🔮 OVERVIEW

The assignments in ENG 120 ask you to critically think and write about how social, cultural, economic, and political realities influence, shape, and/or challenge individuals and communities. You’ll begin this course by composing a Discourse Community Narrative (Unit 1), which asks you to reflect upon your experiences as a member or observer of a group and to consider how language mediates the values, goals, and behaviors of a community. Through this process, you’ll focus on how words and phrases can express additional layers of meaning about a community, and begin to form the basis of a research project that you’ll pursue throughout the semester. After examining discourse, you’ll conduct a Rhetorical Analysis of a Cultural Artifact (Unit 2) to analyze and articulate the relationship that exists between communal identity and the cultural artifacts that represent it, artifacts that can be seen, touched, or otherwise sensed. You’ll interpret them as symbols and then analyze their rhetorical impact within the community based on factors that complicate ethos, pathos, and logos. Building on this, you’ll finish with Ethnographic Research (Unit 3) on your selected community. You’ll begin this assignment by conducting primary research or “field work,” observing social or digital spaces inhabited by the community and interpreting your findings to come up with a research hypothesis. You’ll supplement your primary research with secondary research, peer-reviewed sources from library research, to critically analyze the social dynamic in the community. In addition to homework you’ll post on Slack, prewriting worksheets, and collaborative writing and revision in Google Docs, you’ll initially write two phases of each essay, followed by a third phase/revision of each for the Final Portfolio.

📲 SLACK POSTS

Length: Refer to specific instructions that will be posted to Slack #homework in the weeks when homework is due
Schedule: Fridays by 5pm; refer to the calendar for specific deadlines

Many of the prewriting exercises, discussion threads, and social activities for our class will take place on Slack #general or #homework. The instructions will indicate how many posts and replies you’re required to make in a given exercise. Your posts and replies should be substantive, thoughtful, and curious. Avoid simplistic cookie-cutter posts or replies that simply agree or disagree, point out what you like about the original post, or praise the original poster for being insightful. Instead, use these posts to figure things out, to crowdsource, to try to help build on what your peers are thinking-through, to offer feedback, or to team up if you’re working through similar claims or receive similar feedback on writing exercises. 

🤝🏾 POST-CONFERENCE REFLECTIONS

Length: ~500 words minimum

After each workshop, you’ll write a reflection letter to me summarizing the feedback you were given by your peers, identifying what you prioritized for revision and why, explaining which assignment parameters you think you met and which you think you need to keep striving towards. You may also reflect on the reasoning behind the decisions you made in revising your draft for submission to me: any regrets or difficulties you dealt with, your attitude towards the assignment and feedback, any burdens of college or life that crept into your work, and so on. This letter will serve as a lens through which I can view the sum total of your thinking and writing for the unit more transparently and compassionately.

📖 UNIT 1: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY NARRATIVE

📍 INTRODUCTION & PURPOSE

This assignment asks you to think about and analyze the language of a discourse community, a group of individuals who share an identity and a broadly agreed upon set of common goals that are realized through the use of a specific, specialized language, or lexis. You will consider how language locally determines (and sustains) community membership, goals, and values through expressing multiple meanings: the obvious subject matter of the lexis, and the underlying connotations or tones that form or reinforce communal bonds. In doing so, you will come to better understand the variances that exist between communities and how communities require speakers and writers to adhere to specific expectations around slang, stigma, appropriation, tone, punctuation, emoji, and so on. For a face-to-face ethnography, you might consider how members of a gym community speak to and interact with one another in the weight room, or how they’re informed by the language of social media, magazines, and so on, and what their use of language tells the reader about the community. For a virtual ethnography, you might investigate how a word like “karmawhores” on r/AITA distinguishes authentic users from trolls and polices community boundaries. The discourse community narrative tells a story about the community in a way that allows you to think critically and question what you think you know even if you don’t necessarily have answers to those questions. You can think of a narrative essay as not necessarily “proving a point” but exploring complex ideas or thoughts about oneself and about how language functions within and for groups.

📍 REQUIREMENTS

• Select a discourse community
• Develop a controlling idea
• Develop a clear organizational pattern/structure
• Use MLA format (double-spaced, 12-point font, 1” margins, Times New Roman)

📍 LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Describe a discourse community and your own membership in it
• Explain the ways in which the community determines membership through language and communication
• Articulate and analyze the goals, values, and language of the community and one’s relationship to those ideals
• Explore the local interactions between community members and the communication that takes place locally, nationally, and/or globally
• Build a framework for analyzing communities rhetorically, digitally, and ethnographically
• Write with community peers in mind in addition to an audience of your classmates, professor, and Writing Center tutors

📜 PHASE 1

Length: At least 1¶ community introduction + 1-2¶ controlling idea + 2-3 units of lexis that led you to your claim
Due: Fri, 2/12 at 5pm

At minimum, this phase of drafting should include your controlling idea or claim, which will essentially be the hypothesis you make about the role of a specific aspect of language use in your community. That is, how does a type of speech sustain the identity of the community, or reinforce hierarchy, or make new users feel welcome or unwelcome? What values does it imply and reinforce? Your claim should apply specifically and uniquely to the subreddit you choose. This phase should begin to set up a paper that will analyze specific words as evidence of your claim.

📜 PHASE 2

Length: At least ~800 words (~3pp.)
Due: Fri, 2/26 at 5pm on D2L

At minimum, this draft must include a substantively revised and improved controlling idea or claim that has an essential relationship to the lexis and values of the subreddit. This claim should be substantiated through at least 3-4 examples of how community priorities or values present themselves in speech patterns on the subreddit. This phase should approach the length of a full draft, and should include evidence (lexis) and analysis (why/how the lexis constructs community priorities or values). Dedicate 1-2¶s to analyzing each word/phrase. Try to incorporate narrative elements as well.

📜 PHASE 3

Length: ~1000-1200 words (~4-5pp.)
Due: Sun, 5/2 at midnight, as part of the Final Portfolio

Your formal draft must include both narrative and discourse analysis. It should meet the word count by now and must account for the Essay 1 General Feedback, specific comments I gave you in writing or in one-on-one conferences, and comments you received on your peer review forms. 

🔏 WRITING CENTER

While you can use the Writing Center during any point of the brainstorming and writing process, in past semesters, writers working on this assignment have found it useful to have sessions about:

• Brainstorming examples of language use in the discourse community that they can then analyze in the essay
• Ensuring that the examples of language use demonstrate specific values of the discourse community they selected
• Balancing the use of narrative and analysis
• Negotiating transitions between their own personal experience and that of the discourse community on a national/global scale

🖼️ UNIT 2: RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF A CULTURAL ARTIFACT

📍 INTRODUCTION & PURPOSE

This assignment asks you to conduct a rhetorical analysis of a cultural artifact relevant and significant to this group. You can think of a cultural artifact as an object or image that the community associates with itself or uses to represent itself, an object or image frequently referenced, viewed, shared, or otherwise used as a group identity marker. For example, a student examining a DC comics fandom community might examine Hasbro Batman figures, while a student looking at r/SkincareAddiction might examine a frequently posted meme about retinol. You’ll identify communal values that are represented through these associative artifacts, objects that not only embody cultural values but also function as tools that shape how community members see and understand themselves, how they interact and engage with other communities, and why they have elected to build relationships with specific groups of people. In doing so, you will gain insight regarding how arguments are made visually and explore the connection that exists between your cultural identity and how that influences the manner in which you read and thus make meaning of the world. 

This assignment is designed to extend your understanding of rhetoric from the textual to the sensory, meaning the visual and tactile. It asks you to act as archeologists and historians, mining a cultural artifact for implicit symbolic meanings embedded in its explicit appearance. You’ll explore how the artifacts you choose embody issues of communal identity and make visual assertions about the community’s values and goals. You’ll also consider the wider sociocultural ramifications of these texts, given their semi-public or public circulation. As such, this genre of writing gives you the opportunity to understand how meaning and cultural identity are developed or constructed through textual and visual discourses.

📍 REQUIREMENTS

• Define and understand visual rhetoric as a framework for how communities make meaning about themselves and inform and persuade community members and non-members
• Select, describe, and analyze three visual artifacts’ target audiences, rhetorical purposes, and spatial-visual designs
• Describe the cultural, social, or political impacts of the visual rhetoric employed in the visual artifacts
• Examine how individual identity determines how visual artifacts are interpreted
• Using an expository method, continue building a critical-analytic framework for later projects that entail blogging and ethnographic methods

📍 LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Identify significant cultural artifact or genre of cultural artifact (e.g., one object, or two memes) in the discourse community  
• Develop a complex controlling idea
• Create a clear organizational pattern and structure
• Describe and analyze the composition of the artifact and its visual rhetoric and cultural significance
• Describe and analyze the cultural, social, political, and/or personal impact of artifacts’ visual rhetoric and cultural significance
• Use MLA format (double-spaced, 12-point font, 1” margins, Times New Roman)

📜 PHASE 1

Length: At least 1¶ community introduction + 1-2¶ controlling idea + 1¶ (per artifact) describing the artifact(s) that led you to your claim
Due: Fri, 3/12 at 5pm

At minimum, this phase of drafting should include your controlling idea or claim, which will consist of the artifact(s) you select, and the conclusions you draw about how it rhetorically and/or visually represents the community: that is, how do the significant rhetorical factors around the artifacts influence how the artifact is received and used by communicator(s)/audience(s) in the community? How do visual (or other sensory) aspects symbolize the values in the community? (You’ll develop your visual analysis in future drafts, but in brief, visual analysis means identifying and interpreting visual features as representative of cultural meanings. Look for pop culture references or connotations about audience demographics or social expectations in the visual features you identify.) While your claim does not have to point to both rhetorical and visual analysis, your essay will ultimately contain both, so try to formulate a controlling idea that allows you to engage in both kinds of analytical work.

📜 PHASE 2

Length: At least ~1000 words (~4pp.)
Due: Fri, 3/26 at 5pm

As you continue to improve and explore your controlling idea, this phase of drafting should engage in both rhetorical analysis and analysis of at least 2-3 visual features of each artifact with regards to the social, cultural, and communal meanings each of those features symbolize. In doing so, you’ll consider how elements or qualities of the image/object accumulate to give rise to more comprehensive visual arguments about the community.

📜 PHASE 3

Length: ~1200-1500 words (~5-6pp.)
Due: Sun, 5/2 at midnight, as part of the Final Portfolio

Your formal draft must contain both rhetorical and visual analysis. It should meet the word count by now and must account for the Essay 2 General Feedback, specific comments I gave you in writing or in one-on-one conferences, and comments you received on your peer review forms. 

🔏 WRITING CENTER

While you can use the Writing Center during any point of the brainstorming and writing process, in past semesters, writers working on this assignment have found it useful to have sessions about:

• Ensuring they are analyzing the sources rather than summarizing them
• Identifying the audience as well as its values
• Developing a controlling idea/thesis (this is a step that usually occurs after doing some preliminary analysis of the images)
• Brainstorming ways in which the rhetoric used in the images has cultural, social, or political impacts

👪 UNIT 3: ETHNOGRAPHY

📍 INTRODUCTION & PURPOSE

Ethnography is the study of people and their culture by way of observation from within specific communities or environments. In this assignment, you’ll critically observe and write about a predominant, significant, and/or defining social dynamic in the community. This assignment serves as an introduction to qualitative research and is designed to help you effectively integrate primary and secondary research into your writing. You’ll learn to trust yourselves as thinkers, writers, and researchers, exploring and interpreting what you notice in your fieldwork instead of deferring to what has already been said on the topic.

Unlike our previous assignments, this essay requires two distinct steps: primary research, conducted through observation and written down in the form of field notes; and secondary research, or library research. In the first stage, you’ll write field notes in which you’ll:

• Observe a specific community
• Produce and reflect on notes from extended observations that consider how the community socializes, interacts, develops relationships, in physical or virtual spaces, or how the digital space structures the ways in which members interact
• Identify patterns that yield a controlling idea or claim that will steer further secondary research

In these notes, you’ll describe what took place through rich, detailed description of dialogue, members present and the demographics of membership, popularity and hierarchy, and so on, and then you’ll begin to analyze those descriptions by considering the significance of these moments, interactions, exchanges, events, and their consequences.

In the second stage, you’ll conduct secondary research, develop a thesis statement that responds to their initial research hypothesis, and synthesize scholarship on the topic with your field notes/observations to support your position or the paper’s argument. As a social science genre, your ethnographic research paper will use the following subheadings (known as an “IMRAD” structure):

• Introduction (~1-2¶): Introduce the community, and then consider: What tension or interpretive problem necessitates this study? What pattern did you notice in your data, and what conclusion did you draw about it (i.e., your claim)? What do readers need to know to understand your specific claims? 
• Methods and Ethical Considerations (~1¶): How was the study done (e.g., nonparticipant observation, participant observation, online interviews, etc.)? What ethical problems did you run into (e.g., did your participation affect how people behaved; did you use anonymity for interviewees or case studies and why, etc.)? How did you address them in your study?
• Results (~3-4¶): Your primary research recorded in your field notes goes here, but only aspects of observations that relate back to your claim and relevant central themes. In other words, what were the most significant parts of your field observations with regards to your claim?
• Analysis (~5-6¶): What patterns did you notice in your primary research? How do those patterns lead you to your claim? How does secondary research support the sub-claims you’re drawing? You’ll introduce and apply 2 secondary sources in this section (~2¶ per source).
• Discussion (~1-2¶): This section operates like a conclusion: What’s the significance of your findings? What new knowledge does this provide to the field?

To accomplish this style of writing, you have to find a balance between primary and secondary sources. You’re not simply presenting your observations; instead, you’re analyzing them to make claims about them. Through this process, you’ll engage with voices in the dialogue of the discipline and will put forth unique ideas and contribute to the conversation in meaningful ways.

📍 REQUIREMENTS

• Articulate a clear, complex controlling idea
• Implement a clear organizational pattern and structure using subheadings
• Include observations as evidence—only aspects of observations that relate to central themes should be included, as noted above
• Integrate 3 secondary sources into analysis (1 “B” type, 2 “A” type)
• Include a Works Cited page
• Use MLA or APA format (double-spaced, 12-point font, 1” margins, Times New Roman)

📍 LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Demonstrate an understanding of qualitative, ethnographic research
• Conduct primary and secondary research
• Synthesize primary and secondary research
• Apply rhetorical strategies and research methods from ENG 110 and ENG 120 for a final, culminating project that prepares students for ENG 201

📜 FIELD NOTES

Length: 3 Field Notes, at least ~300-500 for each
Due: Fri, 3/26 at 5pm

Your primary research for your ethnographic research assignment consists of observing the community you’re studying. You’ll record this “fieldwork” in 3 field notes, with each entry being a minimum of 300-500 words. Specificity is of the essence. You’ll end up with writer’s block when writing your essay if your notes are overly broad and vague, whereas more vivid, detailed notes with rich description will generate more complex controlling ideas. It’s the difference between these two notes:

• Vague: “The same user posted 2 memes in a thread about distance learning.”
• Specific: “In a thread about distance learning where 6 different participants contributed, a user who self-identified as male posted 2 ableist memes that used images of mentally disabled children to indicate his intellectual superiority to students who have difficulty with online class.”

You may find it easier to take quick notes while observing and then craft more formal entries when it’s time to submit them on Slack #homework. 

For this assignment, you’ll review 3 separate threads (meaning opening posts and all the replies and comments to it) in your community for at least 30 minutes each. You’ll take detailed, specific notes on the social interactions and behaviors you notice in each thread. Then, consider the following questions for each thread: 

• What cultural community will you be observing?
• What are the values, goals, ideologies, beliefs, desires, and needs of this community?
• How do they connect with each other?
• How is power distributed among members?
• What does intimacy look like in this community?
• How do you suspect members will behave with each other in a variety of online settings?
• Which behavior patterns are most interesting, problematic, or seemingly inexplicable? 
• What potential does this direction have in shaping your secondary research for this assignment and producing an argument of consequence? 

Each Field Note will consist of your observations and answers about one thread. Choose a new thread for each field note, and choose different threads from the ones you’ve been working with for your previous essays.

All field notes are due as a Google Doc or MS Word doc attachment in Slack #homework on 3/26 at 5pm.

📜 PHASE 1

Length: ~800 words (~3pp.)
Due: Fri, 4/9 at 5pm

This draft should include: your Introduction section, in which you’ll introduce your community and your controlling idea about the predominant set of social dynamics or behaviors that characterize your subreddit (a hypothesis you arrive at based on your field notes); your Methods and Ethical Considerations section, a brief summary of how you made your observations and what (if any) ethical issues arose; and your Results section, which will consist of the most significant notes from your field research reorganized and rewritten in academic style and paragraph format, without analysis yet.

📜 PHASE 2

Length: At least ~1000 words (~4pp.)
Due: Fri, 4/23 at 5pm

In addition to incorporating feedback from workshops, your primary task in this essay will be to analyze the significant field notes you selected for inclusion in your Results section) in the Analysis section. You’ll also integrate 2 secondary sources in the Analysis section, appropriately introducing and summarizing each before explaining how they elaborate on or add to your controlling idea. You’ll also include your Discussion section, which operates like a short conclusion in which you discuss the larger ramifications of your research, other avenues of inquiry, or potential applications to other fields of research.

📜 PHASE 3

Length: ~1500-2000 words (~6-8pp.)
Due: Sun, 5/2 at midnight, as part of the Final Portfolio

Your formal draft should meet the word count by now and must account for the Essay 3 General Feedback, specific comments I gave you in writing or in one-on-one conferences, and comments you received on your peer review forms. 

🔏 WRITING CENTER

While you can use the Writing Center during any point of the brainstorming and writing process, in past semesters, writers working on this assignment have found it useful to have sessions about:

• Selecting the most effective digital location in which to conduct observations
• Selecting a focus for those observations
• Using sources to critically examine the data they’ve collected
• Ensuring that you’re analyzing data rather than simply presenting it

📁FINAL PORTFOLIO

📍 INTRODUCTION & PURPOSE

The final portfolio consists of all three Phase 3 drafts: Essay 1 Phase 3, Essay 2 Phase 3, and Essay 3 Phase 3. These drafts are your opportunity to demonstrate that you have become versed in the skills we’ve been working on in each unit, and that you’re able to revise your drafts such that they exceed the minimum requirements. In this assignment, you’ll critically review and reflect on your previous submissions and will practice using oral and written feedback from peer review, feedback conferences, and the General Feedback posts to further improve your drafts. While Phase 3 drafts may remain imperfect, the goal is to produce work that approaches the quality of a final draft for each unit.

You will submit your Final Portfolio to D2L Classes as a single file, in Word (.doc/.docx) or PDF (.pdf) format. Do not include your earlier drafts in this file.

📍 REQUIREMENTS

• Perform all the skills from Units 1-3
• Appropriately identify weaknesses in your drafts
• Address higher-order concerns discussed in General Feedback posts, conferences, and peer review
• Edit for lower-order concerns like spelling and grammar

📜 LETTER OF REFLECTION

Length: ~500 words
Due: Sun, 5/2 at midnight

Your Final Portfolio should include a letter of reflection, in which you consider the writing habits and practices you acquired during the semester. You might discuss the challenges of each essay, the specific skills you feel you’ve acquired, or any changes you’ve noticed in your writing process. You  may also reflect on the reasoning behind the decisions you made in revising each draft: any regrets or difficulties you dealt with, your attitude towards the assignment and feedback, any burdens of college or life that crept into your work, and so on.

📜 ESSAY 1 PHASE 3

Length: ~1000-1200 words (~4-5pp.)
Due: Sun, 5/2 at midnight, as part of the Final Portfolio

Your formal draft must include both narrative and discourse analysis. It should meet the word count by now and must account for the Essay 1 General Feedback, specific comments I gave you in writing or in one-on-one conferences, and comments you received on your peer review forms.

📜 ESSAY 2 PHASE 3

Length: ~1200-1500 words (~5-6pp.)
Due: Sun, 5/2 at midnight, as part of the Final Portfolio

Your formal draft must contain both rhetorical and visual analysis. It should meet the word count by now and must account for the Essay 2 General Feedback, specific comments I gave you in writing or in one-on-one conferences, and comments you received on your peer review forms. 

📜 ESSAY 3 PHASE 3

Length: ~1500-2000 words (~6-8pp.)
Due: Sun, 5/2 at midnight, as part of the Final Portfolio

Your formal draft should meet the word count by now and must account for the Essay 3 General Feedback, specific comments I gave you in writing or in one-on-one conferences, and comments you received on your peer review forms. You must use subheadings and sections, appropriately incorporate and synthesize secondary sources, and correctly cite your sources.