Presidential rhetoric assignment: part one

“I wished to write a speech which would be a praise of Helen and a diversion to myself.”

            Gorgias, “Encomium of Helen”

Gorgias began the semester with an important announcement: in one light, rhetoric is a puzzle, a sort of mental toy. The start our play – ala Aristotle - by carefully considering what we might say, what it is possible to say, and continues by figuring out the best parts of that to use to address these people, in this place, at this time.

For this assignment, I want you to take a text, a series of texts, or a central aspect of the Presidential campaign (or a related topic) and apply in a focused way one or more of the concepts and principles we’ve engaged so far this semester. My interest in this assignment is that you try out, in a comprehensive and detailed way, analyses based on the ideas we have explored this semester.

Before you write, take Aristotle seriously: sit down with your text (or texts, or whatever it is you are working with) and with the rhetorical concepts we’ve taken up, and work through them. Look closely at topics, at modes of appeal, at argumentative strategies. Ask questions about the things you find. If you note that an advertisement seeks to make the audience angry, explain how it does that. (This doesn’t just mean saying, “The ad seeks to create a sense of anger by showing how the candidate’s incompetence caused a financial disaster.” Further, you’ve got to consider the question “Why did the creators of this ad know that this topic would make this audience angry?” In other words, keep pushing your answers.)

That’s stage one, and it’s due by Wednesday Oct. 3. These are notes, the finding out, the pre-writing.

Stage two will continue the invention part: invention never stops (another thing that sets it apart usefully from pre-writing, by the way: by definition, pre-writing stops when writing begins). Stage two is where you look at what you came up with and start thinking about what you can say using it, given what you have seen in it, and ask these questions of it: how can you write this piece in a way that will engage readers because it is 1) saying something interesting and worth saying, and 2) trying to engage readers.

The audience is, of course, us. I grant that the entire exercise is completely driven by the rhetorical situation of the teacher-mandated writing assignment, but once we’ve gotten past that, I’m not so interested in “what I want.” I’m more interested in your sense of what we want. Part of your job, as a rhetor, is to appeal to us. Now, the questions you asked about one text (& etc.) become questions you ask about your text. It’s a construction job, and it requires that you think about how to appeal to us.