September 29, 2008

Response to Melisa Dawson's Rhetoric

I enjoy Melisa's direct approach to writing. I think she understands and implements the strategies we are learning. Her posts are very inviting and easy to read. The rhetoric post stuck with me because we used similar examples for the pathos form of rhetoric. I think those television commercials of starving children that need the viewer to send money and save them is a classic example of rhetoric in the pathos form. Sara also chose this type of commercial as an example of pathos. Three in a class of less than 30 shows more than 10% pick this particular commercial as the most prominent use of emotion to persuade based on the fact it is the example chosen to present, so it must fit the category. Of course, this last sentence is oozing with logos.

September 26, 2008

Chapter 6 is all about a reader-centered approach, only this time the book explains you must start thinking about your reader even before you think about writing. Research techniques, sources, and even how you use the information you find require you to consider your reader. Not only will this help you to create something your reader can use and be persuaded by, but it will also keep you focused during your research and limit any time wasted doing research. There are seven guidelines to consider when starting research.

The first guideline is to "define your research objectives" (152). If you know what you need to find out before you start, chances are you will have better luck locating the information. Second, "create an efficient and productive research plan" (153). Determine which type of materials are going to supply you with the most persuasive information, and set a schedule to keep yourself on track in order to have enough time to do the actual writing. The third guideline is to "check each source for leads to other sources" (155). This includes reading the footnotes or bibliography to see where the information you just read came from. Perhaps these sources will provide more information you still need to find. Fourth, "carefully evaluate what you find" (155). Even when you carefully consider which sources to use, you need to evaluate the information within those sources bias and credibility. The fifth guideline is to "begin interpreting your research results even as you obtain them" (156). Do not take notes randomly. When you read information you think you will use, think of how your reader will use that information. You may need to do additional research, but answering questions for your reader is what makes your writing most useful to them. Sixth is to "take careful notes" (157). The best information is useless to you if you cannot document it correctly. Determine whether you are quoting or paraphrasing, and always collect all the needed information to construct your bibliography. The seventh and last guideline deals with ethics, and it is to "observe intellectual property law and document your sources" (157). You need to know what you can and cannot use, and you need to follow the correct format of documenting the sources you use.

Chapter 7 gives you guidelines on how to put all your information together in a way that allows your reader to find what they are looking for and easily follow what you are saying. Whether it is a sentence, paragraph, or an entire book with many chapters, how you organize the information will make or break all your hard research efforts. The eight guidelines are:

• Begin by announcing your topic
• Present your generalizations before your details
• Move from most important to least important
• Consult conventional strategies when having difficulties organizing
• Consider your readers' cultural background when organizing
• Reveal your communication's organization
• Smooth the flow of thought from sentence to sentence
• Examine the human consequences of what you're drafting
  

I can see how following these guidelines will get my research focused and help me produce writing that has my reader at the center from the very beginning. Not only will I have the information to persuade my reader, but also they will be able to follow and use it based on my organization. I am anxious to use these techniques in the research project we are working on for class.

September 19, 2008

Once again, all the information in the assigned chapters proved to be very interesting, and I can really see how I will incorporate the guidelines into my writing. Chapter 16, specifically, was of interest to me not only for working in our groups, but also because so many of my other classes will require group projects. I am just starting a large group project that will require an 8-page paper along with multiple other written submissions. The guidelines in chapter 16 gave me some great ideas to get my group focused and looking ahead to creating the best finished product possible. I enjoyed the way it described how to use strengths from each member, and while an agenda makes perfect sense in a meeting structure, I have never considered it from a project-meeting standpoint.

Reading chapter 23 was thought provoking as well. I could not help but compare personal experience with directions to the ideas in the book. My experiences range from trying to follow very poorly written instructions or mastering the most well written instructions to completely tossing the instructions aside (perhaps based on an introduction that failed to persuade me to read them). I also did some instruction writing when I worked as an item processor for my bank. The assignment was to write systematic instructions on how to do my job so that someone with no knowledge whatsoever could follow them and be successful. During the testing phase, it did not take long to see that the amount of background and explanation I needed to give for each step well exceeded even the twenty page manual I developed. Ultimately, my employer determined that some skill set and knowledge base was required in order to execute my duties. It was not feasible to create the instruction manual they desired.

I was surprised that chapter 4 describes outlining as one of multiple options for organizing your writing. That shows how this information on writing is so much different from what I have studied in other English classes. It was music to my ears (...or eyes?). Outlining was not ever something that I found to help me. Most of the time I wrote my papers, and then I pulled the outline from the finished product. I always did well, so perhaps that fuels my bias toward outlines.

Direct and indirect patterns are what I focused on in chapter 5. From previous reading, we learned that if the reader may interpret your information negatively, you do not necessarily want to start with it. However, there was not really a suggestion of how to go about this. Figure 5.5 on page 133 is a great visual to help compare the two patterns, and I completely buy in to the idea of stating possible flaws with a current system to gain support of your suggested solution before you even present it. Depending on how you word it, I believe that has to be rhetoric of some sort.

September 22, 2008

Rhetoric is a newly defined term for me; however, it is in so much of everyday life that I am unsure how I failed to assign a proper name to it until now. There are three types of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos. Not having studied rhetoric and with the limited information I received in class, it is still somewhat easy to point out where rhetoric is used in virtually everything I see and hear. Whether an advertisement focuses on the "I,” "we", and "us" of ethos to build credibility and greatness for the company or product, appeals to emotions through pathos, or gives a laundry list of logical data with logos that advertisement is persuading you. Rhetoric is present in more than just the obvious advertisements as well. A simple conversation with a friend will contain rhetoric. "I really know what I am doing because I have done this before and have a lot of experience. I was very good and everyone loved me.” If someone says those two sentences, they are dripping with ethos. I think of the "Save the Children" commercials where children in need of food, clothes, education, and health care surround a celebrity when I think of ethos. Visuals like that can really pull on the heartstrings and invoke strong emotion. A=B and B=C so A=C is an example of how someone might use logic to persuade with logos rhetoric. I am fascinated with this new knowledge and cannot stop trying to determine what type of rhetoric I am seeing, hearing, and using all the time. Aside from persuading someone else using rhetoric, it is important to understand how manipulation of you can occur with rhetoric.

September 15, 2008

Response to Sara Ross



I also was interested in the information about not showing hands in pictures. This is common in order to avoid possible rude gestures. I began thinking about how else pictures might need to be censored. Perhaps certain cultures would not respond well to a communication that contained pictures portraying a woman in power.

The chapter also addressed paying attention to the charts and graphs you put in your writing all the way down to the colors you use within the charts and graphs. While making sure your readers are seeing only graphics that are useful to them seems obvious to me, I have never considered if the type or colors would make any difference. I probably do not find the graphics of things that I read distracting because the writer has made good choices.

September 12, 2008

As many other students have indicated, Chapter 3 provides a great deal of insight to writing with effectiveness. Usability and persuasiveness, while essential, only work if you have written your communication in a way that is usable and persuasive to your intended reader. As I read through the ten guidelines, I could not help but think of how some people within the organization I currently work really implement the guidelines to benefit their writing and how others seem to overlook them completely. I also began realizing what an enormous task writing a reader-center communication is. Our last assigned reading gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling about how great it is going to be to focus my efforts and attain the best results. Chapter 3 pointed out what a magnitude of effort is required just defining objectives.

Objective 3 had me chuckling to myself with its example of a bank manual. I work in a bank, and not long ago our entire computer system was changed. The reader indicated that the best approach for this type of communication would be to show "how easy the system is" (72). Rather than providing such a manual, the powers that be relied on verbal queues that the new system was super simple and possible problems were not even worth discussing. The reality was that many, many problems did arise and the only manual available required a degree in advance double speak to decipher.

Objective 5 had me a bit perplexed right up until the end when it referred to a "3rd context" (80). It seemed counter-productive to constantly be writing the opposite of what comes natural. I was thinking of how there should be some kind of compromise for writing cross-culturally. The idea that this alternate context may arise then felt obvious.

I was very pleased to see Objective 7. From the beginning, I appreciated that there was an abundance of questions to consider before writing a particular communication, but I kept asking myself how I was supposed to know the answers. My own feeling is that if someone is not willing to tell you what it is that they want they do not necessarily deserve it. I am sure this is a perspective I will need to re-evaluate if I want to be successful in my communication efforts.