Hey guys! I was wondering who is in this class, so I can figure out who do to my peer review with. Or if anyone is looking for another peer I am available. Anyway, I hope you all have or had a wonderful week. 

Blog Post #9: Invention and Inner Lizzie’s

Hello everyone I hope you all are having or had a wonderful week. We didn’t have any readings scheduled for awhile and I’m sure we were all ecstatic about that. The theme for this week and the next is invention. With the Invention Journal due this week and the Map of the World due next week, we are all showing the steps to get to a research paper. Both of the articles talked about how to come up with and formulate a research question, while controlling your writing anxiety. As someone who has major problems with formulating a research questions and writing anxiety, I understood these articles on a personal level.

In Antlitz article she talks about how to start writing and roll with it. Antlitz gives some amazing advice on how to map out ideas. Her taking flight approach was something refreshing to see. Often we put our personal feelings into our writing which isn’t always a great thing. By writing your feelings on one side of paper or wing, and writing the social context on the other, it gives you a balance between your ideas and a group of peers ideas. Being able to bounce of the two to not only draw similarities but differences.

My favorite writing advice that Antlitz gave was the random words idea. I find it hard to connect my ideas on how I want my research paper to go with articles I find. So this exercise will help me connect not only my ideas but articles together to help form a connected work. The idea of putting two things together that wouldn’t necessarily work is always a little scary but, it could make something beautiful in the end.

In the second article Murray talks about how all writing is autobiographical since we are writing it. What I mean by that is we all have different writing styles and different inner people.We all have that different inner voice that comes out when we write. Which is what I call the Lizzie McGuire affect.

Anyway I stand with Murray on the fact that all writing is indeed autobiographical. We all write with our own cartoon Lizzie’s. As we grow older or learn more about the topic our view on that changes but our writing style always stays the same. If I go back to look at my writing through the years my ideas may have changed but my voice that I find in my writing is always the same. Even if I wrote a poem in 5th grade I can still find my writing style that I use now as a sophomore, just more developed.

In the end of all my blabbering I find this week's theme of Invention really helpful. I am also a little nervous about next week's assignment. As always I’m sure I can get through it somehow. I hope you all have a great week next week, see you soon, Bye.

Hey Michael I hope your week gets a little better. As always I found your blog post very interesting and a great wrap up of the reading. I also face the same problem you do with being my worst enemy. I often criticize everything I write, especially since I'm such an avid reader and I hate reading my own work. As soon as I type my gibberish and have to go back to edit it I just close up. I just know that I will criticize myself beyond belief. I also,as I stated in my blog post, can not and I mean can not find anything to write about. I have to be given a very detailed guide line I can’t just poof something out of thin air. So I know exactly how you feel.

Last week for me was terrible as well. So as someone on the other side I want you to know that it gets way better. One of my favorite quotes is “ It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” by Lewis Carroll. So I hope that helps with you being able to start over and do better next time on your test. Anyway have a great week.

Blog Post 8: Composition Strategies and Deadlines

This week has been an epic debacle for me. I was already stressing knowing the midterm portfolio was due on Friday, and after not doing as well as I expected on my O Chem II exam, I thought the week couldn’t get any worse, that is until I probably failed my second Cal II quiz. You can imagine how I felt after this, knowing I still have the midterm portfolio ahead of me. After receiving the email regarding postponing the portfolios until the 20th, my heart literally sank, so THANK YOU SO MUCH.

Anyways, this week’s readings consisted of opposing theories/methods, both of which are a tool to aid you in composing a piece of writing. Peter Elbow introduces a linear method and approach to composition, whereas the second article refutes the idea that composition can be linear, and instead offers an alternative approach to composition. I personally think I would find the skeleton process most helpful compared to the other options, and this is probably because I’m very left-brained and a structure-oriented person by nature.

Because the article by Elbow almost precisely describes the situation I face every time I write, I was much more engaged when reading the article. The biggest problem I face when writing is strongly criticizing myself AS I write my drafts, and this yields assignments taking much more time to complete and me being far more frustrated. I’ll constantly tell myself a sentence I have written sounds funny or can be written better, and I’ll spend an unnecessary amount of time trying to revise that one sentence before moving on. Another major issue I face is not knowing exactly what to write about, and I believe writing germ sentences after reading articles and pieces of information can greatly aid me in having areas to talk about. The strategies in both of these articles can definitely help me with the process of generating ideas, compared to the scrutinizing part of the revising process, which I do A LOT of already.

Even though this has been a TERRIBLE week, not having to turn in the midterm portfolio tonight has definitely helped me feel a little better. I hope everyone is doing well and the extension allows everyone to complete their portfolio. Good luck everyone!

Rain Rain Go Away: Blog #8

Hello everyone, I hope you all had a great week. Last week was a little bit stressful when it came to balancing work and school, but other then that I'm doing pretty good.However, this week was an easy train to calm town. I hope everyone had a less stressful week.

Anyway this week's reading was about tools to help your writing. Peter Elbow talks about turning your chaos into something you can actually turn in. Elbows tool about using a collage to get from chaos to coherence is actually something I kind of already do, Along with using a skeleton. 

I tend to kind of just through out words to try to form anything.Basically just free writing like Compose Design Advocate says. If you have read my writing you know this because a lot of time I just don’t make any sense. I do a hybrid of chaos and structure so I did find the skeleton method most helpful and most like my writing style.Trying to find time to read and re read everything about the topic and finding the most important information. Making little notes while you read, germ sentences. Is something I really try to do when forming a paper.

The one thing I really need to concentrate on is figuring out a main idea. I always have trouble figuring out what I want to write about. I can create a collage and list about anything but trying to put it all together into something cohesive, is not my forte. I defiantly think the skeleton method is something that I will keep on coming back to.

I see myself using both methods and ideas from The Need for Care: Easy Speaking Onto the Page is Never Enough and from Compose Design Advocate.

Anyway sorry if this was more chaotic than a coherent work. I’m currently typing this with the horrible rain outside trying to get this up before anything happens to the wifi. As always I hope everyone has a great week. Off to go sit by the window with some tea and a book. Bye bye for now.

Hello,I hope you had a great week. I enjoyed reading your post. I also loved the fact that Grammar Girl used humor with grammar facts. Learning can be fun,I feel like I have forgot that through the years. I found her commentary really interesting when it came to the words of the year and her talk about aphasia and how the brain works.  I also started a journal this year with having wanting to start one for so long. I have always told myself to write at least one sentence a day but, I couldn’t even do that. My goal for this year is to be more creative in general. Anyway, I also have decided to continue to listen to Grammar Girl after this. I find her very entreating and a great way to learn new things I never knew, about the world and myself.

I hope you have an amazing week, peace out.

Blog Post #6

So this week we listened to “Grammar Girl” and I really enjoyed her tips and facts. I loved how she mixed humor with grammar facts, it kept things a little more interesting. She explained in episode 551 “Words of the Year. Easy Tips to Improve Your Writing” many of the top searches in online dictionaries. Miriam Webster’s word of the year for 2016 was “surreal”. The searches for the word started to spike after occurring terrorist attacks this past year. I find it so amazing that the most searched words had a lot to do with politics in 2016. It seemed like everyone was on their toes the election, and this proved that. Grammar Girl also gave us some pretty good tips to improve our writing in 2017. My favorite and most relevant tip was “write for fun”. I’ve been telling myself to start writing in a journal for YEARS and I’ve never actually pushed myself to do it. 2017 is my year and I will finally start writing in the journal I bought for myself back in 2014…..

In episode 510 “How Aphasia Causes Difficulty Speaking”, I learned about aphasia which is a type of brain damage in which you lose your ability to speak or understand speech. I loved this podcast because I had absolutely NO idea was aphasia was. The brain damage is most commonly caused by stroke, which is overall very sad. The most severe cases are called “global aphasia” and it may make the person mute. Less severe cases such as “fluent aphasia” and “non fluent aphasia” makes the person have a harder time structuring sentences. Dyslexia is also very common among people who suffer from aphasia. I learned a lot about my brain in this podcast! I had no clue who “Grammar Girl” was before but I’m going to challenge myself to listen to 1 podcast a week. Why not learn some more grammar tips this year?! This week was all about setting goals for myself and I’m excited to see where this takes me. Hope my fellow classmates had a great week! Stay awesome.

BRAIN STUFF: Blog 6

In this week's reading it was a podcast, I’m loving the new way we can connect and learn, anyway. I found Grammar Girl very interesting. In the first podcast, "Words of the Year and Easy Tips to Improve Your Writing” I was surprised. I never knew that there was a tally of all the words searched at the end of year, that is pretty dang cool. Of course the top words where words that had to do with this years political election and certain government moves through the world.

Dumpster fire being the word of the year was genius 

along with the matching emoji. The fact that we now have categories like these, such as digital word of the year being an @ and using it as a verb is so funny to me. I'm definitely going to start using gas lighting.How does someone even join the american dialect society? Other note Grammar Girl’s easy tips to improve writing where actually really good I might use 2 of the four.

I also enjoyed the second podcast How Aphasia Causes Difficulty Speaking I always find it interesting to think about language and how the brain works. It's crazy to think if you were blindfolded and had something in your left hand you wouldn’t be able to name the object in your hand as easy as you would in the right. I have always said left handed people had it better now I know that's true since they can recover faster and use language more evenly in their brain.

The whole time all I could think about was being a kid and calling apples bananas and talking like dog chase cat. Having a niece with aphasia has made this very normal to me but, to think about how the brain compartmentalizes these words we use everyday is interesting to say the least. This podcast just made me think the brain is weird.

Sorry if that this blog post is everywhere that is just how my brain is this week. As always I hope everyone had a wonderful week and goodbye for now.

Hey Michael, I also agree with you that the weeks and the assignments are getting way more interesting and less stressful. Also this is the internet if you aren’t getting political you are doing it wrong.

The first podcast "Words of the Year and Easy Tips to Improve Your Writing” also reminded me of last year's election. I agree with you on Trump’s post-truth politics. After having just written about this same topic for my political science class a couple days ago.I have always said left handed people had it better so this podcast just proved it. I also was not too sure about the non-flat text source but I thought what the hay and just did it anyway. I hope you have a wonderful week and did or do great on your exams.

Blog Post 6: Grammar Girl and Politics

Hey, guys! My Tumblr post for this week is getting done even earlier than last week’s, so I guess you can say things are running pretty smoothly. Along with the assignments becoming less stressful, the readings are becoming much more interesting! Hopefully this trend of interesting readings will continue. Just to give you a heads-up, I included a “CW” before a controversial subject in the next paragraph, so proceed after the CW with caution.

The first recording started out by giving definitions of words that were trending during the 2016 election year, so I was enjoying the reading from the beginning! The words that caught my attention the most were xenophobia and post-truth. (CW) Xenophobia rings a bell because I easily make a connection to xenophobia and racism being an influencing factor in the recent election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. By exploiting the economic hardship and fear of many people, Trump was able to pin the problems faced by everyday Americans against immigrants and muslims. After the definition of post-truth was explained to me, I immediately thought of the post-truth politics Trump used throughout his campaign. One quick example being his assertion that there is no system to vet middle-eastern refugees. This claim is completely false on it’s face, and this is because our current vetting system for refugees takes relatively a year AT MINIMUM to complete (this being one of MANY outrageous claims). Anyways, I feel a little weird talking about politics in this post and using the CW indication, but I guess the recording compelled me to write about it.

The next recording revolved around aphasia, which is the loss of ability to understand or express speech caused by brain damage. A lot of the things she mentioned lead me to think about the psychology course I took my senior year, which was partly about language, speech, and how portions of the brain process them. The concept of meaning being separate from speech/language is really interesting, and I never knew that left-handed people are less prone to having aphasia post-stroke! She ends the recording by talking about how many people who have affluent aphasia can, after recovery and therapy, progress to a more fluent type of aphasia.

It’s week 6, and I’m starting to stress about the midterm portfolio that is due in two weeks! I have multiple exams this week, and with the different type of research summary we’re doing, which I’m still unsure about what non-flat text source means, I’m feeling overwhelmed! Even though things are overall easier, this week happens to be a particularly stressful one. Anyways, I digress. Until next week, bye everyone!

I'm glad that you found the critical response easier when you started writing. I had the same thought that it would be hard to change audiences like that. I also found the video the most interesting reading so far. I think it was great that we were all introduced to something we wouldn't normally think about. At the same time it was also something that we do look at when it comes to writing. We wonder how the intended audience will see the work. The paintings on walls and chapels is like the tumblr post we do here.It is a requirement for us to do blog post and communicate with each other. Which we all know what the audience is. When showing pictures of the painting across the world. Is like if someone just happened to come across this post. It would be an audience we didn't really intended. Of course anyone can see any of the post because this is the internet, but it would not be the intended audience. So it was cool to kind of connect the video to what we are doing this week, as it always is. Anyway I hope you have a great week.

Blog Post 5: Reproduction and Transmission of Art

Ok, so I talked about being nervous/anxious regarding our first Critical Response in my previous blog post, but after starting the assignment, I found myself writing much more comfortably and confidently with this genre of writing! Once I was able to choose a new audience, which was the toughest part of the assignment personally, writing the argumentative piece directed towards that audience was rather enjoyable compared to summarizing articles.

So this week’s reading was a video, which also happened to be the most interesting to me. Berger begins the segment by talking about art and how the reproduction and transmission of art now allows paintings to be at many places at once, all over the world. He continues by claiming that for this reason, we are able to experience paintings in our own personal context, compared to having to travel to view a piece of art in a stationary environment/setting. Berger argues that a combination of these two reasons along with camera movements/mechanisms is the reason why experiencing art has lost originality. These are concepts that would have NEVER crossed my mind, and I think the reason I find these concepts very interesting is because, in a way, they alter the way I see reality. Honestly, art and almost anything requiring the smallest bit of creative/imaginative ability will never cross my mind unless assigned, but now I feel like whenever I see a painting or work of art, I’ll be thinking about the various factors that influence my perception of the piece.

Another part of the segment that caught my eye was the ending note Berger leaves the viewer on, which is that people should be critical and skeptical of the program he is providing. Recently, a frequent theme that keeps coming up is the importance of being critical of others’ work, and this is because writing can be seen as an ongoing scholarly conversation with writing that is done in a certain context with specific goals. Completing the segment lead me to make this connection to important concepts we’ve discussed throughout the course so far.

We’re now 5 weeks in, and I hope everyone is comfortable with the course and the research they have decided to pursue! Until next week, later guys!

*Mona Lisa posing with the “duck face” back in 1503 before it was popular

Hello everyone I hope you had a great week. This weeks reading was actually a video so I enjoyed that.When I watching Berger cut a piece of the painting a little part of me died.

In the video Ways of Seeing episode One, John Berger's talks about how every person has a limtied view.It really puts in perspective how small your worldview is and how different it truly is from other people.

The fact that the original paintings made for buildings was only meant to be seen by those visitors but can now be seen through pictures and videos kind of gives it less beauty. In a way we are talking out all the small wonders meant for that certain space and time by looking at it through a screen. That is one of the reasons I prefer live theater over movies. As Berger says by using a camera it takes away the feeling of art. It is as if we are sucking all the life and the stories out of art by seeing it in a way the artist never intended.

When I was a young girl my dream was to go to New York thinking it would be so cool surround by a city that never stops. I would look at  photos and read stories about what New York was like. My senior year of high school I was able to finally fill that dream. As soon as I got there it was a whole different feeling. As if the New York I saw and read about was not a real place. This New York was lively and dull at the same time, and it was so much better than the New York I grow up dreaming about. The meaning of New York after seeing it, feeling it, and breathing the air is absolutely way more special to me than it ever was through photos.

Nowadays with so much technology we tend to live life through a lens. Which take away the whole pointing of living for some, which is being able to experience.

In the end I really liked this week's “reading” I think it was really eye opening to the fact that we get so used to looking at things through a lens. We end up making certain life experiences less magical.

Other note: When Berger says be sceptical of his own program it was something start out of Stephen King. It was crazy mind-blowing and deeply impactful.

Writing in a Group of One: Blog #3? #4?

As always I hope everyone had a great week.

In The Concept of Discourse Community John Swales talks about discourse community. The steps to achieve that and how to is different from speech community. Swales talks about how different types of writers come to together to create a weird masterpiece. Showing discourse community, having a group of people with a shared respect, goal, or value communicate to get something done.

John Swales also list the different types of characteristics that form a discourse community. Like common public goals, intercommunications, feedback,possessing one or more genre, having relevant content, and the use of lexis.

As a class we are going through the stages of a discourse community. With the way we communicate by using Tumblr or by how different the way we communicate is from when we started the class to now, and even compared to other classes and assignments.

Surprisingly I found this reading really helpful to my own research paper. Thinking about so many different minds coming together to produce something unified, reminding me to get out of my own head. To change my mind set and ideas to a completely different point of view to work together with my original ideas to produce a untied piece. This also helps with the critical response assignment. On the fact that we have to rewrite a piece of research that we have chosen for a different audience. Which was a challenge for me trying to think of a different audience, but once I read this reading I figured out how to do it in a way better for me.

In the end this reading just makes me want to have a society of different people with different backgrounds and ideas write anything on any topic. 

Having all ideas flow seamlessly would be an incredible read.I hope everyone has a good week. 

Hello Bianca, I hope you had a great week.Two things,   One I love the gif and two I agree with you on the organized chaos of wonderful thinking. As a reader you relate more to things when they agree or challenge your ideals. I also think you did a great job on discussing the difference between speech communities and discourse communities. It’s true that speech communities tend to have the same ideas rotating without getting any results, keeping the same ideals and goals through the family. Families tend to pass on the same values and goals through generations. While discourse communities has a different formula. Being able to always be refreshing your goals and ideas unlike speech communities.

 Discourse communities can have that wonderful chaos of mixed thinking to make that goal.

Blog Post # 4

Hello my peeps, Well this week went by slow but I’m glad I’m finally getting the hang of all this Extra Curricular English work we have to do. When I read this text, the first thing that came to my mind was a SECRET SOCIETY of writers but I as read more I was able to see that Discourse Communities were just a group of writers that are grouped together through the topics they write about. Many of the writers have different styles and use different mediums to portray their thought but at the end they all come together to fight one common goal. The difference between Speech and Discourse communities are that one group is to involved in trying to work on how to be a group and come together as one while the other is past that phase and are coming together to find a way to get through to readers. In Speech Communities they “inherit” they’re members which means they have no variety or new thoughts. What I mean when I say that there’s no variety is that when you bring in the “offspring” of you own members, the theme will never change because you will generally have the same person. In Discourse Communities recruits are often drawn in by persuasion and training. The search for different ways of thinking helps this community bring in fresh minds. These people come from different Niches so they are able to attract readers from everywhere. The thought of this community being a cluster of ideas is brilliant because all the ideas of these writers would be organized chaos of wonderful thinking. The readers would be able to relate a lot more.

This might be a random thought but I find it quite funny that we are the audience for an author talking about thinking of your audience. Anyway, I agree with you on how it is easier to understand how the audience is perceiving things when they are right in front of you.Unfortunately they are not, but it would be easier for us all if we could magical make people appear. As writers I guess we always have to create something, it can be a story, an audience, or an argument. It's just another thing for us to think about when it comes to writing.

To answer your question, yes it made sense. I also have made it my goal to make sure my words count or of importances. In the end though I feel like every word has importances in someway. I found your blog post to be a great read so thanks for that. Sorry I’m so bad at complements I guess.

WEekNumber3

Well, week number 3 is here and with that a new reading assignment. This week’s assignments really spoke out to me and help me better understand my writing. Last week we were supposed to have a question that we would be looking at for our “research” paper and we should have received some feedback after we turned it in. One of the things that was brought to my attention was knowing your audience. Who am I speaking to and what am I saying? This idea of “Writing Addresses, Invokes, and/or Creates Audiences” really peaks my interest. This portion of the reading uses a speaker and its audiences and compares that to a writer and its audience. To add to that arguement, (not an obvious expert on the subject but this is my opinion) it can be “easier” for a speaker to give a speech since he can see the audience and “flow” off of their reactions to him speaking. A writer, on the other hand, may have a harder time. He has to create his audience. The writer has to understand that he needs to visualize or create his audience by the words he uses. I think that is really interesting and would be good look into that a bit more. 

One last thing, one thing that I could understand was:

“Writing is also and perhaps ultimately understood as an activity that engages us with others and thus with problems associated with the moral life: What shall I say? To whom do I speak? What obligations follow from my words?”

The above quote is how I feel as I write this and as I have during my many papers. “What do I say and does it even have any importance?” I hope to have concrete answers to these questions by the end of the semester.

I hope the above made sense…lol

Hi Biance, I can totally agree with you about being guilt of the fact that I don’t think about my audience at all when I write. Finding the purpose of your writing and finding the audience is something we do need to do from the start of the paper and I don’t unfortunately.Doing this would make it easier for us (especially me) to write the research paper. I always forget to connect to my audience, making them feel how I want them to when reading my work. As a reader I find when I connect to the writing it makes the reading a lot easier to swallow. That’s good that you sat back and thought do I do this? I did the exact same thing while reading Naming of What We Know. Thinking to myself “wow! I suck at writing. Like I have said before I learn something new every week from this class.

Blog Post #3

Hey guys! I’m happy to actually have the time to write this blog post. I have been overwhelmed this week because of my chemistry class. It’s the only class I need to get into the nursing program and I already had a test for it. It’s only been 2 weeks of lecture and I already had an exam can you believe it. Well anyways this weeks reading made some interesting points. When it comes to writing we as students don’t take the time to actually do the rhetorical work. We tend to do things at the last minute and just rush our work without addressing the purpose of our writing. I have been a college student for 3 years now and I still catch myself not addressing the purpose of my writing I have a bad habit of going on and on about a topic and not really stating to my audience why. This weeks reading taught me that when I first start writing an essay or a research paper I have to do the rhetorical work. The rhetorical work may be to find what expresses my audience or address the purpose to my audience. These two concepts are very important when it comes to writing. Another thing is making sure we have an ongoing conversation about the topic and try to visualize how the audience would present it. This is also very important because when we write sometimes we literally just write without even thinking how the person reading it is going to take it. I am totally guilty on this. The last thing I learned was as writers we need to express the desire, and emotions of our writing. When we write something the audience should express how you were feeling. This is what makes the reader more interested into a story in my opinion. As I finished reading this week reading I thought to myself do I even do any of those things??? As bad as it sounds i do not. So I told myself after reading this article I would try and conclude on those writing methods in my writing from now on.

Can’t Think Of Anything-Blog #3

I’m gonna start this blog post with asking how many students are in this class? 

I really wanna know so that way we can stay more in contact with each other when we have questions. I also believe that some of us are using the wrong hashtag because I can’t seem to find other students answers, unless I go to the actual tumblr page. Besides that the weeks seem to be getting better when it comes to me wanting to pull my hair out. I hope the feeling is mutual. I however found the reading hard to read due to the formate on my laptop. I don’t know if the sides were cut off for anyone else? I did find the reading interesting though. The readings are short of taking things in and out of each other through the weeks. Training us for our research paper and writing careers in general. 

Naming What We Know talked about how we need to create an intended audience which I think we all forget when we are home writing a research paper or blog post. Trying to put yourself in someone's else's shoes is not easy when you have been reading your own paper over and over again. I do recommend changing the font of your paper but I digress. Of course when you find your audience your paper easily becomes transformed into something you can actually turn in. Naming What We Know is a basic go through of what we should think about when it comes to writing.

Through all of this I found this week to be a bit difficult with a lot of work. The fact that Naming What We Know was cut off was a bit distracting but a metaphor for how I feel this week. Each week I feel more confident and then less confident each time. I’m learning and growing as I'm sure we all are. Sorry that this blog post was everywhere. I’m gonna spend the rest of day reading my book and drinking some calming tea. Have a wonderful day!

Hello Gilbert, I found your opinon on the rhetoric.net website very similar to my views. I also found this the better of the two. It was a great reminder but also learning experience of how we were taught to write and how we should challenge that. Those pages taught me more than most teachers ever had. My research topic has a little to do with media and the effect on people as well. I had the opposite thought about words when I was younger. I was raised that words had the power to change things over anything else in this world. It was very interesting to read how you thought or were conditioned to think about words. One of my favorite quotes is “One must always be careful of books and what is inside them for words have the power to change us” which I think applies to your views. You should always be careful of what you are being influenced by.

WEekNUMBER2

So for this weeks reading we had http://rhetorica.net/textbook/invention.htm and Greene, Stuart. “Argument as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument”. The article that particularly stood out to me what the “invention” one. It looked at “Invention, Arrangement, Style, and Delivery.” I wasn’t sure if we were to read all of it but when in doubt, read it all. I really enjoyed these short articles. Not because of their length but the content. One of the things that stood out to me was the article on Style. This really speaks to me because part of the topic I am thinking of choosing has to do with media and it’s effect on society (or something to that effect). The “WOW” moment was when the author uses the Kennedy’s “Call to national service”. The author states,

“Also, note that Kennedy’s statement could be construed as a rather dubious assertion about the proper relationship between a citizen and a democratic government. But, we remember the line (often out of context) and refer it (despite its political difficulties) precisely because it sounds so good. This is stuff of soundbites and headlines. Rhetoric scholar James A. Berlin said that “language is never innocent.” 

I truly believe that as a society we have to be very careful with words. Growing up we are taught that words can’t hurt us and that they have no power over us. But when we REALLY think about it, WORDS ARE POWER. I am not a conspiracy theorist but we have to really read between the lines when looking at any type of media. What is it REALLY trying to tell us.

Well, I hope this is part of the assignment.

Feel free to comment and or continue the conversation.

Totally open to discussion.

The good thing is that I think everyone is lacking a bit of confidence when it comes to blogging, but I think everyone is really doing an amazing job with it. I think you did an amazing job getting Greene’s article across. I agree with you that it becomes a little weird to "question the inquisitor”. The fact that Greene makes us question not only what argument and conversation mean, but to completely change what we believe was interesting. Making us really see each view on the conversation. I also really enjoyed you linking the video you posted not only with the article but also what you feel like writing your second blog post. I also am lacking confidence each time I open up tumblr to write but I’m hoping we can all master this by the end of the semester. I am also interested to see the way this will affect my writing and my conversations in the future.

Still lacking confidence, but here’s Blog #2

This is about the reading: Argument as Conversation. The author presents a different way of examining both research and argument, re-positioning it as conversational with an outcome of reaching new knowledge via a social process…and here it was I thought I was uncomfortable with my FIRST post. [SMH] Stuart Greene asks the reader to reevaluate our definitions of both argument and conversation, then goes on to make a case for how each of us do this organically by means of social interaction. He admonishes us to be critical in our sources and put into context the conclusions or dilemmas each faced, and to use research as a means of “advancing the conversation”.(pg. 11) To actualize this here in this post, sometimes culture can be a barrier to questioning sources or “authority” and can hamper of even halt a research process that leans heavily on a social/conversational process. On the other hand, challenging cultural barriers may be the very intent of this methodology, and thereby arrive at new conclusions, new problems to argue or solve, or perhaps revitalize a “cold case of inquiry” with new perspective and mental bravery that would otherwise be discouraged or “socially policed” within that culture.

The above video clip is simply a representation of both my willingness to embrace my fear of digital rhetoric/composition, as well as my discomfort of “questioning the inquisitor”.

Greene illustrates his conversational method through osmotic reference of “Hunger of Memory” by Richard Rodriguez, and Rodriguez’s reflection of “the scholarship boy” anecdote contained in the work “The Uses of Literacy” by Richard Hoggart. In this particular passage reference, we, the readers have an opportunity to review, side-by-side, both Hoggart’s divulgence and Rodruiguez’s comments and context…leading Mr. Greene to ask us readers some probing questions about our perspectives and conclusions about the “scholarship boy” upon review to demonstrate his concept of framing. Once establishing this baseline, Greene continues with another example of framing from a different author.

***BREAK***

It is at this point where I am unsure whether I am supposed to answer the questions contained in the reading like an assignment, or if this reading was meant to spur and generate independent thought, so like the girl on the diving board…I am jumping in without pondering. I find myself curious and interested in this concept of conversational argument, how it will influence my writing going forward, and discovering what new insights and new methods of critique I can with the use of framing.

Researching, Confusion, and Arguments: Blog #2

The theme of this week for everyone seems to be a shared confusion and uncomfortableness, so that’s a wonderful sign that we are at least all on the same page. 

I found the rhetorica.net reading to be a little bit refreshing. I feel through the years we all lose the basics and create a unique writing style to go with us. Which of course is not a bad thing but it’s also not the best thing.

When it came to Greene’s "Argument as conversation." I found it putting me in a different place. When it comes to research papers and my life in general. I think we often argue just for the sake of winning and not for actually taking something away from it, at least I have a couple of times. As writers we need to make the argument clear and understanding of personal opinions of the people reading. It should be more than getting the point across but for the reader to understand what we mean and to question it.

The article also brought to my attention how literal we take everything, online or in person. When we go looking for answers we often don’t question them, especially if you are running on 4 hours of sleep and need to start on a research paper asap, I think it has to do with when we were younger we were not allowed to question what are parents told us. As I have gotten older I tend to question everything like a young 5 year old. This has made me actually understand what someone is trying to tell me or teach me.

Greene challenges us with the fact that we need to treat every argument as a conversation and to take every argument as a learning experience for everyone involved.

This was certainly me this week not only with the assignments but with Tumblr.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day or night.