I am not assigning any new work for tomorrow's class. Come with a final draft of your papers -- or as close to one as you have--and we will schedule grading conference times for the following week.
We will also have an in-class quiz on the readings from Unit 1 in the course.
These include all of the readings that we did in preparation for our first essay. So take some time to review those essays (see your course calendar for details--or check out this copy: Download 202S09cal) and prepare tomorrow to answer some questions about key quotes, concepts, and examples from these readings.
I will be coming to class with comments on the last drafts you gave me (I picked a paragraph from each draft and wrote some detailed notes) and a set of your in-class writings to return).
What have I learned about argument and rhetoric from my analysis of this essay? How will this knowledge shape my own writing of arguments in the future?
Focus: How well does ________________ premise support / advance the essay's argument?
Support: Is it true? Would everybody, most people, many people, some people, nobody agree with it? Consider supporting and/or counter-evidence and evaluate the credibility / persuasiveness of premise.
Clincher: Trace the relationship between the premise and the argument--how well does the premise support that argument?
Michael Omi
offers a valid argument about race in popular culture that links two broad
premises with a conclusion.Omi begins
by asserting that racial consciousness has defined our culture and the films,
television shows, and other key products of our culture.After offering a long list of different
manifestations of this first premises—traditions and assumptions that reveal
this preoccupation with race in American culture—Omi contends that “possibilities
for change” to this racial consciousness do “exist” (559). We have the
potential, Omi claims, “for transforming racial stereotypes and challenging
institutional inequities” (559), but his conclusion suggests that this change
will be difficult because “the tradition itself “ requires critical examining
and questioning in order to be “contested and transformed” (559).Ultimately, Omi is arguing that we need to do
what he does in his essay: we need to examine cultural products for their
relationship to race and our assumptions about race. If Omi’s premises—that race
is a defining force and pop culture and that we can change how that force works
are true—then his conclusion that in order to change that racial conscious we
must scrutinize the assumptions and traditions of racism in America seems to
follow logically from those premises.
This weekend, in addition to the articles in the syllabus, I would like you to read a web lecture about concision--the first style area that we want to focus on this semester: concision
As you read it, note some key elements that you will want to emulate:
1) a topic sentence that explicitly explains what the iPhone tells us about America and one (1) of its values, hopes, desires, beliefs, etc.
2) a detailed discussion of one example (in this case one add) and how that one add presents evidence for one American value--that discussion includes details and explanations
3) clincher sentences that tie the discussion together and reconnect everything to the larger discussion of America
4) integrated references to our course readings and ideas
Before you go on, you may want to watch the ad I am writing about:
Sample Draft Paragraph:
For all of its slick, stand out from the crowd gadgetry and obvious appeals to what Jack Solomon calls competitive elitism (410), the iPhone sells an idea of freedom understood as limitless consumption. Apple's iphone ad "Shazam" updates what Lawrence Shames has described as the idea of the "frontier," a "place where one never quite came to an end" (77), by promising us a new technological frontier where we can capture and identify any music we see or hear anywhere. Beginning with an up close shot of a finger flipping through two display screens featuring more than twenty iphone applications, the ad then introduces us to Shazam, an application that allows us to transcend the horror of hearing a song without knowing its name. Through the magic of Apple, all we have to do is hold our iPhone up to the “song” (the image in the ad presents a hand holding a phone up to a speaker---will that work for elevator music too?) and Shazam liberates us from our ignorance because “in seconds, you’ll know who sings it and where to get it.” This last phrase is the crucial hook—for liking a song enough to want to know its name is only torture if you cannot immediately purchase the song as well—or so this ad suggests. Although Apple’s own iTunes store is not mentioned verbally in the ad, the image that appears on the screen refers the anxious music listener to the comforting “convenience” (a synonym for freedom in American consumer culture) of iTunes. Shazam makes round the clock consumption of music a reality for the consumer who feels trapped by age old methods of discovering music that limited our ability to pursue every impulse that even vaguely crossed our minds. In terms of what all of this says about America, the ad's last line is particularly chilling: “That’s the iPhone: solving life’s dilemmas one app at a time.” Our dilemmas are not Iraq, the economy, educating our children, or improving healthcare. Our American dilemma is whether we can find and purchase every song we ever hear that interests us. If Solomon argues correctly that our ads reveals our "hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs" (410), then the iPhone’s ads and its huge commercial success suggest that we yearn for our freedom to consume above all else.
We have only one required text for English 202 (Section 2290) this spring.
I have listed the book below along with publisher information and a link to Amazon.com, where you can find more than 100 used texts available for significantly less than half the cost (including shipping). Look below the list price of the book on amazon for small blue links to new and used texts from other dealers at below that list price.
Please order your text early as possible so that you can save a significant amount of money on your text and still have it before class begins.
I encourage you to buy a cheap used text this semester because a new edition of this text comes out for the fall, so the bookstore probably will not buy back this text from you. In other words, buy the text as cheaply as you can now and do not count on a resale to recoup what you spend.
Signs of Life in the USA 5th edition (do not purchase any other editions--you will not have the readings you need for the class if you do!) Bedford St. Martins, 2006: ISBN: 978-0312431334 Amazon Link
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