Wednesday's summary

Today in class we discussed:

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/celestinechua/10706603194/

1) the week's plan and deadlines
2) time management and the "tyranny of the urgent"
3) examples of rhetorical analysis thesis statements

• Student's Guide p. 192,  215
• in-class analysis of the introductory paragraph from http://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/9001639/bernie-sanders-black-lives-matter
• in-class work on the thesis statement

If you bought Writing Public Lives, pages 200-201 contain a useful summary of what we are trying to do: 

The Main Features of a Controversy Analysis are: 

• Its thesis could be stated in the form of a focusing question (see the headline of the black-lives-matter QRG linked above). [To make sure your thesis is analytical, try posing it as why question. Why is this controversy happening? Why does it matter?]
• It presents at least two--and frequently more--different arguments in answer to the question. 
• It has researched the arguments it presents so as to present them thoroughly and fairly, using the words of those who have made the arguments
• It examines how the arguments speak to each other
• It analyzes the arguments to show how they are constructed and what their strengths and weaknesses are 

What a Controversy Analysis is NOT:

• A controversy analysis is not taking sides in an argument: You are not advocating or refuting a particular view point on the issue. You are laying out for your audience the various arguments addressing a particular question about the issue. 
• A controversy analysis is not just a summary of the arguments: You are not just reporting who is saying what, but also how and why, and how effective those arguments are for their audience. 
• A controversy analysis is not a report: You want to help your readers understand the controversy as a whole, in it's context...The introduction should give some background, and at the conclusion you should project what seems to be the future, as you see it, of the controversy.