3.5 Building Expertise: Identifying Publics and Positions
Jackie Hendricks; Amy Lueck; Loring Pfeiffer; and Maura Tarnoff
Identifying Publics and Positions
Ashley Holmes goes on to discuss considerations for shaping your own contribution to the conversation about your chosen issue. Before moving on to idea development (we’ll do that in the next module), let’s pause to talk more about building your expertise on your topic by learning what others have said about it. Start by considering the issue you identified in your “Writing on Location” exercise, and identify some sources of information to understand the diverse positions different publics might have on that topic.
Apply It
Start by making a list of all the relevant publics that might have a stake in the issue you addressed in your “Writing on Location” exercise. For each group that you identify, where might that public discuss this issue (e.g., their living rooms, churches, or social media accounts)? For each group that you identify, what forms of public writing might they produce as artifacts of these discussions (e.g., newsletters, websites, articles, or oral histories)? If sources do not exist, consider generating your own sources by interviewing stakeholders.
Build a repository of sources, making sure to take note of where you found each source. Consider sources like online public forums, fliers posted on campus, Instagram stories, or campus newspaper articles, although you are not limited to these options. These are unlikely to be traditional academic sources, but they have their own authority as primary sources that reveal the positions of different individuals and communities.
Select an artifact from the public research you’ve already conducted (like a social media post, flier, or website) to analyze the text in the context of a particular speaker, audience, and purpose. Ask yourself how they shape that text to communicate identities and language values, and reflect on the ways in which your own identities are, or are not, reflected in that artifact.
Steps in Reflection
- Annotate the artifact to note specific textual features (e.g., wording, images, and references) that reveal an imagined or invoked audience, speaker, and context.
- Identify who is speaking to whom and what need is being addressed. Do you see yourself and your needs or interests reflected in that rhetorical situation? How or how not? What do the concepts of linguistic justice, translanguaging, and positionality illuminate about the ways language and identity are represented in the example?
Notice and Focus
Based on your annotations, select at least three observations that seem significant to you. Use them to reflect on who this text imagines as its audience (you? someone else?), what unique or otherwise valuable perspectives it contributes to the topic, and what linguistic or design elements are used to communicate its point to its audience. Make a claim about the artifact that is supported by your observations—what insight does it give you into the way this text conceptualizes or speaks to its rhetorical situation? How does it affect different audiences—positively, negatively, or both? How could you revise the text to better reflect or speak to the needs of impacted communities?
Putting It All Together
Before moving on to the next module to consider how to respond to the public issue you have identified, you will share your preliminary research about your topic. You will practice weaving together the diverse sources you have identified by completing one of the following synthesis assignments:
- Compose a written summary of the sources you have located that provides an overview of the conversation about your topic and the ways that different publics contribute to the collective knowledge about that topic. What do different publics have in common in their approaches? Where do they differ? What role do identity and positionality play in how they feel about this topic or how they represent it to their own audiences? How does your own experience and positionality affect your understanding or perspective on this topic?
- Create a visual representation of the topic you have chosen, mapping the relationships between different perspectives and publics and how they bring their diverse knowledges to bear on this topic.
- Create a 10-15-minute podcast episode that analyzes the rhetorical situation, exigence, and diverse public or individual perspectives in relation to your chosen topic. You might include voices and perspectives of these stakeholders on your topic through interviews or recorded dialogue, as well as ideas and perspectives from your preliminary research.
Written Summary
Visual Representation
Create a Podcast
Attribution
“Building Expertise: Identifying Publics and Positions” by Jackie Hendricks, Amy Lueck, Loring Pfeiffer, and Maura Tarnoff is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
