Communications Question

For this third Skills Building paper we are focusing on the strategic use of language. While our class is first and foremost an analysis class, constructing strategic pieces of rhetoric helps to develop a better sense of analysis. As such, you are tasked with writing a reply to a blogger. The challenge for you will be to keep the reply brief but argumentatively sound. You will also have to justify your choice in the second section of the paper.

To guide you in this paper, I would suggest reviewing the chapter on language and argumentation.

Link To The Required Textbook For Chapter Reviewing

You will select a political blog with which you disagree and write a reply to the blogger. Your response must provide good reasons for your opposition. This is a direct answer to the author of the blog, something you post back to them. This reply should be no longer than 400 words.

In addition to the actual blog response, you need to write a strategy paper in which you explain why you chose your argumentation and language choices. Be sure to apply class concepts.

The key to responding to messages with which you disagree is to give good arguments, relying primarily upon the rhetorical appeal of logic, but also bolstering your credibility (ethos) and employing some pathos to capture the attention of blog gladiators (those who actively participate in the “blogosphere”) and voyeurs (those who lurk but do not post).

___The blog reply should be no longer than 400 words. There is no minimum or maximum for the strategy portion of the paper you should be sure to provide a reasonably thorough explanation of your choices

___ Double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman

___ The blog entry that triggered your response is placed at the end of your paper after your bibliography (not counted in the page limit)

___ Your response to the blogger clearly expresses disagreement with the entry

___ Your primary approach is logical

___ You use a strategy to bolster your credibility

___ You use a strategy to gain attention through pathos

___ Your argument clearly uses evidence (statistics, expert opinion, real examples, literal analogies, etc.)

___ Your strategy paper clearly describes the strategies employed in the response and ties them back to the course theory.