English and Literature

ENGL 101:Explication and Tone: Tone for Meaning- Truth Behind the Story
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin’s 

Your opportunity to practice the first literary concept we discussed in our course, tone (tone of voice). Your task here is to explicate your reading material by focusing on narrator’s narration and the writer’s intention behind this narration.

For instance, in Maupassant’s “Necklace,” we have a 3^rd person impersonal narrator whose tone complicates our evaluation of the story’s female character, Loisel. The narrator’s humorous, witty, and mocking tone at the beginning (“as if by a mistake of destiny”) quickly positions the readers above Loisel, leading us to judge her vanity and fantasy with a sense of superiority. However, the narrator also maintains a sympathetic tone of voice towards Loisel and effectively reveals the social forces and restrictions that influence and thereby justify Loisel’s obsession for looks and vanity: “since with women there is neither caste nor rank: and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of family and birth” (34). By looking more closely into the narrator’s use of words, perceptions, and tone and voice, we learn to situate Loisel and her vanity in a larger social context. As a result, we evaluate not only her character itself, but her relationship with the society and how her environment shapes her.

Please conduct a close reading/explication on one of the texts we cover in our class. First, identity the kind of narrator you have in your reading–3^rd person, 1^st person, or 2^nd person? Once you familiarize yourself with the narrator, please identify narrator’s tone and interrogate what kind of perceptions (narrator’s point of view) you find through the narratorial tone. Ultimately, please discuss how the narrator’s narration shapes your reading experience and your own perceptions toward the events and characters. How do the narratorial tone and any other aspect of narration reveal important authorial intentions and messages? In short, you should do the followings for a successful completion of your first essay assignment:

1. Present your thesis statement in the introduction—narrator’s narration (tone, description, setting, characterization, etc) + authorial intention behind this narration (“Maupassant’s narrator in “Necklace” has a tone of voice that is simultaneously humorous, mocking, critical, and yet sympathetic. This tone of voice is effective to reveal the complex relationship between society and women. Maupassant, through the narrator’s complex and varying tone, illustrates how society’s expectations towards female beauty shape Loisel’s vanity and fantasy. In doing so, Maupassant urges his readers to evaluate Loisel more sympathetically in a larger social context, rather than focusing on her individual traits that might shed negative light on her”)
2. Conduct a close reading on your text–pay attention to the ways in which narrator introduces scenes, characters, and events. Based on your analysis of the narration, investigate how narrator’s manner of telling conveys specific perceptions about the story (authorial intention) and shapes your reading experience and evaluations of the text.
3. You will have to engage with textual evidence to prove and support your explication.

Rhetorical analysis paper will be modeled in class.  This paper will examine the grammatical structure and rhetorical effectiveness of a selection of written text.  Papers will be assessed for application of grammatical concepts studied as well as the analysis of the rhetorical effect and worldview of the structures.  Papers may further examine ways in which the analysis could help in the teaching of or writing about the content area under examination.  Students may approach the paper(s) in any way that makes sense for their writing journey, projected career path or personal goals.  (100 points)  (CO 2.1-2.4, 3.3)

There are two approaches to the assignments.

1) The first takes a representative chunk of the student’s own writing for analysis. You will identify problematic areas within the selected passage and analyze them using their understanding of grammatical terms and concepts required in class. The analysis will also include a synthesis of these problematic areas and suggest prioritized steps to take to improve the selected passage overall. Finally, a revision of the selected passage will be provided along with a brief discussion of how these changes have improved the overall effectiveness and rhetorical impact of the passage. This approach will likely include a page overview that discusses goals, approaches, and provides a roadmap of how areas will be identified and organized within the analysis. For example, you may wish to organize around categories of issues (careless errors, punctuation problems, sentence structure issues, word choice considerations, cohesion and organization, etc.) The body of the paper will be the analysis itself. That section will likely depend the number of problems and the depth of analysis. A reasonable ratio might be a page analysis to two pages of writing, and a very. The conclusion will likely also be page. Students taking this approach may also wish to attach evidence of sentence diagramming or other more kinesthetic approaches to data gathering and analysis. (For example a scanned or electronic copy of the paper showing evidence of the student’s ability to identify subject verb pairs, main versus subordinate clauses and so forth.

Advantages: working with one’s own writing will allow for immediate application and potential improvements. Using this approach pares very nicely to analysis of pure writing, perhaps lessening the burden to approach rhetorical analysis from multiple perspectives.

Disadvantages: it may be more difficult to develop ideas about how to make an infected paper rhetorically effective than it is to look at good writing and identify what makes it rhetorically effective.

2) the second approach is to take an example of exceptionally good, effective writing (likely from a published author or famous text) and analyze the rhetorical features that make it as active as it is. This paper would also begin with an introduction outlining the findings, methodology, and organization of the discussion. Analysis would be similarly proportional to the number of pages in the selected text and exhibit significant depth of understanding of grammatical/rhetorical concepts covered in the course.  Conclusions will perhaps situates be that the rhetorical elements in the impact the particular piece has had on audiences over the years, and/or may derive ideas for how to improve students own writing (i.e. things that this writer as well now you don’t, or things that you would like to try from your own writing they may not have thought to use before.

Advantages: This approach allows you to focus on good habits rather than identifying poor ones. A well-chosen passage here is likely to provide more readily identifiable “meet” for analysis then perhaps student writing will. This approach may also allow the student to examine carefully what good writing looks like within their personal discipline.

Disadvantages: This approach puts the burden of application more heavily on the student’s shoulders for subsequent writing. It does not provide the “improve as you go” advantage of option one

Link to Article: www.ipedr.com/vol33/030-ICLMC2012-L10042.pdf

Write a critical reflection on a film with elements relevant to our class, such as leadership, teams, persuasion, or ethics.  What does the film say about one of these concepts?  Do you agree with that message?  How does the film add to what we’ve read or discussed in class?

Do not simply describe the film or give a plot summary.  Reflect on it.  Question it.  Challenge it.  Is the film making a point about one or more of our class topics or concepts?  Do you agree with it?  Treat the film as an argument that requires a rebuttal.