Prompt for Paper 2

ASSIGNMENT 2: USING ONE TEXT AS A “LENS” ON ANOTHER

In this assignment you will use concepts and arguments from one text as a context for “seeing” another text. The first text will thus provide a “lens” for understanding, analyzing, and evaluating the “target” text. Specifically, you will draw from materials on the rhetoric of DEMAGOGUERY(Patricia Roberts-Miller) to examine either A) Wayne LaPierre’s speech after the Sandyhook tragedy, or B) George Wallace’s inaugural speech as Governor of Alabama (his “segregation” speech).

Said another way, in order to successfully compose Paper 2, you will need to have a firm grasp on the Roberts-Miller text; you will need to be familiar with concepts she presents; you will need to be able to recognize her concepts outside of her text. Specifically, you will need to be able to 1) recognize concepts presented by Roberts-Miller in another text, 2) use them in order to describe and discuss corresponding concepts in the “target” text—how Roberts-Miller’s concepts have become manifest in either LaPierre or Wallace, and 3) explain to what extent or to what degree demagogic rhetoric presented by either LaPierre or Wallace accomplishes the aim of their respective projects.

Please do employ concepts we covered in Unit 1 in order to complete Paper 2. It seems reasonable to discuss, for instance, aspects of rhetorical situation and PACES. Please remember that the aim of Paper 2 is not exclusively an exercise in working with rhetorical situation and PACES. Instead, let those simply be tools to aid in successfully understanding, analyzing, and evaluating demagogic rhetoric.

Ultimately, you will write around 5 pages (no fewer than 3 full pages, no more than 7 full pages) that:

  1. Introduces demagoguery/Roberts-Miller as it relates to argumentation
  2. Offer an example or “target” text that will be understood, analyzed, and evaluated using Roberts-Miller as a “lens”
  3. Give many examples of why and how Roberts-Miller can be “seen” in the “target” text
  4. Describe and discuss to what extent or to what degree the “target” text or argument(s)/project is successful

EXAMPLE PARAGRAPH:

One of the manners in which demagoguery is made manifest in Wallace’s speech is by and through the evocation of General Lee. According to Roberts-Miller, “eschatalogical means something related to the idea of the history of good and evil. So…eschatological metanarrative is a way of telling stories that puts events in the context of the eternal battle between Good and Evil.” By referencing General Lee almost immediately; by cloaking himself in the ethos of such a beloved Southern Hero, Wallace essentially frames or founds the entirety of his address. From that point forward, Wallace’s address—in fact, his service as Governor—will be an instantiation, a continuation of what many in the South believed to be the Lost Cause. Everything Wallace says during his address, from that point forward, will be seen as not only a rekindling and, then, continuation of the struggle to maintain the Southern “way of life,” it will be seen, perhaps, as an opportunity for redemption, a change to set the record straight. Wallace’s evocation of General Lee not only goes toward defining the in-group in that sense, it clarifies it as being the difference between Good and Evil. Who might stand up against this so-called noble and virtuous endeavor? Who among the audience might object to such a staggering collapsing of time? The likely answer to those and like questions is not many—and that is precisely why Wallace’s General-Lee-strategy is especially emblematic of demagoguery.