COMMUNITY RHETORICS: Writing from the Inside
COMMUNITY RHETORICS: Writing from the Inside
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Community Rhetorics is offered through the Program in Writing & Rhetoric at Stanford University and is taught by Carolyn Ross. How many discourse communities do you belong to? Understanding discourse communities and the rhetoric--the language and communication styles--particular to each equates to understanding audience and purpose in writing. Discourse communities vary widely not only with age, culture, ethnicity, language, and nationality (among other factors), but also with experience, education, academic discipline, and professional expertise. Members of each discourse community have common interests and concerns, and in expressing or sharing these interests they practice a community rhetoric unique to the community's goals. In this course, we will explore ways of "knowing," methods of research, and forms and styles of written, oral, and visual communication from inside diverse discourse communities. Readings from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities and Mary Louise Pratt's "Arts of the Contact Zone" will help students conceptualize community rhetorics in light of issues of power and authority as well as "insider" and "outsider" identities. In the "'Contact Zone' Essay," students will examine their personal histories as travelers in cultural and rhetorical contact zones. In the "Radio Feature," students will collaborate on researching, writing, editing, and producing a pre-recorded NPR-style feature story, based on interviews and background research. Topics of the final research paper--a documented argument--will be open, but special attention will be paid to interdisciplinary audiences and purposes in this project. At the end of the quarter, each student will give a multimedia presentation to the class on a particular aspect of his or her research topic or as an analysis of one particular example of "insider rhetoric."
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