Ethnographies and Rhetorical Persuasiveness anyone?

Lesson Plans

Dear new writ 1133 students, there are so many ways in which you will explore writing this quarter and one which will be particularly fun is conducting an ethnography. The great thing about ethnography’s are that you can do them anywhere and there are so many different ways to go about doing them. Ethnography is the study of people in an attempt to learn the nature of people. This can be done through interviews, questionnaires and even participant observation. This is somewhat like a lab write-up in a science class. You conduct your field research with whatever direction you take in gathering information and then you present your ideas about what you are trying to prove, or disprove for that matter, about people and then you present the data you found. You then take this information and write an analysis on what you found through conducting this ethnography. This is how to conduct an ethnographical study in more depth.

First you need to decide which way you plan on doing your research. To start off you need to come up with a hypothesis. What are you trying to argue? You want to come up with something original that makes a claim about society. You want to make a statement that you can prove or disprove with the way in which you go about doing your research. The three main ways are through interviews, through questionnaires and through participant observation. For interviews you will want to do the following.

Interviews and questionnaires- for this you will need to look at your hypothesis. Think about what you want to be looking to find about people. This could be anything from a study on cheating on spouses, to privacy, to people’s habits while they smoke. Once you come up with your argument, you need to think of questions for your interview to try and get the most useful information possible. Formulate questions that are not broad but try and be as specific as possible. Your questions should be trying to find out the why of what you want to know. Think of a broad question but then think of specific questions to use to either prove or disprove it. If you were doing something about cheating you shouldn’t just ask do you cheat ever? It should be specifics such as habits that you are trying to figure out.. These next questions should ask things like how many times or how many people have you done this with or to. Also if you are trying to associate two different things together such as cheating and something like sports you could ask if you think they are related but what is important is the WHY. You should be trying to find out the why in each situation. So think of questions that will help you get a better understanding of why things are and really break this down to the bare essentials.

For participant observation location is key. As the saying goes, location, location, location. Like with interviews and questionnaires you should think of your hypothesis. If your hypothesis is something about smoking then your location should be at the outside of a building or designated smoking area or just a highly populated area and sit down and watch the people who hang around there and walk by and see if you can make observations that support or even go against your hypothesis. When you see either of the two you should take down notes about it so that you will remember. Just like when it comes to interviews and questionnaires you want to find the little details that are the key to understanding what it is that you are trying to find out. For example, don’t just see these people for what they are doing; they are smoking in this case. See the specific details that will help support or oppose your hypothesis though. See the little details like their habits or quirks. These are what are important.

Now that you have an understanding of how to conduct your research it is important that you know where to go from here. So far in your paper you should have started with an introduction that presents your hypothesis and just what exactly you are tying to find out. Then you should have a paragraph explaining your methods. This is how you went about your research. Explain everything about what you did. Where you observed. What you observed. You should talk about who you observed and why. You should talk about what you asked the people you interviewed and why you did that. Once you have described what you did and why, proceed to talk about the results that you got. In regards to an interview or questionnaire you should talk about the answers you got either in a whole if there are a lot of people or if it was a very limited subject group you should present the data you found for each person. This is where you get into your results paragraph. After presenting the information you found, it is important to talk about what this all means. For participant observation and interviews and questionnaires alike you should talk about the little things. The answers and observations and what they mean in regards to your hypothesis. Does this all support your argument or oppose your hypothesis? Then you should end all of this with a conclusion. Your conclusion should reinforce your observations section and really sum up what you found and whether it was what you thought it would be or not. It is very important that not matter what you find through your research that you present that information and not bias the information to support your original hypothesis. What makes the most interesting papers is when you make a statement but disprove it or even have to change your original hypothesis. This way it shows the reader that you are presenting the information as non biased as possible and show the reader that you truly observed people an what they did or said and tell them that although you may have thought something originally, the truth as found through your research is what you have presented.

My second lesson is in regards to using your rhetorical skills in order to persuade a community to change through your writing. When it comes to using your rhetorical skills to persuade a body of people to change through writing you will need to truly connect to the reader. The first and most important thing in writing to a body of people and trying to convince them to change is in understanding who they are. You need to know if the people you are addressing have certain ideologies that they hold and things that they feel strongly about. Consider their job and the position they hold and everything that is pertinent to you argument that could possibly hinder or help your situation. For example if you wanted to argue the benefits of protecting swamp lands you are going to want to research who you need to reach out to in order to make an impact. You need to decide whether or not you are doing a specific swamp that is endangered or swamps in general. Then you need to know who is protecting these swamps or who is hurting these swamps. Once you understand whom you need to write to and what they are all about and what their reasoning is behind what they are doing you need to come up with a solution. In order to be effective you need to be convincing. The only way you can be convincing is if you have a concrete argument. You need to present the issues and how you plan to address them and what the benefits are of your plan and what the detriments are of hurting these swamps, for example.

So this is where we are. You have decided on a topic that you would like to write about. This is a public issue which you feel needs to be addressed. Now once you have that you think about whom you are writing to. You have thought about what they are trying to get out of what they are doing and why. Now it is your job to present your plan. You need to think of a concrete plan in order to address a few things. You need to explain why what they are doing is wrong. Explain to them the hazards of it and that there are solutions. You cannot just tell them that there are other ways of going about things though. You need to come up with concrete ideas. You need to come up with a plan of action and present it. The best way would be to completely write out your plan in advance and write it in a manor that is easy to read and put it together in a proposal for whomever you send it to. This argument needs to be able to show them that they are wrong for doing this and why and why your ideas are better. You need to show them that your ideas will be able to give them what they want but in a more efficient or safe or just a plain better way.

Now that you have described what is wrong with the system and how you can change it and why your ideas are better and how both parties can benefit from your solution or if not both, then make them understand why what they are doing is wrong then you need a conclusion to sum it all up. You should have a sample proposal and have everything that you need. You want to have exactly what you would write up and give to whomever you are trying to convince. This is how to effectively use your rhetorical skills to persuade a group of people to change.