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Assignment Guidelines Write a 1-2 page letter to your instructor, in which you analyze the strategies the author uses to persuade the reader to a point of view. Format the document using MLA formatting guidelines, include: course information, page numbers, 12 point font, and double spacing. Use the suggested structure and content suggestions below to complete the assignment. Introduction: You’ll begin with a greeting: “Dear Professor:” Then write a brief 2-3 sentence summary of the Lanehart’s narrative essay, using signal phrases to identify the author and the article.  Consider using the elements of the rhetorical situation as a framework for summarizing. Who is the author, who is she writing to and why.  Toward the end of this brief introduction, you’ll want to include a statement of some kind, a claim that gives your reader a sense of what this essay is about and what you’ll be discussing. In other words, you’ll want to include a thesis statement about Lanehart’s use of appeals. Example: “Though Sonya Lanehart uses all three appeals, logos, ethos, and pathos,  to express a point of view, she relies heavily on two in particular.” Body: The body of your analysis, is the section in which you will break it down for your reader.  Consider the following: What general strategy does Lanehart use to move the reader from one vantage point to the next? In other words, after having read the article what is her overall strategy for shifting the reader to her point of view? Provide specific examples Explain why this example is effective or not What appeals does she rely on most heavily? One way to organize and structure your analysis is to write a paragraph discussing the authors use of each of the appeals. If you were to organize your work in this way, you might for each paragraph, make a mini claim about an appeal. Define your terms. If you are referencing one of Aristotle’s three appeals, then be sure to explain to the reader what this term means. Provide an example. Refer directly to the article and include a quote or describe a section in the article. Explain why this is indeed an example of the appeal and discuss. How does it affect the reader? For example, if she uses an appeal to ethos, such as mentioning her experience, explain how this affects the reader and why is this persuasive? Before you move on to the next paragraph, include a transition sentence, for example, “Another strategy that Lanehart uses is…” Don’t feel compelled to discuss each and every appeal. You may not believe that she uses all of the appeals effectively, and this is fine. If you don’t believe she uses all of the appeals, you might want to mention this early on as part of your main claim (in the introduction.)   Conclusion: This is a chance to give your opinion. Conclusions often answer the question “so what?”  Now that you’ve explained how Lanehart has used strategies to express her point of view. Tell us what you think. Were you swayed by this essay or not, and why? Rhetorical Situation Genre: Analysis Audience: Your Instructor Purpose: To Identify rhetorical strategies Stance: Formal Medium: Electronic/digital Constraints: Length: 1.5 to 2 pages Use MLA to format the paper Avoid commentary and unsupported opinions-this is an analysisDiamond Anniversar y Essays 355
LET THE COPULA BE
sonja l. lanehart, University of Georgia
My fervor for language began when I was in the second grade. I believed
there was only one way to speak correctly, and I was going to do that while
making sure everyone else did also. I corrected people’s language, particularly
my family’s, at every opportunity. I was the militant language midget.
Once, when I was a teenager attending a family function, I remember
asking my relatives, “Why do Black people use be so much?” Not surprisingly,
no one gave a satisfactory answer.
I was a zealous crusader for “good” language. When I went to the
University of Texas (UT), I decided I would become a speech pathologist so
I could teach people to speak “right.” Family conversations about the
language of a well-known former UT football player who had finished his
NFL career and was now working at UT fueled my pursuit of this goal. This
football icon had been notorious in my family for talking “bad.” My family’s
surprise at the improvement in his language after he had completed his
speech degree and become a spokesperson for UT was the final sign I
needed to know that speech pathology was the way I should go. If speech
pathologists could help this football icon speak “good” English, then I
knew I could teach anyone to speak “good” English.
I jumped into my major eager to begin my life of public service for all
those “bad” English users. However, when I took a couple of classes in
English language—“History of the English Language” and “American English”—
my life was forever changed. I realized then that language variation
was not “bad”; it was not a pathology to be cured but a difference to be
celebrated. I learned that language variation represented a history, a
culture, an identity that should not and could not be eradicated. I also
realized I’d spent most of my life believing everything that school and
society told me: smart, successful, intelligent people speak “good” English;
limited, derelict, unintelligent people speak “bad” English. As a speaker of
African American English, I heard that often and with conviction. Black
people used be in the wrong place and said ain’t—something everyone
knew wasn’t in the dictionary and, therefore, couldn’t possibly be a word.
Several years later, I came across a passage in Alice Walker’s The Color
Purple (1982, 183) that exemplified my early prescriptive fervor:
Darlene trying to teach me how to talk. She say US not so hot. A dead country giveaway.
You say US where most folks say WE, she say, and peoples think you dumb.
Colored peoples think you a hick and white folks be amuse. What I care? I ast. I’m
american 356 speech 75.4 (2000)
happy. But she say I feel more happier talking like she talk. . . . Every time I say
something the way I say it, she correct me until I say it some other way. Pretty soon
it feel like I can’t think. . . . Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a
way that feel peculiar to your mind.
I realized I had chosen something peculiar to my mind. I had chosen to
believe the language of my family, my community, was bad and inferior—
meaning my family and my community were inferior. The language is the
people—“the language, only the language” (LeClair 1981, 29), because
“language is the only homeland” (Marshall 1983, 7). I embarked on a new
journey to find and reclaim my homeland. I have gone from one end of the
continuum to the other, and I know it has been a change for the better. My
family still expects me to correct them. I struggle with that because they
believe in me more than themselves.
My mom tells me it’s easy for me to say there’s no “good” or “bad”
English because I know and use “good” English. She believes I don’t know
what it’s like to use only “bad” English in a society that demands that
everyone use “good” English or else. It’s like when rich people tell you
money doesn’t bring happiness. They can say that because they’re rich and
know it from experience. I think my mom and I are both right. Because I
know a language of wider communication but also understand that all
languages are systematic and rule-governed, I can say it doesn’t matter if
you say It bes that way sometime or That’s just the way it is. My mom and others
in my family don’t have the luxury of knowing either.
Since I now research language use in the African American community,
because I am on a lifelong journey of reclamation, affirmation, and
celebration of the language of my family and community, I don’t ask why
black people use be so much (or why they delete it); I just think, “It bes that
way sometime.”
sonja l. lanehart is assistant professor of English and linguistics at the
University of Georgia. She received her doctorate from the University of
Michigan. Her research interests include language and uses of literacy in
the African American community, language identity, and language attitudes.
She is editor of Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American
English (forthcoming).