Controversy Analysis:
Reasoning: To become effective and articulate speakers, we first need to develop our listening skills.
Your goal in this paper is to ?listen? to different sources so that in the third unit, you can respond intelligently. For this second unit, you will research a topic that lends itself broadly to a debate. Your job is to analyze how the parties on each side of your chosen issue generally frame the debate and argue their positions.
Your paper should answer the following questions:
What is the occasion or situation that gave rise to this debate? (Setting)
Who are the people or groups involved in the issue? (Persona)
On what values or principles do they rest their positions?
How do they attempt to appeal to their audiences? (Rhetorical Strategies)
Many of these questions should sound familiar; they are the same ones you addressed in your rhetorical analysis. However, instead of analyzing a single text, you are being asked to analyze patterns of similarity and difference from different sides of the issue. You will be generalizing about the way the issue is presented (or defined) and argued, and you will draw on several individual texts to offer evidence in support of your generalizations.
Your essay must demonstrate that you have listened to three to four different viewpoints on your issue.
To listen to a source means that you:
Fairly and accurately:
Explain the speaker?s argument
Explain how the speaker?s situation or context might lead him/her to take such a position
Discuss how the speaker defends his/her stance
Accept that others have important and valid reasons for their beliefs
Listening is not:
Interjecting your own opinion
Only listening to outsmart someone else
Assuming that someone believes something because they are evil or stupid
Disingenuous or fake
Unfairly or inaccurately representing what someone has said
Organization:
Introduction: Your introduction is similar to the rhetorical situation paragraph from your last essay.
Begin with context?or background information?on your topic: what is the occasion or situation that gave rise to the controversy? Make sure the information you include in this part of your paper is relevant. You will need to identify credible sources for the information you included in this part of your paper. Scholarly sources would be best here. You must cite any borrowed information that is not common knowledge.
Body: In this part of your paper, you should focus on the patterns you?ve identified during your research. You should organize your paper by patterns you identify in groups, values and appeals, not by texts. You must consistently integrate specific passages from your research to support and illustrate your claims. You must also incorporate all borrowed material; furthermore, be sure to accurately introduce your sources, quote, paraphrase and summarize.
Note:
Do not write a series of mini-analyses of separate texts as if you were composing several abbreviated versions of your first-unit assignment. Instead, show how these different texts talk to one another.
Biased sources are not only acceptable but necessary for this part of your paper. You must identify at least six texts that argue a specific position on the issue you choose to investigate.
Conclusion: You may identify common ground and/or summarize the current state of the controversy to end your paper. You?ll need to conduct the research and draft the paper before you decide how best to conclude.
Length Requirement: Most students will need six to eight FULL pages?double spaced and not counting the works cited page?to complete this assignment successfully.
Minimum Sources Requirement: You must cite a minimum of eight separate sources in this paper.
Citations: There are three requirements here, all of which help you avoid plagiarism:
Use signal phrases to introduce your sources in the body of your paper.
MLA: See Rules for Writers 58b.
Include in-text citations following all borrowed material.
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