Posted: September 13th, 2017

Communicating the Rhetoric of an Important Topic or Idea in Your Field

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

Major Paper THREE: Communicating the Rhetoric of an Important Topic or Idea in Your Field

PURPOSE

In the first part of this course we investigated the rhetoric of several forms of writing in several genres and in several disciplines. For this paper you will draw on all of the data and research you’ve been conducting this term—as well as your skills in rhetorical analysis—to write a rhetorical analysis paper that both represents the making and presentation of knowledge in your field, and is readable by a lay audience. This will get us practicing two things simultaneously: 1. Continuing to explore the ways writing, thinking, and rhetoric happen together in your and others’ fields/subfields; and 2. Developing an ability to communicate the rhetoric of this writing and thinking to readers and thinkers both within and outside your field/subfield. 

TASK

Compose a 2400-3000-word essay that explores and makes some sort of claim about why a topic OR journal is important in your field/subfield, and—rhetorically—how and why people in your field/subfield  think and write about it or in it. REMEMBER, you are investigating the RHETORIC of that topic/journal, not just the topic itself: Why is this such an important or interesting topic/journal for the field? How and why is a specific rhetorical frame of analyses useful and appropriate for analyzing this topic/journal? How, rhetorically, does what scholars in the field approach and argue on/in this topic/journal take shape and form in the texts they produce? What does the way scholars rhetorically approach and argue on/in this topic/journal—the way texts are written and the rhetorical features they exhibit—suggest about the way people think, act, and try to communicate (or persuade, or educate…) in your field/subfield, and what they consider important and interesting? YOU DO NOT NEED TO ANSWER ALL THESE QUESTIONS. The number of sources you end up using will depend on your project, but anywhere from 4-10 sources are recommended.

To do this assignment well, as in Major Paper 2, you will need to have a relatively specific and precise focus that will allow you to go into great depth of analyses with your evidence and claims. The quicker you can match a rhetorical frame and set of tools for analyses with the topic/journal and set of texts you wish to analyze the better! As with Major Paper 2, it will help a lot if you refer to the “Notes on Rhetoric” information from the handout, especially the links to online resources in #8.

AUDIENCE/GENRE/STYLE

Imagine this essay is going in the journal The George Mason Review. So, while you are trying to stay true to a smart, sophisticated rhetorical analyses of your topic/journal and chosen texts, you will also want to make sure your final essay is readable to an intelligent, but lay academic audience. In other words, this essay should be reader friendly for someone who might not be familiar with your field/subfield or rhetorical analyses.

Depending on what your research on academic journals in your field/subfield has revealed, you will choose what formatting/documentation style (MLA, APA, Chicago, for example) to use. 

DUE DATES

First draft due for peer review TBA. Second draft due TBA. Final draft due in your final ePortfolio.