↩ SocioRhetoric

the gym · recognition before it moves you

Practice locating
speech acts.

The catalogue teaches the names; the drill trains the reflex. Specimens arrive without labels — you set the five coordinates, then see the key. Misses come back sooner than hits. The goal is for naming-the-move to become faster than being-moved-by-it.

I

The Drill

Read the specimen, set all five axes, submit. Any missed coordinate returns for review tomorrow. The deck shuffles unseen specimens first.

Warm-up: how an expert reads one

“We're all really excited about this direction.”

an executive announcing a reorganisation no one was consulted on

  • Function — expressive on the surface, but the “all” manufactures a state of affairs: read it as a declaration of consensus delivered in expressive form? No — score what the act does: it installs unanimity, so expressive/declaration both defensible.
  • Orientation — nothing here is keyed to the world (no one checked excitement levels); it is keyed to belonging: joining the excitement is joining the team.
  • Motive — the act works only if the audience doesn't see the mechanism; disclosed (“I'm saying this so dissent feels late”), it dies. That dependence is the mark of manipulative.
  • Scope — the sentence is built for the whole room and the forward-chain of retellings: wide.
  • Target — acts on the hearers, not on a prior act or the speaker's self: outward.

Now finish one yourself — two axes are read for you, you set the other three. Then the deck is yours.

II

The Daily Five

Five specimens on a spaced schedule: box 1 daily, box 2 every third day, box 3 weekly. Wrong answers fall back to box 1.

III

The Misfire Clinic

Each dialogue is going wrong. Your task is not to name the acts — it is to click the axis where the fight is actually happening.

IV

The Field Notebook

Sightings logged from the catalogue index collect here. The assignment is standing: catch one in the wild by Friday.

Export (copy anywhere):

V

The Duels

Two utterances, one confusable pair. Click the one the question names; the distinguishing criterion is the prize.

VI

The Reverse Drill

Coordinates given; you produce the utterance. Write yours before revealing the examples — production is the rep, the examples are only the check.

VII

The Map

The catalogue's confusability structure: acts grouped by function, lines joining the pairs people mix up. Click an act to see what separates it from each neighbour.