Rhetoric Response (T. Black)

Tayler makes a short and simple post that wraps up everything about rhetoric in a handful of lines.  Rhetoric is just that, getting your point across promptly and accurately.  Like we watched in "Boiler Room" on Monday, the ethos, pathos, and logos is an amazing power in communication that someone can use in this line of work to establish who they are, see who others are, and use smart reasoning to grab both of these.  Many of us ramble or jump around with rhetoric rather than developing and perfecting it for success in their given fields.

Well done.

| 6 ampersand 7 |

Chapter 6

Interpreting your research is very important.  It is simple and easily overlooked.  By your lack of interpretation while obtaining you will only cause yourself much more work in the end and may get lost in  a tangle of who, what, where, and why.  Remember, this is to be useful and persuade your readers, not YOU.

The most important lesson I took from both chapters 6 and 7 was about copyright.  This can be a very dangerous position to be in if you are victim of it.  It occurs all over the place.  Many of us do this every day without even knowing it within our own emails and social networking.  

Until recently I worked for a blueprint company and this was an issue that came up every single day of my employment.  There were times I had to tell people that we simply could not make copies for them and they would either be confused because or angry.  This was a good judgement of character.  

A confused person probably purchased the plans from a developer and was required by the city to make 'X' amount of copies for permit approval.  The angry customers were coincidentally of a given culture/country/region that I will not mention, and would obviously attempt to steal plans that did not belong to them.  They would attain these from contractors and mass produce these, change the title blocks and call them their own.  THIS IS ILLEGAL!!!

Be careful in the workplace and just like your school research papers, make sure you cite everything since they consider work material much more difficult to declare 'FAIR.'

Chapter 7

This portion of the book was a good recourse for developing your thoughts on paper.  It reminds you to give yourself time to re-read, proof, re-write, organize your paper and know who your audience is.

Connecting everything in a paper is one of the more difficult things to do in writing that even over time, still poses problems for the greatest writers.  Again, one of the main guidelines is to consider your readers' cultural background.  Apart from pissing people off and getting yourself into trouble with copyright, crossing cultures and insulting someone is not a good thing to do in the workplace either.

While organizing give your readers something to look forward to with your forecasting statement, or what lies ahead...but as the books says, just do this one level at a time.  One of the most fun things if you are knowledgeable in design is presenting visual headings.  These can really attract the reader and really offset what could have been a boring presentation.

RHETORIC

Rhetoric is communication through writing.  This class covers communication through many forms of writing.  We are used to communicating our thoughts on paper about a novel we had to read for our French Literature class or analyzing cultures and their social inequalities.  Yes we may use these things down the road, but I truly do not want to. 

The rhetoric we are learning in professional writing is something that can be used every day.  There is a manual in the desk drawer next to me that tells me how to turn this computer on and off.  There is a tab on this blog that tells me how to change the appearance of my template or how to spellcheck.

If I wanted to I could go online and find a graphic or set of instructions that could tell me how to tie my untied shoes and then show me the proper steps of walking with good posture.  Rhetoric is everywhere.

Many of have poor rhetoric and cannot get our points across.  I think the problem here is too many people dwell on the idea of communicating with others and worry what the reader may think.  If you take the simple steps that are simply described in our readings your rhetoric through the course of the semester should be strengthened allowing you the confidence to write and construct whatever it is you are trying to get across in a more successful fashion.

|Chapter-4|5|16|23-Readings|

|CHAPTER 4|  

Talking about usability seems to be an issue the book is driving into our brain.  Making sure you identify what your readers need and organizing your writing around those developed ideas, you can then proceed.  There are many steps that are overlooked everyday that many people take for granted. Chapter 4 does a great job of pointing out that we the writer should avoid including information just because we find it interesting and/or want to demonstrate our knowledge (Anderson 101).

I have done this many times before thinking that showing off my knowledge on a product may encourage others to be more interested.  Most of the time you and the reader do not share the same interests so you have to ask these questions that you think they might ask upon your approach. (Always outline if you are uncertain of how your writing will turn out)

|CHAPTER 5|

BE PERSUASIVE!  In being persuasive you have to listen and attack yourself at times to understand what it is you are trying to get across.  You cannot just sell yourself.  You would never get anywhere.  The chapter is common sense that most of us lack in presenting what we have to offer.  We never step back to listen and need to learn to take counterarguements and use those to make our persuasion stronger than it was before.  The three things that I took away from this chapter that have stood out in all the readings this semester is the simple reasoning chart.

       EVIDENCE           ------------------------->   CLAIM          

The facts, observations,             | The position you want 

and other evidence that                     | your readers to accept   

 support your claim |

|

|

|

       LINE OF REASONING

  The connection linking your claim and 

  evidence: the reason your readers should 

agree that your evidence supports your claim.

|CHAPTER 16|

This might be the most important chapter a college student could read in this book.  Everything else is a great way of developing your professional writing skills but typically based on the individual.  Many classes assign group projects that require strangers to come together and form a bond over the course of a semester or a quarter and develop a presentation/paper for a grade. A grade that requires a team effort.  If you are positioned with all Alphas you have the problem of who is going to do what because everybody wants to take the lead without the proper forms of distribution.  

Sharing leadership responsibilities poses a problem because many may not agree on your tactics so you have to go back and establish a team structure and agree on these issues prior to moving forward.  Setting up an outline and other detailed plans helps keep the group in check on and on task.  Many groups suffer from not creating a project schedule and pose the problem of not presenting what they are capable of.  Identify the roles of each person immediately and move on from there.  Propose, listen, debate, reform, draft, finalize.

|CHAPTER 23|

This chapter was a breeze in the sense that we see this everyday and understand what is trying to be communicated. The difficult problem comes in actually being able to write a reader-centered set of instructions for someone else.  Can I do this?  I would love to be assigned a set of instructions to write on a given product and compare them to the original after response from others.  Troubleshooting is something I do every day with one product or another and usually stray away from instructions because I cannot find them or have thrown them away.

This would be fun to try and see how difficult it really is.

Response to Vic's Blog

Like Vic said, when you are writing certain proposals you are not just writing to one person. Not only are you writing to multiple people in his example provided, but you are writing to multiple people you know close to nothing about.

Yes it may be nice to have a friend involved on the other end of your project but this is more of a matter of networking and introducing yourself verbally over time in which you can be a little more nonchalant in your approach. I dont know if the book covers networking but it would be interesting to see how you can use others influence based upon your relationship in the world of business. I know much of it is common sense, but there should be some guidelines.

This also hits on Vic's ethical point. Is it ethical to use your relationships to get ahead (see the city of vancouver politics, haha)? Always be on point. As Vic continues on, he makes a great point of just knowing your audiences and avoiding mistakes that may hurt you in the end.

Ch.3 - "Cultures don't talk to each other....

...people do." -Ron Scollon (1999)

I think many of us take for granted that everybody will adapt to what we write and how we present the material. This chapter did a great job of teaching you how to analyze your thoughts on paper through the eyes of other readers.

Not only are you focusing on delivering your message in a persuasive and effective way, but you have to consider the ramifications of all those you may be addressing. Chapter 3 talks about Stakeholders. Now culture is important but looking into who your stakeholders might be seems to have far more influence on your focus of writing. I assumed that stakeholders were those who made important decisions in large companies bc they have invested quite a bit more than others. (These are shareholders)

Everybody as to be accounted for. After reading this I realized that the farmers and environmental agencies are part of this group, but I never thought to imagine unborn children that may be exposed to any problems in the future that might occur.

Bottom line, make sure you think about everybody that your message may cross. If it is more complex, address it when the time comes but take the same measures to cover yourself on anything that has your name on it.

"Peter, did you get the memo?"

English 402
Interclass Memorandum

To Kat Ricker, Adjunct Professor
From Peter O’Connor
Date August 31, 2008

Subject Lack of Ideas for Research Paper (No Retention).

After two weeks of pondering and developing research topics, the lack of thoughts proved to be an unacceptable amount of ideas for writing an extensive paper on a topic.

Lack of Thought Retention
Ideas for a research paper seem like an easy task in which a student picks a topic and writes on an idea after extensive exploration and development. One would hope to provide a reader with thoughts and points to make the given idea a probable thought to process. After attempting to pass on these thoughts it was clear to see that when ideas and thoughts are developed without deep entranced thought, the idea may seem to drift and merge with other thoughts defeating the entire goal of encouraging one idea to maintain its focus.

Practice Makes Better (Not Perfect)
To prove this idea wrong one must develop a distinct and well thought out plan to maintain a course discipline in concentration and development of mind processing ideas to stay in the moment rather than drifting from conscious to daydream. One way to acquire retention skills one can practice with two easy skills: read and remember. Do this over and over again in various locations until you find the most suitable environment for your mind to retain thoughts in which you can put together a stream of knowledge and use it in the future.

I cannot help you, you can help yourself.