UNIT TWO ASSIGNMENT SEQUENCE

Purpose: As we move through this unit, our main goal is to be able to identify and separate the three forms of rhetorical usage—logos, ethos, and pathos—as well as to begin to utilize outside sources in constructing and strengthening our writing. To this end, please familiarize yourself with the sections in the Allyn and Bacon Handbook that describe the MLA style for documentation (if you didn’t buy it for class, there should be copies available in the library...you will be expected to cite sources properly from now on, so find a reference you can use). The actual written assignments and their due dates are as follows:

FEEDER ASSIGNMENT #1:

Download and print the texts of both Martin Luther King’s famous "I Have a Dream" speech (http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/King.html) and the speech made by George Wallace (Governor of Alabama at the time of King’s Speech) during his 1964 presidential campaign (http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/Wallace.html). Using the entire text of both speeches continue your analysis of the rhetorical strategies of the speech with the following questions in mind:

• How does the speaker address the specific beliefs, concerns and needs of the audience that each is addressing? How can you tell that the audiences of the two speeches are very different even if you know nothing about Wallace and King?
• How does the difference in audience affect the choices the speaker makes concerning issues of discussion, word choice, vocabulary, etc.?
• What types of appeal (if any) seems to predominate in the speeches? Are they different? If so, how? Also, speculate about why the speaker chooses to emphasize certain kinds of appeals at various places in the speech?
• What differences do you perceive in these texts, which are transcripts of speeches presented verbally, and a document produced to be read, not heard, like a political pamphlet?

This paper should be at least 2 pages in length (no more than 4), typed and double-spaced, and will be due in class on Friday, October 9.

FEEDER ASSIGNMENT #2:

Letters to the editor of a publication are a great way for private citizens to get the opportunity to influence the thinking of others. As such, they are exercises in rhetoric that we encounter every day, and an effective letter to the editor uses many of the same tools as an effective speech or persuasive paper would.

For this assignment, you will pick an editorial (not an news article, but a column which takes a side on an issue) from a newspaper of magazine of your choice dealing with an issue in which you are interested. Choose an editorial with which you disagree and write a letter in response to this editorial in which you not only refute the arguments made by the writer of the editorial but suggest an argument of your own in response.

While you may use ethical and emotional appeals in your refutation, you will need to do plenty of outside research to provide logical support for the position which you take in your letter. It is not enough simply to say "that opinion is wrong"; the burden of proof is one you as a respondent to explain why and how it is wrong and to suggest a "right" alternative.

Remember, your audience (the class) may not have read the original editorial, so you will have to briefly summarize and specifically refer to the main points of the editorial as you refute them. This paper should be at least 2 pages long (no more than 3), typed and double-spaced, and is due in class on Monday, October 19.

FINAL UNIT ASSIGNMENT:

The assignment for this paper is extremely simple: Write a speech to present to the class that will persuade them to believe the way you do on some particular issue of your choosing. Note the use of the verb "persuade." Although you should provide information to your audience about your topic in the course of persuading them, the purpose of your speech will be to change the way your audience thinks about the topic that you are speaking about, not simply to tell them some facts they do not already know. The topic is completely up to you, but choose carefully, as you neither want to bore, confuse or insult the intelligence of your audience. You may certainly choose the issue you wrote about in your second feeder (in fact, this may help you organize your thoughts in advance).

Make sure that your speech contains logical, ethical and emotional appeals to your audience (in whatever proportion you find most effective in dealing with the particular issue you’ve chosen) and supports these appeals with references to outside sources. In other words, you will need to use authoritative resources to find other voices that will join with yours to strengthen your argument and move it from the realm of pure opinion towards an argument rooted in proof.

You should use at least three outside sources in creating this speech and properly cite all of them in the body of your text. We will be presenting the speeches in class, but the vast majority of your grade will come from the effectiveness of your rhetoric, rather than your "stage-presence," so concentrate on making your argument the strongest it can be.

Two copies of the first draft of this speech are due in class on Friday, October 23. The final draft will be turned in on Wednesday, October 28 and the speeches will be given in class that day and the next two class periods (order to be determined by a random drawing). Everyone, no matter what day you will be reading your speech, should turn in their final draft on Wednesday the 28th.