Download Summer Reading for Pre-IB AP Language and Composition 1 This

Summer Reading for Pre-IB AP Language and Composition
This is a college level class that will require participation, commitment, and hard work. Upon successful
completion of this course and receiving a satisfactory score on the AP exam in May of 2018, students
may earn up to 6 college credits.
Summer reading is required. This packet should give you a thorough explanation of your summer
reading assignment. Although this book and the downloadable files on the school website are the only
required reading over the summer, you are strongly encouraged to read more non-fiction and various
columnists over the summer.
You will read. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb (the regular edition,
not the young reader’s edition. This novel can be purchased at any bookstore, checked out at your
local library, or downloaded as an e-book. After you read the novel at least twice, you will need to do
following in order to complete the summer reading assignment:
Your written assignments will be due on the first day of class
Early bird extra credit - You can email your completed essay to me over the summer by Sunday,
July 16th for extra credit. My email address is [email protected]. You will still upload your
essay to the plagiarism checker when you return to school and the essay may not change after they are
sent to me. It will not be re-graded if you decide to continue working on it after that date.
Before Beginning Your Summer Reading:
Before beginning any other reading for the summer, print and carefully read the following documents
which will be posted on the School Website:
1. Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard
2. “What Do Students Need to Know About Rhetoric?”
3. Formal Writing Rules
4. SOAPSTone
5. Representative Authors for AP Language students
Please annotate your readings according to the instructions in the Harvard guide, especially those parts
that pertain to the questions you must answer as well as those parts that help you to understand the
meaning of the text on an analytical basis. You will be expected to know and to be well-practiced at
using the reading techniques described in the links above. Please be aware that we discuss additional
questions based upon I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai during Socratic Seminars or Fishbowl
discussion forums.
In AP Language and Composition, we analyze everything we encounter, whether it is a
conversation, advertisement, documentary, body language, cartoon or text (fiction and non-fiction). As
you read through “What Do Students Need to Know About Rhetoric?” you will understand that a
working knowledge of rhetoric teaches us to notice how an author uses rhetorical devices to create
impact, build persuasion through the use of appeals, and controls the rhetorical triangle to communicate
meaning. Additionally, as you complete the summer reading assignment, you will learn the skills needed
to enter into the conversation of AP Language and Composition.
Rhetoric in and of itself is something that we all use on a daily basis, but generally do not use this
particular terminology. Think of it this way – when you have something to relate to someone, you adjust
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Summer Reading for Pre-IB AP Language and Composition
your wording and demeanor based upon whom you are talking to. This is what is called the rhetorical
triangle. You the speaker or writer have adjusted your persona and what you are saying (subject) based
upon your listener or reader (audience) because you are trying to convince your audience of your point.
With this in mind it is your task to read I am Malala and to analyze the novel in regard to its
rhetorical meaning. You will then answer all of the following questions in a well written essay.
1. Malala’s mother, Tor Pekai Yousafzai, cannot read or write. How do you think this has impacted
Malala’s life and her view of education for females?
2. Malala says that her father “believed that lack of education was the root of all of Pakistan’s
problems”(41). Does education cure all problems? How does it make life different/ better? What
does education not do? How do you relate these ideas to your own education?
3. The focus of Malala’s message is that an education is worth dying for, but what is Malala’s
perspective of education? How is that perspective the same or different than how we, in
America, view education? What might Malala think about our understanding of education? Is
her only goal to get a job?
4. At what point in Malala’s life experience do you think that the fight for girls’ education became
her fight, as opposed to her father’s fight?
5. Malala is known for her passion for education and women’s rights. How does her passion for
education shape her life? Do you have a particular cause that you care about deeply? Discuss.
You must use MLA format. Please do not use a cover page or folder.
Rhetorical Terms Flashcards
For the following words make flashcards that have the word and the definition on one side of the
card and an example from either I am Malala, another book you have read or an on-line resource on
the other side. Please use 3x5 cards, you will add additional examples and other terms during the
year. Please purchase a ring to keep your notecards together. Please number the cards.
Allusion
Analogy
Antithesis
Connotation
Denotation
Diction
Ethos
Imagery
Juxtaposition
Logos
Metaphor
Oxymoron
Parallelism
Pathos
Personification
Rhetorical Question
Syllogism
Syntax
Your grade for this assignment.
Your grade will be based upon how well you are able to analyze the novel. You must support
your assertions using appropriate quotes and examples. Remember no disembodied quotes.
Delivery
Bring a hard copy of your assignment to class on the first day of school. The essay will be
checked in on that day and you will then post the assignment to “Vericite” that night (first
homework grade).
Barry Coleman
Assistant Principal
[email protected]
Doug Hernandez
Teacher
Pre-IB AP English II
[email protected]
Maria Lyons
Teacher
Pre-IB AP English II
[email protected]
Nicole Rottler-Wysong
Assistant Principal
[email protected]
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Writing Rules for Formal Writing
1. Never write in the first person (I, me, us, we) or second person (you, your, yours).
3rd person
Always write in
2. Always write in the present tense when writing about literature.
3. Never write contractions or any type of abbreviation. Use formal language at all times (not Scout’s dad,
but Scout’s father). Do not use slang or clichés. “Avoid them like the plague” 
4. Quotations from the primary source MUST be used to support your points. Punctuation always goes
inside the quotation mark. NO DISEMBODIED QUOTES!!!! You cannot quote entire sentences and
stick them in your essay as stand-alone sentences. Keep quotes short and integrate them into a
sentence you are writing.
5. All titles for short pieces of literature (short stories and poems) ~ Quotation marks for “The Raven” or
”The Scarlet Ibis”
All titles for long pieces of literature (novels) ~ Underline when handwriting ~ Things Fall Apart or
Italicize when typing ~ Things Fall Apart.
7.
Thesis statement is always the last sentence in the introduction.
the thesis.
All topic sentences must support
8.
Don’t editorialize. Don’t praise the writer or the text (Knowles does an excellent job...). It just
indicates
that you have nothing of substance to say and are hoping the teacher will not notice if you
pretend you
really like the book.
9.
Take a break from your work before you proofread. Read your writing aloud when proofreading.
10. Two spaces after all periods.
11. Titles need to be a bit creative.
• It should tell the reader the topic, yet the title should not be the title of the literary work
(“The Raven”).
• You didn’t write “The Raven.”
12. Never start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS ~ for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
Exception: Used as an interjection (Example: So, you think you want to be a writer? Writing Fiction)
13. Do not use fickle words – probably, might, seems, maybe, possibly, could.
know what you are talking about. Be definite.
Sound as if you
14. NEVER WRITE: “I am going to write about,” “the reason I am writing,” or “I just wrote about.”
JUST WRITE IT. No one cares about your reasoning.
15. Use strong transitions. Transitions are not used exclusively at the beginning of a paragraph.
Transitions can and should be used throughout your writing. See transition sheet for good examples.
Forbidden transitions are as follows: first of all, secondly, thirdly, in conclusion. They are weak and
juvenile.
16. Avoid the forbidden words: like, a lot, stuff, things,
SOAPSTone

Originally conceived as a method for dissecting the work of professional writers, SOAPSTone provides a concrete
strategy to help students identify and understand the main components of writing, including their own writing.

SOAPSTone (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone) is an acronym for a series of questions that
students must first ask themselves, and then answer, as they begin to analyze texts and/or plan for their own writing
assignments.
Who is the Speaker?
The voice that tells the story. Whose voice is going to be heard? Whether this voice belongs to a fictional
character or to the writers themselves, students should determine how a writer develops the
personality/character/credibility of the speaker or narrator that will influence the overall meaning of the text.
Think about: What assumptions can you make about the speaker? (e.g. age, gender, emotional state, etc.) What is
the speaker’s point of view?
What is the Occasion?
The context and circumstances of the piece that prompted the writing. Writing does not occur in a vacuum.
All writers are influenced by the larger occasion: an environment of ideas, attitudes, and emotions that swirl
around a broad issue. Then there is the immediate occasion: an event or situation that catches the writer's attention
and triggers a response. What is the rhetorical occasion of the text (to relate a memory, a description, an
observation, an argument, a critique?) Think about: What is the setting? What is the intended emotional effect?
What else was going on in the world when the author was writing? What is the rhetorical occasion of the text (to
relate a memory, a description, an observation, an argument, etc.)
Who is the Audience?
The group of readers to whom this piece is directed. Successful writers must determine who the audience is
that they intend to address. It may be one person or a specific group. This choice of audience will affect how and
why writers write a particular text. Think about: Who does the author want to be affected by the text?
What is the Purpose?
The reason behind the text. Writers need to clearly consider the purpose of their text in order to develop the
thesis or the argument and its logic, or in the case of fiction, to develop a theme. Writers should ask themselves,
"What do I want my audience to think or do as a result of reading my text?" What is the writer’s message and
how does he convey it?
What is the Subject?
Students should be able to state the subject in a few words or phrases. This step helps them to focus on the
intended task throughout the writing process. Subjects, or topics, are then developed into full ideas, arguments, or
themes. What is the speaker literally saying?
What is the Tone?
The attitude of the author toward his/her subject. The spoken word can convey the speaker's attitude and thus
help to impart meaning through tone of voice. With the written word, tone is created by conscious choices in
diction, syntax, figurative language, imagery and selection of details to extend meaning beyond the literal. The
ability to manage tone is one of the best indicators of a sophisticated writer. Think about: Diction – is the writing
tight and efficient (economical) or elaborate and long-winded (expansive)? Does the writer use proper and formal
language? Tone – What is the speaker’s attitudes about the subject? About the audience? Does the speaker seem
sarcastic, aggressive, wistful, pessimistic, hopeful, bitter, reflective, skeptical, etc.?
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Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in Your First Year at Harvard
Critical reading--active engagement and interaction with texts--is essential to your academic success at Harvard, and to your
intellectual growth. Research has shown that students who read deliberately retain more information and retain it longer. Your
college reading assignments will probably be more substantial and more sophisticated than those you are used to from high
school. The amount of reading will almost certainly be greater. College students rarely have the luxury of successive rereadings of material, either, given the pace of life in and out of the classroom.
While the strategies below are (for the sake of clarity) listed sequentially, you can probably do most of them simultaneously.
They may feel awkward at first, and you may have to deploy them very consciously, especially if you are not used to doing
anything more than moving your eyes across the page. But they will quickly become habits, and you will notice the difference—
in what you “see” in a reading, and in the confidence with which you approach your texts.
1. Previewing: Look “around” the text before you start reading.
You’ve probably engaged in one version of previewing in the past, when you’ve tried to determine how long an assigned
reading is (and how much time and energy, as a result, it will demand from you). But you can learn a great deal more about
the organization and purpose of a text by taking note of features other than its length.
Previewing enables you to develop a set of expectations about the scope and aim of the text. These very preliminary
impressions offer you a way to focus your reading. For instance:
•
•
•
•
What does the presence of headnotes, an abstract, or other prefatory material tell you?
Is the author known to you already? If so, how does his (or her) reputation or credentials influence your perception of
what you are about to read? If the author is unfamiliar or unknown, does an editor introduce him or her (by supplying
brief biographical information, an assessment of the author’s work, concerns, and importance)?
How does the disposition or layout of a text prepare you for reading? Is the material broken into parts--subtopics,
sections, or the like? Are there long and unbroken blocks of text or smaller paragraphs or “chunks” and what does this
suggest? How might the parts of a text guide you toward understanding the line of inquiry or the arc of the argument
that's being made?
Does the text seem to be arranged according to certain conventions of discourse? Newspaper articles, for instance,
have characteristics that you will recognize; textbooks and scholarly essays are organized quite differently Texts
demand different things of you as you read, so whenever you can, register the type of information you’re presented
with.
2. Annotating: Make your reading thinking-intensive from start to finish.
Annotating puts you actively and immediately in a "dialogue” with an author and the issues and ideas you encounter in a
written text. It's also a way to have an ongoing conversation with yourself as you move through the text and to record what
that encounter was like for you. Here's how:
•
Throw away your highlighter: Highlighting can seem like an active reading strategy, but it can actually distract from
the business of learning and dilute your comprehension. Those bright yellow lines you put on a printed page one day
can seem strangely cryptic the next, unless you have a method for remembering why they were important to you at
another moment in time. Pen or pencil will allow you do to more to a text you have to wrestle with.
•
Mark up the margins of your text with words and phrases: ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem
important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes. This kind of
interaction keeps you conscious of the reasons you are reading as well as the purposes your instructor has in mind. Later
in the term, when you are reviewing for a test or project, your marginalia will be useful memory triggers.
•
Develop your own symbol system: asterisk (*) a key idea, for example, or use an exclamation point (!) for the
surprising, absurd, bizarre. Your personalized set of hieroglyphs allow you to capture the important -- and often
fleeting -- insights that occur to you as you're reading. Like notes in your margins, they'll prove indispensable when
you return to a text in search of that perfect passage to use in a paper, or are preparing for a big exam.
•
Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions: “What does this mean?” “Why is the writer drawing that
conclusion?” “Why am I being asked to read this text?” etc. Write the questions down (in your margins, at the
beginning or end of the reading, in a notebook, or elsewhere. They are reminders of the unfinished business you still
have with a text: something to ask during class discussion, or to come to terms with on your own, once you’ve had a
chance to digest the material further or have done other course reading.
3. Outline, summarize, analyze: Take the information apart, look at its parts, and then try to put it back together again in
language that is meaningful to you.
The best way to determine that you’ve really gotten the point is to be able to state it in your own words.
Outlining the argument of a text is a version of annotating, and can be done quite informally in the margins of the text,
unless you prefer the more formal Roman numeral model you may have learned in high school. Outlining enables you to
see the skeleton of an argument: the thesis, the first point and evidence (and so on), through the conclusion. With weighty or
difficult readings, that skeleton may not be obvious until you go looking for it.
Summarizing accomplishes something similar, but in sentence and paragraph form, and with the connections between ideas
made explicit.
Analyzing adds an evaluative component to the summarizing process—it requires you not just to restate main ideas, but
also to test the logic, credibility, and emotional impact of an argument. In analyzing a text, you reflect upon and decide how
effectively (or poorly) its argument has been made. Questions to ask:
•
•
•
What is the writer asserting?
What am I being asked to believe or accept? Facts? Opinions? Some mixture?
What reasons or evidence does the author supply to convince me? Where is the strongest or most effective
evidence the author offers -- and why is it compelling?
4. Look for repetitions and patterns:
The way language is chosen, used, positioned in a text can be important indication of what an author considers crucial and what
he expects you to glean from his argument. It can also alert you to ideological positions, hidden agendas or biases. Be
watching for:
•
•
•
Recurring images
Repeated words, phrases, types of examples, or illustrations
Consistent ways of characterizing people, events, or issues
5. Contextualize: Once you’ve finished reading actively and annotating, take stock for a moment and put it in perspective.
When you contextualize, you essentially "re-view" a text you've encountered, framed by its historical, cultural, material,
or intellectual circumstances.
•
When was it written or where was it published? Do these factors change or otherwise influence how you view a piece?
Also view the reading through the lens of your own experience. Your understanding of the words on the page and their
significance is always shaped by what you have come to know and value from living in a particular time and place.
6. Compare and Contrast: Set course readings against each other to determine their relationships (hidden or explicit).
•
•
•
•
At what point in the term does this reading come? Why that point, do you imagine?
How does it contribute to the main concepts and themes of the course?
How does it compare (or contrast) to the ideas presented by texts that come before it? Does it continue a trend, shift
direction, or expand the focus of previous readings?
How has your thinking been altered by this reading? How has it affected your response to the issues and themes of the
course?
Susan Gilroy, Librarian for Undergraduate Programs for Writing, Lamont and Widener Libraries 10.23.13
Copyright © 2013 President and Fellows of Harvard College
Representative Authors
There is no recommended or required reading list for the AP English Language and Composition course. The
following authors are provided simply to suggest the range and quality of reading expected in the course.
Teachers may select authors from the names below or may choose others of comparable quality and complexity.
Autobiographers and Diarists
Melba Patillo Beals, James Boswell, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Jill Ker Conway, Thomas De Quincey, Frederick
Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Elva Trevino Hart, Harriet Jacobs (Linda Brent), Helen
Keller, Maxine Hong Kingston, T. E. Lawrence, Frank McCourt, Samuel Pepys, Richard Rodriguez, Richard
Wright, Malcolm X, Anzia Yezierska
Biographers and History Writers
Lerone Bennett Jr., James Boswell, Thomas Carlyle, Winston Churchill, Vine Deloria Jr., Leon Edel, Richard
Ellmann, Niall Ferguson, Shelby Foote, John Hope Franklin, Antonia Fraser, Edward Gibbon, Richard Holmes,
Gerda Lerner, Thomas Macaulay, Francis Parkman, Arnold Rampersad, Simon Schama, Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Ronald Takaki, George Trevelyan, Barbara Tuchman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Critics
Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua, Michael Arlen, Matthew Arnold, Sven Birkerts, Susan Bordo, Judith Butler,
Kenneth Clark, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Arlene Croce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., William
Hazlitt, Christopher Hitchens, bell hooks, Samuel Johnson, Pauline Kael, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Pater, John
Ruskin, Edward Said, George Santayana, George Bernard Shaw, Susan Sontag, Cornel West, Oscar Wilde,
Edmund Wilson
Essayists and Fiction Writers
Joseph Addison, James Agee, Margaret Atwood, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, G. K. Chesterton, Joan Didion,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Fussell, Mavis Gallant, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth Hardwick, Edward Hoagland,
Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara Kingsolver, Jamaica Kincaid, Charles Lamb, Philip Lopate, Norman Mailer, Nancy
Mairs, Mary McCarthy, N. Scott Momaday, Michel de Montaigne, V. S. Naipaul, Geoffrey Nunberg, Tillie Olsen,
George Orwell, Cynthia Ozick, Francine Prose, Ishmael Reed, Adrienne Rich, Mordecai Richler, Sharman Apt
Russell, Scott Russell Sanders, David Sedaris, Richard Selzer, Leslie Marmon Silko, Richard Steele, Shelby
Steele, Henry David Thoreau, John Updike, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, E. B. White, Terry Tempest Williams,
Virginia Woolf
Journalists
Roger Angell, Dave Barry, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Elizabeth Drew, Nora Ephron, M. F. K. Fisher,
Frances Fitzgerald, Janet Flanner (Genêt), Thomas L. Friedman, Ellen Goodman, David Halberstam, John
Hersey, Paul Krugman, Alex Kuczynski, Andy Logan, John McPhee, H. L. Mencken, Jessica Mitford, Jan Morris,
Donald M. Murray, Susan Orlean, Rick Reilly, David Remnick, Red Smith, Lincoln Steffens, Paul Theroux,
Calvin Trillin, Cynthia Tucker, Tom Wolfe
Political Writers
Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, William F. Buckley, Jean de Crèvecoeur, W. E. B. Du Bois, Margaret
Fuller, John Kenneth Galbraith, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Chris Hedges, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson,
George Kennan, Martin Luther King Jr., Naomi Klein, Lewis H. Lapham, John Locke, Niccolò Machiavelli, John
Stuart Mill, John Milton, Thomas More, Thomas Paine, Olive Schreiner, Jonathan Swift, Alexis de Tocqueville,
Gore Vidal, George Will, Garry Wills, Mary Wollstonecraft
Science and Nature Writers
Edward Abbey, Diane Ackerman, Natalie Angier, Wendell Berry, Jacob Bronowski, Rachel Carson, Charles
Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond, Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, Loren Eiseley,
Timothy Ferris, Tim Flannery, Richard Fortey, Atul Gawande, Stephen Jay Gould, Evelyn Fox Keller, Aldo
Leopold, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Bill McKibben, Margaret Mead, John Muir, Steven Pinker, David
Quammen, Carl Sagan, Lewis Thomas, Jonathan Weiner, E. O. Wilson
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What Do Students Need to Know About Rhetoric?
Hepzibah Roskelly
University of North Carolina
Greensboro, North Carolina
The AP Language and Composition Exam places strong emphasis on students’ ability to
analyze texts rhetorically and to use rhetoric effectively as they compose essay responses.
It’s an important question for teachers, therefore, to consider what students need to know
about this often misunderstood term in order to write confidently and skillfully.
The traditional definition of rhetoric, first proposed by Aristotle, and embellished over
the centuries by scholars and teachers, is that rhetoric is the art of observing in any given
case the “available means of persuasion.”
“The whole process of education for me was learning to put names to things I already
knew.” That’s a line spoken by Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton’s private investigator in one
of her series of alphabet mystery novels, C is for Corpse. When I began a graduate
program that specialized in rhetoric, I wasn’t quite sure what that word meant. But once I
was introduced to it, I realized rhetoric was something I had always known about.
Any of these opening paragraphs might be a suitable way to begin an essay on what
students need to know as they begin a course of study that emphasizes rhetoric and
prepares them for the AP English Language Exam. The first acknowledges that the
question teachers ask about teaching rhetoric is a valid one. The second establishes a
working definition and suggests that the writer will rely on classical rhetoric to propose
answers to the question. And the third? Perhaps it tells more about the writer than about
the subject. She likes mysteries; she knows that many people (including herself when she
was a student) don’t know much about the term. But that third opening is the one I
choose to begin with. It’s a rhetorical decision, based on what I know of myself, of the
subject, and of you. I want you to know something of me, and I’d like to begin a
conversation with you. I also want to establish my purpose right away, and Millhone’s
line states that purpose nicely. Rhetoric is all about giving a name to something we
already know a great deal about, and teachers who understand that are well on their way
to teaching rhetoric effectively in their classes.
The first thing that students need to know about rhetoric, then, is that it’s all around us in
conversation, in movies, in advertisements and books, in body language, and in art. We
employ rhetoric whether we’re conscious of it or not, but becoming conscious of how
rhetoric works can transform speaking, reading, and writing, making us more successful
and able communicators and more discerning audiences. The very ordinariness of
rhetoric is the single most important tool for teachers to use to help students understand
its dynamics and practice them.
Special Focus in English Language and Composition: Rhetoric
7
Exploring several writers’ definitions of rhetoric will, I hope, reinforce this truth about the
commonness of rhetorical practice and provide some useful terms for students as they
analyze texts and write their own. The first is Aristotle’s, whose work on rhetoric has been
employed by scholars and teachers for centuries, and who teachers still rely on for basic
understandings about the rhetorical transaction.
The Rhetorical Triangle: Subject, Audience, Speaker’s Persona
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means
of persuasion.
—Aristotle
Aristotle believed that from the world around them, speakers could observe how
communication happens and use that understanding to develop sound and convincing
arguments. In order to do that, speakers needed to look at three elements, graphically
represented by what we now call the rhetorical triangle:
Aristotle said that when a rhetor or speaker begins to consider how to compose a
speech— that is, begins the process of invention—the speaker must take into account
three elements: the subject, the audience, and the speaker. The three elements are
connected and interdependent; hence, the triangle.
Considering the subject means that the writer/speaker evaluates what he or she knows
already and needs to know, investigates perspectives, and determines kinds of evidence or
proofs that seem most useful. Students are often taught how to conduct research into a
subject and how to support claims with appropriate evidence, and it is the subject point of
the triangle that students are most aware of and feel most confident about. But, as
Aristotle shows, knowing a subject—the theme of a novel, literary or rhetorical terms,
reasons for the Civil War—is only one facet of composing.
Considering the audience means speculating about the reader’s expectations, knowledge,
and disposition with regard to the subject writers explore. When students respond to an
assignment given by a teacher, they have the advantage of knowing a bit of what their
Special Focus in English Language and Composition: Rhetoric
8
audience expects from them because it is often spelled out. “Five to seven pages of errorfree prose.” “State your thesis clearly and early.” “Use two outside sources.” “Have fun.”
All of these instructions suggest to a student writer what the reader expects and will look
for; in fact, pointing out directly the rhetoric of assignments we make as teachers is a
good way to develop students’ rhetorical understanding. When there is no assignment,
writers imagine their readers, and if they follow Aristotle’s definition, they will use their
own experience and observation to help them decide on how to communicate with
readers.
The use of experience and observation brings Aristotle to the speaker point of the triangle.
Writers use who they are, what they know and feel, and what they’ve seen and done to
find their attitudes toward a subject and their understanding of a reader. Decisions about
formal and informal language, the use of narrative or quotations, the tone of familiarity
or objectivity, come as a result of writers considering their speaking voices on the page.
My opening paragraph, the exordium, attempts to give readers insight into me as well as
into the subject, and it comes from my experience as a reader who responds to the
personal voice. The creation of that voice Aristotle called the persona, the character the
speaker creates as he or she writes.
Many teachers use the triangle to help students envision the rhetorical situation. Aristotle
saw these rhetorical elements coming from lived experience. Speakers knew how to
communicate because they spoke and listened, studied, and conversed in the world.
Exercises that ask students to observe carefully and comment on rhetorical situations in
action—the cover of a magazine, a conversation in the lunchroom, the principal’s address
to the student body—reinforce observation and experience as crucial skills for budding
rhetoricians as well as help students transfer skills to their writing and interpreting of
literary and other texts.
Appeals to Logos, Pathos, and Ethos
In order to make the rhetorical relationship—speakers to hearers, hearers to subjects,
speakers to subjects—most successful, writers use what Aristotle and his descendants
called the appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos.
They appeal to a reader’s sense of logos when they offer clear, reasonable premises and
proofs, when they develop ideas with appropriate details, and when they make sure
readers can follow the progression of ideas. The logical thinking that informs speakers’
decisions and readers’ responses forms a large part of the kind of writing students
accomplish in school.
Writers use ethos when they demonstrate that they are credible, good-willed, and
knowledgeable about their subjects, and when they connect their thinking to readers’ own
ethical or moral beliefs. Quintilian, a Roman rhetorician and theorist, wrote that the
Special Focus in English Language and Composition: Rhetoric
9
speaker should be the “good man speaking well.” This emphasis on good character meant
that audiences and speakers could assume the best intentions and the most thoughtful
search for truths about an issue. Students’ use of research and quotations is often as much
an ethical as a logical appeal, demonstrating to their teachers that their character is
thoughtful, meticulous, and hardworking.
When writers draw on the emotions and interests of readers, and highlight them, they use
pathos, the most powerful appeal and the most immediate—hence its dominance in
advertisements. Students foreground this appeal when they use personal stories or
observations, sometimes even within the context of analytical writing, where it can work
dramatically well to provoke readers’ sympathetic reaction. Figurative language is often
used by writers to heighten the emotional connections readers make to the subject. Emily
Dickinson’s poem that begins with the metaphor “My life had stood—a loaded gun,” for
example, provokes readers’ reactions of fear or dread as they begin to read.
As most teachers teach the appeals, they make sure to note how intertwined the three are.
John F. Kennedy’s famous line (an example of the rhetorical trope of antimetabole, by the
way), “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your
country,” calls attention to the ethical qualities of both speaker and hearer, begins to
propose a solution to some of the country’s ills by enlisting the direct help of its citizens,
and calls forth an emotional patriotism toward the country that has already done so much
for individuals. Asking students to investigate how appeals work in their own writing
highlights the way the elements of diction, imagery, and syntax work to produce
persuasive effects, and often makes students conscious of the way they’re unconsciously
exercising rhetorical control.
Any text students read can be useful for teachers in teaching these elements of classical
rhetoric. Speeches, because they’re immediate in connecting speaker and hearer, provide
good illustrations of how rhetorical relationships work. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,
Marc Antony’s speech allows readers to see clearly how appeals intertwine, how a
speaker’s persona is established, how aim or purpose controls examples. Sojourner
Truth’s repetition of the phrase “Ain’t I a Woman?” shows students the power of
repetition and balance in writing as well as the power of gesture (Truth’s gestures to the
audience are usually included in texts of the speech). Asking students to look for
rhetorical transactions in novels, in poems, in plays, and in nonfiction will expose how
rhetorical all writing is.
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Context and Purpose
Rhetoric is what we have instead of omniscience.
—Ann Berthoff
It’s important to note that Aristotle omitted—or confronted only indirectly—two other
elements of the rhetorical situation, the context in which writing or speaking occurs and
the emerging aim or purpose that underlies many of the writer’s decisions. In part,
Aristotle and other classical rhetoricians could assume context and aim since all speakers
and most hearers were male, upper class, and concerned with addressing important civic,
public issues of the day. But these two considerations affect every element of the
rhetorical triangle. Some teachers add circles around the triangle or write inside of it to
show the importance of these two elements to rhetorical understanding.
Ann Berthoff’s statement suggests the importance of context, the situation in which
writing and reading occur, and the way that an exploration of that situation, a rhetorical
analysis, can lead to understanding of what underlies writers’ choices. We can’t know for
sure what writers mean, Berthoff argues, but we have rhetoric to help us interpret.
The importance of context is especially obvious in comedy and political writing, where
controlling ideas are often, maybe even usually, topical, concerned with current events
and ideas. One reason comedy is difficult to teach sometimes is that the events alluded to
are no longer current for readers and the humor is missed. Teachers who have taught
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” for example, have to fill in the context of the Irish
famine and the consequent mind-numbing deprivation in order to have students react
appropriately to the black humor of Swift’s solutions to the problem. But using humorist
David Sedaris’s essays or Mort Sahl’s political humor or Dorothy Parker’s wry social
commentary provides a fine opportunity to ask students to do research on the context in
which these pieces were written. Students who understand context learn how and why
they write differently in history class and English or biology. And giving students real
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contexts to write in—letters to the editor, proposals for school reforms, study notes for
other students— highlights how context can alter rhetorical choices in form and content.
Intention
Rhetoric . . . should be a study of misunderstandings and their remedies.
—I. A. Richards
Richards’s statement reveals how key intention or aim is to rhetorical effectiveness.
Words and forms carry writers’ intentions, but, as Richards indicates, those aims can be
miscommunicated. Investigating how readers perceive intentions exposes where and how
communication happens or is lost. For Richards, rhetoric is the way to connect intentions
with responses, the way to reconcile readers and writers. Intention is sometimes
embodied in a thesis statement; certainly, students get lots of practice making those
statements clear. But intention is carried out throughout a piece, and it often changes.
Writing workshops where writers articulate intentions and readers suggest where they
perceive them or lose them give students a way to realize intentions more fully.
Many texts students read can illuminate how intentions may be misperceived as well as
communicated effectively. “A Modest Proposal,” for example, is sometimes perceived as
horrific by student readers rather than anguished. Jane Addams’s “Bayonet Charge”
speech, delivered just before America’s entrance into World War I, provoked a storm of
protest when it seemed to many that she was impugning the bravery of fighting soldiers
who had to be drugged before they could engage in the mutilation of the bayonet charge.
Although she kept restating her intention in later documents, her career was nearly
ruined, and her reputation suffered for decades. I use that example (in part because you
may not be familiar with it) to show that students can find much to discuss when they
examine texts from the perspective of misunderstandings and their remedies.
Visual Rhetoric
One way to explore rhetoric in all its pervasiveness and complexity is to make use of the
visual. Students are expert rhetoricians when it comes to symbolic gesture, graphic
design, and action shots in film. What does Donald Trump’s hand gesture accompanying
his straightforward “You’re fired” on the recent “reality” television program The
Apprentice signal? (Notice the topical context I’m using here: perhaps when you read this,
this show will no longer be around.) Why does Picasso use color and action in the way he
does in his painting Guernica? Why are so many Internet sites organized in columns that
sometimes compete for attention? Linking the visual to the linguistic, students gain
confidence and control as they analyze and produce rhetoric.
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Conclusion
So what do students need to know about rhetoric? Not so much the names of its tropes
and figures, although students often like to hunt for examples of asyndeton or
periphrasis, and it is also true that if they can identify them in texts they read they can in
turn practice them in their own writing, often to great effect. (If you’re interested in
having students do some work with figures of speech and the tropes of classical rhetoric,
visit the fine Web site at Brigham Young University developed by Professor Gideon
Burton called Silva Rhetoricae, literally “the forest of rhetoric”:
humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm. That site provides hundreds of terms and
definitions of rhetorical figures.) However, it’s more important to recognize how figures
of speech affect readers and be able to use them effectively to persuade and communicate
than it is to identify them, and the exam itself places little emphasis on an ability to name
zeugma (a figure where one item in a series of parallel constructions in a sentence is
governed by a single word), but great emphasis on a student’s ability to write a sentence
that shows an awareness of how parallel constructions affect readers’ responses.
Students don’t need to memorize the five canons of classical rhetoric either—invention,
arrangement, style, memory, and delivery—although studying what each of those canons
might mean for the composing processes of today’s student writers might initiate
provocative conversation about paragraph length, sentence structure, use of repetition,
and format of final product.
What students need to know about rhetoric is in many ways what they know already
about the way they interact with others and with the world. Teaching the connections
between the words they work with in the classroom and the world outside it can challenge
and engage students in powerful ways as they find out how much they can use what they
know of the available means of persuasion to learn more.
Some useful books on rhetoric:
Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd
Ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004.
Covino, William A., and David A. Jolliffe. Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
Lunsford, Andrea A., John J. Ruszkiewicz, and Keith Walters. Everything’s an Argument.
3rd Ed. New York: Bedford, St. Martin’s, 2004.
Mailloux, Steven. Rhetorical Power. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989.
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