Notes for January 14

Common places and attitudes

I. Attitudes are according to Fishbein and Azjen (1975): “a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object” (Frymier and Nadler 22).

A. Attitudes provide a conceptual lens to see ideologies operating in discourse: Ideology is a “pattern or set of ideas, assumptions, beliefs, values, or interpretations of the world by which a culture or group operates” (Foss, Rhetorical Criticism 2nd ed., 291).

B. Attitudes function in five ways (Katz, 1960).

1. Attitudes reveal knowledge, what people know and believe about their world.

2. Attitudes reveal values: when we express our view of the world we are also giving expression to our values.

3. Attitudes are utilitarian: we develop attitudes that benefit us by allowing us to avoid negative consequences and achieve positive outcomes.

4. Attitudes have a social-adjustive function (Smith, Bruner, and White, 1956); we hold attitudes to better relate to those around us.

5. Finally, attitudes have an ego-defensive function, which means that we develop attitudes toward people, events, and objects that help us make sense of who we are and then protect that self or “save face.”

C. Crowley and Hawhee suggest that “using common topics and commonplaces to invent arguments” (140) requires that we pay attention to these different elements operating in the discourse.

1. Graff and Birkenstein suggest in They Say/I Say: “It is generally best to summarize the ideas you’re responding to briefly, at the start of your text, and to delay detailed elaboration until later” (19).

2. They have several templates for accomplishing this task: pp. 21-23.

D. Letters to the editor are brief 150-200 words, they make a clear claim at the start of the letter, the audience is the general public (newspaper and online readers), and the goal is to get at the common places around different issues reported in the news.

Examples: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestvoices/2010653078_honoringanotherfallenofficerkentmundell.html