Rhetorical Strategies and Analysis of our “English 110 syllabus”
In the English 110 syllabus, our professor starts most prompts by using authoritative claims when she starts by saying “You will” or “We will”. Ms. Shearer also employed the strategy of providing commentary on preferred reader interpretation like when she went over the Major assignments and said that all “major assignments” must be completed in order to pass the English comp. 10100 course. I also notice that Prof. Shearer uses ethos to empower her claims, her messages in the syllabus hold weight because she is the professor of the course that she is talking about. Professor Shearer has the credibility of her position because she will know what will happen in her this course as a result of her position.
What parts of Tan’s “Mother’s Tongue” essay resonate with me the most.
Amy Tan’s “Mothers Tongue” is sure to hit hard for a lot of children of minorities and for good reason. Your mother’s tongue is one every child will seldom neglect to distinct from the rest whether that distinction be negative or positive. Amy Tan’s essay highlight what it means to draw a negative distinction from your mothers tongue to one that you might appreciate as proper. Personally, I resonate with the way Amy describes her feelings of losing respect of her mother for the way she speaks because this is a feeling I myself have experienced. Just like Amy, I can relate to being frustrated by my mother’s “broken English” and didn’t understand my mother anymore than I did her speech because of it. However my mother isn’t stupid, in fact she even owns her own business and manages it from the comfort of her home as a single parent of 4. Therefore It was a eye opener to see in writing someone make the argument that language doesn’t translate to intelligence. Alternatively my mother code switches often, drawing this comparison made me reflect on the many “English’s” she used on a day to day basis. Henceforth I can resonate with Amy’s reflection on her many English’s because I recall seeing them in action through my mother and I saw the value it brought her in communicating despite her broken English. It made me realize she was a better communicator than I gave her credit for and it made my mother make sense in a way because I couldn’t see past the fault in her speech to realize that she was worth admiration for more than simply being mom.
Rhetorical response to Jordan’s piece “Nobody Means More To Me Than You And The Future Life Of Willie Jordan”
In the essay “Nobody Means More To Me Than You And The Future Life Of Willie Jordan”, the writer takes advantage of her students to create a rhetorical situation of purpose to express that black English and than black justice was, so to speak, being ignored in the U.S. The author hints at black English being a minority study in America multiple times throughout her piece which made her mission in teaching it feel underappreciated and noble. The author introduces this notion when she explains her first time introducing black literature to them and they reffered to it as “funny” because they were so unfamiliar with it despite the class being mostly made up of minorities. This idea is reinforced again when she hears that peers and family of her students said things like “You studying that shit? At school? “. This use of rhetorical situation helps the reader to understand the authors idea on black English through the revelations that brought about her students to understand, generally making her writing easier to digest. The revelation of Willie Jordan himself surmised in his paper responding to the murder of his brother speaks of black justice uses pathos as well as ethos seeing as he is emotionally and personally invested in the unlawful death of a black man. The authors addition of Willie Jordan’s call to “change” powerfully concludes that black justice felt “rhetoric” and needed to be fixed.
