By Jennifer Fletcher For a while now, I’ve found myself struggling to say anything new or insightful about the Aristotelian rhetorical triangle. When I get to the slide with this diagram during a presentation or workshop I’m giving on rhetorical literacy skills, I say something about how all these components–text (logos), audience (pathos), and rhetorContinue reading “From Rhetorical Triangle to Communication Pyramid”
Category Archives: Effective Communication
Paraphrase and Summary: Getting the “They Say” Right
By Jennifer Fletcher In other posts (see here and here), I’ve written about the value of dialogic argumentation as a mainstay of intellectual work. This is the “they say, I say” approach to source-based writing described by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein in their popular little book by the same name. Understanding and responding toContinue reading “Paraphrase and Summary: Getting the “They Say” Right”
Making Someone Wrong
By Jennifer Fletcher Pick a side and prove the other side wrong. In a nutshell, this is what many argument prompts tell students to do. But “making someone wrong”—that is, accusing, shaming, or blaming someone else instead of seeking a win-win solution—rarely serves our best interests in personal relationships or in academic and professional settings. Continue reading “Making Someone Wrong”
Resurrecting Dead Words
By Jennifer Fletcher In Teaching Arguments, I write about an activity I used for many years with my high school and college students: dead word funerals. I first learned about “dead words” when I was a student teacher back in the mid-nineties. At the time, it seemed like a clever and fun way to teachContinue reading “Resurrecting Dead Words”
The Bias Against Bias
By Jennifer Fletcher Students sometimes feel like they can pull a mic drop on other writers by calling them out for their bias. Labeling a writer “biased” is an ethos slam. One Oxford English Dictionary definition describes bias as “prejudice.” Another mentions “slanting” or “distortion.” It’s hard to read for understanding once you’ve decided a text is prejudiced orContinue reading “The Bias Against Bias”
Parlor Crashers
By Jennifer Fletcher Many teachers use Kenneth Burke’s famous parlor metaphor to help their students understand what it means to take a turn in an academic conversation: “Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion tooContinue reading “Parlor Crashers”
Rhetorical Thinking 