Your name: 

Omar Mohamed

Completing this worksheet may take more time than you think. It’s worth the time. The information you gather will help you later when writing up assignments. But more importantly, the process of addressing each of the questions below will slowly work to change howyou read texts. Keep in mind that some answers will not be obvious or even observable in the text, and so you may have to do some critical thinking and, at times, even some online research. Use full sentences. Take as much space as you need.

Context & Exigence: What topic/conversation is this text responding to? What year is the text published? What is the exigence–that is, what motivating occasion/issue/concern prompted the writing? The motivating occasion could be a current or historical event, a crisis, pending legislation, a recently published alternative view, or another ongoing problem. 

The topic this text is responding to is that it does not make sense for there to be a standard convention of English, and the death of Reggie Jordan. The text was published in 1988. The motivation behind this text is the concern that whites try to enforce a standard type of English that they speak as the only correct way to speak English.

Author: Who is the author of this text?  What are the author’s credentials and what is their investment in the issue? 

The author of the text is June Jordan, a professor of the Arts of Black English at SUNY Stony Brook. June Jordan’s investment in the issue is that they want Black English to be accepted as a correct version of English-speaking and stop oppression.

Text: What can you find out about the publication?  What is the genre of the text (e.g., poem, personal essay, essay, news/academic article, blog, textbook chapter, etc.)? How do the conventions of that genre help determine the depth, complexity, and even appearance of the argument? What information about the publication or source (magazine, newspaper, advocacy Web site) helps explain the writer’s perspective or the structure and style of the argument?

The genre of this text is textbook chapter. This is because the text is a part of the author, June Jordan‘s book, “On Call”.

Audience: Who is the author’s intended audience? What can you infer about the audience (think about beliefs and political association but also age, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, profession, education, geographic location, religion, etc.)? Look for clues from the text (especially the original publication) to support your inference.

The author’s intended audience would be educators and students, since it was published to the Harvard Educational Review, which is affiliated with the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Purpose: What is the author trying to accomplish? To persuade, entertain, inform, educate, call to action, shock? How do you know?

The author is trying to persuade and inform others that there should not be a standard English in the US that white people try to enforce and claim is superior over other standards of English, or the only correct way to speak English.

Argument: What do you believe is the main claim/idea/argument that the author is trying to communicate? What stance does s/he take? 

The author’s argument is to prove that oppression against black people and the way they speak English exists, and to try to create a movement to fight against it.

Evidence: How is the argument supported? Types of support include reasons and logical explanations as well as evidence. Types of evidence include anecdotes, examples, hypothetical situations, (expert) testimony, quotes, citing sources, statistics, charts/graphs, research the author or another source conducts, scientific or other facts, general knowledge, historical references, metaphors/analogies, etc.

The argument is supported by the author giving the example of how white people English is considered the correct way to speak English, and by explaining the events leading and preceding to the death of Reggie Jordan.

Rhetorical Strategies: What aspects of this text stand out for you as a rhetorical reader? In other words, what do you observe about what the author strategically does(consciously or not) in hopes of appealing to their audience? List here as many observations as you can make about what the text does. 

The strategy that stood out to me was the listing of rules created for Black English, assuming it as an official way of speaking English.

Citation: Add the correct MLA or APA bibliographic entry for this text. Use easybib.com if you prefer.

Jordan, June, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 58, no. 3, Harvard Education Publishing Group, Sept. 1988

Notes: What do you want to remember about this text?

One thing that stood out for me in this text is when the author pointed out that English is spoken in 33 countries, and it is illogical for a 34th country to come in and set its own rules and values of how the language should be spoken. This is very powerful because it logically proves that it does not make sense for a specific English-speaking country to enforce rules and values of the language, when it is spoken by many others.