Read Lloyd Bitzer's "The Rhetorical Situation" (the handout I gave you in class) and write a 500-word essay that responds to the following:

Bitzer's article was written way back in 1968; however, it is still relevant and nicely articulates some of the complexities of "the rhetorical situation." What significant complexities--or considerations, factors, issues, concerns--would you like further developed? In other words, are Bitzer's descriptions of audience, exigence, and constraints adequate for you and for our time? If they are, explain why, and use illustrations to exemplify. If they are not, explain why not, using illustrations to develop and exemplify.

Please write this in a text editor first (say, in Microsoft Word, choosing "plain text" or "text only"; or, even better, write it in Notepad), and then cut-and-paste it directly into an email message that you send to eng406-L@hawaii.edu. Do NOT upload your document as an attachment.

I request that you cut-and-paste rather than writing directly in email or attaching a document for two reasons: (1) If you have dial-up access, and if you try to compose your essay directly in the email program, there's a strong chance you'll lose what you wrote. Why? Because you will take a while to compose this, and when you hit "send" on your mail program, you will discover that you have been disconnected automatically (for lack of activity during connection) and you will quite possibly lose the message you just slaved over. (2) Different email programs handle attachments differently; so it's much better to just paste the contents of your paper into the mail message itself, rather than attaching a Word document that several people will not be able to download. Final note: please avoid italics and bold and other snazzy formatting, because when you cut-and-paste into email, the formatting will result in some odd characters that will show up in many people's mail readers.

Read Thomas Farrell's essay on "The Social Consensus of Knowledge," and write a 500-word essay that responds to the following prompt:

Please post your response essays by Monday night so that we can read
each other's before class.

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Short Paper #2.  Due 11:59 pm Monday, October 3, posted to the class listserv (eng406-L@hawaii.edu). (For posting, remind yourself of the instructions for the practice paper listed above.)

For this essay, you should review the notes you've been taking in class on discussions, the recent pop-quiz on rhetoric, and presentations thus far. Utilize that as you come up with a personal essay that grapples with this question:

And if that's too intrusive for you, you may opt for an alternative version of the above question, one that will allow you to write a non-personal essay that speculates on people and rhetoric more broadly. If you opt for this prompt, then answer this: If much (not all, but much) of what we do and say is motivated by a sense of right and wrong, and if "right" and "wrong" are rhetorically-constituted and socially maintained truths, how do we choose those truths, and do we have ethical obligations in making such choices and engaging in rhetorical actions based on them? Develop your answer with examples and analyses.

Answer either the main question or the alternative, less personal version in a post to this listserv by Monday.

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Short Paper #3.  Due 11:59 pm Wednesday, October 33, posted to the class listserv (eng406-L@hawaii.edu). (For posting, remind yourself of the instructions for the practice paper listed above.)

Re-read Donald Macedo's essay on "Poisonous Pedagogy: Our Common Culture," and consider the argument he makes through comparisons with E.D. Hirsch's ideas about common cultural knowledge. If anything, Macedo and Hirsch demonstrate that the "facts" of history and of the world around us are really interpretations, or arguments. Which means that the shared cultural knowledge upon which we build arguments is
itself a set of arguments--or to put it another way, rhetoric based on rhetoric.

While I'm tempted to ask you what the ethical implications of this are, I won't, since we've been batting that question around enough. Instead, I'd like to ask you to reflect upon the implications for engaging in persuasion. How might your own arguments be improved, or affected, if you accept that rhetoric is built upon rhetoric, which is built upon rhetoric, which is....?

Develop your essay with references to readings, reflections on experience, and/or recollections of previous class discussions.

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Short Paper #4.  Due 11:59 pm Wednesday, November 2, posted to the class listserv (eng406-L@hawaii.edu). (For posting, remind yourself of the instructions for the practice paper listed above.)

For this short paper, you are to answer the following rather straightforward, yet complex, question: What is good rhetoric?

Of course, this begs the questions of what rhetoric is and what is meant by good. You need to answer both of those as you develop your essay. In doing so, please rely on whatever readings, discussions, and experiences you think are relevant. One requirement in this: you must rely on examples. You must have at least one illustration of rhetoric that you think is good, with an explanation as to why. (Conversely, you could have examples of rhetoric you think are not so good, with an explanation as to why.)

Finally, this: as you develop your response, think through the counter-arguments and/or complications, and respond to at least one. (For example, if you think "good rhetoric" is that which is persuasive and accomplishes its goal, then Nazi rhetoric is an immediate complication: Was Hitler's rhetoric good, by such criteria? How do you deal with that?)