Examine language itself as a rhetorical act — how word choice, syntax, dialect, and definition shape argument and power.
How control of language reflects and reinforces social, political, and institutional power — who gets to name things, whose dialect is "correct," and how language polices identity.
The rhetorical construction of "Standard American English" as a prestige dialect — how it came to be treated as neutral or correct and what that construction excludes or devalues.
How speakers navigate multiple language systems across social contexts — and what choices of dialect and register signal about audience, identity, and purpose.
How sentence structure — length, complexity, coordination vs. subordination, parataxis vs. hypotaxis — creates meaning, controls pace, and shapes the reader's emotional and intellectual experience.
How word choice shapes argument through associations and emotional resonance beyond literal definitions — euphemism, dysphemism, doublespeak, and the politics of naming.
How definitions control the premises of debate — whoever defines the key terms often wins the argument before it begins. Recognizing definition as a rhetorical act, not a neutral act of clarification.
Unit 9 centers STL: every linguistic choice — word selection, sentence structure, dialect use, definition — is a rhetorical act with argumentative consequences. Language does not describe reality neutrally; it constructs it.
Language choices are always made for specific audiences, purposes, and contexts. The same words mean different things in different rhetorical situations — and choosing which register or dialect to use is itself a judgment about audience and relationship.
CLE in Unit 9 focuses on how the language of argument — especially definitions and loaded terms — can predetermine conclusions. A claim built on a contested definition is only as strong as that definition; evaluating arguments requires examining their linguistic premises.