Cinthya Jauregui

CTW MWF 1:10

September 28, 2018
Narrating the Rhetoric

I always loved analyzing novels, films, and my crush’s cryptic texts. Eventually, it
became a problem of over analyzing brochures, commercials, and the directions for writing this
essay. Every year becoming more skillful at critically over analyzing simple, meaningless events
in my life, I needed to find a way to be more pragmatic. Instead of dragging this skill to a futile
extreme, now I have finally encountered and will apply a more focused approach with the
BEAM method. BEAM is an acronym for vocabulary with which to analyze and deconstruct a
research paper. By separating sources and paragraphs into Background, Exhibit, Argument and
Method, one can analyze the purpose a piece of information serves and allows the reader to
question the stylistic choices of the author rather than simply categorizing the type of sources
that were used into primary, secondary or tertiary. In this way, Background is distinguished as
what the author mentions as information assumed to be known or at least understood by the
general public. Exhibits are the evidence with which the author build upon their argument.
Argument being the point the author is trying to make. Lastly, Method is the guiding style or
idea with which the author frames and forms her work. It is with this intention of delving into a
deep reading and interaction with the text itself that I will be BEAM-ing light into Robillard’s
rhetoric on her essay ​It’s Time for Class: Toward a More Complex Pedagogy of Narrative​.
Before being able to discuss how she chooses to argue, first it is important to note that
like any other story, Robillard’s essay has a clear message she seeks to convey. Her three main
contentions are that time is interpreted by a person as a result of their class, narrative is an
important tool for the development of a person’s identity, and just because narratives are
personal and subjective does not mean they cannot be used argumentatively in a pedantic
environment. Robillard is able to seamlessly transition from a narrative about her mother’s
obsession with being early into her first major argument of how narrative is only trusted to be a
rhetorical tool by professionals in the field of writing. To develop this argument, she smoothly
starts the paragraph as background to later transform it into an exhibit. She begins by assuming
that her reader and audience know what ​College English ​and ​CCC​ are. These famous academic
journals serve as a background knowledge for the reader to get rid of their stigma around the use
of the narrative in a professional writing level. Afterall, other famous renowned authors such as
Lindquist, Brodkey, and Bloom are already employing it, and as Robillard is quick to point out,
it is effective too (75). After establishing the context of the current academic writing scene, the
paragraph pivots to reveal the reason Robillard attributes the successful use of narrative to the
trust the reader confides in the author to develop a sound argument. This exhibition serves to
banish all the preconceived opposition an individual might have. Afterall, it would be immoral
not to even grant students a chance to develop their stories when for other writers, trust is blindly
given. With this emotional preparation and moral foundation set, Robillard is ready to deliver her
argument.
Robillard provides her arguments in the next four paragraphs that follow. It is in this
section where she develops how essential it is for a working-class student to understand their
past through narrative so that they can have a better focus on their present and a clearer goal for
their future. It is clear these paragraphs are all serving as arguments because this section is filled
with quotes and citations from different sources more than the others. This most notable
characteristic of argument intuitively structuctures the ideas of other writers in the field so that
Robillard can prove and expand on her points. An example of this technique is when Robillard
invokes the words of British historian and writer Edward Palmer Thompson to explain that class
is a construct “by men [and women] as they live their own story” (76). She does this in order to
expand the definition of class by people’s stories to be fundamental to their identity. It is
interesting that she chose to repeat this quote later on in her essay to once again talk about the
social construct of a class to parallel the social construct of time itself and how those can be
affected in perception by one another. In this example, ideas ascribing to other people in the field
can create different arguments depending in which direction Robillard decides to frame her
claim, but citing others can also be used to parallel their methodology.
Amidst the arguments of the development of a class consciousness, she transcends the
criteria making the paragraph solely argumentative to then serve as the method. Robillard
explicitly states “To argue, as Marinara does”, thus invoking the methodology associate
professor Martha Marinara uses in her essay ​When Working Class Students 'Do' the Academy:
How We Negotiate with Alternative. ​This statement, thus, signals how Robillard arguments about
the importance of narrative in discerning time for working classes will be paralleling Marinara’s
arguments about focusing on the “students who work” (77). Robillard then mimics Marinara’s
methodology in order to shift the focus from the working class to only the working students.
From that moment on her argumentation will be paralleling Marinara’s own arguments. She
employs this method to provide the emphasis to not only on the aforementioned working class,
but bring the attention closer to the students who work. In the paragraphs and sections that
follow, Robillard goes back to making arguments, but now with the focus being the the way
narrative serves as a tool to provide context, understanding, and meaningful discussion into the
classroom and for the working class students’ lives even beyond their academic years. Robillard
testifies herself with a narrative of her own life having been a working class student herself. She
candidly reveals the adoption of a new regard for time when her work was measured in a fixed
salary per hour. Because she argues how this mentality blurred the lines of class, time, and
identity in what they mean to her now that she has assimilated into the middle class, her own
story serves as an exhibit to her arguments in how they impact the development of a person.
Candidly narrating her own past in efforts to make her arguments even more personal, she not
only argues towards the effects of class, but also illustrates how a narrative that is purposefully
crafted can be used to argue.
Throughout the essay, small anecdotes are sprinkled and built upon to serve as
background that she later mindfully manipulates into an splendid exhibit of how different
perspectives of a single story can tell their own story. This is brilliant because she shows the
power of narratives and their importance and potential for argumentation with her own narrative.
In the end she concludes expressing that the reason narrative can be effectively utilized in
argumentation is the analysis embedded into the narrative itself. As working class students are
not trusted to be able to use the narratives of their own past meaningfully, their sense of identity
is disregarded and an important classroom opportunity is compromised. With her teachings, I
realize that the reason I over analyze is because I cannot afford to be taken advantage of like my
family has from corrupt individuals and their own negligence in analyzing. It’s not a matter of
replacing my over analytic self with BEAM, but rather embracing my past so I can not only
narrate the rhetoric of Robillard’s essay and her story, but be able to narrate my own.