Samuel Filpo’s Cover Letter:

Phase two, where I rhetorically analyzed a text. This assignment forced me to break down a certain text and analyze the specific reason why the author structured their text in such a way. By doing these things in this phase, I was revealed two new insights regarding both language and literacy. I first learned that in order for our writings to reach our reeader’s hearts we must structure them and compose in a way that can get this effect. While analyzing Jordan’s “Nobody mean more to me than you and the life of Willie Jordan” I realized that Jordan is an expert at writing in a persuasive manner. She uses many techniques like repetition and appealing to her audience’s sense of logic to get her point across. Which taught me that we don’t only have to express our purpose but we also have to write in a way that can engage our audience and persuade them while doing so. 

As I wrote in my first letter, phase one’;s assignment gave me the goal of always writing with a purpose. However, the second insight I received from this assignment is that my goal can’t only be to express and get a message across. I also need to use distinct, effective, techniques, that allow me to persuade the audience, to make them believe in my message, and to make their hearts and minds be inspired to fight for what I write for, so that what I write isn’t only a fantasy world but the utopia we can make our lives to be. but I also need 

 For this assignment, my goal was to make myself an audience. The reason why I wanted to be my own audience for this essay is because after finishing this phase’s assignment I came to a realization that I was grasping around the exact puzzle, the samme enigma, I talked about in my first cover letter. I realized that I was in fact stuck in my linguistic and literacy skills. With this being the case, Analyzing a writer who had become an expert in the art of literacy would teach me more about literacy and would teach me how to make my literacy and the use of my language, impactful. To appeal to myself as the audience, I tailored my language and literacy so that I could embody the perspective of a teacher and a student at the same time. As the author, I wrote as if I was teaching lesson to a student, who would also be myself, on rhetorical techniques, I did this my not only including examples of the rhetorical techniques that Jordan uses but by also explaining these techniques as if the person reading my piece was a student, learning a complete new topic.

The term that has greatly impacted my learning and writing practices the most would

have to be rhetorical. As I mentioned before, this assignment made me realize that writing with a purpose is not enough to write a fruitful, meaningful, and impactful text.In order to reach our audience’s hearts we must take our time as writers to structure our work. We must take our time to manipulate our words and our language in a way that allows us to persuade our audience of our message. This is what analyzing Jordan;;s wo

rk taught me, it taught me to not be afraid to make myself vulnerable to my audience, but it also taught me to be determined and demonstrate that as the writer I know what I am writing about and believe in it firmly.

This phase’s assignment has taught me many things, but the most valuable lesson it taught me was to recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.This assignment gave me the opportunity to analyze the ways that Jordan’s manipulated her literacy and how she utilized rhetorical techniques in order to persuade the audience of her argument and to even get her message across. A core part of this phase that helped me achieve this outcome was when in class we analyzed small texts and pointed out how every single structure of the writing had a purpose and affected the understanding of the audience. This part of class helped me understand and motivated me to practice rhetorical strategies such as anecdotes and appealing to my audience’s sympathy in my writing.

Samuel Filpo

Freshman Composition

10/28/2021

Final Draft of RAE

           The Judgement in our ears

Despite having a multilingual population with different backgrounds, and no official language; the United States still manages to be a land in which people are prejudiced based on language and literacy skills. In her essay, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan” June Jordan argues that in America, what is considered the standard form of English is a dialect based on white standards. We are judged based on our English precisely because of these standards that diminish other dialects of this language such as  “Black English” and many other derivatives of the language. June Jordan appeals to the reader’s sense of logic, emphasizes the term “Black English”, and establishes a sense of credibility, trustworthiness, and a friendship, between her and her audience in order to disprove the concept of a normal or “standard English”.

In order to make a friend, you must be yourself. This is exactly what Jordan did in her essay. June Jordan used a strategic choice of words and a genuine and  sincere tone in order to establish a vulnerable and close relationship between her and her audience. Jordan’s choice of words such as profanity in the fourth page, “they mix it up more. Like ‘fuck’ and ‘motherfuck? Or like ‘shit? ” in order to establish a friendship with the reader. As the writer, Jordan could have easily blurred or even excluded these words. However, Jordan decided to use these words because this use of language that would normally only be used among friends allows Jordan to build a much closer relationship with her audience than she ever would have in an academic or professional essay. Jordan made her essay a personal one and chose these words because it somehow made the reader feel included throughout the entire text and especially in her anecdotes since it felt as if she were telling a story to a friend. This manipulation of words gave the reader a sense of sincerity and allowed this text to surge with credibility and trustworthiness. Jordan established her credibility because in order to convince us of her claim, we first need to believe in her words.

As I mentioned before, Jordan made the audience feel included in the piece through her anecdotes. However, what I didn’t mention was that she reached this strategy not only through her choice of words that made her vulnerable but also through her descriptive words that made her storytelling abilities be able to make the reader feel as if they are in the anecdote itself. While describing her conversation with Willie Jordan, one of her students, she included this sentence in the ninth page, “He was all agitated and stammering and terse and incoherent. At last, his sadly jumbled account let me surmise, as follows: Brooklyn police had murdered his unarmed, twenty-five-year old brother, Reggie Jordan”. As we can see, while telling this anecdote Jordan used extremely descriptive language such as “agitated”, “incoherent”, and “sadly”. Jordan chose to be so descriptive in order to allow her audience to imagine the conversation she had with Willie. This strategy allowed the audience to be engaged in Jordan’s essay which caused us, the readers, to further understand why Jordan’s life plays such a vital part in why she is invested in this issue of  “Standard English”.

As if establishing a friendship, and a sense of trust wasn’t enough to enforce Jordan’s credibility, June Jordan also appealed to the writer’s sense of logic in order to further establish her credibility. Jordan appeals to the audience’s sense of logic by including a series of statistical evidence that ridicules the concept of a“standard English”.  At the beginning of her text in the first page, Jordan mentions multiple statistics from around the world to support her argument, “ ‘more than thirty-three countries use this tool as a means of “international communication.”..“there are five countries, or 333,746,000 people, for whom this thing called “English” serves as a native tongue”.“Approximately 10 percent of these native speakers of “English” are Afro-American citizens of the U.S.A.’.” After effectively including all of this statistical evidence, Jordan makes it clear to her audience the purpose behind these numbers. By citing these statistics, Jordan supports her claim that “Standard English” does not exist and is simply a language composed of white standards since these numbers demonstrate how unlikely and strange any concept of “Standard English” is.

The last strategy that Jordan utilizes  is that she emphasizes the term “Black English”. Jordan purposefully repeats the term “Black English” over 50 times, as I noticed while reading the essay. Jordan also puts the word “standard English” in quotation marks, to emphasize this term. June Jordan purposefully keeps repeatingthese points, despite the fact the message she is trying to portray. Jordan employs this to underline two key concepts from her writing, Black English and what is commonly referred to as “normal English”.

June Jordan structured her essay in a strategistical manner that allowed her to persuade the audience of her argument by appealing  to the reader’s sense of logic, emphasizing the term “Black English”, and establishing a sense of credibility, trustworthiness, and a friendship, between her and her audience in order to disprove the concept of a normal or “standard English”. I’ve analyzed the reasoning behind these strategies and the importance and impact they each represented in her piece. These concepts were the key to her text and were the factors that made Jordan’s text so persuasive and successful.

CITING PAGE

Source 1:

• “Nobody mean more to me than you” – University of Missouri, Date Unknown

Source 2:

• Indeed career guide, 10 Commonly Used Rhetorical Strategies (With Examples), Indeed Career Guide, February 22, 2021
• URL:https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/rhetorical-strategies-list#:~:text=Rhetorical%20strategies%2C%20or%20devices%20as,you%20are%20planning%20a%20speech.