Reviewing for Exam 2

Contents

• For each time period we have studied:
• For each of the communities we have studied:
• For each of the styles of discourse we have studied:
• Generating some discourse or each community and/or style
• For each of the assigned speeches:
• On Lincoln at Gettysburg:
• Getting a sense for the flow:
• Structure of Material Since First Exam

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For each time period we have studied:

Several communities coexist at any moment in American experience. You need to have a vision of the way in which the various communities fit together. Exam 2 covers the early nineteenth century and the civil war period.

• What communities are active during the time in question?
• Who are the important American voices of the time and in which community are they active?
• Do the communities active in that time relate or react to each other? If so, how?

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For each of the communities we have studied:

• In the introduction to the course we generated a list of questions to apply to each of the communities we studied. You might make yourself a chart with those questions down the side and the various communities across the top and fill in the cells.
• What were the characteristic problems that the community took as public problems? What did the discourse need to do to respond to these?
• Think particularly about the public motivation in the various communities. How would you motivate public action and public participation? Can you generate a message to motivate members of the community to pursue some public purpose that might be a part of the community?
• Compare and contrast the communities to make certain you can recognize the differences in discourse. For example, can you take a look at a piece of discourse and decide if it is epideictic or argumentative? Whether it comes from the frontier or from the Cavalier South? Can you tell the difference between a message from the evangelical abolitionists and from the radical abolitionists?
• Be able to trace influences from one community to another. For example, do you see things in the sentimental style that track to the puritan community? To the Virginia frontier?
• There are obviously characteristics of each community that you simply need to know. You need to know, for example, where geographically the abolitionists were stronger. Your notes should indicate the "facts" that are important in defining the distinctiveness of each of the communities.

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For each of the styles of discourse we have studied:

• What are the distinctive characteristics that mark the style? How can you recognize the style in discourse?
• What forces did the style respond to? Why did it take the character that it did? Did the style reflect its community? Did it reflect the difficulties of the situation in which it developed? Why did the style have these characteristics and/or what did that style allow the discourse to do?
• Where did the style typically occur?
• Who are some of the people who were good at the style? What are some speeches in that style?

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Generating some discourse for each community and/or style

Here are some example situations you might invent discourse for:

• It is 1827. The citizens of Boonsboro MD have celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence the previous year by building a monument to George Washington. You are asked to speak at the dedication of the momument. Write a paragraph that might be the final paragraph of your speech on the occasion.
• You are running for office on the frontier. You believe that the river should be dammed to allow boat traffic to your town. Your opponent is opposed. Write a paragraph to the audience gathered at your debate.
• It is January 1860. John Brown has been hanged the month before in Charles Town, Virginia. You are at a rally in the Midwest paying tribute to Brown's life and calling for the abolition of slavery. Write a paragraph calling for an end to slavery.
• It is January 1861. You are in a plantation parlor on the Virginia Tidewater. Your neighbor and you are discussing succession. Write a speech that addresses Virginia's position on the subject.
• It is Sunday morning in the slave quarter. Write a paragraph urging the leading of a religious life with the "Rhetoric of the life hereafter."
• Write a brief speech for delivery at Gettysburg that motivates the civil war in terms of anarchy (stability).

Notice that the examples ask you to:

• Figure out which style would be most appropriate for the situation described.
• Then using that information, produce text in the appropriate style addressing the issues specified or that would be appropriate in the situation.

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For each of the assigned speeches:

Remember that the assigned speeches are more numerous than the ones discussed in class.

• You will need to identify speakers and approximate time periods with speeches. One way of doing this is to make a chart. List all the speeches along the horizontal axis and the list of categories that will help you recognize them along the vertical. Chart keys to recognition such as events to which they responded, positions they held on issues coming from these events, style that they exemplify, communities in which they were delivered, memorable phrases from them, and any other cues you find useful. Remember, my objective on these questions is not to fool you, and I do not assume you have memorized speeches. The identification is based on your ability to associate speakers and speeches with important styles and communities of discourse.
• Know something about the situation in which these speeches are given. Discourse responds to situation so you have to understand something about how the speech did so.
• Be able to identify the characteristics of the speeches that come from their context in the community in which they are a part.
• Few speeches are "pure" examples of the styles of the community in which they are given. For example, Webster's Reply to Hayne ends with an epideictic peroration even though it is in the Senate and uses mostly an argumentative style. Be able to recognize cross-influences in the speeches and the reasons for them.
• Speakers can, in fact, attain attention for their speaking by violating the expectations of the community. Understand when that is happening.

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On Lincoln at Gettysburg:

Your abstracts of the chapters in the book should be a good starting place for this study.

• Wills' book is an argument for his thesis. What is that thesis? How would you summarize his argument for the thesis? Does the argument prove the thesis in your mind?
• Wills' book can also be viewed as a tracing of the historical influences on Lincoln's speech. What are these influences? What do they tell us about America of the first half of the nineteenth century? Where do they manifest themselves in the speech? Do they make the speech better and/or more powerful?

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Getting a sense for the flow:

A course like this one is divided into units. But there is a flow among the units. Lincoln's ode to the people attains its power from the development of <people> as an ideograph that we have seen emerging from early in American experience. Be certain that you can tell the story of the development of American discursive themes.

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Structure of Material for Second Exam

Structure of Material new for Final Exam

The following terms for identification have been provided by Sarah Miller, a student in a previous section of the course, for your use:

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