Reading and Note Taking Assignment: Due Monday, 8 September.

Here is some work to do over the weekend to jump start next week's discussion and work.

Read Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." It is among the best pieces of 20th Century rhetoric I know, and it is a good place to start in your journey to try to understand how rhetoric works. Hopefully, you'll never need to write or speak in such a complicated and vital situation, but knowing such can be done with brilliance lets you know what someone who understands rhetoric can accomplish. [We call such people, rhetors, that is, those who can consciously use a knowledge of rhetoric and have had training in it. You are now rhetors.]

Find a copy of the letter here:

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Your assignment is to analyze the rhetorical situation in which King was writing and try to get some ideas concerning how King handled the situation. To accomplish this task you should answer the following questions. In rhetorical studies, some of us consider these as the Magic Questions.

• Who was the author? Do some down and dirty research here. King was a more complicated man than popular culture would lead you to believe.
  
• Who was the audience(s)? King wasn't just speaking to his fellow clergy. Many in his audience were hostile, but he wasn't just speaking to the folks who were hostile. He was speaking to many different audiences at once.
  
• What did the author hope to accomplish? (That is, "What was the author's rhetorical purpose(s)?") In the case of this letter, King is trying to do multiple things.
  
• What appeals did the author use in crafting his message?
• Did the author use logos? If so, how? How does king use facts, logic, and ideas.
  
• Did the author use pathos? If so, how? How does he get his various audiences to feel?
  
• Did the author use ethos? If so, how? Think about how one established credibility (and superior credibility at that) writing from a jail cell.
  
• Was the author's message successful? In other words, "Did the author's message do everything he hoped it would do?
• What were the sources of noise? That is, "What prevented the various audiences from understanding and acting/believing/knowing in the way he author intended?

Note:

What you are doing here is learning to break down and understand some of the nuances of the rhetoric which King used. This is a complicated rhetorical situation, and you are just getting started in thinking about communication as rhetoric, so you're not going to see everything which is going on. You won't. Don't try to. Your goal is notice things you wouldn't have noticed before you heard of rhetoric. As you develop and practice the skill of doing rhetorical analysis, that is, asking the magic questions about the communication you encounter, you will begin to pick up ideas about how others succeed (and don't succeed) in their efforts to communicate. Each time you observe, you are learning new techniques, sources of noise, what to do, and what to avoid in your own communication. Each time you gain such an insight, you are becoming a better communicator and user of rhetoric, and each act of your communication becomes more likely to succeed.

As always, write with any questions.

Steve

By Monday, all I want is for you to have read the letter more than once and to have taken good notes, but we're going to build a writing assignment out of your reading and note taking; so, take good notes.