Discussion 2-2

Prez_RhetoricalStrategiesCommonlyUsedinExpertAudienceTexts.pptx

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Spotlight on Rhetorical Strategies in an Expert Audience Text: “Taco the Puppy Is Super Sick”

(Jargon / Metadiscourse / Responding to Other Participants in the Topical Conversation)

Subject, Claim, and Purpose in Stein and Ostrowsky’s Text

In “’Taco the Puppy Is Super Sick: Student Excuses as a Unique Form of Apologia Rhetoric (2016),” Kevin A. Stein and Michael K. Ostrowsky, Associate Professors in Southern Utah University’s communications and sociology departments respectively, explore the variety of reasons college students offer for inappropriate course-related behaviors. They assert that the apologies of college students should be explored because such apologia illustrate efforts to recuperate one’s image/reputation and that such forms of student-faculty communication are pervasive. The rhetors use William L. Benoit’s (1995, 2015) framework of apologia strategies to explore which tactics are deployed in emails college students send to their instructors.

What Do Academic Audiences Expect?

Here are six common characteristics of academic writing.

In fact, expert audiences expect these “rhetorical strategies” to occur.

Writers respond to what others have said about their topic, as if they are joining a conversation on a specific issue.

Writers state the value of their work and announce the plan for their papers (and they regularly use metadiscourse to accomplish this).

Writers acknowledge that others might disagree with the position they’ve taken (and they might then respond to these anticipated opposing views).

Writers adopt a voice of authority (like using first-person pronouns and referring to previous research or outside sources).

Writers use academic and discipline-specific vocabulary (especially jargon).

Writers emphasize evidence, often in tables, graphs, and images.

(from Teresa Thonney’s “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse” (2011)

Strategy 1: The Rhetor Uses Jargon

Jargon—specific words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for non-experts to understand.

Here is an actual sentence published in an article titled “Biomimetic Acellular Detoxified Glutaraldehyde Cross-Linked Bovine Pericardium for Tissue Engineering” (2013):

Glutaraldehyde (GLUT) processing, cellular antigens, calcium ions in circulation, and phospholipids present in the native tissue are predominantly responsible for calcification, degeneration, and lack of natural microenvironment for host progenitor cell migration in tissue implants.

(source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0928493112006315)

What’s So Great about Jargon?

From the perspective of other experts or members of a group who are expected to possess specialized knowledge, jargon allows for precision and brevity during communication acts.

Take the word “calcification” from the sentence on the preceding slide.

Knowing that other members of their audience understand what calcification means, the rhetor does not need to provide a definition for this process, which is commonly understood as the hardening of muscle tissue or other material into calcium carbonate or another insoluble calcium compound.

So, jargon allows experts to communicate complex or sophisticated ideas oftentimes in just a few words.

Ok, What’s So Great about Jargon for Members of a Rhetoric and Writing Course?

Jargon is a fairly easy rhetorical strategy to identify.

Here’s an example from “Taco the Puppy Is Super Sick”:

Scholars have long been studying image repair, but it was Benoit who integrated the previous approaches to the study of apologia and offered an expanded typology more comprehensive than earlier ones. He provided fourteen strategies, consisting of simple denial, shifting the blame, provocation, defeasibility, accident, good intentions, bolstering, minimization, differentiation, transcendence, attacking the accuser, compensation, corrective action, and mortification (see Table 1).

The notion of “image repair” is one that seems relatively straightforward considering the predominance of media in our everyday lives.

But toward the end of this passage, there’s so much jargon.

Jargon in “Taco the Puppy Is Super Sick”

Apologia

Typology

Provocation

Defeasibility

Minimization

Differentiation

Transcendence

Compensation

Corrective action

Mortification

Jargon in Other Groups

I want to stress that jargon is not used exclusively by academics.

For instance, if you visit the RPG subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/), you will see jargon used extensively:

D&D (dungeons and dragons)

RNG (random number generator)

HnS (hack and slash gaming)

Homebrew (guidelines that vary from official rules/regulations)

New game + (when you beat an RPG video game, you get the option to play as a badass version of the protagonist instead of starting over)

So, if you’re not a fan of console/PC role-playing games, you might have difficulty understand posts on that subreddit.

The Takeaway: Expect to See Jargon Used as a Rhetorical Strategy

If you choose to write about Jargon as a rhetorical strategy (particularly in the text for the expert audience), aim to accomplish the following.

Identify multiple examples of this profession-specific language being used by the rhetor

Definitely strive to provide direct quotations rather than paraphrased examples so that your viewers can see/read how the language is used and why it might be difficult for non-experts to comprehend it.

Strategy 2: Metadiscourse

In sentence 4 of “Taco the Puppy Is Super Sick,” the rhetor announces the focus/topic of the article and why that topic would be of interest to others:

Our focus is not on whether the excuse is true, but rather to understand the manner in which students construct messages so that they function to account for their undesirable classroom behaviors.

The words in bold font represent what is called metadiscourse, and in this instance, these bolded words allow the rhetor to very directly identify the issue they will address in their essay.

Metawhat?

Metadiscourse is language that rhetors use when they want to comment on something they have written or said.

Writers use metadiscourse because they possess a keen understanding of their audience and the difficulties some audiences have in understanding ideas.

And, writers want to connect with their audiences by letting their readers know that sometimes audiences need some help or guidance when they are reading.

Metadiscourse allows writers to

Clarify in order to prevent an audience from misunderstanding a key point

Elaborate on a previous idea

Offer a roadmap to an audience

Announce potential disagreement with one’s own view and respond to it

Guide readers to a specific idea or overarching claim

When I said _____, what I meant to convey was _____.

Writer X claims ______; in other words, the rhetor believes that ______.

In the first part of my essay, I will examine ______. Then, I will explore Writer X’s use of ______.

While some participants in this conversation may disagree with my perspective because of _____, I would respond to their opposition by asserting that _____.

What my examination of Writer X’s argument has shown is that the rhetor ultimately _____.

Additional Metadiscourse in “Taco the Puppy”

“This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of student excuses and how they attempt to maintain face in interpersonal professor-student exchanges regarding student failures or mistakes….This study will instead focus on image repair in the more private context of interpersonal relations between professors and students. Specifically, we analyze the rhetorical strategies present in 324 emails from students to professors, in order to explore the face-work, image repair, and apologia strategies associated with student excuses.

“We begin our exploration of this topic with a brief review of the most relevant literature on this area, explain our qualitative approach to analyzing student excuses, offer a summary of the key strategies used by students in their face-saving strategies, and draw some conclusions about what we can derive from these findings” (Stein and Ostrowsky 3).

The Takeaway: Expect a Rhetor Who Writes for an Expert Audience to Use Metadiscourse

If you choose to include metadiscourse in your analysis,

Identify multiple examples of this profession-specific language being used by the rhetor

In addition,

Try to identify which of the 5 common functions of metadiscourse is being exhibited in the examples you locate; refer back to Slide 11!

Metadiscourse allows writers to

Clarify in order to prevent an audience from misunderstanding a key point

Elaborate on a previous idea

Offer a roadmap to an audience

Announce potential disagreement with one’s own view and respond to it

Guide readers to a specific idea or overarching claim

When I said _____, what I meant to convey was _____.

Writer X claims ______; in other words, the rhetor believes that ______.

In the first part of my essay, I will examine ______. Then, I will explore Writer X’s use of ______.

While some participants in this conversation may disagree with my perspective because of _____, I would respond to their opposition by asserting that _____.

What my examination of Writer X’s argument has shown is that the rhetor ultimately _____.

Strategy 3: The Rhetor Responds to Others Participating in the Conversation

People in the Rhetoric major study how others use language to impact and inform or persuade their target audiences, and often, these people we study are regularly part of the academic writing community.

Because of this, we kind of know what academic audiences expect when they read or listen to the ideas of other academics.

Even though you may have been writing for academic audiences for only a few semesters (probably since 11th grade and on), you also have some understanding of what academic audiences expect.

To this point in the presentation, we know that expert audiences expect specific language to be used (both jargon and metadiscourse)

Strategy 3: The Rhetor Responds to Others Participating in the Conversation

Here are two common characteristics of academic writing that are viewed as two different ways of responding to others:

Writers respond to what others have said about their topic, as if they are joining a conversation on a specific issue.

Writers acknowledge that others might disagree with the position they’ve taken (and then respond to these anticipated opposing views).

(from Teresa Thonney’s “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse” (2011))

Stein and Ostrowsky Respond to Others Regularly, Example 1

Writers respond to what others have said about their topic, as if they are joining a conversation on a specific issue.

Let’s use “Taco the Puppy Is Super Sick” to highlight how the rhetor responds to others:

On page 2, the rhetor reviews what three other writers/academics have theorized or studied about the importance of “face-work”

Stein and Ostrowsky Respond to Others Regularly, Example 2

Toward the top of page 3, they review existing research on student excuses for course-related misconduct and share anecdotes from writers who have explored this phenomenon (“dead grandmother syndrome”)

Stein and Ostrowsky Respond to Others Regularly, Example 3

Report findings from William L. Benoit’s study about apologizing strategies on page 4.

Stein and Ostrowsky Respond to Others Regularly, Example 4

But on page 5, Stein and Ostrowsky assert that these aforementioned experts—participants in the conversation—have not explored the types of excuses college students use and how they phrase their excuses.

The Takeaway: Expect the Rhetor to Respond to Others

If you choose to include “responding to others” as a rhetorical strategy in your slide analysis,

Specify which kind of response it is:

Are the rhetors identifying what other experts have studied or written previously?

Do the rhetors state opposing views and then respond directly to them?

Offer multiple examples of these responses to others being used by the rhetor

Consider offering paraphrased examples instead of direct quotations because the rhetor may respond to others over several sentences.