Unit 2 essay

Here is a link to my rough draft for my unit 2 essay.

"Approaching" The End

In Harris’s words, taking an approach can be defined as, “working in the mode of another writer.” I feel that in my own words the definition would be using a similar style of a previous author to write a response or work similar to their own. To do this you do not merely look at their work and try to imitate it, one must use the ideas and some methods of an author in their own new passage. Harris reveals three ways of taking an approach; acknowledging influences, turning an approach on itself, and reflexivity.

Many blogs are full of these concepts; Sullivan’s is constantly acknowledging things that his readers have said. In his article, “Why I Blog,” he states that roughly a third of his site is full of reader responses, many of which he shows by posting them on his main blog screen. I have also found articles he has analyzed where he asks question about the topics involved, a main component in turning an approach on itself. After looking through several blogs, I found that taking an approach is one of the more prevalent concepts in almost every one. I think one of the main reasons it is so common is that many blogs are written in response to something read or that has occurred in the world, but also because readers have an open forum to comment on and add to stories.

I found that the New York Times proved to be a little more difficult in finding this concept. It is most common in the op-ed section, where writers are writing in response to a text or to an event. News stories are merely reporting what is happening in the world and there is a set style to almost all of the articles, which could be considered a part of the acknowledging influences aspect. However, the use of this is very limited because today people want a short bit of text that gets all the facts out to them, and is not just a long commentary.

Turning My Word Upside Down

In the literary community today there is a great surge in the amount of writing done by young scholars. However, it is not in the form of great academic prose as you would expect, it comes in a much more dumbed-down version know as social communication. Facebook, MySpace, and text messaging are all involved in this revolution, but it is not the kind of writing young students need. In these formats, there is no need for a wide vocabulary, simple acronyms and numbers will do, and most writing involves no more than a few sentences. While I can say that any writing is good writing, students need much less of this. There is no need for research or time spent delved into books searching for answers, people can simply write what they feel or how they are laughing about something. Also, the fact that this form of literacy is so short can easily influence the newer generation to try to get a point across in less and less words. Long down the road, research projects could become mere sentences long, and contain very few bits of information, unlike those enormous projects of the past. Students could miss bits of information in their readings by only skimming articles, leaving out critical details. There is no doubt that getting younger people to write is a very good thing, just not in this form. Blogs can still be great tools for literacy, if they are used in the right fashion. If not, we are only throwing away the great literacy levels we strove so hard for in the past.
In this post I countered a past article about how I thought the new age of writing was a good thing for literacy. While I truly do believe that this new writing is a good thing, I chose to counter this post because my opinion was so strongly held. I tried to use all three forms of countering, but I put my main emphasis on dissenting from the article. I looked for limits in some of the points I made, and exposed them in the best fashion I thought possible. I truly do believe that the new age of literacy is a great thing, and I have to admit I felt like I was siding very strongly with Hedges while writing this.

Countering

Pretty much everyone alive today loves a little argument and controversy in their daily lives. We, as Americans, feed off of it with nightly gossip news and the countless debates that go on about different aspects of the US government. I, for one thrive off of a healthy disagreement every once in a while, but only if both sides are able to back up themselves with strong points, not incessant chatter. Harris outlines the art of disagreement in textual form in his chapter about countering, saying that in order to provide a good argument against a text, you must not prove how smart you are, but instead add to what can be said about a subject. The first step in Harris’s countering is to identify the limits of the writing you want to oppose. Then, work out a new way of thinking to respond to the limits of that text. Using this method, one can acknowledge the points of one way of thinking, while still proposing new ones that can suit a situation better. Using this technique, one adds to a text and doesn’t just try to disprove it.

While reading through Sullivan’s blog, I found that for the most part, his readers have taken over his entire blog site. A main argument I witness is one over religion. I really have had a hard time finding any of his readers using Harris’s approach in their arguments. Many times the people want to say what church they are from and why it is better than the others out there. In fact, I had trouble finding an article on the website that acknowledged that other religions were ok but then listed the limits of them. On my other blog, I could not find any example of countering because it is mostly talking about the scores of different basketball games, and the fact are irrefutable for the most part.

I feel like Harris’s version of countering is the best form in the sense that it allows for both sides to prove their points. While I may feel one way, it allows readers to see both sides of an argument. In this fashion, reader can form their own opinion about something. A writer is not just trying to look smarter than the person they disagree with, but they are adding to their writings. With this style one can present limits and then propose counters to them.

And the Text Moves On...

To Harris, forwarding is basically the idea of taking text from previous works and compiling it into your own. However, it is not in a sense a copyright violation because you can reword the text, and make it your own. I feel he really gives great insight into the way people learn in this chapter. He states, “Learning a subject means acquiring discourse, not just mastering a body of knowledge.” This idea makes perfect sense. A student really does not know much about a topic at all until they are able to speak the language associated with it. In this aspect, we are forwarding our own knowledge about a subject to others every time we speak of it. We are taking words learned from textbooks, and putting them to use in a new context. This is Harris’s underlying idea of forwarding.
I think a prime example of this technique is the Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan. Throughout his blog one can find comments written by readers, links to articles, and Sullivan’s own opinion on issues in the world today. He quotes comments in new posts, using them in a new context. Most of the quote remains intact, and he usually will give his opinion on what his readers are writing to him about. In my other blog, Seth Davis frequently uses information from other individuals, and then proceeds to give his opinion about what has been stated. He comments on scores from games, news reports about players, and also the character of each athlete, which can be considered forwarding when you think about character being the ideas of a person. Since reading this chapter I have noticed that almost every text I pick up makes use of forwarding. When I think about it, I believe I have used this technique in my writings throughout school, I just never thought consciously about what I was doing. With forwarding we can take our writings to new levels using the help of others.