which rhetorical mode will be most appropriate for your paragraphs.
-- a
formal, stylized but essential thinking process --
generic paragraph structure (see essay structures)
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paragraph |
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topic statement |
an assertion answering a reader question |
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support |
evidence - facts, statistics, experts examples - stories about people, things, and events illustrations - images, tables, charts |
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explanation |
what it means, what reader is supposed to get out of it, how it contributes to the answer |
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transitions |
how each piece of support relates to the other pieces of support |
How do people treat pets in [
country ]? Example Topic sentence: People in [ country ] treat their
pets
_______. For example, ...
What do you need to know if you want to take your pet to [ these countries ] to visit or live? exemp, process, division/class
What animals are not allowed in other countries and why? cause-effect
How are animals we see as pets treated? description
How do people view animals in general in other countries? division/classification
What animal rights groups or activists are prominent in other countries? exemp, definition, div/class
Someone walks in to the clinic, distraught, holding a limp pet. Within a short period of time, often seconds, the vet tech must do a lot of quick thinking. That thinking will use the same patterns that, in this course, we call rhetorical modes.
Faced with that limp pet and an emotionally distraught client, the vet tech must diagnose (definition; compare/contrast), choose treatment options (compare/contrast, classification), treat (process), explain why to self, to client, or to vet/boss (cause-effect).
In this kind of paragraph, this mode of thinking, you are defining a concept that you are using in a specific way for your purposes. This is your way of limiting what your words mean so that you and your reader will be on the same page. You are saying, "Regardless of the dictionary definition or what other people say, for the purposes of this essay I am defining ____ as ...."
Your rhetorical situation will tell you who your audience is and for what purpose they need the situation defined.
Your data will determine your content. Look at the
data. Listen to the data. Now, how would you characterize the situation?
group and separate
What group does it belong to? How is it different from every other member of that group?
You can probably do that in a couple of sentences. Then extend that basic definition with the support that the claim (topic sentence) needs.
How will you organize that extended definition?
Characterize the situation.
The parking situation at Medaille is [ __characterization__ ].
High schools are prisons.
A job at McDonalds is a rude awakening.
Even though we can win some of the battles, cancer
always wins the war.
In every classroom in our school district, victims of
child abuse are hidden in plain sight.
The Netherlands is the little country that stands tall.
The road beyond DIII soccer is paved with avoidable failures.
As of the All-Star break at the end of January 2011, the Sabres season was one of [ __characterization__ ].
Hate crimes, that is, violent crimes motivated by prejudice against a group, are [ __characterization__ ].
Capital punishment is ...?
The world of the father in teenage pregnancies is ... ?
The endangered species list is one of the most exclusive clubs in the world.
Animal abuse is not a uniform phenomenon. Both the animals that are abused and the frequency of abuse vary greatly according to geography.
Poor Mary Jane has taken a beating over the years. A ubiquituous weed, she has been held responsible for all sorts of social ills.
first, second, third
How is that different from __? What's in, what's out?
What do you mean by romance in Buffalo? Are you including Iraq and Egypt, or only Israel and its neighbors?
What do you mean by famous people? Are you including only events that happen inside the home?
What do you mean by firsts? Are you including only those from an embryo or also those from bone marrow?
In this kind of paragraph, you are evaluating two alternatives or options according to a certain criterion. Which movie will you see this weekend? One's at the Regal and costs $8 each. The other's on my TV and costs $5 for the video rental. On what basis will you decide?
The table below is for minimum of 2 options and 3 criteria - expand to suit your situation
example from sports: Rating Percentage Index (RPI) for the NCAA men's basketball committee
weighted criteria grid
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option 1 |
weighted |
option 2 |
weighted |
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criterion 1 |
X% |
evidence |
evidence |
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criterion 2 |
Y% |
evidence |
evidence |
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criterion 3 |
Z% |
evidence |
evidence |
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total score |
pts |
pts |
For the RPI, the evidence is game scores, game locations, and strengths of schedules, which is all public, objective information. For your essay, the evidence will be the usual statistics, expert opinions, narratives, etc.
Instead of the RPI, the grid above will work for two movies (options 1 and 2) and the criteria of cost, convenience, and content, with convenience being as important as the other two combined.
the next option, the next criterion
Which path should we take, path A or path B, and on what basis will we decide?
How can I decide which Australian university to attend for my study abroad semester?
In this kind of paragraph, you are tracing a process over time. The requirements of cause and effect are not as important here. For example, you could trace the process by which stem cells are extracted from living tissue. Or you could walk us through an evening in a Bavarian beer garden.
A set of directions says what to do. A recipe says what to do. A process analysis says what to do, but it also says why it's being done that way.
The entry-level employee needs to know what to do. The boss needs to know why, in addition to what.
The low-wage employee is just laying asphalt. The boss is paving a bike path.
The carpenter needs to know what to nail together. The general contractor knows why. So the carpenter needs a set of directions, but the contractor needs a process analysis.
time
Present the events to the reader in chronological order (and in rare cases, reverse chronology).
Divide the process into phases and the phases into steps. Then in the body of the essay, go through the process step by step.
first, second, third
How do I do __?
How did __ happen?
How does child trafficking work? Is it like being kidnapped or enslaved?
How do I apply for this study abroad program?
How to overcome stress.
The divorce process.
In this kind of paragraph, either you are explaining why something is important, that is, what it's causing
or you are explaining what led up to it, that is, what caused it
or you are explaining a chain of cause and effect.
By chain, I mean that an individual event can be both cause and effect. For example, A can cause B and B can cause C. Thus, B is an effect of A and a cause of C, depending on how you look at it.
time and logic
Just because event A happens before event B does not mean that event A causes event B. To establish a cause-and-effect relationship, you must show the empirical basis for your claim of cause and effect. By empirical, I mean something that a physicist, psychologist, or other social scientist could measure.
As a result of that, because of that, the most important effect of that, the primary cause of that
Why? How important is it? How did it get this way?
Why is the surfing on that beach in Ecuador so good?
Why is this year's NFL draft so important for the Bills?
Trace the chain of cause and effect that got Tiger Woods to where he is today.
How could the Khmer Rouge dominate Cambodian life for so long while causing so much harm?
What is the most effective way to market American rock music to European teenagers? That is, what causes them to buy CDs and concert tickets?
In this kind of paragraph, you are describing something. It could be as small as a stem cell or as large as a beach in Ecuador or even a whole region of the world such as the Middle East.
You can also characterize the description.
space
The four "objective" attributes that describe almost anything, especially objects: shape, size, colors, and position in relation to other things. With a little adaptation, these general terms can apply to dynamic (constantly changing) things like stem cells, beaches, the family violence situation in a country such as Pakistan.
We read from top left to bottom right, so that is a familiar organizing principle. Depending on what you are describing, you could go from a bird's eye view to a closer view. Or you could go from inside to outside or the reverse.
Adding "subjective" characteristics can be difficult to do well, so be careful.
below that, to the right of this
What is __?
What is a stem cell? Describe it from outside to inside, starting with the cell walls and then the inside parts.
What is the Middle East? What is the status of women in traditional Pakistani families?
In this kind of paragraph, you are giving examples to support a claim or assertion. If that claim is the focus of a paragraph, we call it a topic sentence.
rank order
In what order should you present the examples? According to what criteria? How many examples should you present?
most importantly, last but not least, next in importance
What do you mean by that? Give me some examples.
In this kind of paragraph, you are making sense of a lot of information by setting up a classification system and then applying it to the information. This Rhetorical Modes section of this course web is using division and classification (types of paragraphs) to help you develop your writing skills.
taxonomy - a hierarchical cascade of branches off a root
At any given level in the taxonomy, among equal parts, you will need another organizing principle such as size, importance, seniority
first type, second type, third type; largest, most important, oldest
Where do all these __ fit?
How many types of internships are there in Germany for Medaille marketing majors?
How many types of family violence are there in Pakistan?
Are all stem cells the same? If not, how many types of stem cells are there and how can you tell them apart
modified: September 2011
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/eng100/essay/modes.htm