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Class:Section 71 - ENG 112 - Spring 2007/Course Quotes Day 1
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James Carey
James W. Carey disagrees with a common conception of
- the nature of thought. In [U.S. American] predominately individualistic tradition, we are accustomed to think of thought as essentially private, an activity that occurs in the head - graphically represented by Rodin's "The Thinker." I wish to suggest, in contradistinction, that thought is predominantly public and social. It occurs primarily on blackboards, in dances, and recited poems. The capacity of private thought is a derived, and secondary talent, one that appears biographically later in the person and historically later in the species. [Footnote 15] Thought is public because it depends on a publicly available stock of symbols. It is public in a second and stronger sense. Thinking consists of building maps of environments. Thought involves constructing a model of an environment and then running the model faster than the environment to see if nature can be coerced to perform as the model does. (page 15)
- Chapter One: A Cultural Approach to Communication in
- Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society
- Routledge, New York, N.Y., 1989.
- Chapter One: A Cultural Approach to Communication in
Student paraphrases and assumptions of meaningfulness: quiz results.
Text-Wrestling
“Few of us think in sustained ways about why we might take a certain position on an issue or why we might hold certain values rather than others. Writing can serve as a way to inquire into our own histories to better understand ourselves. Such an understanding can help make us better writers because we can then explain to others the background behind our thinking. Many times when we read texts that might be confusing, we are not reacting to the difficulty of the ideas themselves. We are just as often confused or dismayed by how a writer is presenting those ideas and why she interprets them differently from the way we already think. As a result, writers who can make the background of their thinking more apparent are usually more successful” (p. 2).
“Effective writers…create and/or interpret the situations available for writing – they think about why their text might be needed in the larger ‘conversation’ on a topic and how it might affect the way others think about their subject matter” (p. xviii).
- The Text-Wrestling Book
- Donna LeCourt, et al.
- Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 2005.
Penguin Handbook
"The starting point for effective writing is determining in advance what you want to accomplish" (emphasis added, p. 13).
"If you can get your readers to consider your position seriously you will have succeeded" (p. 13).
"The dynamic nature of the rhetorical [situation] is the key to understanding how an audience is persuaded" (p. 7).
which means
YOU (as author) must "become aware of the historical dimensions of particular subjects for particular audiences" (p. 10).
- "The Rhetorical Situation"
- Penguin Handbook, Custom Edition
- Pearson Custom Publishing
- Boston. 2007.
Steinbeck, Kothari, Anzaldua
Advice to beginning writers from John Steinbeck:
From a story by Geeta Kothari:
- If You Are What You Eat, Who Am I?"
- The Text-Wrestling Book, 2005 (p. 29)
From a story by Gloria Anzaldua:
- How to Tame a Wild Tongue
- The Text-Wrestling Book, 2005 (p. 173)
W.D. Snodgrass
'Am I writing what I really think? Not what is acceptable; not what my favorite intellectual would think in this situation; not what I wish I felt.
Only what I cannot help thinking.'
For I believe the only reality which a man can ever surely know is that self he cannot help being,
though he will only know that self through its interactions with the world around it.
If he pretties it up, if he changes its meaning, if he gives it the voice of any borrowed authority,
if in short he rejects this reality, his mind will be less than alive.
So will his words."
Malcolm X
Don't just go through the "book-reading motions"! (Malcolm X's phrase, for acting as if one is "reading" but in actuality, comprehension does not dawn.)
Dr. Gilligan and Gloria Steinem
"If humanity is to evolve beyond the propensity toward violence . . . then it can only do so by recognizing the extent to which the patriarchal code of honor and shame generates and obligates male violence."
- Dr. James Gilligan
- Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic
"I think the way out can only be found through a deeper reversal: just as we as a society have begun to raise our daughters more like our sons - more like whole people - we must begin to raise our sons more like our daughters - that is, to value empathy as well as hierarchy; to measure success by other people's welfare as well as their own."
- Gloria Steinem
- Supremacy Crimes
A Quote To End On
"...writing is a series of choices that
primarily depend on audience and context.
The influences we bring to our position and
who we explicate that position to
are paramount in the outcome of our work.
How we write what we write and who we write it to
determines
Thomas Fox and Paulo Freire
“Students certainly don’t expect political consequences to issue from freshman English.”
- Thomas Fox, The Social Uses of Writings
“...adopting…a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world…the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself…consciousness as consciousness of consciousness.”
- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
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