Metacognitive Moves Paper

     When strategizing how I would create the rhetorical situation within my project I wanted to focus on interpersonal communication. I created a situation in which a man running for State Rep is accused of a sexual scandal during his campaign. This obviously throws a huge wrench into the campaign causing a lot of stress and planning throughout the whole campaign and its interaction with the community. In “Writing Identities” one of the clear first parts of the article say you need to create a character that people trust. While I agree with that in a sense that you need to trust the character when they are the protagonist, however I wanted to create non-protagonist characters. I wanted to give the audience a situation that wasn’t really guided by myself as the writer and open a space where i think the issue would be discussed if it were a real life situation.




     The first textual genre I made was an initial campaign speech. I needed an introduction for the the candidate and I needed the audience to know what he was running for, why he was running, and what his points of view where within the race. I modeled Dan’s personality around a few other characters I had seen on television and on other platforms. He needed to seem kind of starchy in personality as well as have a political stance that seemed like it was leaning in a specific direction. This is because I’ve noticed that with candidates who tend to be a little more polar, their voters tend to cling to them harder in an election. In doing this I wanted to make it seem like it was actually creating a rift within a community because his political stance might have been something strongly revered and not often seen but certain citizens and voters.




     My next textual genre was an address Dan chose to give after he was accused of the allegation. I wanted to make sure his family looked united, and that each part of his speech targeted seperate groups within the community. He does not give up, therefore, he is still campaigning, even when addressing this situation. By targeting audience members he manages to attempt to ease concern, thank his supporters, and call out those who are publicly bashing him. In one part of the address he says “My wife and children have chosen to stand by me during this difficult time.” I used the word chosen specifically to show that this wasn’t a decision forced upon them but that his wife and children, like his supporters, have made a decision on their own to support and trust someone that has a huge impact on their lives.




     In my third textual genre I created a string of emails between a local ad agency and John, the campaign manager. The ad campaign, which had previously offered space on billboards for dan to past campaigning material on, wants to revoke its offer. This hurts the campaign in a very specific way. It cuts off a form of marketing which is one of the most important aspects of a political campaign. I made it seem like John was making some attempts to grovel and bargain with the ad agency by offering additional pay and asking for a response even if they decide they still no longer wish to work with the campaign. I wanted it to look like John was trying to make it hard to say not to him by essentially backing them into a corner and forcing a response from them anyway. Since it’s only an email though and you can tell by “Karen’s” tone, she has already made a decision and no amount of groveling will change her or her agency’s mind. Since this is essentially a negative news email, John still needed to try and gain the dominating role in communication by seeing if he could convince the agency to continue to work with them. Once he realized that wasn’t the case, he didn’t put more effort into fixing the issue because he realized that there was no upper hand to be gained at that point.




     In the fourth genre I created another email string. The difference between this and the other emails with Karen are that this time a local Union is thinking of pulling their support. Instead of dealing with a big successful ad business, now John is talking to the local leaders of his community on Dan’s behalf. These people seem to be eager to help make a change and they saw that change happening perhaps, through Dan. John strategizes a face to face meeting between Dan and the Union and in doing so opens a space for an opportunity to really connect with the guys in the Union. In the Unions response to John I think you can really tell how much it’s appreciated by them by letting them sit down and have their own sort of town hall session with Dan. In John doing this, he not only makes it harder for the Union to say no directly to his face but also makes them feel important by letting them voice opinions, concerns, and wants directly to Dan. While this email also deals with negative news writing I think it’s very clear that John was aware of who his audience was and how he could potentially solve the issue at hand.




     In the fourth genre I decided to go a little more in depth as to how the address was written and edited. Given that this speech would be major key as to whether or not Dan could continue as a legitimate candidate in the race, it had to be written carefully as to address issues, solve problems, create new space, and discredit his opponent. Each paragraph is carefully written without using any language of force. This was one situation where “trigger words” that created a negative image of Dan and to be completely eradicated. He directly addresses what happened and how it has affected not him, but his family, the true “victims” of the accusation. (Not the girl who made the accusation) He thanks his supporters who have not doubted him first after that. I put each specific point in a very specific spot based on how far he had to reach to literally reach the audience he was addressing. In the email string I made, it gets brought up that the accuser was friends with his opponent's daughter, which I think makes it very easy to make it look like this is a fake accusation. Darcy is careful to tell Dan and John not to make his own accusation of the fake allegation seem to hostile and that he remains wholesome. So I threw it in there at the end of the speech since I think it’s the juiciest part of the speech. If I had put it in the beginning, it wouldn’t have mattered what he said after because no one listening would be thinking of anything but that. So in saying that part last, he has his audience’s attention the whole time, but also says that last, so it’s the last thing people remember about the address.




     The last textual genre I created was an interview between Dan and a local news person named Christine Forte. I wanted to put Dan in a situation where he didn’t have his team speaking for him and he had to come up with a response right then and there. Christine makes a big move after Dan’s first answer to one of his questions. Dan mentions the stress of the campaign and she uses that to move onto asking a hard question about the sexual scandal. He responds by bringing up again, how this isn’t something that actually happened and that it has affected his family the most. He also uses the word “extreme” which I thought was a great word because I think it’s a word that a lot of people are afraid of today no matter where they fall in their political ideals. Then after his response Christine asks if he plans on taking some time for himself with his family to recoup after the ordeal, Dan responds saying that the campaign is the most important thing at the time. A little contradictory since he just said the accusation really affected his family but now he’s saying the campaign is the most important part. I felt like it was necessary though because I wanted it to look like, again, he seemingly had nothing to hide so shutting down the rumors and being able to pull through and gain a lead was still a major possibility. The article we read called “Collecting Data by In-Depth Interviewing” I think laid the groundwork for how to conduct an interview. Even though I made the interview relatively short in the textual genre I think the moves within the interview are very clear from both sides. It’s easy to to tell which direction both Dan and Christine were trying to go in in order to both get what they wanted out of the interview.



     I think the metacognitive moves I used where pretty strategic and created space for conversation and to allow the readers to create their own opinion on what was happening. I wanted the textual genres to not only include key details as to how the campaign was being ran and strategize but to also provide some sort of evidence as to back up the reader’s own opinion. I decided to write about a political campaign specifically because nothing happens by accident when it comes to responses or gaining lead. Campaigning literally is strategizing to win a race by gaining support so the language that has to be used when communicating has to be carefully planned.




     When I had my interview with AJ he said something along those lines to me after the actual interview. He said he never really said something by accident. He would create pockets of space for small talk sometimes and could close it again when he needed a specific answer. Sometimes to lessen tension or ease the people he interviewed he would ask a question with an easy response. I think I used this in my final project because you can see it through John’s communication skills that he sort of knows when he can fix something versus when he no longer has the attention or support of an audience to keep pushing for feedback or support.