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All right, so we are continuing to talk about rhetorical analysis as we have been doing for a previous, quite a few what, for quite a few previous episodes. So in this episode, we'll continue along the current stream that we've been on since thinking rhetorically was introduced, particularly. So we started there with the ironic moments and discuss some questions about how to consider that with respect to the text that you're trying to rhetorically analyze. Then we went into a long, very digressive discussion about audience conceptions of audience sort of, sort of jazzy, I'd like to think of that as sort of jazzy the way we were, the way we went about it. You know, singing about Bill Evans, they're a little bit if anybody's a jazz aficionado, and knows what I'm talking about. But aside from that, let's continue with rhetorical analysis, like I said, along the stream. Here, we're going to talk about the writers identity and angle of vision, which I think segues pretty nicely from our conceiving of audience in greater detail, sort of as a philosophical puzzle of positioning.
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So you know, that actually that segues pretty nicely into thinking about angle of vision. It is a writer's perspective on an issue. So yeah, let's start there. And more specifically, with angle A vision and writers identity will sort of be absorbed by that discussion, naturally entangled as it is. So what is angle of vision? Well, again, it's a writer's perspective on an issue. And this is colored or filtered. Think of like the lens optical metaphor. By the writers own ideological perspective, an angle of vision can be seen as a lens that the writer looks at the issue through. And this lens can control what the writer sees. And of course, if it's having some significant substantial influence upon what the writer is seeing, it's also acting as a filter. So what makes it in the piece of writing and thus, what's able to be seen by an audience or just anyone else? Right? What's what's there laid down in the text. And with this two, we're also going to think about degree of advocacy, the writers degree of advocacy. And this isn't like black and white, either or situation. It's on a continuum from truth seeking to persuasion. The writers degree of advocacy along this continuum also affects how the reader sees the issue. And when you recognize the angle of vision, behind the interpretation of an issue, you were more able to look past it to more complex truths. And identifying it may also help you analyze authors who seem undecided or less obviously bias than others. Because most writers on any subject enter with a point of view in search of facts. Now because it's essential for writers to understand the readers angle of vision alongside their own, because they're presumably going to be thinking about their audience while composing the text. A key part of rhetorical criticism is the identification of a readers interpretive position. Let me say that again, because it is essential for writers to understand the readers angle of vision alongside their own. A key part of rhetorical criticism is the identification of a readers interpretive position. You could call this the audience positioning model, this audience positioning model as a way of understanding how a writer takes into account the potential audience and their likely reaction to the text. So now I've got an acronym for you and I think this is a pretty good one. This is going to help you diagram the audience positioning model we can use the acronym radio, R a d i o. So the R is reader. A is angle of vision, D degree of advocacy, I ideology, and oh, opportunities for rebuttal. Radio reader, angle of vision, degree of advocacy, ideology, and opportunities for rebuttal, radio, radio radio. Okay, cool, we got the acronym down. And now let's think about these components and some more detail as discussed them. So when a writer writes with a reader in mind, and they understand well, which reader will or will not accept their point of view, they're holding in mind their angle of vision, in relation to or in connection with their readers angle of vision. And the audience positioning model, the term reader designates a kind of idealized figure who is in good sense intelligence temper, and breadth of view and need not necessarily be reflexive about their status as a member of society. There's a good argument to be made, that the writer conceives of this figure and tries to write in a way that will appeal to it. That is, the writer begins by taking into account who their readers are the figure or figures in question, and what they want to achieve with their writing. Of course, they must also be aware of their own biases and the lens through which they are viewing the topic, though this probably doesn't always happen. But it's something you should look for, or think about anyway. And then once they have a good understanding of their reader, you may think of as audience but trying to stay away from that word a little bit right now.
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Once they have a good understanding of their reader and their own perspective, they can begin to frame the issue in a way that is most likely to persuade their readers. Now for thinking of rhetorical analysis as a set of discrete procedures that we can constitute and to the form of a generalizable process, and then give it you know, a predictable, this is how you do it definition, then we're probably thinking about the writer using the communicative model, and the communicative. And the communicative model, the writer is seen as always communicating with someone, and that someone is not necessarily the idealized reader. And I say that because when we define when we try to define what the reader is, the tendency for whatever reason is to construe that in idealized terms. In any case, it may be helpful to think of the writer as always in dialogue, always adjusting to the other person. Now, the writer is constantly taking the measure of the other, trying to figure out what this person can hear what this other person knows, and trying to find a way to say something, to say something to them that they will understand. Let's think about what this means before proceeding. So one way to think about what this means is that the writer is always in a position where they have to reckon with the audience they're addressing, which is never really a monolithic entity. And they're also having to reckon with their own perspective, which is really never neutral. So the writers job is never done, they always have to be aware of their own positionality, the lens through which they're viewing the topic. And of course, the positionality of their readers. These are also lenses that are being viewed through, the writer has to take these into account. That's why so the argument goes, it's never enough for writers to simply quote, report the facts, unquote. So they always have to frame the issue in a way that is most likely to persuade their readers comes down to persuasion. Alright, another way to think about all of this, is that the writer is always in a position of having to negotiate the tension between their perspective and that of their readers. Again, it's not a matter of simply stating the facts and letting the chips fall where they may, the writer has to be aware of the ways in which their perspective might differ from that of their readers, and then try to find a way to bridge that gap. There's always a tension between the writers point of view and that of the reader. And a large part of the writers job is to find a way to try to find a way to reduce that tension as much as possible. As a result, typically, the writer will be most concerned with the dominant Identity that a text is trying to reach. The dominant identity is the identity of the writers idealized reader. This is the reader that the writer is trying to reach and persuade. But the dominant identity is not the same is as the actual readers of the text who are always more diverse than the idealized reader. So the writer has to be aware of the various ways in which their idealized reader might differ from the actual readers of the text. And that's, that's really part of their angle of vision, but maybe a strand of their angle of vision, you can think of it like that. Being aware of these differences, they have to try to find a way to address those differences. And this is really why it's never enough for, for writers to simply report the facts. So to reduce the tension between the writers perspective and that of their readers, the writer might first frame the issue in a way that is less likely to provoke a negative reaction. So the first thing they might do is frame the issue in a way that is less likely to provoke a negative reaction. Secondly, address the concerns of the readers who are most likely to disagree with them. Really, this means address the angles of vision that are not immediately the author's own are those which are most likely to disagree with the author's. Thirdly, try to find common grounds with their readers try to connect with these angles of vision.
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And then finally, this is more of an and or situation, not a series of 1234. Finally, acknowledge and even embrace the differences between the writers perspective and that of their readers. With angle of vision, remember, is the degree to which a writer's perspective is open or closed. That letter of the acronym the a angle of vision reflects the degree to which a writer's perspective is open or closed. What do we mean by open or closed with respect to what? Right that's that's sort of the the hardest part about this is the extreme variability of what it means to be open or close. What we generally mean though, is that a closed angle of vision is one in which the writer has a high degree of certainty in what they believe. And because of that, they see little value in the opposing perspective, that's close. And open angle of vision. On the other hand, we're calling this one in which the writer is more willing to entertain different points of view and is less certain of their own beliefs. It's typically ideology, that colors angle of vision the most, when we're talking about ideology here, and this is, you know, a term that merits a lot of lengthy discussion. But for our case, here, just to use the words to some point of effect, we're meaning the worldview that informs the understanding of the issue at hand, the understanding that doesn't necessarily belong to the author, just the rhetoric present in the text. Now, this is an important point to note that the text itself is not the author, their self, author, writer, you know, critical distinctions aside, the entity that's producing the text should not automatically be equated to, and therefore should be differentiated from the text itself. Now, see, students make this mistake of assuming that the author and the text or the writer in the text are one in the same that the argument is the author's somehow. But this is a problematic assumption. It's very convenient to do this, but it's very problematic, because it will lead students to evaluate the argument as if it were the person. Now sometimes this is true, but it's not a truth that this is always true. We should not employ rubrics that ask a student to measure the amount of effort that the author writer put into the essay. We should instead ask them to inquire into the essays effectiveness. That's really what we're doing with rhetorical analysis. That's what we mean to find when we ask a question like, What is the writing doing? Now I do as a sort of a side note, I do think this is a difficult idea to embrace properly, if I can use that word. Because when we're talking about effectiveness, I think at least in the West, there's a strong metric of connotation with value in the sense of worth or really worthiness. But effectiveness here is simply the effects that it has, the effects that it has, what it is doing, and how those effects are coming about how it's doing what it's doing. That's really effectiveness. And when we say like one piece of writing is more effective than another, we should not be thinking one piece of writing is more valuable, or inherently has more quality of worth than another, it just means it's doing more observably or rhetorically detectably, then another. Now take that idea of effectiveness and think about it in relation to degree of advocacy. Again, degree of advocacy is reflecting how much a writer is trying to persuade the reader of their position. And a writer with a high degree of advocacy is more interested in convincing the reader than exploring different possibilities. The other hands writer with a low degree of advocacy is more interested in exploring different possibilities that and convincing the reader and in between these two extremes, is a writer with a moderate degree of advocacy, who was interested in both exploring different possibilities, and convincing the reader of their position.
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And ideology has a play in this ideology, the worldview that informs a writer his understanding of the issue at hand, or the understanding that is possessed or emitted by a piece of rhetoric. In any case, this includes a set of values, beliefs, and assumptions that are brought to a text and then are part of the text become part of the text. In this sense, ideology, you can think of it as the deep structure of a text, while for analogy sake, angle of vision is more like the surface structure. Alright, so moving on to opportunities for rebuttal. These reflect the degree to which a writer is open to opposing points of view, to which the text possesses a degree of openness to opposition. A writer with high opportunities for a bottle or a text with high opportunities for rebuttal is interested in exploring different perspectives and open to the possibility that they are it may be wrong. At the other end of that is a writer or a text was low opportunities for rebuttal, which means basically not interested in exploring different perspectives not open to the possibility that there it might be wrong. And in between these two extremes, just like we saw with degree of advocacy, is a writer or text, some rhetorical entity, with a moderate opportunity for rebuttal. Does moderate degree and remember now we're in opportunities for rebuttal, this moderate degree, may be interested in exploring different perspectives, but isn't really that open to being wrong to the possibility that they may be wrong. And that is radio. I hope you found that useful. The idea of the audience positioning model. This is really useful for trying to understand how a writer or a text take into account that potential audience and their likely reaction to the text. And I get it, it seems complicated, it may seem a bit complicated, at first with practice and understanding of this model will make it easier to interpret the way a writer is reacting to the reader and what the reader considers to be possible objections, which can give you great insight into the implicit and explicit agendas of both the writer and the text. So remember, we started this episode, saying that it was about angle of vision writers identity. And we've definitely talked a lot about that. But how about some specific productive takeaway questions that we can ask? All right, here they are. And I've got four of them for you. And then some applications for them. So here's the questions. Who is the writer and what is their profession, background and expertise? Who's the writer and what is their profession background and expertise? Next we've got how does the writers Personal history, education, ethnicity, age, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, political leaning any of that? How does it or does it at all influence the angle of vision? Be very careful when answering this question be very, very careful. Because really, you're asking how does the writers identity influence the angle of vision? And may very well. Remember, though, objective, objective, objective, objective, stay objective. Okay. Next question, what is emphasized? And what is omitted in this text? This might require you to do some mental gymnastics because in asking what is emphasized and what is omitted? I think for me anyway, this is kind of tough to grapple with, because we're saying that we're considering the text for what it says, which is obvious, but considering what it says in relation to what it does not say, or does not acknowledge or seem to represent, if we can say that there are certain commonplace categories of representation that are socially or at least contextually, somewhere, wherever that is. So yeah, that's that's a tough one, though, what is emphasized? And what is omitted in the text? And then finally, the last question, how much does the writers angle of vision dominate the text?
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How much does the writers angle of vision dominate the text? Or there's probably a number of variations permutations of ways that you can ask these questions. So, you know, you're not just confined to saying, How much does the writers angle of vision dominate the text? You could also ask, to what extent is the text dominated by a certain angle of vision? Right? That's a that's a variation. That's a permutation of the original question. Now, what about applying these questions? When we're trying to figure out who the writer is, and what their profession background and expertise is, were talking a lot about are they a scholar? Are they a researcher, scientist, policymaker or politician, professional journalists, citizen blogger, that kind of thing, you know? Now when we ask how does the writers personal history education at this at the age class, sexual orientation, gender identity, political leaning influence the angle of vision? We don't necessarily have to come up with an answer. You're not obligated to answer the question just because the question exists. But should you find something that has an influence that you can make an argument has an influence on the angle of vision? You might think about things like affiliations? Are they affiliated with any with any publications that may be typically considered leaning one way or another? Or, or refusing to lean at all? You know, that that's a possibility, too, as far as I'm concerned? And the next question, applying it, what does emphasize what's omitted? We've sort of sort of already talked about this. But in application, this might look like, is there advocation for a certain stance? Or are they adopting a more inquiry based mode? It's that kind of thing. Is persuasion the ultimate goal? Or is persuasion even on the table? And if it is, is it just there as a possibility of a focus on inquiry, a focus on the process, rather than trying to prove something that's already determined at the outset? And then finally, thanks for hanging in there, by the way. Finally, when we ask how much does the writers angle of vision dominate the text? or to what extent is the text dominated by a particular angle of vision? In application, you might ask something very similar to what we talked about in the previous question, what's emphasized what's omitted? What points of view and pieces of evidence are not seen by this writer. Similarly, what points of view and pieces of evidence are seen are most visibly given roles on the stage, so to speak, if you will. I hope you found this episode helpful. As always, thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening. Love, love doing these podcasts. Students can't wait to see you in class, everybody else, whoever you may be. Have a good day. Have a good night. Enjoy it all. And we'll see you back here. Next time Fraley out a Shazam
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