Welcome to English 1050!

Audience

Who cares?

What do they know?

What do they want to know?

Subject

What data?

What needs to happen?

What will change?

Text

What form?

What expectations?

The Rhetorical Triangle

Welcome to English 1050!

Today's Class

• Audience and Data
• In Class 1: Description
• Recursive Thinking

Dr. Abigail Mann

Office: Dial Hall 249

Office Hours: TR 11:30-12:30, 2-2:45, MW 11-12:30 AND by appointment: I’m happy to set up a time that works for both of us

Abigail.Mann@uncp.edu

Phone: (910) 521-6312

Purpose

Homework!

The A2Z Method

In Class Write

(Subject)

Data Dump

Application

In this triangle you are listing every possible piece of information: it is a pre-writing invention step. Do not worry about meaning at this point: just get as much data as possible

Data Collation

In the triangle, you are isolating patterns of data. The three basic patterns you might look for are connections, contrasts, or surprising anomalies.

Encounters

So What

This is where you say why the data matters to this audience: what purpose does it serve? This may be a new way of doing things, a plan for the future, a new way of thinking about something, a new understanding of causality....

An application is a way to think through to the “so

what” of your observations; to connect them to big

ger issues and concerns and make a claim as to why noticing this helps us understand the text in surprising/less obvious ways. Part of the goal is to delve even deeper into the details you have started to link, developing patterns to surprising depths.

Basic questions you are looking to answer with your data:

• How is your pattern part of a larger system of practice, interpretation, or relations between ideas?
• How is your pattern similar to or different from another related system of practice, interpretation, or relations between ideas?
• To what larger categories can your pattern be assigned? How does that help us understand it?
• What values does your pattern reflect? What values does it support? Contradict?

The encounter should be understood as a list of the questions the so what answers: why did the author write the article? To develop this write a list of what question each so what answers—your questions may take the form of:

Why does [PARTICULAR ASPECT] surface in [PARTICULAR WAY]? (order/causation/

analysis)

How does [PARTICULAR ELEMENT] modify [PARTICULAR PRACTICE/ANALYSIS/ UNDERSTANDING]?

To what extent does [ELEMENT 1] replace/change [ELEMENT B]? (order/causation/

analysis)

Describe your dorm room/ room. Start by just listing everything you can think of--don't worry about order/sense. Keep your pencil moving the whole time! (5 minutes)

Now read through what you have written and underline the stuff that you want to make sure you cover. Draw lines to connect what seem to be linked points. Missing anything? (3 minutes)

Write out a description using the points you have identified above. (5 minutes)

You've just done a freewrite! This is a form of invention, which will be discussed in the reading next week.

So What Does it Mean To Talk About Writing/Thinking as Recursive?

Using Writing

(Purpose)

Group 1:

Draw a Picture of the person's dorm room using ONLY the description you are given (don't use what you know about rooms/ dorms here)

Group 2:

You're a grandparent and want to send a care package of stuff to make your grandchild's room nicer/more convenient. Based ONLY on the description, what exactly are you going to send and why?

Group 3:

You are on UNC-P's version of Room Raiders. You have to decide whether to date this person based ONLY on their room description (assume they are of the gender(s) you are interested in dating). Would you date this person? What helped you decide?

• No one place to start
• Changing one thing may cause you to change things both upstream and downstream
• All in relation to each other
• (Writing is a way of displaying and organizing thinking)