Presentations

In chapter nine of Envision: Writing and Researching Arguments it discusses delivering presentations. This chapter helps you understand the branches of oratory. While giving a compelling presentation, rhetoric can provide ways of understanding the needs of writing situations with your own purpose, audience, and persona. Aristotle divided oratory into three branches based on time, purpose, and content.

The first branch is Judicial or forensic discourse. This branch involves defending or accusing and deals with the past. It can also be thought of as oratory right and wrong. The second branch is deliberative or legislative discourse. This branch concerns politics or policies and argues for or against actions that can happen in the future. This oratory is beneficial or harmful. The third branch is Epideictic or ceremonial discourse. This branch deals with the present. This branch can be thought of as praising or blaming.

The key elements for oral rhetoric are audience, purpose, and persona. When giving a presentation think about some presentation strategies like words, expressions, dress, props, and persona, to fit the audience and purpose of a rhetorical situation. This chapter gives you questions to help you identify your audience, purpose, and persona. One of the questions are, “What format will my presentation take? Another question is What branch of oratory does my presentation represent?

The Canons of Rhetoric

In chapter three of Envision: Writing and Researching Arguments, it discusses composing arguments. Chapter three helps you understand the canons of rhetoric. The canons of rhetoric are classified in to five categories where the principles of writing, speaking, and visual arguments operate. Number one is invention, creating an idea. Number two is arrangement, organizing your ideas in an effective way. Number three is style, expressing your ideas in an appropriate manner. Number five is memory, presenting your crafted idea to an audience. The canons are all necessary for persuasive communication.

Aristotle defined invention as methods for “finding all available argument.” Some methods used to invent an argument are: definition, definition of text; division, the parts that are comprised within the text; comparison, the comparison between your text and another. Classification, the purpose of the text, and testimony, things others say about the text.

After you create your idea, arguments becomes the next important thing because they way you present your essay will define a reader’s response to your ideas. Chapter three list some organizational strategies that can help you choose your argument. Chronological structure, relies on examples across time. Cause-effect show how one event causes another. Problem-solution defines a problem then offers a solution. Block structure works your way systematically througha series of example and case studies.

Understanding the Powers of Persuasion

In chapter two of Envision: Writing and Researching Arguments. Chapter two discuss understanding strategies of persuasion. Techniques used to move and convince an audience are called rhetorical strategies. Chapter two helps you analyzing ads as arguments. Readers can detect rhetorical choices writers and artist use to make their points to the audience by analyzing advertisements. You can find advertisements strategies of argumentation that you can use to make your case in your own writing. Some strategies advertisers use are narration to sell a product, comparison-contrast to encourage the consumer to buy their product rather than their competitor’s. Examples or illustrations are used to show how products can be used in a person’s life. Cause and effect to demonstrate the benefits of using their product. Classification and division is used to help the reader conceptualize on how the product fits into a larger scheme.

Chapters two also discuss the three rhetorical strategies of logos, pathos, and ethos. When writing, you can use logos to construct an essay around facts and reason. When creating your own analysis, be careful not to rely on mistaken or misleading use of logos. This is called logical fallacies. Paths appeals to emotion. Pathos means to put the audience in a particular mood or state of mind. The word pathos includes the words pathology and pathetic, some speak of pathos as “the pathetic appeal.” Writers use pathos as a tool of persuasion to build a connection between the writer and readers by involving a powerful emotion. Ethos appeals to character and authority. According to Aristotle, ethos works as a rhetorical strategy by establishing credibility of the writer or speaker. This chapter suggests that you use ethos every time you begin to write.

Organization

In Chapter six of Envision: Writing and Researching Arguments, the chapter talks about organizing and writing research arguments. The books compares writing a research paper to film production. Writing a research paper and producing a film have many small steps that support a grounding vision or main idea. Both have a carefully planned structure. Both also involve rigorous editing. The chapter discuss on how you can organize your research. You can make visual map like a bubble web to arrange your ideas in categories using shapes and colors. You could also make a graphic flowchart. In a graphic flowchart you list an idea and draw an arrow to the cause and effect to show the relationship.

The visual maps help you prepare to continue on with the next step of creating your paper, the outline. Outlines help you organize ideas when you start your first draft. To construct an outline that will actually help with your paper, you can not have only topics in the outline, your outline must consist of detailed information which is going to be shown in your paper.

Chapter six also discuss integrating research sources. Integrating sources is including your sources strategically and not just appropriately and rhetorically. By including your sources appropriately you are avoiding plagiarism. By including your sources rhetorically you are deciding on how much of a presence you will have in the paper. By including your sources strategically you are providing a range of quotations and evidence in the paper.

How Do I Find Sources?

In Chapter five of Envision: Writing and Researching Arguments, the author discuss finding and evaluating research sources. To start a research paper on your argument you need to gather and evaluate reliable sources. A researcher needs to learn what is being talked about, the topic, how it is being discussed, the conversation, and what are the different positions, research context.

To get everything needed for your topic it is good to visualize your research process. When gathering your sources where will you look for them? You might decide to go to a library, surf the web, or get a personal interview with an expert in the field of study. The topic and final paper is only a small part of the research. As explained in the book, there are many more sources beneath the surface. Archival material, books, articles, films, interviews, surveys, visual media, websites, and historical text, creates the entire research project.

Chapter five of Envision also talks about the steps in the research process. One of the steps in the research process is locating relevant and interesting sources. In your research you will need to include primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are original text that is analyzed in the research paper. Secondary sources are sources that provide commentary on the primary material or on the main topic in general.

Rhetorical Cartoons!

In chapter one of Envision: Writing and Researching Arguments, the author discusses Analyzing Text. In this chapter we learn how to understand text in a rhetorical manner. “To approach text rhetorically means to ask questions about how the text conveys a persuasive message or argument, how the text addresses a specific audience, and how the writer operates within a specific context or rhetorical situation.” Rhetoric is the ability to discern the available means of persuasion in any given situation.

We encounter rhetoric in many forms every day. While walking down the street or down a hallway, we encounter many things which has a rhetoric meaning if it is a poster or drawing on the wall. In writing there is a rhetorical situation, a dynamic relationship of communications between the writer, text, and audience. An example used in the book is in a personal argument when you want to persuade your couch to let practice out early, you would state your case face to face instead of through a letter.

Rhetorical persuasion is not only displayed by writing, visual means is also included. The way a person makes eye contact with the audience, the way he/she stands, or formats a professional document. Design posters to advertise an organization or adding pictures to an essay are examples of visual persuasion. This strategy for analyzing rhetorical text is called visual rhetoric. Some examples of visual rhetoric includes: a documentary produced to suggest a point of view, illustration in children’s books to shape meaning of a story, and cartoons of a comic strip offer commentary on society.

In analyzing works such as comic strips notice key elements in the works such as: images, words, characters, layout, and actions. It is also good to observe facial expressions, body postures, and changes between the panels. Some questions you might want to keep in mind and try to answer is: Who is the audience of this cartoon? What is the message of the cartoon? What persuasive statement does the cartoon convey? What is the argument?

Be A Whistleblower 4 Peace

The “Falling Whistle” is an organization which promotes peace in Congo, Africa. There is a war in Congo; people are fighting over minerals which are used in many different popular products today, for example cell phones. In the war, the armies would put children, who are too small to hold guns, in the frontlines. The only weapons the children are armed with are whistles. Supposedly the children armed with whistles, were supposed to frighten the enemies with their loud noises. When this fails the children are supposed to become a human shield for the soldiers and their bodies used as barricades.

The speaker who started Falling Whistles, Sean, tried to interact with the crowd. In the beginning of his presentation he tried to get to know the audience and let the audience get to know him. When growing up as a kid his family was broke because his father’s business partner stole everything from him. To make a living Sean's family sold Glow in the dark necklaces, which his grandfather made. Everyday his family would go out and sell the Glow in the dark necklaces. John started trying to help people who in other countries in 2006, when he heard about children being take from their homes and having to sleep elsewhere. Sean and his friends started a protest to make people aware of the issue by leaving their homes and sleeping outside on the street. The awareness of this protest expanded nationally when the social network MySpace was created later that year. Thousands of people around the nation came out to support the cause.

The wars in Congo, Africa started in the 1800s, when the bicycle and the automobile were invented. With mass production of these transportation devices, the need of rubber increased. Congo had the largest supply of rubber, which lead to war.

When Sean first went to Congo, the original plan was to visit for five days and move on. On their visit they came across a camp where kids of war were treated as enemies. After hearing what was done there, John wrote a blog about the horrors of the camp and sent it to this family and friends. His family and friends then forward the blog to more people. Sean started receiving hundreds of emails from people asking how they can help. John then organized the Falling Whistles. The goal is to have Peace in Congo. The whistle became the symbol of peace. Back in the States Sean and his friends started selling whistles, making displays in stores, doing anything to get more people to support the cause.

In Congo, Sean met a sixteen year old girl who helped inspire him. The words she said were so strong, “Our skin might be different, but our blood is still the same.” Also in Congo, there were two boys who fought for different tribes, Sean thought there was going to a conflict; however, one of the boys waked up to the other, kissed him and said, “We are only boys, and how could we be enemies.” John wants to give the children of Congo a different weapon; everyone’s voice. He wants everyone to become a whistleblower for peace.

A Weird Childhood

Jeannette Walls the author of a New York Times Best Sellers, The Glass Castle: A Memoir came to Ball State University on September 21, 2011. In her speech she discussed her story and the things she has learned while writing the story of her childhood, looking back and understanding things she did not understand while she was a child.
While Walls was maturing, she was ashamed of her childhood. She was scared what people might think about, what she called her weird childhood. Walls finally decided to tell her story to the world when she was on her way to a party and saw her mother going through a trash can. Walls took her mother out to eat and asked her mother what she was supposed to tell people about her parents. He mother simply responded, “The truth.” She then decided to tell her story without caring if this is the kind of story people would want to read or not.
One of Walls’ dreams for writing the book was that each person would read her story and understand people in who is in the same position she was in while growing up. She dreamed that after people read her book that they wouldn’t treat people different because they dressed different then everyone else or wasn’t able to take daily showers. She realized that her dream has been fulfilled when people came to her and said that her story changed the way they treated people.
Walls also spoke about an old friend of her brother Brian, Sam, who always had food and a mother that cooked for him. She always wished that she had his life. One day while they was over Sam’s house he was at the table drawing, then his father came into the kitchen and made fun of Sam’s dream of being an artist. Walls realized that she didn’t want Sam’s life because she didn’t have parents who made fun of her dreams.
While Walls spoke she tried to catch the audience’s attention by making jokes throughout the speech. In the audience everyone seemed to be very intrigued throughout her whole speech. I did notice a few people texting on their phone; however, they could be taking notes on their phone like I was. During the Question and Answer section, there were a few people who had very good questions to ask Walls. She seemed excited to answer every question asked.

I Think I'm Getting Dumber!

In the article is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr, he discuss how the internet is making readers lose the ability to read lengthy articles or books without losing focus. Carr says that he feels something changing in his brain. He now struggles with reading the things which came easy to him in the past. Carr noticed how his mind would drift away from his reading on to something more interesting, only after a couple of pages.

I have also noticed the same thing Carr has noticed in his mental capability of reading. Reading was never my favorite thing to do, but if I had to read a chapter or article, I would read it without skimming and be done with it. This was before I used the internet daily. However, now while reading a lengthy article or a chapter in a book I get distracted and taken off topic. Even while I was reading this article, after the fifth paragraph I stopped reading and got on Facebook.

Some of Carr’s literary friends and associates also notice the same change Carr was experiencing. In today’s society people mostly skim through things instead of actually reading through the article or book. “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” I think Carr tries to get the readers of this article to notice the change in them as well by writing a very lengthy article. He wants the readers to see how many times and how long it would take for them to stray away from the article on to something else on the internet.