The Rhetorical Situation, Claims, and Adjustments

This week, we're diving deeper down into understanding the rhetorical situation through writing claims and adjustments -- i.e., a customer's complaint and a customer service representative's response to that complaint.  As (I hope!) we're finding out, if we want to give ourselves the best shot as succeeding, it's essential to, first, get as specific as possible when we plan out our communication.  This heuristic, below, can help us do that.  Thinking through these questions before you jump into writing a claim and/or adjustment should help you tailor your message in the clearest way possible.

• Writer: _____  (Who is sending this particular piece of communication?)
• Audience: _____ (Who will be receiving this particular piece of communication?)
• Exigence: _____ (What circumstances prompted the need to communicate?  What happened?  What's the context surrounding this communication?) 
• Writer's Purpose/Goal: _____ (What is the writer trying to achieve?  What outcome do they hope to see/feel/get from this communication?)

Here's an awesome graphic that captures all of the terms we've been using:

Here are a couple of quick videos that will remind us about the do's and dont's of writing claims and adjustments.

Thinking About Genre (and Conventions) Through Country Music

I wanted to post these videos to help you (re)consider the following questions which can, hopefully, help you to think about the relationship between genres and their conventions:

• what's the "glue" that binds these songs together? 
• what about them makes them fall into the “country music” category?
• at what points do they bend/blend into other genres (such as folk, blues, and bluegrass)?

"Your Cheating Heart"

Lyrics

"Coal Miner’s Daughter"

Lyrics

"Whiskey River"

Lyrics

My Annotations of Elbow's 1st and 2nd Order Thinking Article

Hi everybody!  Here's an example of what my annotation practices look like!

Post Your Blog Link (Below)

Penn Staters,

Once you've set up your Gmail account and your blog, click this link to share that information with me.  I need to so that I can put your blog info up on my/this blog.  Why is that necessary?  This will give us access to each other's work, and that's important because it'll help us (1) revisit our course content and (2) practice giving each other feedback, which will be important for your work throughout the semester.

Thanks,

Z

Campus Map, Our Class, and My Office

Our class meets in Woodland 347; my office is in Sutherland 214.