Pb2B They Say, I Say

The book They Say, I Say it has a guide in the back to show you different templates for moves that most authors use in their writing. They give you twenty one different types of moves that an author can make—however that is not close at all to the actual numbers of moves authors have at their disposal. There is no limit to what, you, as a writer can make as a move. These moves are meant to impact the piece positively, which is why people use them so often in their own writing.

They Say, I Say is so accurate with the moves template that they use, you can see many of the moves used inside our course readings. In “Why blog? Searching for Writing on the Web” Alex Reid uses the template for Adding Metacommentary (A section in the guide about moves) when he says “In other words…” Carol uses moves from the template as well when she writes, “Now as you performed this kind of analysis, you likely didn’t walk through each of these questions one by one…” and continues on with her assumption. What move she uses comes from the “Introducing Something Implied or Assumed” section of the appendix guide. She also uses another move from the explaining quotes subsection when she starts to say, “Lloyd Bitzer argues…” Even Kerry Dirk uses the “Embedding voice markers” move when he says “I think it’s time…” in his article Navigating Genres along with using “Saying who is saying what” move when he states, “Taking what Devitt says into account…” The point I am trying to make here is that these moves are similar to conventions, they help build your argument and writing, however there is never a set combination or set of moves that you are required to use.

One of the moves I found was in Laura Bolin Carroll’s “Step toward Rhetorical Analysis”, in which she wrote, “The last piece of the rhetorical situation is the constraints.” The move made here is listing off her main points. Throughout the article she uses many transitional phrases that purposely make help better organize the essay. Without this, the article might seem messy and unorganized which would reduce the credibility of the article, so this move is an attempt at pathos.

In another section of her article, “Step toward Rhetorical Analysis,” she uses the phrase “Can’t judge a book by its cover,” this is her using a very common idiom to help the reader understand what she is talking about. She goes on to say that this inherently isn’t true because it’s a daily occurrence when people are faced with snap judgment. The impact of the move – using an idiom—is in the fact that people have undoubtedly heard this saying more than one hundred times throughout their life; so by saying a popular cliché it should not be taken as a fact that grabs the reader’s attention.

Alex Reid has a couple of interesting moves that he implements in his writing too; first off, he decides to use rhetorical questions. “What does this have to do with blogging?” Reid uses this question as a sort of pause in the reading to give the reader a moment to gather his or her thoughts. He starts off by giving myriad information about blogging and then after the introduction he gives this rhetorical question so to give the reader a moment to comprehend this said information. Then Reid continues to answer his own question. This helps the reader understand his assertion about why you should blog.

Lists are great way to present the information you want to give to the reader. Reid uses multiple lists throughout his article for this very reason—to present information to the audience. He lists off the top twenty five blogs as of June 2010 for the sole purpose of providing evidence to his claim, it strengthens it. It is very effective in the sense that the lists help you understand what he is trying to say. He even creates a table titled “Types of course-assigned blogs” where he lists different types of blogs in order to get even more of an idea as to what type of blog we are supposed to create.

Every author uses moves as part of their writing. It strengthens their essay by implementing techniques used by previous writers that are known to be an effective tool for their writing. They Say, I Say highlights this by actually creating a guide for you to look at common moves used in many writings, illustrating the almost formulaic tendency of praised pieces.