If you have ever played a game of "one of these things is not like the others," then you have engaged in the rhetorical mode of classification. Division and classification go hand in hand, but they are more-or-less opposites.
Classification is showing how something fits into a larger group, or showing why a bunch of things belong together (as opposed to division in which you break one thing down into its component parts). If you were writing a product review of the new iPhone, you might classify the Apple iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy, and the HTC One as "smart phones." This would be particularly useful if you were going to compare them to each other (see how nicely rhetorical modes work together!), or if you were going to compare that classification—“smart phones”—to another classification, such as "dumb phones" (aka flip phones).
Classifying can be problematic when you try to shove something into a category when it doesn't quite fit, like trying to stick a square peg in a round hole. It can be tempting to come up with three or four neat classifications to discuss complex issues, but it can create arbitrary distinctions and ignore important characteristics. For example, if one of the flip phones you mention has full internet access and all the capabilities of the iPhone, then which category or classification would be the best fit? If I classify types of celebrities into three categories—athlete, actor, and singer—then what happens when I mention someone who could qualify as all three? Where do they go? The solution might seem easy, just add a new classification, but before long, you'll have so many classifications that it can be difficult to discuss them in a meaningful way—and that’s one of the key goals of classification: to make it easier to discuss and analyze complex things.
Classifying can also be problematic if you are basing the categories on arbitrary, illogical, or fallacious characteristics, or if you unnecessarily pit those classifications against each other. Grouping people, for example, by gender, race, or age can lead to problems, especially if you're trying to explain why one group is better than the other (why men are better athletes than women, why girls are smarter than boys, why this generation is superior to that generation, and so on). I'm not saying to avoid these classifications, but ask yourself if it is really essential to what you are trying to accomplish. For example, classifying people by race to investigate the prevalence of genetic diseases might lead to some breakthroughs in the medical field. Classifying people by race to find out who enjoys going to Disney Land more will probably be offensive and unproductive. Classifying people by personality type, on the other hand, and asking the same question might be quite enlightening ("Who enjoys Disney Land more: introverts or extroverts?").
The following essay was written for an intermediate-writing class. The student was asked to pick a popular-culture artifact, like a movie, TV show, or video game, and classify the types of people that generally consume (i.e. use) that artifact.
The Fault in Our Fans
by Paul Whitaker
It’s easy to pick on network executives for prematurely cancelling some of the greatest sci-fi shows on television, such as Firefly, Almost Human, Doll House, Caprica, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Read the user-generated reviews for any of these shows, and you’ll see phrases like, “Fox sucks,” and “The executives should be fired,” and “What do they even know about sci-fi?” This all may be true, but there are a lot of people to blame for the demise of these shows—creators, actors, advertisers, and sponsors—but surprisingly, some of the people most to blame are the fans themselves.
For decades, movies and TV shows have painted the portrait of a very unflattering, two-dimensional sci-fi fan, wearing his Ben Kenobi robes, pushing up his glasses, popping his zits, not getting laid, and freaking out if you use “the force” and “Captain Kirk” in the same sentence. This might be an accurate portrait of one or two fans out there, but there are millions of others who defy this description. Though each sci-fi fan is unique in his or her own way, most fall into one of five categories: The Purist, The Waiter, The Fanboy, The Closet, and The Newbie. As I discuss the characteristics of these types of fans, my aim isn’t merely to show how they differ but to highlight one important similarity between them: that they all, in their own way, pose a real threat to the health and longevity of the sci-fi television shows they cherish.
The Purist
We’ve all met that guy—or maybe you are that guy—who can’t say anything nice about The Arrow or The Flash because of some discrepancy between the show and an obscure storyline from the comic book forty years ago. The outfits are all wrong. She would never say that. He doesn’t appear until years later. Those two aren’t even from the same universe. That’s not how he would use his power. We get it. The creators take some liberties—perhaps too many liberties—in converting the story from the medium of a comic book to that of a television show. That’s not only to be expected, but there’s no way around it. You simply cannot adapt material into a different genre and medium without changing some key aspects.
The purists hold creators of sci-fi television to a higher standard, and for that they should be applauded, but they also hurt the industry in a couple ways. First, they alienate a lot of would-be fans. Some people just don’t want to be associated with the purists, so they stay away from the genre altogether, which seriously depletes the viewership needed to keep these fledgling sci-fi series afloat. And second, they hurt the industry because they can lead to irreconcilable creative differences between producers, actors, writers, and advertisers. A lot of compromise is required to create a television show, especially when adapting the material from a different medium, and a few purists who refuse to budge or compromise can shut down the entire enterprise. Many great sci-fi shows have died at the hands of purists demanding absolute virtue. It’s a travesty.
The Waiter
Sci-fi television has always suffered from those fair-weather fans who wait to watch the show, but the problem has reached new heights as so many shows are made available online through such platforms as Netflix, Crackle, and HULU. The reasons for waiting are varied. Some people don’t like to deal with the week-or-two lag between episodes or long breaks between seasons. Some people don’t want to get invested in a show only to have it cancelled. Some people want confirmation that it’s great before they’ll commit. Whatever the reason, they wait until entire seasons have been produced before even watching the pilot, but by then it’s often too late: the show has been cancelled due to low ratings. Networks don’t care how many people will eventually watch their show on Netflix, they want to know how many will watch it this week on their channel with their sponsors. That’s where the numbers come from. That’s where the money is made. And that’s why The Waiter is a threat to your favorite sci-fi series. If you meet a waiter, tell them to stop waiting and start watching!
The Fanboy
Perhaps this is the closest thing to that oft-parodied version of the sci-fi fan. Fanboy is a bit of misnomer in that he or she can be a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, a cyborg, an android, an alien, or anything in between. What unifies fanboys is their love of the sci-fi series. Some fanboys are purists, but only a few. Most fanboys would rather celebrate what’s great about their beloved show than to rail on what’s wrong with it. If the purists are the haters, the fanboys are the lovers. Often seen in full costume on Halloween or at comic-book conventions, fanboys enjoy emulating their favorite characters. Often, too, they decorate their cars and cubicles and bedrooms with trinkets and memorabilia of their shows: sonic screwdrivers and light-sabers and space ships and ray guns and full-size cut-outs of Princess Leia or Captain Harkness.
It’s difficult to accuse fanboys of hurting their favorite sci-fi series in any way—they are, after all, the biggest fans—but the reality is that they, too, tend to alienate potential fans of the show by being perceived as obsessive, geeky, or weird. Just as would-be fans are turned off by the purists, they also fear being mistaken for a fanboy (or eventually turning into one).
If you’re a fanboy, that’s okay. Just be cool about it.
The Closet
Almost as irksome as The Waiter is The Closet: the person who loves (LOVES!) a particular sci-fi series, but who will never admit to it. I haven’t actually met one of them, because by their very definition they are not going to tell me they are a closet fan (else they would no longer be in the closet). But I know they’re out there. I know because I used to be one, watching Doctor Who at two in the morning while my wife was asleep, wishing I could carry a sonic screwdriver around or put a miniature TARDIS on my nightstand. Eventually, I got over my anxiety of being discovered. I declared to all my friends on Facebook that I was a lover of not only Doctor Who, but all things sci-fi, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that so were most of my friends and family. Even my mom, who never talks of such things, declared her love of David Tennant, the tenth doctor.
So if you’re in the closet, come on out. Openly support your show and get others to support it too. Network executives need to know you’re out there. They won’t continue broadcasting the show if they think you’re not watching.
The Newbie
God bless the newbie. They are the uninitiated who have stumbled upon the wonders of sci-fi television. Perhaps they accidently stopped turning the channel on an odd-yet-compelling show and left it for a moment, “just to see what it is,” and then found themselves, an hour later, unable to turn it off. Maybe they were forced to watch a few episodes with their boyfriend. Maybe they grew up in a cave and only now have discovered how great Firefly is. Whatever the reason, they—like all of us—have to start their sci-fi journey somewhere.
Embrace the newbies around you. Mentor them. Guide them. Teach them the ways of responsible sci-fi viewership. Don’t let them become purists. Don’t let them recede to the closets. Don’t let them become a fanboy stereotype. Unite with them in forming the strongest fan-base in the history of the planet!
Whichever type of fan you are, all I ask is that you be the best fan you can be. If you’re worried about your show being cancelled, don’t be so quick to blame the network executives. Take some responsibility for what is going on. Be part of the solution. Love your show. Watch it. Cherish it. Share it. Promote it. But don’t be the reason that it gets cancelled.
Please watch responsibly.
[1] "One of These Things is Not Like the Others," written by Joe Raposo and John Stone for Sesame Street.
To divide is to take something and break it down into its component parts. If you are writing a review of the new iPhone, you might discuss the operating system, the screen, the available apps, the battery, and the camera. You are dividing it into its components so you can discuss each one in turn. These divisions are also commonly known as categories if you are analyzing something, or criteria if you are evaluating something.
When you divide something, there is always the element of choice, and readers might disagree with your divisions. For example, they might say that apps and operating system are the same thing and should be called software. Ultimately, though, it is up to you as the writer. Be prepared to defend or clarify your divisions.
In this section of the book, I have made the choice to divide writing into the components of rhetorical modes. You'll find other first-year writing textbooks where the authors choose not to make that division. In the first part of this book, I chose to divide the writing process into pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Some folks out there will disagree with that choice, and they're free to write their own textbook.
At RATEMYPROFESSOR.COM, students evaluate their professors using four categories: Easiness, Helpfulness, Clarity, and Rater Interest. They can also write a review of the professor (usually one or two paragraphs). The whole point is to help other students decide if they want to take a course from that professor.
To help my students understand the art of division, I ask them to pretend that our campus website has a feature called RATEMYCLASSROOM. We spend a few minutes brainstorming possible criteria (i.e. divisions) we could use to evaluate the room. Usually, we end up with a list that includes such things as size of the room, comfort of chairs and desks, temperature, location on campus, number of windows, computer equipment, WiFi strength, color scheme, and speaker system (apparently, it’s important to many students that the TED Talks we watch are in surround sound). The list could go on—there are dozens or perhaps hundreds of categories.
I then ask students to write a one-paragraph review of the classroom using only three or four of the categories from the board. The key is to pick categories that are important to them and that will be relevant to the reader. While I, as a professor, value the ability to change the thermostat, a student trying to decide if she wants to take a class in that room probably doesn’t care about such things.
I recently did this activity with my students and decided to write my review using the following three criteria: the size of the classroom, the age of the building, and the number of windows. Additionally, I decided to write the review for fellow professors who might not want to teach in that particular classroom: Browning 117. I could have just as easily written the paragraph for students—ultimately, it doesn’t matter to whom you write your review as long as you have some particular group of people in mind and then cater the review to them. Remember, the top goal of writing a review is to help the reader make a decision about the thing being reviewed.
Here is my final paragraph. I don’t claims it’s perfect, but it demonstrates how the rhetorical mode of division can help with the task of writing an evaluative argument.
Teaching English in Browning 117
There are a few things about Browning 117 that might make it unappealing for English professors, such as its size, age, and lack of windows, but the classroom is still a good option for teaching English 0990. The first concern, that the classroom is small, is only an issue when an instructor wants to move the chairs and desks around. It contains 14 two-seater desks and 28 chairs, none of which has wheels. Given the lack of space, it is extremely difficult to rearrange the furniture for small-group activities, especially if students are already in the room. Students have also complained that it is difficult to get in and out of desks without tripping on the legs of the chairs. Regardless, the chairs are comfortable, and if an instructor is willing to leave them where they are, the room layout is fine—there is even plenty of space for the instructor to walk around the front and side of the room while lecturing. The second concern, that the classroom is old, is only true in the sense that the building is old, but the classroom itself has been remodeled in the last ten years and has a very new feel to it. The paint and carpet are fresh, the white boards are unblemished, and the classroom is equipped with a computer, ELMO, overhead projector, and Wi-Fi. It also has access to the bank of computers in the foyer. Despite its age, the classroom feels very modern. The last concern, that the classroom lacks windows, is actually easy to rectify. It actually has one exterior window that looks toward the center of campus, and it has two interior windows that look into the foyer. All the windows have beige shutters, which are usually shut. This might explain why, at first glance, the room appears to have no windows, but if instructors open them, the room feels airy and light and open. It’s not the perfect classroom, for sure, but Browning 117 provides a surprisingly comfortable and up-to-date environment for teaching English 0990.
There are many circumstances in which using the division will help you write an evaluative analysis or argument. You might have a short, informal assignment to read and evaluate an article or story. You might have to write a longer, formal paper in which you evaluate a product, book, or movie. In the workplace, you might be expected to evaluate one of your employees. I had the experience years ago, before I even had a college degree, of having to write an evaluation of a very expensive software program that the sheriff’s office was considering purchasing for the 911 center. Fortunately, the director of the center came up with the criteria for me to use before beginning my evaluation. I don’t recall what they were, but I imagine they were something like ease of use, customizability, and cost of implementation. I don’t even remember if my evaluation was good or not, but ultimately we bought the program, so I like to think the powers-that-be found my recommendations useful.
The following is from a developmental-writing course, The assignment was to write a one-paragraph review of a movie using three criteria.
Prehistoric Goodness
For a few days after watching Jurassic World, I gave into my baser movie-snob urges and railed against the film, warning friends and family not to waste their time or money on this slick reboot of Jurassic Park. As I’ve thought about the film over the last couple of months, however, I’ve softened my criticism and have come to accept that it actually wasn’t that bad of a movie. One thing I appreciated about Jurassic World was its relatively short runtime. Big-budget movies tend to demand a three to four-hour commitment, which may not seem like much, but when I’m sitting next to a squirming child who has just guzzled my ten-dollar soda, three hours is an eternity. Jurassic World clocks in at about two hours, and it’s a quick two hours at that: when it was over, I honestly thought it had only been an hour. Another thing I appreciated was the simplicity of the story line. Like the original, this movie establishes a little bit of science and then releases the dinosaurs. There’s not much more to it. After watching the sequels, which got mired in plots and subplots and ridiculous twists and turns, it was refreshing to watch Chris Pratt plow through the jungle on his motorcycle, flanked by a flock of raptors, ready to take on the big bad—ridiculous, yes, but straight forward. I applaud the film for its lack of guile. The last thing I appreciated about the film was how well it paid homage to the original without feeling like just another remake. Jurassic Park fans could nerd-out to the little things, like someone wearing a vintage Jurassic Park t-shirt, or characters stumbling into the original Jurassic Park building, with the tattered banner still on the ground and the faint roar of a long-dead T-Rex reminding us of what had happened. Never did any character have to explain the plot of Jurassic Park, though. Spielberg trusted us as viewers to make the connections ourselves, and they were so much fun to make. So despite my initial grumblings, I’m happy to conclude that Jurassic World is definitely worth a few dollars and a couple hours of your time. If nothing else, watch it just to see Bryce Dallas Howard clumsily sprinting through the jungle in high heels.