On to the second paragraph. The first sentence is really simple,
not so. Of course.
it's referring back to the last sentence of the first paragraph.
We said, now we thought at least some of it was safe.
And saying, no, it wasn't safe. So, what are we going to say about this
sentence? Well, what about the little word, so?
So, can be an argument marker. It can indicate that what follows it, is
a conclusion. But, is that what it's doing here?
I don't think so. As we just saw like in, I don't think so,
the word, so, can be used in many ways, where it's not an argument marker.
And this is saying, it's not so. It's not that way.
So there's no argument here. So that would get marked with a big N for
nothing. Now,
what about shocking, as it sounds, shocking?
Well, is shocking always bad? Remember we saw in the first paragraph
the word stunning. Well, stunning stuns you, and shocking
shocks you. And it's telling you that you have some
kind of reaction. But it's not telling you whether that
reaction is due to the thing being good, or the thing being bad.
You can get shocked by something good or bad.
It can be shockingly good, or shockingly bad.
And so the word shocking by itself. Doesn't indicate that it's e plus or e
minus, so again, you get a nothing. I mention it only because it's clear that
Robert Redford thinks that shocking is bad, that this should not have happened.
He's suggesting that it's bad. But the word shocking, itself, is not an
evaluative word. What about, as it sounds?
Well, he's saying that it sounds that way.
He's not saying that it is that way. He's not saying that it may sound that
way. He's saying it does sound that way, which
is to say, it seems that way to him. Which is not to say it really is true, so
he's guarding the client. He's not saying that it really is
shocking. He's saying that it seems shocking.
So he's guarding the client, in order to avoid someone objecting that it's not
really all that shocking, after all. Say, well it sounds shocking, and in
order to make that part of his argument more defensible.
Because it's not really essential to his argument, that it's shocking or not.
So what's supposed to be shocking? Clinton's Bureau of Land Management, or
BLM, has approved oil drilling within the monument.
Notice that there is no guarding at all here he just states it.
They did it they approved oil drilling within the monument.
And, that's because it's not really something he is arguing for.
He's actually opposed to it. It's something that his opponents might
support but he doesn't so, he doesn't want to guard it since he wants to say it
just happened as a matter of fact that they approved it so, there's I nothing
that we need to mark in that particular sentence.
Next sentence. BLM or the Bureau of Land Management has
given Conoco Incorporated, a subsidiary of the corporate giant DuPont permission
to drill for oil and gas in the heart of the new monument.
Well, there's a lot going on here that we could mention, no, BLM has given Conoco a
subsidiary that explains how they got permission by siding the BLM.
It's a subsidiary of the corporate giant DuPont.
He's certainly suggesting that giant suggested that he's the small guy, you
know, up against the big corporate giant. It might even has some connotation of
corporate giants being bad, but it doesn't actually say that.
And so, again giant should be marked as nothing.
What about permission? To say that someone's permitted to do
something, is to say that it's not wrong. That's what permitted means.
Now of course, if you're talking about a legal permission, then to say that it's
permitted is to say that it's not legally wrong.
It's not forbidden by law. It still might be morally wrong but at
least it's legally permitted means it's not legally forbidden.
And so if forbidden and wrong are evaluative words, to deny them and say
it's not wrong looks like an evaluative as well.
But one of the interesting things about this evaluative word is it's clear
whether it's positive or negative. It means it's not wrong, but that doesn't
mean it is good or is right. It simply means it's not forbidden.
So, it's not clear whether to put plus or minus.
I'll just leave it as a plain E in that case,
okay? Now, what did they have permission to do to
drill for oil and gas in the heart of the new monument,
okay? That's what the permission was a
permission to do. The word to there is not being used as an
argument marker in this case because you can't say they get permission in order
to, right?
What they gave them permission to do was to drill,
okay? What about drill?
Well clearly Robert Redford doesn't want them to drill.
So he thinks that's bad. But he doesn't say it's bad.
He just calls it drilling. And they're drilling for oil and gas.
Well a lot of people think that oil and gas are good things.
But they don't say here that they're good.
They're simply saying that they're oil and gas.
The coolest part of this because I think, is that metaphor at the end.
I mean you have this image that there is this poor monument and somebody is
drilling right in its heart you know like, what could be crueler than to drill
in the heart of a young monument the poor innocent thing.
So, this metaphor of the heart is a nice rhetorical device that fits with the
drilling and is building up people's opposition to what Redford wants them to
be opposed to. But it does actually give an argument
it's just stating it in a flower or a metaphorical way, it will get their
feelings going, okay?
You may wonder. Notice he doesn't say, you do wonder.
He says you may wonder. So this is,
tell me, a guarding term. So you should mark it with G.
And you may wonder, as I do, as is sometimes used as an argument marker, but
here you're not saying that you wonder because I do or I wonder because you do.
The word because can't be substituted for as, so to say as I do is simply to
conjoin the two and say you wonder, and I also wonder or you may wonder because I
don't know whether you are or not, and I do.
And what we wonder is how can this happen?
Now we have a rhetorical question. How can this happen?
Well that's obviously suggesting. It shouldn't a happened,
you know, how could something have gone so wrong, as it did in this case?
But he didn't actually say that. He simply asked the rhetorical questions.
An that's really the trick of rhetorical questions.
Notice there're a bunch of them here. Wasn't the whole purpose this?
Didn't the President say he was doing this?
Then these three sentences in a row are all rhetorical questions.
So what's the trick of rhetorical questions?
The point of a rhetorical question is to get you to give the answer.
If I say, how can this happen and someone thinks to themselves well the government
messes up all the time. Then you've got that audience member who
answered the question to be saying it themselves and there's nothing more
forceful in an argument than to get your audience to say it themselves when you
don't have to say it. And, that's the trick of a rhetorical
question and what Redford is doing here is putting three of them right in a row
so that you'll have to go along with him three times in a row.
And then that obviously has an effect on your feeling like you're with him.
On you feeling like you agree with him. That's the effect he's trying to create
by using these rhetorical questions. Okay,
what's the whole purpose of creating? Notice the whole purpose is to preserve.
That phrase, the whole purpose, goes with it.
Cause we say the purpose is, to preserve. And there.
As before, in the previous paragraph, we're signaling an explanation because if
you want to explain why Clinton created the monument, then the answer was, to
preserve the colorful cliffs and sweeping arches and so on.
So this is going to be an explanation and to say that's the purpose is to say that
you created it because you wanted to preserve or in order to preserve.
Then this whole purpose. Marks the conclusion, and the, to
preserve, marks the premise. And we have a little argument.
He wanted to preserve his colorful cliffs, therefore, he created the
monument. And we've got the conclusion marked by
the whole purpose, and the premise or the reason, marked by the word to.
Okay. Preserve.
We've already seen a word a lot like that namely protect.
And we saw that when you protect something it has to be good.
Preserve also means to preserve it against things that would harm it.
If harm is bad, then preserving and protecting against harm must be good, so
we can make that as E plus. Its colorful cliffs.
Colorful sounds good, but of course colorful just means it's colorful.
Sweeping arches, broad and sweeping and curves, well that sounds good, that's
sounds beautiful the way he describes it. And it surely is, as you can see in any
picture. But, sweeping doesn't itself say it's
good or beautiful or so on. Another extraordinary we already saw
extraordinary. So colorful,
sweeping, and extraordinary. They're certainly being used here by
Redford to suggest that these are good. But they're not openly saying they're
good. So we don't want to mark those as
evaluative words. But resources.
Now, resources are things that can give you abilities.
And when you have more resources, you're able to do more.
So, abilities sounds like a good thing. And resources are the things that make
you more able. That give you more freedom and more
power. So.
At-least many people want to mark that as a D+ work.
Some of these are going to be questionable.
They are not obvious as others, so I am suggesting one way of interpreting this
passage, and I hope you are following the law.
But if you have some questions about the particular cases, that's going to be
natural. It's partly coz our language is not
totally precised. Okay.
Large scale mineral development. Well, that's not bad if it's done in the
right places. So I don't think that's evaluative
either. Didn't the President say that he was
saving these lands? Well didn't the President say that he was
saving these lands? Well that suggests that he's assuring you
that in fact he was saving these lands. He should know, whether that's what he
was doing since, after all, that's what he, you know did himself.
So he should be able to say, what he did and why.
Didn't the President say he was saving? Saving could be marked as E plus, just
like protect and preserve? because it saves it from something bad
happening. These lands from mining companies for our
children and grandchildren. Now, what about the word for?
This explains again why he is saving these lands.
He's saving them for grandchildren and children.
That means the reason for saving these lands is to benefit our grandchildren and
children. So, for is going to be a reason or
premise marker. It marks the reason or premise that
justifies saving the lands and explains why in fact the president did want to
save the lands. Okay?
So now we're through with paragraph two. And I hope you're kind of getting the
feel for how to do close analysis. And so, what I want to do now is give you
a chance to practice the skill on your own.
We'll put up paragraph three, mark certain words.
And your task in the exercise, will be to put the right letter next to, or to
indicate the function of that word in the paragraph.
And the letter you put should be either R or P for premise marker, C for conclusion
marker, A for assuring, G for guarding, D for discounting, E+, E- for positive and
negative evaluation. And you can go through the third
paragraph yourself in the exercise.