of Reading, Composing, Toward a Model

I found that I followed all five functions Tierney and Pearson discuss in “Toward a Composing Model of Reading” while writing my wikipedia article. I also realized my weakness in writing, which is the monitoring step. Sometimes I’ll get hung up on a certain minutiae and can’t snap out of it, if I’m particularly frustrated, I’ll scrap the whole thing and choose a new topic.

Planning was an especially important step in this project, although I don’t see any instance where planning would be a lower priority than something else.. besides maybe safety? Once I chose my topic, I suppose my goals were to write something procedural and intentional. It’s embarrassing for me to admit when I learn things, but after learning about my topic, I had the great feeling you get when you gain a new perspective (or in my case, at least scrape the surface enough to see a different color underneath). I wanted to inculcate, with less negative connotation, that feeling and knowledge to the reader. I don’t really understand procedural, but I wanted the reader to want to get a sense of the topic overall.

Drafting the article was like how I eat a huge thanksgiving meal; bit by bit from piles until it’s all gone. I didn’t need ‘flow’ as much as a narrative needs, I just needed it to be logically cohesive enough to not jar the reader. The first line was the hardest, as wikipedia articles start broad in scope and then narrow down. I had to be choosy with my words as not to contradict or misdefine the concept.

Alignment had a bigger role in this writing project than others. Because wikipedia is an editable, communal text where readers are writers, I didn’t want to put any personal flare in, but I still wanted to secretly push for it’s notability.

I consider drafting and revision about the same thing. In my case, I wrote words for the first line, cut words, added some more, then cut the whole sentence at one point. Was my second, or third try a revision or a draft? The good part about this project being a wikipedia article is you can slack a bit on the revising, because people will do that willingly.

Texts as Intertexts, as Texts

Some believe writers are divine conduits of expression, channeling their unique muse, never producing anything unoriginal. Others believe that writers are more like engineers, creating objects from known components that seem different as a whole from other objects, even if they share the same parts. Whenever somebody suggests a spectrum, the answer always seems to fall in the middle.

No matter what one may write, someone will read it - at the least, the author themselves. Even in this reflexive discourse community, the writer cannot be ‘truly’ ‘original’, unless they devise a lexicon of gobbledegoop that makes sense only to them.

Writing composition is like music composition. There are only so many notes to use; just as Aristotle said there were only a certain number of stories anyone could tell, there are only so many songs one can write. Altering the tempo, structure, instrument composition, and various other elements makes a song seem unique - even if it uses the same four chords as countless other songs.

When I was little, I always asked 'what about me?' Now that I'm older, I realize I do the same thing when I write.

Donald M Murray (or as his friends hail him, ‘The Don’) in “All Writing is Autobiography” contends that written work contains elements from the writer’s life experience - no matter what the subject or style of the piece may be. This idea flies in the face of a certain ‘standard’ for writing: that at times, writing should be objective, exclusively entertaining concepts or ideas that have nothing to do with the writer him/herself. The Don even references this concept in the very first sentence, when he asserts that “it’s very likely that at least one teacher has told you not to use “I” in your school papers”. I’ve been told this enough times to remember this ‘rule’. I also learned later in my English-student career that blacklisting “I” was not enough; all personal pronouns should be denied citizenship, and I should deport any alien pronouns that happened to slip into the population of words comprising my papers.

Our perspective is limited to a single consciousness, unless you’re blessed/cursed with MPD. In light of this handicap, it makes sense that writers will ‘write themselves’ into a piece, at least subconsciously. Granted, every written piece will fall on a certain spot in the continuum between objectivity and subjectivity, but the ends of this scale aren’t real. There is no purely objective statement. Even if someone were granted the powers of absolute objectivity, they would still have to communicate in words that carry connotative baggage around, skewing meaning for different listeners.

Seeing as there are no objective statements, Wikipedia becomes an interesting model. I’ve often thought that the internet is a digital manifestation of the transcendental, collective conscious of people who use it; Wikipedia is no different. If this be the case, I can see how a new standard for ‘objectivity’ can arise from Wikipedia. When I read a Wikipedia article, I know that anyone can edit or otherwise modify it’s content. As a reader, this forces me to be more critical of the articles as I read. However, paradoxically, I also tend to lend more credence to the articles, knowing that it is a product of a large group; statistically speaking, I feel that error (including subjectivity, bias and ‘spin’) is better controlled with a larger group.

Rhetorical Situations and their Constituents

Keith Grant-Davie asserts that when "an activity , an event, or a situation... [is] shaped by language or communication", than it is a rhetorical situation. Rhetorical situations exist to solve a problem or fulfill a need; the purpose of any bout of communication is called it’s ‘exigence’. However, what makes most rhetorical situations unique from one another, are the constraints imposed upon it. Constraints “are factors that limit or focus the response to... a given situation”.

If exigence is the content of rhetorical situations, I imagine that constraints are the style. If you ate a whole cake, and said “I ate the whole thing”, the exigence of that phrase would be the same as if you said “I ate the whole thing...”. However, the difference in inflection between the first and the second, represented by the ellipsis, also represents the difference in potential constraints of each rhetorical situation. A triumphant professional speed eater who downed a cake before his competitors might say the first phrase, while a dog with icing on his muzzle and tail between his legs in the corner of the room, with body language, could express the second phrase. A compound rhetorical situation is comprised of many independent but related rhetorical situations. Communication that doesn’t occur in real-time is considered a compound rhetorical situation.

Like everyone else, college students should be aware of rhetorical situations and their constraints, so we can communicate effectively. It’s important to understand what you want to say before you speak, so your audience isn’t confused about the exigence of your discourse. It’s also important to understand the context of your rhetorical situation, so you can adjust for the constraints of the given situation.

The Phenomenology of Error

Joseph M. Williams, in his article "The Phenomenology of Error", argues that writing errors should be seen as ‘social constructs’. Seeing how language in general is a social construct, I readily agree that error within a socially constructed system like language would be socially constructed as well. Epistemologically speaking, a better question would be: how could error be anything but socially constructed? Or better yet, what is error? But that's a whole other can of worms.

Specifically, Williams discusses the experience of error as necessarily existing in multiple places at once; in the mind of a grammarian who sets the rule, in the net of the teacher who enforces the rule, and in the effort of the student who breaks the rule. This is an interesting point when combined with another argument of his; that is, to survey academia on nearly limitless cases of potential grammatical errors would most likely generate more grammatical rules, more potential for grammatical pitfall.

It seems like the more social this construct of error becomes, the more rigid the construct becomes. If this is the case, and if Wikipedia is one of the largest socially constructed texts our society has produced, than why is it so popular (and I may add, effective), when it may be helping to expand the social construct of error? And how can we lend credence to something that may be ripe with both error, and the potential for error?

We must consider the basic difference between a Wikipedia article and an academic article as texts. An academic article usually has one author/editor, or a small group of people who are responsible for it’s birth. As such, these articles are often ‘finished’, after being combed over for error in both content and form. These articles often have a specific audience in mind, that obviously affects the level of scrutiny in editing out error, as this audience may cringe at the least noticeable grammatical errors. Because authorship/editorship is limited, and because the audience is limited, academic articles are necessarily held to the highest standards for grammar.

Wikipedia is more fluid, it has multiple authors and editors, and multiple revisions. Articles posted on Wikipedia rarely stagnate, or find a ‘final copy’. Wikipedia is unique to all other texts, because the author (potentially anyone) and the audience (potentially anyone) are one in the same. Wikipedia is subject to change; both factual, in regards to content of an article, and social, in regards to aesthetics like formatting, and (gasp) grammar usage.

People who write Wikipedia articles use a neutral tone in order to appeal to the broadest audience. I believe that grammar usage also follows the same logic. Williams noted the difference between types of grammatical errors and the reaction from a reader; the most egregious errors cause the reader to lose focus, while the lesser errors are sub-consciously forgiven, and the content is still clear. While Wikipedia might not be held to the same ivory-tower grammatical standards as other texts, I argue that due to the nature of the relationship between author and reader in a Wiki, those standards aren’t necessary, and shouldn’t reflect on the intrinsic value of the content it presents.

Academic articles are like the Mona Lisa, whereas Wikipedia articles are like a photocopy of the Mona Lisa. Same content, but different form; if that matters to you, feel free to waste time, money and effort to visit the Louvre and realize that the image is exactly the same.

This is my blog for 308J, the one with Matt Vetter

Well hi there,

My name is Max Long, I’m from Cincinnati (east side, of course), and I transferred here last year from The Ohio State University. I’m studying media arts here at OU, with a focus in video production, specifically writing, concentrating on the 30 minute sit-com format. My go-to life experience I like to share is my time spent as an expat in the UK. I lived there with my family during 7th and 8th grade, and I was fortunate enough to be able to travel around western Europe, and meet some good friends at school. For some reason I really click with Scandinavians.

I tested out of my early composition class at OSU by using some AP credit instead. I have taken analytical Brit Lit in college, but we read the same things I read in high school - Beowulf, Chaucer, and of course Shakespeare. I don’t dislike analytical stuff, but I’m really a fan of creative writing, so it would have been more rewarding to generate some content instead of analyze it. I find English classes are always more effective and interesting when there are class discussions, but that Brit Lit class seemed to cast a mind-numbing mouth-breathing thrall over my peers, so it wasn’t that fun.

I like the emphasis on technology in this class, especially surrounding the issues of authorship and ownership when people collaborate amorphously and anonymously on the internet. I also like using two words when one will do... it. I’ve always had positive experiences when classes have a blog aspect to it - I like being able to post and comment on discussions on my time. I’m also a Wiki-nerd, my idea of wasting time on the internet is playing Wikipedia-choose-your-own-adventure; if something blue looks interesting, I’ll click on it.

I haven’t studied rhetoric in a while, so I’m really looking forward to filling out my knowledge about persuasive communication. I’m looking forward to the discourse community ethnography, as I’m interested in seeing how language forms group identity, especially when the group forms virtually on the internet (browsing is like driving, people have an additional degree of separation between themselves and others in their community, making them act a bit more ‘raw’). I don’t worry much, but if I had to choose one, I guess I hope we can do something creative, even if it’s a small assignment.