Conclusions

Conclusions in Analysis Papers

Introduction: Rhetorical Context

Provide the rhetorical context for the social milieu of your text. In other words, you will want to provide relevant contemporaneous information about the issue/debate the speaker is addressing (e.g, war in Iraq, gun control, dedication of a new monument, etc.). Cite sources to help provide context such as historical events, political climate, or biographical information. You want to explain why your author wrote on this topic at the particular moment (s)he chose to write. Your goal is to provide context for your readers who will know less than you about the text and its contemporary historical moment.

Conclusion: Contemporary Significance

Provide the continuing significance of the issue your paper addresses. In other words, you will want to demonstrate contemporary events that make this something we should still talk about and consider or which make the points less relevant today. You can then evaluate your author’s argument based on whether we should continue to heed his/her warning, dismiss him/her for a certain reason, or pay attention to him/her but not for a good reason (maybe they represent a dangerous or problematic viewpoint on the topic that we should strive to avoid).

Introduction	Conclusion
Rhetorical Context of Your Article	Rhetorical Context of Your Paper
Context of author’s time of writing	Context of your time of writing
Why this issue was important at its publication	Why this issue is important today
Why did your author care then?	Why should we care now?

Places to Look for Sources

-Web search on topic
-Library Search (articles, newspaper, books, etc.): http://library.tulane.edu/
-Encyclopedia: http://www.britannica.com/, use Wikipedia to lead you to more reputable sources
-Google Books for historical sources: http://books.google.com/
-Articles in Various Disciplines: http://scholar.google.com/

Sample Conclusions on Andrew Sullivan's "iPod World"

This article, published 7 years ago, foretold of continued growth in iPod sales and a noticeable change in the social interactions between people. In reality, sales of iPods turned out to be much different than was suggested in 2005. In an article published in 2010 one columnist said, “If sales of Apple’s iPod are any indication, the heyday of the MP3 player is over and done with” citing the continued decline in sales of the device after its peak in 2008 (Bonnington). However, it was not because people decided to rid themselves of such devices and interact in a distraction-free environment as Sullivan suggested, instead Apple has introduced consumers to even more alluring devices such as the iPhone. The predicted popularity of the iPod in 2005 pales in comparison to the actual popularity of the iPhone today with Apple having reported almost 250 million iPhones being sold since its introduction in 2007 (Apple Inc). These increased features over an iPod that the iPhone now offers only further the validity of Sullivan’s argument from 2005. Instead of being limited to music with an iPod, people are now able to talk, text, tweet, message, and video chat from almost anywhere at any time. And Sullivan’s prediction is becoming ever more accurate as Apple incessantly tweaks the device to perfect it for optimal consumption of media, accumulation more distractions every time. With these constant advancements, the points Sullivan brings up are more applicable to current society than when his article was first published and reminds us to always realize that it’s not all bad to have some downtime for the mind.


“IPod World” is funny, witty, and overall truly makes you think about the degrading camaraderie in our society and the value we place on simple human interaction. iPods have become such a large aspect of our culture, when Sullivan wrote his article in 2005, 10 million iPods had been sold—by September 2012 the number has increased to 350 million (Costello). This topic of technological isolation is not just a current debate, but has been talked about since the origin of MP3 players. In 1981, Shuhei Hosokawa wrote an article about the “Walkman effect”. This article was written in response to the recent release of the Walkman in 1980 and its effects on the interactions of others—claiming that these new MP3 players were disconnecting society and causing severe “incommunicability” between people (Hosokawa). Thirty-one years later much has changed. Walkmans have turned into iPods and cassettes have become digital files, but the same problem remains; people’s routine detachment from their environment once deafened by their headphones. Now in 2012, iPods aren’t just MP3 players, they’re movie theaters, books, arcades, and even cell phones. Between iPods and iPhones more and more people are loosing touch with their environment and succumbing to their personal virtual bubble. Sullivan’s article, despite being written seven years ago, is even more pertinent in our current society and makes its reader’s think about what they’re missing when they plug themselves in and tune society out.

Political Cartoons

Political Cartoon Terminology

Political Cartoon Website

One of the best websites to find political cartoons to analyze is Daryl Cagle's PoliticalCartoons.com.

Rhetorical Appeals: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

Basics of Ethos, Pathos, Logos

"The Rhetorical Triangle: Understanding and Using Ethos, Pathos, Logos": a quick 2 page read

Introduction to Ethos, Pathos, Logos: a short video

Ethos, Pathos, Logos Overlap

Ethos, pathos, logos are not discrete non-overlapping elements. All communication tells us something about the author and so includes ethos.  Authors and audiences always possess emotion, even if striving for "neutral" emotion, and so pathos is involved. And all communication evidences a judgment or claim, thereby drawing on logos.

If these appeals overlap so much, what is the point of seeing them as distinct? The appeals help us understand three dominant ways through which people persuade and three common ways that rhetorical critics talk about texts. They give us places to focus. The appeals ask you to use a certain lens, to concentrate on one particular element and to dissect how it works in a given text.  If you can't first name and identify these effects, then you would have a hard time explaining how they overlap or how the pathos of a line might succeed while its logos fails. It strengthens analysis to show how any one of the appeals may become stronger or dominant in a given moment as well as to demonstrate how they are interrelated.

Group Work 

To learn how to use these terms, identify ethos, pathos, and logos in the following passages. You could use Word’s Comment feature under the “Review Tab” to select text and label it. I encourage you to break down the different parts of the text instead of using one term for each selection.


Mark Clayton “A Whole Lot of Cheatin’ Going On,” Christian Science Monitor, 1999
The Center for Academic Integrity in Nashville studied 7,000 students on 26 small-to-medium-size college campuses in 1990, 1992, and 1995. Those studies have found that nearly 80 percent admitted to cheating at least once. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the more-explicit forms of cheating” and illegitimate “collaborating,” says Donald McCabe, associate provost at Rutgers University in Newark . . . He and others blame poor role models and lack of parental guidance for the growing acceptance of cheating in colleges . . . Add to that a pervasive change in societal values, and students can easily be snared if they lack a strong moral compass.

Franklin Roosevelt, “Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation,” 1941
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. . . .

Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Ronald Reagan, “The Space Shuttle ‘Challenger’ Tragedy Address,” 1986

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers. . . . And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. . . . The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Andrew Cuomo, Democratic National Convention keynote Address, 1984
Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures. The President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill." And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill. But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate. In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.

Christopher Lasch, “The Lost Art of Political Argument” Harper's, 1990
Let us begin with a simple proposition: What democracy requires is public debate, not information. Of course it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by vigorous popular debate. We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our ideas about the world to the test of public controversy. Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is better understood as its by product. When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information. Otherwise, we take in information passively--if we take it in at all.











Ellie Wiesel, “The Perils of Indifference,” 1999
Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again. Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.
. . .
And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope.

Andrew Sullivan “iPod World,” New York Times Magazine, 2005
I was visiting New York City last week and noticed something I'd never thought I'd say about the big city. Yes, nightlife is pretty much dead (and I'm in no way the first to notice that). But daylife - that insane mishmash of yells, chatter, clatter, hustle and chutzpah that makes New York the urban equivalent of methamphetamine - was also a little different. It was just a little quieter. Yes, the suburbanization of Manhattan is now far-gone, its downtown a Disney-like string of malls, riverside parks, and pretty upper-middle-class villages. But there was something else as well. And as I looked across the throngs on the pavements, I began to see why. There were little white wires hanging down from their ears, tucked into pockets or purses or jackets. The eyes were a little vacant. Each was in his or her own little musical world, walking to their own soundtrack, stars in their own music video, almost oblivious to the world around them. These are the iPod people.

Ashley Davis Bush “Grief Intelligence: A Primer”
For the last 25 years, I have worked with thousands of griever. I have sat with widows and widowers, the young and the old. I have offered tissues to bereaved parents in their inconsolable grief. I have normalized, educated, listened to and championed those grievers who, through tremendous pain, still engaged with life.

D.T. Max “End of the Book” (1994)
The quiet hum of the room, the bright white lighting, the clean, flat antiseptic surfaces, give the impression of an aspirin commercial. "It was clear to us that no reader was going to read a book off any of the current screens for more than ten minutes," says Malcolm Thompson, the chief technologist. "We hoped to change that." A large annotated poster on the wall illustrates point for point the screen's superiority to paper, as in an old-fashioned magazine ad. This flat panel display is indeed better than commercial screens, but it is neither as flexible nor as mobile as a book, and it still depends on fickle battery power. A twentysomething software marketer who began as an editorial assistant in book publishing points out, "A book requires one good eye, one good light source, and one good finger."

Punctuation is Rhetorical

Punctuation does more than adorn words; it tells us how to read words. At the end of this exercise, I hope you will be able to think more critically about punctuation in all its various roles: creating meaning, controlling tempo, and conveying emotion.

Group Work

To learn how to analyze punctuation deeply, summarize the message of the text and explain how the punctuation contributes to that message. What does the significant punctuation usually tell us in any sentence? You might describe the role/"rule" of each mark, which you are welcome to Google. What effect does the mark have on the content?


1. Examine the effects of the punctuation in these titles:

Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing



2. Examine the differences between the following statements, created solely by punctuation. Why does one of the versions produce a more humorous effect than the other?

Say ‘NO’ to Drugs. From the NMB Police D.A.R.E Officers.	Say ‘NO’ to Drugs from the NMB Police D.A.R.E Officers.
A woman without her man is nothing.	A woman: without her, man is nothing.
He eats shoots and leaves.	He eats, shoots, and leaves.
Let’s eat, mother.	Let’s eat mother.
Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours?	Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

3. Examine the effects of the parentheses & italics.

From “Let American be America Again”
-Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.



4. Analyze the effects of the ellipsis, present in one textual variant. 

From Percy Bysshe Shelley "Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

5. Analyze the following rhetorical questions. How does the fact that the sentences are questions affect their meaning? How do they work on an audience?

Will we be better off if more Americans get a better education? Will we better off if we depend less on foreign oil and more on our own ingenuity? Will we be better off if we start doing some nation-building at home? Will we be better off if we bring down our deficits in a balanced, responsible way without gutting the very things that we need to grow? When we look back four years from now, or ten years from now, or twenty years from now, won’t we be better off if we have the courage to keep moving forward?
--President Barack Obama, "Remarks" 

Can't Get Enough Punctuation?

Kathryn Schulz, "The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature"
John Dawkin, "Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool"
Jennifer Schuessler, "If Only Thomas Jefferson Could Settle the Issue: A Period is Questioned in the Declaration of Independence"
Anne-Marie Womack "Punctuation Matters" in The Pocket Instructor: Literature, edited by Diana Fuss and Bill Gleason for Princeton University Press.

Statistics and Rhetoric

The Basics on Numbers and Rhetoric

Joanna Wolfe's "Rhetorical Numbers: A Case for Quantitative Writing in the Composition Classroom" published in CCC (2010). For my students, a 6.5 page version is available on our class website.


Often students assume that argument does not function within fields that strive toward objectivity like math Famed statistician Nate Silver, though, writes, “The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning” (9). Numbers, while "true," have little value until they are brought into the world—until the minus sign means a withdrawal from your checking account, until three equals the number of pizza slices you have for lunch, or until the flu virus spreads exponentially in your city. Raw data must be interpreted and that interpreting always requires a person who is situated, biased, flawed, and emotional. These are the types of problems that students can evaluate with rhetoric.

Even with a closed-system like math, the rules are not created in a neutral vacuum. For example, our base 10 system groups items based on increments of ten—it takes ten ones to push a number over into the tens column and ten groups of ten to overflow into the next column to the left, the hundreds. There are symbols available for 1-9, but after that a single column can contain no more. Doesn't it “naturally” make sense: grade school children counting on their ten little fingers? In reality this system of numerical organization is dependent on culture and is not a universal. The Mayans in fourth century AD used a base 20 system (Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World 28); California’s Yuki tribe had base 4 and base 8 numbering systems. Some scholars believe the Mayans counted on their fingers and their toes; the Yuki counted the spaces between the fingers (When Languages Die 173-175). Not to be limited to body digits, ancient Iraq used various systems including base 120 and base 60 (Mathematics Across Cultures 103). Mixing things up even more, the Dozenal Society of America has promoted since World War II the use of a duodecimal system, in other words, learning to count in base 12. Among the benefits: alignment with systems of measurement (12 inches to a foot, 12 donuts in a dozen) and fractional simplicity—1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 of 12 all create nice whole numbers. All of these systems of numbers, from the way we count them up to the way they take on meaning, depend on culture and context, on the rhetorical situation.

Cold Open Video to Begin Class

Pros and Cons of Public Opinion Polls (listed on my Cold Open Videos Post)

Lecture

Class Work

Even though all statistics are rhetorical and biased, not all statistics are created equally. Like all rhetorical moves, statistics can be stronger or weaker, and people can employ statistical methods in better or worse ways. Let's identify some ways that statistics commonly go wrong.

Videos to Discuss

"Did You Know?"

"Wealth Inequality in America"

Captain America "Statistics Song"

More on Statistics

Some Examples of Misleading Statistics

Tim Wise Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity  (93-96): In this section, Wise compiles analyses of faulty statistics that have been used by racism skeptics. These skeptics claim that the success of Asian Americans in the United States disproves racial inequality. The numbers more accurately suggest that when all other things are equal in education, location, and skills, Asian Americans are paid less than white Americans because of discrimination.

Introductions

Students often struggle with introductions because they rely on two rules for introductions: 1) start broad and 2) catch the reader’s attention. Broad is relative to the rest of the paper, though, and the advice of Catherine Prendergast at First Year Comp describes the issue well: “In reality, the best introductions start specific. After that, they get even more specific.” So instead of starting out by describing “the beginning of time” or “today’s society,” think about the specifics of your paper.

Introductory hooks (like beginning with a question, opening with a startling fact or statistic, or crafting a narrative) only become useful if the introduction also 1) creates a substantial rhetorical context that 2) teaches the reader something new. Audiences are often interested if they feel like they are learning from reading. To engage audiences in this way, it just takes a little research on the rhetorical context.

Authors always speak, write, or perform within contexts. They respond to various statements, events, structures, and beliefs that came before they took part in the “conversation” on their topic. Your author(s), too, is in dialogue with other texts. As you introduce the text you are analyzing, then, you will want to consider the following questions: Why did this writer contribute to this topic at this particular moment? What cultural contexts do they draw on? What motivated them to communicate now? One of my students called this the “trigger;" rhetorical scholars call it kairos. You can create powerful introductions by discussing the timeliness  and occasion of the text, those things happening contemporaneously or which have historically informed the text.

In the following example, I provide the rhetorical context for a short dialogue. You can apply the principles and questions to your own article.

            Ben: Want to grab dinner with me tonight?

Cara: Sure, where are you thinking?

Ben: I’m pretty hungry, but I don’t know what I’m in the mood for.

Cara: Well, I know you usually don’t like Italian, but a new restaurant down the street is getting good reviews. They have pizza and salad, too, if you don’t want more traditional dishes.

Now, say we are analyzing Cara’s final argument. Cara wants to convince Ben to eat Italian food. What is the rhetorical context for her claim?

Cara’s Rhetorical Context	Some Principles of Rhetorical Context	Application Questions for Rhetorical Context
Ben spoke directly to her in conversation	Writers often respond directly to the words or actions of others. Writers join a conversation with people talking about the topic at the same time—sometimes directly (as here), sometimes indirectly.	Who else was talking about this issue around the same time your author was? What conversations is (s)he entering?
A critic released a review of the restaurant	Writers often respond to experts commenting on an issue in a new study, statistic, interpretation, or argument.	What experts presented findings on the author’s topic before (s)he wrote the text? What statistics emerged to show the significance of the issue?
The restaurant just opened	Writers often respond to current events, cutting-edge ideas or revivals of older ideas.	What events dealing with the topic occurred around the time the author wrote the article?
Ben doesn’t like Italian	Writers often respond to prevailing attitudes from individuals or from the culture at large.	What are the prevalent cultural attitudes about the topic? Does the author go with or against the grain of these attitudes?
Ben and Cara are hungry	Writers respond to things that affect them, their personal experience. Biography always informs writing.	What personal interest does the author have in the topic? Did something happen to the author to make her/him deal with this topic?

Assignment: Locate 2-3 academic sources that help build the rhetorical context for your text.

Think of it as setting the stage or describing the social milieu. In other words, you will want to provide relevant contemporaneous information about the issue/debate the speaker is addressing (e.g, overuse of technology, gun control, dedication of a new monument, etc.).

Your sources might describe current/historical events, disagree with your author and so show the debate, or provide biographical information. Your goal is to provide context for your readers who will know less than you about the article and its historical moment. Teach them something new.

Find Sources: You might start with a general web search on the topic of your text. First, limit it to the year the text was published.  You can always expand the date range if you need to. Read especially reputable sources like newspaper hits. You might also start with newspaper sources to get the facts first. For access to many newspapers at once, use your library website’s subscription to Proquest Historical Newspapers Database. If you don't have access, you can conduct a similar search through Google News Archives.

Student Examples:                                          

Research:

Question: I originally went looking for a text that addressed the changes to Medicare coverage for obese patients. So, what news articles can help me get the facts about the Medicare obesity debate in America around 2004?

Method: Search Proquest Historical Newspapers Database through library website

Search Term: Medicare Obesity 2004

Source: Found good news sources in New York Times

Question: What other (reliable) writings can I find on the Medicare obesity debate in America around 2004?

Method: Search Google. Look for reputable sources, not just random blogs or pages.

Search Term: Medicare Obesity 2004

Source: Found a lot of sources such as  Washington Post and Gallup

Question: What else was happening with obesity around 2004 in America when this comic was published?

Method: For web keyword search (google), Work on specific search terms: what, when, where?

Search Term: Obesity America 2004

Source: Found a useful statistic

Sample Introductions to Critique:

1. By 2004, more than one in three adult Americans were obese (Ogden et al.). In response to the problem, the United States government changed Medicare policies to cover certain obesity related treatments. Specifically, "the new policy... remove[d] the phrase 'obesity itself cannot be considered an illness'" to newly qualify treatments (Glassman). The legislation spurred debates over funding obesity with proponents of the plan arguing that the change would provide life-improving interventions and prevent premature death (McMurray). Yet 75% of Americans in a 2004 Gallup poll reported believing that obesity was due to "bad eating and bad lifestyle habits" as opposed to a "disease" (McMurray). Political cartoonist, Jeff Parker, sides with this majority. In the cartoon "Sick of Fat," Parker argues that Americans are to blame for weight problems and that the United States government not only inflates these problems by claiming obesity is an illness but also ignores the real problems of other countries.

Works Cited

Glassman, Mark. "Deletion Opens Medicare to Coverage for Obesity." New York Times 16 Jul. 2004.

Higgins, Marguerite. “Obesity Deemed an Illness.” The Washington Post.com 16 July 2004. 10 Aug. 2004.

Ogden, CL and MD Carroll, LR Curtin, MA McDowell, CJ Tabak, KM Flegal. “Prevalence of Overweight and Obsesity in the United States, 1999-2004.” Journal of the American Medical Association 295.13 (5 Apr. 2006): 1549-55. 

2. Obesity carries many stigmas in contemporary American culture, such as lazy, sedentary, and excessive. These labels reflect the prevailing view that obesity is a behavioral and therefore preventable problem. But as obesity affects more and more Americans—over one-third of United States adults were obese as of 2004—the United States government has displaced blame away from the individual American (Ogden et al.). In the summer of 2004, the United States Health and Human Services decided to “remove language in Medicare’s coverage that states obesity is not an illness” (Higgins). This change will allow individuals on Medicare and Medicaid to receive funding for obesity related treatments, and more broadly, it will influence the way Americans think about obesity. In “Sick of Fat,” political cartoonist Jeff Parker argues through the juxtaposition of American and the “third-world” that obesity is a moral disease caused by the excesses of American life. In contrast to the third world, America maintains excessive wealth, excessive power, excessive self-interest, and excessive disinterest in other countries.

Works Cited

McMuray, Colleen. "Public: Lifestyle, Not Disease Causes Obesity." Gallup.

Ogden, CL and MD Carroll, LR Curtin, MA McDowell, CJ Tabak, KM Flegal. “Prevalence of Overweight and Obsesity in the United States, 1999-2004.” Journal of the American Medical Association 295.13 (5 Apr. 2006): 1549-55. 

Finding Texts to Analyze

Speeches
American Rhetoric (searchable bank, list of their top 100, 9-11 rhetoric, speeches in movies)

Famous Speeches Given by Women

Voices of Democracy (speeches organized by Citizenship & Civic Identity, Civil Rights, Freedom of Speech, Religion & Morality in Public Life, Social & Economic Justice, U.S. Internationalism,  War & Peace)

Women's Speeches from Around the World

Nobel Lectures (find a subject, then a laureate, and view their award ceremony speech)

Speeches by American Presidents
Miller Center Presidential Speech Archives
So Just: Speeches on Social Justice
History Channel Famous Speeches (speeches by topic: war, civil rights, sports, space, etc.)

News, Politics, and Culture

Slate

Salon

The American Spectator

Huffington Post

Mother Jones

Townhall

The Nation

Newsmax

Feminist Perspectives
Bitch Magazine
Jezebel
Feministing
Ms. Magazine

Political Cartoons

Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons.com

Advertisements
Gender Ads
Adforum
Adflip Archive of Classic Print Ads

Film Analyses

The Dissolve

Titles

Ineffective Titles

Ineffective titles don’t prepare readers for what the paper will cover. Imagine you are writing a paper on Romeo and Juliet. If you simply name your paper after the work you analyze, a reader could expect to read the full text of Romeo and Juliet, not a literary analysis of Romeo and Juliet. If you refer only to abstract themes without naming the work(s) you analyze, a reader could expect a treatise on the theme of “love” through all time. Finally, titling your paper as an analysis of Romeo and Juliet suggests that you will cover all the aspects of the play as opposed to honing in on a few critical ideas.

1. Titling your paper only after the work you analyze.	2. Titling your paper only after a broad theme you analyze.	3. Titling your paper as an analysis of the text.
Example. Romeo and Juliet	Example.  Love and Death	Example.  Analysis of Romeo and Juliet

Effective Titles

While ineffective titles often use just one strategy above, effective titles build on all three. They name the text and/or author you address, demonstrate that you are analyzing a text, and label the topics within your discussion. Students who craft strong titles often wait until they have finished writing the paper so that they adequately describe the content of the whole. Successful titles draw interest and describe information, managing expectations by forecasting the topic(s) the paper addresses while exciting an audience to read the material. In short, they deliver an engaging preview.

Effective titles are informative and catchy.

Effective titles often use a well-placed colon.

Effective titles often follow conventional strategies.

Conventional Strategies for Titles

1. Incorporate an appropriate quote from the text you analyze.
 “She is a Creature Designed for Reading”: Narrative Intimacy in Young Adult Fiction
“Digital Narcissism is a Narcotic”: A Keen Analysis of the Dangers of Facebook

2. Play on a term that has multiple meanings.
No-Man’s-Land: Gender and Violence in Tim O’Brien’s “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”
Telling it Straight: Christianity and Fallacy in James Dobson’s Critique of Same Sex Marriage

3. Use parallel structure.
Comic Women, Tragic Men: A Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare’s Plays
Destroying Discourse and Constructing Masculinity in the Arcipreste de Talavera

4. List words in a series that name the elements you examine.
Money, Love, and Aspiration in The Great Gatsby
An Archive of Shame: Gender, Embodiment, and Citizenship in Contemporary American Culture

5. Use a related cliché or commonly recognized phrase in its original form or in a variation.
Make Love, Not Warcraft: Virtual Worlds and Utopia
The Renaissance: (Paradigm) Shift Happens 

6. Craft a probing question that describes the debate.
Is Nick an Unreliable Narrator? Narrative Voice in The Great Gatsby
What Should Colleges Teach?

7. Juxtapose items that describe the debate.
Sinner or Saint? Anti-Hero as Christ Figure in the American Novel of the 1960s
Exotic Fable or Stalinist Allegory? Taking Another Look at Shaw’s The Simpleton

8. Incorporate a fitting allusion (e.g. songs, fables, literature).
Children of the Corn: America’s Favorite Cash Crop and Where To Find It (Hint: Everywhere)
“We Don’t Need No Education”: Moore’s Critique of American Politics in “Idiot Nation”

More Forms for Titles

My article "A Rhetoric of Titles: Eighteen Forms for Student Writers" appears in Pedagogy 14.2.