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Section 3: Overview

The Role of Rhetoric in Communication

We will move from exploring what comprises a community and how those definitions evolve to identifying the rhetorical strategies and stylistic decisions authors use to convey their arguments. We will discuss the origin of the word community and will discuss the various roles and responsibilities of communities. We will then read two arguments dealing with community and will conduct a rhetorical analysis. Throughout this unit, we will seek answers to the following questions:

  • How do authors effectively discuss their communities?

  • What role does rhetoric play in effective communication?

  • What forms of evidence are most effective when making a nuanced and complex argument?

  • Lesson 1:

    We will analyze how an author’s perspective influences the purpose and ideas of a text.

  • Lesson 2:

    We will explore the roots of the word community. Then, we will review the texts we’ve read so far and discuss how vocabulary and diction factor into meaning and tone. Additionally, we will review connotation and denotation in order to determine how preconceived notions factor into an individual’s understanding.

  • Lesson 3:

    We will explore one proposed philosophical rationale for why communities are formed and why individuals ultimately choose to participate. We will evaluate the proposed rationale and determine the applicability to our current society and ourselves.

  • Lesson 4:

    We will return to “The End of Solitude” and answer several text-dependent questions in order to deepen our understanding of Deresiewicz’s argument.

  • Lesson 5:

    We will examine the central claims of “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam.

  • Lesson 6:

    We will review rhetorical strategies and determine how those strategies are used in “The End of Solitude” and “Bowling Alone.” We will determine the effectiveness of these techniques and how the authors use them to their advantage.

  • Lesson 7:

    We will reexamine “The End of Solitude” to determine the ways ethos, pathos, and logos are used in Deresiewicz’s argument.

  • Lesson 8:

    We will return to “Bowling Alone” to conduct a close reading of Putnam’s writing style in order to emulate his techniques in our own writing.

  • Lesson 9:

    We will write multiparagraph responses in which we examine the rhetorical strategies and techniques used by the authors in the core texts of this unit: William Deresiewicz and Robert Putnam.

  • Lesson 10:

    We will review feedback on the Section Diagnostic. We will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

  • Lesson 11:

    We will share the understanding we have gained through our independent reading and continue to read our texts.