I like to move it, move it

Moves can be used in a variety of different ways in writing, dancing, singing, playing sports etc. Who would have known that Michael Jackson’s different dance moves such as the moonwalk, would be related to the moves that we are studying in Writing 2? Throughout the articles that we have read so far in our course reader, the authors use many different moves to affect the audience in certain ways. One can find many examples of moves from “They Say, I Say” demonstrated in the course reader, as well as many other moves not included in the appendix.

For example, in the article “So What? Who Cares?” the identified move of “signaling who is saying what” is used many times to help establish its credibility. The author uses phrases such as “What Grady implicitly says here is…” and “Notice that Grady’s phrase…” to portray the point of the article and give examples of affective and non affective writing.

In Navigating Genres, Dirk adds metacommentary by using phrases such as “In other words” and “By this point you might realize”. He often uses this move after quoting long explanations from leading professors/professionals to summarize what was quoted, to provide clarity for the audience.

Dirk also captures authorial action by using the terms “Carolyn Miller argues” multiple times throughout the reading. This move also adds to the ethos of the article by showing the point of view from a respectable figure, and also gives an introduction to the upcoming quote. The diction of the word “argues” has a stronger impact than if Dirk were to replace it with “says,” which also adds to the effectiveness of the move.

 In “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis,” Carroll begins the article very informal using the “introducing standard views” move. I found the introduction to this article extremely interesting, because I was able to relate when she brought up the fact that we are constantly judging the people around us by their hairstyle, clothing, jewelry etc. Carroll states that “daily we find ourselves in situations where we are forced to make snap judgments” which proves that these days everyone develops stereotypes without even realizing it. This move is effective because it shows how real life situations are similar to rhetoric and helps give a realistic introduction to the topic.

It is only obvious that in the article “Why Blog? Searching for Writing on the Web,” Reid uses the move of “establishing why your claims matter”. Reid believes that “a blog is an excellent opportunity for exploring and developing intrinsic motivations for writing.” This move is crucial because the purpose of the article is to persuade students to believe blogging is a great way of demonstrating their work. Therefore, if Reid doesn’t establish why his claims matter, then the audience will consider the article irrelevant.

In Straub’s “Responding—Really Responding—to Other Students’ Writing,” there are many two-word sentence blasters that have a strong impact on the text. An example of the two-word sentence blasters is “She writes. You read.” The author may have used this move to get his point across in a short and concise way, so the audience clearly understands how to properly respond to other people’s writings. I believe this move was very effective because instead of using long/complicated sentences, I was easily able to understand the rights and wrongs.

In “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” Boyd uses a unique move, one that I would like to call the “stop and visualize”. After giving all of the information about the alleged murder, Boyd assigned the reader a task in the middle of the article to write as if they were a detective. Boyd’s intentions were to get the reader involved and to ultimately help the reader obtain a better understanding of rhetoric, which was very effective. Later on in the article, Boyd used a move titled “predicting the report.” Boyd claimed that the writer was “probably thinking hard about jargon” and that he/she “began it much like you did your detective report”. I believe this move was very affective because it helps the writer understand that even though every student has a different approach, most of the information that each student includes is very similar. Boyd included this because it is important to note that everyone approaches rhetorical situations in similar ways.

In “How to Read Like a Writer” Bunn uses the move I would like to call, the “question digger”. Bunn devoted an entire paragraph to asking rhetorical questions about starting an essay with a quote, which I do not believe is very effective. I think rhetorical questions are good to use every once and a while to get the reader thinking, but too many just gets annoying. I understand that the point of all of the questions was to get the reader thinking about the many advantages/disadvantages of starting with a quote and maybe even taking a stance on the topic, but I do not like this “question digger” move.

Lastly, going back to Dirk’s, Navigating Genres, he uses a move named “the isolated bullet point examples”. Dirk uses bullet points to list the names of newspaper headlines, which separates them from the text. I believe this is effective because it would be confusing for the reader if the headlines were separated by commas. The headlines stand out, which make the different genres easily identifiable.

As you can see, the limit to how many different moves authors use in their writing does not exist. Now, it is up to the reader to solve the puzzle and figure out the purpose of these so-called “moves”.