Understanding Scenes of Writing

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You are an actor. Each day of your life you play a variety of roles or “parts”—as son/daughter, sibling, friend, student, teammate, employee—and you act out these parts in a variety of scenes, whether at home, in school, in the gym, in the workplace, or in your neighborhoods or communities. As in the scenes of a movie or a play—where actors take their cues from co-actors and directors, the stage and surrounding sets, and the time and place of the action—you take your cues for how to act from the scenes you act within. As students, you constandy negotiate among scenes: from dorm room, apartment, or home to cafeteria, classes, or work; from meetngs of clubs or organizations to dinner with friends; from a date on Friday night to a party on the weekend, to the football game on Saturday, and to visits with your extended families on occasion.

Each of these scenes is different; each requires you to play a different role, which involves different strategies for acting and communicating within it. How you dress, how you present yourself, how you interact with others, what you talk about—all these behaviors depend in large part on the scene in which you find yourself. You are constantly coordinating how you act with the scenes in which you act. Within familiar scenes, this coordination becomes so habitual that it seems intuitive and effortless. When you enter new or less familiar scenes, however, you need to make more conscious, less automatic decisions about how to act.

Entering New Scenes

Think about what you do when you enter the scene, say, of a social get-together at your college or university and you do not already know the people attending. What do you do as you walk into the room? How do you decide where to go in the room and what to do there? In all likelihood, one of the first things you do is look around. As you begin to observe the room, what do you look at? What do you look for? You might pay attention to what people are wearing. Are they dressed formally? Are they dressed to impress? You might also take in the way the room is structured. Are people standing around? Is there space to walk, or is the room set up in such a way that forces people to sit? You almost certainly would focus on how people are interacting with one another. Is the room buzzing with conversation, or are people shyly avoiding one another? You might discover that some are talking in groups while others are engaged in one-to-one conversations.

Reading Scenes

You might notice these things and others as you begin to look around the room. But you don’t just passively absorb these images; chances are you also begin to analyze or “read” them to help you decide how to act. That is, you begin to think about what these images tell you about this scene, how people are acting within it, and how you might act. For example, what people are wearing and how they are interacting can tell you whether the scene is formal or informal and whether you will fit in comfortably. (Did you wear the “right” thing? Will you be able to tell raucous jokes or have intellectual discussions?) Drawing from your past experiences with how people present themselves on various occasions and how they interact, you begin to form assumptions about what sort of scene you have entered and how best to position yourself and act within it.

Say, as you make your way around the room, that you decide to join a group conversation. Once again, you probably begin by observing or “reading” the group. You might observe the group dynamic: Is everyone engaged in the conversation or is one person dominating the conversation? Are people interrupting one another or are they taking turns talking? Is it women or men who are interrupted most frequently? You surely also pay attention to the topic of conversation: Is it a topic you know something about? Is it something you are interested in? Is it a topic that must be treated seriously, or is there room for joking and banter? How far along is the conversation? Has it just begun, or has the group already covered much of the topic? Should you listen, or can you contribute something to the discussion? And if you can contribute, when would be the best opportunity to do so?

Timing may not be everything, but it does count quite a bit, as the ancient Greeks understood well. They referred to this notion of rhetorical timing and opportunity in communication as kairos. If you want to get people’s attention—if you want to persuade them of something, or get them to cooperate with you, or have them identify with you or something you believe in—your timing must be right given the conditions in which you are operating. Have you ever known someone whose timing was off, who always made comments a topic behind or leaped ahead to new topics when others were still discussing something introduced and “covered” earlier? In order to get the timing right, you must be able to read the scene effectively.

In addition to paying attention to the group interaction and its topic of conversation, you might also observe how the group is handling the topic: What is the style of conversation? Are people having a calm discussion, or is their tone animated? What kind of language are they using to discuss the topic? Is their language elevated or full of jargon and expressions that only they would understand? Are people making declarations, or are they hemming and hawing, qualifying what they say? Are some asking questions? What sorts of things are people using as evidence to support their views in this group: facts, citation of authority, personal experience, gossip, etc.? These are just some of the questions you could, and probably often do, ask unconsciously in order to make effective decisions about how to communicate and behave in an already existing scene.

Writing Activity 1.1

Describe the scenes you experienced yesterday. What different places were you in, who did you interact with, and what roles did you play?

Collaborative Activity 1.1

Make a list of all of the different scenes that you participate in at college. Compare your lists in small groups, and select one scene to analyze or read, as in the example of the social get-together we “attended” earlier in this chapter. Describe the various clues to how participants are expected to behave and interact within the scene your group selected. You might consider the kinds of clues we observed in our social get-together:

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Making Rhetorical Choices

Observing a scene and reading it by the process described above help you make more effective choices about what to say, how to say it, to whom, and when. Scholars who study the art of communication refer to these choices as rhetorical choices. Rhetoric is the use of language to accomplish something, and rhetorical choices are the decisions speakers and writers make in order to accomplish something with language. Rhetorical choices include

The more appropriate your rhetorical choices, the more likely you are to communicate effectively.

The scene in which you participate helps determine which choices are appropriate. Whatever their writing tasks, writers are always making rhetorical choices as they ask themselves questions such as

In fact, “How should I begin?” is perhaps the most significant—and challenging—question a writer can ask theirself. Yet answers to this question and others like it do not need to be as mysterious or elusive as they are sometimes imagined to be. Imagine how differently you would answer such questions if you were in your home writing in your diary rather than in a classroom writing an essay examination. You can develop answers to such questions by examining the context of your writing, what are here called scenes of writing.

Just as you make decisions about how to act based on your knowledge of the social scene you are acting in at any given time, so too writers make decisions about how and what to write based on their knowledge of the rhetorical scenes they are writing in. The more effectively you understand the scene you are writing in, the more effectively you will communicate. Working from this premise, the goal is to teach you how to make more effective writing choices as you function within and move from one scene of writing to another.

Writing Activity 1.2

Begin keeping a list of all the things you write in a day, including such small texts as notes or e-mails as well as longer texts like letters or reports. For each thing you write, describe the writing scene in which it functions—the location or context (workplace, classroom, academic discipline, dorm room, etc.), your role as a writer, your reader(s) and your relationship to them, and your purpose for writing it (what you were trying to accomplish/respond to).

Defining Scene, Situation, Genre

Let's begin by defining what is meant by the word scene and identify its key components, situation and genre. These three terms—scene, situation, and genre—figure prominently as the building blocks of all that follows.

Each of these terms receives explanation and examples in what follows, but here are brief definitions of each concept. A scene is the overall setting, a place where communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives. A writing classroom is a scene; so are a restaurant kitchen, a chat room, and an editorial page. A situation is the rhetorical interaction happening within a scene. For example, students and teachers discuss readings and respond to each other’s writings, cooks and servers discuss food orders, chatters explore topics that interest them, and editorial writers convey their opinions on current issues. A genre is a common way of responding rhetorically to a situation, including class discussions and writing prompts, restaurant meal orders, chat room postings, and editorials. We begin with scene because it is the overarching term. Scene is a place in which communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives. Examples of a scene range from a large tax accounting firm to a small business, from a classroom to a sorority house, from a doctor’s office to a peace rally, from a baseball game to a bar to a criminal trial—to name but a few.

Certainly, not all scenes are so obviously physical as a doctor’s office or a ball game. The “place” of a scene can extend across well-defined physical spaces. For example, the college or university you are attending is one scene, a clear physical place. But it also participates in a larger academic scene, a “place” of academia that reaches across colleges and universities throughout the world. Within the larger academic scene, there are a number of different disciplinary scenes, such as English, history, geography, and chemistry. These scenes consist of groups of people who have their own bodies of knowledge, facts, and theories; their own research methods; their own ways of communicating with one another—all of which reflect their shared objectives: to advance and convey understanding of a subject matter. You may learn to write case studies in your psychology class, lab reports in your biology class, and profiles in your sociology class. Each piece of writing will reflect its scene and should meet special expectations in terms of use of evidence, special terminologies, special styles and formats.

To illustrate, suppose you are taking a class in architectural history. This class will familiarize you with a specific subject matter: styles of architecture throughout the ages, landmark buildings, and ideas of influential designers like I. M. Pei and Frank Lloyd Wright. You will also gain knowledge of the economic and social forces that have shaped architectural structures—as well as the beliefs and values of architects and others who participate in the larger architectural scene, such as their struggles with the social and ethical issues of preservation. In order to feel comfortable in this scene and function effectively in it, you will need to become familiar with the participants’ language—their use of terms such as rectilinear design or the distinctions between concepts such as shingle style versus stick style. Finally, you will need to become familiar with the methods of communicating within this scene—perhaps by writing architectural descriptions of buildings, following guidelines set by the National Register of Historic Places. To participate effectively in this academic scene, you must participate in its rhetorical practices —practices which reflect the group’s shared objectives.

Like the academic scenes with which they overlap (as students move from architecture classes, for example, to architecture firms), workplace scenes are also places where communication happens among groups of people with some shared objectives. Your ability to succeed in the workplace depends on your ability to use the language of the scene in appropriate ways, to achieve its shared objectives—whether you are asked to write an e-mail to your coworkers to promote the company picnic or a sales letter to clients to promote a new product.

As in academic scenes, with their specialized disciplines, workplace scenes are also made up of smaller scenes: various departments and social organizations whose specialized ways of communicating reflect their own shared objectives. An engineering firm, for example, represents one workplace scene; its departments (human resources and design, for example) represent smaller scenes. (The profession of engineers represents another, larger scene.) With engineers’ emphases on form, precision, and technical detail, an employee in an engineering firm will need to know how to produce an organized and detailed technical report—with title sheet, table of contents, list of figures, definition of the problem, design presentation, letter of transmittal, and closure—and will need to be familiar with the information that should be contained within each section of the report. As we saw with the language of architecture, the shared technical knowledge of engineers is expressed through a shared language. A mechanical engineer is likely to be familiar with a gearbox design, which may involve terms meaningful to other members of this scene (terms such as input/output RPM, torque, and HP capacity) but mostly meaningless to those of us outside this scene.

Outside of and often interacting with academic and workplace scenes, groups exist at various levels in civic or public scenes to achieve different kinds of shared objectives. If you have ever observed a criminal trial, for example, you would have seen a scene that involves a place (a courtroom) in which communication happens among groups of people (judge, jury, lawyers, defendant(s), plaintiff(s), witnesses, court reporter, bailiffs, and observers) with some shared objectives (most generally, to reach some kind of verdict and, more ideally, to seek justice through a fair trial). The combination of the courtroom, the participants, and the shared objectives is what constitutes, in general, the criminal trial as a scene. In other public scenes, political groups, such as the local branch of the Democratic Party, work to elect their candidates and to achieve their agendas by using pamphlets, news releases, fund-raising letters, and other kinds of texts, to spread, in their own language, information about pertinent political issues. Other community action groups, whether created to stop the closing of a local elementary school or to promote the use of the public library, exist in particular scenes and use language in particular ways to achieve their particular objectives. At times, such public scenes can be quite large. City inhabitants may share a common newspaper, with its editorials and letters to the editor addressing local issues, and people may share some regional objectives. Even larger groups like Amnesty International have branches across the nation but still share common objectives and use their newsletters, websites, and other ways of communicating to reach their goals.

This document distinguishes between academic, workplace, and public scenes in order to help you identify different types of scenes. Actually, these categories may not be clearly distinct. Quite often, scenes overlap. For instance, the trial scene is both a public scene and a workplace scene: a public scene for observers, defendants, plaintiffs, and jurors and a workplace scene for judges, lawyers, court reporters, and bailiffs. Similarly, you likely inhabit multiple academic, workplace, and public scenes, often simultaneously.

Acting within Scenes

We have seen that, just as understanding a scene helps an actor act within it, understanding scenes is an important first step in learning how to write within them. But the writer does not just passively sit by while the scene creates a piece of writing. Instead, the writer actively makes rhetorical decisions. The individual writer acting within a particular scene has a range of choices to make—choices regarding what information to include, how to organize that information, and how best to present it. And to make these decisions well the writer must analyze and interpret the scene. ==The writer has the very important role of constructing a text that is appropriate in terms of content, organization, format, and style. Writers draw on their knowledge of a scene, especially on how others have responded similarly within that scene, in order to develop strategies for how best to respond.==

Imagine, for instance, that you have an item that you would like to sell—a bike, for instance. You might choose to post a flyer at the grocery store, send an e-mail to everyone in your address book, or create a listing for an online auction service like eBay. Another option is to write an ad that will appear in your local newspaper’s classifieds section. If you decide to write a classified ad, how will you know what to do? You will have to familiarize yourself with the scene of the classifieds within the newspaper. You might start by defining the groups of people involved in this scene and their shared objectives. One group involved includes the subscribers to the newspaper who come to this place where communication happens (the classifieds section) with the shared objectives of looking for a product/service to buy or sell. Another group of people in this scene is the newspaper’s classifieds staff, whose shared objectives are to sell advertisement space and to compile all of the necessary information for selling the product (name, price, contact number) or service while maintaining the newspaper’s policy of brevity and space for other ads. The group of those (including you) who place ads may even share some objectives with the classifieds staff, such as the objective of brevity, since the cost of advertisements is per word.

Such knowledge of the scene is critical because it helps guide your rhetorical choices regarding content, language, length, and format. For example, knowing that the classified staff needs to pack many ads into a small space and that they charge by the word, you will understand why your ad must be so short. Knowing that some readers come looking for specific items to buy, you will understand how important it is to highlight what kind of thing you are selling. To decide exactly how to achieve your purpose of selling your item, you will likely draw on what you already know about the classifieds from having used them in the past and on the knowledge available in the classifieds section. In the section itself, you would find, first, examples of ads, such as the ones shown here.

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By looking at these examples you can see how people describe their items, the sort of language they use, what information they include and do not include, how they organize the ad, and so on. Observing these features of ads is like observing the kinds of conversations people are having at the party we described earlier. Your second source of information about the scene of classified ads is the explicit guidelines the newspaper staff includes, usually printed at the beginning of the classified section. Looking at the newspaper’s policies regarding ads (cost per line, deadlines, and so forth) will tell you how to get your ad placed. By combining your observations about what ads look like and your reading of the newspaper’s rules, you can write an ad that effectively participates in this scene—and achieves your goal of selling your bike. So writing a classified ad involves more than just knowing something about the item you are selling; it involves knowing how to develop strategies for presenting that item within the classifieds scene. Such strategies are learned through understanding the scene itself, whatever that particular scene might be. Of course, even though your knowledge of the scene helps you frame your classified ad, there is still room for individual interpretation and choice—decisions on exactly how much and what information to include, how to balance the item’s defects (if any) and its strengths, and how vividly to describe the item. The scene acts on you as an individual writer, but as a participant in that scene you also act on (and within) it.

Collaborative Activity 1.2

Write a classified ad for an item you wish to sell or can imagine selling. In small groups, share your ads and note similarities and differences in responses. What accounts for the similarities? Speculate also on the reasons for any differences in the ads. To what extent were the content, format, language, and tone influenced by the scene of writing? What part did individual choices and decisions play in the differences among your ads? Explain.

Interacting within Situations\

When you need to write a classified ad, you encounter not just the large scene of classified ads but also the particular situation of writing your ad. Situations, as they are defined here, are the various rhetorical interactions happening within a scene, involving participants, subjects, settings, and purposes. In other words, each situation represents a specific rhetorical interaction that involves certain participants who are using language to engage with a certain subject in certain ways for certain purposes. A closer look at the scene of a criminal trial (as described on p. 9) {FIX} for example, reveals that this scene has many situations in it. A few of the situations—the rhetorical interactions—that together make up the scene of the criminal trial include making opening statements, swearing in witnesses, testifying, crossexamining witnesses, making closing statements, instructing the jury, deliberating, reading the verdict, and sentencing. In each of these situations, a specific group of people is engaged in a specific rhetorical task, which requires them to relate to and communicate with one another in certain ways—to use language to accomplish something specific within the overall scene.

Not every participant within the scene of a criminal trial is or needs to be involved in all its situations, of course. For example, the lawyers, defendants, court reporter, and observers do not participate in the jury deliberations. Only jury members are engaged in the rhetorical interactions of that situation as participants dealing with a specific subject (the facts presented at trial) in a specific setting (behind closed doors at the end of a trial) for specific purposes (to come to a consensus about whether the prosecution has proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt). In another situation within the scene of a criminal trial—the situation of cross-examining witnesses—a different rhetorical interaction takes place, involving a different group of participants (most immediately, a lawyer and a witness, while judge, jury, and other lawyers observe). In this situation, a lawyer and a witness are usually engaged in a more “aggressive” interaction, with the lawyer perhaps trying to expose or discredit a witness. The situation of cross-examination, then, engages the participants in a specific rhetorical interaction, involving a specific setting (the witness in a chair, the lawyer standing before the court), a specific subject (testimony), and a specific purpose (to test whether the witness’s testimony might prove incorrect or unreliable).

Because situation involves rhetorical interaction, it is often referred to by teachers of writing as the rhetorical situation. Within a rhetorical situation, how participants communicate about a certain subject will depend on who these participants are, what setting they are in, and what their purposes are in communicating. For example, a writer’s purpose (what he or she wishes to accomplish) will influence his or her approach to the subject, suggesting what information needs to be included and how the subject might be presented. The writer’s understanding of audience and the setting will, likewise, shape how the writer approaches the purpose and subject and will also influence the writer’s tone (the attitude that comes through the writing) and the writer’s persona (the image presented, the character of the writer that comes through). These elements—the participants, subject, setting, and purpose—interact within rhetorical situations.

Consider the scene you are in while taking this writing course and the rhetorical situations it includes. Within the broader academic scene, you are in the scene of a writing class, and within the classroom you participate in many interactions, from chatting with a fellow student to listening to a lecture to contributing to a class discussion or working on a group task. Even though all these situations exist in the same scene of your writing class, they differ in exactly who is participating and in what ways, what subjects they address, and the purposes people have for participating in them. Even the setting varies a bit, with the group work occurring in a small circle of desks rather than the larger classroom of a lecture. Any differences of participants, subjects, settings, or purposes from one situation to another influence how you act within the larger class scene. When listening to a lecture, you probably take some notes for yourself, while in a group activity you might record the group’s responses or complete a form for your teacher. You probably use more formal language when contributing to a class discussion than you do when you work with your peers in a group. The persona or image you project when speaking with classmates without the teacher present may differ from that you project when your audience includes your teacher.

Writing Activity 1.3

One situation in this writing class is responding to the Activities in this document. You have already seen two other Writing Activities and may have responded to one or both. You have also encountered two Collaborative Activities. Select any one of those four Activities and consider its rhetorical situation. Identify the participants, subject, setting, and purpose in the activity you select. Explore how each of those elements might affect what you would do in responding to it.

Writing Activity 1.4

Looking back on the classified ad you wrote for Collaborative Activity 1.2 (p. 12), {FIX} use the terms you have just learned to describe its rhetorical situation within the scene of the classifieds section: Who are the participants in this situation? What are they interacting about (subject), where (setting), and why (purpose)?

Analyzing the Situations of Three Editorials

The following three editorials, which are on the topic of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), exemplify three different scenes and rhetorical situations, each with its own interaction of subject, participants, setting, and purposes. The first editorial is written by the vice president of species conservation at Defenders of Wildlife; the second editorial is written by a student and native Alaskan; the third editorial is written by the chairman of the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC).

As you read the editorials, consider the different scenes of writing (a national conservation organization, a university, and a corporation), and try to identify the various elements of the rhetorical situations within these scenes:

Notice how, even though the editorials address the same topic, they address it differently based on their rhetorical situations. As you identify elements of each rhetorical situation, pay attention to how they affect how the writers of the editorials present themselves, describe ANWR, and characterize the oil companies.

“New Technologies But Still the Same Messy Business” – Bob Ferris

(Bob Ferris Bob Ferris is the vice president of species conservation at Defenders of Wildlife. This editorial appeared in TomPaine.com, an online journal of progressive opinion.)

Each time an argument for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is analyzed and rebutted, a new one emerges. President Bush suggested that drilling would help solve California's energy woes, but that makes as much sense as filling up a car's gas tank because it's pistons don't work. Others have argued that ANWR could help us become independent of OPEC, but in the unlikely event that there's enough oil in Alaska to make a difference, trade regulations under the World Trade Organization would prevent keeping all the oil for domestic use.

Now the oil industry is touting advances in technology that would let them drill with minimal environmental impact. They are using this new technology to paint a very pretty, almost clinical picture of petroleum extraction. In recent weeks, a number of media outlets, including the New York Times and 60 Minutes have run stories heralding the new technology.

Yet this pristine view is strongly at odds with experience. Oil extraction, much like open heart surgery, is a very messy business.

Of primary importance is not fancy technology, but whether we should trust oil company claims of cleaner, more ethical behavior. Incredibly, they are projecting this newly sanitary image at the same time they are reporting an oil or chemical spill every eighteen hours on Alaska's North Slope. Then there's the case of BP-Amoco—one of the most likely refuge lessees. The firm must be seriously hoping that their $22 million settlement with EPA for dumping toxic chemicals in Alaska (not to mention the potential congressional investigation of its business practices) will somehow not make it to the public's radar screen before Congress votes on whether to open up the refuge to drilling.

That point aside, while improved technologies can certainly lessen the impact of major surgery or oil drilling, neither is easy on the patient. And the scars—whether on flesh or land—never do disappear. Period.

Conservationists favor technologies that lessen the impact of necessary resource extraction. But all of these technologies have both pros and cons. Using the “targeted drilling” featured in the news reports, drill heads can steer through the rock laterally deep below the earth's surface.

The benefit is indeed a reduced drilling footprint, but the trade-off is a need for dramatically more detailed seismic data, derived by blasting dynamite and by even more intrusive and extensive seismic testing than ever before. This seismic testing is not benign and visitors to the refuge can still see evidence of testing that is nearly two decades old.

The oil industry also boasts of ice roads “harmlessly” made out of water that protect the delicate tundra. They fail to simultaneously mention that the vast volume of unfrozen water they use to make those roads is rare in the arctic. And it is much needed by fish that often get pumped up with the water and become part of these harmless roads.

Drilling and seismic activities comprise just a small percentage of the total extractive insult to land, water and wildlife from oil development. Behind the drillers come the legions of roads, water use, pipelines, garbage dumps, worker housing and a host of associated infrastructure problems that even the most gee-whiz drilling practices cannot eliminate. As the New York Times noted in a January 30, 2001 editorial, this industrial sprawl on the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an unconscionable price to pay just to roll the dice on six months worth of oil.

The new technology is promising, but it will never mean that drilling can occur without serious environmental consequences. Defenders of Wildlife would rather see the country's technological elbow grease applied to energy conservation, which would have the same result as drilling, but with less cost to people and the environment.

If we truly need the oil we could extract it from the plugged and abandoned wells that dot our country's mid-section and which contain many billions of barrels. In fact, two areas in north and east Texas contain roughly 7 billion barrels of oil—more than twice the mid-range estimates for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If the president and vice president are so gung-ho to drill why don't they look a little closer to home?

Americans love the promise of having their cake and eating it—the seductive voice that says we can have oil development and an Arctic Wildlife Refuge. We can't, and no amount of oil company advertising will alter the laws of physics and biology to make it so.

**“My Opinion: The Shortsightedness and Exploitation of Oil Drilling” – Elizabeth Morrison **

(Elizabeth Morrison is a senior majoring in general arts and sciences and a Penn Collegian columnist. This editorial appeared in the Penn Collegian newspaper.)

In a national news magazine recently, I saw an advertisement: “Alaskans support oil drilling.” It was an ad picturing smiling (presumably) Alaskan people, grinning in agreement with the oil industry, who (obviously) paid for the ad. I've seen this ad now in the New York Times, Newsweek and Time. The advertising campaign is an effort to convince the continental United States that because Alaskans support yet more oil exploration, they should also.

I've certainly never polled the 450,000 people who live in Alaska, but I know absolutely that I am not the only Alaskan who is against the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. For those who don't know, there is an ongoing battle between boom and bust oil developers and environmentalists about whether to open up ANWR for oil exploration and drilling, or to keep the land protected.

Situated on Alaska's North Slope, just west of the Canadian border, the 19 million acre refuge is home to several thousand indigenous peoples, grizzly bears, musk oxen, wolves, migratory birds and a herd of 180,000 caribou. But to the oil industry—and those who benefit from it—the refuge is nothing but a potentially profitable lode of black gold.

This battle tipped for a brief period in favor of drilling opponents after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. But in the three years since the Persian Gulf War, the political mood has changed drastically. Once purely a state issue, it has now been brought to national attention, and opinions have swung in favor of drilling. Even the change of presidential administration last November did little to stop the tide of opinion. In fact, shortly before the election, the Democratic Party took its opposition to oil drilling in ANWR out of its platform. Since then, a tide of senators and members of Congress have flown in their private jets to the middle of ANWR, looked at the tundra and proclaimed it not worth saving.

Of course, drilling may have seemed logical after the emotionally frenzied aftermath of the Gulf War. Why should we be dependent on foreign oil, politicians asked, when there is oil waiting to be tapped in our own backyard?

I think there are an awful lot of reasons. First, contrary to what developers and oil companies publicly say, there are innumerable variables and guesswork involved in oil drilling—and absolutely no guarantee that oil will actually be found, much less be actually exploitable. Although developers and those opposed to drilling agree that there is indeed oil under the plain, the size of the oil deposit is a mystery.

The U.S. Interior Department's estimates range from 600 million barrels to as much as 9.2 billion barrels. Even the highest estimate, an almost unimaginable amount to most of us, is only the amount of oil the United States uses in just one year. In addition, the department puts the odds of actually finding a commercially exploitable oil field at just one in five. Assuming (and this is a major assumption) an oil field is found, as long as 10 years may be needed to gear up before major production could begin.

Compounding the logical inconsistencies and practical fallibility, opening up the refuge to oil drilling would be a gross intrusion on one of the last untouched wilderness areas in the United States. Politicians and oil men who advocate drilling argue that it would create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenues.

In reality, drilling would only be lucrative to certain people, namely those mentioned above. However, those who would not profit and who would be most adversely affected are, ironically (but not surprisingly), those with the least voice in whether the refuge is opened. This includes the indigenous peoples who have lived in what is now ANWR for thousands of years. To advocate drilling is to blatantly disregard the Native Alaskans who bitterly oppose the rape of the land and intrusion on their way of life.

Last summer, at an open forum on this issue, Sarah James, a tribal leader of the Gwich'in Indians said, “This is a simple issue. We have the right to continue our way of life. We are caribou people.”

To open the refuge for drilling is also to virtually ignore the environmental effect oil exploration and exploitation has on the animals who live there, and on the land itself. The most-often-cited example is the caribou. The herd that makes its home in the refuge represents the largest migratory pattern in the United States, and it would be in danger of disruption and displacement, as would other birds and animals.

Oil is a non-renewable energy source; a fact that advocates of drilling conveniently neglect to address. Opening ANWR for oil drilling would only act as a short-term drug for a chronic ailment. It would succeed in putting off, yet again, the urgent need to find alternative energy sources. It would be folly to count on any oil in the refuge to fuel our gas-guzzling lifestyles for long. The contribution to U.S. petroleum needs would be small compared to other means of reducing demand and finding alternative energy sources.

The billions of dollars squandered in oil exploration, oil drilling and oil production is money not spent on potentially more-beneficial activities. Most importantly, it compromises the inherent value of the land, the animals and the people who live there. The proposal to open the ANWR for oil drilling is an attempt at a short-term solution to a problem that requires careful long-term management.

This is no longer a state issue; as I said above, it has long been a national one. We are all dependent on oil, and we all suffer, sooner or later, from the environmental consequences. In our increasingly global economy, the use of one of our greatest natural resources—land—is all of our responsibility.

“Alaska Environmental Bugaboos” – Bernie W. Stewart

(From Bernie W. Stewart, chairman of the International Association of Drilling Contractors. This editorial appeared in the IADC corporate magazine, Drilling Contractor.)

As IADC chairman this year, one of my most rewarding activities has been the opportunity to travel to our Chapters and visit with contractors in a variety of markets, both geographical and operational. Most recently, I was the guest of our IADC Alaska Chapter. In addition to participating in a well-attended Chapter meeting, Doyon Drilling, Nordic-Calista Services and Pool Arctic Alaska graciously hosted me to the North Slope. I was very impressed by how the North Slope drilling contractors and operators conduct their business. Through close cooperation, the industry has developed ingenious adaptations for this very difficult environment.

Speaking of the environment, much is made over the allegedly deleterious effect of drilling on the Alaskan ecology. I'm here to tell you that drilling operations are in no way going to harm the environment in Alaska. Industry's environmental precautions in Alaska deserve tremendous applause.

Technology has been used to great advantage in Alaska. Despite the field's vast area, the Alaskan industry has been miserly when it comes to generating footprints of drilling operations. They have done their utmost to minimize the number of well pads through the canny use of horizontal drilling and offset wells.

The caribou are among the most visible source of nervous anxiety. The fact is that these magnificent animals graze unconcernedly around the drilling rigs. The scene is little different than cows munching pasture around a rig in Texas. One experience was particularly striking. In Alaska, the buildings stand 7 ft off the ground to avoid damaging the permafrost. At one site, a mother caribou stood with her calf in the shade of such a building. So much for our industry's threat to the caribous!

This brings me to the great Alaskan environmental bugaboo—the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. The US Congress regularly denies drilling access to ANWR. From the hype, one might conclude that allowing drilling on this frozen wilderness is to invite an environmental disaster on a par with Chernobyl. In all this, one gets the notion that ANWR is a pristine Eden of scenic proportions equal to Yellowstone or Yosemite.

From “A ” to “Y,” ANWR couldn't be more different from Yellowstone. There are no sweeping forests and grand roiling rivers, all teeming with wildlife unknown in modern society. ANWR is a barren and empty place. It is a land of endless tundra where no vegetation stands taller than 6 in. The principal wildlife is the migratory Porcupine Caribou Herd. Having observed the aplomb with which caribou react to drilling activities elsewhere on the North Slope, I have no doubt that this 150,000-animal herd would be similarly unaffected.

Part of the reason is there's plenty of room in ANWR. Out of the refuge's 19 million acres, 17.5 million acres are permanently off limits to exploration. Development would be confined to only a small fraction of ANWR's coastal plain. Estimates are that this field could reach a peak output equal to 10% of total current US production. Developing ANWR would create jobs, enhance national security and lower consumer costs, all at an extremely remote environmental risk in a forbidding area of the US. In a cost-benefit analysis, it's easy to see the logical solution.

Collaborative Activity 1.3

Working with classmates, select one of the three editorials and describe in as much detail as you can the rhetorical situation to which it is responding. Who are the likely participants in this situation? What purposes seem to be driving these participants? What’s the setting in which the editorial appears, including the date of its publication? And how does the interaction between the participants, the purposes, and the setting affect how the subject of the editorial is treated and presented? Describe some of the choices that the writer makes regarding kinds of organization, examples, style, tone, and persona as a result of his or her situation. Then explain how these rhetorical choices were shaped by the situation of writing.

Writing Activity 1.5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPoqNeR3_UA&t=41959s

[embed] (https://vimeo.com/531277218)