Preview: Week Two

Monday MLK Jr. Day

TuesdayInauguration
Wednesday Turn in Homework 1A
Friday What is social controversy?
 Week One in Review

Intros, Syllabus, and Branford Marsalis

I Have A Dream, ME Dyson, What is Rhetoric
Preparing for an Inauguration

All of the Above will Prepare You For Homework/Midterm

Marsalis
Based on your understanding of rhetoric,
how does Branford Marsalis’ clip function as
a rhetorical artifact or not?
We jump into rhetoric via key
terms.
Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any
particular case all of the available means of
persuasion" (Aristotle). Process of Discovery
or Invention/Persuasion.
Deliberative
Forensic
Epideictic
Rhetor
Polysemic
We begin to explore “What is
Rhetoric” by example.
Branford Marsalis
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Michael Eric Dyson
Barack H. Obama
David A. Frank
Mark L. McPhail
Al Sharpton
 Michael Eric Dyson “I May Not Get
There With You”
Aim of the book:
 Biocriticism
 An attempt “to rescue King’s memory from the
image of romantic dreamer that obscures his
embrace of challenging ideas” (p. 4).
Aim of first chapter: From Color
Blindness to Black Compensation:
 To “combat the conservative misappropriation of
King’s words” (p. 14)
 How? By exploring the importance of and problems
posed by the “I Have A Dream” speech
Dyson Follow Up
Summarize specific and key arguments of
piece.
Cite aspects of his style you may
incorporate.
Stories, use of other speeches, “poster
boy”(p.27)
Back up key arguments.
Ex. Conservatives coopted King’s Legacy
Pretend to embrace a revolution they opposed
Used speech to fight affirmative action
I Have A Dream Speech
Identify which aspects of IHAD are
deliberative or epideictic. Back up. How does
the speech function as a rhetorical hybrid?
Is this speech radical or conservative? Back
up your belief.
Choose 2-3 metaphors and articulate how
they function in the speech.
Frank and McPhail
Two scholars write about Obama’s 2004
Address to the Democrat Convention
Frank-Obama succeeds, offers a rhetoric of
consilience. Difference is integrated to
transform division
McPhail-Obama offers little hope by ignoring
and obscuring racial realities.
Both agree “through words we can alter
reality.”
Obama’s speech “reveals a tension between
dream realized and dream deferred.”