Hobson,

Sarah

AED 668, Spring 2014
Inquiry IV
Critical Reading, Analysis, and Writing of an Issue of Concern to You


This inquiry is an opportunity to take up a political issue you care about, to use your
knowledge of writing, including: grammar, morphology, phonology, style, rhetoric, and
discourse to analyze how others are writing about this issue and to create your own analytic
piece, addressing the issue. The personal piece you write can be in the genre(s) of your
choosing but must present a clear analysis of the issue at hand, the language practices and
word choices of others regarding this issue, and a clear explanation of the position you are
taking and the reasons for your position.

Part I: Critical analysis of the writing and arguments others are
constructing regarding this issue (4-5 pages (longer if you desire))
For this part, you will need to collect writing that reflects a range of perspectives
on the issue at hand.
This writing must include, but is not limited to, at least two newspaper articles
(these may be formal pieces; letters to the editor; op-ed pieces).
This writing can also draw from any other writing of your choosing: blogs,
spoken word poems, formal or informal essays, interviews, speeches, narratives,
academic research, statistical reports, rants, transcripts of radio or TV talk show
conversations, etc.
Having collected writing that reflects a wide variety of perspectives, you will
critically analyze at least two opposing pieces for:
o How the writer is constructing his or her argument and for what
purposes.
The nature of his/her rhetoric and his/her intended audiences and
purposes.
The connections between the writers rhetorical strategies, their
positioning of themselves, others, and their audiences, and the
stories they are telling.
The style of writing used to advance his/her argument and agenda.
This includes the organization of his/her ideas within and
across paragraphs.
This includes the sources informing his/her arguments.
This includes the larger conversations and social languages
from which the author is drawing and the intertextual
references upon which the author builds his or her agenda.
This includes the genre(s) of the piece and the audiences
accessed through that genre.
This includes the choices of sentence structure, and how he
or she is choosing to emphasize certain words or ideas
through sentence structure.

 This includes the rhythm and tone the writer has

constructed through the sentences and ideas emphasized
within each sentence and paragraph.
This includes the discourses the writer is constructing and
the ideologies the writer is re-inscribing and/or
transforming through his or her style. (A way into locating
these discourses is to pick out key words, phrases, or
clauses that resonate across pieces and to look at what they
mean in the contexts of the different pieces).
This includes the voice (register, attitude,
stances/positions, identities, desired actions) constructed
in and through the piece.
This includes the literary devices incorporated to advance
the argument in specific ways (metaphors, similes,
personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc).
This includes an attention to how the writer is framing
certain arguments, using any one or all of these genre,
stylistic, and literary devices.
This includes the writers choice of words and the
morphology or phonology of those words.
Part II: Your own analytic piece presenting your position, constructing your
own argument, and advancing your own agenda (length commensurate with
the space needed to develop your own argument and advance your own
agenda, according to your own purposes)
For this part, you will need to choose a genre (this can be a hybrid or multiple
genre piece) through which you will de-construct (speak back to) the arguments
of others, the strengths and weaknesses of these arguments, the discourses and
ideologies the writers have constructed to advance the interests of themselves or
others, the cultural implications of their arguments, their representations of the
issue at hand, and their agendas.
You will need to construct your own argument, an argument that positions you
securely in these conversations, with awareness of the discourses and ideologies
you are targeting, with awareness of your own stylistic, grammatical, rhetorical,
and word choices, and the specific larger conversations, discourses, and
ideologies you are targeting to advance your own agenda. Your position must be
made clear.
Your choice of genre is open, and you may consider publishing this piece
somewhere. You could post it as a blog, present/perform it as a rant, create a talk
show conversation, create a multi-genre piece like a documentary, an
ethnographic report, or an ethnodrama (I will explain), perform a spoken word
poem, present a news report, present it as a formal speech, write and publish a
letter to the editor, write an op-ed piece, etc.

Writing Guidelines and Grading

You will have in class time to work on this inquiry with your peers and with me. To write this
inquiry, the following activities will be helpful.

In class analyses of your texts or other texts, using the descriptive review process and/or
applying learnings on grammar, discourse, and ideology, etc. to your pieces.
In class drama enactments of your texts, exploring the people represented, the language
used, the style, tone, and effect of the piece on an audience, and the genre of the text.
For the critical analysis piece, you will be graded on the strength of your critical analyses
of the writing of others. This includes your awareness of the cultural conversations and
the range of positions of others concerning this issue, the range of discourses and
ideologies at play, and the genres and styles of framing these issues on behalf of specific
purposes.
For your own piece, you will be graded on the strength of the argument you construct and
the alignment of your rhetorical devices, genre and style with your purposes and your
target audiences.