Project 2 Outline

Cherup, Erica. ""Chalk" Outline" 6/4/2009 via flickr.
Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

This post will be an outline for the upcoming rhetorical analysis on "Mars One Finalist Explains Exactly How it's Ripping off Supporters". It will be modeled after the “Sections of the Paper” section in Writing Public Lives on pages 122-5.

I have never liked writing introductions (or conclusions, for that matter), but like it says, for this genre, it is important because it needs to set up my particular perspective on the text. It isn't enough to just introduce the text, because there is far more to the analysis than that.

Even more than introductions, I never used to write conclusions. I would always either stop after my last body paragraph, or, if a conclusion was required, literally rewrite (maybe reword) my thesis as a one-sentence conclusion statement. I guess I fell for the old myth the reading talked about, that that is all a conclusion is (page 125). I'll have to come up with something to write in the conclusion, which ill be pretty hard since I've never done so before. Oh, well; there's a first time for everything.

Outline:

• Introduction

• Thesis (the analytical claim): The author attempts to expose Mars One for what it is to supporters, reporters, and space enthusiasts, primarily through logical and ethical appeals, which is appropriate considering the field, topic, and context of the issue (support for the analytical claim) (it's science-y and professional).
•  Background on topic (probably put this before thesis)

• How did the info get out
• What is Mars One 
• Who are the people involved 

• Body 

• Topic 1: the rhetorical situation (kind of a second intro)

• Who is the audience
• Who really is the author
• What is the context
• Also include the cultural values/beliefs/assumptions

• Topic 2: Ethos

• Ethos is important for her to establish, and she does so. 

• A NASA researcher comes out from the Mars One selection process, claiming it's flawed and a rip off. (credible person)
•  Direct quotes and personal stories, and an interview with the CEO, with direct counterarguments, then counter-counterarguments.
• Why, given the RS... 

• Topic 3: Pathos

• Pathos is not important for her to use, here's the little amount she does, and that's it; that's all she needed to use.

• The few things she does to appeal to emotion (like depict the company as dishonest entity)
• Why it's not important,and why she didn't use it too much, given the RS...

• Topic 4: Logos

• Logos is important for her to use, and she does (maybe not as much as ethos?) 

•  Here are examples (statistics, and numbers of falsified information)...
•  Here's why that's good to include, given the RS...

• Conclusion

• Here's what I think of these things from my personal reading of the text...
• Here's what I think she could have done differently...
• This is why what she did was effective...