final project guidelines

I.   THE BASICS

--Topic (and photocopy copy of  your chosen text) due: no later than Wednesday, April 5, 2006
--Deadline for submitting rough drafts for review (strongly encouraged but optional):
6:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 23.  (If you submit a draft for review by this date, you may continue to send me
questions throughout the week.)
--Recommended due date for paper: Wednesday, April 26
--Absolute deadline for paper: 5:00 p.m. on Monday, May 1
(Beginning at 5:01 p.m. on May 1, a full letter grade will be deducted for each day that a paper is late.) 
--Approximate length: 8-10 pages (undergraduates); 11-15 pages (graduates)
--Format : see guidelines below.  (If these guidelines have been reformatted by your computer, please collect a hard copy from the box outside my office.)

For the final paper, you will compose a concise, thoughtful, and well-organized rhetorical analysis of a short text (e.g., essay, story, speech, poem, chapter of a novel) of your own choosing (pending my approval).  Be sure to include a photocopy of the text itself along with your analysis.  Papers should be word-processed and follow MLA guidelines.

II.  Selecting a Text
Consider works (or parts of works) by writers whom you particularly like--writers who have moved you, intellectually stimulated you, stylistically delighted you, even inspired you to imitate them.  The work itself may be fiction or fact, prose or poetry, contemporary or ancient, literary or not-at-all literary.  The text may be one you have already studied (or are currently studying) in another class--though you may not select a work that we have analyzed (or will be analyzing) in our own class.

Students in previous classes have selected works as diverse as the first chapter of Catch 22 and the final few pages of Joyce's "The Dead," a long poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and a single section of Eliot's "Little Gidding," the final part of M. L. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and the ghost scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet, the first chapter of Covino's if on a winter's night a traveler and the opening pages of Conrad's Lord Jim--as well as short excerpts from stories or novels by Faulkner, Hemingway, Morrison, Wolfe, Chandler, Carver, Tyler, and Twain and essays by White, Didion, Thomas, Emerson, Walker, Orwell, and Woolf.   On the not-so-literary side of things, students have conducted rhetorical analyses of speeches by Barbara Bush, Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell, and Presidents Lincoln, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton.  Recently, fine papers have been submitted on St. Paul's "Epistle to the Romans," Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go, Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," the first chapter of  Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Letter II of Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth, excerpts from Twain's The Diaries of Adam and Eve, a speech by pornographer Larry Flynt from the movie The People vs Larry Flynt, Langston Hughes's poem "A Negro Mother" (with a comparison to Jacob Lawrence's painting "Dreams, No. 2"), and the "dueling poets" scene from the film Dangerous Beauty.  In other words, you can choose almost anything (as long as it's fairly short--a text that runs longer than seven or eight pages tends to induce vacuous summary or a gargantuan final paper), though you will certainly find it easier to work with some works (and with some writers) than with others.   By April 5 (at the very latest), be prepared to show me the work you've selected

If you find yourself stuck for a topic, let me know before April 5, and I'll suggest a suitable short work based (I hope) on your interests.   In the meantime, tour our web site (in particular, speeches and passages) for topic ideas.

III. Quick Tips for Conducting a Rhetorical Analysis
A few things to keep in mind:

• As with any assignment that calls for a close reading, get ready to reread your chosen text several times before you begin even to take notes.  The watchwords are simply look and listen (try reading the text aloud).
• Often a good starting point is to consider the nature of the textual voice (or narrator or persona) in the text--and how that ethos is projected.
• Don't attempt to write an essay before you've taken lots and lots of notes.  Squeeze the text: that is, identify all the structures and strategies and stylistic devices that you can find--and then begin to answer the question, "So what?" So what particular effect is created by this or that device?  So what does this effect have to do with the intended meaning?  So in what ways do these structures, strategies, and stylistic devices work together to create certain effects, sensations, or ideas?  Don't be concerned if you can't answer "so what?" about every single structure, strategy, and stylistic device that you find: those you will simply leave out of your final analysis.  (Pointing out every instance of alliteration, for instance, is generally about as useful as singling out sand gnats in Savannah in May.)  Of course, if you can't answer "so what?" about most of the structures, strategies, and stylistic devices, you should consider another text--fast.
• Keep in mind that you are composing this rhetorical analysis for someone who has already read the text.  In other words, there's no need to summarize anything.  Trust that your reader is fairly familiar with what the text is all about. Your primary job is to indicate how the text works to induce particular effects and create particular meanings.
• As you move from note-taking to composing a rough draft, study the sample analyses that, following Spring Break, I will be handing out each week in class.  These sample analyses will include a number of excellent compositions by students in past classes.  Your chosen text and your approach to it will, in part, determine the best way to organize your observations in an essay--but the sample papers should serve as helpful guides.
• Start early and finish early. Try to choose your text well before the April 5th deadline, and let me know (in writing) what you have selected.  Compose a rough draft well before April 23, and let me have a look at it so that I have time to respond to your draft and offer suggestions.  And try to complete the final version of  your paper by April 26.  Don't drive yourself crazy by trying to write a concise, thoughtful, and well-organized rhetorical analysis at the same time you're supposed to be studying for final examinations.  (Oh, well, at least I warned you.)
  

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  IV.  Revising and Editing the Final Paper
  A few more things to keep in mind as you move from "squeezing" your text and drafting your paper to composing a clear, concise final version of the report:
  
  Below you will find (1) an example of the required format; (2) guidelines for word processing the final version of your rhetorical analysis; (3) additional tips on developing, illustrating, and organizing your observations in a coherent essay; (4) a few final do's and don'ts.   In addition, please consider this copy of the grade sheet that I'll be using when I evaluate your essays.   I'll also be giving you some sample passages (draft versions and revisions) from previous student papers.
  
  
  Your Name

  Rhetoric (Nordquist)
  
  Date Submitted
  
                                                         Title of Your Essay
  
        Your essay begins right here (no separate title page).  Essay should be word processed

  (and clearly and sharply printed) in a standard 12-point font.  Double space all text.  Set one-inch

  margins: top, bottom, left, and right.  Follow current MLA style guidelines (MLA Style Manual

  and Guide to Publishing,1998).  Know how to punctuate quotations (hint: in the United States,
  
  commas and periods go inside quotations), and know how to underline or italicize a word referred
  
  to as a word.
  
        Make sure that your rhetorical analysis maintains a clear focus throughout.  In other words,
  
  don't simply catalog all the devices that you've found.  As you work on revising your draft, cut
  
  out anything obvious, repetitious, or purpose-less.  In your introduction, immediately attend to
  
  the work you are about to analyze: no need to offer general commentary about the nature of
  
  rhetorical analysis or the life of the author or the hard work you put into composing the paper.
  
  As my history professor reminded me, "Life is short": get down to work.  Never quote
  
  a passage without commenting on what you perceive to be the significance of the passage.  
  
  Make sure that your individual observations are clearly connected and that your rhetorical
  
  analysis adds up to something: insights that are conventionally drawn together in a sharp
  
  conclusion.  No essay will be marked down for exceeding the recommended page length as
  
  long as every word in the essay matters. 
  
        This assignment does not call for research beyond a close rhetorical analysis of the text at
  
  hand.  In other words, unless you've chosen to analyze an historical document, it's unlikely that
  
  secondary sources will be necessary.   However, if for some reason you feel that you must rely
  
  on a secondary source, be sure to cite that source following MLA conventions.  Failure to cite
  
  secondary sources of any kind will be considered a violation of the AASU Honor Code.
  
        Don't complain about your choice of text, especially if you failed to carry out the
  
  rudimentary analysis recommended above before you announced your topic.  No one, by the
  
  way, has ever failed this assignment because they picked a "poor" or "inadequate" or
  
  excessively complex text; students have failed, however, because they ignored the assignment
  
  guidelines, failed to take advantage of my offers to review drafts, got a late start, and/or spent
  
  more time worrying than working.
  
        Don’t waste time in needless summary or paraphrase.   Don’t overwork the word use or the
  
  verb to be.  Avoid the vague pronoun this if it is not followed by a clear, specific noun after it (e.g., NOT
  
  "This shows . . . " BUT INSTEAD "This figure . . . " or "This passage . . . ").  Keep in mind that
  
  you are writing your essay for a peer who (1) knows the meanings of all of our rhetorical terms
  
  (definitions not needed), and (2) who has read the text you are analyzing (no summaries needed).  
  
  Keep quotations brief (i.e., less than a line, whenever possible).  To avoid lengthy quotations,
  
  (1) use ellipses ("The beginning . . . to the end"); (2) refer to line and/or stanza and/or paragraph
  
  numbers (which you will have marked clearly on the text attached to your essay).
  
        Don’t wrap your essay in plastic. Number the pages of your essay.  Clip or staple the pages
  
  together, attach a copy of the text you are analyzing, and slide the materials into a 9" x 12"
  
  envelope.  Absolutely no later than 5:00 p.m. on Monday, May 1, drop the envelope or folder into the
  
  appropriate box outside my office (Solms Hall 207).    You’re done.
  
  _________________________________________________
  
  V.  More Tips on Revising and Editing the Final Paper
  NOTE: I originally composed the following tips a few years ago after reading several rough drafts for this assignment.  The advice remains sound.
  
  A few quick late-night thoughts after reading (rather than drinking) several drafts:
  (1)   Deadwood and repetition tend to distract from an analysis: as you revise be prepared to reduce clauses to phrases and phrases to words--and then cut needless words.
  (2)   Don't forget the value of topic sentences (in this assignment, sentences that clearly identify the key rhetorical strategies you're considering in each of your paragraphs); opening sentences that either summarize the text or identify a minor device (alliteration!) tend to get get the paragraph off to a vague, dispiriting  start.
  (3) If every paragraph begins with something like, "In Kinky Friedman's next paragraph, he uses . . . " you're probably not connecting points adequately--and you're certainly wasting words.
  (4)  After finishing your draft, take a red pen and underline the word "use" every time it appears: then try recasting your sentences more directly without that tiresome verb.  (Once you've identified Kinky, for instance, as the author of your text, his name hardly needs to appear again.)
  (5)  If you've reached this ripe old age and still haven't learned how Americans (as opposed to Brits) use commas and periods with quotations, please go to THIS PAGE NOW and learn the conventions; otherwise your essay will fail horribly, your dog will die, and your garden will never grow.
  (6)  About turning our rhetorical terms into adjectives, here are a few of the more common ones: alliterative, ambiguous, analogous, anaphoric, anticlimactic, antithetical, assonant, asyndetic, copiousness, encomiastic, enthymemic. epimonic, ethical, euphemistic, euphuistic, figurative, hyberbolic, hypotactic, ironic, isocolonic, metaphorical, metonymic, onomatopoetic, oxymoronic, paradoxical, punning (not   paranomasiatic), paratactic, parenthetical, pathetic, polysyndetic, proverbial, rhetorical, and stylistic.
  
  NOW . . . go check  here for a critique of  a student paragraph written on Alice Walker's
  "Am I Blue?" . . . and try applying some of the suggestions to your own draft.   Cheers.

  _________________________________________________

  
  VI.  TRY IT AGAIN: Some of the Same Tips on Revising and Editing the Final Paper--but Worded Differently This Time
  
  A few more quick late-night thoughts after reading several more drafts.  
  (1)  Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do when revising a paper is to give yourself a night off so that you can later review your drafts (remember to read aloud) with fresh eyes and ears. 
  (2)  An introductory paragraph (one is plenty) should let us know the name and author of the text you're examining, a clue that you're about to embark on a rhetorical analysis of that text, and a suggestion re. the purpose and/or value of conducting such an analysis of that particular text.   Then get down to business.  (No need to provide a history of rhetoric, a moisty-eyed encomium to the author of your text, or a farctated monologue on the remarkable discovery that "typewriter" happens to be one of the very few multi-syllabic words that can be typed using only the the top row of letters on a standard keyboard.)
  (3)  One of the major problems with deadwood (i.e., words with little or no nutritional value--to mix a metaphor) is that it distracts from (at times even obscures) some of the best ideas in an essay.  Almost everything (including this page) could be markedly improved through  judicious (make that ruthless--slash and burn) editing.   A few examples from papers in  front of me (with thanks to the authors):

  (a) Instead of writing, "The author's use of zeugma in line one is . . ." say simply, "The zeugma in line one . . .."  See meditation below on the abuse of  "use."
  
  (b)  If you hear yourself writing about "authorial authority as the author creates himself as a character," you should recognize at least one "author" too many before you plunge down Alice's rabbit hole.  Try instead, "The first six words project an ethos of authority . . .."  (Invented ethos, remember, emerges from words. )
  
  (c)  If you feel a recurrent impulse to refer to "the reader" throughout your essay, resist with all your might.  The pronoun "we" can save acres of deadwood. 
  
  (d)  "That" and "which" clauses can be deadly.  Here's the before-editing version: "The metaphor that is created with the phrase 'I had suffered a sea change' . . ."; here's the after-editing version: "The 'sea change' metaphor . . .."  Sweet and simple, right?
  
  (e)  A few phrases you can go through life without ever using again: instead of "in order to" write "to"; instead of  "the reason . . . is because" write "because"; and instead of "due to the fact that" write "because."
  
  (f)  In a rhetorical analysis, the word "word" is often redundant: e.g., instead of "the metonymy of the word 'eye' . . . ," just say "the metonymy of 'eye' . . ." and instead of "the assonance of the word 'heliotrope' . . ." try "the assonance of 'heliotrope' . . .." Remember: putting a word in quotation marks indicates that you're talking about the word as a word.
  
  (g)  The world just might be a better (or at least more sensible)  place if we agreed not to use "this" without a noun immediately after it. Otherwise, "this" is confusing.