104 F19 Harris

English 104: Rhetoric in Popular Culture

No such thing as unrhetorical ‘natural’ language exists that could be used as a point of reference: language is itself the result of purely rhetorical tricks and devices.

—Friederich Nietzsche

Tuesdays, Thursdays, 10:00-11:20, EV1 132

Course conductor: Randy Harris, x35362, raha@uwaterloo.ca,

Student hours: Wednesdays, 9:30-10:30, Thursdays, 12:30-2:00; HH 247

Digital base of operations

For a variety of electronic services, we will be using UW-LEARN.

Objectives

The objectives of English 104 are the objectives of liberal arts (the arts of liberty) as a way of life: the enhancement of critical thinking in both the private sphere (exercising judgement) and the public sphere (engaging society and culture). We will pursue them by building and refining our facility with rhetoric. If you do this with energy and focus, you should also gain more facility with the ways and means of communication.

The way we're going to do this is to plunge into the pool of popular culture. OK, you got me, that's not quite true. We're already fully immersed in popular culture, like fish in water,—only, well, we're humans, so we can think about that water, analyze it, see what coves and currents are for us and what aren't. What we're going to do, more precisely but still analogically, is to slap on some rhetorical swimming goggles and look at popular culture through their lenses.

Our specific knowledge outcomes include: what rhetoric is as a field, and what it allows us to say about our culture; a range of rhetorical perspectives on popular culture, centrally including Aristotelian and Burkean theories; the related functions of suasion and identification in the symbolic ocean that surrounds us (I just can't let go of that fishin-water conceit); how popular culture reinforces dominant ideologies, but also provides sites of resistance and renegotiation of those ideologies.

Course epitome

This course is about you. No kidding. You. It’s also about me, about the people sitting around you, about Charlie Sheen and Louis Armstrong, and about your best friend in grade six. But it’s you that you really need to learn more about.

You are a rhetorically formed creature, and the most massive instruments of that formation are those of popular culture. So we are going to look at how pop culture forms you, and what you should be doing about it.

Since it's about you, you need to help build the course. In the first month, we'll be working from my standard playbook, but your first assignment is to tell me about one popular culture artefact (a movie, a game, a subreddit, a song, a novel, a "TV" series, ...) and argue why it is worth our attention. The last two months will be built out of your nominations. Argue hard and some of the artefacts we take up might be yours.

Please note

Popular culture is not uniformly pretty. If you are not prepared to confront ugliness occasionally--racism, misogyny, violence--you may not be comfortable in this course and should reconsider your enrolment.

Textbooks

Required text

Sam Leith, Words Like Loaded Pistols

Various object texts (please acquire them legally)

Recommended text

Acheson, Katherine. 2010. Writing Essays About Literature. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. ISBN: 9781551119922

I like this thing; you should too

Write a one-page argument (maximum) for why some particular artefact of popular culture has engaged your attention and why it should engage the class' attention as well. This should be both descriptive (what the artefact is, and what its salient features are) and persuasive (why we should adopt it as an object text in class). If you are proposing a 'non-standard' sort of artefact (say, Goop, or skater duds), you will need to make a case as well that its domain is important for popular culture (staying with our examples: the wellness industry for Goop, fashion for skater duds).

Instant A+: if I adopt the artefact as an object text for the class, your grade will be an A+.

Exams

Midterm

The Midterm will be an analysis of some assigned artefact along specific critical grooves; the artefact and the grooves will be revealed during the 29 October class; your analysis must be digitally submitted by midnight 5 November.

Final

You will have to know both "facts" and "ideas" for this course. To test the former, the final exam will include multiple-choice, true/false, short-answer questions. These facts will come mostly from me and the textbook. You need to show up for class, take clear, thorough notes, ask any questions that surface, talk to each other, get notes when you miss class; most of all, think about and apply what you hear. If you use the information, it will stick. For the ideas quotient of 104, there will be essay questions.

The final exam will cover the entire course.

Being rhetorical

Come to class, contribute to discussions, participate in the development of the course. Be a good 104 citizen. You need to be engaged in the topics and themes of the course every time you're in class (and you need to be in class).

Ways to get a good grade: ask relevant questions, make salient observations, look for and point out connections in the discussions, use the rhetorical concepts we encounter to complain about the unbelievable pressure of having to be rhetorical on demand, ...

Ways to get a mediocre grade: sit in your seat; avoid eye contact with the professor.

Ways to get a poor grade: stay away from class (of course, but also, if you come), make long irrelevant commentaries, treat your fellow students with notable disrespect while they are commenting to class, read your e-mail, text your friends and enemies, review the calls on your cell phone, have a sandwich and a thermos of soup, ...

Harvesting figures

Full disclosure: this component feeds my research as much as it feeds your education.

You will have access to GoFigure, a game that gives you points for finding rhetorical figures and marking off their elements. We will talk about figures a good deal, because they are stylistic epitomes of arguments and encoders of attitude, and the game includes tutorials on core figures. The figures can come from (almost) anywhere, from the course text book, from participatory media, from things you encounter in other classes or in your extracurricular activities. I said "almost:" no poetry or lyrics are allowed (it's too easy); and no previously curated examples are allowed (e.g., from a website or book on figures that gives them as examples).

One crucial aspect of finding and marking figures is that you have to provide evidence, exactly as if you were using a quotation in an essay: they must be cited (author/source, date, page number/time code--though not all three elements are always necessary; websites don't have page numbers, for instance), and a full bibliographic entry must be supplied.

This is a pilot study, so there will be glitches. As we go to press, for instance, there is no way to enter citations for participatory media, so we may have to jerry-rig something.

To get the full 10% in this component, you will need to submit 20 instances or 50 figures, whichever comes first; for 8%, 16 or 42; for 5%, 14 or 36; no grades for under 14 submissions. This is easier than it seems, since most instances contain multiple figures. Here's an example (one instance, but five figures):

Instance:

Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. (Kennedy [& Sorensen] 1961)

Kennedy, John F. [and Theodore Sorensen]). 1961. Inagural Address (January 20). The American presidency project [Internet]. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=8032

Figures:

antimetabole Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

mesodiplosis Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

epanaphora Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

antithesis Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

ploke Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

Essay

Your essay grade is the largest and most important component of your mark. Start thinking about your essay right away. I'm not kidding. It will not have to be very long (2,000 - 2,750 words), but it will have to demonstrate thought, research, and craft. You should work on your essay diligently. It should shape your thought and understanding as you shape it. I will work with you on all stages of its development--invention, arrangement, style and delivery. Feel free to bring drafts to my office hours to discuss and refine.

The essay will be a research-based critical analysis. You will have to go beyond the course discusssions to find relevant rhetorical materials and apply them to the artefacts.

A critical analysis rhetorically examines a cultural artefact in the light of some theory or theorist we are studying. A typical artefact for analysis would be an aspect of some website or video or game, a scene from a movie or a "TV" programme, or a theme in a series, or a DVD interface, or a podcast, or the poster over your room-mate's bed, … look around you: pop culture is everywhere. Remember though, critical analyses need to be theoretically informed, so you will have to draw on the concepts and positions explored in the course, reinforced by specific readings, documented in the essay and listed in its bibliography. No fewer than five sources are acceptable, three of which must be peer-reviewed.

What matters for your understanding, and consequently for your grade, is how you develop your analysis: what your examination yields in terms of explaining central aspects of the artefact and/or the framework you adopt, and how you demonstrate that yield (significantly including the research you marshal and deploy, and the cogency of your argument).

A proposal is required. You will need to write up a one-page essay-plan and discuss it with me before you write the essay. The proposal should identify the thesis you will be arguing (for instance, that the two final episodes of Game of Thrones are feminist, or misogynist; that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is liberating or dangerous because of the motives it inculcates in its players; that Cardi B is an ironic persona or a commodity or a cultural matriarch or all three). You will need to do preliminary research on your thesis: on both critical analyses of the artefact and on the theoretical notions you are applying.

My evaluation of the essay (including the proposal) will depend on the soundness, analytical sophistication, research depth, and rhetorical appropriateness of your work, along the following metrics:

Proposal 10%

Articulation of your thesis 3%

Research outline 4%

Style and grammar (sentence and paragraph structure, diction, spelling, punctuation, agreement, ...) 3%

Essay 90%

Articulation and framing of your thesis 10%

Research (quality of sources) 20%

Use of evidence (research and analysis) 20%

Argumentation (relevance, coherence, structure) 20%

Style and grammar (as above) 20%

Academic ethics

You should familiarize yourself with the policies we have to make sure we all get along, treating our fellow humans, including those a long way off or a long time dead, whose ideas are still their ideas, with respect and empathy. But it all comes down to this: be honest, be kind, be fair; be a good citizen and a good neighbour and a good person. Expect those qualities of others, holding them accountable, not just students but professors as well. There's nothing special about academic ethics. They're ethics.

Yes, professors as well. One of the reasons I spell things out in this much detail in the syallabus is to be clear about the expectations and parameters. If you think any aspect of my conduct, including teaching, marking, and counseling, is unfairly detrimental to you or the class in general, you have not only the right but the obligation to let me, the English Department Chair, or the Dean of Arts, know about it, whomever you are most comfortable speaking with or you feel most appropriate for hearing your views and their reasons. Please keep this obligation with you throughout your time at Waterloo

The late policy is simple: don't be. If personal concerns, including health issues, prevent you from meeting a deadline, contact me ahead of time to make arrangements; if unforeseen circumstances prevent you from meeting a deadline, contact me when you are able and we can work something out. Please note that bad planning, conflict with assignments in other courses, and video-game addictions (to list a few attested reasons offered by students in the past) are not interpretable as personal concerns. Your health, the health of loved ones, unexpected demands in a job, ... these are personal concerns.

Policies and resources

You are expected to know what constitutes academic integrity [check Academic Integrity at UW] to avoid committing an academic offence, and to take responsibility for your actions. A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about “rules” for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course instructor, academic advisor, or the undergraduate Associate Dean. But ignorance is not a defence. For information on categories of offences and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71, Student Discipline. For typical penalties check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties.

Appeals: A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70 (Student Petitions and Grievances) (other than a petition) or Policy 71 (Student Discipline) may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes he/she has a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72 (Student Appeals).

Grievances: A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4. When in doubt please be certain to contact the department’s administrative assistant who will provide further assistance. 

Note for Students with Disabilities: AccessAbility Services, located in Needles Hall, Room 1401, collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with AccessAbility Services at the beginning of each academic term.

English 104 Schedule Fall 19

We are being swallowed up by American popular culture, but then the Americans are being swallowed up by it, too. It’s just as much a threat to American culture as it is to ours.

—Northrop Frye