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Question  1
Consider the comic below (this question relates primarily to content covered in Chapter 4 / Mini-Lecture 4):
I’ve provided a transcript of the panel contents below:
Panel 1
Sally: “Who are all those people driving by in those cars?”
Panel 2
Charlie: “Those are people going to work..”
Sally: “Work?”
Panel 3
Charlie: “They used to wait for the school bus like we’re doing…”
Panel 4
Charlie: “Now they have to go to work every day for the rest of their lives..”
Sally: “Good grief! Whose idea was that?”
(Note: in case you are not familiar with Charles Schultz’s comic Peanuts, the characters above are Charlie Brown (on the left) and his sister, Sally (on the right)).
List the deictic terms you can identify in the comic above, including deictic pronouns, demonstratives, and/or adverbs of time and place.  Explain how readers are meant to interpret these deictic terms based upon the context provided in the comic.
Question  2
(Questions 2-3 respond to the excerpt below, which will be included in the prompt for each question. These questions relate primarily to content covered in Chapter 5 / Mini-Lecture 5.)
Consider the following excerpt from the beginning of “The Golden Goose,” which is one of the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm (Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm):
There was a man who had three sons, the youngest of whom was called Dummling, and was despised, mocked, and sneered at on every occasion.
It happened that the eldest wanted to go into the forest to hew wood, and before he went his mother gave him a beautiful sweet cake and a bottle of wine in order that he might not suffer from hunger or thirst.
When he entered the forest he met a little grey-haired old man who bade him good day, and said: ‘Do give me a piece of cake out of your pocket, and let me have a draught of your wine; I am so hungry and thirsty.’ But the clever son answered: ‘If I give you my cake and wine, I shall have none for myself; be off with you,’ and he left the little man standing and went on.
But when he began to hew down a tree, it was not long before he made a false stroke, and the axe cut him in the arm, so that he had to go home and have it bound up. And this was the little grey man’s doing.
Analyze the information structure in this excerpt. How is new information marked? What about given information? Be sure to given specific examples from the excerpt to illustrate how and when new and given information are marked (give at least four specific examples of new information and at least four specific examples of given information within the text). How does the marking of new and given information help the audience to understand this portion of the fairy tale and prepare the audience to follow the remainder of the tale? (Note: the next portion of the tale details the other two sons’ encounters with “the little grey man” before moving on to the next stage of the tale, which revolves around a reward that Dummling receives from “the little grey man” – a golden goose – after sharing food and drink with him.)
Question 3
(Questions 2-3 respond to the excerpt below, which will be included in the prompt for each question. These questions relate primarily to content covered in Chapter 5 / Mini-Lecture 5.)
Consider the following excerpt from the beginning of “The Golden Goose,” which is one of the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm (Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm):
There was a man who had three sons, the youngest of whom was called Dummling, and was despised, mocked, and sneered at on every occasion.
It happened that the eldest wanted to go into the forest to hew wood, and before he went his mother gave him a beautiful sweet cake and a bottle of wine in order that he might not suffer from hunger or thirst.
When he entered the forest he met a little grey-haired old man who bade him good day, and said: ‘Do give me a piece of cake out of your pocket, and let me have a draught of your wine; I am so hungry and thirsty.’ But the clever son answered: ‘If I give you my cake and wine, I shall have none for myself; be off with you,’ and he left the little man standing and went on.
But when he began to hew down a tree, it was not long before he made a false stroke, and the axe cut him in the arm, so that he had to go home and have it bound up. And this was the little grey man’s doing.
Discuss how this excerpt achieves cohesion. Consider how cohesive resources such as reference, ellipsis and substitution, conjunction, and lexical cohesion work together in order to lend the text cohesion (note: you won’t necessarily find every single one of these cohesive resources in the text. Just discuss the ones you do observe). Be sure to back up your response with specific evidence/examples from the excerpt. Finally, consider the coherence (as opposed to cohesion) of this excerpt (see Mini-Lecture Five). To what extent does the audience’s familiarity with the genre of fairy tales contribute to their ability to make sense of the text?
Question 4
(Questions 4-6 respond to the excerpt below, which will be included in the prompt for each question. These questions relate primarily to content covered in Chapter 8 / Mini-Lecture 6.)
The following is an excerpt from an opinion piece by John Kerry and Ernest Moniz (“Earth Day: Fighting Climate Change Requires Political Collaboration and Immediate Action”) published in USA Today on April 22, 2019:
We must act together to secure the one planet we have — because there is No Planet B. We must act because, in the very near future, the costs of inaction will far exceed those of acting.
And we can act because, since 2009, the cost of solar energy is down 88%, and wind is down 69%. These cost reductions are reflected in our choices for

power generation: wind and solar made up more than half of new generating capacity in recent years.
But we must also be pragmatic. We must guarantee the reliability and resilience of the electricity system, at the same time we are working on its transformation. This means that efficiency, natural gas, advanced nuclear, carbon capture, smart grids and negative carbon technologies will all play important roles in our future grid, indeed enabling the continued rapid growth of renewables. And, of course, other sectors beyond electricity that are more difficult to decarbonize — transportation, industry, buildings, agriculture — will need practical, low-carbon technology options as well.
As we advance deep decarbonization of our economy, we must also promote justice and fairness. Those who can least afford it — the poorest Americans and the world’s developing countries — will be economically hit worst and first. They will continue to pay the steepest price for climate change unless low-carbon technology innovation is accelerated and accompanied by policy innovation for a just transition. We must minimize stranded physical assets and stranded workers and communities.
Consider how Kerry and Moniz use the personal pronoun “we” in this excerpt.  Who does “we” refer in the context of this article?  On what do you base this conclusion? (Hint: A successful response to this prompt will consider specific usages of “we” within the text and use them to support the answer.)
Question 5
(Questions 4-6 respond to the excerpt below, which will be included in the prompt for each question. These questions relate primarily to content covered in Chapter 8 / Mini-Lecture 6.)
The following is an excerpt from an opinion piece by John Kerry and Ernest Moniz (“Earth Day: Fighting Climate Change Requires Political Collaboration and Immediate Action”) published in USA Today on April 22, 2019:
We must act together to secure the one planet we have — because there is No Planet B. We must act because, in the very near future, the costs of inaction will far exceed those of acting.
And we can act because, since 2009, the cost of solar energy is down 88%, and wind is down 69%. These cost reductions are reflected in our choices for power generation: wind and solar made up more than half of new generating capacity in recent years.
But we must also be pragmatic. We must guarantee the reliability and resilience of the electricity system, at the same time we are working on its transformation. This means that efficiency, natural gas, advanced nuclear, carbon capture, smart grids and negative carbon technologies will all play important roles in our future grid, indeed enabling the continued rapid growth of renewables. And, of course, other sectors beyond electricity that are more difficult to decarbonize — transportation, industry, buildings, agriculture — will need practical, low-carbon technology options as well.
As we advance deep decarbonization of our economy, we must also promote justice and fairness. Those who can least afford it — the poorest Americans and the world’s developing countries — will be economically hit worst and first. They will continue to pay the steepest price for climate change unless low-carbon technology innovation is accelerated and accompanied by policy innovation for a just transition. We must minimize stranded physical assets and stranded workers and communities.
Provide at least three pieces of evidence from the text which reveal Kerry and Moniz’s epistemic stance.  How certain/confident, in general, do Kerry and Moniz seem to be regarding their ideas?
Question 6
(Questions 4-6 respond to the excerpt below, which will be included in the prompt for each question. These questions relate primarily to content covered in Chapter 8 / Mini-Lecture 6.)
The following is an excerpt from an opinion piece by John Kerry and Ernest Moniz (“Earth Day: Fighting Climate Change Requires Political Collaboration and Immediate Action”) published in USA Today on April 22, 2019:
We must act together to secure the one planet we have — because there is No Planet B. We must act because, in the very near future, the costs of inaction will far exceed those of acting.
And we can act because, since 2009, the cost of solar energy is down 88%, and wind is down 69%. These cost reductions are reflected in our choices for power generation: wind and solar made up more than half of new generating capacity in recent years.
But we must also be pragmatic. We must guarantee the reliability and resilience of the electricity system, at the same time we are working on its transformation. This means that efficiency, natural gas, advanced nuclear, carbon capture, smart grids and negative carbon technologies will all play important roles in our future grid, indeed enabling the continued rapid growth of renewables. And, of course, other sectors beyond electricity that are more difficult to decarbonize — transportation, industry, buildings, agriculture — will need practical, low-carbon technology options as well.
As we advance deep decarbonization of our economy, we must also promote justice and fairness. Those who can least afford it — the poorest Americans and the world’s developing countries — will be economically hit worst and first. They will continue to pay the steepest price for climate change unless low-carbon technology innovation is accelerated and accompanied by policy innovation for a just transition. We must minimize stranded physical assets and stranded workers and communities.
Provide at least three examples from the text which index the agency of the article’s “we.” Generally, do you find evidence that the article’s authors promote activity or passivity on the part of “we”?Â