Kristi Moser
(kmoser at emich)

Just call me "Flipper": A Dolphin in the Rhetorical Sea
Before I took this course, I was a young and naive 21-year-old who didn't know the first thing about rhetoric. I had heard the word used several times, and like the idiot that I am, never asked or even cared what the word meant. Then along came Dr. Benninghoff. He single-handedly took this word, a concept that I had never before thought about, and drilled it into my brain so that all I could concentrate on every time I was in another class, every time I had a conversation with another person, was how rhetoric was being used at that instant. That is what this course is about. It is a learning experience, designed to get students to think about rhetoric and the implications and applications that it has on every situation in life. The course is aimed at making us examine rhetoric and its uses as something that we took for granted before, and come to a new realization that rhetoric is all around us. It is a rhetorical sea out there and us students are just the dolphins swimming in it.

This rhetoric that I have come to know and love is all part of a bigger picture: technical writing. To me, technical writing is the writing that serves a purpose, the writing that fits a situation and, with the proper use of rhetoric, is effective in that context. Technical writing is the writing that gets jobs done by speaking to specific individuals. Technical writing can be a memo that serves and an introduction to the class, it can be an email to a professor about a homework assignment, it can be a resume for a job. Technical writing is the practice of using rhetoric to appeal to a situation.  

The Team Introduction Memo (TIM) and Process Documentation Memo (PDM): Hello My Name is Rhetoric

Contextualizing the TIM & PDM

The Problems of "Joining" a Tech Writing Team
The team introduction memo is the first assignment that we had in English 424. We were first given very vague instructions: write a memo that introduces yourself to the class. When our original drafts were completed we whiddled away at them; we left information that pertained to the class in, and took all the extra "fluff" out. We discussed the types of information that would be in our, and the class', best interest to know. Many discussions and drafts later, each member of the class had a final memo that included not only a brief personal introduction, but clear explanations of our previous writing experiences and what they would mean to the class. A process documentation memo was also assigned. In this document, we were supposed to discuss several changes that we each made to our team introduction memo. The idea behind the pdms was that writing down our changes would allow us to see the direction in which our memo was moving.

Reflecting on the TIM & PDM

Never Make Your Reader Assume.
One of the main things that I learned about the team introduction memo as well as the pdm is that in previous writing, I let my reader assume too much. In one of my original memos, I discuss previous writing experiences that I have had, but I didn't discuss what implications that previous writing has on the class. It made me reflect on old pieces of writing that I had done for other classes. I always included information about past experience but never made connections; I forced my reader to make their own connections that may or may not have been the purpose of my message.

Sub-headings Make A Difference
Never before have I used subheadings with "talking heads" in my writing. This was a new experience for me, and one that, to be quite honest, was hard for me to get used to. I learned, however, that the sub-headings are part of what make technical writing effective. Sub-headings make the writing easy to read through; and the talking head allows the reader to understand purpose without having to make assumptions.

The Creative Rhetoric Scenario: A Conversation With Lor Bor

Contextualizing the Creative Rhetoric Scenario

Issues of Online Tutorial Design
Our second assignment was the creative rhetoric scenario. This was my favorite assignment that we did. Our task was to come up with a dialogue between ourselves and someone we knew, personally. In the dialogue, we were supposed to discuss, with the other person, what rhetoric was. Along with the dialogue discussing rhetoric, we needed to include a setting that contextualized the scene and provided any background information that we felt our readers needed to know.

Reflecting on the Creative Rhetoric Scenario

Tacit knowledge: who knew?
An important concept that I have learned about by doing the creative rhetoric scenario was that of tacit knowledge. The class learned that certain situations or certain relationships contain knowledge or processes that are only understood by those people who are a part of that situation. The tacit knowledge within a situation must be spelled out and explained to the reader in order for he or she to get a clear picture of what a situation or relationship is. This is an example of rhetoric. Rhetoric, as we learned, says that audience awareness is essential when writing. The explanation of tacit knowledge is an example of the proper use of rhetoric because it is giving the reader insight into a situation.

Rhetoric is Audience Awareness/Situational writing.
In Lester Faigley's article that we read in class, I learned that technical writing must examine audience in order for the purpose to shine through. In the process of writing my CRS, I realized that a good example of poor audience awareness would be to yell at my sister about my father's views on life. This is something that I included in my document to try and illustrate my understanding of the concepts of rhetoric and audience awareness.

The Context & Genre Analysis Project: It's Time Now For Eastern Weekly

Contextualizing the Context & Genre Analysis Project

Limiting the Scope
For the Context/Genre analysis we were asked to pick a context in our lives that had a process of writing. This context could be anything from a job that we had, a class we were in, or an organization that we were a part of. Our next job was to explain the context and its writing processes. We then had to pick one specific process in the contextual "chain" of writing. The main goal in this project was aimed at getting us to understand and explain how writing is rhetorical/situational/practical in an environment other than the confines of English 424.


Reflecting on the Context & Genre Analysis Project:

We're all Dolphins...
What I have taken away from this project is a further understanding of how rhetoric has practical applications in a real life situation. We learned from the writings in Carolyn R. Miller that rhetoric is practical. I have come to realize from my analysis, that I have been using forms of rhetoric all the time and that I just haven't realized it. I have been swimming in the rhetorical sea the whole time and never knew to come up for air.