Blogging Pedagogy - argumentation

Discussing Stereotypes in the Classroom

Sarah A. Riddick — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 22:38:50 +0000

Author:

Sarah Riddick

Image Credit:

Ookami-Schiffer. "Don't Stereotype Me!" Deviant Art, n.d. Web. 14 Nov 2014. <http://ookami-schiffer.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-Stereotype-Me-321935197>.

One of my primary aims in a rhetoric classroom is to equip students with the skills to thoughtfully respond to the world around them. What that means, as fellow instructors know well, is that sometimes it is appropriate to discuss rhetorical arguments that make the audience uncomfortable—a discomfort that could potentially halt or hinder discussion in the classroom. Moreover, given that every person in a classroom brings with them a distinct set of past experiences, influences, and perspectives, certain arguments and texts can affect some students more personally than others.

As an instructor, I make a conscious effort to establish upfront a classroom ethos that is founded on respect. We respect each other’s viewpoints, as well as those featured in our discussions, and I encourage my students to maintain this respect throughout the semester. Of course, despite the classroom being a “safe space” for reflection and discussion, it can nevertheless be intimidating for a student to vocalize what they notice in a text, especially when they view the text as stating something offensive. One moment in a recent class discussion of mine illustrated this point wonderfully, albeit unexpectedly.

Having defined some key rhetorical topics (induction, causation, correlation, definition, analogy, and difference), I asked my students to assess a variety of texts that feature these strategies. Samples included two-to-three straightforward sentences, an excerpt from an argumentative article about a recently controversial issue, a series of photographs, and a few excerpts from television and film. One excerpt came from the final court scene of Legally Blonde, a well-known film that continues to circulate regularly in popular culture. Specifically, I chose the moment in which Reese Witherspoon’s character Elle Woods realizes that a male witness in the trial could not have been involved with the female accused, despite his testimony that he had been. Elle comes to this conclusion after the witness, Enrique, identifies her shoes by their designer. After watching the one-minute clip, one of my students eagerly began to speak about which of the topics she observed, but she quickly and nervously prefaced her response with a clarification that she herself did not support what she was about to say.

This is precisely why I chose this clip. This moment at the water fountain is, in my opinion, the film’s defining moment. Elle’s eyes widen, and she runs into the courtroom to inform her team about what she is now completely certain: Enrique is gay. Her argument is, approximately: “Enrique knows designers. Gay men know designers. Therefore, Enrique is gay.” According to my students, Elle draws a correlation between Enrique’s sexual orientation and his knowledge of fashion designers based on a stereotype about gay men. Rather than challenge her argument, the accused agrees with her, adding another stereotype to the mix (Enrique listens to Cher). Thus, Elle, who has been struggleing to succeed throughout the entire film until now, takes over the defense and wins the case.

Legally Blonde came out in 2001. Many might say it was a career-defining moment for Witherspoon, and the film was so successful that it has a sequel and a Broadway adaptation. That said, nearly a decade and a half later, my classroom full of young undergraduates watched this one-minute clip and uneasily recognized the rhetorical power of a moment that until now had likely provoked no more than a chuckle. As my students agreed, the basis of Elle’s argument in this scene—an argument that catapults her to victory in the movie—is both flimsy and based on a stereotype.

For me, this was a wonderful teaching moment. Not only did my students recognize a rhetorical topic at-work, but they also demonstrated an understanding of how far-reaching, significant, and even insidious argumentation strategies may be. To put the aforementioned student at ease, I took a moment to commend her on being conscientious enough to distinguish herself from an offensive argument, and I reminded the class as a whole that in our classroom it is okay for us to talk about what we observe in texts without claiming personal responsibility for them. In fact, that is one of the most important reasons for taking this course: to learn how to respond thoughtfully to others while establishing and maintaining one’s own position.

Embodying a Controversy

Axel Bohmann — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Author:

Axel Bohmann

Image Credit:

Art E. Rial | Body Worlds 3: The Thinker

This summer, my parents asked me to review an article they were writing for a handbook on systemic counselling. The topic was using the body as a resource as well as an agent in problem-solving strategies and decision-making. Mom and Dad wrote the interaction between cognition and embodiment (and their fundamental inseparability), the bi-directionality of psycho-somatic processes, etc. All of which I felt was very interesting, but at the time seemed slightly too obvious to really excite me. But as I think about my teaching this semester, I keep coming back to the issue of embodiment and I realize that, yes, I have been aware of it for quite some time but, admittedly, have failed to … well, embody what I knew.

An example from the rhetoric classes I teach (it's intermediate level this semester, but I speak mostly from my past experience with introductory courses). In these, each student has to select a controversy to map, analyze chosen positions in depth, and finally take her own stance. One of the key realizations I want students to make is that a controversy is much more multi-faceted than “pro and con.” To that end, my students get to use a number of tools for visualizing the relationships between individual stakeholders when they work towards mapping their controversy (color coding, mind mapping, etc.). Students typically find these quite helpful.

Yet as they begin defining and verbalizing their own position, I've noticed there often is a relapse into the two-camps model. And I as the instructor am probably not innocent in that regard. An exercise I've been doing at the beginning of Unit 3 (constructing arguments) serves as a good example: this is only a slight variation of the split-the-class-in-half-then-debate exercise I am familiar with from high school. There are three groups and each gets assigned one position in a given controversy, usually with the third group mediating between the first two. They get into three different corners of the room and rhetorically batter away at each other (well, there is a reflection part to it, too, but that just as an aside). I think it's quite telling that the third group often ends up aligning more or less with one of the first two and feels like they argue that group's point only less decidedly.

The problem is that this splitting up into distinct blocks with predetermined position glosses over a lot of the nuances students have learned to identify when mapping and analyzing controversies. It presents positions as fairly unitary and static, and puts direct argumentative confrontation center stage.

This semester I hope to use space, movement, gaze and posture in better ways to help students navigate their controversies with more flexibly and elegantly. I'm not sure about the exact details yet, but I am thinking about smaller group exercises where each individual has an assigned set of basic beliefs and a goal expressed in proxemic terms (e.g. “try to get Kim to stand as closely to you as possible” or “separate Max and Kabriesha as far from each other as possible”). I would probably have each group member put forth an argument in turn and have everybody else react to this argument physically (by moving away from/towards others, directing their gaze one particular way, etc.). The goal would be for students to see that their arguments influence everybody in the controversy, even the ones that do not move, since the constellation inevitably gets altered. Also, this could be really helpful in getting them to think about navigating multiple audiences: convincing one group without agitating another, for instance.

Why Teach Popular Culture?

Laura Thain — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 03:13:09 +0000

Author:

Laura Thain

Image Credit:

Wikimedia Commons

This semester, I have taken great pleasure in teaching The Rhetoric of Celebrity to a group of enthusiastic and talented students. In my office hours a few weeks ago, a student who came in to discuss a recent assignment with me began our conversation by asking if “all rhetoric teachers had to be so young.”

“Well,” I answered, “most of us are graduate students, so we don’t have our PhDs yet. We’re generally in our twenties and thirties.”

“So, what do you want to do, you know, professionally? Do you want to work for TMZ someday?” she asked. I smiled a little and explained that I was a doctoral student studying 18^th century intellectual history and the English novel. She looked perplexed. “Why are you teaching us about music and movie stars and stuff then? Were there stars back then? What does what you teach have to do with being a professor?”

It’s a provocative question. Many of us shy away from studying our “pet” interests in the mass media to make ourselves more marketable—out of fear of entering an oversaturated market of scholars of popular culture. I’ve also heard many of my colleagues voice concerns over ruining what they love by studying it: “I just want to read/listen to/view __________ and enjoy it without thinking about how I can interrogate it!” is a common reprise in graduate offices. But I don’t think we really mean this. In fact, on our Facebook walls, in our informal discussions, and in our lesson plans we examine and analyze the media objects we encounter constantly. We express excitement when we find a particularly glowing example of a rhetorical principle in the most recent broadcast of SNL or The Daily Show. We talk about the ethics of ironic distance in The Colbert Report and Lena Dunham’s Girls. We laugh at memes that mix Derrida with Honey Boo Boo; we eagerly await the season openers of Breaking Bad and Homeland. I even have a fairly well-rehearsed defense of Britney Spears in terms of Barthes’ Mythologies.

At the heart of the importance of cultural studies in general, and popular culture in particular, is the interrogation of the evaluative mode of rhetorical discourse. The controversy model upon which all of our introductory composition courses here in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing are based emphasize three main modes of discourse: the descriptive mode, the analytical mode, and the evaluative mode. These modes represent a cumulative skill set—that is, that one cannot analyze before one can describe, and one cannot evaluate before one can analyze. Within this model, evaluation usually takes place in terms of a position paper on a social issue. For instance, last years’ first year forum book encouraged RHE 306 students to argue for a particular position on school reform; this year, the first year forum topic is oriented toward digital democracy and Web 2.0.

This unit structure transfer neatly into classes that deal directly with public policy—the Rhetoric of Protest, the Rhetoric of Gentrification, or the Rhetoric of Disasters—because the evaluative unit of these course topics easily fits into an argument for policy change. But how do we teach evaluative rhetorics in less civic-minded classes? How do we teach students how to evaluate a music video, a documentary film, or a comedy routine?

Teaching popular culture can be a crucial tool in teaching students how to make the evaluative turn when examining implicit, rather than explicit, styles of argumentation. Because students are often already familiar with the content, they are able to draw on a vast array of cultural associations when formulating their own series of ethical or aesthetic criteria, which is a crucial precondition for adept rhetorical evaluation. It is what keeps students and scholars alike from falling back on response-type criticism alone and seeing larger systems of meaning in media objects. It is what elevates the rhetoric classroom from book club to site of social critique. I believe the most important objective of teaching the evaluative turn in rhetorical theory—as it is in the descriptive and analytical units, as well—is to emphasize the utterly essential concern of audience. In order to do this, we must teach students to think beyond their own personal responses and consider how different rhetorics appeal to others. This process always begins with students learning to recognize these processes within themselves, but they must move beyond this in order to understand the effects of rhetoric in society at large.

The flaw of “book-club” style reader-response is that it is utterly centered on the individual and encourages us to read complex implementations of standard cultural mythic structures for plot, and the actions of the characters within these cultural media objects as somehow changeable. This elicits responses from students such as “If Britney hadn’t driven around LA during the summer of 2007 looking for attention…” or “If Mookie hadn’t vandalized the pizza shop in the end of Do the Right Thing…” in the same way that a reader might muse on the fate of Heathcliff had he not left Wuthering Heights to find his fame and fortune. This sort of response to popular culture undermines the ability of readers to discern that the choices the characters before them make, whether real or fictional, are nonetheless mediated by cultural forces as a precondition for audiences to even understand that a choice was made. In other words, the action and the depiction of the action are the argument; we cannot separate them from each other. Learning to make the evaluative turn rhetorically in popular culture means understanding that we judge the acts of groups or individuals as they are mediated through implicit media arguments; that is, we must teach students to examine with scrutiny the carrier of the message as much as the message itself, because one cannot exist outside of the other. In this exercise, the use of digitally-equipped classrooms is an invaluable tool, because the discussion of the dissemination of cultural myths in media objects is not only technologically possible but environmentally fostered.

Teaching popular culture means teaching students how to read and understand the content and power of implicit arguments as mediated by mass culture. It means deferring knee-jerk evaluative judgments—ones without distinct sets of ethical criteria. It means recognizing and resisting assumptions about the distinctions between high and low culture, and understanding mass media as, at least in some sense, a reflection of, rather than the cause of, cultural attitudes and mores. Close rhetorical analysis of objects in popular culture deconstruct the myths of societal devolution and help us to understand ourselves in our own moment without perspective and without hindsight—all things that make us better readers, better viewers, and, perhaps ultimately, better citizens.

Teaching Argumentation Through Trial Transcripts

Coulson — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 04:46:28 +0000

Author:

Doug Coulson

Image Credit:

Nuremberg Trials Library, Harvard Law School Library

My teaching primarily focuses on forensic rhetoric and the role of narrative, memory, and proof in disputes about past events. This classically includes legal disputes, although it extends far beyond them. In the course I’m teaching now, entitled Rhetoric and the Law, I challenge students to consider the importance of rhetoric to interpretations of evidence in legal disputes, the use of analogical argument in appeals to precedent, and the significance of the adversary system of justice as a dispute resolution model. One of my goals is to encourage the collaborative study of argumentation around topics of public controversy in the spirit of the classical rhetorical exercise known as in utramque partem, in which students learn to discover arguments on opposing sides of controversial cases. I particularly strive to accomplish this by emphasizing the value of casuistry, or case-based reasoning, and the close reading of evidence in trials. This presents a problem of access, however, because while trial records are generally public they’re often not readily available outside of the courts.

The problem of accessing trial records is unfortunate because trial transcripts are excellent sources for the study of argumentation and rhetorical concepts in particular cases. Trials are formally structures argumentation in which legal disputes are narrowed through a process that derives from classical stasis theory, in which both sides are given time to be heard and introduce evidence and rebut the other side, and in which everything that is said is spontaneously recorded. As Robert Ferguson writes, because trial transcripts reflect complete records of court proceedings they reveal, “as nothing else quite can, the real preoccupations in the flow of legal argument,” supplying a better perspective for understanding “the formulation of story that lies at the center of all courtroom proceedings.” See Robert A. Ferguson, “Becoming American: High Treason and Low Incentive in the Republic of Laws,” in The Rhetoric of Law, edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press 1994), 103. The opening and closing arguments in trials provide excellent sources for rhetorical study.

To try to make these resources more accessible to my students, I’ve identified various electronic and print resources that make trial transcripts available either in whole or in relevant excerpts. Because many court transcripts are now being electronically generated and scanning technology is more readily available to upload electronic files of older trial transcripts, many trial transcripts are now available online. The following constitute a sampling of the transcripts from famous court cases, both old and new, available online:

Cameron Todd Willingham Trial Transcripts

Clarence Darrow Digital Collection

Clay Shaw Trial Transcripts

Eichmann Trial: The Complete Transcripts

The Leo Frank Case and Trial Research Library

Leonard Peltier Trial Transcripts

Lizzie Borden Trial Transcripts

The Trial of Joan of Arc

The O.J. Simpson Trial Transcripts

Proceedings of the Mary Surratt Conspiracy Trial

Transcripts of the Salem Witch Trials

West Memphis Three Trial Transcripts

In addition to these resources, there are some excellent print sources of transcripts. Among these are various volumes within a collectible book series under the imprint of the Notable Trials Library. Many of these volumes contain extensive excerpts from the world’s most famous trials. In addition, the following print sources contain opening and closing statements from famous and relevant summaries of the evidence introduced in the trials:

Michael S. Lief and H. Mitchell Caldwell, The Devil’s Advocates: Greatest Closing Arguments in Criminal Law (New York: Scribner, 2006)

Michael S. Lief, H. Mitchell Caldwell, and Ben Bycel, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law (New York: Scribner, 1998)

Joel J. Seidemann, In the Interest of Justice: Great Opening and Closing Arguments of the Last 100 Years (New York: Regan, 2004)

These resources reflect exceptional laboratories of sorts for the study of rhetorical concepts, and I’ve found that students enjoy analyzing trial rhetoric and it often serves to demystify courtroom proceedings.

Using Mind Maps to Analyze and Assess Reasoning

Battistelli — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:15:53 +0000

Author:

Todd Battistelli

Image Credit:

Grumpyyoungman01

Chris Ortiz y Prentice raises an interesting question in “Why we just can’t seem to teach logos.” As Chris says, analysis challenges both instructors and students as we struggle to understand the multi-faceted Greek term “logos.” Given rhetoric’s long and at times contentious relationship with formal logic, I agree that we should take a broader approach to the analysis of reasoning in persuasive texts. As for practical classroom activities, I think one answer, which bears some correspondence to the interactive fiction technology Chris discusses, is the use of argument mapping to describe and assess reasoning.

At the outset I want to distinguish mind mapping or concept mapping from the mapping of argumentation. Mind maps diagram a wide variety of information and ideas: from non-linear brainstorming to more hierarchal outlining to rhizomatic relationships. Argumentation mapping has a narrower focus. It attempts to translate text-based arguments into various argument schemata including, but not limited to, formal logic, as described by Tim van Gelder.

While mind mapping has found favorable use in the writing classroom, more focused argumentation mapping software has gone unnoticed in rhetoric and writing (even as it receives attention in the fields of argumentation theory, informal logic, computer science, and business communication). Given the Toulmin model diagrams that appear in our writing textbooks and the other schemata we use to conceptualize logos, I think argumentation mapping could serve the writing classroom well.

However, I can't simply point out a tool that instructors can neatly plunk down into their own classroom practice for two connected reasons. First, the software available is limited in function for writing instruction purposes. Second, these limitations result from contested understandings of logos.

Rhetoric and writing is rightly cautious about the application of formal logic in rhetorical arguments. We do not resolve our civic debates through appeals to universally agreed premises, because such premises do not exist. Any attempt to locate and work from such premises inevitably excludes perspectives that belong in public discussions, as the variations of lived experience are stripped away in favor of clear and distinct perceptions.

The process of reasoning, though, can be conceived in ways different than the construction of logically sound syllogisms. In The Rhetoric of Reason James Crosswhite says, “The capacity for reason lies not in an independent rational mind but at least partly in the deep competences people have to be members of social groups that disclose the world and interpret things in a shared way” (43).

These competencies have their own patterns that diagramming can capture. One productive and long-standing rhetorical schema is that of stasis theory. Stasis, as described in Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee's Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students demonstrates how interlocutors do or do not converge on a common question to debate.

Stasis evokes spatial metaphors with its sense of a standpoint from which people pursue a line of reasoning. This visualization in turn lends itself to mapping where users can demonstrate the convergence or divergence of viewpoints. Unreasonable rhetors under the stasis theory model are not illogical; they are unreasonable because they do not engage the reasoning offered by their fellow discussants. Software that helps students create stasis maps could highlight not only breakdowns in communication but also directions in which discussants would need to move in order to regain stasis.

As I said above, no current software is especially well-suited to using such schemata. Philosophy Professor Maralee Harrell reviews several programs in "Using Argument Diagramming Software in the Classroom" [pdf copy], but finds that most are not adaptable enough for classroom use. Even in the context of philosophy courses where the study of formal logic has more relevance than it does in rhetoric, Harrell finds that most of the software currently available limited in terms of the flexibility of map organization or doesn't allow for on-the-fly classroom demonstration that can draw on student participation.

As most argument mapping programs employ schemata that are too close to formal logical syllogisms, one option is to adapt mind mapping software to provide more freedom in designing maps, but this comes with the trade-off of losing the guided template designs that help students construct maps that describe stasis, fair summary, and other elements of persuasive interaction. The interactive dimension is key, as argumentation is a participatory activity. Per Crosswhite's definition, we cannot assess the reasonableness of arguments in isolation but only in the way they work together to create community.

The underlying structure of mind maps presents central ideas with sub-units branching off and connecting. You can describe complex interrelationships in a mind map, but I'm not sure how well the mind map structure can capture the diachronic and interactive dimensions of argumentation that involves two or more interlocutors. Discussants exchange viewpoints over time, and each proffered argument shapes the others that later respond. Perhaps a map with animation, three dimensions and the capacity to zoom to different levels of detail as with Prezi could address these needs.

While such complexity might assist in crafting maps with a high level of fidelility to the argumentative landscape they represent, it isn't needed to assist students and instructors with more limited analyses of reasoning. More limited maps can evaluate whether sources are in stasis, whether they fairly represent the different positions at play, and can describe other aspects of the dialectical relationship between viewpoints in order to show the extent to which they abide by the competencies of reason.