Chapter 5

1. Chapter 5 Seeing Rhetorically: The Writer as Observer

2. About Seeing Rhetorically • One goal of this writing assignment is to raise the issue of angle of vision versus objectivity in writing. • To see something rhetorically is to interpret it, that is, to see it as meaningful.

3. Writing Project: Part A • Find a place on or near campus where you can sit and observe in preparation for writing a focused description of the scene that will enable your readers to see what you see. Here is the catch. You are to write two descriptions of the scene. Your first description must convey a favorable impression of the scene, making it appear pleasing or attractive. The second description must convey a negative, or unfavorable, impression, making the scene appear unpleasant and unattractive.

4. Writing Project: Part B • Attach to your two descriptions an analysis that explains how your two equally factual descriptions create two contrasting impressions of the same subject. What did you do differently to create the contrasting effects in the two descriptions? In the conclusion of your analysis address the question, “So what?” by exploring what you have learned about reading and writing from composing your two descriptions.

5. Angle of Vision • In any writing, writers necessarily--whether consciously or unconsciously--include some details and exclude others. Their choices are driven by their sense of audience and purpose, but most important, by their “situatedness” in the world, which creates a predisposition toward a particular perspective or angle of vision.

6. Conducting a Rhetorical Analysis • Feature 1: Writer’s Overt Statement of Meaning • Feature 2: Selection or Omission of Details • Feature 3: Choice of Words • Feature 4: Use of Figurative Language • Feature 5: Sentence Structure

7. Becoming a Strong Reader • Learning to ask what is not in the text, why the text is constructed this way and not that way, or why the writer took this particular point of view and not another enables you to identify the forces that shape what a writer sees and opens up the possibility for you to challenge and speak back to the text.

8. Perception and Interpretation • People note and remember whatever is consistent with their worldview much more readily than they note and remember whatever is inconsistent with that view. What you believe is what you see.

9. Readings • Mark Twain • “Two Ways of Seeing a River” • Henry Morton Stanley’s Account • Mojimba’s Account