User:Bsxcc/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Feminist rhetoric

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Feminism and feminist rhetoric are part of the course I'm taking and are subject I'm interested in; I thought it would be personally valuable and enriching to preview what Wikipedia had to say about feminist rhetoric.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)


 * The opening paragraph doesn't lay out either the significance or the timeline of feminist rhetoric as it should; it jumps from 1973 to 1992 as if nothing transpired in between that twenty year gap. The second paragraph leads with a reference to 1988, further confusing the timeline. Questions I would want answered in the first paragraph: How is feminist rhetoric unique to and different from other rhetorics? What are its specific traits and characteristics? Who are its leading voices? This is all ultimately answered by the end of the first section, but the structure of the information presented is
 * The major flaws of this article are the intra-paragraph structure, the overall writing quality, and the digressions. Many sentences lack fluidity from one sentence to the next; from the Talk page, I understand this was an undergraduate class project, and the different voices from sentence to sentence ring out loud and clear, including the voice of the instructor. It ultimately reads as if everyone were assigned to come up with one sentence, and one editor simply categorized the sentences and put them together untouched. Also, on several occasions, I had the impression that the writers weren't completely comfortable with the subject matter -- perhaps not even fully clear on what "pedagogy" means, much less other essential terms. For example, consider the following sentence: "A key term used in this field is 'transnationality', defined as the culture of one nation moving through borders to another nation. It is used with the terms cultural hybridity and intertextuality, which continue the theory of cultures, texts, and ideas mixing with one another": these lines are not connected to feminist rhetoric and become a digression. Further, look at this discussion below of classic rhetoric and notice how it attempts to describe what the "rhetorical canon" is but strays far from providing the background to understanding feminist rhetoric (instead of mentioning Cicero and Quintillian, referring to Greek rhetoric and inserting a hyperlink to "rhetoric" would have been more efficient):
 * Feminist rhetoric works to expand the rhetorical canon. The rhetorical canon is traditionally composed of five parts: Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, and Delivery. They were introduced by the Roman orator Cicero in his treatise De Inventione around 50 BC. The idea was expanded by the Roman rhetorician Quintilian 150 years later in Institutio Oratoria. The rhetorical canon has been used in rhetorical education since its creation. Rhetorical treatises have based their purpose off these canons.
 * The text is sloppily proofread: "Feminist scholar Patricia Bizzell noted in 1992 that classical canon of rhetoric consists almost entirely of well-educated male authors" and "Black woman scholar serves as a keeper of rhetorical culture by revealing..." The overall effect of both the writing and editing quality, naturally, is a loss of confidence in the material. Solution: I think that one master editor could provide a cohesive voice to the article that would ground it and improve its flow.
 * The section on "Gender" is significantly underdeveloped. A reader would expect the discussion that follows a heading like "gender" to be detailed and specific; the wording in this section, on the contrary, is cursory and superficial. The writers toss in the word "transgender" without connecting it to feminist rhetoric and simply say that "is recognized by scholars as a lack of privilege some authors have." More depth and substance is needed connecting transgender studies (inc. in 4th Wave feminism) to feminist rhetoric.
 * Sources: Most of the sources are credible, scholarly sources (College English, CCC); one source is from ThoughtCo though. All the links appear to be functional. The references are shoddily edited: some are in MLA format, some in APA. While one source is from 2021 and another from 2017, most of the 22 references are circa 2011, so more current scholarship would improve the article.
 * The article lacks imagery which -- while not essential for this topic -- would give the text some visual relief.
 * The Talk Page of this article gives it a C-class rating with a high importance on the WikiProject Writing's importance scale (but a low importance on WikiProject Feminism importance scale). This page was nominated for deletion in 2018; apparently people got together and defended the baseline material while also admitting that it needed significant additions and editing, ultimately voting to keep the page. Someone edited this page as late as Jan. and Feb. 2022, so it's still actively under someone's hand.
 * Overall, I think this article needs significant work especially with the quality of writing, but also in terms of providing a better understanding of racial and sexual diversity, and a more complete description of what feminist rhetoric is and does: what its significance is, more on its genesis and antecedents, how it has changed and evolved over the past few decades, what challenges and criticism it has faced, what its principal issues are currently. I think this article needs one person to edit it; giving this piece a unified voice and unified/grounded scholarship would significantly improve the information.

Comments from Dr. Vetter
Very thorough and excellent evaluation here! - "feminist rretoric" is quite obviously in the purview of our course topic and would be an excellent candidate for updates for this class project. It is also on the to-do list for CCCC Wikipedia Initiative and Wikiproject Writing Studies so you would be actively contributing to that project should you choose to work on this article as well.

In addition to your criticisms - which I agree with, I think there's way too much emphasis/coverage given to Royster - and the work/themes of other feminist rhetorical theorists, both historical and current, should be included.

I realize the impulse to want to fix everything....but I want to caution you to not try to take on too much. It's OK to do a section or two, with some light editing on the whole thing, and then eave some additional work for others (or you can take it up after the course).

Again, this would be an excellent topic to work on and I could help you with some sources should you choose to focus on this.

Best, Dr. Vetter DarthVetter (talk) 19:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)