For your first assignment, I want you to tell the story of a moment in your life (or an hour, week, whatever) when you employedsuccessfully or notrhetoric or a rhetorical lens. In other words, this paper should tell a story about you as a rhetorician, as someone who had to communicate something to an audience while considering your purpose and credibility as a speaker/writer; your audiences needs, feelings, values, or beliefs; your message, reasoning, and argument; and the timing of your communication. Since you dont have a lot of room, make sure you pick a story that you can narrate in detail in around two pages.
And who is your audience for this paper? Well, think of me, of course, and the rest of the class for this one, particularly the notion that we are still exploring what rhetoric is (or what rhetorics are) and we want to know how you are making sense of these new ideas.
You have two tasks, then, in this paper: first, tell a good story, and second, tell me about the rhetorical situation using the terms from our first chapters. I think you can manage both at once although you might want to think about them separately as you work on ideas and then draft the paper.
As you consider your particular rhetorical story, you might think about these questions:
Note 1: You need to include each of the bold terms below.
What is the rhetorical situation (or rhetorical context)? Describe the setting of your moment.
Ethos: Whos the speaker or writer? Thats you, but whats your position/ your character/your reason for writing or speaking?
Pathos: Whos the audience(s)? Who makes up your primary audience? What are their values/beliefs/characteristics?
Logos: Whats the message? What are you trying to communicate to your audience? Are you persuading, arguing, informing?
Kairos: Describe the timing. Why did your communication need to occur when it did? Why did you need to consider timing when planning your communication?
How do you write with these words?
Example: As I planned my speech, I wanted my ethos to reflect. . . .
Example: My audiences characteristics or pathos included . . .
