Reading Response 10 (Bryson)

Bryson – “Good English and Bad”

Summary

In his article, “Good English and Bad,” Bryson attempts to show how the “rules” for the English language are not only convoluted, but straight up wrong or nonexistent. He argues that many of the “rules” have become so confused that many different rules are there from confusion or no reason at all. He doesn’t feel that to have a rule just for the sake of the rule is a good enough reason to use sloppy or inelegant grammar.

Synthesis

This text is similar to many of our texts, picking a construct to challenge and then proving its point. However, it is like many of the shorter works by having a sort of commentary in the background, a little bit of dry humor to keep the reader awake. The author uses examples that are simple yet get the point across in the most effective way, similar to many of the pieces that are directed to students, yet this article is approachable by many different people of different mindsets.

Pre-reading

Good English is a very loose term to apply to anything with so varied a basis. Good grammar is something to strive for, but not entirely necessary. Sometimes context is more important than grammar, especially in speech. I personally will use improper grammar to make a point or to be funny (i.e. pronouncing words as they are spelled with phonics as well as combining words to make a new word).

QD

1. Bryson is challenging the writing construct of grammar rules, show by his many examples of where rules contradict each other. He points out how flexible and democratic the English language, going into a brief history of how academics throughout history have tried to revise the rules to make them simpler, but they constantly make it worse. He gives purely grammatical examples that show where the standing rules are deficient to help prove his point.

A&E

2. Bryson means that whatever we want the English language to do, it does. Throughout history, meanings, spellings, pronunciations, and “rules” have changed at the whim of a popular scholar. Personally, I’ve seen commas rules taught four different ways throughout my schooling career, none of which my parents or siblings were taught. Teacher to teacher, scholar to scholar, each rule has a varying level of importance, with some getting bent or broken frequently by one, but being invulnerable by another.

MM

Some parts of speech are noun, verb, adverb, pronoun, ect. I learned how they all relate in school, a long time ago. Most of it is ingrained into my subconscious mind, so I do it instinctively, most of the time. I do not think about it at all when I write, I think about translating my thoughts to words, and they magically appear in a relatively correct grammatical format, if I’m lucky. It may help me write better if I knew grammar better, because I could fall back on it to try mixing up my sentence structure, but not very much.

Thoughts

This piece was much more interesting than many of the others we’ve read recently, mainly because of the more down to earth vocabulary as well as descriptive and understandable examples. They were relatable with my own experiences with the language, indeed they were relatable to just about anyone. This made it much more interesting to read.

Project 1 Intro/Conversation

Intro

When you think of writing, there are two distinct genres that separate it down the middle. To many, they are as different as night and day, blue and red, hot and cold, sweet and sour, the list goes on. When it comes to writing, you can either write creatively or academically, poetically or rhetorically. This gap between fiction and nonfiction has long been thought to be unbridgeable. This construct; a construct being something that we accept as true due to extensive exposure within our culture or discipline, but was something agreed upon in the first place; has been discussed extensively by ( ) who mention (). I say that this gap is neither as long nor as dark as many people make it out to be. While there are distinct differences between them, by changing the situations, you can understand both. To show how this construct works, I will challenge a second construct that is prevalent in the literary world, on both sides of the issue. The concept of the stereotype has been around for a long time, in both fiction and nonfiction. This construct has two faces, as has been the common theme so far in this paragraph, in that it can be applied to both sides, but from different angles. For the creative side, there is the idea that to have good writing all you need are stereotypical characters to make a good story. For the rhetorical side, there is the concept that an essay must be straightforward and lengthy, as well as use complex vocabulary. The result of testing this construct on both sides will then by default test the original construct that we have set out to prove. Meta much? If so, get ready for the most convoluted set of logic to make sense that you’ve ever seen.

Synthesis

Literature and Composition: Separatism or Convergence? By John Trimbur is a work that supports bridging the gap between the creative and rhetorical. By showing his stated initial want for them to be separate and realization that they can work together. Also, Create Flesh and Blood Characters by William Kowalski illustrates my point of stereotypes for the fiction side. The article Challenging Stereotypes About Academic Writing: Complexity, elaboration, Explicitness by Douglas Biber and Bethany Gray shows the stereotypes found in nonfiction and academic writing and challenges them, thus proving the point I’m trying to make. I also want to look at Greene’s article on conversation, but don’t know how it will fit in if at all. The same goes for Porter’s article on Intertextuality and Elbow’s on Contradictions.

This is a bare bones outline of what I intend to do, but more analysis of the texts is required to know more about what I want to do with what source. 

Reading Response 9

Bernhardt – “Seeing the Text”

Summary

In his article, “Seeing the Text,” Bernhardt attempts to show the relationship that the visual points of text have on people when they read them. He argues that how something is set up graphically will lead to different ways of understanding as well as different levels in interest toward the material and can also be traced to the audience that the text is geared toward.

Synthesis

This article is a lot like Klein’s as well as Elbow’s, because it is written for a more academic audience. He throws a couple of bones in that are more for students, but the majority is very high level. It is also structured in a very scientific pattern, laying out all of the evidence and then results.

Pre-reading

No, none of my other classes have me do lab reports or organize text with images. If I were to, the visual clues would help narrow down the details that the text may have a hard time to describe to the reader.

QD

4. It is normal to have a teacher want us to write a paper that follows a specific form because then everyone has to write the same way and it is a lot easier to judge and grade the student’s work. When you have it as an assignment, it gets rid of different student’s interpretations and has only the teacher’s interpretation as the valid one, so there is a more linear grading system.

A&E

1. There may have been times that I’ve had to use unconventional visual structure, such as in my high school chemistry classes where it was structured more as a list in some parts. To use them again would only be beneficial in a science field, since most English teacher’s will want the generic essay, but if asked for it won’t be a difficult thing to do.

Post-reading

McCloud would have had a diagram for each paragraph, showing each part that he was talking about. I think this way would’ve been much easier to understand, because instead of having to both understand him and visualize his visuals, you would only have to understand the concept.

MM

In the context of looking at graphs and charts would probably be the most common case. Pamphlets and newspapers are also set up visually, as they have pictures and aren’t a wall of text. I couldn’t say what assignment calls for the most visual thinking, but the readings of McCloud and Berger apply since they involve art and images, not in that order.

Thoughts

This article was dreadfully boring, and aside from McCloud’s work, it doesn’t appear to apply to much of what we are doing in this class. His vocabulary, like many of the others that we have read, is unnecessarily complicated and circuitous, and merely confuses the reader rather than informing them.

Reading Response 8

Porter – “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”

Summary

In his article, “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” Porter attempts to show the reader that plagiarism as defined in popular culture isn’t in fact what happens. He argues for intertextuality, which states that “all writing and speech – indeed, all signs – arise from a single network.” (88)

Synthesis

This is a lot like Klein’s work, because not only is he supporting his idea that is a much broader context than many would think to apply to writing, it is most obviously written towards a more scholarly community, as shown by the spinning of my head after reading it. The vocabulary and rhetoric he uses is definitely not meant for anyone without a Phd.

Pre-reading

I get a lot of help from writing, by asking friends for advice, having others proofread, even by relying on spell check frequently. I have even participated in my fair share of collaborative writings, voluntary and otherwise. Anything I do in life can also have an influence on my ideas that I’m working on, even if they have no correlation.

QD

4. I’ve always evaluated writing on whether or not I like it, and whether it fits the criteria I set out to accomplish. Most of the ways my writing has been evaluated before fits with my own idea, although I may be less knowledgeable about all of the grammar rules that my judges.

5. His work reflects on his principles, because he keeps bringing other people’s ideas into his article not only to show his point, but to make it as well. He is obviously not the first to think about this, because there are already a large number of people on both sides of the fence over the issue.

A&E

1. There are many different texts in it, shown in all of the different ways of displaying comfort and there are homages back to the tried and true, as they are trying to make money off of it. The cultural intertext is the constant use of not only women, but of different racial mixes to try and show that all types of people will look good as a result of said product, making it more universally accepted.

MM

No, he hasn’t changed my mind as all, because I know in my writings I’ve relied heavily on the assistance of others; his declaration of it merely confirmed my suspicions. I don’t think I’ll change the way I right at all, because I think that by using outside sources I also push myself to be more creative so I don’t feel as though I’m not contributing to my own writing.

Thoughts

I did not enjoy this text at all, it was long and hard, and the concept not overly surprising or interesting. That it was obviously written for people over my level of comprehension didn’t help at all, and makes the concept that much harder to grasp.

Reading Response 7

Elbow – “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries”

Summary

In his article, “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries,” Elbow attempts to support both sides of the age old argument about viewing writing through the two main lenses, text based and voice based. He argues against the standard compromise, saying that it waters down the resulting concept, instead encouraging the use of both lenses, and learning when to switch between them. He does this through showing all of the advantages and disadvantages of each different process, and through this demonstrating that they are contrary, but neither is necessarily wrong.

Synthesis

This is similar to many of the other texts we have read in class, where the author is applying a common discussion in the academic community to students writing, and challenging us to change our standards. What is different about it is that he isn’t showing the other side as wrong, rather encouraging us to accept both sides of the topic as correct and applicable at different times.

Pre-reading

2. There is no doubt that papers would be different with the inclusion of “I” into a paper. It would allow the use of much more personal language; the ability to relate to a much more specific personal event rather than through obscure and roundabout impersonal language that you spend more time thinking about the wording to take away the personal touch than on the content of the essay in question.

QD

1. I had always defined voice as the personality that the author gave to the surroundings and situations in a story. All, or a vast majority, of my experience is with fiction works, so the critical analysis of the text without voice doesn’t really apply, although without it, the humorous descriptions of the settings or the impassive character actions would be different. The majority of differences in voice I’ve found exist in nonfiction and poetry, where they seem to take themselves way too seriously, or there isn’t any voice to be found.

4. In his argument, his is playing his “game” because he switches mindsets when he talks about the different frames that he is currently supporting, he then doubts the other side by showing their flaws. By showing support for both sides rather than just giving a cursory glance at the “opposing side,” even though there aren’t any in this essay, he’s giving the feeling of an unresolved debate, because though he’s supporting both sides, his tone when he switches sides still shows that edge of “this sides right” even though he ends with his statement that he supports both. He uses this to emphasize that there is still a difference between when each one is applicable.

A&E

1. Sincerity is when you write from you heart or mind with little thought to censor or restrict what you are writing; you feel what you are writing. Resonance is when you make the “voice,” for lack of a better word, change subtly to make a certain point stick out differently than the rest of your piece. This took a little time to come up with, mainly for the right words, but the concept wasn’t difficult to come up with.

2. When you listen to a passage, the job of identifying what the tone and inflection of the characters isn’t left up to your imagination; rather it is decided by the speaker. It also jades your memory when you read it yourself again; you don’t hear your internal voice, you hear the speaker. You understand passages that sounded weird with the inflection you gave them when you hear them differently. It is definitely a tool that I use when reading, because when you say things multiple times, they seem to make more sense.

MM

It is possible to incorporate this into your writing, you just need to write something and look at it from more than perspective; using Greene’s idea of frames, you need to use multiple frames to find where every part fits. Instead of coming to a compromise and taking only certain parts for your piece, you can blend all of the ideas together while keeping both distinct ideas.

Thoughts

This was my least favorite thing I’ve read so far, not because of the subject matter, for the concept is intriguing, but it was sooooo long. After about page two, I kept checking to see how much more I had to read every other paragraph. This kind of ambiance is not conducive to pleasure reading. The concept of opposing ideas both being correct and coexisting is very intriguing, and I intend on expanding upon it in one of my novel ideas….

Reading Response 6

Berkenkotter – “Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Published Writer”

Murray – “Response of a Laboratory Rat – or, Being Protocoled”

Summary

In their articles, “Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Published Writer”

and “Response of a Laboratory Rat – or, Being Protocoled,” Berkenkotter and Murray attempt to show, through their experiment, the processes that go through the mind of a professional writer to try and analyze the “proper” method of writing and revising piece. Berkenkotter disliked the (then) current methods of analysis which consisted of putting writers in a laboratory setting, with parameters. She felt, and proved, that this inhibited the thought processes of the writer, and observed the writer in its natural environment.

Synthesis

This is similar to the other texts, such as Klein, where as it is a discussion about the methods and results of their research, and an application of the self-same results to the writing of students in schooling now.

Pre-reading

I don’t have any particular writing habits, although I concentrate better most of the time if I have music playing, although this doesn’t work all the time.

QD

1. Murray’s writing process is very eccentric, as he has a system that works for him and him alone, as far as I can tell. He does a lot of notes on what he wants to write, but he dictates it rather than actually types it, so he also listens to it, and discerns whether it has the correct feel. I sit down and think about the concept as I go through life, refine random bits and pieces as I think, and when I sit down to write, I connect all the dots.

3. Berkenkotter discovered that for Murray, planning and revision are basically the same in practice. When he went back to do revision, he instead did a combination of both, which she called reconceiving.

A&E

1. I spend a lot of time connecting ideas with dialogue when I am writing a story. I have written a lot of non-story type essays, so I have a general idea of what formulas work and what don’t. I do a mental outline of what I need to write, and I formulate it in the most logical order, and start writing. When I go through and reread, I sometimes move ideas to try and make sure my point is being made. I don’t spend as much time on revising as I should, rather I’m used to just plowing through and hoping it’s right.

MM

I feel that I have a better understanding of how to revise and now I know that I need to spend more time on the information and on how everything is set up.

Thoughts

This article was weird, because it took me a while to realize that it was more geared for other academics, and when I took that into account, the point made a lot more sense. It didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t know, but it brought it all into light, and showed me I’m not the only one who goes back and forth on writings.

Reading Response 5 (Berger)

Berger – “Ways of Seeing”

Summary

In his article, “Ways of Seeing,” Berger attempts to use an analysis of European nude paintings to show gender placement in the corresponding time period in which the painting was created. He uses this to show the dual existence of women as well as the rather simplistic realm of men. Though the style has changed over the years, it still shows the same general trend of treating women as objects and men as overseers to judge said objects, which is obviously wrong.

Synthesis

This article isn’t like anything else we’ve read, because there is no argument about bettering our writing style, or anything to do with writing for that matter. Rather, this article is a social commentary on the historic placement of genders based on an analysis of nude oil paintings.

Pre-reading

1. For starters, we are imagining a lot if I’m going to draw. It takes a stretch just to imagine that whatever I draw even remotely comes close to looking like a woman. As to the direction she is facing, it would depend on the context of the picture, but in the generic sci-fi laser battle, probably sideways (hint: this is also my scene). As in any drawn out battle, there is mass chaos and people everywhere, if we imagine that I can draw mass chaos and other people. In no way would she be nude or naked, as it is a distraction when you are cold on the battle field. Although it might confuse the enemy.

3. The male is depicted as ruggedly handsome, as well as cool and confident. Almost as if he was projecting an aura of awesome, if there is such a thing. The woman, on the other hand, is depicted as “beautiful” with a pound of make-up covering her face, and wearing a skimpy, yet uniquely weird outfit that probably cost more than you make a year (directed at Mr. Vetter). She is depicted as confident and sexy, and gives off a vibe of ease with her surroundings. The depictions are all based around the stereotypical “perfect” person, and all of their publicity people set it up that way.

QD

1. The artists of these paintings knew exactly what they were doing; the painting of nude females, not the commentary on stereotypes that they didn’t know applied to them. Unfortunately, being a male, I have access to the horrible machinations of said mind, and the one thing guys like above looking at naked women is money (not saying that I do, it’s just an evil of hormones). These painters were marketing geniuses, because they were able to make money drawing naked women. Not only does it show status because of the servility of said women to the man that is commissioning this painting, but the painter gets to fulfill a primal urge and make money while doing it. Thus pornography was born. But all jokes aside, they did know what they were doing, and Berger would agree with this, because it shows the subservient nature of the female’s position in the process.

3. These assumptions are still very much in effect today, though their connotations have changed a little. Though there are some women that follow the old method of subservience; through their mannerisms, attire, surroundings, etc.; there are others that are much more independent through these same things. They don’t follow the list as strictly and because of this they have a more defined presence because what people see and think they are is in fact who they are, thus eliminating the dual existence.

A&E

2. There are definite ways we can apply Berger’s ideas of relationships to texts, because there is a definite relationship between the author and/or narrator to the reader. This relationship that you enter is one of the passing of ideas and thoughts; or in my realm of fiction, the telling of a story which could be told different based on the narrator and the author.

4. Humor defines a person by how they react to many different scenarios and situations. Some things seem funny to certain people and silly to others. Humor can also be seen as a passive trait, because it takes the place of other emotions such as anger, jealousy, ect. Humor mellows everything out when used properly and shows a person’s character when they can not only tell jokes, but take some as well. Humor could be seen as compensation for some insecurity, but that isn’t the case all the time, just like humor isn’t gender based the entire time. It is a careful combination of both, as well as the fact that most people like to laugh and smile, plus it’s always a good ice breaker.

MM

The necessity of reading this article has a lot to do with the correlation of spectator and viewer in relation to writing. When writing, it always good to keep the perspectives of the author and reader into consideration. This is especially important when you are trying to aim for a certain point that is affected by one of these points. The more general nature of art allows for an easier job of comprehending how easy it to understand something many different ways when you change a minute detail.