Peer Review, Digital Humanities Style

Lindsay IllichCurry College

Word Clouds

visual representations of texts in which the frequency of word usage determines the size of each word used in the text (excluding stop words)

What can word clouds help students see?

• Word clouds may reveal high-level concerns in an essay, such as purpose, focus, and method

• Word clouds can sometimes point to sentence-level concerns, especially word choice issues

Essay #1 Rhetorical Analysis

For this assignment, you will write a 3-5 page rhetorical analysis of either Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail" or Brenden Lorber's "Why Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won: A Poet's Report From the Trenches.”

What is a rhetorical analysis?Simply, a rhetorical analysis analyzes rhetorical effects. Consider Aristotle's definition of rhetoric: "The ability, in each particular case, to recognize the available means of persuasion." In other words, rhetoric is a skill we use to unify others and to build consensus. When you perform a rhetorical analysis, you discuss how a rhetor achieves certain effects (think of "effects" in the same way it's used in the term "special effects"). For example, you may consider word choice, different appeals the rhetor used, imagery (to name only a few). How did these elements work to unify others and build consensus?

1. Informing your reader with evidence and key facts is the most influential way to unify your audience so people can join the movement or even create remorseful feelings.

2. This connection of noticing something is wrong is a clear way of unification rather forcing an argument upon me that I may not agree with till I know more information.

3. His way of saying things compared to Brendon Lorber’s way are actually opposite and both have different affects.

4. Some examples to me is that demanding anything in life is a hard way to come by when generosity is the best way to get your point across.

5. An Invading Army also doesn’t sound to welcoming for me because it’s just not the best way of comparing yourself so early in paragraph one.

6. The reason why Martin Luther King was so successful was because he presented his thoughts in the nicest way possible, through positive and courteous tone.

7. Attacking anything when trying to make a change in a situation is no way to resolve anything.

8. Lorber presented himself in a way that was hard to realize where he was actually getting at.

Visual Analytics in the Composition Classroom:

• Reed-Kellogg Diagrammer

• Juxta – tracking the evolution of drafts, especially for portfolio reflection