Hey all!

Our discussion was so great today that I ran out time to talk about next class in any detail.  That’s an AWESOME problem to have!  Here is the assignment as it appears on the syllabus:

Assignment: View all of the campaign videos posted on the class blog.  Choose at least two videos to comment on.  Use some of the concepts and tools for rhetorical analysis introduced in chapter 1 in your comments.  Do not limit yourself to “good/bad,” “true/false,” “either/or.”  I want you to think about what each video is trying to do and it’s trying to do it. Generate a list of key words, images, sounds, etc. that are used to represent each candidate. Bring your list to class.

It’s kind of self-explanatory, but I wanted to just follow up.  Just like we did in class today with “The One” video from the McCain campaign, I would like you to look carefully at all of the videos posted below on this blog.  Pay particular attention to HOW the videos are designed (see the section in Rhetorical Visions on composition analysis)…what kind of strategies do they employ?

In addition to bringing to class your list of key words, images, sounds, etc., I’d love to hear more of your responses.  So, here’s what I’m going to suggest.  Once you take a look at the videos, either post a comment to this post or create a separate post.  If you want to create a separate post, log in to WordPress.com, click on “ENG 025,” and “Write” a new post.  When you log in you should be taken directly to the “Write Post” page (which looks like an email screen”.  If you are not, click the “Write” link on the upper left hand side of the page and then click “Post.”

Give it a shot!  Can’t wait to read more.

Here it is: the web page and blog for Mahoney’s ENG 025 Honors Composition Class! I want to welcome everyone to our little corner of the ‘blogosphere.’ This will be a space to continue class discussions, pose questions and ideas, and to experiment with a form of public writing.

In this class, we will be talking about writin–academic writing in particular–as an on-going conversation. In his book The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke, a literary scholar rhetorical theorist, gave us the metaphor of a “parlor” to highlight the conversational nature of knowledge-making and, I would argue, writing:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument, then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him [or her]; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself [or herself] against you, to either the embarrassment of gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress (110-111, brackets mine).

So, we’ll be talking a lot about conversations…and, hopefully, we will add to this conversation in new and interesting ways…ways that reflect who you are and what you have to say.

Since we only meet twice during the first two weeks of the semester, take some time to introduce yourself by commenting on this post.

I’m looking forward to a great semester!