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SAMPLE ESSAY #1 ! The Power of Rhetoric

In the chapter, “I Did It on Purpose” from Disability Rhetoric, Jay Timothy Dolmage

debunks common misconceptions about disabilities. In particular, he focuses on spoken disabilities, such as stuttering. Dolmage draws examples from The King’s Speech to criticize how the film wrongly represents this disability as an issue that needs to be “fixed.” Dolmage strives to inform and educate fellow rhetoric scholars, especially those with an interest in disabilities, about how it is misunderstood in society. He argues that disabilities should not be seen as a deficit that needs to be “cured.” Dolmage uses rhetorical strategies, particularly the inclusion of outside quotes, references to famous cinema, and use of typographical emphasis, to criticize the disability myths commonly seen today.

Dolmage begins the chapter with a quote from a poem to show how someone with a stutter can positively use disability to strengthen their work. The quote, written by Jordan Scott, reads, “‘The old psychology’ of feeling the stutterclutter is of the earth is the breaking down into the intestinal alimentary or reclamation of meaning back into the original ‘chaos of noises’ since decomposed” (Dolmage 225). This quote is verbose, nonsensical, and hard to follow, but that is the poet’s intent; this is poetry that is different from anything the audience has seen. Scott uses his speaking disability to craft poetry that someone without a disability would not be able to write. Dolmage recognizes his audience as a group of educated people who would appreciate poetry, so they would be impressed with Scott’s ability to use his stutter in a positive way to benefit his poetry. Including a quote written by a poet with a stutter acts as a counterexample to the rest of Dolmage’s paper, which focuses on how society portrays disabilities in negative ways. Dolmage begins with this excerpt from Scott’s poetry to start the reader off with a positive example of someone who makes the most of his disability, using it to write creative and powerful poetry. Dolmage wants the readers to go into his chapter feeling impressed and happy with how Scott benefitted from his optimistic outlook on his stutter. The readers start the chapter on Dolmage’s “side,” which is that disabilities should not be seen as a setback. This creates a stark contrast to Dolmage’s following argument, which criticizes how modern movies negatively represent disabilities as something that needed to be cured.

Dolmage references the award winning movie, The King’s Speech, to show how society accepts the disability myths that the film shows. The movie focuses on “Bertie” (King George VI) and his struggle to rid his stutter through extensive speech therapy. The plot highlights the “labor and the battle of overcoming a disability…and that with hard work, disability is something we can triumph over… but if they remain disabled, they probably just have not worked hard enough” (Dolmage 226). Dolmage draws examples from The King’s Speech because it is a popular movie about speech disabilities so most of his audience would be familiar with it. This makes his arguments against the film resonate stronger than if he referenced a film that his audience had never heard of. Dolmage claims that The King’s Speech’s portrayals of disabilities were not “correct,” but this film was widely accepted by society because it won four Oscars, including “Best Picture.” Therefore, Dolmage uses this connection to confirm his argument that there are larger, societal misconceptions about disabilities. Dolmage draws

examples from The King’s Speech to show the audience how a movie that was reviewed highly actually exemplifies the disability myths that he wants to refute. This proves that without them realizing it, they believed and agreed with the idea that disabilities need to be treated until they are “cured.” By exploiting the misrepresentations of disabilities in The King’s Speech, Dolmage informs his readers that they have been blindly accepting disability myths because society depicts it a certain way.

Dolmage uses typographical emphasis to bring attention to the misuse of phrases that insinuate that disability is something that needs to be fixed. His strategic prose throughout the chapter act as little hints to contribute to his argument. In multiple instances, while discussing The King’s Speech and Bertie’s life with a stutter, Dolmage describes Bertie’s efforts to stop stuttering with words like “cure,” “overcome,” or “get over.” Dolmage emphasizes that disabilities are not anything that need to be “fixed,” so he frequently wrote such words in quotes or italics to show the audience that he does not agree with the associated meaning. This technique contributes to Dolmage’s argument because it allows him to mock the exact words that The King’s Speech uses to describe the battle to fix disabilities. It is clear to the audience that anytime he uses quotations or italics with a phrase, he is bringing attention to it or making fun of how it is misused. This strategy supports Dolmage’s argument because the audience will learn how his typographical emphasis denotes sarcastic undertones, so whenever they see him using this technique throughout the paper, they will recognize that he does not approve of the context that a word or phrase is used in.

Dolmage’s exploits rhetorical strategies, particularly the inclusion of quotes, references to famous cinema, and use of typographical emphasis, to refute common misconceptions about disabilities seen in society today. Dolmage puts the power of rhetoric to his advantage; using his words, he is able to construct a reality within his work where he has control. Those who read his chapter are doing so through the prose he carefully crafted. Dolmage’s version of the “truth” about disabilities is a constructed truth; it is his way to try to make sense of an idea. A reader who steps back to study a piece rhetorically can recognize the noticeable features and rhetorical strategies, and use that knowledge to make their own meaning of something. There is always an underlying influence that seeps into an argument, source, or opinion. The ability to recognize the dangers of constructed truths reveals an entirely new approach to analyzing sources. While these skills are useful for writing analysis papers, rhetorical analysis flows beyond the world of academia. Readers can apply this curiosity and questioning to aspects of their everyday life. Nearly every situation in life can be analyzed rhetorically, and understanding rhetoric provides the ability to grasp concepts in a deeper and fuller manner. !! !! !!

Works Cited Dolmage, Jay. “Chapter 6: ‘I Did It on Purpose.’” Disability Rhetoric, Syracuse University Press, !

2014, pp. 225–287. !! !!! SAMPLE ESSAY #2 !

Both Style and Substance: Costumer Tara Maginnis’s Rhetorical Strategies

In “The Importance of Being Artificial: Style as Substance in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Tara Maginnis interprets the world of Wilde’s play as one of strict superficiality that prizes style over substance. Building off this scholarly interpretation, the professional costume designer and head of the University of Alaska theatre department describes the choices she made in costuming a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. The publication journal TD&T: Theatre Design and Technology is primarily read by fellow theatre professionals, and Maginnis’s combination of scholarly and practical knowledge within the article suggests that she is appealing to both dramatic scholars as well as those specializing in the production and design elements of theatre. She opens with historical and textual analysis, includes examples of positive communication with the cast and crew, and uses emotionally vivid descriptions to make her audience understand and support her decisions as a costumer. The rhetorical structure and strategies within this piece effectively explain and justify her costume design choices to this combined audience of scholars and professionals. Maginnis opens the article with in-depth historical and textual analysis, immediately establishing her authorial credibility—an appeal to ethos directed particularly at her scholarly audience. Her first sentence reads: “In the late Victorian era, fashion was, according to Oscar Wilde, ‘a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months’” (58). This humorous quote not only pulls the reader into the text, but it also establishes knowledge of the playwright that brilliantly ties into knowledge of Victorian fashion in general. Following this quote, she describes in detail the key components to Victorian fashion from stiff detachable collars, to corsets and dress improvers, to an extensive layering process meant to “demonstrate one’s wealth and freedom from work,” according to the “principles of Conspicuous Consumption and Conspicuous Leisure” (59). Her knowledge of fashion in these beginning passages highlight her qualifications as a costume designer, and it sets her up to interpret the satiric themes of Wilde’s play in accordance with values of the 1890’s. Citing passages from the play itself, she forms the conclusion that the characters are “so thoroughly enamored with the form of being that they make form and style ‘being’ itself” (59). It is now clear to her scholarly audience that she is more than an expert in fashion; she is a literary critic whose costumes will extend beyond reflecting historical accuracy and into the realm of careful interpretation of the text. It is only after all this has been established that she delves into a discussion of her design choices. Introducing her purpose so late into the article is an unusual but effective choice; had she opened with her artistic vision and later backed it up with external evidence, her scholarly audience may have been put off by her bold costuming choices and doubted her credibility from the beginning.

Maginnis’s choice to begin her article with historical and literary analysis effectively establishes her identity as a scholarly professional and makes her audience trust her decisions as a costume designer before she has even discussed them.

Maginnis also appeals to ethos by including examples of positive communication with those involved in the show, enhancing her likeability and credibility particularly for other production professionals. She recounts how the director, Anatoly Antohin “wanted everyone (except the servants) in summer white, a la Fanny and Alexander, as if at the very beginning of the play everyone was ready for a wedding” (61). Including the director’s vision in a discussion of her design process establishes her willingness to communicate with the other production members. Beyond simply listening to the director, she goes on to explain that following their conversation, “My central metaphor for the costumes, therefore, was wedding favors” (61). By stating a general vision that both includes and expands on the director’s ideas, Maginnis demonstrates her ability to reconcile directorial input with her creative freedom. Her audience of theatre professionals would know all too well that conflict between directors and costumers is common in productions, so this positive interaction truly bolsters her credibility as an effective costume designer. In addition to her experience with the director, Maginnis also includes the response of the actors to show their support for the costumes. She recalls expressing concern for the potential discomfort caused by “such torturous outfits,” only to find that the actors fully embraced these outfits “because, they said, the garments helped them transform into people who prized style over substance” (61). On its surface, this section increases her general likeability by painting her as sympathetic to her actors. But on a deeper level, it also reinforces her design choices as ones that genuinely worked with the theme of the play and helped the actors get into character. The choice to include the support of the director and actors in this article increases both Maginnis’s credibility as a costumer and the credibility of her design, especially in the eyes of other theatre professionals.

Maginnis helps her audience appreciate the costumes themselves by appealing to pathos with emotionally charged anecdotes and descriptions that mimic the effect her costumes had onstage. For example, to illustrate the wedding favor metaphor, she draws upon an anecdote from a childhood experience of wedding favors:

They are given to guests at the reception, and as any child will tell you, after you unwrap them, the contents seem either disappointing or incredible. Even when you think you get to the core, you discover upon biting into the candy (often given a surreal finish of silver or gold leaf) that there is more, hard, tooth-breaking, sugar coating on the outside than there is actual almond in the center (61). !

This passage calls upon sentimental childhood memories to make the reader feel the heart at the center of the metaphor—the disappointment of superficiality—and in turn, better understand its purpose. When first introduced, the wedding favor metaphor sits alone on the page as an obscure and far-fetched idea, but in the context of a relatable anecdote, it is rooted in feelings of squashed excitement. Thus, although Maginnis’s textual audience cannot see the costumes in action, they can imagine what her physical audience must have felt. She then applies the isolated, personal feelings from the anecdote to a more straightforward description of the effect of her costumes: “clothing on top of clothing on top of clothing, excess piled on excess, until one might imagine

that unwrapping the character might make the person disappear altogether” (61). The repetition in this description conveys the same sense of exhaustion and frustration that her costumes were meant to induce—the same sense of exhaustion and frustration that accompanies a life of style over substance. By imbuing both the content and the language with the same emotions she was trying to convey through her costumes, Maginnis allows the reader to emotionally respond to her design choices in a way that supports her overall interpretation. The rhetorical strategies Maginnis uses throughout “The Importance of Being Artificial” help convince her audience of the value of the costuming decisions she made for this production of The Importance of Being Earnest. She proves both her credibility as a scholar with her extensive use of historical and textual evidence proceeding her interpretation and her credibility as a theatre professional with the inclusion of her positive interactions with the cast and crew. She then illuminates her choices for both audiences with emotionally charged content and stylistic choices. Her ability to appeal to an audience of both scholars and professionals is truly significant to costuming in general because it demonstrates that effective costumers must be more than good with a sewing machine; they must be skilled in both critical interpretation and creative application. In other words, they must have both style and substance. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SAMPLE ESSAY #3 !

The article, “Fast Relief: Buying Time with Medications” describes the use of over-the- counter medications amongst Americans, especially American mothers, as a means of creating time. The author, Nancy Vuckovic, utilizes peer-reviewed research and her own ethnographic research and interviews to assert that Americans are so dominated by a culture of productivity that they seek self-medication over proper time for recuperation. She writes in her article that over-the-counter medications are perceived as an efficient means of fighting off illness while still allowing people to be productive throughout the day- a reflection of greater American culture. Vuckovic’s article makes use of appeals to logos and ethos to convince fellow anthropologists and medical professionals of the relationship between self-medicating and time famine in the United States. Vuckovic formats “Fast Relief” into sections depicting her most important areas of research, so that the reader can easily identify its main themes. By breaking down the article this way, Vuckovic underscores the most important areas of her research. Because “Fast Relief” is published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, the majority of Vuckovic’s audience would likely be fellow anthropologists and members of the medical community. This is important to note because health professionals would likely have less exposure to anthropological research, so in formatting “Fast Relief” in themed sections, Vuckovic ensures that those less familiar to her discipline will take away the points she wants them to. The article’s format gives the reader before reading some sense of what the article is about and Vuckovic’s thesis without knowing anything about the subject. When readers skim or review the article, they can easily identify the main themes relating to time famine in the United States and Vuckovic’s ethnographic research. These themes include: “time as a scarce resource,” “how time famine affects women’s medication decisions,” “time regulation and children’s illness,” “expectations of medicine demonstration effect,” “medicines as time-saving devices,” and a section dedicated to research methods (Vuckovic, 1999). These sections make it easy for anthropologists and medical professionals to skip to what is most relevant to them. For example, an anthropologist wishing to

conduct a similar research project might look at Vuckovic’s section on methods or a doctor might read in “how time famine affects women’s medication decisions” to understand why some patients won’t be seen unless the circumstances are dire. She utilizes an appeal to logos to show through cause-and-effect how time famine affects healthcare and consequently, why her research is relevant. She walks her audience through her logic by saying, “Technology enables a wider range of activities, and in doing so drives a more hectic pace. This in turn acts as a catalyst for social change that encourages Americans to feel they should be engaged in productive activity every moment of the day,” (Vuckovic, 1999, p. 53). Vuckovic says developments in technology result in being able to do more activities, which means a faster paced lifestyle, ultimately changing American culture to making people feel like they should constantly be productive. She continues to say that “’an outcome of the U.S. cultural ideal of progress an productivity is an impatient with illness,’ (Vuckovic and Nichter 1997; Young 1977)” (Vuckovic, 1999, p. 55). She displays the cultural context for how time famine formed and created her area of research: self-medicating as a solution to time famine. She presents technological progress as a cause and self-medicating as an effect for Americans purchasing over-the-counter medication to mask symptoms of illness to maintain productivity. By presenting this cause-and-effect, Vuckovic helps the reader understand why there’s a market for over-the-counter medication and how the culture of productivity came into being. Vuckovic makes an appeal to ethos through extensive citing of other research of the American time famine. For instance, she opens her article with citing the works of nine different researchers on how “lack of time is a plague of industrialized, high-income societies,” especially in the United States (Vuckovic, 1999, p. 51). By citing nine sources of research in the first paragraph, Vuckovic immediately informs the reader that she knows what she’s talking about and that her research is legitimate. She conveys that other researchers have examined this phenomena and its existence. Including citations is important for convincing readers of an author’s research, but it is especially important for Vuckovic’s audience of anthropologists and medical professionals. Given their scholarly background, Vuckovic is aware that they would particularly appreciate her inclusion of existing research. This helps to build her credibility in their eyes and consequently builds the credibility of her article. Vuckovic makes another appeal to ethos through including direct quotations from Claire and Mercy to show the depth of her ethnography to improve her reputation with her audience. An extremely vital part of being a credible anthropologist is to conduct extensive fieldwork in at least one area. By dedicating an entire section of “Fast Relief” to results of her fieldwork, Vuckovic conveys to her audience that she is a professional anthropologist trained to recognize real cultural phenomena. Because a number of her readers are anthropologists, by showing her methods of participant-observation and interviews, Vuckovic establishes her research’s credibility with them. To obtain useful information, an anthropologist must establish rapport with informants and be able to ask the right questions to get beyond superficial answers. Anyone can include statistics, which may or may not accurately portray the real phenomenon. Including quotations from the mothers reflects the degree of skill Vuckovic has an anthropologist. One of the quotes from Claire on doing “’whatever it takes’ in order to juggle work and family life” in particular, reflects Vuckovic’s high degree of skill (Vuckovic, 1999, p. 55). In referring to her daily life, Claire says, “’I feel guilt a lot about it, you know. I’d rather stay home with them and

be with them all day. But if I’m going to work to do what we want to do and in order to provide for them, that’s the choice we’ve made,’” (Vuckovic, 1999, p. 55). She references that while she would prefer to stay at home with her children, in order to provide for her family, she must maintain a full-time job to have enough money to take care of them. Claire’s quotation highlights the effects the culture of productivity has on family life. Without having good rapport with her informants and good interviewing skills, Vuckovic wouldn’t have been able to obtain a response like that one. By including this quotation, not only is Vuckovic showing her audience an example of time famine’s effects, she’s also exemplifying her skills as a researcher- both of which builds her article’s credibility. Vuckovic specifically chooses clear and easy-to-understand language so that the reader doesn’t get caught up in what the words mean and can focus on the subject itself, which is far more important. While her audience likely consists of anthropologists and members of the medical community, Vuckovic chose clear and easy-to-understand words and tone to ensure her message isn’t lost. If she was only writing to anthropologists, she could simply use anthropological jargon in her article, but because she’s also targeting members of the medical community, she must clarify her research. Her audience doesn’t need to pause and re-read the passage for clarity, because she chooses vernacular such as “’go into’ something worse,” “downplay illness,” and “get to the point,” to make her argument as clear as possible (Vuckovic, 1999, 56, 57, 59). The culture of productivity in the United States is so expansive that it affects even how people seek methods of self-care. Perhaps those in the medical community after reading her article could feel compelled make changes to the way they practice medicine to better treat patients. Nancy Vuckovic utilizes rhetorical methods of appeals to logos and ethos, structuring her article by themed sections, and using clear, simple word choices to encourage readers to see a relationship between the American culture of productivity and self-medicating. She highlights that time famine’s effects can be seen in the way Americans treat illnesses and how they conduct themselves when sick. These methods of rhetoric cause anthropologists and members of the medical community to understand why Americans choose over-the-counter medications as a treatment option over “following doctor’s orders.” !

Works Cited Vuckovic, N. (1999). Fast Relief: Buying Time with Medications. Medical Anthropology !

Quarterly, 51-68.