Essay Instructions: The follow is the assignment for a better understanding of what the essay should be:
Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum
- Neufeld and Colman, "When Science Takes the Witness Stand" (pp. 561-576)
-Tucker,"DNA in Court" (pp. 577- 586)
-Watson, "The Human Genome Project: A Personal View" (pp. 529-537)
-Nelkin, "The Grandiose Claims of Geneticists" (pp. 524-529)
Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace
Lesson 5: Cohesion and Coherence
Lesson 10: The Ethics of Prose.
Commentary
Every student of writing at some time asks the following questions: '.~'What makes a piece of writing work~~.
" Exactly how does a writer go about accomplishing his intended effects? ~ The best way to provide answers is to do a close, textual study of a good piece of writing, called a rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis brings to a level of conscious awareness what it is writers do when they want to persuade or engage a reader. Although it demands some counting and labeling activities, rhetorical analysis is not a sterile exercise. By taking a piece of writing apart we can see just how it works. For the purposes of rhetorical analysis, an essay can be takeI1: apart in four ways:
A. Rhetorical situation and context B. Purpose
C. Reasoning and evidence D. Style
There are questions we can ask about each of these categories. A 0 Rhetorical situation and context
1. Describe the authority or familiarity of the writer .
2. What is the nature of the audience? (reconstruct from
internal or external evidence)
3. What is the time, place, and occasion of publication? (check original publication)
4. Describe the historical background or other matters of context.
1. What is the purpose of the essay? Any secondary purpose? 2. What is the thesis, stated qr implied?
3. What does the writer assume about the audience's
knowledge and attitude about the subject? How do you know?
Reasoning and evidence
1. What principle of structure or organization is at work in the essay?
2 In what ways is the organization revealed to the reader?
3. What is the function of each paragraph in terms of the thesis and purpose of the essay?
4. Where does the writer employ ethos, logos, pathos? 5. What is the pattern of reasoning in the essay?
6. What kinds of evidence are used? To what effect?
7. Is there any evidence missing? Are these errors in
reasoning or logic? Are there invalid emotional appeals?
D. Style
1. Describe the voice. Consider its appropriateness to the rhetorical context.
..2. Determine what features characterize the style.
3. Describe any special techniques: schemes, figures of speech, sentence emphasis, punctuation. What is their effect? as we look closely at each of these categories, we will refer to Gilbert Highet's "The Gettysburg Address." Opening his essay with the necessary history of the Gettysburg Address, Highet follows with a close reading of the Address.
Stop Here: Read Lincoln's "Address at Gettysburg" and
Highet's "The Gettysburg Address" in the Appendices at the end of this lesson.
Many beginning writers usually are not aware of the extent to which , they can learn about writing by analyzing an essay or speech. Or, if they are aware, they often object that analysis of an artistic work
"destroys" the work. If you fall into either category (or somewhere in between), you should have found Highet's essay enlightening and instructive: it is accessible, informative,' and even moving in its
veneration of Lincoln's genius. Certainly, the grandeur and power of Lincoln's speech is in no way impaired by Highet's analysis. Careful readers of the essay can learn about several important devices, such as the tricolon and antithesis, useful for their own writing. But perhaps the most important lesson of Highet's analysis is the
example of his close reading, the principles of which you can apply to your own writing and reading assignments.
In the first eight paragraphs of his analysis Highet deals with rhetorical situation and context. He briefly but effectively creates the historical
context in which Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was not then respected as a great man-indeed, his presence at the
dedication ceremonies caused consternation among those who thought he did not know how to behave. Highet manages to get us "on Lincoln's side" by painting him as the underdog, as a genius and artist; a man who was not initially appreciated by his contemporaries. We become sympathetic to Lincoln's predicament at the dedication ceremony, to which he was invited as an afterthought and at which he spoke
last-hardly the position of honor. And Lincoln, a man who understood the importance of the ceremony and who was not fazed by the
disrespectful reception, delivered a brilliant speech. By providing such background information, Highet makes us want to learn more about the speech-and then analyzes its historical (and Biblical) references, its thematic richness, and its skillful use of rhetorical devices.
.Highet begins to cite evidence in paragraph 10, in which he observes that Lincoln's address "is full of quotations-or rather
Iadaptations-which give it strength." Highet refers to the Biblical ;; cadences of the speech and then, in paragraph 11, discusses its .: "imaginative themes." He then analyzes the rhetorical structure of .!.. the speech in paragraphs 12-14.
Indisputably, the Gettysburg Address is a document whose author
had something of moment to say and said it well. It can be cited as an example of what George Orwell would consider good writing-
writing in which the author controls language and does not allow language to control him.
Stop Here: Read the assigned essays in Writing and Reading.
Writing Your Rhetorical Analysis
The four essays that you have just read from Writing and Reading all concern various issues involved in genetic engineering and the ways in which biotechnology already affeGts or might affect our lives.
While the essays by Watson and Nelkin explore the actual science behind DNA research and some of the larger claims of the
researchers and the sociological effects of the science, the essays by
N eufeld/Colman and Tucker explore the much more specific issue of how genetic research has affected our judicial system. After you read these essays, you probably came away thinking that while the science involved in genetic research is complex, the implications of this
research on society are even more profound. This almost inescapable conclusion reveals why close and careful textual analysis of
arguments are so important. Even though you may not understand fully the science behind genetic research, the claims of the
scientists-and of those who apply the science-affect our society in direct and indirect ways.
What are these claims? And how does a writer defend them? In this assignment, you will write a rhetorical analysis in which you will attempt to answer these two questions in relation to one of the four
essays that you have read. Your first step is to select one of the four essays from Writing and Reading that you would like to study more carefully. Then re-read the essay, using the following suggestions to guide each reading. (Note: This may seem like busy work; however, the more carefully you study the essay, the easier it will be to write
your rhetorical analysis.) In your first re-reading, concentrate on the purpose and overall effect of the piece. Record your observations and identify key passages in the text that show the essay's purpose. In your second re-reading, mark anything that strikes you as
significant-a turn of phrase, an idea, an effective sentence, or use of evidence (recall code words from the last lesson).
The next step in your close textual reading is to make a descriptive
outline. Draw a line down the center of a sheet of notebook paper and head each column with a question. At the top of the first column
write "What does it say?" At the top of column two write "How does it say it?" What you list under the first question will show meaning;
your notes under the second question will reveal method. There is no "right way" to do a descriptive outline. Its sole purpose is to break
down the meaning and method into workable segments that you, the
analyst, can deal with. As an example, if I were to write a descriptive outline of the Gettysburg Address, it could look like this:
Descriptive Outline of Gettysburg Address
What does it say? How does it say it? para. 1 87 years ago the U.S. .biblical language
started-beliefthat all men (fourscore and seven...) are equal. .alliteration: new nation
.family words: (fathers, brought forth, conceived)
para.2 Now we are at war...he is. ellipsis-omits "we are" before establishing background to "testing"
lead into the purpose ofhis .parallel: so conceived, speech. so dedicated.
.why "we are met" instead of "we meet"? more formal?
He tells what's going on and why.
.Repeats: that nation any nation that nation
(note "new nation" in para. 1) para. 3 [para. 3 ]
You get the idea. In a descriptive outline you concentrate on whatever strikes you as significant in either column. Try the descriptive outline; you may be surprised at what you discover .
Two Ways to EXplore Style
1. Schemes and Tropes
To help you identify and label aspects of an author's style, turn to
Appendix 5.1 on Schemes and Tropes at the end of this lesson. Listed are some of the more common devices you will find in
good writing. Study the examples given for each term and make that technical term part of your language vocabulary. The more you learn about such techniques of style, the more you will consciously try to use some of them in your own writing.
2. Analysis of Style
There is yet another way to look at style-to identify structures and count words. This activity seems mechanical at times, but the results of such a study are revealing. Notice that there is a second column in the following analysis that you can use for
your own writing. Even though that second column is not part of the rhetorical analysis you will write, you will find it equally
revealing! In case you have trouble with numbers 7 through 14 under Sentences, turn to Appendix 5.2 at the end of this lesson for definitions of the kinds of sentences asked for .
Instructions: Fill in column one and column two with the required information. Use the first column for the Neufeld and Colman essay or the Tucker essay you have chosen for your rhetorIcal analysIs. Do not use the entire piece for this stylistic study. Instead, use only the followrng.
Neufeld and Colman: paragraphs 1-9 or
Tucker: paragraphs 1-8
Use the second column for an analysis of your own writing. Choose either the essay you wrote for Lesson 3 or Lesson 4. Use the first 500-750 words if your essay exceeds 750 words.
Published Essay Your Essay
1. Total number of words in the piece studied
Paragraphs
2. Longest paragraph
{number of sentences)
3. Shortest paragraph
{number of sentences)
4. Average paragraph
(number of sentences)
Sentences
1. Total number of sentences in the piece studied
2. Longest sentence (number of words)
3. Shortest sentence (number of words)
4. Average sentence (number of words)
5. Number of sentences that contain more
~ words than the average sentence
6. Number of sentences that contain fewer words than the average sentence
7. Total number of simple sentences
8. Total number of compound sentences 9. Total number of complex sentences
10. Total number of compound/complex
sentences
11. Total number of declarative sentences
12. Total number of interrogative sentences 13. Total number of imperative sentences
14. Total number of exclamatory sentences
Indicate the number of sentences beginning with ...
...1) subject (e.g., A low rate of interest
causes Mary drew the picture.)
...2) expletives (e.g., There are It is )
...3) coordinating conjunction (e.g., and,
but, or, for, yet, so)
...4) adverb (e.g., moreover, thus, namely, first, etc. )
...5) transition phrase (e.g., as a
consequence, on the other hand, etc.)
...6) prepositional phrase (e.g., in the morning, under the table, after dinner, etc.)
...7) verbal phrase (participle, gerund, infinitive)
Diction
For this section on diction, use paragraphs 1 and 3 for analyzing any essay. For your own essay, use the first 150-200 words for your analysis.
1. Total number of nouns
2. Total number of concrete nouns 3. Total number of pronouns 4. Total number of verbs
5. Total number of passive verbs
6. Total number of adjectives (do not
count participles or articles)
7. Total number of adverbs A Look at the Analysis of Style
Generally, professional writers write longer paragraphs than
unpracticed writers do. Often the short paragraphs that beginners write have no rhetorical justification (e.g., transition); they simply reveal that these students have not developed their thoughts adequately.
How do the sen tences vary in kind and in length ? Very often the experienced writer will have more variety in sentence length than the less experienced one. The same with sentence beginnings-the skilled writer employs a number of different sentence openings while the beginning writer often starts sentences (unconsciously) with the subject or a prepositional phrase or an adverb clause, sentence after sentence.
Make use of this style analysis as you write your rhetorical analysis for this lesson. Once you have completed the assignment, study the second column with the analysis of your own writing to detect any areas you can consciously improve on right now. One other very practical way to improve your style follows.
Imitation
Many good writers have taught themselves to write by using an exercise from the classical tradition called imitation. Somerset
Maugham, for example, copied passages of Jonathan Swift's "Tale of a Tub" and then tried to write the words out from memory. He even tried altering words or changing their order in order to understand Swift's strong, balanced style.
In his younger days Benjamin Franklin felt that his prose, even
though correct in spelling and punctuation, fell short in elegance of expression. In endeavoring to improve his style, Franklin happened upon a volume of the Spectator, a daily English periodical that
appeared between 1711 and 1714. He found the Spectator's prose to be written with charm and simplicity in a polished, elegant style. In Part I of his Autobiography Franklin tells of his experience:
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator, it was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing
excellent and wished it possible to imitate it. With that view, I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again by expressing each hinted sentiment at length and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should occur to me. Then I
compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks
endeavored to reduce them into the best order before I began to
form the full sentences and complete the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of the thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and
corrected them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.
There is no question that one way to improve a writer's style is by conscious imitation of the style of an admired author. You can imitate style in several ways:
1. copy passages
2. imitate sentence patterns
3. devise alternative ways of expressing an idea
Copy Passages
For about fifteen minutes each day, transcribe by hand (do not type) a...:, passage that you have read and admired for its choice and use of (;; words, sentence patterns, or variety of sentences. Copy the passage slowly and accurately, first reading the passage as a whole and then . reading each sentence again before you copy it. To benefit from this
exercise you need to practice it daily over an extended period of time. Vary the authors you choose; the idea is not to slavishly imitate one ..author but to get the feel of a variety of styles and eventually develop your own style.
You might turn to the Bible, to great English and American authors, and to contemporary essayists and columnists for passages to
imitate. You will easily see how writing styles have changed over the years; a beautiful nineteenth century style might be anachronistic today, depending upon the author.
Imitate Sentence Pattems -
Once you are copying and studying passages regularly, look at .. individual sentences as models. Look closely at the structure and : diction of the sentence as you copy it into your notebook. Then write a I sentence of your own-on another topic that closely imitates the i model. If the original sentence begins with an adverb clause, then , yours will begin with an adverb clause. If three adjectives modify the c subject in the model sentence, then your subject will have three
adjectives describing it. It is almost impossible to achieve a word-for- word imitation, but the basic sentence pattern can be followed. Mter doing this exercise for a while, you ~ill begin to see the immense variety of sentence structures the English language is capable of.
Example Model sentence: The gallows stood in a small yard separate from the main grounds of the prison and overgrown with tall pricklyweeds. (George Orwell, Burmese Days)
Imitation: The dog wailed at the back door, wet from the I heavy dew of the mormng and covered wIth damp grass clippings
Devise Alternate Ways of Expressing an Idea
This exercise starts out with a model sentence that you convert into
different forms, each retaining the basic idea of the original
sentence. At first you might simply reorder the words in the original sentence to change the pattern. But you also are free to choose
different words and phrases as long as they retain the basic meaning of the original.
This exercise was commonly used in the classical tradition. A
sixteenth century philosopher and teacher named Erasmus, in one of
his books, showed students 150 ways to write a Latin sentence whose English equivalent is
Your letter has delighted me very much. Some 'of Erasmus's reworkings are
On reading your letter, I was filled with joy.
Your note has been the occasion of unusual pleasure for me. Your letter provided me with no little pleasure.
You can imagine that not all 150 sentences were equally good, but
certainly Erasmus's students could see the immense flexibility in the arrangement and choice of words. How many more variations of Erasmus's sentence can you write?
Now choose a sentence of your own to work on. Work with a fairly straightforward sentence that makes a point. Can you express the
same idea in at least five alternate sentences using different words and phrases?
Practicing any of the above exercises would be a worthwhile activity
for you to do on your own during the remainder of this course. These exercises would help you become more aware of the resources of our language and the varieties of style. Do these exercises for a period of time until you feel your own competence grow and your own style emerge. Stop when the exercises no longer seem useful to you.
Even though they are a logical outgrowth of the rhetorical analysis, the imitation exercises are an optional, not required, part of this course. If you do practice them and wish to share some of your successes, please send them to me with any future course assignment. (Indicate on the top of the page what they are.) I would be pleased to see them as well as offer comment and encouragement.
Assigned Readings
Before completing this lesson on style, take time now to read the assigned chapters in Style. Lesson 5, "Cohesion and Coherence," shows you how to create gracefully long sentences using various devices: coordination, resumptive modifiers, summative modifiers, and free modifiers. Williams shows the importance of uninterrupted links between subject-verb and verb-object to keep up the momentum in a long sentence. Lesson 10 explores a variety of subtle stylistic strategies used to persuade audiences. It also recognizes the ethical aspect of writing. Try to apply what you learn in Style to what you learn in your rhetorical analysis.
Stop Here: Read Lessons 5 and 10 in Style and do the following exercises. Suggested Answers are not provided for all exercises. Do not submit these exercises for grading. However , do submit any questions you might have to the instructor since content covered in Style will appear on the final examination.
Lesson 5
5.1
5.2, #1-3
5.6
Lesson 10
10.2
10.3
10.6
10.7
Organizing Your Paper
When you reach the point where you have answered the questions and collected data from the Analysis of Style pages, follow the methods of organization you studied in Lesson 4. Many students find it helpful to begin with the four categories listed on the first page of this lesson, adding perhaps structure or audience as other categories. Decide what elements are distinctive in the piece you have chosen and organize your own essay, using the examples from the piece to show how and why the writer made particular choices, how the parts of the essay work together, and how effective the choices are.
For an example of a rhetorical analysis written by a student, turn to Appendix 5.5 at the end of this lesson. Read " A Great Inaugural Address," a rhetorical analysis of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first
inaugural address. For comparison purposes, the Roosevelt address is included as well.
Review the Writing Fact Sheet for elements to include in your rhetorical analysis.
Write a rhetorical analysis of any of the four essays on genetic research in order to bring to a conscious level of awareness what it is writers do to accomplish their intended effects. The audience will be your instructor and serious students of writing who want to know such things. Remember that your essay is first and foremost an analysis of the writer's argument and style, not a mere summary of the writer's ideas. Just as you are exploring in your analysis how the writer makes a claim and defends it, so, too, you need to be sure to demonstrate effectively to your reader that your own claims are valid and reasonable. Length of rhetorical analysis: 500-1,000 words.
