The Academic Writer - A Brief Rhetoric

CHAPTER 1 Writing Rhetorically What does it mean to be a writer today? In a media-saturated world where visual images surround us, does writing still matter, and if so, how much? How has the increasing emphasis on the visual influenced how ordinary people communicate? One need only search Google to notice the power that images hold. While drafting this chapter, for instance, I searched for dog and owner photos and promptly got more than 371 million hits. Clearly, dog owners are using the web to communicate how much they love their pets. As a medium, photographs are not new, and neither is sharing them. Now, though, just about anyone with a smartphone can establish a visually rich presence on the web. On social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter; on video-sharing sites like YouTube; and on many blogs, images and video or audio clips can be as important as the written text. The power of images: The love people have for their pets — and the power ima CHAPTER 1 Writing Rhetorically CHAPTER 2 Reading, Listening, and Viewing Rhetorically Why — and how — do people read? Not surprisingly, they read for as many different reasons and in as many different contexts as they write. They read to learn how to use their new smartphone, to decide which movie to see, or to explore ideas for writing. They read for pleasure, whether checking social media, browsing a magazine, or enjoying a novel. They read to engage in extended conversations about issues of importance to them, such as climate change, the economy, or contemporary music. In all these ways, people read to experience new ways of thinking, being, and acting. Reading and writing are in some respects parallel processes. The process of reading a complex written work for the first time — of grappling with it to determine where the writer is going and why — is similar to the process of writing a rough draft. When you reread an essay to examine the strategies used or the arguments made, you’re “revising” your original readi CHAPTER 2 Reading, Listening, and Viewing Rhetorically CHAPTER 3 Analyzing Rhetorical Situations As Chapters 1 and 2 emphasize, whenever you write — whether you’re drafting an essay for class or designing a website for a student organization — you are writing in the context of a specific rhetorical situation involving you as the writer, who you’re writing for, what you’re writing, and the medium you’re using to share what you have written. Each rhetorical situation comes with unique opportunities and demands: A management trainee writing a memo to her supervisor, for example, faces different challenges than an investigative journalist working on a story for the New York Times or a student preparing a slide presentation for a psychology class. Successful writers know that they need to exhibit rhetorical sensitivity — an understanding of the relationships among writer, reader, text, and medium — to help them make decisions as they write and revise. In this chapter, you will learn how to ask questions about your rhetorical situation, question CHAPTER 3 Analyzing Rhetorical Situations CHAPTER 4 Academic Writing: Committing to the Process A rhetorical approach to writing encourages you to build upon and apply your understanding of human communication in general, and of texts in particular, to make decisions that enable effective communication. That is true whether writing an essay for your composition course, a lab report for your biology class, a memo for your employer, or an audio essay to share with family and friends. Rather than emphasizing rigid rules, a rhetorical approach to writing asks you to consider all the elements of your rhetorical situation: writer, reader, text, and medium. A rhetorical approach to writing also challenges the common assumption that those who write well possess a magical power. According to this view, people are either born with the ability to write well or not, and those who write well find writing easy: They just sit down, and the words and ideas begin to flow. Interestingly, people often feel the same way about those who work with CHAPTER 4 Academic Writing: Committing to the Process CHAPTER 5 Analyzing and Synthesizing Texts thinking rhetorically A rhetorical approach to writing looks at the various contexts in which you write. Even if you are writing alone, you are writing in the context of a specific rhetorical situation. By analyzing that situation, you can identify your purpose and goals as a writer, develop an appropriate persona or voice, and respond to the expectations of your readers. You also can understand and implement the appropriate textual conventions for courses across the curriculum. CHAPTER 5 Analyzing and Synthesizing Texts CHAPTER 6 Making and Supporting Claims As Chapter 5 emphasizes, analysis, synthesis, and argument are linked in powerful ways. To write an effective argument, you must analyze both your own ideas and those of others. But academic argument requires more than strong analytical skills. A successful academic argument also requires careful, well-supported reasoning that synthesizes or responds to ideas in sources and anticipates readers’ interests and concerns. CHAPTER 6 Making and Supporting Claims CHAPTER 7 Doing Research: Joining the Scholarly Conversation In some ways, learning to write for academic audiences is like traveling to a new country and learning a new culture: You may have to learn new approaches to familiar tasks, find ways to apply what you already know to a new environment, and master entirely new skills. And these are not things you will do just once. Since scholars in different disciplines examine similar topics in different ways, what works in one course may not work in another. What’s important is developing the strategies and habits of mind that will help you determine how your academic audience approaches issues, frames questions, defines evidence, and uses research tools. These strategies and habits will guide you as you gather, analyze, and interpret the sources that are the backbone of a good academic argument. And they will also continue to serve you well long after you leave college: Strong researchers know how to adapt to new audiences, workplaces, an CHAPTER 7 Doing Research: Joining the Scholarly Conversation CHAPTER 8 Writing in the Disciplines: Making Choices as You Write Part One of The Academic Writer began with this question: What does it mean to be a writer today? Despite the increasing prevalence and power of multimodal composition, writing does indeed still matter. In fact, those with access to computer and online technologies are writing more than ever before. thinking rhetorically How can you negotiate the opportunities and challenges of communication in today’s world? As Part One emphasizes, you can draw on your understanding of rhetoric, the rhetorical situation, and the writing process. Part Two of The Academic Writer builds on this rhetorical approach to writing. It applies this approach to the essential skills needed in college reading and writing. One of the challenges you face as an academic writer is learning how to apply these skills in a wide range of courses — from philosophy to chemistry to psychology. You can use your knowledge of rhetoric and of the writing process t CHAPTER 8 Writing in the Disciplines: Making Choices as You Write Chapter 9 Strategies for Invention, Planning, and Drafting Part Three of The Academic Writer provides practical strategies that writers can use when they compose texts. The first two chapters provide pragmatic, action-oriented advice about how to meet the challenges of academic writing. They also model strategies that enable writers to move productively through the writing process. Many of these strategies apply to both print texts (or alphabetic texts that look like traditional print texts but are read on screens) and compositions that employ multiple modes. Whether you are writing a print essay for your geography class or creating a Prezi presentation or podcast for that same course, you need to come up with ideas, develop them, and embody them in a print, oral, or digital medium. As Chapter 11, “Strategies for Multimodal Composing,” emphasizes, however, students are increasingly creating texts that take advantage of the multiple modes and media available to them. Students who want t Chapter 9 Strategies for Invention, Planning, and Drafting Chapter 10 Strategies for Revising, Editing, and Proofreading Revising and editing can be the most rewarding parts of the writing process: Together they give you the satisfaction of bringing your ideas to completion in an appropriate form. Revision challenges you to look at your work from a dual perspective: to read your work with your own intentions in mind and also to consider your readers’ or viewers’ perspectives. Editing provides you with an opportunity to fine-tune your paragraphs and sentences and, along with proofreading, to provide your readers with a trouble-free reading experience. Although revision and editing occur throughout the writing process, you’ll probably revise most intensively after completing a rough draft that serves as a preliminary statement of your ideas and edit once you’re happy with the focus, organization, and content of your draft. Proofreading usually occurs at the very end of the process. Revising and editing are medium-specific activities. Revising a Chapter 10 Strategies for Revising, Editing, and Proofreading Chapter 11 Strategies for Multimodal Composing The term multimodal composing may be new to you. When you first encounter the term, you may think something like this: “Oh that must refer to forms of digital communication like wikis, blogs, websites, posts to Twitter and Instagram, and so forth.” These are examples of multimodal texts but so is a traditional print essay. “How can this be?” you might wonder. A brief discussion of what modes are should clarify why this is the case. Chapter 11 Strategies for Multimodal Composing MLA Documentation Guidelines The MLA Handbook, Eighth Edition, published by the Modern Language Association of America, or MLA, offers general principles for citing sources focused on the basic contents of every citation, including the following: Author or authors (followed by a period). Title of source (followed by a period). Titles of self-contained works, such as book titles, television series, and website names, are italicized; titles of works contained within other works, such as an article in a magazine or a story in an anthology, are set in quotation marks. Title of the container, or larger work, in which the source appears, if any (followed by a comma). For example, a newspaper or magazine “contains” the articles that appear within it; a television series “contains” individual episodes. Follow the title of the container with a comma, since the items that follow (other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, and location) all relate to the container. If a sou APA Documentation Guidelines The following formatting guidelines are adapted from the American Psychological Association (APA) recommendations for preparing manuscripts for publication in journals. Check with your instructor before preparing your final draft, however. For detailed guidelines on formatting a list of references, see pp. 370–88. For a sample student essay in APA style, see pp. 240–48. Title page. Center the title in boldface type, three or four double-line spaces from the top margin. After one double-line space (also centered), include your name, the department and school one line below your name, the course number and course title one line below the department and school, the instructor’s name one line below that, and then the due date following one line below the instructor’s name. In the top right corner, type the number “1.” Margins and spacing. Leave margins of one inch at the top and bottom and on both sides of the page. Do not justify the right margin. Double-space Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11