Discussion Questions: God Don't Never Change: Black English from a Black Perspective/ Smitherman

1. Smitherman is making this article into an argument about racism. Is it about the black dialect/english or is it about racism ? I understand how she is tying the two together and her theory may be partially correct but BE doesn't sound right. Maybe it sounds right to them, but to me, grammatically, I don't think it sounds correct. I am not by any means racist. But if you were an business owner, hiring an employee and both being interviewed were equally qualified in every way, would you hire the person who speaks BE or WE ? It's extremely depend on the audience you are trying to target. If you're in an upscale, highly educated, gated neighborhood, its more than likely going to be the WE. Apposed to a small town where most speak BE, where maybe they hold onto their traditions and culture more tightly you would hire the person who speaks BE. But in American today, I strongly feel that someone who speaks strictly BE would struggle and be looked down upon. Again, this comes of as racist but it's in no way meant to be. 

2. I'm not sure the point of the argument Smitherman is trying to make? She clearly states that the BE was adapted and created "with characteristic laziness, these Gullah Negros took short cuts to the ears of their auditors, using as few words as possible, sometimes making one gender serve for three, one tense for several and totally disregarding singular and plural numbers." The example she uses in the article astounds me. A freshman in college was asked to take a position on the Vietnam War and present and argument to defend his position. I think the professor had every right to hand him back that paper, ask him to correct his grammar and resubmit it. As a freshman in college you shouldn't be making those types of mistakes. 

3. One of the valid points Smitherman does make is that we cohesively can understand each other's WE and BE. When it's BE versus WE, it's true people do throw a fit about it. But when it's northern english versus southern english, or western versus eastern, no one really makes a huge deal about it. Why is that though? It is because the eastern, western, southern and northern still sound correct but have slang ? Or are we truly racist against BE? Should BE be more widely accepted?

Project #2 Writing Constructs Proposals

Originally I  had planned to discuss and argue that there are more than two sides to an argument. But after writing the second part of project one I decided to keep the same claim I had in project one. I now plan to write about the five paragraph essay form. I discussed how important the five paragraph essay form is to the writing process and becoming a successful writer.

Defending the five paragraph essay form for my construct only seems right because I think it is important to learn the basics of writing. All through high school I became very skilled with the five paragraph essay and I feel like I'm strong in writing due to learning this basic so strongly. In high school, teachers use the five paragraph form not to constrict students but to help them learn form and organization.I haven't read into research against the five paragraph form but I think there are strong arguments for both sides. I will definitely be including criticism of the five paragraph form in my essay. It's important to understand both sides of the arguement and defend your opinion. In the end though, the five paragraph essay plays an essential role in learning the organization and function.

Project #2 Writing Constructs Pre-Bibliography

Supporting

Title: The Five-Paragraph Essay: An Attempt to Articulate
Author(s): Duane C. Nichols
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 55, No. 7 (Oct., 1966), pp. 903-908
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/812186

Title: Speaking My Mind: In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay
Author(s): Kerri Smith
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Mar., 2006), pp. 16-17
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30047081

Title: Speaking My Mind: Defending the Five-Paragraph Essay
Author(s): Byung-In Seo
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 97, No. 2 (Nov., 2007), pp. 15-16
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30046782

Title: Praise for the Five Paragraph Essay
Author(s): Tracy A. Novick
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 90, No. 3, The Lure of Young Adult Literature (Jan., 2001), p. 12
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/821293

Title: In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay
Author(s): Raymond Stopper
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 85, No. 3, The Universe of Literature (Mar., 1996), p. 9
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/820092

These records have been provided through JSTOR.
http://www.jstor.org

Refuting

Title: The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme
Author(s): Kimberly Wesley
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 90, No. 1, Teaching Writing in the Twenty-First Century (Sep., 2000), pp. 57-60
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/821732

Discussion Questions: Intertextuality and the Discourse Community/Porter

1. The description he gives of discourse communities is very vague for how long the text is. I'm not sure I understand the purpose of explaining a discourse community in this article. I understand what a discourse community is but not the point in this text about originality. If anything, these authors try so hard to become of these discourse communities. But to become part of the discourse communities you have to have common ideas and not step over the line of what is and isn't allowed. If that's the case and these authors aren't allowed to write about anything outside of what this discourse community believes and agrees too, then no wonder Porter says there are no original ideas. If you are being bound by other ideas, opinion and rules then you can't come up with new ideas and your creativity is smothered down to meet their standards.

2.  Porter is questioning originality in every aspect. My first question for porter would be do you find yourself to be unoriginal? I do agree that authors use each others work to build their own ideas but what he is claiming is that no authors ideas are original so where did they come from, back in the stone age? I find it challenging to understand that no authors ideas have ever been original. I can understand an author questioning another's work to research his own work and then in return using it. But, I don't understand how he believes all ideas are unoriginal. In that case is he okay with saying his idea of being unoriginal is also unoriginal? Does his idea of no idea being original also extend farther than just literature? What Steve Jobs not the first person to invent the iPhone and all of the things he invented? Did Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, steal his song ideas from someone else? I also don't think its acceptable to claim Jefferson not an original writer. I'm sure he did use all of those sources of work but the piece of writing he composed will be forever known in this country.

3.  I think the idea of intertextuality and plagiarism are on opposite sides of a very fine line. When Porter discusses Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, the way he argues it sounds as if he is almost trying to convince the audience Jefferson is guilty of plagiarism. So what's the difference between intertextuality and plagiarism? How does Porter want to define the difference if he is arguing that there is a difference. If he is going to argue he needs to define the difference. I believe intertextuality is the positive influence the author takes from another work while plagiarism is a negative influence when a student, usually, takes ideas and does not recognize that they are those of the authors.

Informal Writing: Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively/ Margaret Kantz

In her article Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively, Margaret Kantz attempts to discuss the struggles of composing original arguments and research texts by combining numerous sources. She points out that it is much easier to use the claims and theories from the sources than to create a new purpose and abstract ideas of your own. Kantz's tells the story of a sophomore in college to relate the story and help the audience understand this struggle.

At first read this article doesn't relate to much we've read. But after reflecting I realized the ideas behind we she is saying is the entire purpose of Kleine's article. You can put facts upon facts upon facts into a research paper, there are millions of those out there. That's easy. A real research article has those facts but has arguments and claims of your own. Those arguments shouldn't come out of a book you get at the library but between the lines of those books you get at the library and the discussions you have with your peers. It's not very self explanatory but I feel like this is one of those ideas that is better said with few words and left the audience to ponder and figure out on their own.

I'm not sure if I feel like this article relates well to any of the texts we've read up to this point. We've read about inspired writers, shitty drafts, writing processes, the perception of beauty and now this. This article reminds me of high schoolers doing a shitty job of trying to half ass a paper the night before it's due. I understand though that is not the point she is trying to make. Creating original claims from facts upon facts, doesn't give you much room to be original. Discussion within facts takes practice because you have to keep the facts but manage to intertwine your own ideas into those "facts."

Discussion Questions: The Sticky Embrace of Beauty/ Anne Frances Wysocki

1.  In society today, sex sells. People can argue with the statement but in my eyes it's completely true. What brought our society to such a point where its essential to have a half naked female or man with rock hard abs to successfully sell anything? Society always has convinced themselves you need to be a single digit size to be considered beautiful. The world healthy has been thrown out and beautiful now equals skinny. How did our society get to this point though? It wasn't appropriate to have half naked women in the newspaper in the 19th century or 18th century and I don't know if the printing press was even capable of such images. So how did society progress to this ideal?

2.  I don't know it it's acceptable to include this picture as part of my question. I believe that the top ad for Victoria Secret would be another ad that Wysocki would we angered by. As a first reaction the ad is pleasing to the eye, like Peek but then when you compare the top picture to the bottom it becomes almost disgusting. I feel as if Wysocki would agree with me. I feel that the point Wysocki is trying to make is very significant to societies current perception of beauty.

3.  Although Wysocki is incredibly hard to dissect and read I really appreciate her organization. She's extremely thorough in explaining every part of her claim/theory and backing it up with research. This article is one of my favorites we have read in class so far this year even though I did have a hard time focusing on it. When we talked about it in class I heard mostly dislike and discontent about it from my peers. Was it  merely because of the length of the text or it was it because of the topic? If it was because of the topic of the text then our society has truly corrupted some of my peers. After reading the article and understanding Wysocki's research I don't understand how anyone could still not see how society perception of beauty is corrupt.

Informal Writing:Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer and Response of a Laboratory Rate--or, Being Protocoled/Carol Berkenkotter and Donald Murray

In their articles Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer and Response of a Laboratory Rate--or, Being Protocoled, Carol Berkenkotter and Donald Murray attempt to analyze and discuss the highly researched and accredited writing process. Together they argue not every writer utilizes the original five step process of writing; prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading and publishing and that many times the steps are unclear and blur together. They are successful in this argument by analyzing Donald Murray through his writing own writing process. 

Synthesizing between articles isn't always easy. You would think the more articles you read, the easier it would be to put all of them into conversation together. Not the case for me at least. The articles we read, the more they blur together and there is so much information to put into conversation. To put this article first and conversation with Shitty First Drafts, I think they conflict in a way. Murray's writing style, the way I understand it, blurs together drafting and revising. Shitty First Drafts, discusses how all authors have that really shitty first draft that's just a huge ass mess to get all of their thoughts out. Murray doesn't seem that he writes in that way. It's more of a write some, revise it, write some revise it; which is the way I write. I'm not sure if this is the correct or healthy way to write, but at this point, its what works best for me. Yes this is a minor detail and ahead of schedule, but in Kleine's article he mentions how eager how the authors he interviewed were to talk to him about their writing. I also feel like Murray was extremely willing to about him writing. He did allow basically allow Burkenkotter to use him as a lab rat. Early in the 20 century authors had this image of being this unsocial, nerd, bookworms that didn't interact with the real world or at least that's how I feel people perceived them. I worry when I put articles into conversation that the topics or details I focus on are to minor and don't really matter but the smaller details of the article are really what interest me. 

After I dissected this article a  bit more and with the discussion we had in class it really helped me to understand. At first I really didn't the "deeper meaning" or what the article was trying to help us as students understand. I was having a really difficult time coding my writing process using the video I recorded of myself. A few of my categories like drafting and revising, in my writing process, were one big blob and I truly thought I was writing wrong. I still have the image in my head that authors sit down and they literally go into their own world and can't function until they've gotten everything out of their head. But, I think this article was helpful in understanding why we're writing this paper and there are other authors who have done this to help them understand their own writing process. 

Discussion Questions: What Is It We Do When We Write Articles Like This One--and How Can We Get Students to Join Us?/ Michael Kleine

1.  This question in it's own may be unimportant but I still wonder. Can you split authors into hunters and gathers as Kleine talks about in his article? Or is that what he's talking about? I think Kliene is discussing the writing process styles of writers and not the writers themselves. Society is always trying to dumb down the writing process into five simple, easy to follow steps. When in reality how many writers actually write with that exact, evenly split, five step process? We saw with Murray when he became a research project that his process of writing over lapped tremendously. I think it is essential for us to teach the five step writing process when learning to write but as you grow as a writer is it no longer appropriate.

2.  The system he's using to score these writers seems to be quite subjective so how is it accurate? If he is the one always doing the interviews with the writers then it is possibly less subjective. But still, he seems to have a lot of issues and frustrations with his own systems of coding/scoring that I wonder how accurate is really is? Why not add more categories or make them more inclusive. If I was the audience and knew how biased this was I don't know how much I could rely on his research.

3.  I brought this topic up in another one of my IWA's or discussion questions but it keeps reoccurring to me. Kliene starts talking about how the eight writers he interviewed never wrote for an external reason, they always wrote for internal reasons. Every time this leads me to celebrities or TV stars and the discussion of are they really writers? Real writers write for internal reasons, not for the money or because a higher authority asks it of them. Does Dr.Phil write because he has an internal want to write or does he write for the fame and the money. I know I've discussed this before and I should probably drop it but I don't believe people like Dr. Phil should get the amount of respect they do for their writing.