Informal Writing: Argument as Conversation/Stuart Greene

In his article Arguments as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument, Stuart Greene attempts to analyze the importance of arguments in society and explain the concept of framing to young writers. He points out that arguments and framing are critical strategies to research and writing by analyzing Rodriguez use of The Use of Literacy, a parlor metaphor and other examples.

When I first began reading this excerpt from Greene's book, I saw no straight forward comparisons to any of the other articles that we have read before. I kept asking myself how this excerpt about arguments and "framing" things have anything to do with Allen's The Inspired Writer or Lamott's Shitty First Drafts. Then Greene started discussing how this young boy Rodriguez, a nonnative speaker just wants to put himself in the mainstream for the sake of his education. Rodriguez struggles to cope with school and home. Rodriguez finds Hoggart's book The Use of Literacy and identifies with it. He uses the book to help understand his situation and at the same time advance his ideas as well. Greene goes on to explain how other peoples text can serve as tool for helping you to say more about your own ideas. At this point I was starting to think that this storyline sounded slightly familiar. In Allen's article, she talks about how she uses Bizzell's work as a guide to her own work and she can even she the influence of this authors work has own her own. Because these authors are becoming a tool and a guide to other authors I would definitely consider these author's, Bizzell and Hoggart, to be literacy sponsors, especially in these situations. Both Allen and Rodriguez are extremely influenced by the authors and I think if a person influences your life or your own work that much they should definitely be considered a literacy sponsor. There are many authors that have affected me but I will never have the chance too meet them because they were before my time.