What are we really arguing about when we’re arguing about climate change? And what can we learn by closely examining the ways in which popular video essayists frame the issue? These are the questions that will be guiding our rhetorical analysis of the climate change debate online. This essay is an opportunity to better attend to the ins and outs of the climate change debate, but it is also an chance to learn what makes persuasive argument so compelling.
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For the final unit essay of the semester, I would like you write a thesis-driven rhetorical analysis of the climate change debate via YouTube video essays. What, in other words, can we learn about the climate change debate by carefully studying professional video essayists? How do people conceptualize the climate change debate and add their own take? And what arguments tend to be more persuasive than others? What does this tell us about climate change discourse going forward? Keep in mind that your job is not to sort out winners and losers in this debate; your job is to better understand and define the dimensions of the public discourse about climate change. As ever, you do not have to agree with any of these essayists, but you should seek to understand what their arguments say about the broader public discourse about climate change. You may use any of the video essays from class as evidence, but you must also include 2 to 4 additional video essays of your own.
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Your role in this paper is to take a broad view on the climate change debate by defining and categorizing the arguments used by some of the most popular video essayists. You are offering a rhetorical analysis of the debate, drawing a conclusion about the state of the debate from the available evidence.
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The audience for your rhetorical analysis, as always, is a general one. You should assume that they are basically familiar with the science of climate change, though they are perhaps not totally familiar with the personalities of our sample vide essayists. You should aim your essay, then, at an average but intelligent reader who perhaps does not closely follow the daily updates of the terminally online. Therefore, it will be important to create a clear interpretive context for your analysis.
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As the culminating exercise of the semester, this essay should draw on all the skills and techniques introduced and practiced in this class. Your essay can be organized inductively or deductively, but in either case, it should be a thesis-driven rhetorical analysis that answers the core question of the prompt. I expect the essay to clock in somewhere between 1200 and 1700 words long. And as ever, I expect you to use proper MLA citation guidelines for all quotations. Finally, please make sure you include a Works Cited page at the end.
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In evaluating the essay, I will primarily focus on how well you construct your argument and defend it with claims and evidence. The development of your argument should exhibit hallmarks of either deductive or inductive reasoning (or use a blended approach). A thoughtful rhetorical analysis will not simply catalog and summarize various essayists’ arguments. Instead, it should synthesize this analysis into a comparison that draws conclusions about the ways in which people argue about climate change.
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