The Rhetoric of Maps

The Basics on Maps

Great reading on Maps & Rhetoric: "Writing with Maps."

Maps are metaphors. Maps are not the actual land features, rather they are representations of these features. As representations, they are always created from a position of culture, bias, and values. In short, maps (and all types of logos) are rhetorical.

Even maps that strive for accuracy of say Africa, can never be Africa itself. One could never take in the whole of Africa in a single moment; a view from land is only of a specific place from a specific direction; a view from the air obscures the people, formations, plants, and animals below. As Samuel Ichiye Hawayaka says succinctly in Language in Thought and Action, “The first of the principles governing symbols is this: The symbol is not the thing symbolized; the word is not the thing; the map is not the territory it stands for” (19). While people can strive for objectivity and accurate descriptions of reality and experience, these descriptions can never be complete, universal, or divorced from the sign systems within which they work.

Group Work

To learn how to recognize the underlying message and values of maps, analyze the following New Orleans maps. What do you notice about each? What is prominent? What is hidden or deemphasized? Who do you think the target audience for the map is? What purpose do you think the map is used for?

In-Class Writing

At the end of class, students write on the following topic for about 10 minutes: Which map of New Orleans do you think is the "best"? You can define "best" in any way you choose: clearest, most useful for a certain activity, most encompassing, most representative, etc. You may also choose to compare the "best" map to the "worst" map in your mind. What makes one stronger than the other?

More Unique Maps

A Sample of Geopolitical Anomalies: This map draws attention to the way that maps encourage students to think of space (often wrongly) as isolated nations.
40 Maps that Will Help You Make Sense of the World: Includes unique cultural maps such as McDonalds Across the World and Paid Maternity Leave Across the World
Geography of Hate: Geotagged Hateful Tweets in the United States: The map tracks the use of certain slur terms for homosexuals, racial minorities, and individuals with disabilities.

Metaphors for the Mind

Directions: First, name the metaphor in the following quotes: the mind equals what? Next, analyze and critique the metaphors. What does the metaphor usefully tell us about the mind? What does it problematically imply about the mind?

At the end, consider all the metaphors as a type of set, a conceptual metaphor as George Lakoff calls them. More generally, what two things are compared in all of these examples. What is the A = B for the overall set? Now, think about these metaphors in their historical context, what do you notice about each individual metaphor and the context in which it was created? In other words, why these particular metaphors at these particular times? Can you make a larger statement or argument about how people create metaphors of the mind?

1. Galen, physician and scientist during Roman Empire, 200 A.D. (quote from  Rebecca Schwarzlose "Modernity, Madness, and the History of Neuroscience")

“pneuma fills the brain cavities called ventricles and circulates through pathways in the brain and nerves in the body just as water flows through a tube”

2. Julien Ofray de La Mettrie, L’Homme Machine, 1747

On the human brain and body: “a machine that winds its own springs—the living image of perpetual motion . . . man is an assemblage of springs that are activated reciprocally by one another”

3. Metaphor popular during the Industrial Revolution, usually dated as approximately 1760-1820; quote from Nicholas Carr The Shallows

There was a “metaphor that represented the brain as a mechanical contraption. Like a steam engine or an electric dynamo, the nervous system was made up of many parts, and each had a specific and set purpose that contributed in some essential way to the successful operation of the whole.”

4. Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and John C. Shaw “Empirical Explorations of the Logic Theory Machine” (352), 1964

They describe a “functional equivalence between brains and computers . . . Our theory is a theory of the information processes involved in problem-solving and not a theory of neural or electronic mechanisms.”

5. Christiane Paul, “Neural Networks vs. Computer-Networked Environments” 2002

The neural network of the brain exhibits the same fundamental structure as that of social or computer networks. The brain can be understood as an assembly of distinct modules, each of them responsible for different tasks, such as speech, language, vision. In neuroscience labs, magnetic resonance imaging techniques — which use radio waves to probe the pattern of blood flow in the brain, revealing how much oxygen its various parts are using at any moment — are used to see these modules in action. This process reflects the level of neural activity.

Metaphors for the Student

Metaphors influence public policy. In Texas over the last 5 years, for example, politicians have used metaphors describing the student as a customer to change evaluation procedures for faculty, changes which received national attention. Student evaluations became more important, and for a while the university awarded money to professors with high ratings (Student Recognition Awards for Teaching Excellence). Now job postings for the A&M system include "The Texas A&M University system requires excellent customer service skills of all applicants."

Class Work

1. What metaphors for viewing students does each author embrace?

2. What metaphors does each author reject?

3. Analyze the implications of these metaphors—think deeply. What are the connotations and associations with each metaphor for the student?

4. What are the benefits of each metaphor? What are the problems? Do you think any of these metaphors are false analogies? Why or why not? Which metaphors seems most appropriate?

1. Truma, Mary “Small MBA program in Austin Pioneers‘ Students as Customers'” Approach to Higher Ed” Oct 2011 American Independent.

Founded seven years ago, an intensive MBA program in Austin pioneered the customer satisfaction philosophy that is driving facets of education reform at other Texas public universities today. The Acton School of Business, a nonprofit institution taught by non-academics in the entrepreneurial field, was born from the collective idea of four former University of Texas at Austin professors. Since its inception, the one-year program has rewarded its instructors with financial bonuses based on weekly student evaluation reviews. The questionnaires ask students to rate their professor and course experience on a five-point scale. High professor ratings can lead to a $30,000 bonus, while low ratings nudge professors out at semester’s end. A forced curve system is said to circumvent bias from students based on grades.

“We are very focused on students as customers,” said co-founder Jeff Sandefer, an oil and gas entrepreneur. Ranked by BusinessWeek as one of the top 10 entrepreneurship professors in the country, Sandefer likened the classroom to a free market. “We break the idea that promotes ‘teacher as parent’ and ‘teacher as approver.’ We let classes set their own level which is always further ahead than ours.”

2. Fish, Stanley “Deep in the Heart of Texas” June 21, 2010 New York Times.

A number of responses to my column about my high school education rehearsed a story of late-flowering gratitude after an earlier period of frustration and resentment. “I had a college experience like yours,” the poster typically said, “and I hated it and complained all the time about the homework, the demands and the discipline; but now I am so pleased that I stayed the course and acquired skills that have served me well throughout my entire life.”        

Now suppose those who wrote in to me had been asked when they were young if they were satisfied with the instruction they were receiving? Were they getting their money’s worth? Would they recommend the renewal of their teachers’ contracts? I suspect the answers would have been “no,” “no” and “no,” and if their answers had been taken seriously and the curriculum they felt oppressed by had been altered accordingly, they would not have had the rich intellectual lives they now happily report, or acquired some of the skills that have stood them in good stead all these years.

The relationship between present action and the judgment of value is different in other contexts. If a waiter asks me, “Was everything to your taste, sir?”, I am in a position to answer him authoritatively (if I choose to). When I pick up my shirt from the dry cleaner, I immediately know whether the offending spot has been removed. But when, as a student, I exit from a class or even from an entire course, it may be years before I know whether I got my money’s worth, and that goes both ways. A course I absolutely loved may turn out be worthless because the instructor substituted wit and showmanship for an explanation of basic concepts. And a course that left me feeling confused and convinced I had learned very little might turn out to have planted seeds that later grew into mighty trees of understanding. “Deferred judgment” or “judgment in the fullness of time” seems to be appropriate to the evaluation of teaching…

Now an entire state is on the brink of implementing [a “customer satisfaction” style of teaching]. Backed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, the plan calls for college and university teachers to contract with their customers — that is, students — and to be rewarded by as much as $10,000 depending on whether they meet the contract’s terms. The idea is to hold “tenured professors more accountable” (“A&M regents push reforms,” The Eagle, June 13, 2010), and what they will be accountable to are not professional standards but the preferences of their students, who, in advance of being instructed, are presumed to be authorities on how best they should be taught. A corollary proposal is to shift funding to the student-customers by giving them vouchers. One respondent to the June 13 story in The Eagle got it exactly right: “In the recent past, A&M announced that it wanted to be a top ten public university. Now it appears to be announcing it wants to be an investment firm, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and a car dealership.”

3. Bermudez,  Jose Luis “Students are not college customers” Sept. 2011 Houston Chronicle

Are students customers? For some, understanding that students are customers is the key to solving ongoing budget problems. For others, even mentioning the words "student" and "customer" in the same sentence is betraying the fundamental principles of higher education. Who is right?

Universities certainly have customers. For us at Texas A&M University, the state of Texas is a customer and we serve it in many ways. We provide a high-quality education to young Texas women and men, enhancing the skills of the work force. Students and faculty work together on research improving the economy and quality of life in Texas. And the university itself is a powerful economic engine for the local community. In some respects our students are obviously part of the customer base. Universities are in the restaurant and hotel business. They are subject to the same constraints and obligations as any other restaurant or hotel. Likewise for athletics facilities and tickets to sporting or artistic events.

But these services are not part of our core mission as a leading research university. Our mission is to create and transmit knowledge. We create knowledge by doing research. And we transmit knowledge by teaching. This is the heart of the issue. Even though we are transmitting knowledge to students, that doesn't make them customers. The real customers are the people on whose behalf we educate our students. This includes the state of Texas; the government agencies, private companies and branches of the armed forces that employ our students; and it includes all those whose lives are enriched by contact with graduates of a great university driven by academic excellence and its own unique spirit.

It is true that students and their families pay for the education that universities provide. But there are things that we pay for without thereby becoming customers. It is better to think of the money students pay for their education as an investment. They are investing both in their own future and in the university to which they have entrusted their education. We can measure the return that students receive on this investment. It takes different forms. One is financial. Texas A&M provides an outstanding "payback ratio" when graduate-earning levels are compared to tuition, fees and living costs. In fact, Texas A&M was recently ranked first in the nation for its payback ratio by Smart Money magazine. There are other, indirect, forms of return on investment. I have met many in Texas and elsewhere who have told me how their lives have been transformed by a single, transformative learning experience — often in an arts or literature course in the College of Liberal Arts.

[The current budgetary climate] will involve discussions with many different groups of stakeholders, customers and investors. But these discussions will only be constructive when we move beyond the idea that students themselves are customers. Universities do have customers. And they educate students on behalf of those customers. But the students themselves are not the customers.

4. Taylor, John S. “Absolutely the Best Dentist” Abbreviated. The School Administrator (2000)

My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don't forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me. And, at 52, I've still got all my teeth. When I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see if he'd heard about the state’s new initiative to help him succeed in his work. I knew he'd think it was great....

"Did you hear about the new state program to measure the effectiveness of dentists with their young patients?" I said. “They will just count the number of cavities each patient has at age 10, 14 and 18 and average that to determine a dentist's rating. Dentists will be rated as Excellent, Good, Average, Below Average and Unsatisfactory. That way parents will know which are the best dentists. It will also encourage the less effective dentists to get better," I said. "Poor dentists who don’t improve could lose their licenses to practice in South Carolina."

"But that's not a fair way to determine who is practicing good dentistry."

"Why not?" I said. "It makes perfect sense to me."

"Well, it's so obvious," he said. "Don't you see that dentists don’t all work with the same clientele? So much depends on things we can’t control.”

"For example," he went on, "I work in a rural area with a high percentage of patients from deprived homes, while some of my colleagues work in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Many of the parents I work with don’t bring their children to see me until there is some kind of problem and I don't get to do much preventive work.

"Also, many of the parents I serve have allowed their kids to consume way too much candy and soda from an early age, unlike more-educated parents who understand the relationship between sugar and decay.

"To top it all off," he continued, "so many of my clients have well water that is untreated and has no fluoride in it. Do you have any idea how much difference early use of fluoride can make?"

"In a system like this, I will end up being rated average, below average or worse. My more-educated patients who see these ratings may believe this so-called state rating actually is a measure of my ability and proficiency as a dentist. They may leave me, and I’ll be left with only the most needy patients. And my cavity average score will get even worse. On top of that, how will I attract good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to my practice if it is labeled below average?"

The program still sounded reasonable to me, so I asked, "How else would you measure good dentistry?"

"Come watch me work," he said. "Observe my processes."

"That's too complicated and time consuming," I said. "Cavities are the bottom line, and you can't argue with the bottom line. It's an absolute measure."

"You don't get it," he said. "Doing this would be like grading schools and teachers on an average score on a test of children’s progress without regard to influences outside the school, the home, the community served and stuff like that. Why would they do something so unfair to dentists? No one would ever think of doing that to schools."

5. Pausch, Randy. The Last Lecture (2008)

I don’t fully reject the customer-service model, but I think it’s important to use the right industry metaphor. It’s not retail. I’d compare college tuition to paying for a personal trainer at an athletic club. We professors play the roles of trainers, giving people access to the equipment (books, labs, our expertise) and after that, it’s our job to be demanding. We need to make sure that students are exerting themselves. We need to praise them when they deserve it and to tell them honestly when they have it in them to work harder. Most importantly, we need to let them know how to judge for themselves how they’re coming along. The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same can be true of college. A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.



6. Perry, David M. "Faculty Members are Not Cashiers." The Chronicle for Higher Ed 17 March 2014.

For years now, corporate language and thinking has invaded academe....[T]he attempt to shift the world of higher education into the business paradigm seems rational to administrators: Without customers--i.e., students--faculty jobs will be cut, programs shuttered, and staff members 'downsized.'

Meanwhile, students (and their families) are taking on ever-increasing amounts of debt, paying higher tuition, and fearing they will never earn enough to make those costs worthwhile....They've paid their money--or they will over the next 30 years or so--now they want service.

But public discourse has consequences for how we think and act...Students who believe that they are mere customers are selling themselves short, as are the faculty members and administrators who apply business-speak to the classroom. Students are not customers to be served. They are far more important than that...

Perhaps I'm a romantic, but I believe in teaching as a vocation and a craft, not a sale. I believe that it's possible to turn a class into a microcommunity of learners and teachers. Such an approach yields some of the power back to the students and makes us collaborators, all governed by expectations, feedback, evaluations, and conversations.

Gun Debate Metaphors

Multimedia to Begin Class

"Loaded Words: How Language Shapes The Gun Debate"

Class Work

Analyze the following sets of metaphors. First determine the metaphor repeated by each selection. Next, analyze how each author uses the particular metaphor. Which side do you think benefits most from the connotations of that particular metaphor?

CASE 1

Barack Obama, “President Addresses Vigil for Sandy Hook Shooting Victims”
Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens -- from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators -- in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of NRA, “Standing Guard: Making Our Nation’s School Children Safer”

With the horrific series of mass murders culminating in the cold-blooded killing of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December, this latest iteration of “gun control” is entirely directed at making the sane pay the price for unthinkable acts committed by the insane. It is the root of the civil disarmament movement in America today.

But for the evil acts of these and other deranged killers, all of the sane people in America are supposed to pay the price with the loss of our freedom. On its face, that very concept is, well, insane. And the gun-banners know it. They cynically exploit these tragedies and their elite media enablers amplify what they, too, know to be a big lie: that, somehow, homicidal maniacs are going to be stopped through legislation, as if you can legislate morality, or sanity, for that matter.

In late January, NBC headlined its coverage of a Biden meeting and quoted Obama’s official gun-ban czar as saying, “Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting.” So what on earth is all this push for massive new gun controls on innocent citizens about?

CASE 2

Tom Brokaw on Morning Joe

Gun control "reminds me a lot of what happened in the South in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Good people stayed in their houses and didn't speak up when there was carnage in the streets and the total violation of a fundamental rights of African-Americans as they marched in Selma, and they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture in effect and become a face of it. And now a lot of people who I know who grew up during that time have deep regrets about not speaking out . . . Now it's time for the people who do have strong feelings, who are feeling that they can't do anything about it, to kind of band together and have something to say here."

David A. Keene, “We Will Prevail” NRA President’s Column
The Sandy Hook murders gave the president and his allies in Congress, the left-wing media and activists the political opportunity they had been waiting for. . . .

What the president and his allies didn’t count on was your deep belief in freedom and the Constitution, the tenacity of those of us dedicated to preserving the rights handed down by the framers of our Constitution and the good common sense of most Americans . . .

We are awake now. There are millions of us and we will not be cowed. The struggle to preserve our rights will get ugly, and there will be additional attempts to demonize us, divide us and limit the rights of gun owners who have never done anything wrong.

Millions of Second Amendment supporters are rallying, speaking up and letting their elected representatives know just how they feel. [There are] tens of thousands of new members joining the NRA and the continuing flood of calls to Congress are making it very clear that we will Stand and Fight when our rights are threatened. If we don’t let up, we will prevail.

Bob Scheiffer on CBS News
Let's remember: there was considerable opposition when Lyndon Johnson went to the Congress and...presented some of the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in the history of this country. Most people told him he couldn't get it done, but he figured out a way to do it. And that's what Barack Obama is going to have to do . . . What happened in Newtown was probably the worst day in this country's history since 9/11 . . . Surely, passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do; and before that, surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.

CASE 3

NPR Barbershop Segment, “Is Public Numb to Mass Shootings?”

IZRAEL: Thank you for the info, Michel. All right, fellas, so some people say these stories won't get the same attention that earlier shootings did, you know, and that maybe Americans are just getting a little too used to this kind of violence. Paul Butler, you live in the D.C. area. Do you see - do you think there's any truth to that at all?

BUTLER: Of course. I work about a mile from the Navy Yard. And it was kind of weird to go outside on Monday and wait in line at the food truck as if, blocks away, 12 people had not been gunned down. So I don't know if we're desensitized or if we're just suffering from combat fatigue because I've got some bad news - there's going to be another mass shooting this year and then another one after that. We know that from statistics. But is that supposed to change the way that I live my life? Am I supposed to be scared every time I go to work? I'm not going to live that way. So I wouldn't call it desensitized - I would call it a way of coping with a violent, scary world.

Emily Miller, “Inside Obama’s War on Guns: Rick Perry Decries Effort to Disarm Americans.” The Washington Times
The biggest fight in history over Americans’ right to keep and bear arms is being waged today. There were attacks on the Second Amendment in the early 1990s with the passage of the Brady bill and the “assault weapons” ban. The gun-control battle of 2013, however, could easily see the greatest losses of Second Amendment rights ever.

There are two key factors that make this assault more serious: billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is willing to spend anything to win, and a longtime anti-gun fanatic Barack Obama, who is applying the full power of the presidential bully pulpit for the gun-grabbers’ cause.

Jules Witcover, “Obama’s Limited War on Guns” Chicago Tribune
The rich and influential Bloomberg so far is waging a more pointed and expansive war on the NRA and the nation's gun culture than is the man in the White House. Obama's pitch to Congress that the recent gun victims on the streets and in the schools of America "deserve a vote" pales in comparison to Democratic [predecessors].

President Obama should do no less now in the fight against gun violence, regardless of Harry Reid's grim reading of the prospects of restoring the assault weapons ban in the Senate. Better to fight and go down swinging than to concede defeat once again to the NRA and its grip on weak-kneed or wrong-headed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.