Understanding Health Rhetoric
What is “health”? The goal of this course is not to answer this question (you probably already have an answer), but to understand the available answers. You will enrich your understanding of “health” by expanding your understanding of health rhetoric, that is, the different answers people have, or the different arguments people make about health. You will find that the complex concept of “health” takes on very different meanings in different contexts, for different audiences, at different times, and within different communities. We aim not to decide the ultimate meaning of health, but to pay attention to the different ways the concept is employed in argument.
Doing Rhetoric
Rhetoric is an art, an education, and an analytic. You will learn major rhetorical concepts and figures so you can recognize and analyze how arguments work, how texts persuade, why people disagree, and how they can agree. You will also learn to craft arguments that are not only sound and well styled, but also effective for your audience and purpose. “Doing rhetoric” means finding rhetoric outside the classroom—in TV and on the Web—and using rhetoric outside your assignments—in professional communication and casual conversation.
Becoming a Better Writer
Whatever your current writing level, you will improve it in terms of organization, diction, sentence construction, style, and substance by reading difficult texts, receiving weekly grammar instruction, writing regularly, and revising your work.
Skills
Below is a breakdown of the skills you will develop in this course
:
- identify and analyze contexts
- identify a text’s purpose
- analyze the various ways a text appeals to its specific audience
- examine how a text contributes to an ongoing conversation or conversations
- summarize multiple perspectives fairly
- assess the credibility of sources, including Internet sources
- think critically―invent, organize, and revise college-level thinking
- read and write well-researched, college-level papers
