4 Annotating Cultural Literacy
How to Annotate (Media Works Data Sheet)
As previously described, in a rhetorical analysis, students are asked to analyze a piece of media (book, song, movie, etc.) in relation to the rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, logos, and sometimes kairos. From there, the rhetorical situation is broken down to analyze whether the communicator is credible, whether their message is logical, and whether or not their audience is persuaded. In some cases, both face value and common knowledge can be applied, but to make sure that a well-developed essay is conceived, additional research and critical thinking skills must be applied.
A Major Works Data Sheet (MWDS) can assist in breaking down the rhetorical analysis and rhetorical situation to develop analytical points and overall serve as a tool for decoding cultural literacy. A MWDS is a form commonly used in literature courses to break down key points, summarize plots, and characterize themes, elements, and motifs in a work. However, this same format can be utilized to develop a rhetorical analysis and assess how a work has emotionally impacted its audience.
In the MWDS form, key points that align with the rhetorical appeals are annotated to explain how they can assist with creating a rhetorical analysis. For the sake of alignment with the rhetorical analysis, the form has been renamed a Media Works Data Sheet to reflect that it can be used with all types of media—books, movies, songs, social media content, etc. The language is also updated to reflect terms from rhetorical analysis. It coincides with the typical outline of a MWDS, but, again, reflects how this information can be transferred to rhetorically analyze a piece of media and contrive a message to be synthesized in an analysis. Thus, this MWDS is a tool to assist with rhetorically analyzing a media work and then synthesizing the information gathered through annotations to decode the meaning of the message and the overall cultural literacy of the work.
Download the blank Media Works Data Sheet worksheet [PDF file].
Annotated Example
Although the MWDS would more inclusively apply to larger bodies of work, it can still be utilized to analyze media and categorize them accordingly, helping to decipher the message and whether the audience was persuaded. This is a great exercise for students to analyze pieces of media and group them at face value, or to conduct research as homework, because research sometimes must be done to gain a larger scope of context for the communicator and message. Please also note that, depending on the type of media, not every section can be filled in.
Take the annotated MWDS example of the Kevin Durant tweet (X) located in the Annotated Example of Rhetorical Analysis MWDS [PDF file]. The sample Annotated Example of Rhetorical Analysis worksheet is also available in an accessible version reformatted for screen reader use [Microsoft Word file].
In the annotated example MWDS, specific information about Kevin Durant and his tweet was researched and added to the sheet to help create a more developed rhetorical analysis and organize the data. However, certain sections of the MWDS, such as “Significance of the Opening/Closing Scene” and “Characters,” could not be completed because this is a slice of media without characters or scenes. In other cases, students may be able to fill in these sections. After completing this worksheet, students have all of the necessary data to write a formal rhetorical analysis.
Example Media Analysis
After you’ve taken the steps to outline who the communicator is, their background related to the piece’s message, and how it appealed to you as the audience, it is time to put together the information into a rhetorical analysis and decode whether the communicator was effective in their purpose.
Rhetorical Analysis 4.1.
Decoding Example
Kevin Durant’s tweet on July 30, 2010, went viral, with 65,000 retweets and 75,000 likes showing agreement with his statement. Despite being known as a basketball player, Durant received a college education, earning his bachelor’s in education with a minor in social work. As the communicator, his educational background makes him relatively credible. He is making an argument about the History Channel’s knowledge of what goes on on the sun. Additionally, the History Channel has been criticized by many skeptics for its pseudoscientific documentaries. As a result, this tweet can be interpreted to be credible due to common knowledge. The communicator presents an argument based on common knowledge that is easy for the audience to believe, and the source he is addressing has been highly criticized for delivering false information.
DECODING: The Analysis
In this example, the writer has decoded the cultural literacy behind Kevin Durant’s post and synthesized its credibility due to common knowledge. This indicates that the tweet relies on ethos from the message. Some messages hold more credibility than the communicator themselves. Despite Kevin Durant’s career in basketball and studies in education, the claim he made holds more credibility than his research: the audience would be more inclined to believe him based on what they already know regarding the matter.
In some cases, it can be argued that the communicator is aware that the audience agrees, and perhaps presented the information in an “I thought we were all aware of this” sense. This same concept is applicable to most common-knowledge arguments or statements: the sky is blue, rain comes from clouds, cars can operate on both gas and electricity. Of course, more developed arguments will require more research and, therefore, credibility from the communicator, but in the case of this piece of media, the ethos came from the message itself!
Reading to Inform Writing
No matter the audience you are writing for, it is most efficient to read and stay informed on the content that you like to engage with. Cultural literacy is constantly being updated, and the media that fall into each cultural literacy category will be a new modality for that targeted audience to engage with. For writers, awareness of these changes in cultural literacy can help create more cultural awareness that resonates with their targeted audience, and, therefore, help them produce content that is relevant, precise, and culturally literate!
Reading to inform writing is part of decoding cultural literacy because it helps you garner background knowledge on the topic, build authorial credibility to ethically decode the subject matter from within and outside the discourse community, and produce writing that is fluent within that culture. Therefore, if you like to engage with popular media, read articles and see how journalists curate popular media for their audiences in order to edutain them, then proceed with creating your own. If you want to write for scholarly journals, consider the types of submissions they seek and see how the writers create their articles. All of these steps build your authorial credibility, as does willingness to research the field that you would like to engage with. Knowing the field you like means reading content generated in your field. This helps develop your literacy within that culture and your ability to participate in that discourse community through reading and research. After you have built up the necessary tools to annotate, it is time to move on to writing cultural literacy.
Often, students think they are only producing writing for a grade from their teachers. In hindsight, they are correct. Rhetorically, they are wrong. A student’s writing can land in the hands of many professionals, just as a journalist’s article can land in the hands of someone outside their intended audience. It is best practice to be mindful of the intended and unintended audiences when producing a piece of cultural literacy. In Part III, “Writing Cultural Literacy,” you will see how to take a piece of analyzed cultural literacy and produce a written analysis.
Activity 4.1.
DECODING: thesis draft
Have your students use the prompt below to create a thesis draft for a piece of everyday media.
Prompt:
In the (media), (media’s name), the (communicator), appeals to ethos by (state how Communicator uses ethos), in order to appeal to their audience’s emotions through pathos by (state how Communicator uses pathos), thus using logos in the way of (state how Communicator uses logos), to convey the overall message of (identify the message of the media).
Thesis Example:
In the movie, Whiplash, the main antagonist of the film, Terrance Fletcher, appeals to ethos by using his reputation of success with his ruthless methods, in order to appeal to their audiences emotions through pathos by breaking down their emotions using his form of constructive criticism that is seen as emotional abuse, thus using logos in the way of if I succeed, so can you, to convey the overall message that you need to be pushed to your absolute breaking point in order to come close to reaching excellence.
