I’ve finished reviewing your Essay 2 Phase 2 drafts, and scores have been posted to Gradebook on D2L. As before with Essay 1, this feedback post speaks to issues I noticed across 90% of the papers I received in all 3 of my classes. The items below are pretty common in Unit 2 drafts—partly because rhetorical analysis can be a difficult, slippery skill to grasp at first, and partly (I think) because Unit 2 falls at the mid-semester mark when you’re overwhelmed with work, life, and other courses, and so it becomes easier to revert to old writing habits or forget to double check yourself against the guidelines, sample work, Unit 2 blog posts and writing tips, and readings and video lectures.

On the note of scores, I want to remind you not to despair or feel discouraged if you received a +. There are certain parameters that must be met for me to see that you’ve acquired the skills we’ve been learning in Unit 2. Also, in the interest of transparency, the + score exists to protect you as well. You can’t revise the Final Portfolio, so receiving a + score if you’re on the cusp and having to revise the draft now means your odds are better of receiving a ★ on the Final Portfolio, which will be graded holistically (meaning all 3 drafts must be ★ for the whole portfolio to receive a ★). Many + scores can be quickly addressed by meeting with me and (most often) making sure that your draft very explicitly links your claims and sub-claims to the particular meta-data around the specific 2 posts you’re looking at. I recommend setting up a meeting with me to figure out how to proceed. (As a side note, we’ll be working on Essay 3 this week so next week is feedback conferences, but you might want to meet with me this week for 15-30 minutes to sort out any outstanding + scores you need to revise.)

To repeat the instructions from the General Feedback – Essay 1 post, I’ve created this list of patterns to help you habituate the ability to identify and address issues in your own writing in the future. You should practice figuring out what applies to you before reaching out to me for any needed clarification. The best way to do that is to go bullet point by bullet point: i.e., read the first bullet point, then read your draft with that bullet point in mind to see if you can catch the issue on your own. If you locate it, make a note in the margin and make an attempt to address it. Repeat this process with the next bullet point, and the next, and the next. I’m here to help you during and after this process in one-on-one meetings!

As a reminder, for ease of revision, I’ve divided the feedback into 2 categories, higher-order and lower-order concerns:

  • Higher-Order Concerns (HOCs) include the most important material in your essay, the “big picture,” macro-level stuff: e.g., the controlling idea; specific connections to your community and the artifacts (words, phrases, values) you identify as exemplary of your claim; development of your explanation of the claim (i.e., “how do I know what I know?”); your analysis of each piece of evidence (i.e., lexis); and so on.
  • Lower-Order Concerns (LOCs) include the less important (but not unimportant!) stuff in your essay, like grammar and mechanics: e.g., spelling, fragments, run-ons, punctuation, sentence rhythm variation, word choice.

And as an overarching comment, always make sure to follow the assignment directions.

HOCs

  • Your claim should point to rhetorical analysis as well as visual analysis. Be aware you may have received a ★ even if your claim was not yet doing this. Your claim must do more than talk about the visual content of the images/object; it must indicate a specific connection to the rhetorical aspects of the posts those artifacts appear in. It should be specific to only 2 images or if you’re examining an object, only 2-3 posts in which the object is referenced. For instance, if your focus is a T-shirt logo, suddenly introducing a set of memes will confuse the reader. In other words, your claim should consider a pattern of context, production, dissemination around the image and how those factors affect the way an image is received: e.g., like how the image of a Spongebob meme on r/TIFU is aimed at the “today I fucked up” audience because it’s posted there but is likely to have the largest effect on people growing up in the early 2000s who would have thus grown up with the show. This is an example of audience and intended audience impacting the way the message is received.
  • You must anchor your claims and sub-claims in rhetorical analysis. This will 9 times out of 10 mean making connections between circulation (the specific number of upvotes and replies) and popularity/lack of popularity in the subreddit and how that popularity or lack thereof leads you to the claim you’re making. It will mean connecting exigence to the reason there might be a communal demand for such an image or meme.
  • Use the expanded rhetorical situation correctly. Exigence tends to be the one that trips students up the most, as it means more than just “reasons,” but circulation means more than just “it’s posted here a lot.” Circulation will necessitate including specific numbers or percentage of type of comment (e.g., 85% upvoted, 65% of comments praised the image, the rest hated it). Exigence is what motivates a rhetor to speak in the first place, both timing and situation: e.g., a pastor delivers a eulogy; the exigence is the event of a funeral and the custom of reflecting on a person’s life at a memorial service.
  • Use the specific metadata of the posts in question. Each image comes from a specific post. I expect that you have the information on how many upvotes/comments the post has (as it may pertain to circulation), the timestamp (as it may pertain to exigence), the number of years the poster was an active Redditor (as it may pertain to communicator), the title of the post (as it may pertain to message/purpose). This assignment is meant to help you form claims out of specific data, so make sure you’re looking at specific data.
  • Unless it’s been approved by me, videos are not allowed.
  • If you’re using a social media post reposted on your subreddit, use the entire post. That is, a reposted Twitter post = the image, the text of the tweet, and the number of likes, retweets, and comments (which indicate circulation on the original platform).
  • Spend a paragraph on each rhetorical aspect you examine. You don’t necessarily have to use all of the factors of the rhetorical star, but likely you’ll use at least 2 for each image. Spend about 1 paragraph apiece. It might help to explicitly name the factors of the rhetorical star you’re examining in the paragraphs where you examine them.
  • Visual analysis is not the same thing as rhetorical analysis, and both must be done in your essay to receive a complete. Refer to Nicotra’s chapter on the expanded rhetorical situation if you still need clarification on what the rhetorical star is.
  • Apply the rhetorical star fully. To fulfill the assignment parameters, you must consider what the artifact is (a meme? a selfie? a professional photograph from a magazine? amateur photographs? fanart?); when it was posted or circulated (which might be significant re: exigence); who the actual audience (subreddit users with that shared interest) and intended audience (users who will most likely “get” the image) is; the purpose of the image; and/or other factors of the rhetorical star and the significance of each of those factors. In other words, how does this rhetorical information affect the way audiences receive and interpret the visual information? That is, a place of original publication of a professional image = how legitimate the image is, which = how much its content is normalized. When considering exigence and date of posting, consider what happened that month/year that might have compelled the image’s production or circulation. An image from a West Elm catalogue posted in r/Homemaking put out in April 2020 that depicts a rustic home office and says “Cabin styles to soothe cabin fever” = a response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has people in many countries working remotely from home (exigence), with a sales-oriented persuasion because it’s an ad, aimed at people with a certain income bracket because it’s West Elm (instead of, say, IKEA or Target).
  • Introduce your images with a 1-paragraph description before you begin your visual analysis and rhetorical analysis. Remember that your reader doesn’t know what your images are. You may include the images if you like, but even if you do, you must still describe them in writing. Only describe the details that are important for your reader to know, for them to be able to follow along with your analysis. To make sure you’re being thorough in your analysis, follow the format suggested in Writing Towards Phase 2. After you have all the analysis down, then you can reorganize if need be.
  • Transitions must reflect a clear and essential connection to the claim. For organizational purposes, it might be best if your transition sentences also signposted which rhetorical or visual factors you planned to focus on in that paragraph. Refer back to the previous posts for additional guidance on signposts and transition sentences.
  • Speculation. Avoid speculating about subredditors’ feelings, reactions, or intentions in creating/posting their images, and avoid speculating about the audience’s feelings. We’re not mind-readers, and this verges on generalization. Instead, focus on what seem like the likeliest effects, and explain why you think those effects are likely by linking it to specific rhetorical/visual evidence.
  • Specificity. Avoid saying “certain types,” “a kind of,” “certain people,” etc. Name the types; always answer the question “what kind?” where it can be asked. Refer to earlier feedback posts for guidance.
  • Balance your analysis. Spend equal space/time on both images. You must emphasize rhetorical analysis over visual analysis.

LOCs

  • Avoid telling me about visual rhetoric or what image analysis is, which is a huge subject and a paper in and of itself. The aim of the assignment isn’t an introduction to visual rhetoric but an application of approaches to visual analysis to the images you’ve selected
  • Avoid talking about your subreddit as a discourse community, which suggests to the reader that your paper is about discourse analysis and not visual communication and rhetorical analysis
  • Reduce the amount of gushing or fanboying/fangirling you do or value judgments you make about your community’s subject (e.g., “JRPGs are amazing and this community is just so great”)
  • Edit for concision and readability! Hemingway App can be useful in a pinch (but don’t over-rely on it).
  • Avoid using a thesaurus, as this muddies your sentences. Repetition of words is preferable to words that have incorrect connotations
  • Avoid making recommendations for improving the image, or suggesting what the creators should have done. If it must be included, save it for a concluding “so what? who cares?” paragraph.