- Genre: Contextual Analysis
- Audience: educated, curious readers; some are on your side, some are skeptical
- Learning Outcomes: Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing; Knowledge of Conventions; Processes
- Length: 1500-1750 words
- Sources:
minimum of eight credible sources, at least four of which come from peer-reviewed scholarly publications; one of which must be a book; use your own mature judgement to decide - Background: St. Martin’s e-Handbook: choosing topics (12); conducting research (13); integrating sources (15)
By this point in the term, and after an individual conference with me, you should have identified an issue or a question that interests you for further inquiry from reading the New York Times: a trend, an idea, an argument or advocacy position, or an ongoing news story.
Your challenges for this project are to first spend some time in inquiry mode, asking questions — to whom does this issue matter? Why? What is interesting about it? What is important about it? What is at stake? — to contextualize your issue and to then, finally, to take a persuasive position on it.
Possible examples:
Consider how the NYT has covered and continues to cover Tupac Shakur.
“Thugs is convicts in God’s prison”: put Shakur’s lyric, “Thug Love” into context with the NYT’s representations of him: what’s at stake in these lyrics? Do they have arguments? Are the lyrics composed for political or aesthetic (or some other) ends? What do people who research and write about Shakur seem to value? How can you tell?
Last quarter, a student chose to do a textual analysis of the “Fashion & Style” section of the NYT, drawing on several weeks of the newspaper’s textual and visual materials — fashion and style are highly rhetorical activities, she noted — and a contextual analysis project of a section of newspaper could reveal even richer meanings, because it could draw on a wider range of sources. What does the NYT seem to value? How can you tell? What kind of reality does the NYT represent?
Research the NYT’s archives, using disciplinary key terms from your career, creative, professional, or community aspirations: how does the NYT cover and represent Nicaragua? Or the field of Accounting? Or boxing? Can your contextual analysis reveal, report on, or advocate for a particular position? Yes, it can.
There is a statue outside of the Student Union — “A Twentieth Century Priest” — of Msgr. John Egan, inscribed with the quote, “What are you doing for justice?” I assume that this is a rhetorical question. But the questions it raises! What is the difference between fairness and justice? Should college students in general, and DePaul students in particular, be active in social-justice issues? Why or why not? How has the NYT covered and represented student activism, social justice, and community organizing? What can this tell us about what people value?
These examples are meant to show the possible scope of a contextual analysis project; I will negotiate yours with you, and will encourage you to invest this time on an issue that you genuinely care about, and for which you want to make compelling, successful arguments. Also note that these representative examples are based on inquiry — not initially on a thesis or based on argument — and that is where we will start: with questions.
Our Process:
- Tues. 4/24: Preliminary Inquiry Question & Map
- Tues. 4/24: Online library workshop
- Tues. 5/1 Project Proposal
- Thurs. 5/3: Project First Draft (workshop & peer review)
- Tues. 5/8: Project Second Draft (workshop & peer review)
- Tues. 5/15: Project Final Draft