Kairos and Stases

I found the article “Kairos and the Rhetorical Situation: Seizing the Moment” to be one of the most useful articles we've received so far in this class, particularly because of the questions raised by Kairos. I'm thinking of using them as my own discussion questions for my classes, probably when we start the third unit that covers the argumentative paper. Some of these were ones I hadn't thought of before—“Have recent events made the issue urgent right now, or do I need to show its urgncy or make it relevant to the present?” and “What venues give voices to which sides of the issues? Does one group or another seem to be in a better position—a better place—from which to argue? Why?” (43) I'm not sure yet how I'd frame the class (or classes) around the questions. Maybe I could present an argument and then have a group discussion where we talk about these questions altogether? Small groups over their own argument topics? I might even just give them the article to read and then we have a class discussion over it, but I feel like it might take two class periods to decompress it and talk about the main points and I don't know if I'll have enough time in the syllabus to do it. Maybe. Again, I'm not sure exactly how/what I'm going to do, but using the questions is something I'm contemplating.

I also really liked the exercises provided at the end of the article. My class is already doing parts of the things mentions already since they're in the exploratory part of their papers, but I do think the visual map mentioned for the different arguments would be helpful to get them to do, and I really like how one of the exercises is to think about a moment where the writer/speaker “changed the subject” and digressed to a different issue. I think that's an important skill to get students to learn when looking at argumentative texts.

The second article was also helpful but my one concern is figuring out a way to unpack the material so that my students would understand. I enjoyed the section that puts the stases into an example and providing a detailed explanation of the steps involved to formulating your own argumentative paper. Again, I might use this article in my class as well. Right now I'm just trying to figure out a way to incorporate the concepts into something more accessible to my students.