English 101 Northeastern Discourse Communities & Personal Communities HW

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Writing

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Writing as a Community Member + Reflection

In this project, you will contribute to a conversation about how writing, rhetoric, and/or literacy is impacted by community membership. The essay will include a thesis/claim which is then supported by textual evidence pulled from (at least) two of the following list or attachments. The essay will also be accompanied by a short reflection in which you describe what you have learned thus far that has helped you expand or shift your understanding of reading/writing. (4-5 Pages)

PROMPT: In what ways do communities (discourse communities, personal communities, or other) shape writing? Stake a claim (i.e., present a thesis) as to how writing is shaped by communities and then support it with evidence pulled from (at least) two of the readings in the following list or attachments. Your essay must be accompanied by a short reflection (at least one page but no more than three) in which you describe how engagement with the idea of communities impacts your reading and writing.

Readings:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/why-is-academic-writing-so-academic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/09/brevity-in-email/501986/

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/a-modern-guide-to-the-love-letter/385370/

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University of Pittsburgh Press Chapter Title: “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (1987) Chapter Author(s): Gloria Anzaldúa Book Title: Available Means Book Subtitle: An Anthology Of Women'S Rhetoric(s) Book Editor(s): Joy Ritchie, Kate Ronald Published by: University of Pittsburgh Press. (2001) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hjqnj.57 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Pittsburgh Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Available Means This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Gloria Anzaldua 1942- Gloria Anzaldua calls herself a "border woman" who has been "straddling" dividing lines all her life. Born on the physical borderland of the Texas-U.S. Southwest/Mexican border, a site that informs all of her writing, Anzaldua explores in her work what she calls the "psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands, and the spiritual borderlands" that exist wherever "two or more" cultures, races, or classes "touch." In her preface to Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldua describes these borderlands as places of "contradiction," places where "hatred, anger, and exploitation" are part of the landscape, but also sites where she finds a "certain joy," especially at the "unique positionings consciousness takes at these confluent streams." Anzaldua was one of the first writers to confront the realities of being a Chicana in North American culture. She named the political, social, and personal struggle of being a woman negotiating the rules of the dominant culture as "border crossing." Anzaldua, through her self-identification as a "Chicana tejana lesbian-feminist poet and fiction writer," subverts as well as reinforces multifaceted borders in her writing and work: Chicana/American, Chicana/ Mexican, lesbian/Chicana, lesbian/feminist, feminist/Chicana. Her work is committed to describing how these borders divide (and conquer) and to confronting the alienation of always being on one side or the other. Borderlands/La Frontera offers a rhetorical theory of "border crossing" and "borderlands" that has flourished and has shaped discussions of women's writing and rhetoric since its publication. Ana Louise Keating defines Anzaldua's writing as "mestizaje ecriture" (125), writing that disrupts dualistic thinking and refuses monolithic categories. Anzaldua continually challenges dichotomies, showing in her own writing how interconnected are culture and individual, language and identity, body and intellect. In "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," Anzaldua blends autobiography, linguistic and colonial history, poetry, and myth into a rhetorical theory that both exposes and overcomes "linguistic terrorism." Weaving Spanish and English together in this essay, Anzaldua recreates in her text the reality of bilingual Chicana/Chicano life in North American culture. At the same time, she confronts her English-only-speaking readers with their own limitations; in effect, she puts them on the border she has negotiated all her life. This rhetorical strategy creates two very different effects on her multiple audiences. First, she turns the tables on the dominant culture, forcing English-only speakers to occupy the position of the "other," to read on the "border" of Anzaldua's text. Simultaneously, the blending and blurring of This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GLORIA ANZALDUA 357 Spanish and English celebrates readers who are bilingual, who can, indeed, cross borders fluidly. Keating says that Anzaldua "uses the differences between herself and her readers to generate new forms of commonality" (13). By highlighting boundaries in this way, and by her careful attention to linguistic differences that shape individual material and psychological lives, Anzaldua enacts a theory of language as generative: because she is a "shape-changer" herself, she shows her readers the performative power of language to generate selves, cultures, and communities, for good or ill. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" "We're going to have to control your tongue," the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode. The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp. "I can't cap that tooth yet, you're still draining," he says. "We're going to have to do something about your tongue," I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing . back the drills, the long thin needles. ''I've never seen anything as strong or as stubborn," he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down? "Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?" -Ray Gwyn Smith I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess-that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the corner of the classroom for "talking back" to the Anglo teacher when all 1 was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name. If you want to be American, speak 'American.' If you don't like it, go back to Mexico where you belong." "I want you to speak English. Pa' hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el ingJes bien. Que vale toda tu educaci6n si todavia hablas ingJes con un 'accent,'" my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican. At Pan American University, I, and all Chicano students, were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents. Attacks on one's form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation Reprinted with permission from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. © 1987 by Gloria Anzaldua. Published by Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, 1987. This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 358 GLORIA ANZALDUA of the First Amendment. EI Anglo con cara de inocente nos arranc6la lengua. Wild tongues can't be tamed, they can only be cut out. Overcoming the Tradition of Silence Ahogadas, escupimos el oscuro. Peleando can nuestra propia sombra el silencio nos sepulta. En boca cerrada no entran moscas. "Flies don't enter a closed mouth" is a saying I kept hearing when I was a child. Ser habladora was to be a gossip and a liar, to talk too much. Muchachitas bien criadas, well-bred girls don't answer back. Es una falta de respeto to talk back to one's mother or father. I remember one of the sins I'd recited to the priest in the confession box the few times I went to confession: talking back to my mother, hablar pa' 'tras, repelar. Hocicona, repelona, chismosa, having a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada. In my culture they are all words that are derogatory if applied to women-I've never heard them applied to men. The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word "nosotras, " I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use nosotros whether we're male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural. Language is a male discourse. And our tongues have become dry the wilderness has dried out our tongues and we have forgotten speech. -Irena Klepfisz Even our own people, other Spanish speakers nos quieren poner candados en la boca. They would hold us back with their bag of reglas de academia. Oye como ladra: ellenguaje de la frontera Quien tiene boca se equivoca. -Mexican saying "Pocho, cultural traitor, you're speaking the oppressor's language by speaking English, you're ruining the Spanish language," I have been accused by various Latinos and Latinas. Chicano Spanish is considered by the purist and by most Latinos deficient, a mutilation of Spanish. But Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developed naturally. Change, evoluci6n, enriquecimiento de palabras nuevas par invenci6n a adopci6n have created variants of Chicano Spanish, un nuevo lenguaje. Un lenguaje que corresponde a un modo de vivir. Chicano Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language. For a people who are neither Spanish nor live in a country in which Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in a country in which English is the This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GLORIA ANZALDUA 359 reigning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language? A language which they can connect their identity to, one capable of communicating the realities and values true to themselves-a language with terms that are neither espanol ni ingles, but both. We speak a patois, a forked tongue, a variation of two languages. Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicanos' need to identify ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language. For some of us, language is a homeland closer than the Southwest-for many Chicanos today live in the Midwest and the East. And because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, we speak many languages. Some of the languages we speak are: Standard English Working class and slang English 3. Standard Spanish 4. Standard Mexican Spanish 5. North Mexican Spanish dialect 6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California have regional variations) 7. Tex-Mex 8. Pachuco (called calO) 1. 2. My "home" tongues are the languages I speak with my sister and brothers, with my friends. They are the last five listed, with 6 and 7 being closest to my heart. From school, the media and job situations, I've picked up standard and working class English. From Mamagrande Locha and from reading Spanish and Mexican literature, I've picked up Standard Spanish and Standard Mexican Spanish. From los recien llegados, Mexican immigrants, and braceros, I learned the North Mexican dialect. With Mexicans I'll try to speak either Standard Mexican Spanish or the North Mexican dialect. From my parents and Chicanos living in the Valley, I picked up Chicano Texas Spanish, and I speak it with my mom, younger brother (who married a Mexican and who rarely mixes Spanish with English), aunts and other relatives. With Chicanas from Nuevo Mexico or Arizona I will speak Chicano Spanish a little, but often they don't understand what I'm saying. With most California Chicanas I speak entirely in English (unless I forget). When I first moved to San Francisco, I'd rattle off something in Spanish, unintentionally embarrassing them. Often it is only with another Chicana tejana that I can talk freely. Words distorted by English are known as anglicisms or pochismos. The pocho is an anglicized Mexican or American of Mexican origin who speaks Spanish with an accent characteristic of North Americans and who distorts and reconstructs the language according to the influence of English. Tex-Mex, or Spanglish, This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 360 GLORIA ANZALDUA comes most naturally to me. I may switch back and forth from English to Spanish in the same sentence or in the same word. With my sister and my brother Nune and with Chicano tejano contemporaries I speak in Tex-Mex. From kids and people my own age I picked up Pachuco. Pachuco (the language of the zoot suiters) is a language of rebellion, both against Standard Spanish and Standard English. It is a secret language. Adults of the culture and outsiders cannot understand it. It is made up of slang words from both English and Spanish. Ruca means girl or woman, vato means guy or dude, chale means no, simon means yes, churro is sure, talk is periquiar, pigionear means petting, que gacho means how nerdy, ponte aguila means watch out, death is called la pelona. Through lack of practice and not having others who can speak it, I've lost most of the Pachuco tongue. Chicano Spanish Chicanos, after 250 years of Spanish/Anglo colonization have developed significant differences in the Spanish we speak. We collapse two adjacent vowels into a single syllable and sometimes shift the stress in certain words such as maiz/maiz, cohete/cuete. We leave out certain consonants when they appear between vowels: lado/lao, majado/majao. Chicanos from South Texas pronounced f as j as in jue (jue). Chicanos use "archaisms," words that are no longer in the Spanish language, words that have been evolved out. We say semos, truje, haiga, ansina, and naiden. We retain the "archaic" j, as in jalar, that derives from an earlier h, (the French halar or the Germanic halon which is lost to standard Spanish in the 16th century), but which is still found in several regional dialects such as the one spoken in South Texas. (Due to geography, Chicanos from the Valley of South Texas were cut off linguistically from other Spanish speakers. We tend to use words that the Spaniards brought over from Medieval Spain. The majority of the Spanish colonizers in Mexico and the Southwest came from Extremadura-Hernan Cortes was one of them-and Andalucia. Andalucians pronounce II like a y, and their d's tend to be absorbed by adjacent vowels: tirado becomes tirao. They brought ellenguaje popular, dialectos y regionalism as. ) Chicanos and other Spanish speakers also shift II to y and z to s. We leave out initial syllables, saying tar for estar, toy for estoy, hora for ahara (cubanos and puertorriquefios also leave out initial letters of some words.) We also leave out the final syllable such as pa' for para. The intervocalic y, the II as in tortilla, ella, botella, gets replaced by tortia or tortiya, ea, botea. We add an additional syllable at the beginning of certain words: atocar for tocar, agastar for gastar. Sometimes we'll say lavaste las vacijas, other times lavates (substituting the ates verb ending for the aste). We use anglicisms, words borrowed from English: bola from ball, carpeta from carpet, machina de lavar (instead of lavadora) from washing machine. TexMex argot, created by adding a Spanish sound at the beginning or end of an English word such as cookiar for cook, watchar for watch, parkiar for park, and This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GLORIA ANZALDUA rapiar for rape, is the result of the pressures on Spanish speakers to adapt to English. We don't use the word vosotros/as or its accompanying verb form. We don't say claro (to mean yes), imagfnate, or me emociona, unless we picked up Spanish from Latinas, out of a book, or in a classroom. Other Spanish-speaking groups are going through the same, or similar, development in their Spanish. Linguistic Terrorism Deslenguadas. Somos los del espanol deficiente. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Be- cause we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos hue1anos-we speak an orphan tongue. Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language. And because we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other. Chicana feminists often skirt around each other with suspicion and hesitation. For the longest time I couldn't figure it out. Then it dawned on me. To be close to another Chicana is like looking into the mirror. We are afraid of what we'll see there. Pena. Shame. Low estimation of self. In childhood we are told . that our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self. The attacks continue throughout our lives. Chicanas feel uncomfortable talking in Spanish to Latinas, afraid of their censure. Their language was not outlawed in their countries. They had a whole lifetime of being immersed in their native tongue; generations, centuries in which Spanish was a first language, taught in school, heard on radio and TV, and read in the newspaper. If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me. Often with mexicanas y latin as we'll speak English as a neutral language. Even among Chicanas we tend to speak English at parties or conferences. Yet, at the same time, we're afraid the other will think we're agringadas because we don't speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to out-Chicano each other, vying to be the "real" Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience. A monolingual Chicana whose first language is English or Spanish is just as much a Chicana as one who speaks several variants of Spanish. A Chicana from Michigan or Chicago or Detroit is just as much a Chicana as one from the Southwest. Chicano Spanish is as diverse linguistically as it is regionally. By the end of this century, Spanish speakers will comprise the biggest minority group in the U.S., a country where students in high schools and colleges are encouraged to take French classes because French is considered more "cul- This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GLORIA ANZALDUA tured." But for a language to remain alive it must be used. By the end of this century, English, and not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of most Chicanos and Latinos. So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity-I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue-my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence. My fingers Move sly against your palm Like women everywhere, we speak in code .... -Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz "Vistas," corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue In the 1960s, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City of Night by John Rechy, a gay Texan, son of a Scottish father and a Mexican mother. For days I walked around in stunned amazement that a Chicano could write and could get published. When I read I Am Joaquin I was surprised to see a bilingual book by a Chicano in print. When I saw poetry written in Tex-Mex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as a people. In 1971, when I started teaching High School English to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the required texts with works by Chicanos, only to be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I was supposed to teach "American" and English literature. At the risk of being fired, I swore my students to secrecy and slipped in Chicano short stories, poems, a play. In graduate school, while working toward a Ph.D., I had to "argue" with one advisor after the other, semester after semester, before I was allowed to make Chicano literature an area of focus. Even before I read books by Chicanos or Mexicans, it was the Mexican movies I saw at the drive-in-the Thursday night special of $1.00 a carloadthat gave me a sense of belonging. "Vdmonos a las vistas," my mother would call out and we'd all-grandmother, brothers, sister and cousins-squeeze into the car. We'd wolf down cheese and bologna white bread sandwiches while watching Pedro Infante in melodramatic tearjerkers like Nosotros los pobres, the first This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GLORIA ANZALDUA "real" Mexican movie (that was not an imitation of European movies). I remember seeing Cuando los hijos se van and surmising that all Mexican movies played up the love a mother has for her children and what ungrateful sons and daughters suffer when they are not devoted to their mothers. I remember the singing-type "westerns" of Jorge Negrete and Miquel Aceves Mejia. When watching Mexican movies, I felt a sense of homecoming as well as alienation. People who were to amount to something didn't go to Mexican movies, or bailes or tune their radios to bolero, rancherita, and corrido music. The whole time I was growing up, there was nortefio music sometimes called North Mexican border music, or Tex-Mex music, or Chicano music, or cantina (bar) music. I grew up listening to conjuntos, three-or four-piece bands made up of folk musicians playing guitar, bajo sexto, drums and button accordion, which Chicanos had borrowed from the German immigrants who had come to Central Texas and Mexico to farm and build breweries. In the Rio Grande Valley, Steve Jordan and Little Joe Hernandez were popular, and Flaco Jimenez was the accordion king. The rhythms of Tex-Mex music are those of the polka, also adapted from the Germans, who in turn had borrowed the polka from the Czechs and Bohemians. I remember the hot, sultry evenings when corridos-songs of love and death on the Texas-Mexican borderlands-reverberated out of cheap amplifiers from the local cantinas and wafted in through my bedroom window. Corridos first became widely used along the South Texas/Mexican border during the early conflict between Chicanos and Anglos. The corridos are usually about Mexican heroes who do valiant deeds against the Anglo oppressors. Pancho Villa's song, "La cucaracha, " is the most famous one. Corridos ofJohn F. Kennedy and his death are still very popular in the Valley. Older Chicanos remember Lydia Mendoza, one of the great border corrido singers who was called la Gloria de Tejas. Her "Bl tango negro," sung during the Great Depression, made her a singer of the people. The everpresent corridos narrated one hundred years of border history, bringing news of events as well as entertaining. These folk musicians and folk songs are our chief cultural mythmakers, and they made our hard lives seem bearable. I grew up feeling ambivalent about our music. Country-western and rockand-roll had more status. In the 50S and 60S, for the slightly educated and agringada Chicanos, there existed a sense of shame at being caught listening to our music. Yet I couldn't stop my feet from thumping to the music, could not stop humming the words, nor hide from myself the exhilaration I felt when I heard it. There are more subtle ways that we internalize identification, especially in the forms of images and emotions. For me food and certain smells are tied to my identity, to my homeland. Woodsmoke curling up to an immense blue sky; woodsmoke perfuming my grandmother's clothes, her skin. The stench of cow This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GLORIA ANZALDUA manure and the yellow patches on the ground; the crack of a .22 rifle and the reek of cordite. Homemade white cheese sizzling in a pan, melting inside a folded tortilla. My sister Hilda's hot, spicy menudo, chile colorado making it deep red, pieces of panza and hominy floating on top. My brother Carito barbequing fajitas in the backyard. Even now and 3,000 miles away, I can see my mother spicing the ground beef, pork and venison with chile. My mouth salivates at the thought of the hot steaming tamales I would be eating if I were home. Si Ie preguntas a mi mama, "l Que eres?" "Identity is the essential core of who we are as individuals, the conscious experience of the self inside." -Kaufman Nosotros los Chicanos straddle the borderlands. On one side of us, we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos' incessant clamoring so that we forget our language. Among ourselves we don't say nosotros los americanos, 0 nosotros los espafioles, 0 nosotros los hispanos. We say nosotros los mexicanos (by mexicanos we do not mean citizens of Mexico; we do not mean a national identity, but a racial one). We distinguish between mexicanos del otro lado and mexicanos de este lado. Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul-not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders. Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres. (Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.) -Mexican saying Si Ie preguntas a mi mama, ''.; Que eres?" te dira, "Soy mexicana. " My brothers and sister say the same. I sometimes will answer "soy mexicana" and at others will say "soy Chicana" 0 "soy tejana. "But I identified as "Raza" before I ever identified as "mexicana" or "Chicana." As a culture, we call ourselves Spanish when referring to ourselves a linguistic group and when copping out. It is then that we forget our predominant Indian genes. We are 70-80% Indian. We call ourselves Hispanic or SpanishAmerican or Latin American or Latin when linking ourselves to other Spanish-speaking peoples of the Western hemisphere and when copping out. We call ourselves Mexican-American to signify we are neither Mexican nor American, but more the noun "American" than the adjective "Mexican" (and when copping out). Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity-we don't identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don't totally identify with the Mexican cultural values. We are a This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GLORIA ANZALDUA synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no 10 soy, 10 soy. When not copping out, when we know we are more than nothing, we call ourselves Mexican, referring to race and ancestry; mestizo when affirming both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever own our Black ancestry); Chicano when referring to a politically aware people born and/or raised in the U.S.; Raza when referring to Chicanos; tejanos when we are Chicanos from Texas. Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something momentous happened to the Chicano soul-we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. Now that we had a name, some of the fragmented pieces began to fall together-who we were, what we were, how we had evolved. We began to get glimpses of what we might eventually become. Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration take place. In the meantime, tenemos que hacer la lucha. t QJJiin estd protegiendo los ranchos de mi gente? t Quiin estd tratando de cerrar la fisura entre la india y el blanco en nuestra sangre? EI Chicano, si, el Chicano que anda como un ladr6n en su propia casa. Los Chicanos, how patient we seem, how very patient. There is the quiet of the Indian about us. We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we've kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture. But more than we count the blows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in deserts they've created, lie bleached. Humildes yet proud, quietos yet wild, nosotros los mexicanos-Chicanos will walk by the crumbling ashes as we go about our business. Stubborn, persevering, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability that renders us unbreakable, we, the mestizas and mestizos, will remain. FOR FURTHER READING Anzaldua , Gloria. Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado. San Francisco: Children's Book Press, 1985. - - - . Making Face, Making Soul/ Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990. Keating, AnaLouise. Women Reading/Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua, and Audre Lorde. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Moraga, Cherrie, and Gloria Anzaldua, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1984. This content downloaded from 158.121.247.60 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:55:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms What Is “Academic” Writing? L. Lennie Irvin Introduction: The Academic Writing Task As a new college student, you may have a lot of anxiety and questions about the writing you’ll do in college.* That word “academic,” especially, may turn your stomach or turn your nose. However, with this first year composition class, you begin one of the only classes in your entire college career where you will focus on learning to write. Given the importance of writing as a communication skill, I urge you to consider this class as a gift and make the most of it. But writing is hard, and writing in college may resemble playing a familiar game by completely new rules (that often are unstated). This chapter is designed to introduce you to what academic writing is like, and hopefully ease your transition as you face these daunting writing challenges. So here’s the secret. Your success with academic writing depends upon how well you understand what you are doing as you write and then how you approach the writing task. Early research done on college writers discovered that whether students produced a successful piece of writing depended largely upon their representation of the writing task. The writers’ mental model for picturing their task made a huge differ* This work is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License and is subject to the Writing Spaces Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. To view the Writing Spaces Terms of Use, visit http://writingspaces. org/terms-of-use. 3 4 L. Lennie Irvin ence. Most people as they start college have wildly strange ideas about what they are doing when they write an essay, or worse—they have no clear idea at all. I freely admit my own past as a clueless freshman writer, and it’s out of this sympathy as well as twenty years of teaching college writing that I hope to provide you with something useful. So grab a cup of coffee or a diet coke, find a comfortable chair with good light, and let’s explore together this activity of academic writing you’ll be asked to do in college. We will start by clearing up some of those wild misconceptions people often arrive at college possessing. Then we will dig more deeply into the components of the academic writing situation and nature of the writing task. Myths about Writing Though I don’t imagine an episode of MythBusters will be based on the misconceptions about writing we are about to look at, you’d still be surprised at some of the things people will believe about writing. You may find lurking within you viral elements of these myths—all of these lead to problems in writing. Myth #1: The “Paint by Numbers” myth Some writers believe they must perform certain steps in a particular order to write “correctly.” Rather than being a lock-step linear process, writing is “recursive.” That means we cycle through and repeat the various activities of the writing process many times as we write. Myth #2: Writers only start writing when they have everything figured out Writing is not like sending a fax! Writers figure out much of what they want to write as they write it. Rather than waiting, get some writing on the page—even with gaps or problems. You can come back to patch up rough spots. Myth #3: Perfect first drafts We put unrealistic expectations on early drafts, either by focusing too much on the impossible task of making them perfect (which can put a cap on the development of our ideas), or by making too little effort be- What Is “Academic” Writing? 5 cause we don’t care or know about their inevitable problems. Nobody writes perfect first drafts; polished writing takes lots of revision. Myth #4: Some got it; I don’t—the genius fallacy When you see your writing ability as something fixed or out of your control (as if it were in your genetic code), then you won’t believe you can improve as a writer and are likely not to make any efforts in that direction. With effort and study, though, you can improve as a writer. I promise. Myth #5: Good grammar is good writing When people say “I can’t write,” what they often mean is they have problems with grammatical correctness. Writing, however, is about more than just grammatical correctness. Good writing is a matter of achieving your desired effect upon an intended audience. Plus, as we saw in myth #3, no one writes perfect first drafts. Myth #6: The Five Paragraph Essay Some people say to avoid it at all costs, while others believe no other way to write exists. With an introduction, three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion, the five paragraph essay is a format you should know, but one which you will outgrow. You’ll have to gauge the particular writing assignment to see whether and how this format is useful for you. Myth #7: Never use “I” Adopting this formal stance of objectivity implies a distrust (almost fear) of informality and often leads to artificial, puffed-up prose. Although some writing situations will call on you to avoid using “I” (for example, a lab report), much college writing can be done in a middle, semi-formal style where it is ok to use “I.” The Academic Writing Situation Now that we’ve dispelled some of the common myths that many writers have as they enter a college classroom, let’s take a moment to think about the academic writing situation. The biggest problem I see in freshman writers is a poor sense of the writing situation in general. To 6 L. Lennie Irvin illustrate this problem, let’s look at the difference between speaking and writing. When we speak, we inhabit the communication situation bodily in three dimensions, but in writing we are confined within the twodimensional setting of the flat page (though writing for the web—or multimodal writing—is changing all that). Writing resembles having a blindfold over our eyes and our hands tied behind our backs: we can’t see exactly whom we’re talking to or where we are. Separated from our audience in place and time, we imaginatively have to create this context. Our words on the page are silent, so we must use punctuation and word choice to communicate our tone. We also can’t see our audience to gauge how our communication is being received or if there will be some kind of response. It’s the same space we share right now as you read this essay. Novice writers often write as if they were mumbling to themselves in the corner with no sense that their writing will be read by a reader or any sense of the context within which their communication will be received. What’s the moral here? Developing your “writer’s sense” about communicating within the writing situation is the most important thing you should learn in freshman composition. Figure 1, depicting the writing situation, presents the best image I know of describing all the complexities involved in the writing situation. Figure 1. Source: “A Social Model of Writing.” Writing@CSU. 2010. Web. 10 March 2010. Used by permission from Mike Palmquist. What Is “Academic” Writing? 7 Looking More Closely at the “Academic Writing” Situation Writing in college is a fairly specialized writing situation, and it has developed its own codes and conventions that you need to have a keen awareness of if you are going to write successfully in college. Let’s break down the writing situation in college: Who’s your audience? Primarily the professor and possibly your classmates (though you may be asked to include a secondary outside audience). What’s the occasion or context? An assignment given by the teacher within a learning context and designed to have you learn and demonstrate your learning. What’s your message? It will be your learning or the interpretation gained from your study of the subject matter. What’s your purpose? To show your learning and get a good grade (or to accomplish the goals of the writing assignment). What documents/ genres are used? The essay is the most frequent type of document used. So far, this list looks like nothing new. You’ve been writing in school toward teachers for years. What’s different in college? Lee Ann Carroll, a professor at Pepperdine University, performed a study of student writing in college and had this description of the kind of writing you will be doing in college: What are usually called ‘writing assignments’ in college might more accurately be called ‘literacy tasks’ because they require much more than the ability to construct correct sentences or compose neatly organized paragraphs with topic sentences. . . . Projects calling for high levels of critical literacy in college typically require knowledge of research skills, ability to read complex texts, understanding of key disciplinary concepts, and strategies for synthesizing, analyzing, and responding critically to new information, usually within a limited time frame. (3–4) 8 L. Lennie Irvin Academic writing is always a form of evaluation that asks you to demonstrate knowledge and show proficiency with certain disciplinary skills of thinking, interpreting, and presenting. Writing the paper is never “just” the writing part. To be successful in this kind of writing, you must be completely aware of what the professor expects you to do and accomplish with that particular writing task. For a moment, let’s explore more deeply the elements of this college writing “literacy task.” Knowledge of Research Skills Perhaps up to now research has meant going straight to Google and Wikipedia, but college will require you to search for and find more in-depth information. You’ll need to know how to find information in the library, especially what is available from online databases which contain scholarly articles. Researching is also a process, so you’ll need to learn how to focus and direct a research project and how to keep track of all your source information. Realize that researching represents a crucial component of most all college writing assignments, and you will need to devote lots of work to this researching. The Ability to Read Complex Texts Whereas your previous writing in school might have come generally from your experience, college writing typically asks you to write on unfamiliar topics. Whether you’re reading your textbook, a short story, or scholarly articles from research, your ability to write well will be based upon the quality of your reading. In addition to the labor of close reading, you’ll need to think critically as you read. That means separating fact from opinion, recognizing biases and assumptions, and making inferences. Inferences are how we as readers connect the dots: an inference is a belief (or statement) about something unknown made on the basis of something known. You smell smoke; you infer fire. They are conclusions or interpretations that we arrive at based upon the known factors we discover from our reading. When we, then, write to argue for these interpretations, our job becomes to get our readers to make the same inferences we have made. The Understanding of Key Disciplinary Concepts Each discipline whether it is English, Psychology, or History has its own key concepts and language for describing these important ways What Is “Academic” Writing? 9 of understanding the world. Don’t fool yourself that your professors’ writing assignments are asking for your opinion on the topic from just your experience. They want to see you apply and use these concepts in your writing. Though different from a multiple-choice exam, writing similarly requires you to demonstrate your learning. So whatever writing assignment you receive, inspect it closely for what concepts it asks you to bring into your writing. Strategies for Synthesizing, Analyzing, and Responding Critically to New Information You need to develop the skill of a seasoned traveler who can be dropped in any city around the world and get by. Each writing assignment asks you to navigate through a new terrain of information, so you must develop ways for grasping new subject matter in order, then, to use it in your writing. We have already seen the importance of reading and research for these literacy tasks, but beyond laying the information out before you, you will need to learn ways of sorting and finding meaningful patterns in this information. In College, Everything’s an Argument: A Guide for Decoding College Writing Assignments Let’s restate this complex “literacy task” you’ll be asked repeatedly to do in your writing assignments. Typically, you’ll be required to write an “essay” based upon your analysis of some reading(s). In this essay you’ll need to present an argument where you make a claim (i.e. present a “thesis”) and support that claim with good reasons that have adequate and appropriate evidence to back them up. The dynamic of this argumentative task often confuses first year writers, so let’s examine it more closely. Academic Writing Is an Argument To start, let’s focus on argument. What does it mean to present an “argument” in college writing? Rather than a shouting match between two disagreeing sides, argument instead means a carefully arranged and supported presentation of a viewpoint. Its purpose is not so much to win the argument as to earn your audience’s consideration (and even approval) of your perspective. It resembles a conversation between two 10 L. Lennie Irvin people who may not hold the same opinions, but they both desire a better understanding of the subject matter under discussion. My favorite analogy, however, to describe the nature of this argumentative stance in college writing is the courtroom. In this scenario, you are like a lawyer making a case at trial that the defendant is not guilty, and your readers are like the jury who will decide if the defendant is guilty or not guilty. This jury (your readers) won’t just take your word that he’s innocent; instead, you must convince them by presenting evidence that proves he is not guilty. Stating your opinion is not enough—you have to back it up too. I like this courtroom analogy for capturing two importance things about academic argument: 1) the value of an organized presentation of your “case,” and 2) the crucial element of strong evidence. Academic Writing Is an Analysis We now turn our attention to the actual writing assignment and that confusing word “analyze.” Your first job when you get a writing assignment is to figure out what the professor expects. This assignment may be explicit in its expectations, but often built into the wording of the most defined writing assignments are implicit expectations that you might not recognize. First, we can say that unless your professor specifically asks you to summarize, you won’t write a summary. Let me say that again: don’t write a summary unless directly asked to. But what, then, does the professor want? We have already picked out a few of these expectations: You can count on the instructor expecting you to read closely, research adequately, and write an argument where you will demonstrate your ability to apply and use important concepts you have been studying. But the writing task also implies that your essay will be the result of an analysis. At times, the writing assignment may even explicitly say to write an analysis, but often this element of the task remains unstated. So what does it mean to analyze? One way to think of an analysis is that it asks you to seek How and Why questions much more than What questions. An analysis involves doing three things: 1. Engage in an open inquiry where the answer is not known at first (and where you leave yourself open to multiple suggestions) 2. Identify meaningful parts of the subject What Is “Academic” Writing? 11 3. Examine these separate parts and determine how they relate to each other An analysis breaks a subject apart to study it closely, and from this inspection, ideas for writing emerge. When writing assignments call on you to analyze, they require you to identify the parts of the subject (parts of an ad, parts of a short story, parts of Hamlet’s character), and then show how these parts fit or don’t fit together to create some larger effect or meaning. Your interpretation of how these parts fit together constitutes your claim or thesis, and the task of your essay is then to present an argument defending your interpretation as a valid or plausible one to make. My biggest bit of advice about analysis is not to do it all in your head. Analysis works best when you put all the cards on the table, so to speak. Identify and isolate the parts of your analysis, and record important features and characteristics of each one. As patterns emerge, you sort and connect these parts in meaningful ways. For me, I have always had to do this recording and thinking on scratch pieces of paper. Just as critical reading forms a crucial element of the literacy task of a college writing assignment, so too does this analysis process. It’s built in. Three Common Types of College Writing Assignments We have been decoding the expectations of the academic writing task so far, and I want to turn now to examine the types of assignments you might receive. From my experience, you are likely to get three kinds of writing assignments based upon the instructor’s degree of direction for the assignment. We’ll take a brief look at each kind of academic writing task. The Closed Writing Assignment • • • • Is Creon a character to admire or condemn? Does your advertisement employ techniques of propaganda, and if so what kind? Was the South justified in seceding from the Union? In your opinion, do you believe Hamlet was truly mad? These kinds of writing assignments present you with two counter claims and ask you to determine from your own analysis the more valid claim. They resemble yes-no questions. These topics define the 12 L. Lennie Irvin claim for you, so the major task of the writing assignment then is working out the support for the claim. They resemble a math problem in which the teacher has given you the answer and now wants you to “show your work” in arriving at that answer. Be careful with these writing assignments, however, because often these topics don’t have a simple yes/no, either/or answer (despite the nature of the essay question). A close analysis of the subject matter often reveals nuances and ambiguities within the question that your eventual claim should reflect. Perhaps a claim such as, “In my opinion, Hamlet was mad” might work, but I urge you to avoid such a simplistic thesis. This thesis would be better: “I believe Hamlet’s unhinged mind borders on insanity but doesn’t quite reach it.” The Semi-Open Writing Assignment • • • • Discuss the role of law in Antigone. Explain the relationship between character and fate in Hamlet. Compare and contrast the use of setting in two short stories. Show how the Fugitive Slave Act influenced the Abolitionist Movement. Although these topics chart out a subject matter for you to write upon, they don’t offer up claims you can easily use in your paper. It would be a misstep to offer up claims such as, “Law plays a role in Antigone” or “In Hamlet we can see a relationship between character and fate.” Such statements express the obvious and what the topic takes for granted. The question, for example, is not whether law plays a role in Antigone, but rather what sort of role law plays. What is the nature of this role? What influences does it have on the characters or actions or theme? This kind of writing assignment resembles a kind of archeological dig. The teacher cordons off an area, hands you a shovel, and says dig here and see what you find. Be sure to avoid summary and mere explanation in this kind of assignment. Despite using key words in the assignment such as “explain,” “illustrate,” analyze,” “discuss,” or “show how,” these topics still ask you to make an argument. Implicit in the topic is the expectation that you will analyze the reading and arrive at some insights into patterns and relationships about the subject. Your eventual paper, then, needs to present what you found from this analysis—the treasure you What Is “Academic” Writing? 13 found from your digging. Determining your own claim represents the biggest challenge for this type of writing assignment. The Open Writing Assignment • • • • Analyze the role of a character in Dante’s The Inferno. What does it mean to be an “American” in the 21st Century? Analyze the influence of slavery upon one cause of the Civil War. Compare and contrast two themes within Pride and Prejudice. These kinds of writing assignments require you to decide both your writing topic and you claim (or thesis). Which character in the Inferno will I pick to analyze? What two themes in Pride and Prejudice will I choose to write about? Many students struggle with these types of assignments because they have to understand their subject matter well before they can intelligently choose a topic. For instance, you need a good familiarity with the characters in The Inferno before you can pick one. You have to have a solid understanding defining elements of American identity as well as 21st century culture before you can begin to connect them. This kind of writing assignment resembles riding a bike without the training wheels on. It says, “You decide what to write about.” The biggest decision, then, becomes selecting your topic and limiting it to a manageable size. Picking and Limiting a Writing Topic Let’s talk about both of these challenges: picking a topic and limiting it. Remember how I said these kinds of essay topics expect you to choose what to write about from a solid understanding of your subject? As you read and review your subject matter, look for things that interest you. Look for gaps, puzzling items, things that confuse you, or connections you see. Something in this pile of rocks should stand out as a jewel: as being “do-able” and interesting. (You’ll write best when you write from both your head and your heart.) Whatever topic you choose, state it as a clear and interesting question. You may or may not state this essay question explicitly in the introduction of your paper (I actually recommend that you do), but it will provide direction for your paper and a focus for your claim since that claim will be your answer to this essay question. For example, if with the Dante topic you decid- 14 L. Lennie Irvin ed to write on Virgil, your essay question might be: “What is the role of Virgil toward the character of Dante in The Inferno?” The thesis statement, then, might be this: “Virgil’s predominant role as Dante’s guide through hell is as the voice of reason.” Crafting a solid essay question is well worth your time because it charts the territory of your essay and helps you declare a focused thesis statement. Many students struggle with defining the right size for their writing project. They chart out an essay question that it would take a book to deal with adequately. You’ll know you have that kind of topic if you have already written over the required page length but only touched one quarter of the topics you planned to discuss. In this case, carve out one of those topics and make your whole paper about it. For instance, with our Dante example, perhaps you planned to discuss four places where Virgil’s role as the voice of reason is evident. Instead of discussing all four, focus your essay on just one place. So your revised thesis statement might be: “Close inspection of Cantos I and II reveal that Virgil serves predominantly as the voice of reason for Dante on his journey through hell.” A writing teacher I had in college said it this way: A well tended garden is better than a large one full of weeds. That means to limit your topic to a size you can handle and support well. Three Characteristics of Academic Writing I want to wrap up this section by sharing in broad terms what the expectations are behind an academic writing assignment. Chris Thaiss and Terry Zawacki conducted research at George Mason University where they asked professors from their university what they thought academic writing was and its standards. They came up with three characteristics: 1. Clear evidence in writing that the writer(s) have been persistent, open-minded, and disciplined in study. (5) 2. The dominance of reason over emotions or sensual perception. (5) 3. An imagined reader who is coolly rational, reading for information, and intending to formulate a reasoned response. (7) Your professor wants to see these three things in your writing when they give you a writing assignment. They want to see in your writing the results of your efforts at the various literacy tasks we have been discussing: critical reading, research, and analysis. Beyond merely stat- What Is “Academic” Writing? 15 ing opinions, they also want to see an argument toward an intelligent audience where you provide good reasons to support your interpretations. The Format of the Academic Essay Your instructors will also expect you to deliver a paper that contains particular textual features. The following list contains the characteristics of what I have for years called the “critical essay.” Although I can’t claim they will be useful for all essays in college, I hope that these features will help you shape and accomplish successful college essays. Be aware that these characteristics are flexible and not a formula, and any particular assignment might ask for something different. Characteristics of the Critical Essay “Critical” here is not used in the sense of “to criticize” as in find fault with. Instead, “critical” is used in the same way “critical thinking” is used. A synonym might be “interpretive” or “analytical.” 1. It is an argument, persuasion essay that in its broadest sense MAKES A POINT and SUPPORTS IT. (We have already discussed this argumentative nature of academic writing at length.) 2. The point (“claim” or “thesis”) of a critical essay is interpretive in nature. That means the point is debatable and open to interpretation, not a statement of the obvious. The thesis statement is a clear, declarative sentence that often works best when it comes at the end of the introduction. 3. Organization: Like any essay, the critical essay should have a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. As you support your point in the body of the essay, you should “divide up the proof,” which means structuring the body around clear primary supports (developed in single paragraphs for short papers or multiple paragraphs for longer papers). 4. Support: (a) The primary source for support in the critical essay is from the text (or sources). The text is the authority, so using quotations is required. ( b) The continuous movement 16 L. Lennie Irvin of logic in a critical essay is “assert then support; assert then support.” No assertion (general statement that needs proving) should be left without specific support (often from the text(s)). (c) You need enough support to be convincing. In general, that means for each assertion you need at least three supports. This threshold can vary, but invariably one support is not enough. 5. A critical essay will always “document” its sources, distinguishing the use of outside information used inside your text and clarifying where that information came from (following the rules of MLA documentation style or whatever documentation style is required). 6. Whenever the author moves from one main point (primary support) to the next, the author needs to clearly signal to the reader that this movement is happening. This transition sentence works best when it links back to the thesis as it states the topic of that paragraph or section. 7. A critical essay is put into an academic essay format such as the MLA or APA document format. 8. Grammatical correctness: Your essay should have few if any grammatical problems. You’ll want to edit your final draft carefully before turning it in. Conclusion As we leave this discussion, I want to return to what I said was the secret for your success in writing college essays: Your success with academic writing depends upon how well you understand what you are doing as you write and then how you approach the writing task. Hopefully, you now have a better idea about the nature of the academic writing task and the expectations behind it. Knowing what you need to do won’t guarantee you an “A” on your paper—that will take a lot of thinking, hard work, and practice—but having the right orientation toward your college writing assignments is a first and important step in your eventual success. What Is “Academic” Writing? 17 Discussion 1. How did what you wrote in high school compare to what you have/will do in your academic writing in college? 2. Think of two different writing situations you have found yourself in. What did you need to do the same in those two situations to place your writing appropriately? What did you need to do differently? 3. Think of a writing assignment that you will need to complete this semester. Who’s your audience? What’s the occasion or context? What’s your message? What’s your purpose? What documents/genres are used? How does all that compare to the writing you are doing in this class? Works Cited Carroll, Lee Ann. Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002. Print. Thaiss, Chris and Terry Zawacki. Engaged Writers & Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2006. Print. Navigating Genres Kerry Dirk There’s a joke that’s been floating around some time now that you’ve likely already heard.* It goes something like the following: Q: What do you get when you rewind a country song? A: You get your wife back, your job back, your dog back . . . Maybe this joke makes you laugh. Or groan. Or tilt your head to the side in confusion. Because it just so happens that in order to get this joke, you must know a little something about country music in general and in particular country music lyrics. You must, in other words, be familiar with the country music genre. Let’s look into country music lyrics a bit more. Bear with me on this is if you’re not a fan. Assuming I want to write lyrics to a country song, how would I figure out what lyrics are acceptable in terms of country songs? Listening to any country station for a short period of time might leave one with the following conclusions about country songs: • • Country songs tend to tell stories. They often have characters who are developed throughout the song. Country songs often have choruses that are broad enough to apply to a variety of verses. * This work is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License and is subject to the Writing Spaces Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. To view the Writing Spaces Terms of Use, visit http://writingspaces. org/terms-of-use. 249 250 Kerry Dirk • • • Country songs are often depressing; people lose jobs, lovers, and friends. Country songs express pride for the country style and way of life. Country songs are often political, responding to wars and economic crises, for example. Given these characteristics, I would feel prepared to write some new country lyrics. But what would happen if I wanted to write a country song that didn’t do any of the above things? Would it still be a country song? You are probably already familiar with many genres, although you may not know them as such; perhaps your knowledge of genres is limited to types of books, whether mystery, horror, action, etc. Now I’m going to ask you to stick with me while I show you how knowledge of genres goes far beyond a simple discussion of types. My purposes are to expand your definition of genre (or to introduce you to a definition for the first time) and to help you start thinking about how genres might apply to your own writing endeavors. But above all, I hope to give you an awareness of how genres function by taking what is often quite theoretical in the field of rhetoric and composition and making it a bit more tangible. So why was I talking about country songs? I think that using such references can help you to see, in a quite concrete way, how genres function. When I started writing this essay, I had some ideas of what I wanted to say. But first, I had to determine what this essay might look like. I’ve written a lot—letters, nonfiction pieces, scholarly articles, rants—but this was my first time writing an essay to you, a composition student. What features, I asked myself, should go into this essay? How personal could I get? What rhetorical moves might I use, effectively or ineffectively? I hoped that a similar type of essay already existed so that I would have something to guide my own writing. I knew I was looking for other essays written directly to students, and after finding many examples, I looked for common features. In particular, I noted the warm, personal style that was prevalent through every essay; the tone was primarily conversational. And more importantly, I noticed that the writer did not talk as an authoritative figure but as a coach. Some writers admitted that they did not know everything (we don’t), and others even went so far as to admit ignorance. I found myself doing Navigating Genres 251 what Mary Jo Reiff, a professor who studies rhetoric and composition, did when she was asked to write about her experience of writing an essay about teaching for those new to the field of composition. She writes, “I immediately called on my genre knowledge—my past experience with reading and writing similar texts in similar situations—to orient me to the expectations of this genre” (157). I further acknowledged that it is quite rare that teachers of writing get to write so directly to students in such an informal manner. Although textbooks are directed at students, they are often more formal affairs meant to serve a different purpose than this essay. And because the genre of this essay is still developing, there are no formal expectations for what this paper might look like. In my excitement, I realized that perhaps I had been granted more freedom in writing this essay than is typical of an already established, although never static, genre. As a result, I decided to make this essay a mix of personal anecdotes, examples, and voices from teachers of writing. Such an essay seems to be the most fitting response to this situation, as I hope to come across as someone both informative and friendly. Why am I telling you this? Because it seems only appropriate that given the fact that I am talking about genre awareness, I should make you aware of my own struggles with writing in a new genre. I will admit that the word genre used to have a bad reputation and may still make some people cringe. Genre used to refer primarily to form, which meant that writing in a particular genre was seen as simply a matter of filling in the blanks. Anne Freadman, a specialist in genre theory, points out that “it is this kind of genre theory with its failures that has caused the discredit of the very notion of genre, bringing about in turn its disuse and the disrepair many of us found it in” (46). But genre theory has come a long way since then. Perhaps the shift started when the rhetorician Lloyd Bitzer wrote the following: Due to either the nature of things or convention, or both, some situations recur. The courtroom is the locus for several kinds of situations generating the speech of accusation, the speech of defense, the charge to the jury. From day to day, year to year, comparable situations occur, prompting comparable responses; hence rhetorical forms are born and a special vocabulary, grammar, and style are established. (13) 252 Kerry Dirk In other words, Bitzer is saying that when something new happens that requires a response, someone must create that first response. Then when that situation happens again, another person uses the first response as a basis for the second, and eventually everyone who encounters this situation is basing his/her response on the previous ones, resulting in the creation of a new genre. Think about George Washington giving the first State of the Union Address. Because this genre was completely new, he had complete freedom to pick its form and content. All presidents following him now have these former addresses to help guide their response because the situation is now a reoccurring one. Amy Devitt, a professor who specializes in the study of genre theory, points out that “genres develop, then, because they respond appropriately to situations that writers encounter repeatedly” (“Generalizing” 576) and because “if each writing problem were to require a completely new assessment of how to respond, writing would be slowed considerably. But once we recognize a recurring situation, a situation that we or others have responded to in the past, our response to that situation can be guided by past responses” (“Generalizing” 576). As such, we can see how a genre like the State of the Union Address helps for more effective communication between the president and citizens because the president already has a genre with which to work; he/she doesn’t have to create a new one, and citizens know what to expect from such an address. The definition of genre has changed even more since Bitzer’s article was written; genres are now viewed as even more than repeating rhetorical situations. Carolyn Miller, a leading professor in the field of technical communication, argues that “a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered . . . on the action it is used to accomplish” (151). How might this look? These actions don’t have to be complex; many genres are a part of our daily lives. Think about genres as tools to help people to get things done. Devitt writes that: genres have the power to help or hurt human interaction, to ease communication or to deceive, to enable someone to speak or to discourage someone from saying something different. People learn how to do small talk to ease the social discomfort of large group gatherings and meeting new people, but advertisers learn Navigating Genres 253 how to disguise sales letters as winning sweepstakes entries. (Writing 1) In other words, knowing what a genre is used for can help people to accomplish goals, whether that goal be getting a job by knowing how to write a stellar resume, winning a person’s heart by writing a romantic love letter, or getting into college by writing an effective personal statement. By this point you might realize that you have been participating in many different genres—whether you are telling a joke, writing an email, or uploading a witty status on Facebook. Because you know how these genres function as social actions, you can quite accurately predict how they function rhetorically; your joke should generate a laugh, your email should elicit a response, and your updated Facebook status should generate comments from your online friends. But you have done more than simply filled in the blanks. Possibly without even thinking about it, you were recognizing the rhetorical situation of your action and choosing to act in a manner that would result in the outcome you desired. I imagine that you would probably not share a risqué joke with your mom, send a “Hey Buddy” email to your professor, or update your Facebook status as “X has a huge wart on his foot.” We can see that more than form matters here, as knowing what is appropriate in these situations obviously requires more rhetorical knowledge than does filling out a credit card form. Devitt argues that “people do not label a particular story as a joke solely because of formal features but rather because of their perception of the rhetorical action that is occurring” (Writing 11). True, genres often have formulaic features, but these features can change even as the nature of the genre remains (Devitt, Writing, 48). What is important to consider here is that if mastering a form were simply a matter of plugging in content, we would all be capable of successfully writing anything when we are given a formula. By now you likely know that writing is not that easy. Fortunately, even if you have been taught to write in a formulaic way, you probably don’t treat texts in such a manner. When approaching a genre for a the first time, you likely view it as more than a simple form: “Picking up a text, readers not only classify it and expect a certain form, but also make assumptions about the text’s purposes, its subject matter, its writer, and its expected reader” (Devitt, Writing 12). We treat texts that we encounter as rhetorical objects; we choose be- 254 Kerry Dirk tween horror movies and chick flicks not only because we are familiar with their forms but because we know what response they will elicit from us (nail-biting fear and dreamy sighs, respectively). Why am I picking popular genres to discuss? I think I agree with Miller when she argues the following: To consider as potential genres such homely discourse as the letter of recommendation, the user manual, the progress report, the ransom note, the lecture, and the white paper, as well as the eulogy, the apologia, the inaugural, the public proceeding, and the sermon, is not to trivialize the study of genres; it is to take seriously the rhetoric in which we are immersed and the situations in which we find ourselves. (155) In other words, Miller is saying that all genres matter because they shape our everyday lives. And by studying the genres that we find familiar, we can start to see how specific choices that writers make result in specific actions on the part of readers; it only follows that our own writing must too be purposefully written. I like examples, so here is one more. Many of you may be familiar with The Onion, a fictitious newspaper that uses real world examples to create humorous situations. Perhaps the most notable genre of The Onion is its headlines. The purpose of these headlines is simple: to make the reader respond by laughing. While many of the articles are also entertaining, the majority of the humor is produced through the headlines. In fact, the headlines are so important to the success of the newspaper that they are tested on volunteers to see the readers’ immediate responses. There are no formal features of these headlines besides the fact that they are all quite brief; they share no specific style. But they are a rhetorical action meant to bring about a specific response, which is why I see them as being their own genre. A few examples for those of you unfamiliar with this newspaper would help to explain what I’m saying. Here are a few of my personal favorites (politically charged or other possibly offensive headlines purposefully avoided): • • • “Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race of Skeleton People” “Don’t Run Away, I’m Not the Flesh-Eating Kind of Zombie” “Time Traveler: Everyone In The Future Eats Dippin’ Dots” Navigating Genres • • • • • • • • 255 “‘I Am Under 18’ Button Clicked For First Time In History Of Internet” “Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere” “Myspace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless.” “Amazon.com Recommendations Understand Area Woman Better Than Husband” “Study: Dolphins Not So Intelligent On Land” “Beaver Overthinking Dam” “Study: Alligators Dangerous No Matter How Drunk You Are” “Child In Corner To Exact Revenge As Soon As He Gets Out” (The Onion) I would surmise with near certainty that at least one of these headlines made you laugh. Why? I think the success lies in the fact that the writers of these headlines are rhetorically aware of whom these headlines are directed toward—college students like you, and more specifically, educated college students who know enough about politics, culture, and U.S. and world events to “get” these headlines. And now for some bad news: figuring out a genre is tricky already, but this process is further complicated by the fact that two texts that might fit into the same genre might also look extremely different. But let’s think about why this might be the case. Devitt points out, “different grocery stores make for different grocery lists. Different law courts make for different legal briefs. And different college classes make for different research papers. Location may not be the first, second, and third most important qualities of writing, as it is for real estate, but location is surely among the situational elements that lead to expected genres and to adaptations of those genres in particular situations” (“Transferability” 218). Think about a time when you were asked to write a research paper. You probably had an idea of what that paper should look like, but you also needed to consider the location of the assignment. In other words, you needed to consider how your particular teacher’s expectations would help to shape your assignment. This makes knowing a genre about much more than simply knowing its form. You also need to consider the context in which it is being used. As such, it’s important to be aware that the research paper you might be required to write in freshman composition might be completely different than the research paper you might be asked to write for an 256 Kerry Dirk introductory psychology class. Your goal is to recognize these shifts in location and to be aware of how such shifts might affect your writing. Let’s consider a genre with which you are surely familiar: the thesis statement. Stop for a moment and consider what this term means to you. Ask your classmates. It’s likely that you each have your own definition of what a thesis statement should and should not look like. You may have heard never to start a thesis statement with a phrase like “In this essay.” Or you might have been taught that a thesis statement should have three parts, each of which will be discussed in one paragraph of the essay. I learned that many good thesis statements follow the formula “X because Y,” where “X” refers to a specific stance, and “Y” refers to a specific reason for taking that stance. For example, I could argue “School uniforms should be required because they will help students to focus more on academics and less on fashion.” Now, whether or not this is a good thesis statement is irrelevant, but you can see how following the “X because Y” formula would produce a nicely structured statement. Take this a step further and research “thesis statements” on the Internet, and you’ll find that there are endless suggestions. And despite their vast differences, they all fit under the genre of thesis statement. How is this possible? Because it comes back to the particular situation in which that thesis statement is being used. Again, location is everything. I think it’s time to try our hand at approaching a genre with which I hope all of you are only vaguely familiar and completely unpracticed: the ransom note. A Scenario I’ve decided to kidnap Bob’s daughter Susie for ransom. I’m behind on the mortgage payments, my yacht payments are also overdue, and I desperately need money. It is well known that Bob is one of the wealthiest people in Cash City, so I’ve targeted him as my future source of money. I’ve never met Bob, although one time his Mercedes cut me off in traffic, causing me to hit the brakes and spill my drink; the stain still glares at me from the floor of the car. The kidnapping part has been completed; now I need to leave Bob a ransom note. Let’s look at a few drafts I’ve completed to decide which one would be most appropriate. Navigating Genres 257 Ransom Letter 1: If you ever want to see your daughter alive again, leave 1 million dollars by the blue garbage can at 123 Ransom Rd. at Midnight. Come alone and do not call the police. Ransom Letter 2: Hav daughter. Million $. Blu grbg can 123 Ransom Rd. 12AM. No poliz. Ransom Letter 3: Dear Bob, Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. You have a lovely house, and I very much enjoyed my recent visit while you were out of town. Unfortunately, I have kidnapped your daughter. As I am currently unable to meet several financial demands, I am graciously turning to you for help in this matter. I am sure that we will be able to come to some mutually beneficial agreement that results in the return of your daughter and the padding of my wallet. Please meet with me at the Grounds Coffee House on First Street so that we may discuss what price is most fitting. Your daughter, meanwhile, remains in safe and competent hands. She is presently playing pool with my son Matt (a possible love connection?), and she says to tell you “Hi.” Yours truly, Jim P.S. Please order me a skim vanilla latte, should you arrive before I do. Immediately, you can probably determine that ransom letter one is the best choice. But have you considered why? What does the first 258 Kerry Dirk letter have that the other two are lacking? Let’s first eliminate the most obvious dud—letter number three. Not only does it mimic the friendly, familiar manner of two friends rather than the threatening note of a deranged kidnapper, but it also suggests both that there is no rush in the matter and that the price is negotiable. Letters one and two are closer; they both contain the same information, but letter two fails to be as rhetorically strong as number one. The spelling errors and choppy feel might suggest that the writer of the note is not intelligent enough to get away with the kidnapping. The first letter is the most rhetorically strong because it is well written and direct. All of these letters would qualify as fitting the genre of ransom letter, but the first one most obviously fits the rhetorical situation. It may be worthwhile to note some particular challenges you might have to approaching your writing genres as rhetorical situations. Perhaps you have come from a writing background where you learned that certain rules apply to all writing. Just nod if these sound familiar: • • • • • You must have a thesis statement at the end of the introduction. Every thesis statement should introduce three points of discussion. You cannot use “I” in writing. You cannot begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. Every paragraph should start with a topic sentence. You get the point. These rules are appealing; they tell us exactly what to do and not to do with regard to writing. I remember happily creating introductions that moved from broad to specific (often starting with “In our world”), constructing three point thesis statements, and beginning paragraphs with “first,” “second,” and “third.” I didn’t have to think about audience, or purpose, or even much about content for that matter. All that really mattered was that essay followed a certain formula that was called good writing. But looking back, what resulted from such formulas was not very good; actually, it was quite bad. That is, of course, not to say that there aren’t rules that come with genres; the difference is that the rules change as the genre changes, that no rules apply to all genres, and that genres require more effort than simply following the rules. Because genres usually come with established conventions, it is risky to choose not to follow such con- Navigating Genres 259 ventions. These similarities within genres help us to communicate successfully; imagine the chaos that would ensue if news broadcasts were done in raps, if all legal briefs were written in couplets, or if your teacher handed you a syllabus and told you that it must first be decoded. In sum, “too much choice is as debilitating of meaning as is too little choice. In language, too much variation results eventually in lack of meaning: mutual unintelligibility” (Devitt, “Genre” 53). But on a brighter note, genres also help us to make more efficient decisions when writing, as we can see how people have approached similar situations. Creating a new genre each time that writing was required would make the writing process much longer, as we would not have past responses to help us with present ones (Devitt, “Generalizing” 576). As a result, the more you are able to master particular genres, the better equipped you may be to master genres that you later encounter: When people write, they draw on the genres they know, their own context of genres, to help construct their rhetorical action. If they encounter a situation new to them, it is the genres they have acquired in the past that they can use to shape their new action. Every genre they acquire, then, expands their genre repertoire and simultaneously shapes how they might view new situations. (Devitt, Writing 203) Taking what Devitt says into account, think back to the previous discussion of the research paper. If you already have some idea of what a research paper looks like, you do not have to learn an entirely new genre. Instead, you just have to figure out how to change that particular genre to fit with the situation, even if that change just comes from having a different teacher. Learning about genres and how they function is more important than mastering one particular genre; it is this knowledge that helps us to recognize and to determine appropriate responses to different situations—that is, knowing what particular genre is called for in a particular situation. And learning every genre would be impossible anyway, as Devitt notes that “no writing class could possibly teach students all the genres they will need to succeed even in school, much less in the workplace or in their civic lives. Hence the value of teaching genre awareness rather than acquisition of particular genres” (Writing 260 Kerry Dirk 205). This approach helps to make you a more effective writer as well, as knowing about genres will make you more prepared to use genres that you won’t learn in college. For example, I recently needed to write a letter about removing a late fee on a credit card. I had never written this particular type of letter before, but I knew what action I was trying to accomplish. As a result, I did some research on writing letters and determined that I should make it as formal and polite as possible. The body of the letter ended up as follows: I have very much enjoyed being a card carrier with this bank for many years. However, I recently had a late fee charged to my account. As you will note from my previous statements, this is the first late fee I have ever acquired. I do remember making this payment on time, as I have all of my previous payments. I hope to remain a loyal customer of this bank for many years to come, so I would very much appreciate it if you would remove this charge from my account. You can see that this letter does several things. First, I build credibility for myself by reminding them that I have used their card for many years. Second, I ask them to check my records to show further that I am typically a responsible card carrier. And third, I hint that if they do not remove the late fee, I might decide to change to a different bank. This letter is effective because it considers how the situation affects the genre. And yes, the late fee was removed. Chances are that I have left you more confused than you were before you began this essay. Actually, I hope that I have left you frustrated; this means that the next time you write, you will have to consider not only form but also audience, purpose, and genre; you will, in other words, have to consider the rhetorical effectiveness of your writing. Luckily, I can leave you with a few suggestions: • • First, determine what action you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to receive an A on a paper? Convince a credit card company to remove a late fee? Get into graduate school? If you don’t know what your goal is for a particular writing situation, you’ll have a difficult time figuring out what genre to use. Second, learn as much as you can about the situation for which you are writing. What is the purpose? Who is the audience? Navigating Genres • • 261 How much freedom do you have? How does the location affect the genre? Third, research how others have responded to similar situations. Talk to people who have written what you are trying to write. If you are asked to write a biology research paper, ask your instructor for examples. If you need to write a cover letter for a summer internship, take the time to find out about the location of that internship. And finally, ask questions. Discussion 1. What are some genres that you feel you know well? How did you learn them? What are their common rhetorical features? 2. What rules have you been told to follow in the past? How did they shape what you were writing? 3. How much freedom do you enjoy when writing? Does it help to have a form to follow, or do you find it to be limiting? Works Cited Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1.1 (1968): 1–14. Print. Devitt, Amy J. “Generalizing About Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept.” College Composition and Communication 44.4 (1993): 573–86. Print. —. “Genre as Language Standard.” Genre and Writing: Issues, Arguments, Alternatives. Ed. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997. 45–55. Print. —. “Transferability and Genres.” The Locations of Composition. Ed. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. Albany, NY: SUNY P, 2007. 215–27. Print. —. Writing Genres. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print. Freadman, Anne. “Anyone for Tennis.” Genre and the New Rhetoric. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway. Bristol: Taylor & Francis, 1994. 43–66. Print. Miller, Carolyn R. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70.2 (1984): 151–67. Print. The Onion: America’s Finest News Source. 20 July 2009. Web. 20 July 2009. . 262 Kerry Dirk Reiff, Mary Jo. “Moving Writers, Shaping Motives, Motivating Critique and Change: A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing.” Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers. Ed. Peter Vandenberg, Sue Hum, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2006. 157–64. Print. V\lr;-hnj abou+ wr-·.-n.;,'3 'Down:.
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Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running head: DISCOURSE COMMUNITY

1

Discourse Community
Student’s Name
University Affiliation

DISCOURSE COMMUNITY

2
Discourse Community
Introduction

According to John Swales, discourse community broadly consists of six criteria which have
to be satisfied, standard set public goals, mechanisms of intercommunications among members,
the technical ability of individuals to give information and feedback, genres of communications,
possession of lexis and membership diversity (having the same level of the required knowledge).
Over the past years, discourse communities dwell majorly around intercommunication mechanism
in their area of specialization. On the other hand, Genre, rhetoric, discourse community, and field
of composition can be broadly illustrated and outlines than how currently people define genres.
Facebook is regarded as one of the largest discourse community which shapes the writing art by
involving the use of common styles which includes individual's homepage, a function such as news
feed and component of private and direct messaging.
Discussion
Kerry Dirk outlines in his article Navigating Genres outlines quoting from the speech of
Carolyn Miller, a technical communication professor, that the definition of the term sound
definition in the concept of rhetorical must be centered based on the actions which it intended to
accomplish. According to Kerry Dirk, Genres should be viewed as tools which when appropriately
utilized should help individuals in specific situations, everyday life, and communities of discourse
(Pg27)
The free-flowing of information and the sharing of information among individuals is the
primary purpose of the Facebook Community. The genre is further classified as specific or general
genres. The particular type in a specific community dictates i...


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