Week 1: The Rhetorical Situation and Critical Reading
Week of Mon, Aug 17 · week closes Fri, Aug 21
This week's items
Exact due times are in Canvas. Late out-of-class assignments accepted up to one week past the original due date. In-class process work and Discussion Board assignments cannot be made up.
Know these cold
- The rhetorical situation describes the conditions in which communication happens: the writer (rhetor), the audience, the purpose, the genre, and the context (time, place, culture).
- Exigence is the problem, event, or need that prompts a piece of writing. A strong essay responds directly to an exigence — it explains why the writing is necessary right now.
- Audience shapes every choice a writer makes: vocabulary, tone, amount of background information, and the kinds of evidence that will be convincing.
- Purpose drives structure. Informative writing organizes around what the reader needs to know. Persuasive writing organizes around what will move the reader to agree.
- Genre is a category of writing with expected conventions — an academic essay looks different from a tweet or a lab report because each genre serves a different audience and purpose.
- Ethos, logos, and pathos are the three Aristotelian appeals. Ethos builds credibility, logos provides logical evidence, and pathos appeals to the reader's emotions and values.
- Critical reading means reading with questions: What is the main claim? What evidence supports it? Who wrote this, and why? What is left out? These are the same questions you will ask about your own writing.
- When you analyze a course assignment rhetorically, identify the genre, the expected audience (Prof. Upchurch and the academic community), the required purpose, and the conventions you must follow.
Discussion and forum — how to show up
Discussion post
- Describe a time you adjusted your communication style for a specific audience — what changed and why?
- Look at the EGL 1010 syllabus as a rhetorical document: who is the audience, what is the purpose, and what genre conventions do you see?
Netiquette from the syllabus: address ideas, not people. Complete sentences, correct spelling. Personal matters go to email, never the board.
Meerk's quiz — open the Week 1 gate
10 questions, no time limit. 85% on your first attempt in a 24-hour window opens the gate. Retakes inside the window are practice — they help you learn, they don't count. Work alone; the point is to know it, not to have seen it.
Dinner Table Question
Ask at home: Think of the last time someone completely misunderstood you — what was it about the context or audience that caused the breakdown?
En español: Piensa en la última vez que alguien te malinterpretó completamente. ¿Qué elemento de la situación retórica causó el problema?