Rhetorical Situation Worksheet

Your name:

Mya Evans

Completing this worksheet may take more time than you think. It’s worth the time. The information you gather will help you later when writing up assignments. But more importantly, the process of addressing each of the questions below will slowly work to change how you read texts. Keep in mind that some answers will not be obvious or even observable in the text, and so you may have to do some critical thinking and, at times, even some online research. Use full sentences. Take as much space as you need.

Context & Exigence: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? What year is the text published? What is the exigence–that is, what motivating occasion/issue/concern prompted the writing? The motivating occasion could be a current or historical event, a crisis, pending legislation, a recently published alternative view, or another ongoing problem.

The topic is on Black English as well as Police Brutality. It was published in 1988. The motivating occasion that prompted the writing was the killing of Reggie Jordan, the brother of the author’s student, Willie Jordan.

Author: Who is the author of this text?  What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue?

June Jordan is the author of this text. She was a black professor at Stony Brook University. Her credentials are the fact that she is black herself and has experienced firsthand knowing Black English and the erasure of her culture from the US and white people pushing their system to be a certain way. Her investment in this situation is a great student of hers was heavily impacted by the death of his brother by police and the other students in the class had also shared their similar pains and how they all knew someone who had been killed by police. An unjustly killing is a significant investment in writing this piece.

Text: What can you find out about the publication?  What is the genre of the text (e.g., poem, personal essay, essay, news/academic article, blog, textbook chapter, etc.)? How do the conventions of that genre help determine the depth, complexity, and even appearance of the argument? What information about the publication or source (magazine, newspaper, advocacy Web site) helps explain the writer’s perspective or the structure and style of the argument?

The text is an academic article/essay and the genre is non fiction as it is the true account of what happened in Jordan’s classroom. It was published at the university she was teaching at so it explains why she wrote it in Standard English. The conventions of non fiction help determine the depth and complexity because it is a true story, Willie Jordan was a real person, Reggie Jordan was really killed by police, and June Jordan really did teach the students in her class another dialect: Black English. The authenticity of it is powerful and it forces the reader to really think about what they’ve been previously taught in life.

Audience: Who is the author’s intended audience? What can you infer about the audience (think about beliefs and political association but also age, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, education, geographic location, religion, etc.)? Look for clues from the text (especially the original publication) to support your inference.

The author’s intended audience was the students and educators of Stony Brook University and the readers of her book On Call. Based on the time period, I can infer the college was made up of mostly white people of college and career age, who were highly educated. I don’t think the intended audience would be her class as they already experienced and learned what she had wrote in the article. This was an attempt to show other’s with a closed mindset about other englishes, particularly Black English and showcase how power it could be and a story on racism and the experience of being black in America.

Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action,

shock? How do you know?

The author is trying to educate and inform others on how the erasure of Black English is not okay and that it is important and should be taught just like Standard English. She even writes the rules her class came up with for writing in Black English, all in an effort to teach people who closed minded to another side they should accept into their daily life. It is also a call to action when she adds Willie Jordan’s essay on South Africa and the shooting of his brother. The entirety of her class writing to say they will not be silent and they will not let Reggie Jordan’s death be in vain and they write in his language is an eye opening story about racism, death, and a powerful message to not keep quiet.

Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to

communicate? What stance does s/he take?

The idea is that there are more than one type of English and other cultures should not have their identities erased and put into a box where we are all carbon copies of each other. She’s trying to communicate that these dialects are crucial to learn and are very powerful if you don’t push them away.

Evidence: How is the argument supported? Types of support include reasons and logical explanations as

well as evidence. Types of evidence include anecdotes, examples, hypothetical situations, (expert)

testimony, quotes, citing sources, statistics, charts/graphs, research the author or another source conducts,

scientific or other facts, general knowledge, historical references, metaphors/analogies, etc.

This is clearly shown through the title being written in Black English while it being an academic paper for her university. Other evidence includes the rules for Black English and the repetition in the first paragraph of “Black English is not exactly a linguistic buffalo” saying she understands that it is not easy but continues on it’s importance.

Rhetorical Strategies: What aspects of this text stand out for you as a rhetorical reader? In other words,

what do you observe about what the author strategically does (consciously or not) in hopes of appealing

to their audience? List here as many observations as you can make about what the text does.

Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.

Jordan, June. “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the  Future Life of Willie Jordan  by June Jordan.” English 110: Freshman Composition, 1988, https://engl110gandhi.commons.gc.cuny.edu/content/.

Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?

The story of how Jordan first introduced Black English to her class and they all had criticized the writing but once they broke down their prejudices they were able to learn and “translate” and the class became powerful with their writing and stood by their fellow classmates side to fight against a system that consistently puts black citizens in harm’s way.