gas masks and big hats

1. Who is the speaker (speakers)? (These could be authors, editors, directors, etc. But think also about invited speakers. Who makes/represents/endorses this argument?)
2. Who’s the audience? (DON’T SAY EVERYONE.) How can you tell?
3. What’s the context or exigence here? Why make this argument when they did? What’s going on in the world that might have prompted this argument? 
4. What’s the argument in this piece? (Or arguments? There may be multiple strands.)
5. What rhetorical moves do you see being used? (Emotional appeals, logical appeals, ethical appeals, images, music, lighting, language choice, anecdotes, etc.)

 i wasn't immediately sure what i wanted to work with for this project. i considered a book i've been reading for my dissertation 5 Days That Shook the World, because i'm enjoying and disliking it. this book is about the 1999 WTO riots. it's been really entertaining (and how often can you say that of research?) and it's very compelling emotionally and politically (if you have my politics). *but* i'm also annoyed with it. it relies on first-hand accounts from people who were at the WTO riots but have plenty of reason to lie, or bend the truth. so that's not all that compelling to me, as someone who works in a field where citations are...not king, but a powerful duke at least. as well, although the authors reference others (like articles in The Economist or Michel Foucault) there's no citations, no works cited page, zip.

so. that brought me here, to E. J. Dionne's article on why the next pope should be a nun. i should say at the start that in some ways, i have no dog in this race. i have some friends who are nuns, but i'm not catholic, and i don't meddle much in their affairs. but Dionne is a writer i respect, and i read his column because i find him well-informed and willing to compromise.

1. So, to start, the speaker is Dionne. That he's being published in the Washington Post matters -this isn't some personal blog no one reads. It also matters who Dionne is. He shows up (I'm told) on NPR, he's well-known as a journalist,  scholar, a catholic, and an advocate for social justice.  so he's carrying all those things around with him. for some audiences, this will give him immediately credibility. for others, eh, not so much.

2. the audience is probably politically aware, because they're reading pieces on WP's post-partisan. the audience is probably liberal (although not necessarily. post-partisan features a range of political views, and i imagine a lot of readers (as I do) read both sides.) if they clicked on his link instead of another, the audience is probably at least mildly curious about this whole pope thing, and maybe heavily invested emotionally. so, adults, politically aware, probably very opinionated, here to agree or argue. potentially amused or intrigued by the idea of a female pope, potentially really pissed off about it.

3. Dionne himself does a good job with the context. something happened which hasn't happened in 600 years. this is a weird place to be in. it seems to open up opportunity. as well, it's not like the church hasn't had a rough couple years. there are abuse scandals. the pope's background was a bit of a scandal. he's very very conservative and there are those inside and outside the church who didn't like that (and some who really did). there was conflict last summer between the nuns and higher church officials. as well, although this is further away, recently the girl scouts have welcomed transgendered and gay children, the boy scouts seem to be grudgingly considering it on a case by case basis. it's getting harder and harder to deny any member of any group equal opportunity, and plenty of people think women should be able to be priests.

4. what's the argument? this is where i get hung up -and frankly, this is why i chose the piece. i'm not sure. on the surface, his argument seems to be that there's 1) no reason a woman couldn't be elected to pope-dom and 2) advantages to electing one. but i'm not sure it's that simple. he openly admits he doesn't think this will happen. so maybe the real argument is there at the end. maybe the whole scenario is a way of saying, look, if we can consider this and see it as possible, and this is so far-fetched, couldn't we see our way toward electing someone who will be grounded, compassionate, and good PR for the church? if it's the first, i think he's wildly idealistic, although i admire it. if it's the second, he's sneaky as hell, and i admire it. but he's also risking a lot with that second one, because the scenario he uses (if you read the comments) clearly annoys some people.

5. ugh. where to start? his ethos - his reputation. the fact that he's familiar with canon law (logic appeal, showing us it's technically possible). he compliments the pope for being brave, and flattery never hurt anyone. he calls on the cardinals or whoever decides this stuff to be equally brave - a sort of challenge. logical appeals about how this move could help bring back women who have chosen their feminism over their faith. logical appeal in reminding them/us that nuns have spotless reputations in a lot of ways and would dispel the scandal a bit. emotional appeals in reminding his audience that nuns work with the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, children, the sick, pregnant teens, etc. (i didn't miss his claim that a woman might be a better choice to talk to other women about birth control and abortion -which is what? reminding us that a female pope would have uterus street cred? yes, i just said that.) there's more, but this would be a start. 

roughest of rough drafts. this draft is like sandpaper made of diamonds or something.

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography, "I know it when I see it." This sentiment, while short on clarity, is a familiar sensation to most of us, and one which I suspect applies as easily to the definition of genre as it does to the definition of obscenity. When others speak of "the genre of horror" or "the genre of the business letter," we are inclined to nod - having been shown a genre, yes, we see it. When it comes to thinking about genre in circumstances that call for something more specific, however, it's easy to fall back on giving examples, rather than definitions. 

In Scenes of Writing, genres are called "the typical rhetorical ways of responding to a repeated situation." This definition suggests that genres are involved primarily where language - rhetoric - is involved. This then, seems to put us on firmer ground. Does it fit in a category with a name? Does it involve language? Okay, then, it's a genre. But this neat solution only applies if we fall back on a definition of rhetoric which defines language strictly as words, excluding images, sound, and movement. It is the latter I am most interested in here. In particular, I am interested in examining dance steps in the realm of what is called "juke style" blues dancing as a genre. Later in the text, Scenes of Writing calls genres “social scripts," and it has been my experience that social scripts are very much a part of the culture around social dances like swing, tango, salsa, or blues. In my analysis, I will be examining three blues moves: the grind, the low-down, and the mess around. 


So...that's ugly. For something I want to be sort of casual (this is blues dancing after all) it feels stiff in a lot of places, and not much looser in others. I'm spelling out my argument, which is nice and all, but it's not helping me achieve the tone I want. On the other hand, it seemed important to me to start this off with a justification, which I still feel. I don't need anyone being distracted from the word go because they're thinking 'waitaminute...I thought a genre was something else. what on earth is happening here?' So I want to keep that (or some version of that), but maybe revise this for voice later.

I can't clearly feel my audience here. It feels like...well, I don't know what it feels like. Not my peers, obviously, because scholars in rhet/comp are probably at least vaguely aware of genre theory. They'd feel like I was talking down to them. But if this is for a more general audience - what do they care? I can try to think of my audience as within our classroom, but I'd really like to get outside that. It's possible my best bet is to think of my purpose as making an argument that rhetoric (and thus genre) are bigger than people think.

Alternately, I could scrap this beginning entirely, and think of myself as using blues moves to explain blues dancers. In which case I don't need to lean so much on the genre thing at the beginning. I would just focus on the connection between how we dance and what we value as dancers.

Whatever. I'll take this for now. I've got thoughts for later.

ugh...

this is late because the never-ending snow has more or less hosed my internet connection.

1. after doing some hard thinking, i've decided to go with dancing. i thought about using three blues songs, but the truth is i don't know enough about music to pull it off. so. in particular, i think my genre will be blues dancing - blues dance moves or steps. to get even more narrow on this, i think i'm going to focus in on juke style blues, as opposed to the more ballroom style.

2. my sample pieces will be 3 relatively basic moves for juke blues: the low-down, the mess around, and the grind. (those are...illustrative names.)

3. these moves are used by social dancers, in particular blues dancers. there's some crossover between styles of dance, so i know that some other dancers will insert blues moves into their repertoire, but these moves aren't as fundamental to those dancers as they might be to blues dancers.

4. pretty important. especially because all of these moves can be done alone, or with a partner, and blues is a more freedom-oriented dance than some.

5. well, all three moves, as their names suggest, can look pretty suggestive on the dance floor. which indicates to me that this is something crucial to the genre. all of them are moves the lead can suggest to the follow, but he can't *make* the follow do them, and either partner could do them solo. the low-down and the grind both rely on the hips to make things work. two of the moves rely on firm weight changes. i could probably think of more later, but that's what i've got right now.

6. probably both, actually.