Analyze rhetorical features of an argument to generate fresh, insightful inferences about a text’s construction and effects.
Articulate constructive comments which facilitate the writing process of others.
Integrate source material properly by employing either MLA or APA conventions.
For this discussion board, I invite you to read “Agonism in the Academy: Surviving Higher Education’s Argument Culture” Links to an external site.from Deborah Tannen, a sociolinguist who examines the intellectual habits of college students. As you read this article, consider the extent to which Tannen’s description of argument culture matches your own experience as a college student. Most prompts like this ask students to state the thesis and agree or disagree. But I want to follow Richard Miller and Ann Jurecic and ask you to explore moments in the article that you find interesting, compelling, or baffling. You might consider moments where Tannen “says something surprising or confusing, makes an unexpected connection, or poses an idea or argument that is difficult to accept” (Habits of the Creative Mind 60).
Respond
In a substantive response to Tannen be sure to
1. Identify in your first sentence (or two) the problem that Tannen is addressing by writing this article. (why this? why now? what is the condition that summons forth this particular response from Tannen?)
2. What do you find compelling, useful or helpful about Tannen’s presentation? Cite a specific passage from the article, integrating quotations into your own original sentences. No dropped quotes!
3. What do you find difficult to accept about Tannen’s presentation? Cite a specific passage from the article, integrating quotations into your own original sentences. No dropped quotes!
Here is one final thought from one of my favorite writing textbooks:
We live in a culture prone to naming winners and losers, rights and wrongs….But academics seldom write in an all-or-nothing mode, trying to convince readers to take one side or the other of an argument. Instead their work assumes that any perspective on an issue (and there are often more than two) will have moments of both and insight and blindness. A frame offers a view but also brackets something out. A point of view highlights certain aspects and obscures others. And so, in dealing with other writers, your aim should be less to prove them right or wrong, correct or mistaken, than to assess both the uses and limits of their work. That is to say, academic writing rarely involves a simple taking of sides, an attack on or defense of set positions, but rather centers on a weighing of options, a sorting through of possibilities… What does this text do or see well? What does it stumble over or occlude? What has a writer done well and left undone? Look for gaps or difficulties in perspectives you admire and also to try to understand the strengths of those you don’t. So here’s a text that seems to offer a compelling way of looking at an issue—what does it bracket out of sight? Or, here’s a text that seems curiously wrongheaded or obtuse—what might account for its seeming strangeness?
