Guest Blogger Hannah Wolfe

Ideas come in all shapes and sizes.  More importantly, they come to us in all sorts of ways.  An important aspect of the CUPID Writing and Publishing Studio class is brainstorming.  The objective of the class is to figure out how to implement a creative plan, in the case of our class: a revamped English Department Newsletter.

Brainstorming is a technique that allows a group to entertain a series of ideas in order to find a solution.  A brainstorming session can be administered in all sorts of ways.  They are flexible and open and their structure fosters an environment of creativity.  Brainstorming allows a group to create and develop ideas with contributions from many perspectives.

In determining what the updated newsletter would look like, the class engaged in a series of brainstorming sessions.  One session in particular was successful in determining the direction of the project.  As pictured below, the scrum board technique allows participants to write ideas down on sticky notes.  The notes can then be moved around and categorized for visual aid in brainstorming process.

The main purpose of the brainstorm was to determine what form the new English Department newsletter would take, how it would be distributed, and what content it would include. Professor Pope-Ruark led the brainstorm and gave specific prompts to the class about the form, distribution, and content, and the class would write ideas on individual sticky notes and add them to the board.  Once the idea generation was complete, the class categorized the sticky notes based on which ideas we liked the most.  From there we were able to connect the dots incorporate the usable ideas into one working project

The scrum board brainstorming technique was a great experience.  Not only was the class able to successfully compile ideas for our project, but it also provided an effective brainstorming experience that can be applied to future sessions where the same technique could be utilized.

Guest Blogger Emily Roper

I’m a junior university student at a fairly elite university.  I have a great GPA and experiences in Division I varsity athletics, volunteering, working, study abroad, and research.  Thirty years ago, this alone would have probably guaranteed me my choice of job in a career field with a good salary, benefits, a retirement plan, and a pension.  Today, I’m just praying that at this time next year, I will have a job because someone will be willing to hire me without the 3 years of relevant experience most employers ask for.

Unfortunately, I’ve learned that hoping for a job won’t be enough, and there are a lot of things I could already be doing to increase my employability.  Among these things, one of the most basic is developing my resume and portfolio so that it reflects my skills.  Simple, right?

Think again.  Maybe this task is easy for some, but I’ve found that the biggest challenge in developing my professional identity has been learning to talk about myself.  Identifying a particular skill set is incredibly difficult for me, not because I don’t have one, but because I feel like I’m bragging.

I don’t want to say that I’m smart; what if I walk into a room full of people interviewing me who have IQs of 160?

I don’t want to say that I have leadership skills; what if those skills fall short in a moment of need?

I don’t want to say that I can speak Spanish; what if I’m called upon to use my Spanish skills and I can’t remember a word?

I don’t even want to say that I’m hard-working; what if something happens in my life that distracts my attention from my work?

Besides, who am I to say these things about myself?  Don’t they mean more coming from someone else?

I could get into all these reasons why I find it so hard to talk about myself.  I could talk about living in a culture where even the most competent women aren’t expected to talk about themselves because it means we are stepping out of our place.  I could talk about how I am 21-years-old and don’t have any real life experience to put on a resume anyway.  I could talk about being raised to think that hard work always speaks for itself.  But all those things won’t get me a job.

So this is me, declaring that what I’ve learned in CUPID Studio is the importance of being able to talk about myself to other people and that I will get a job because I deserve it.  Because I do have skills.  Because I can be a great employee.

I’m Emily Roper, a leader, an intellectual, a hard worker, a passionate and compassionate person with skills in problem solving, listening, teamwork, grammar, editing, writing, public speaking, research, and Microsoft Office.  And I will be a great asset to anyone who is willing to hire me.

I encourage you, take a minute and evaluate yourself.  Learn to brag.  It is sort of liberating.  And most importantly, it might be the thing that gets you a job.  If you struggle with it like I do, here are a few great strategies for how to talk about yourself without coming off as a narcissist.

Guest Blogger Maggy McGloin

The day has come: your class’s final presentation. When you step up to the podium, something in your mind switches gears. You feel as if you’ve gone into what I like to call “presentation mode.” You’re cool, confident, and a little bit nervous, but you’ve prepared as such so that by the end of your presentation, your classmates will have been impacted in some way. Whether you know it or not, you are using rhetoric to achieve this final goal. By changing your actions to furthermore influence an audience, you are already thinking with a rhetorical mindset. Understanding your audience with a basic, rhetorical mindset is key. If you are able to keep the basics of “understanding audience” on the back burner throughout your final presentations, you will be able to influence more efficiently.

Aristotle is a great rhetorician to begin with when learning these basics.  He stated that the best thing one can do for their rhetorical situation is make an argument that does the greatest good for the greatest number of people. According to Lester Faigley, the author of “Nonacademic Writing: The Social Perspective,” orations are not the only means of communication where rhetoric is used. Texts are additionally written for a specific group of people. No matter what is being written or said, a person who utilized rhetoric is always adapting his or her words or actions to suit a certain audience. Academic textbooks do this in particular. Faigley states that these disciplines (different academic subjects) are their own discourse communities, each with their own terms, values, and methods of argument (Faigley, 52). Each person is different and therefore will be persuaded differently. This is an ideal you consider for your own presentation. Are you writing or speaking to a group of peers? A professional? A professor? What are you trying to convey to this audience member? All of these are valid questions that correspond to the main, overarching idea: What are you trying to do here?

Secondly, you need to understand what you are trying to accomplish, and then move forward towards how you plan to accomplish this idea. If you are planning on giving a speech with the intention of promoting, say, the legalization of illegal drugs, you must evaluate the type of audience that would be most likely to resonate and sympathize with the idea. Though the speech could be physically performed in the most eloquent and convincing way, deciding to give the speech to, say, a group of parents with children aged 15-20 may not be the best idea. You must understand your “constraints,” or your limitations, as a rhetor. This could include the area where the speech takes place or is being read, the beliefs of the audience, and the overall mindset and motives of the audience (Grant-Davie,“Rhetorical Situations and their Contexts,” 272). Although such constraints may limit your presentation, they will ultimately give structure to what your presentation may be. It will make it easier for you to decide what to include and what to throw away.

Using “appeals” to connect with your selected audience is another aspect to consider. There are three different strategies, or “appeals,” to achieve this notion: pathos, logos, and ethos. While logos corresponds to the factual sense of rhetoric and pathos brings the emotional and passionate senses to attention, I would argue the most important appeal to keep in mind in regards to audience is ethos. According to Aristotle, the creator of these three ideals, ethos is “the persuasive appeal of one’s character, especially how this character is established by means of the speech or discourse” (“Forest of Rhetoric”) Being able to convince an audience as to why you are passionate about your topic speaks volumes about not only the type of person you are, but what you hope to accomplish. Michael Holleran, the author of “Aristotle’s Concept of Ethos, or If Not His Somebody Else’s” is a great source for further reading about the idea of “ethos” within your own writing and orations. He states that:

“An understanding of ethos or character becomes a source of subject matter for speeches. More importantly, a speaker must understand ethos is order to create in his audience a strong and favorable impression of his own character.” (60) So basically, being able to sell yourself as well as your message is key for swaying audiences.

Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably utilized all of these rhetorical ideals before. But by being aware that your actions have been studied, tested, and been proven successful, your presentation or any rhetorical situation will be enhanced in your favor. By evaluating who your audience is, understanding your constraints, and adapting your words to put yourself in the best light, you can begin the path to persuading and relaying your ideas.

Faigley, Lester.  “Nonacademic Writing: The Social Perspective.” Professional Writing and Rhetoric. Tim Peeples, ed. New York: Addison Wesley Educational, 2003. Print.

“Forest of Rhetoric.” Silva Rhetoricae. Ed. Gideon O. Burton. Brigham Young University, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2016. <http://rhetoric.byu.edu/>.

Grant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents”. Rhetoric Review 15.2 (1997): 264–279. Web.

Halloran, S. Michael. “Aristotle’s Concept of Ethos, or If Not His Somebody Else’s.”Rhetoric Review 1.1 (1982): 58–63. Web.

Guest Blogger Micaela Soucy

Technology has created an environment in which we are able to do new things and connect with even more people than before. In CUPID Studio we used this idea to revamp the English department’s newsletter. By pursuing a digital rendition of the newsletter, we have made it more accessible and appealing to our audience. The new newsletter, now titled The Scroll, is a social media based directive delivered on a platform that continues to be favored by millennials. The specific platforms associated with The Scroll are as follows: WordPress, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

WordPress: This blog site is an archive of all the material and content used for the newsletter. Our class decided that we needed a platform in which we could post longer content that people will actually read, so WordPress fit that ideal. Twitter only allows 140 characters and Facebook and Instagram only post a certain number of characters before cutting off the post and adding a “Read More” option. It was determined that the WordPress blog would be something to refer to to “Read More” within social media posts so that the accounts wouldn’t be cluttered with long content. This stemmed from the idea that social media users don’t read lengthy texts. Most users scroll through dashboards and only stop when something catches their eye. Therefore, we decided to use the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts to post short eye-catching snippets of the full content that we post on the WordPress blog.

Facebook: This site is the most used social networking site by adults according to Pew Research Center. It’s a place where people share articles and photos that have meaning to them, and so for The Scroll this is a great place to put content. People can easily share it with friends and family, which provides a much wider audience than we ever intended. Shares can be used to deem what people find important or like more than other content.

Twitter: This site features the option to retweet, which is similar to sharing on Facebook. Hashtags are also a big feature of Twitter that get used often. For the newsletter we decided to use this feature to 1) identify the types of posts and 2) make it more fun and interactive. These hashtags can also be used on Facebook and Instagram, but Twitter was the one to popularize them. Some examples of the hashtags we’re using are, #PageTurnerTuesday, #FacultyFriday, #ScrollCall, and #HowWeScroll.

Instagram: This site allows users to post photos and videos for their followers to see. For every social media platform we will be including images with the content but this platform caters exclusively to pictures and video. Therefore, the picture is the main focus and the text follows it. This means we had to create templates that were eye-catching but also followed a theme relevant to the English department and to Elon.

The great thing about social media is that posts from each platform can be shared on the other platforms as well. This is important because followers on one platform might not be following The Scroll on a different platform, but if, for example, a post from Instagram is shared on Twitter, those Twitter followers could be inspired to now follow the Instagram account. Social media is just a great way to reach a large audience.

Guest Blogger Emily Roper

While sitting in the university coffee shop this morning, I took a minute to look around at the people with whom I was sharing a space.  As ought to be expected in a coffee shop, nearly everyone in the room clutched a Starbucks cup and a few spread cream cheese on bagels.  Aside from food and drink, however, the only thing everyone in the room had in common was their solitude.  The exception, an older man and an older woman, sat immersed in conversation at the center of the coffee shop, but all of us college students, us millennials, sat alone at different tables.  Even those who were together were not interacting.  One girl came in, approached a table at which a boy was sitting and asked if she could sit.  The pair never exchanged another word.

What was it that kept us from engaging with one another?  You guessed it: technology.  Our parents warned us it was making us antisocial and would lead to the decline of society, but they weren’t there to lecture us, so there we all sat, starting our day with a cup of coffee and a nice dose of isolation.

As much as the baby boomers like to complain about millennials, however, I’d like to take a minute to insist that our way isn’t that different from theirs.  Sure, we stare at screens all day, but they forget from whom we learned our habits.  My dad has always complained about how it would drive his mother crazy when my grandfather would sit at the breakfast table and read the newspaper, ignoring everyone present with him except to grunt at them to pass the sausage.  When he left the table, he took the paper to the bathroom with him. Yet every morning at my house begins with the Cincinnati Enquirer and The New York Times piled up on the table, and it isn’t strange for one of my parents to be found sitting at that table with their nose in the paper, sipping a cup of coffee.  I would imagine that I am not the only one who comes from a house like this.

I ended up sitting in the coffee shop writing this post, but I started it on my email, reading a news briefing from The New York Times that took me to a few articles of interest from the newspaper.  So I started the day just like my parents, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper; I just had a different way of doing it.

As I got up to discard my trash, I was reminded why I start my day on my phone or computer rather than with a hard copy of a newspaper.  A copy of the school newspaper, The Pendulum, caught my eye.  The headline of the paper was an article about drugs at Elon.  I had read this exact story a week ago on Facebook.

It wasn’t precisely this story that went into the decision to revamp the English Department newsletter (obviously since that decision was made long before my coffee shop musing), but it was thousands like it.  Each one of us involved in the making of the new newsletter has had an experience like this, and that’s exactly why the old hard copy newsletter had to go.

“What’s engaging?” we asked ourselves.  This was the department newsletter before The Scroll was born:

While attractive and informative as newsletters go, none of us in the class had ever heard of The Back Cover before we were asked to redesign it, and no matter how well it may be written or how pretty it might be, a newsletter is no good if no one reads it.

So what did we do?  Post-Its!

We came up with more than a hundred ideas for how to increase the readership of the newsletter and different formats with which to deliver the content.  Stone obelisk was out of the question, but we all kept coming back to one thing: the Internet.  It was time for the English Department newsletter to join the 21st Century.

It is time for the millennials to shine and to use that technology our parents warned us about to our advantage.  With a new name, The Scroll, the English Department newsletter is coming to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and an online blog will tie it all together.  Hashtags, 140 characters, square pictures, likes, and shares aren’t just the ways millennials connect anymore; they’re the new way the English newsletter will be seen.  So find The Scroll wherever you are, and remember: it’s not your mother and father’s newsletter.

Guest Blogger Max Pivonka

In this recent Saturday Night Live sketch, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler satirically imitate Sarah Palin and Katie Couric, respectively. Satire is defined by Lisa Colletta, the Dean of Academic Affairs at the American University of Rome, as “a form that holds up human vices and follies to ridicule and scorn” (Colletta). In this sketch, Saturday Night Live holds up some of the vices they believe Sarah Palin possesses and severely ridicules them utilizing satire. As the Huffington Post notes, “Fey’s portrayal of Palin didn’t merely entertain. It shaped public perceptions” (Cooper).

Using satire has the power to shape how individuals view prominent issues within American politics, and, along with The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live has been one of the most effective television programs that uses satire to sway American public opinion on political issues. Saturday Night Live has been on the air since 1975, amassing 41 seasons and offering satirical discourse on presidents from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama as well as every President and candidate in between the two. Although The Daily Show and The Colbert Report both use satire effectively, one thing sets Saturday Night Live apart from its competitors: the use of improvisation.

Saturday Night Live successfully combines prepared rhetoric with improvisation to create side-splitting laughs that also deliver a bigger message. Although many of the sketches produced by the show are created beforehand, a character or two within the sketch usually is given the ability to improvise while performing to increase the effectiveness of the sketch. Amy Seham, an artistic director in Michigan and Connecticut, notes that, on the topic of improvisation, “It remains the case, however, that successful improv-comedy often depends on some improvisers being literally freer than others” (Seham 5). If all of the characters were limited to a planned script, it would make the interactions seem fake. In the case of trying to deliver a political message, it would make the discourse between characters seem very forced and like it is just meant to accomplish a political agenda. By allowing a member of the sketch to be able to have freedom on the set, interactions seem more genuine, real, and more effective in their ultimate goal of delivering a political message.

In the case of the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sketch above, Amy Poehler, the reporter, was clearly being restricted by a script while Tina Fey was able to have more freedom to improvise. By allowing Fey to improvise, she was able to make the character she was playing, Sarah Palin, seem even more ridiculous than she could have if she was simply following a prewritten script. Fey and Poehler highlighted a flawless execution of a combination of rhetoric and improvisation within a sketch to create a powerful, satirical discourse.

Relating Saturday Night Live to rhetoric, Wayne C. Booth, an esteemed literary critic and professor at the University of Chicago, noted that “in short, rhetoric will be seen as the entire range of resources that human beings share for producing effects on others” (Booth xi). In the case of politically motivated sketches performed by Saturday Night Live, often times instead of “producing an effect” on others, they create an impression. Booth’s definition is important to our understanding of what rhetoric is because it includes all the resources that can be used to create an impression on others, which means that it includes planned discourse as well as improvisation. When used together, Saturday Night Live has shown that the two rhetorical strategies can be extremely powerful in delivering a political message in terms of satire.

Other times, Saturday Night Live simply uses planned discourse to create an effective political satire. Esteemed literary critic Michael Foucault noted that “the function of an author is to change the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society” (Slack, Miller and Doak 80). Through the creation of different sketches, Saturday Night Live is able to change the discussion and views of citizens in society through the creation of their satire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RetohxBENM

For example, in an attempt to ridicule the recent GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump , Saturday Night Live created a sketch that suggested that Trump supporters were all racists, bigots, or supremacists. Although this is certainly an exaggeration, it is scorning the American people through the use of humor for even considering the idea of a Trump presidency. By comparing supporters of Trump to groups like the Nazis, they are satirically trying to influence the way people view their own decisions to vote for a candidate like Trump.

Saturday Night Live is a comedy sketch television show, yet through its use of satire created by planned discourse and improvisation, it has been able to play a role in the political sphere. Rhetoric is not just limited to an individual’s English papers in class but can be seen in many unique, influencing facets of everyday life, or at least Saturday nights.

For more examples of how SNL has used satire to critique politics and political candidates, click here.

Booth, W. C. (2004). The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Colletta, Lisa. “Political Satire and Postmodern Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.” The Journal of Popular Culture (2009): 4. Online.

Cooper, Jonathan. “Top 10 ‘SNL’ Political Sketches Of All Time.” Huntington Post (2015): 1. Online.

Seham, A. E. (2001). Whose Improv Is It Anyway?: Beyond Second City. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Slack, Jennifer Daryl, James David Miller and Jeffrey Doak. “The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority.” Peeples, Tim. Professional Writing and Rhetoric. New York: Addison Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., 2003. 80-96.

The Transition from Academic to Workplace Writing
Guest Blogger Kate Sieber

We’ve all been there. Staying up late into the night, agonizing over an extensive research paper that could ultimately make or break your GPA. That’s college, after all. Throughout our time in college, one of the most valuable and important skills we learn is how to properly communicate through our writing skills. Each piece of writing we compose is meant to persuade or disclose an argument we are trying to make. From grade school and onward, the writing process we are taught to follow has relatively strict rules. Deviating from that system could potentially result in a lower grade, something any student knows best to avoid.

For years, these lessons in academic writing college students are taught have been thought of as an important component for success in future careers. Obviously, universities want students to flourish once they graduate, and the key to success is through the tried and true method of writing, right? Not necessarily. If a student is successful in the classroom, that no longer means they will be as successful in the workplace. Methods of communication are constantly changing meaning what was once useful may no longer be. Workplace writing and communication can be a completely separate genre from what students learn in school.

The problem, as stated by Carolyn Miller in “What’s Practical Writing About Technical Writing?” is that academic writing and nonacademic writing methods are extremely similar yet different practices. Practicality exists differently in both forms. When people think or do something practically, it usually involves completing a task as efficiently as possibly and relies on a set of structured rules. In a classroom, practical writing makes sense. Follow the structured set of guidelines the professor provides and you will most likely earn an A. Practicality, in this case, is all about adhering to specific guidelines, which is something that may not always be honored in a work setting. Students obsess over the academic writing process, but once they leave the comfort of the classroom, this specific form of practicality may not apply.

Miller states, “technical writing has sought a basis in practice, a basis that is problematic” (Miller 64). The communication techniques that have been branded into our brains since we could first hold a pencil are questionable because what was useful then might no longer be in the real world. Academic writing may limit us to a certain extent because the standard writing methods that have been successful throughout all of our academic career may not translate into our work once we graduate. Stephen Bremner in, “Collaborative Writing: Bridging the Gap Between the Textbook and the Workplace,” makes a point in saying that academic writing can only occur in a controlled setting because classrooms are typically predictable environments. But just as in the real world, ranks and hierarchies are involuntarily established in the classroom. GPAs and grades sort us just as levels of promotion do in the workplace. In both settings, different systems of sorting exist and through that different approaches to communication and writing are created. The disconnect lies in how we should attempt to adapt the academic writing lessons we learn in the classroom to fit that of the workplace, or in other words, how to assert ourselves into a new genre.

Relying on the academic and practical approach can only prepare students for a workplace that operates the same as a classroom. Academic writing and communication demand different forms of knowledge and skill that typically differ from the workplace. According to Liberty Kohn in his article, “How Professional Writing Pedagogy and University–Workplace Partnerships Can Shape the Mentoring of Workplace Writing,” student writers have trouble deviating from the techniques they have been taught in an academic setting once they transition to the real world. This relates back to one of Miller’s main points in that what is useful in one scenario may not be in another. In the working world, grades exist in a different format. That is, students used to be evaluated on a structured grading scale and now must rely on performance reviews to assess themselves. College graduates have difficulty adapting their skill set to a different kind of evaluation because it is a matter of adapting to their new environments unique genre.

Miller, Kohn, and Bremner all agree it is important for college students to be exposed to different forms of communication and writing techniques while still in the classroom. Replicating real-world scenarios and connecting with legitimate employers will only enhance students’ communication skills. However, it is impossible to achieve a perfect replication because every environment will provide different challenges in communication and writing. Overall, it is necessary that as college students, we understand the value in both academic and nonacademic writing and in what contexts to use them.

Bremner, S. (2010). Collaborative Writing: Bridging the Gap Between the Textbook and the Workplace. English For Specific Purposes, 29(2), 121-132. doi:10.1016/j.esp.2009.11.001

Kohn, L. (2015). How Professional Writing Pedagogy and University–Workplace Partnerships Can Shape the Mentoring of Workplace Writing. Journal of Technical Writing & Communication, 45(2), 166-188. doi:10.1177/0047281615569484

Miller, Carolyn R. (1998). What’s Practical About Technical Writing? In Tim Peeples (Ed.), Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Readings from the Field. (pp. 61-70). New York, NY: Addison Wesley Educational Publishers.

Guest Blogger Brittany O’Leary

As college students, we can all remember a time in our lives when we tried to impress a crush. You probably took an extra five minutes in the morning getting ready…then you finally see him or her…and then you tell yourself to play it cool and try to say something funny to make him or her laugh. Throughout this process, you are thinking about your crush and what he or she would specifically find attractive. Every time that you are flirting with your crush—whether it’s picking out a special outfit or making sure to share a funny story (see the video below!)—you are acting rhetorically by convincing that person that you have a something to offer!

We use rhetoric in every personal, professional, and academic interaction we have with each other. Throughout a conversation, we consider the specific people we are speaking to and think of the best message to relay based on that specific person. Similarly when we flirt, we think about what our love interest would like, dislike, or relate most to in order to get that spark. As two people are building a relationship, each individual is internally choosing what to reveal to their potential partner. Should I tell him about my ex-boyfriend of three years? Should I tell her about my past? These are logical things to question when a relationship is just beginning because it is new. Jody Enders, therefore, argues that romance is an inventional, psychological, and creational process as people are making decisions about how to act in a relationship from the very beginning stages of flirting to the very end (Enders 62).

In our personal lives, we use persuasion to convey our emotions towards one another, win an argument, or make new friends. Herrick notes, “In fact, it is difficult to imagine a human relationship in which persuasion has no role, or human organization that does not depend to some degree on efforts to change other people’s thoughts and actions,” (Herrick 3). In the presence of a romantic interest, a person’s demeanor will change slightly. It may be something as simple as twirling your hair, but it is a change nonetheless. Herrick argues that when he is trying to talk to a love interest, he will develop a case to show how attractive he is. He will thus make choices that he believes will showcase him in a certain manner—will his romantic interest like someone who’s slightly arrogant, humorous, or down to earth? All of these thoughts are rhetorical in nature. Herrick explains, “…I start to develop a case—though not an explicit and public one—about my own good qualities…My words and actions take on a rhetorical quality as I build the case for my own attractiveness,” (4). Because his actions are persuasive in nature, they display a level of rhetorical thinking that contributes to his process of flirting with someone.

Additionally, Maggie Werner analyzes rhetoric’s presence in seduction—a common tool of flirtation. Werner explains that seductive rhetoric pulls its inspiration for persuasion from the need of pleasure. Unlike many other daily uses of rhetoric, romantic interaction is a unique form of communication that has the “ability to impel listeners to act not on ethics or logic but on aesthetics and desire created through artifice,” (Werner para. 2). Being able to sweep another person off his or her feet can also show how effective a person’s use of rhetoric was while they were flirting. If a person could understand their romantic interest effectively by using persuasive tactics, they might be more likely to spark the other person’s interest.

Rhetoric can often be seen as something strictly academic or professional. In actuality, rhetoric and the art of persuasion are used in our personal lives even when we are trying to flirt with people. Every time you are thinking of how you should act in front of your crush, or what you could possibly say for that boy to finally ask you out, rhetorical thinking is being put into action.

Enders, Jody. “Memory, Allegory, and the Romance of Rhetoric”. Yale French Studies 95 (1999): 49–64.

Herrick, James A. “An Overview of Rhetoric.” The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 2005. 1-30.

Werner, Maggie M. “Seductive Rhetoric and the Communicative Art of Neo-Burlesque.” Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society 5.1 (2015): n. pag.

Guest blogger Laura Dunbar

Think about the people you talk to on a day to day basis. You talk to your friends, your family, your professors, etc. Now think about the way you talk to these people. How you address them, the language you use, the tone of voice you present. You talk to different people in different ways. You wouldn’t have a casual conversation filled with slang to your professor, and you wouldn’t address your friend in a formal, professional way. This is the concept of audience in rhetoric, something you use everyday without even knowing it.

The study of rhetoric goes back a long time. One of the first authors to research the topic of rhetoric was Aristotle, in his book Rhetoric. Aristotle understood the importance of considering the audience when using rhetoric. In a commentary on Aristotle’s book, author and researcher of rhetoric Tim Peeples wrote, “[There is persuasion] through the hearers when they are led to feel emotion by the speech; for we do not give the same judgment when grieved and rejoicing or when being friendly and hostile. To this and only this we said contemporary technical writers try to give their attention” (Peeples 29). The emotional appeal that Aristotle refers to is known also as pathos, which can be defined as the appeal to the emotions of the audience.

Think about this in your own life. Has someone played on your emotions to attempt to get you to do something? You may not realize it, but many advertisements do this in attempt to convince you to buy their product or listen to their message. In the commercial below, the audience is made to feel sad through the use of a scared, crying child and slow, gloomy music in the background, all in an attempt to convince people to listen to their message and stop smoking.

Author Barry Kroll describes the importance of audience in rhetoric as well, in an article where he examines the rhetorical perspective of audience. This perspective encourages writers to really know their audience, so that they can analyze that audience in order to effectively persuade it. The article advises, “you must keep in mind the concerns and values of the people you want to reach. . . You will have to analyze your audience consciously, specify its traits, and decide what conclusions you can legitimately make about an audience with those traits” (Kroll 173). If you really know all of the traits of your audience, you will be able to predict how they will respond to the points you make, thus allowing you to craft an effective rhetorical argument.

This idea of knowing so much about your audience comes into play in everyday life, especially when kids try to convince their parents of things. As a college student, I have frequently found myself having to call my mom to ask for money. Because she is my mom, I know a lot about her. Because I know her so well, I can predict what her answer will be— no— and can use my knowledge of her to change that answer. Because she is so family-oriented, I can appeal to her by explaining that the money is for a gift for a family member. Because I know she, like me, is a food-lover, I can tell her that a new taco restaurant opened in town that I want to try. By using these things I know about my mom, I can, in the end, persuade her to give me money— the end goal of the rhetoric.

James Crosswhite, a rhetorical theorist, agrees with both Aristotle and Kroll on the importance of audience in effective rhetoric. Crosswhite references Chaim Perelman, another researcher of rhetoric, who addresses an important question— what if you don’t know your audience? Sometimes, the rhetor will not have access to so much information about their audience. In this case, he brings up a concept called the “universal audience.” To create this audience, he says to only focus on the universal characteristics of an audience, excluding thoughts that are skewed or prejudiced, so that the the writing will appeal to the general characteristics of the members of the audience (Crosswhite 163). The universal audience is the main target for situations in which a detailed analysis of audience is not possible.

Audience, as it determines the effectiveness of rhetoric, is an extremely important aspect of the rhetorical process. Analyzing an audience is also something you do subconsciously every day. Now, however, with this information, you can think more deeply about audience as you address people in your life, write papers for school, contribute to a personal blog, or any other form of rhetorical writing or speaking in your life.

Crosswhite, James. “Universality in Rhetoric: Perelman’s Universal Audience”. Philosophy & Rhetoric 22.3 (1989): 157–173. Web.

Kroll, Barry M.. “Writing for Readers: Three Perspectives on Audience”. College Composition and Communication 35.2 (1984): 172–185. Web.

Peeples, Tim. Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Readings from the Field. New York: Longman, 2003. Print.

Guest Blogger Victoria Mathew ’19

Meet Grumpy Cat. At first glance, you might not think that he has much to contribute to high-brow pursuits like rhetorical discourse. He’s just a meme. A trend. Or as Richard Dawkins might say “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” that will pass much like other “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches” before it (Wetherbee, 2). However, to a man who spent his childhood hiding from bombs in Lebanon, Grumpy Cat might signify much more than a silly fad. It might remind him of how day in day out he sees the English students that he teaches being ungrateful and unhappy with their comparatively stable lives.

In the situation above, the teacher sees an exigence, or a “kind of need or problem that can be addressed and solved through rhetorical discourse” (Grant-Davie 266). I would like to argue that there ought to be more rhetors like him who see and react to the problems reflected in memetic culture. How can a rhetorical discourse be created around a meme? According to Keith Grant-Davie, any aspiring rhetor must be able to answer three questions in order to effectively persuade his audience. A look at two scholarly articles with two of these questions in mind will show us that memes can be highly useful springboards for such persuasion.

The first question that Grant-Davie proposes regarding exigence is “what is this discourse about?”(267). He brings up the point that rhetorical discourses often address and are stimulated by specific situations, but in order to be an effective means of persuasion, a rhetorical discourse should connect to broader, more socially relevant themes as well. In other words, both the audience and the rhetor should understand “what values are at stake?” following the discourse (267). In his article, Wetherbee fixated on the “binders full of women” meme shown below and how it provoked such an intense response from the electorate that it was a game changer in the 2012 election. What values do you perceive to be at stake?

The meme refers to a moment in the presidential debates when Governor Romney, in telling a story about searching for women to hire for the cabinet, described his staff as bringing him “binders full of women.” This struck a nerve with the American people because the attitude that informed the offensive statement was a problem in more places than the Romney administration. A rhetorical discourse that claimed “Mitt Romney is an anti-feminist pig” would have missed the point. As Wetherbee put it, voters were up in arms about the “ binders full of women” statement because it spoke to the gender inequity found in workplaces nationwide. The meme provided a national platform for conversations about equal opportunity for women.

The second question that Grant-Davie proposes is “ Why is this discourse needed?” (268). Specifically, he asks the rhetor to ask himself or herself, “What about the current situation demands that it be addressed at that moment?” (268). For Armond R. Towns, author of “That Camera Won’t Save You! The Spectacular Consumption of Police Violence,” it was the new policy requiring policemen to wear cameras that drove him to speak up. In his view, this policy is mistaken in its attempt to prevent police violence against blacks because the problem is bigger than individual acts of violence. Citing evidence like the highly circulated meme pictured below, he blames a spectacular appetite and crude fascination with violence against black people as the central problem.

The meme left shows Toya Graham beating her son for rioting. Toya received approval for trying to protect her son, but Towns claims that, put in a different context, this meme would have yielded a different response. It is his argument that if it had been a white boy being beaten by his mother in the same way against the backdrop of a super market, then she would have been charged with child abuse. He cites the fact that photos of the dead bodies of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, black boys who were both murdered by policemen, can be found on knowyourmeme.com is evidence that normalization of violence against black people is a problem. It is his belief that attaching cameras to policemen and circulating videos of more black people being murdered will only exacerbate the issue, and memetic culture is the foundation of his thesis.

Clearly there is more to memes than meets the eye. Next time you see one that might seem silly to you, ask yourself what it might mean to someone else. Could you see this meme the way that the teacher saw Grumpy Cat in the first paragraph? Then, ask yourself, “What values do I see at stake?” in this meme and “Why might this provoke me to speak out?” Practicing this critical analysis of modern media will help you become a better informed rhetor and will help you discover what issues you are most passionate about.