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Thlog 9

            In writing 2 this week, we talked about how to “write with pictures,” which may be particularly helpful for some people when creating WP3 if they choose to use a visual genre, like a comic. I learned about 5 major aspects of comics that must be considered if someone wants to create one that is concise and effective, meaning that it gives the reader all of its relevant information in a way that is not confusing and gets whatever point across that it may have. I never considered these 5 aspects, but I see now that they are always present in comics but may also drastically alter its meaning if changed. The choice of “moments”—the moments in time of a story that are chosen—are crucial, as well as choice of frame—the extent to which background is included and what angle a scene is portrayed from--, choice of image—how an image is drawn--, choice of word—what text there will be and how it will be used effectively--, and choice of flow—how a reader will be navigated through the comic. Each aspect has many of its own features that need to be considered as well when creating a comic; for instance, when choosing what sort of moment to use, some of the types include moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, scene to scene, aspect to aspect, and non sequitur. In class, we also went over different sorts of genres that could be used to translate academic articles to be age-specific. In this process, I was reminded that there are A LOT of genres out there. When reviewing other classmates’ ideas for WP3, someone brought up prescription-medication labels as a genre. My eyes are now opened bigger, and I realize the vast choices I have for creating my genre-translations.

Dawkins’ “Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool” Translated into a Children’s Book and a Guideline for College Applicants on how to Punctuate College Essays

            For Writing Project 3, I will be translating and transforming Dawkins’ piece on “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical tool” into a children’s book and a guideline for prospective college students and how they should be structuring their college applicant essays, particularly regarding the use of punctuation. The childrens’ book, the instructional guide, and the original piece by Dawkins will all have some similarities in form and language, but will have more differences. Their main similarity, however, will be the author’s intention, which is to educate their audiences—regardless of whether or not that audience may be much younger, slightly older, or academic—about the rules, options, and rhetorical effects of using different types of punctuation in writing.

            In his article, Dawkins begins by introducing the issue of the lack of specific rules with certain types of punctuation: no real rules exist, but there are general practices that are used that have specific effects, and commas, semi-colons, etc. all have their own uses and effects. Next, Dawkins discusses sentences and independent clauses and what they are in the language.

He provides different tables for these which include: 1) a hierarchy of functional marks, 2) the basic functions of those marks, 3) the patterns for those marks, and 4) the rules for those patterns. Next, Dawkins discusses cases involving multiple independent clauses, which concern degrees for separation between clauses (maximum, medium, minimum). Then he goes into “pedagogy,” or the ways in which the subject is taught.

            The children’s book will be a very condensed, simplified form of Dawkins’ article. There should not be more than a few sentences per page, and there should not be many pages overall. The book will have to be interactive in some sort of way, in order to draw in and interest the young readers. I am thinking about putting in pictures, but this might not be necessary. Right now, I’m imagining a pamphlet-sort of book with super-sized font on each page that introduces the topic and asks questions for the reader fairly frequently. The biggest issue will be the simplification of the material. Regarding the complexity of the material, it will be very important to provide a somewhat surface-level description of the ideas I will be sharing. The ideas will have to be explained and understood very simply. I think a good way to go about this would be to make the young readers think and have a sparked interest in the material—it will need to be interesting. I don’t think that pictures will be absolutely necessary for this, because I am not sure if they will just distract the reader. If I do provide pictures, they will need to represent and support the content well. They may just provide visual representations of the reasoning behind using different techniques for punctuation, such as the different sorts and levels of emphasis created when using a comma, semi-colon, hyphen, period, etc.

            The form of an instructional guide for prospective-college students writing college applications will have many differences than the childrens’ book of course. For starters, the instructional guide does not need to be as interesting. The guide will need to be succinct however, and the different content within will need to be easily accessible to the reader, for the reader to be able to access quickly while writing or planning the essay, for example. The guide won’t be there to educate a writing student, in the case of Dawkins piece, but it will be used as a functional guide; therefore, the guide will be much more succinct than Dawkins’ piece, which serves as more of a dissertation.

            The children’s book, the instructional guide, and Dawkins’ piece will all be similar in that they will intend to educate their audiences. The children’s book and the instructional guide will be significantly shorter than Dawkins’ piece, but for different reasons and different effects: the childrens’ book will be shorter because it will have very basic, surface-level information, that will hopefully spark interest in the reader; the instructional guide will be shorter because it will need to be succinct and to-the-point, to serve a functional purpose of guiding the readers—college applicants—through how to use the different types of punctuation in an essay, and the effects those choices will have on their specific audience.

Benjamin Seilhamer

Zack De Piero

Writing 2

08 May, 2016

The Biologists’, Sociologists’, and the Popular Critics’ Perspective on the Impact of Music on People

            The academic fields of biology and sociology and the popular field of music criticism have literary genres written by writers; this means that they include genre-specific conventions and rhetorical features and writer-specific “moves.” These three genres will have some similarities and some differences concerning their general conventions and rhetorical features, and specific pieces from these genres will exemplify the ways in which their writers engage their audience using moves. In order to demonstrate how different academic fields provide different perspectives, conventions and rhetorical features from each other—and how academic fields provide different perspectives, conventions, rhetorical features and reader-directed implications than popular fields—, this essay will examine the genre-specific conventions and rhetorical features and the writer-specific moves of two academic articles’—biology and sociology— and one popular article’s—music criticism—approaches to analyzing how music impacts people. As broad of a topic as this may be—the biologist’s approach concerning a single person being impacted, the sociologist’s and music critic’s approach concerning large groups of people being impacted—, the three sources chosen all represent their specific genres sufficiently by providing solid examples of the conventions and rhetorical features specific to their genres and have writer-specific moves that are worth analyzing. Academic articles from different perspectives and non-academic articles all are different genres with different moves being utilized because different academic and non-academic disciplines have their own conventions and audience expectations and their writers’ moves differ due to both genre expectations and the writers’ personal decision for execution.

            The first article (PNAS article)—written for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and analyzes music and people from the biologist’s perspective—is academic, entitled “Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion;” The second article (MERIP article)—provided by the Middle East Research and Information Project, and analyzes music and people from the sociologist’s perspective—is academic and entitled “Egypt’s Music of Protest;” the third article (RS article)—written by someone from Rolling Stone, and analyzes music and people from the popular music critic’s perspective—is nonacademic and entitled “Nirvana.”

            The biologist’s article has many recognizable moves. These moves can be thought of as conventional to the academic-biology genre, but are moves nonetheless. For instance, the IMRAD-esque structure is employed for this piece, starting with an “Abstract”, then “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion” (Blood), all ordered and labeled accordingly. Under these subheadings for this piece are even smaller subheadings, including “subjects,” “stimuli,” “scanning procedures,” “data analysis,” all existing particularly under the “Methods” section. Although this sort of structure may be considered conventional for academic, scientific pieces, the ordering of the paper in this way may be considered a moves by the writers; the structuring of this article may definitely was a conscious decision. Small variations from the conventional structure of this genre prove that this is the case—for instance, the “A” section of the IMRAD structure, “analysis,” exists within the “methods” section, instead of being its own section (Blood). This may have been done because the writer decided that the “analysis” section may have been too small or insignificant to warrant its own section, or that the “analysis” of the data may be been a “method” used in the experiment. The purpose of this article is obviously to provide a peer-reviewable report of an experiment done for the scientific community to approve and add to their vast plethora of credible investigations. The types of evidence used, primarily graphs and photocopies of scans done of patients’ brains during the introduction of music, and the scientific jargon used throughout the article, “neuroanatomical regions…regression analysis...” indicate that the intended audience are of the scientific community, primarily peers of those doing the experiment, or students of universities. It can be inferred that the audience expects to see the “IMRAD” sort of structure, and that they expect to see—and probably be able to analyze and understand themselves—the visual graphs and photocopies that are included in the article. It can be expected for the audience to be ready to criticize or corroborate the arguments made by the writers of the article.

            The moves made by the writer of the sociological article on music and protest, with respects to the Middle East, can also be seen as conventional of the genre. In his article, “Egypt’s Music of Protest,” Ted Swedenburg separates his ideas into sections; these are not labeled particular to a sociological-academic structure, like IMRAD is for the sciences, but is separated into section of Swedenburg’s own choosing, labeled as “Music of Protest” (introduction), “Anti-Imperial Struggle,” “Revolutionary Memories,” “Poetry of Resistance,” “Working Class Posses,” and finally, “Endnotes” (Swedenburg). The only label that may be conventional of academic writing for sociology is “Endnotes,” which provide cited works and further explanations for particular ideas throughout the article. This article’s purpose is to collect information from many other already published sources and reorganize it to make it more accessible to the reader; there is no original field work done in this paper, only research. The sort of evidence provided is from other authors or other works, as well as specific music examples. The audience is expected to be primarily students. There is a considerable lack of jargon, which makes this article accessible to pretty much anyone, and the nature of the article does not necessitate peer-review. There is no field work or new research introduced in this piece, but rather, it is an argument based off of information already provided by other academic sources. Those who may be particularly interested in this article would be students of the “soft” or “social” sciences, who may need a succinct article to use that has a collaboration of many different articles to inform the specific topic of the role of music in protest in a Middle-Eastern context. The author’s decision, or obligation, to provide endnotes at the end of the article gives students the means to research other articles that may be relevant to the topic they are studying, if that topic has to do with music in Middle-Eastern protest.

            The nature of the Rolling Stones’ non-academic article on Nirvana—a biography—could be described as much more laid back than the other genres. One can recognize immediately that when juxtaposed with the other academic articles in question, there are a few aspects missing. One obvious aspect is the lack of subheadings; ideas are just separated into different paragraphs, and the main title is just “biography” at the top of the article. One can argue that the lack of subheadings is a move made by the writer to make his article feel a lot “cooler” to read; the lack of effort put into separating main ideas in the article, such as chronological events like “On March 30, Cobain check into the Exodus Recovery Center in LA” from other time-insensitive information like “Nirvana’s impact was also felt by some of Cobain’s own musical heroes…” (Simon/Schuster). Maybe the writers moved for a lack of organization by subheadings to make the reader feel more casual reading the article. The article does not provide any direct evidence with citations, but it provides many dates that can be corroborated. Open-ended statements, especially concerning who Nirvana impacted and how do not have any evidence; the article does not need to have citations, which may be conventional of biographies. It can be inferred by the article that the audience is supposed to be casual, looking to learn simple facts, but not for research or anything of the like, because of the lack of citations or even endnotes with the mentioning of cited works; in other words, the audience is not expecting too much, just a casual read. The audience can include anybody, not just those of a specific discipline, like an academic science article.

            There is a significant difference between the structures, conventions, and moves of academic and non-academic genres. Academic genres tend to have more “strict” conventions with standards for how they are supposed to be written, for practical purposes—peers and other researchers want to be able to know how to read the article as efficiently as possible, and must be able to find information within it quickly, especially regarding original research done by those in the science field. The audience-span is much narrower for academic articles, which are intended to be understood—and reviewed—only by those within that particular academic circle; the extensive use of discipline-specific jargon supports this idea. On the other hand, non-academic articles have a much larger audience-span because they can be understood by anybody. There is not an overarching structure that must be followed, the reading and writing process seems to be much more relaxed and open to personal preference by the writer. Academic articles have affordances that are the same as their limitations—their nature of being strictly organized and succinct with high audience expectations of understanding the discipline-specific jargon off the bat enables them to shoot information and arguments into the readers’ brain very precisely. This same characteristic, however, is what limits the article in its scope of audience—not necessarily a bad thing, because your average Joe probably will not care about “complementary subtraction analysis” or “regression maps” (Blood). The non-academic article’s affordances and limitations are the opposite—it is able to be understood by a greater span of audience, yet does not communicate as specific, high-level information as academic articles. Both types of articles are successful in their own ways, however; they deliver to the audience what they expect, whether it may be in-depth analysis about brain function supported by visual evidence such as photocopied brain scans and visual aids such as bar graphs, or whether it may be a simple, casual timeline outlining a rockstar’s life and tragic end. The nature of an article, in this sense, depends primarily on the intended audience of the piece.

Bibliography

Blood, Anne J., and Robert J. Zatorre. "Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate with    Activity in Brain Regions Implicated in Reward and Emotion." Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate with Activity in Brain Regions Implicated in Reward and Emotion. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 11 July 2001. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11818.full>.

Simon/Schuster, and Evan Serpick. "Nirvana Biography." Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, 2001. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/nirvana/biography>.

Swedenburg, Ted. "Egypt's Music of Protest | Middle East Research and Information Project." Egypt's Music of Protest | Middle East Research and Information Project. Middle East Research and Information Project, n.d. Web. 06 May 2016. <http://www.merip.org/mer/mer265/egypts-music-protest>.

Online Class Journal Q’s

I am happy with my specificity concerning WP2.  I started looking and writing specifically about what was asked for the prompt, and my ideas are more succinct than in the last WP. Part of the reason why I am a lot more succinct on my second WP is that I pre-wrote effectively. On my first WP, I tried attacking it using primarily first order thinking, with little review and self-criticism during the writing, and even the review, process. This time around, my structuring of my argument used a combination of first and second order ways of writing. I began with an outline this time, but this was just to provide a skeletal idea of how I was going to organize my paper; I did not even look at any articles yet. After reading the prompt, I created an outline that would deliver a better, more convincing argument--it even helped me zone in on the moves I would use myself.

I would like to know how my methods of argument were delivered in this WP, meaning how were they received by the reader?

Thlog 6

            This last week in Writing 2, we clarified more clearly what moves are and how they are different from conventions. In general, there is a consensus that moves may be specific to certain writers, while conventions are general and exist within all pieces of the same genre. However, this does not mean that conventions themselves cannot be moves as well. A writer may employ conventions in their piece as a move, which may in turn make it part of a specific genre. For example, if someone was writing a research essay, he or she may structure it with the IMRAD structure. Although this is common to research papers, it may not be put in because it is conventional for the research paper genre, but rather because this specific move may have a convincing impact on the reader, and may end up convincing the reader of a certain point. We reviewed how to find moves in pieces as well. The idea of “reading like a writer” keeps coming up, and similar ideas come up as well, such as “listening like a producer” or “seeing like an architect.”

            We went over some important grammar guidelines in class as well. In particular, we went over the idea of “parallelism.” It is important to recognize and utilize this technique for many reasons, one of which is to show professionalism, and also to guide the thought process of the reader. Parallelism exists in many forms, not just literarily, but visually as well. When creating a resume, it is important to make sure that its parts are grammatically and visually parallel for the reasons discussed above, in order to demonstrate one’s professionality and to help expedite the reader’s reading process.

PB2B

            Moves are very important to consider when it comes to writing—and reading—literary sources. No matter what genre of source one may be writing or reading, it is guaranteed to have moves. Moves are pretty much methods that writer utilize in order to get a certain effect on the reader. In this assignment, I will begin by identifying five moves particular to “They Say, I Say” that are used by Julia Nguyen—a Writing 2 student—in the essay entitled “Disciplines of Love” that are used specifically in academic writing; next, I will find and name five other moves from different articles.

            In the first paragraph of the essay, Julia Nguyen captures authorial action when she paraphrases the common ideas of biologists: “Scholars within the discipline of biology approach this idea that…” At the end of the first paragraph, Nguyen adds metacommentary regarding the approaches that biology and communications scholars use for their research and writing: “To sum up, scholars…” Near the beginning of the second paragraph, Nguyen introduces a quotation with the according to X move: “According to Debiec, ‘William James…’” Nguyen uses another move that captures authorial action on page two in the third paragraph: “Debiec provides…” A third move that captures authorial is further down on page two, third paragraph: “Gonzaga concluded that…”

            Peter Elbow uses moves as well in his book entitled “Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching.” In the introduction of chapter three, Elbow uses a move that I would like to call the “Satirical-exaggeration quote.” In his introduction, Elbow is describing how people react to his proposition of using first order thinking. His satirical-exaggeration quote is used to exaggerate how people react negatively to this idea: “Horrors! Their vigilance muscles will get flabby…” The author used this move in order to hook the reader, and make obvious the controversy risen by people who disagree with or are resistant to the idea of using first-order thinking to write; this is an effective move, because it has caused me to be more engaged with the text and has enlightened about the issues some have with the idea, and it has revealed to me that the reasons to deny first-order thinking are really quite silly.

            A second move that Peter Elbow utilizes I will call the “rebutted/clarifying aside.” This is in the second paragraph, in which Elbow clarifies that he does not just teach first-order thinking but that he values and teaches second-order—or critical—thinking as well: “Of course it’s not the only way I teach thinking through writing….” This is used colloquially by Elbow in its own paragraph to have the effect of an aside, as though he is speaking secretly to the reader, or as though this idea could exist within parenthesis, but is too large to do so; it is done in an aside-sort-of sense because it is not particularly important to the main idea of the paper. This move is effective because it makes me feel closer to the writer and more engaged with the writing, and it is not distracting from the main ideas of the paper; of course, it is not too distracting, but it is more of a rebuttal, so it is good to separate from the rest of the ideas being asserted.

            A third move that Elbow uses will be called the “second-person quotation” or “reader call-out.” This involves Elbow bringing the readers into the text by telling them to do something, or initiating a call of action. For instance, on page fifty-six, Elbow asks the reader to “ask them a hard question and then [say] ‘Now think carefully….’” This move is effective because it engages the readers by calling them out to act on something, which makes his message more relatable and personal; the reader now feels more engaged with Elbow and can visualize a situation in which he or she may do what is asked, and also visualizes a hypothetical situation, which is further engaging.

            A fourth move that Elbow uses will be called the “self-aware concession.” In this case, Elbow is considering counterviews, but is making it apparent that he is aware of considering counterviews: “I have learned not to forget to tell the other side of the story” (pg. 57, PP. 2). This move shows that Elbow is aware of how a solid argument works, and is effective because it makes the reader aware that he knows how to argue well, and consider counterarguments; it establishes his credibility.

            The last move that I will identify will be called the “alliterative counter-ideas,” utilized when he asserts that “the two kinds of thinking have the opposite virtues and vices.” This is a cool move he uses, because it brings up two opposing ideas, but poetically. This is effective because it sticks in the readers mind more because of the way they sound in the ear.

Thlog 5

This last week, in Writing 2, I started learning about “moves” and their significance in literary works. Moves exist in any literary work, really. Moves are sort of done—maybe consciously, maybe unconsciously— by the writer to have a specific effect on the reader. This does not necessarily have to do with the content itself, or how one convinces another of a certain fact, for example in academic articles, using rhetorical methods for argumentation; rather, moves are more implicit, such as the way in which a writer presents a certain argument. For instance, in Reading Like a Writer, the writer introduces his piece with an anecdote. This can be seen as a move. Not the content of the anecdote, but the fact that an anecdote was introduced in the first place. This move was done for a specific reason, to have a specific impact on the reader. In this case, it may have been to draw the reader in and engage them in the lesson plan of learning to read like a writer. Learning to read like a writer helps one identify moves, by analyzing—or considering—why a writer did what he or she did to have a specific impact on the reader. Why would a writer start writing in a more colloquial language? To bring the stakes down a notch, and identify on an eye-to-eye level with the reader? Possibly, or maybe it is done to personify a certain type of character being quoted in a text, to make that character recognizable—as he or she may be seen as “representative” of a certain culture, identifiable by the characteristic tongue or slang of that culture—to implicitly indicate to the reader the nature of the source of a specific quote or idea; would you want to hear about the nature of street life from an anthropologist or a sociologist doing his dissertation on the subject, or from a fellow who walks those streets and lives that life daily? It does not matter, but the point is, a writer’s move could be to use the exact quote from the source instead of a paraphrase in order to imply to the reader what sort of source we are listening to—one with an emic or etic approach to the subject. This can make the text more engaging and provide more insight. The decision to use a direct quote instead of a paraphrase is a move. This summarizes what was focused in week 5 of Writing 2.

PB2A

Case Study for Chemistry, for Atomic Layer Composition, on Trimethylaluminum/water Process

            Chemistry case studies, like any other genre of text, is going to have conventions, or common features to look for or that exist among most if not all texts of that genre. I would expect scholarly articles to follow conventions more than some other genres, such as novels, comics, song lyrics, etc., because there is little room for creative input. This particular scholarly article is in the genre of Chemistry scholarly articles, more particularly for “atomic layer composition,” and even more particularly for the “chemistry scholarly articles regarding atomic layer composition, with an emphasis on the trimethylaluminum/water process.” The conventions particular to “atomic layer composition” and “trimethylaluminum/water process” are not really going to be considered, but the broader conventions of the “Scholarly articles on Chemistry” will be considered.

If this particular article were to be used to represent scholarly chemistry articles as a whole, then it would be safe to say that they generally start with a title that describes the subject in great detail, such as “A case study: surface chemistry and surface structure of catalytic aluminas, as studied by vibrational spectroscopy of absorbed species.” Following are the names of the researchers the department, college/university, and city/country, involved.  It seems conventional for chemistry scholarly articles to begin with an abstract. This provides a very short description or summary of what the article will be about and what kind of research has been done; it also discusses what is to be expected and explained in the article. Following the abstract, an introduction, labeled “introduction,” is provided in the beginning of the article. “Introduction” is labeled “1,” indicating that each topic in the article is going to be numbered. Visual representations, such as graphs, are included in the article, and sub topics are included within the main, larger topics (2. Vibrational modes… 2.1. vibrations of the solid). A conclusion—still numbered among the larger topics—and a list of references is also included. There are a lot of in-text symbols and formulas as well.

            The amount of chemistry-specific jargon used, such as “thermodynamically stable corundum phase,” “hexagonal system,” etc., and the many in-text symbols and formulas that are included indicate that this article’s intended audience includes peers of the chemistry discipline—it is not for novices of chemistry, although it may be for students of chemistry. This article has a depersonalized and somewhat pedantic tone, again because of its intended audience, but also because of its purpose, which is to lecture on the findings of the research.

            Although no questions are raised directly in this article, there are answers to questions that may have been raised and may have necessitated the research done in the case study. For instance, it is revealed in the abstract that the study focuses on the various aspects of the surface chemistry of aluminas—so the main question is most likely what are the properties of the various aspects of the aluminas’ surface chemistry?  This article mainly provides a dissertation on the characteristics of surface chemistry, and does not involve much original research, if at all; it is more of a compilation of the models and theories from older chemists that describe the specific aspects of the surface chemistry of the different aluminas. Related larger concepts are grouped together, however, such as the acidity and basicity of certain aluminas.

Thlog 4

This week in Writing 2, we began to explore perspectives in reading, writing, and analysis. On the surface level of this concept, since that is all we have explored so far, we have practiced analyzing and writing in the perspectives of different sorts of people—in particular, people in the three different disciplines of academia—hard and soft/social sciences and the humanities—in the situation of questioning beachgoers about a melting alcohol bottle in the middle of a fire, and through the perspectives of different sorts of writers in the practical world—facebooking colleagues, detectives, coroners, local-and-national-newspaper writers, etc—in the situation of writing about the violent death of a university man in a parking garage. In these exercises, I was not only formally enlightened that these different perspectives exist in the reading, writing, and analysis of topics in writing, but also that conventions of genre—a concept that I learned and practiced extensively over the past couple of weeks in this course—are ever-present in different perspectives of writing. For instance, an example that was brought up in class involves comparing a writing from the perspective of a parking lot customer about the death of the university man—for the sake of expressing personal concerns—and writing from the perspective of a coroner analyzing the body of the university man—for the sake of providing a coroner’s report: a parking lot customer may typically introduce his or her name and address his or herself as a parking lot customer when writing a letter to the operators of the parking garage, while the coroner may not provide his or her name and his or her title as a coroner in the coroner’s report. These conventions have everything to do with genre, a concept I am feeling will be continuingly considered throughout the rest of the course.

WP1, PB1B

Using genre generators, I was able to experiment with identifying conventions regarding 4 different types of genres, all of which were textual. The textual genres included ballad lyrics, ( http://www.song-lyrics-generator.org.uk/create.php?song=13, the sci-gen website would only generate one paper), comic strips, memes, and horror-story introductions (http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/creepypastaplot.htm).

The ballad lyric generator clearly outlined the conventions of ballad lyrics; in order to provide all of the necessary information for the lyrics, the site explicitly instructs the user to provide an adjective that defines the user, the user’s occupation, the sex of who the song is about, the role of the person in the user’s life (cousin, friend, etc.), an adjective to describe the person, and the person’s occupation; the site instructs the user to provide a day, month, or season, and a period of the of day; then the user provides something or someone he/she could meet, and something reckless someone could have done with the thing/person; the same is done but with respect to someone else meeting a person or thing and something reckless someone else could have done with the person/thing; then two body parts, four adjectives, and two verbs must be provided.

The ballad then goes as follows:

1. The ballad begins with a nostalgic set-up that introduces the (first person) main character and the (third person) emotional interest, along with a term of endearment for the emotional interest by the main character, followed by a nostalgic memory of the two when they were happy with each other, and even had hopes for the future.
2. Next, the two characters undergo a pivotal negative experience that changes their relationship, in these cases involving the two messing up the relationship themselves by doing something excessively, followed by the emotional interest finalizing the mess-up by doing something extra stupid..
3. After that, the main character dwells on his/her emotional distress due to the final stupid incident caused by the emotional interest, which indicates that the main character and the emotional interest are now split up.
4. Finally, the main character reminisces on the emotional interest and the pivotal negative experience that changed their relationship, and relives the emotional distress he/she underwent during that time.

The conventions of the ballad can be summarized as follows: there is main character, usually portrayed in first person, and an emotional interest of the character, whether it may be a family member, a love interest, etc, who are introduced in a nostalgic set-up; The two start out well, but then a pivotal negative experience begins jeopardizes their relationship, which is finished by the emotional interest doing something stupid to finalize their splitting of the two; The main character dwells on her emotional distress from the experience; then the main character reminisces on the experience as a whole, indicating that the emotional distress is still relived and not quite resolved.

The Pandyland randomly-generated comics with Finlay and Simon provide a very simple example of the conventions of the comic-genre: the comics involve (at least) two characters, a beginning, middle, and end that includes a situation, and room for interpretation. The Pandyland comics, more specifically, are humorous, and include popular references as well as unexpected/shocking events. The room for interpretation is what works well for the humorous aspect of these comics, because it allows us to form our own conceptualizations about what is happening in the scenes.

To create the comics, it is obvious that the generator is accounting for a beginning, middle, and end within the three events it shows. The order of the events can not be changed, because they would be nonsensical; the ending event shows something that at times would not be able to come before any of the other events, such as one of the characters being killed. The middle event is generally a response to the beginning event, which acts as a set-up. This shows that comics’ beginning event is usually a set-up, followed by some sort of response, which leads to a conclusion; and so, humorous comics such as these have a set-up, a response (or effect) and a conclusion.

As a genre, memes have their own conventions as well. While many subgenres exist within the genre of “memes,” they all have a few things in common, one of which is the format, in which there is a header text and a footer text; all memes also revolve around a specific photograph that captures a specific expression that can be attributed to the intention of the text in the meme (the “meme” is created by providing a humorous text for an image with which it is not originally associated, but with which an association (usually humorous) may be seen and drawn): some, such as the “Willy Wonka” memes, have headers that are not specific to the meme, and may change every time the picture is used; others such as the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” meme (I don’t always…)  may not have a fixed header, but a fixed introduction; others such as the “One Does Not Simply” meme have a fixed header all of the time.

According to the Horror Story Prompt Generator on springhole.net, horror story prompts (or extracts) have conventions as well: there is a set-up involving a prepositional phrase (one day in a wrecked plane), a set of characters (a man, an evil widower), and a supernatural event (transforming a doctor into a werewolf).

These websites can help one understand genre because they provide many examples that share common fundamental elements. These fundamental elements that provide skeletal structures for the genres help one distinguish among genres and recognize the existence of sub-genres that share more general fundamental elements (such as the header and footer of a meme) but differ in more specific elements (such as the specificity of the header).

Thlog 1

This week was pretty great in Writing 2. I learned about rhetoric (I guess? I honestly do not really know if I learned much of anything about rhetoric, I think it is how a text or work or whatever is presented and considers audience and things, but my brain visualizes rhetoric as this gray cloud). I learned about genre and genre expectations, and how we form genre expectations ourselves, and in what ways genre exists. Genre does not just exist in film and books and merely creative works, I learned. Genre exists everywhere. I also appreciate the two different forms of writing that we learned exist. The 1st order and 2nd order. Since I learned about this, I have allowed myself to start writing more 1st-orderly. I’m pretty sure that is the one that involves unrestricted writing. It is very liberating and I feel that my ideas and words flow much easier than 2nd order writing. I think I have always written 1st-orderly to some respect, especially since getting into college; I think this is because I understand that education higher than grade school is more liberal and more understanding of what really makes a good education. It is nice, however, to be aware of these different aspects of writing. I am not entirely a 1st order writer, however. At least I don’t think I am, because even while writing this, at moments I just stop and realize that I lost my train of thought. I understand that first order writing does not necessarily need to follow a train of thought, but for some reason I still feel like I am not absolutely willing to let go of the wheel. So it is not like my actual writing is 1st order right now, but more like my thought process is more 1st order. I still like to ensure that I am writing with respectable grammar and a hint of pretension.

PBA1

On Textbooks

Let’s talk about textbooks. They are boring. They are a dissertation on all of the things you honestly do not care about. They are “text” books, meaning that they are only that: they are books of not images, but only text; not interesting text, but text. Many times, this is all textbooks may provide for the unfortunate reader, for the reader hardly ever actually picks up any information from a textbook, but only reads pages upon pages of text itself, too anxious about finishing as fast as possible to actually pick up and comprehend the information that is being read, because Game of Thrones is on in an hour. Textbooks are never things you read on your own, you read them because you have to.

This issue brings us to talk about the audience of textbooks; who needs to read them? Students. Students of standardized education. Students who are wrung through a system too large and impersonal to deal with them individually, to cater to their own individual needs as educatees; Students who need to get through their college education to get on with their lives. In understanding the audience of text books, we understand why no one wants to read them. Authors and publishers know that people have to read textbooks, regardless of whether or not they enjoy them. So very rarely are these dense bricks ever enriched with engaging rhetoric that allows for some enjoyment in their reading; on occasion, however, they may be sprinkled with white, tasteless bits that are Professors’ and Doctors’ own special deviations of humor, an art in of itself that they lost in their own years of experience of being wrung through such a system that subjects its constituents to the almost unbearable burden that is the mandatory reading of textbooks.

The boringness of textbooks can be justified fairly, however. Textbooks do their job very well; they provide text that makes up information that builds a specific topic, usually from the ground up. Hardly ever is fundamental information particular to the subject left out of a textbook; in the case of the disciplines, textbooks provide most, if not all, of the information possible and necessary for a competent- or even complete, in an ideal world- understanding. It should be understood that readers of textbooks are also expected to be mature; they should not expect humor in a textbook, and should not expect it to be a joyful read. The reader of a textbook must forfeit his own pleasures in order to appeal to the higher purpose that textbooks are a part of: an education, that the reader pursues with the intention of bettering himself, and for the altruistic ones, bettering the lives of others and bettering the world itself. The only ones who will benefit from textbooks are those who are mature enough to accept their responsibility to better mankind in doing their part.

In conclusion, textbooks are boring, are like dissertations, have only information, are not personal at all, and generally soulless. They intend to provide only information for the reader, with the intention of spreading knowledge itself (this is the value in a textbook, it holds knowledge itself). They are used in the context of the most general of educations people can imagine regardless of how high and specific that general education may be. They have the style of a dissertation and no tone at all; once again, they only give information. The audience member must be mature in order to benefit from the reading of a textbook. The audience member, in most if not all cases, is a student, who has to get through them. Very rarely will you find someone crazy enough to pick up a textbook on their own accord.