Memoir asks you to bring to life a moment in the past in order to explore the meanings it has for the present. Since memoires enable both writers and their readers to understand the past, this assignment can be a good time for you to probe significant times in your life, revisiting them now that you have some distance.

In preparation for this assignment, we will read several memoirs across contexts. In each of these selections, notice how the writer focuses on the relationship between past and present, between memory and meaning, to explore an event or series of events in her life. Your assignment is to explore an event, topic, or situation in your own life—whether academic, personal, or civic—for its significance to you and others.

Caveat: For any assignment throughout the semester, do not write about topics that you are uncomfortable sharing with others in the class.

For this assignment, you will write a commentary—a set of explanatory or critical notes on a text, trend, or event—on a pop culture topic of your choosing. Choose a person or a group to write a profile about. The point of this assignment is to bring your subject to life in writing so that you can help your readers see and understand what makes your subject worth reading about. Important to this project is an inquiring attitude and the ability to provide useful and relevant information efficiently. You will be seeking outside background information to help you explore an organization or person.

Choose a person or a group to write a profile about. The point of this assignment is to bring your subject to life in writing so that you can help your readers see and understand what makes your subject worth reading about.

Profiles are regular features in magazines and newspapers, highlighting both well-known and ordinary people. Profiles supplement statistic and analytical treatments of social issues, making concrete and personal what would otherwise remain abstract and remote. These profiles can take readers beyond their preconceptions to explore a remarkable variety of people, backgrounds, lifestyles, and .experiences

Sometimes profiles seem to take place in real time, telling what a person does over the course of a day, or what a group’s characteristic activities are. Such profiles create a sense of immediacy and intimacy. No profile will really work for its readers unless it creates a dominant impression—a particular and coherent sense of its subject.

For your first assignment, you will write a rhetorical analysis of an advertisement – specifically, a video commercial. As you will read in Everything’s an Argument Chapter 6, a rhetorical analysis is an examination of how well the components of an argument work together to persuade or move an audience (Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters 798). A rhetorical analysis examines how a text functions—how its words, images, structure, style, and ideas connect or don't connect with a given audience. In other words, your assignment is to explain how the commercial either sells or doesn’t sell its product to the intended viewer.

To get started, choose a video commercial that poses a complex visual argument. Look for one that challenges or perhaps disturbs you, that raises an issue of substance and is worthy of a deeper examination. View the commercial several times and make prewriting notes about the features of the advertisement that strongly stand out to you.

As you begin work on your essay, refer to the “Guide to Writing a Rhetorical Analysis” on pages 112-117 in your textbook. Look at the guiding questions particularly under “Researching Your Topic” and “Formulating a Claim” to make sure you have a strong central thesis statement to guide your essay.

Rhetorical Analysis is a close reading of a text to find how and whether it persuades the reader (Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters 91).

A rhetorical analysis examines how a text works—how its words, structure, and ideas connect or don't connect with a given audience. Your task is to articulate how a text fulfills its purpose for a particular reader. Whether you agree or disagree with an argument does not matter in a rhetorical analysis. Pay attention only to how—and how well—the argument works.

Analyze the text using the following guiding questions:

1. What kind of argument is it? What is the argument’s purpose?

2. What genre of argument is it, and how does the genre affect the argument? (e.g., academic articles are different than newspaper editorials)

3. What appeals to emotion (pathos) does the argument use?

4. What appeals to character, ethics, and/or values (ethos) does the argument use?

5. What appeals to reason and logic (logos) does the argument use?

6. Examine the writer’s logic. Are there any lines of reasoning that an audience is likely to reject as fallacy? What is the effect of the faulty argumentation? (Remember, fallacy may not wholly discredit the argument, and what one audience sees as fallacy another audience may accept as successful argument.)

7. What types of evidence does the argument use? Is the evidence credible?

8. How does the language or style of the argument work to persuade the audience?

9. Who is making the argument? Does it make the writer seem trustworthy? How does the author establish their authority and credibility on the topic?

10. What other authorities does the writer rely on or appeal to?

11. How does the language or style of the argument work to persuade the audience?

12. Does the author achieve their purpose?

A Toulmin analysis closely examines how the author supports their claim(s) using informal logic, following Stephen Toulmin’s structure of argumentation. Unlike other rhetorical analysis essays, this assignment should focus on explicitly analyzing the claim, evidence, warrant(s), backing, qualifiers, and conditions of rebuttal presented in the argument.

Once you have identified the building blocks of the argument, evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, per Toulmin’s model:

1. Are the claims clear, reasonable, and carefully qualified?

2. Are the claims supported with good reasons and evidence? Remember, this probably includes a combination of appeals to logic, emotion, and character.

3. Are the claims and reasons based on assumptions (warrants) the target audience will likely accept? Probe the values that underscore the argument, and address how those values will relate to particular audiences.

4. How effectively does the author anticipate and respond to objections their reader might offer?

Argument of Definition: an argument in which the claim specifies that something does or doesn’t meet the conditions or features set forth in a definition.

The following sequence of steps is designed to help you plan and organize your ideas before you write:

1. Develop a research question about an issue of definition: Brainstorm a list of concerns in your major field of study that you are familiar with or want to know more about. Another option is to review the issues presented in Rereading America and use one of those texts as a springboard for ideas. Example: Is Theodore Olson a “conservative” American?

2. Research your topic: Browse library resources to determine how often disputed or contentious terms or phrases occur. Ask librarians for help finding the most appropriate and reliable sources, such as college dictionaries, encyclopedias, and specialized reference books, academic journals, scholarly books, and news sources. You must use a minimum of three sources in your paper. Read each of your sources critically, and decide how each will support your argument.

3. Formulate a definition to support your claim: Compose a definition with clear and specific criteria that will become the foundation for your thesis.

4. Write your first draft: Before you begin drafting, it may be helpful to sketch an outline of how you will integrate your sources within the paper to support your own ideas. Decide how you will use your evidence to appeal to your audience using logos, ethos, and pathos. Your argument should include each of the following parts: a claim involving a question of definition; a specific definition of the key concept; a careful examination of the topic, including evidence for every part of the argument; a careful consideration of counterarguments; and a conclusion that reinforces your position.

In the remaining weeks of the course, you will read selections that focus on various aspects of privacy as relate to the Internet, in particular. For your final essay assignment, you will write a research-based argument related to a specific issue of internet privacy, using 3-5 credible sources.

This assignment will require a substantial amount of independent research. You may not use a paper or part of a paper that you have written for another course.

To get started,

1. Choose a Topic: Brainstorm a list of privacy concerns related to the Internet. If you are not familiar with these issues, you might start by scanning some recent news stories or looking up some basic information about some of the following: tracking social media use, data mining, facial recognition systems, GPS tracking, selling internet history, big data, metadata, etc.

2. Begin Researching: Browse DMACC’s library resources to find the most appropriate and reliable sources, such as academic journals, credible news sources, government documents, reliable web sites, and experts in the field. Choose a minimum of three sources to use in your paper. Read each of your sources critically, and decide how each will support your argument. Take notes.

3. Determine your purpose. Decide what you will seek to accomplish in your essay. Do you wish to simply inform your reader, convince them to take a position, or persuade them to take an action? Or do you seek to understand and/or explore the topic in more detail? Decide on an approach, as this will guide the rhetorical choices you make in crafting your argument.

4. Formulate a claim: Compose a declarative statement that represents your first response to the situation. No matter your purpose, your claim should represent the central point you are trying to make in your argument. (Note: your claim may change after you begin writing the essay.)

5. Write a Draft: Begin to integrate your sources within your own ideas. Decide how your sources will best support your argument (e.g., in what logical order you will present them, which points will be better expressed as direct quotes or paraphrases, and if/how you will use your evidence to build logos, ethos, and pathos). As you write your outline, test your thesis and, if necessary, modify it as you go.