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Fearless Writing
Rhetoric, Inquiry, Argument
University of Maryland Academic Writing Program
ENGLISH 101
SECOND EDITION
Selected chapters from:

Everything's an Argument, Eighth Edition
By Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz
The Bedford Book of Genres, Second Edition

By Amy Braziller and Elizabeth Kleinfeld
The Bedford Handbook, Tenth Edition

By Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
From Inquiry to A cademic Writing, Fourth Edition

By Stuart Green e and April Lidinsky
The Writer)s Loop, First Edition

By Lauren Ingraham and Jeanne Bohannon
Writer / Designer, Second Edition

By Kristin L.Arola,Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball
--1 bedford /st.martin's

Macmillan Learning
Bedford/St. Martin's - 9781319377540

Content taken from:
I!veryt/1ings an Argu111e11t, Eighth Edition
By Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz
Copyright © 201 9 by Bedford/St. Martin's
T11e Bedford Book of Genres, Second Edition

By Arny J3raziller and Elizabeth Kleinfeld
T11e Bedford Ha11dbook,Tenth Edition

By Diana H acker and N ancy Sommers
Copyright © 2017 by Bedford/St. Martin's
From lnq11iry to Acade111ic Writing, Fourth Edition

By Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky
·1he Writers Loop, First Edition

By Lauren Ingraham and Jeanne Bohannon
Copyright © 2020 by Bedford/St. M artin's
Writer/ Designer, Second Edition

By Kristin l. Arola,Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball
Copyright © 20 18 by Bedford/St. M artin's
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be
expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes or in writing by the Publisher.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 25 24 23 22 21 20
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Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments and copyrights are found at the back of the book on page 442, 111l1ic/1 constitute an extension of
the copyright page. All contrib11tio11s from faculty, stqff, and st11dents connected to the A cade111ic Writing Program at the
University of Maryla11d are individually credited at the beginning of those chapters.

Author Acknowledgments
As the director of the Academic Writing Program, I first want to recognize the amazing dedication of
all of the instructors in our program for continually reflecting on and fine-tuning their own prac-
tices so that we offer rigorous and effective rhetorical instruction to the students at the University
of Maryland.Thanks especially to those instructors who responded so thoughtfully to the many
surveys regarding this new textbook creation. Instructors Katie Bramlett, Catherine Bayly, Elizabeth
Catchmark, Melvette Davis, Katherine Joshi, Tricia Raysor, Marina Seamans, Britt Starr, and Nathan
Tillman served heroically and brilliantly on the committee that composed this textbook. I lear ned so
much from their insights, and I was grateful to be part of their team . Our administrative coordinator
Scott Eklund was an enormous help to us throughout the composition process, providing feedback
on our work, offering his own contributions, and supporting our efforts. I also want to thank Jennifer
Siu-Wai Lee for submitting the winning image in our UMD Student Cover Artwork Contest, spon-
sored by Bedford/Macmillan. UMD students Brittany Boyd, Ashcr Moldwin, Makayla Machovcc,
Judith T soi, Tarika Sankar, Sophie Warfield, and Savanna Wright shared their work with us and granted
permission for it to be shared with future English 101 students.We greatly appreciate their intellectual
generosity, and we're proud that these students excelled in our program. Finally, I want to thank all the
students taking English 101 for their efforts and for their writing, which continue to shape our ideas
and practices in the classroom.
iii
Table of Contents
SECTION 1 Course Introduction 1
Introduction 2
What Is Academic Writing? 4
2 What Do Rhetorical Situ ations Have to Do with Genres? 14
3 Should Writers Use They Own English? 18
4 Style and Stand ards in the Composition/Communication
C lassroom 24
5 Shattering Black Flesh: Black Intellectual Writing in t he Age of
Ferguson 27
6 Writi ng in Pub lic: English 101 32
SECTION 2 Summary 34
7 From Writing Summaries and Paraphrases to Writing Yourself
into Academic Conversations 35
8 Comparing Summaries of Vershawn Ash anti Young's "Should
Writers Use They Own English?" 46
9 Writing in Pub lic: Summary 49
SECTION 3 Rhetorical Analysis 52

10 Why Read Argu ments Critically and Rhetorically? 53
11 Rhetorical Analysis 59
12 Exi gence 73
13 The Justice Work of Rhetorical Analysis : "Demagoguery: A Case
Study," Annotations of a Genre 76
14 Call for Unity a n d Letter from Birmingham Jail 82
15 Writing in Public: Rh e torical Analysis 92
iv
F earless Writin g : Rhe toric, Inquiry, Argument
SECTION 4 Stasis 94
16 Inquiry and Stasis 95
17 Arguments of Fact 100
18 Arguments of Definition 114
19 Evaluation Arguments 127
20 Causal Arguments 139
21 Proposal Arguments 154
SECTION 5 Inquiry 167

22 From Identifying Issues to Forming Questions 168
23 Finding Evidence 180
24 Evaluating Sources 188
25 What Do You Wonder?: From Personal Experience to Academic
Inquiry 194
26 Personal Experience as a Step Towards Inquiry 197
27 Public Genres: Presentations 199
28 The Inquiry Essay: What It Is and Why It Matters 203
29 Asking Questions 210
30 Writing in Public: Inquiry Presentation 216
SECTION 6 Digital Composing 218

31 Multimodal Arguments 219
32 How Does Rhetoric Work in Multimodal Projects? 232
33 Hyperlinking Sources: Attribution in Digital Composition 249
34 Writing in the Dig ital Age 252
35 Writing in Public: Digital Composing 263
SECTION 7 Argume nt 264

36 Researched Arguments 265
37 Structuring Arguments 268
38 From Introductions to Conclusions 285
39 Crafting Counterarguments 304
40 Parts of a Full Argument 309
41 Understanding the Position Paper 312
42 Protecting Black G irls 322
43 Writing in Public: Position Paper 327
V
Fearless Writing: Rhetoric, Inquiry, Argument
SECTION 8 Public Remediation 329

44 Re-imagining Your Scholarship: What is Remediation? 330
45 Using Genres to Inform, Narrate, or Persuade 334
46 Imagining an Audience 340
47 Responding to One Eve nt: Two Rhetorical Situations, Two
Genres 344
48 lnfographics: Visual Instructions 351
49 Editorials & Opinion Pieces 357
50 Photo Essays 364
51 Write and Read Effecti vely on Public Social Media 369
52 The Author's/Artist's Statement 371
53 The Issue of Overfishing in the United States lnfographic 377
54 Writing in Public: Remediation 381
SECTION 9 Style, Revision, and Reflection 384

55 Shitty First Drafts 385
56 Revising, Editing, and Reflecting 387
57 Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult
Writers 400
58 Thirteen (Lucky!) Strategies for Revision 408
59 Integrating Sources 411
60 Citing Sources; Avoiding Plagiarism 416

61 Drafting and Revising a Working Thesis 420
62 Building Effective Paragraphs 423
63 Tighten Wordy Sentences 430
64 Strengthening and Weakening Claims as a Rhetorical
Strategy 433
65 The Known-New Contract: Re thinking "Flow" in Your
Writing 435
66 Exe rcises to Revise Your Position Paper 437
67 Re-seeing Your Inquiry after Draft 1 440
vi
Introduction
Jessica Enoch
Greetings and welcome to English 101: Academic Writing at the University of Maryland!
As the Director of the Academic Writing Program, I want to introduce you to the course and
co this textbook. The skills, knowledge, and practices you gain through actively participating in this
course are critical for your future as a student, a professional, and a member of the public. I hope you'll
embrace this course with excitement and r igor. From the o utset, I want to note that this textbook was
crafted for the goals of the Academic Writing course at the University of Maryland (UMD). Thus, this
textbook is specifi cally geared to support and gu ide you as you write your way through this semester
of English 101.
As you'll discuss with your instructor and as you'll read in this textbook, to learn the practices
of academic writing is to learn how to contribute to conversations of significance. Therefore, the aim
of this course is to enable you to write within our UMD community and help you to engage your
peers and professors in discussions relevant to your coursework. But the idea for this course is not fo r
you to think that the writing skills you gain in English 101 will only help you with your history or
engineering courses. Rather, the goal is for you to see that the boundary between the writing you do
for school and the writing you do outside it is not impassable. In fact, an objective for this class is for
you to understand that the skills you gain in English 101 can and should transfer to settings w ithin and
beyond the university, enabling you co participate in both the public and professional situations you'll
encounter while you're a student here at UMD and after you g raduate. Ideally, what you learn in chis
class will help you to shape the world around you in positive ways.
To take up this work, your Academic Writing course and chis textbook work along two main
learning trajectories. The first trajectory helps you to become an active and responsible participant
in conversations of importance to you by gaining expertise in rhetoric. Though some may understand
rhetoric as a kind of"empty" talk (i.e., "that's just rhetoric"), the Academic Writing Program at UMD
defines rhetoric in the most traditional sense: it is the use of effective and ethical communication
practices that depend on strategies of summary, analysis, inquiry, listening, research, and persuasion or
argument- rhetorical strategies that, as I discuss below, are infused with diverse language choices that
arc both creative and compelling.
Over the course of this semester, you'll practice these rhetorical skills through the major writing
projects. After inspecting your syllabus, you'll notice that you try out persuasion and argument towards
the end of the semester, after you've fine-tuned your skills in summarizing, listening, analyzing, inquir-
ing, and researching. You might ask, " Why do I have to move through this process first' Why can't I
just learn to argue my case and prove my point from the get- go'"The answer to these questions is that
effective academi c writing (and I would argue that all good writing) happens when the writer resists
jumping into debates and launching off-the-cuff arguments or knee-jerk responses to issues. Instead,
thoughtful argumentation occurs when a person works first to understand the viewpoints of those
with whom they're in conversation (summary); when they exanune why alternative positions may be
persuasive (analysis); when they ask probing questions about the issue at hand and reAect on their po-
sition to assess what they know (and don't know) (inquiry); and when they conduct research as a way
2
Introduction
to learn more about the issue.As you move through this process as a student of English 101, you will
learn not only to argue but also to listen and to allow your own stance to evolve given the questions
you've asked and the new knowledge you've gained.
You'll notice too that within your writing projects for the semester, you'll encounter assignments
and writing genres you're likely familiar with and ones that may be unfamiliar to you, and you may
ask why a digital assignment is part of the course sequence for English 101. While all of the assign-
ments in the course ask you to experiment with different genres and rhetorical modes, the digital
project does this work and more as it prompts you to experiment with the affordances of digital com-
posing: hyperlinks, visuals, audio, moving images, and more. The goal here is for you to explore new
ways of thinking through and writing about your issue by relying on modalities different from more
traditional interfaces like Microsoft Word. Indeed, digital modes of composing surround us-from
social media platforms and websites to wikis and podcasts. A major part of the English 101 course is
to gain the rhetorical acuity to knmv how, when, and why employing digital genres (as well as analog
genres) would be relevant and rhetorically effective.
I noted above that the Academic Writing course works along two main traJectories. The sec-
ond tr,rjectory is one that habituates you to the writing process of drafting, composing, reflecting on
what you've composed, revising, and then reflecting again on that final project. Research in the field
of rhetoric and composition (in fact, research we've conducted in the Academic Writing Program
at UMD) suggests that revision and reflection are key modes through which students become more
aware of their writing practices and more adept at understanding what works, what doesn't, and why
as well as how to change composing practices towards the ends of crafting more effective writing. For
you this semester, reflection means stepping back from your writing project and process and thinking
abouc what you've done (and didn't do); it means asking hard questions about your rhetorical deci-
sions and considering how you might revise so that your writing is stronger and more thoughtful.
R.eflection work for you this se111ester will also entail re-considering the argu111ent you're developing
about an issue as a means of thinking about how you might shift or refine your evolving position and
claims. You should be reflecting on your writing and your arguments throughout the semester, and
your reflections should help you gauge your invest111ents in the class and in your writing.These reflec-
tive moments also enable your instructor to see how you're assessing your writing, experimenting with
new strategies, reconsidering your claims, and making smart changes to your process and product.
A final and critical point about all of the writing you will co111pose this se111ester. A 111ajor
learning objective for English 101 that is represented in this textbook is for you to understand and
experiment with language diversity and stylistic variety in your writing. To be sure, you will learn the
rhetorical moves of traditional academic writing, often referred to as Standard Written English. But as
evidenced in readings such as Vershawn Young's "Should Writers Use They Own English?" compelling
and rhetorically eflective writing comes in a variety of standards, styles, and formats-there is not just
one way to produce meaningful writing (acaden1ic writing or otherwise). English 101 is a place for
you to engage with diverse voices, styles, Englishes, and even languages and to identify and choose the
language and style that you feel best suits your purposes and the rhetorical situation.
I invite you to embrace the rigor, the joy, and indeed the difficulty oflearning to compose
thoughtfully and powerfully. I hope your semester of English 101:Acadernic Writing is a productive
one, and I especially hope this textbook enables you to grow as a writer, thinker, and participant in the
conversations important to you.
Sincerely,
Jessica Enoch
D irector of Academic Writing
Professor of English
jenoch l@umd.edu
preferred pronouns: she/her
3
7
CHAPTER I
What Is Academic Writing?

Stuart Greene and April Udinsky
What Are the Habits of Mind of Academic Writers?

This chapter introduces you to the habits of mind and core skills of academic writing. By habits of
mind, we mean the patterns of thought that lead you to question assumptions and opinions, explore
alternative opinions, anticipate opposing arguments, compare one type of experience to another, and
identif)• the causes and consequences of ideas and events. These forms of critical thinking demand an
inquiring mind that welcomes complexities and seeks out and weighs many different points of view,
a mind willing to enter complex conversations both in and out of the academy.We discuss academic
habits of mind in the rest of Chapter I.
Such habits of mind are especially important today, when we are bombarded with appeals to buy
this or that product and with information that m ay or may not be true. For exa111ple, in "106 Science
Claims and a Truckful of Baloney" (T11e Best American Science and i\lature Wrili11g, 2005), William Speed
Weed illustrates the extent to which the claims of science vie for our attention alongside the claims of
advertising. H e notes that advertisers often package their clai111s as science, but wonders whether a box
of Cheerios really can reduce cholesterol.
fu readers, we have a responsibility to test the clain1s of both science and advertising in order
to decide what to believe and act upon .Weed found that "very few of the 100 claims" he evaluated
"proved completely true" and that "a good number were patently falsc." Tcsting the truth of claims-
learning to consider information carefully and critically and to weigh competing points of view before
making our own j udgments- gives us power over our own lives.
The habits of mind and practices valued by academic writers arc probably ones you already share.
You are behaving "academically" when you contparison shop, a process that entails learning about the
product in the media and on the Internet and then looking at the choices firsthand before you decide
which one you \.vjll purchase. You employ these same habits of mind when you deliberate over casting
a vote in an election.You inform yourself about the issues that are most pressing; you learn about the
candidates' positions on these issues; you consider other arguments for and against both issues and can-
didates; and you weigh those arguments and your own understanding to determirn: which candidate
you will support.
Fundamentally, academic habits of mind are analytical. When you consider a variety of factors
before making a shopping choice-the quality and functionality of the item you plan to buy, how it
meets your needs, how it compares to similar items- you are conducting an analysis. That is, you are
pausing to examine the reasons why you should buy something, instead of simply handing over your
cash and saying," 1 want one of those."
To a certain extent, analysis involves breaking something down into its various parts and then
reflecting on how the parts do or don't work together. For example, when you deliberate over your
vote, you may consult one of those charts that newspapers often run around election time: A list of
candidates appears across the top of the chart, and a list of issues appears on the side. W ith a chart
from a credible news source in hand, you can scan me columns to see where each candidate stands
on the issues, and you can scan the rows to see how the candidates compare on a particular issue.The
"What Is Academic Writing?" from Frc.>m btq,iiry to Academic J,Vririllg, Fourth Ed ition, by Stuart Greene and April Lidinsk.··y, pp.
3---19 (Chapter 1). Copyright © 2018 by lkdford/ St. Martin•s.
4
What Is Academic Writing? CHAPTER 1
newspaper editors have performed a preliminary analysis for you.T hey've asked, "Who are the can-
didates?""What are the issues>" and "Where does each candidate stand on the issues?" ; and they have
presented the answers to you in a format that can help you make your decision .
But you still have to perform your own analysis of the informatio n before you cast your ballot.
Suppose no candidate holds your position on every issue. Whom do you vote for> Which issues are
most important to you;, O r suppose two candidates hold your position on every issue. Which one do
you vote for?What characteristics or experience arc you looking for in an elected official? And you
may want to investigate further by visiting the candidates'Web sites or by talking with your friends to
gather their thoughts o n the election .
As you can sec, analysis involves more than simply disassembling or dissecting something. It is a
process of continually asking questions and looking for answers. Analysis reflects, in the best sense of
the word, a skeptical habit of m ind, an unwillingness to settle for obvious answers in the quest to un-
derstand why things are the way they are and how they m ight be different.
This book will help you develop the questioning, evaluating, and conversational skills you already
have into strategies that w ill improve your ability to make careful, informed j udgments about the often
conflicting and confusing information you are confronted with every day. With these strategies, you
will be in a position to use your writing skills to create change where you feel it is most needed.
The first steps in developing these skills are to recognize the key academic habits of mind and
then to refine your practice of them. We explore five key habits of mind in the rest of this chapter:
1. inquiring,
2. seeking and valuing complexity,
3. understanding that academic writing is a conversation,
4. understanding that writing is a process, and
5. reflecting.
Academic Writers Make Inquiries

Academic writers usually study a body of information so closely and from so many different perspec-
tives that they can ask questions tl1at may not occur to people who are just scanning the information.
That is, academic writers learn to make inquiries. Every piece of academic writing begins with a
question about the way the world works, and the best q uestions lead to rich, complex insights that
o thers can learn from and build on.
You will find that the ability to ask good questions is equally valuable in your daily life. Asking
thoughtful questions about politics, popular culture, work, or anything else- questions like, What
exactly did that candidate mean by " Family values arc values for all of us," anyway? W hat is lost and
gained by br inging Tolkien's u,rd of the R.ings trilogy to the screen? What does it take to move ahead in
this company;,- is the first step in understanding how rhe world works and how it can be changed.
Inquiry typically begins with observation , a careful noting of phenomena or behaviors that
puzzle you or challenge your beliefs and values (in a text o r in the real world). Observers attempt to
understand phenomena by asking questions (Why does this exist? Why is this happening? D o things
have to be this way') and examining alternatives (Maybe this doesn't need to exist. Maybe this
could happen another way instead.).
For example, Steven Pearlstein, a professor of public affairs at George Mason U niversity, observes
that only a small percentage of the students he teaches are enrolled as majors in the humanities. This
prompts him to ask why this is the case, particularly because students express their appreciation for
the o pportunity to read popular works of history. In his essay "Meet tl1c Parents Who Won't Let Their
Children Study Literature," he also points out that faculty at other universities, including H arvard,
share his concern that fewer and fewer students are majoring in English or history. H e wonders why
this is the case and finds that parents, the media, and politicians all advise students to steer clear of tl1e
liberal arts. He wonders further why parents in particular would adopt such a view, and he examines
5
SECTION I Course In troduction
different explanations such as parents' anxieties over debt, the trends toward professionalism, and parents'
own interests. Parents, he concludes, want to see a "direct line" between what their children study and
a job.This, Pearlstein argues, is unfortunate since the available data show that students completing a
major in the humanities have many job opportunities. In the end, he asks what happens to students
who m ajor in fields to please their parents and who lack the motivation to study what they are pas-
sionate about. For that matter, what will happen if fewer and fewer students learn " discipline, per-
sistence, and how to research, analyze, conununicate clearly and think logically"?
In her reading on the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, one of our stu-
dents observed that the difficulties many immigrant groups experienced when they fi rst arrived in the
U nited States arc not acknowledged as struggles for civil rights.This student of Asian descent wonde.-ed
why the difficulties Asians faced in assimilating into American culture are not seen as analogous to the
efforts of Afr ican Americans to gain civil rights (Why are things this way'). In doing so, she asked a
number of relevant questions: What do we leave out when we tell stories about ourselves' Why reduce
the struggle for civil rights to black-and-white terms' How can we represent the multiple struggles of
people who have contr ibuted to building our nation? T hen she exa111ined alternatives- di fferent ways
of presenting the history of a nation that prides itself on justice and the protection of its people 's civil
rights (Maybe this doesn't need to exist. Maybe this could happen another way.). The academic writ-
ing you will read- and write yourself- starts with questions and seeks to find rich answers.
-. . ■1111"■"111··-L______________________________~
1 Observe. N ote phenomena or behavio rs that puzzle you or challenge your beliefs and values.
2 Ask questions. Consider why things arc the way they arc.
3 Examine alternatives. Explore how things could be different.
Academic Writers Seek and Value Complexity

Seeking and valu ing complexity are what inquiry is all about.As you read academic argum ents (for
example, about school choice), observe how the m edia work to influence your opinions (for example,
in political ads), or analyze data (for example, about candidates in an election), you will explore reasons
why things are the way they are and how they might be different . When you do so, we encourage you
not to settle for simple either/or reasons. Instead , look for multiple explanations.
When we rely o n binary thinking- imagining there are only two sides to an issue---we tend
to ignore information that does not fall tidily into one side or the other. R eal- world questions (H ow
has the Internet changed our sense of what it means to be a writer>What are the global repercussions
-------.
of fast- food prod uction and consumption' H ow do we make sense of terrorism?) don't have easy
for-or-against answers. R emember that an issue is open to dispute and can be explored and debated.
Issue- based questions, then, need to be approached with a mind open to complex possibilities. (We say
more about idcntif),ing issues and formulating issue-based questions in Chapte r 22.)
If we take as an example the issue of terrorism, we would discover that scholars of religion, eco-
nomics, ethics, and politics tend to ask very different questions about terrorism and to propose very
different approaches for addressing this worldwide problem. T his doesn't mean that one approach is
right and the others are wrong; it means that complex issues are likely to have multiple explanations,
rather than a simple choice between A and B.
In her attempt to explain the popularity of hip-hop culture, Bronwen Low, a professor of ed-
ucation, provides a window on the steps we can take to examine the complexity of a topic. In the
introductory chapters of her book, Slam School: Leaming Thro11gh Conflict i11 the Hip !lop and Spoken
Word Classroom, she begins with the observation that hip-hop "is the single- most influential cultur-
al force shaping contemporary urban youth culture in the United States, and its international reach
6
- Bedford/St. Martin's - 9781319377540
is growing." She then defines what she means by hip- hop culture, distinguish ing it from "rapping,"
and helps readers understand hip- hop culture as encompassing graffiti art and "a whole culture of
style," including "fashion" and "sensibility." Motivated by a sense of curiosity, if not puzzlement, Low
asks questions that guide her inquiry: What is it that makes hip-hop culture so compelling to young
people across such a wide spectrum of race, culture, and gender? Further, how can social, cultural, and
literary critics better understand the evolution of new forms of language and performance, such as
spoken-word poetry, in "youth- driven popular culture"? Notice that she indicates that she will frame
her inquiry using the multiple perspectives of social, cultural, and literary critics. In turn, Low ex-
plains that she began to answer these questions by giving herself a "hip- hop education." She attended
spoken-word poetry festivals ("slams") across the U nited States, listened to the music, and read both
"academic theory and journalism" to see what others had to say about " poetry's relevance and cool-
ness to youth."
In still another example, one of our students was curious about why her younger brother strug-
gled in school and wondered if boys learn differently than girls. She began her inquiry by reading an
article on education, " It's a Boy Thing (or Is It?):' and realized that researchers have begun to study the
question that she was curious about. H owever, rather than pn:senting a dear-cut answer, the author of
this article, Sara Mead, pointed out that researchers have generated a number of conAicting opinions.
Mead's article motivated our student to deepen her inquiry by examining different perspectives in the
disciplines of cognitive theory, education, counseling psychology, and sociology. She w,is able to refine
her question based on an issue that puzzled her: If educators are aware that boys have difficulty in
school despite receiving more attention than girls receive, how can research explain what seems like a
persistent gap between the achievement of boys and girls? In looking at this issue-based question, the
student opened herself up to complexity by resisting sin1ple armvers to a question that others had not
resolved.
1 Reflect on what you observe. Clarify your initial interest in a phenomenon or behavior by
focusing on its particular details.Then reflect on what is most interesting and least interesting
to you about these details, and why.
2 Exan~ine issue s from multiple points of view. Imagine more than two sides to the issue,
and recognize that there may well be other points of view, too.
3 Ask issue-based questions. Try to put into words questions that will help you explore why
things arc the way they are.
Academic Writers See Writing as a Conversation

Another habit of mind at the heart of academic writing is the understanding that ideas always build on
and respond to other ideas,just as they do in the best kind of conversations.Academ ic conversations
are quite similar to those you have through email and social media: You are responding to som ething
someone else has written (or said) and are writing back in anticipation of future responses.
Academic writing also places a high value on the belief that good, thoughtful ideas come from
conversations with others, many others. As your exposure to other viewpoints increases, as you take
more and different points of view into consideration and build on them, your own ideas wiU develop
more fully and fairly. You already know that to get a full picture of something, often you have to ask
for multiple perspectives.When you want to find out what "really" happened at an event w hen your
friends are telling you different stories, you listen to all of them and then evaluate the evidence to
draw conclusions you can stand behind- just as academic writers do.
T heologian Marrin Marty starts a conversation about hospitality in his book VVhen Fait/rs Collide
(2004) . H ospitality is a word he uses to describe a human behavior that has the potential to bring about
real understanding among people who do not share a common faith or culture. fu Marty points out,
7
finding common ground is an especially important and timely concern "in a world where strangers
meet strangers with gunfire, barrier walls, spiritually land- mined p;iths, and the spirit of revenge." H e
believes that people need opportunities to share their stories, their values, and their beliefs; in doing so,
they feel less threatened by ideas they do not understand or identif), with.
Yet Marty anticipates the possibility that the notion of hospitality will be met with skepticism or
incomprehension by those who find the term "dainty." Current usage of the term-as in "hospitality
suites" and "hospitality industries"- differs from historical usage, particularly biblical usage. To counter
the incredulity or incomprehension of those who do not immediately understand his use of the term
hospitality, Marty gives his readers entree to a conversation with other scholars who understand the
complexity and power of the kind of hospitality shown by people who welcome a stranger into their
world. The stranger he has in mind may simply be the person who moves in next door, but that per-
son could also be an immigrant, an exile, or a refugee.
Marty brings another scholar, Darrell Fasching, into the conversation to explain that hospitality
entails welcoming"the stranger .. . [which] inevitably involves us in a sympathetic passing over into the
other's life and stories" (cited in Marty, p. 132). And John Koenig, another scholar Marty cites, traces
the biblical sources of the term in an effort to show the value of understanding those we fear. That
understanding, Marty argues, might lead to peace among warring factions. The conversation Marty
begins on the page helps us see that his views on bringing about peace have their source in other peo-
ple's ideas. In turn, the fact that he draws on multiple sources gives strength to Marty's argument .
The characteristics that make for effective oral conversation are also in play in effective academ-
ic conversation: empathy, respect, and a willingness to exchange and revise ideas. Empathy is the
ability to understand the perspectives that shape what people think, believe, and value. To express both
empathy and respect for the positions of all people involved in the conversation, academic writers
try to understand the conditions under which each opinion might be true and then to represent the
strengths of that position accurately.
For example, imagine that your firm commitment to protecting the environment is challenged by
those who see the value of developing land rich with oil and other resources. In challenging their po-
sition, it would serve you well to understand their motives, both economic (lower gas prices, new jobs
that will create a demand for new houses) and political (less dependence on foreign oil). If you can
demonstrate your knowledge of these facturs, those committed to develo ping resources in protected
areas will listen to you. To convey empathy and respect while presenting your own point of view, you
m..ight introduce your argument this way:
Although it is important to develop untapped resources in remote areas of the United

States both to lower gas p rices and create new jobs a nd to e liminate o ur dependence on
other countries' resources, it is in everyone's interest to use alternative sources of power and
protect o ur natural resources.
-------.
As you demonstrate your knowledge and a sense of shared values, you could also describe the condi-
tions under which you might change your own position.
People engaging in productive conversation try to create change by listening and responding to
one another rather than dominating one another. Instead of trying to win an argument, they focus
on reaching a mutual understanding. Th.is does not mean that effective communicators do not take
strong positions; more often than not they do. However, they are more likely to achieve their goals by
persuading o thers instead of ignoring them and their points of view. Similarly, writers come to every
issue with an agenda. But they realize that they may have to compromise on certain points to carry
those that mean the most to chem. They understand that their perceptions and opinions may be flawed
or limited, and they are willing to revise them when val.id new perspectives are introduced.
In an academic community, ideas develop through give and take, through a conversation that
builds on what has come before and grows stronger from multiple perspectives.You will find this
dynamic at work in your classes when you discuss your ideas: You will build on other people's insights,
and they w ill build on yours. As a habit of mind, paying attention to academic conversations can im-
prove the th.inking and writing you do in every class you take.
8
1 B e receptive to the ideas of others. Listen carefully and empathetically to what others
have to say.
2 B e re spectful of the ideas of others. When you refer to the opinions of others, represent
them fairly and use an evenhanded tone.Avoid sounding scornful or dismissive.
3 Engage with the ideas of others. Try to understand how people have arrived at their
feelings and beliefs.
4 B e flexible in your thinking about the ideas of others. Be willing to exchange ideas and
to revise your own opinions.
Academic Writers Understand That Writing Is a Process

Academic w riting is a process of defining issues, formulating questions, and developing sound argu-
ments.This view of writing counters a number of popular myths: that writing depends on inspiration,
that writing should happen quickly, that learning to write in one context prepares you to write in
other contexts, and that revision is the same as editing. The w riting process addresses these myths. First,
choosing an idea that matters to you is one way to make your writing matter. And there's a better
chance that writing you care about will contribute in a meaningful way to the conversation going on
about a given issue in the academic community. Second, writers who invest time in developing and
revising their ideas will improve the quality of both their ideas and their language- their ability to be
specific and express complexity.
There are three main stages to the writing process: collecting information, drafting, and revising.
We introduce them here.
Collect Information and Material

Always begin the process of writing an essay by collecting in writing the material- the information ,
ideas, and evidence-from which you w ill shape your own argument. Once you have read and marked
the pages of a text, you have begun the process of building your own argument. The important point
here is that you start to put your ideas on paper. Good writing comes from returning to your ideas on
your own and w ith your classmates, reconsidering them, and revising them as your thinking develops.
This is not something you can do with any specificity unless you have written down your ideas.The
following box shows the steps for gathering information from your reading, the first stage in the pro-
cess of writing an academic essay.
Steps to Collecting Information and Material
1 Mark your texts as you read. Note key terms; ask questions in the margins; indicate
connections to other texts.
2 List quotations you find interesting and provocative. You might even write short notes
to yourself about what you find significant about the quotations.
3 List your own ideas in response to the reading or readings. Include what you've
observed about the way the author or authors make their arguments.
4 Sketch out the similarities and differences among the authors whose work you
plan to use in your essay. Where would they agree or disagree? H ow would each respond
to the others' arguments and evidence'
9
SECTION I Course Introduction
Draft. and Draft Again

The next stage in the writing process begins when you are ready to think about your focus and how to
arrange the ideas you have gathered in the collecting stage.Writers often find that writing a first draft
is an act of discovery, that their ultimate focus emerges during this initial drafting process. Sometimes it
is only at the end of a four-page draft that a writer says, "Aha! This is what r really want to talk about
in this essay!" Later revisions of an essay, then, are not simply editing or cleaning up the grammar of a
first draft. Instead, they truly involve revision, seeing the first draft again to establish the dearest possible
argument and the most persuasive evidence. This means that you do not have to stick with the way a
draft turns out the first time.You can-and must!- be willing to rewrite a substantial amount of a first
draft if the focus of the argument changes, or if in the process of writing new ideas emerge that enrich
the essay. This is why it's important not to agonize over wording in a first draft: It's difficult to toss out a
paragraph you 'vc sweated over for hours. U se the first draft to get your ideas down on paper so that you
and your peers can discuss what you see there, with the knowledge that you (like your peers) will need
to stay open to the possibility of changing an aspect of your focus or argument.
. • • t ............_
1 Look through the materials you have collected to see what interests you most and what
you have the most to say about.
2 Identify what is at issue and what is open to dispute.
3 Formulate a question that your essay will respund to.
4 Select the material you will include, and decide what is outside your focus.
5 Consider the types of readers who might be most interested in w hat you have to say.
6 Gather more n1aterial once you've decided on your purpose- w hat you want to teach
your readers.
7 Formulate a working thesis that conveys the point you want to make.
8 Consider possible arguments against your position and your response to them.
Revise Significantly
The final stage, revising, might involve several different drafts as you continue to sharpen your insights
and the organ ization of what you have written.You and your peers will be reading one another's
drafts, offering feedback as you move from the Lirger issues to the smaller ones. It should be clear by
-------. now that academic w riting is done in a community ofthinkers:That is, people read other people's
drafts and make suggestions for further clarification, further development of ideas, and som etimes
further research. This is quite different from simply editing someone's writing for grJnunatical errors
and typos. Instead, drafting and revising with real readers allows you to participate in the collaborative
spirit of the academy, in which knowledge making is a group activity that comes out of the conversa-
tion of ideas. lmport1ntly, this process approach to writing in the company of real readers rnirrors the
conversation of ideas carried on in the pages of academic books and journals.
10
Wh a t Is Academic Writing? CHAPTER 1
1 Draft and revise the introduction and conclusion.

2 Clarify any o bscure or confusing passages your peers have pointed out.
3 Provide details and textual evidence where your peers have asked for new or more
information .
4 Make sure you have included opposing points of view and have addressed them fairly.
5 Consider reorganization.
6 Make sure that every paragraph contributes clearly to your thesis or main claim
and that you have included signposts along the way, phr,ises that help a reader understand your
purpose ("H ere I turn to an example fron1 current movies to show how this issue is alive and
well in pop culture.").
7 Consider using strategies you have found effective in other reading you have done
for class (repeating words or phrases for effect, asking rhetorical questions, varying your
sentence length).
Academic Writers Reflect

Reflection entails pausing and taking note of what you are doing- finding answers to complex ques-
tions about why unemployment persists or solving a problem to ensure that schools can be safe places
where all kids can learn- and observing yourself for a moment. For example, as you are skimming
articles to find answers to questions or searching for possible solutions, it's valuable to monitor what you
feel you are learning, particularly if you are accustomed to doing research in an onli.ne environment
where it's easy to get distracted. Monitoring entails asking yourself a few questions:What did I just
read' D id I comprehend the writer's argument? Do I need to go back and reread the argument? It's
equally useful to evaluate what you are learning and what you still want or need to know to ensure
that you discuss an issue in complex ways that avoid binary thinking.Try to fom111lale strategies, based
on your own self- assessment, to address any challenges, such as comprehending a technical argument.
What other sources of information can you consult' Whom can you ask for additional help? Finally,
apply what yo11 learn abo11/ your ow11 leaming by compiling a repertoire of strategies that can guide you in
the reading, writing, and problem solving that you are doing in different classes.
R eflection is essentially having an awareness of o ur own thought processes. What do I want to
accomplish ' Is this the right question to ask? What othe r questions could I be asking? Where should
I look for answers? What steps should I take' Why' Educator Jackie Gerstein developed the following
cycle of questions for taking control of our own learning:
Was I resourceful in terms of finding information, resources, and materials?

• Did I ask other people for feedback and inform ation; to collaborate?
• Did I share my work and findings with others?
• Did I learn something new?
• Did I try to either make something better or create something new, rather t han just
copy something t hat already exists?
• Did I approach learning as an open-ended p rocess, open to new and all possibi lities?
• Did I accept failure as part of the process and use it to inform my learning?
-Jackie Gerstein
11
Gerstein is insistent when she explains, "If we don't create a process of reflecting ... then we are leaving
learning up to chance."
Reflection in writing can focus on different types of knowledge: (1) the content of an issue, such as
how economic resources are distributed in different neighborhoods and schools or trade policies that
affect employment; (2) the strategies one m.ight use to write an essay to persuade readers that inunigra-
rion policies do not affect opportunities in employment as much as trade policies do; (3) the procedures
for developing an argument, such as using stories of people affected by unemployment or the failures
of providing safe environments for kids in and out of school; and (4) the co11ditions under which certain
kinds of strategies might work in one context or another. That is, stories might be a powerful way to
raise an issue for a class in sociology or education, but some hard data might be more appropriate in
developing a persuasive argument in economics. Making decisions like this one emphasizes the role of
reflection-monitoring, evaluating, developing st rategies, and taking control over your own learning.
Finally, reflection is an important habit of mind because the act of thinking and questioning
encourages us to critically examine our own lived experiences. In his memoir Berween the World a11d
1vfe, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes abom a moment in his life when he first became literate, and he explains
in the following passage how literacy-reading and writing- opened up a world that he wanted to
know more about. Here Coates, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant;' addresses his
son, as he does throughout his memoir, to tell a story of a time when his mother would make him
write when he was in trouble. For us, the story he conveys is about the power of reflection that comes
fi-om writing-the significance of writing to make thinking visible, to ask questions that prompt
Coates to consider his actions in the present, and to envision future actions based on what he has
learned.
Your grandmother taught me to read when I was only four. She also taught me to write,
by which I mean not simply organ izing a set of sentences into a series of paragraphs, but or-
ganizing them as a means of investigation. When I was in trouble at school (which was quite
often) she would make me write about it. The writing had to answer a series of questions:
Why did I feel the need to talk at the same time as my teacher? Why did I not believe that
my teacher was entitled to respect? How would I want someone to behave while I was
talking? What would I do the next time I felt the urge to talk to my friends during a lesson?
[Our emphasis].
Coates admits that his mother's assignment never really taught hin1 to "curb" his behavior, but these
early lessons were a powerfi.tl source of learning to " interrogate" the world. Reflecting on the past,
present, and future drew Coates into "consciousness," as he puts it. " Your grandmother was nor teach-
ing me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that
elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing-myself."
-------.
Researchers are consistent in describing the importance of encouraging us to think critically on
our own lived experiences before we begin to think about how we can participate in a project, take
action, and create meaningful change in our surroundings. The following steps can help you pause and
make sure learning is actually happening.
12
1 Monitor. Pause and ask yourself some questions: D id I comprehend the writer's argtunent?
Do I need to go back and reread the argument'
2 Evaluate. Assess what you are learning and what you still want or need to know to ensure
that you discuss an issue in complex ways that avoid binary thinking.
3 Formulate strategies. Identify some next steps , based on your own self- assessment, for
addressing any challenges, such as comprehending a technical argument, solving a problem
you have formulated, or answering a question you have posed. What other sources of
information can you consult? Whom can you ask for additional help?
4 Apply what you learn about your own learning. Write down some of the challenges
you have faced in writing-formulating a question, collecting materials, drafting, or revising,
for example. How have you dealt with those challenges' How would you apply what you have
learned to completing othe r academic writing assignments?
The five academic habits of nund we have discussed throughout this chapter- making inquiries,
seeking and valuing complexity, understanding writing as a conversation, understanding writing as a
process, and reflecting- arc fundamental patterns of thought you will need to cultivate as an academic
writer. The core skills we discuss through the rest of the book build on these habits of mind.
Moreover, the kind of writing we describe in ch is chapter may challenge some models of writ-
ing that you learned in high school, particularly the five-paragraph essay. The five-paragraph essay is a
genre, or kind, of writing that offers writers a conventional formula for transmitting information to
readers. Such a formula can be useful, but it is generally too limiting for acade mic conversations. By
contrast, academic writing is a genre responsive to the role that readers play in guiding writing and the
writing process. That is, academic writing is about shaping and adapting information for the purpose
of influencing how readers think about a given issue, not simply placing information in a conven-
tional orga1uzational pattern. We expect acadenuc readers to critically analyze what we have written
and anticipate w ri ters' efforts to address their concerns. Therefore, as writers, we need to acknowledge
different points of view, make concessions, recognize the limitations of what we argue, and provide
counterarguments. R eading necessarily plays a prominent role in the many forms of writing that you
do, but not necessarily as a process of simply gatheri ng information. Instead, as James Crosswhite sug-
gests in his book The Rhetoric of R eason, rcading"mcans m aking judgments about which of the many
voices and encounters can be brought together into productive conversation."
13
7
CHAPTER 2
What Do Rhetorical Situations Have to

Do with Genres?
Amy Braziller and Elizabeth Kleinfeld
When composing, a writer is always working within a rhetorical situation. That m eans the writer con-
siders the purpose of her piece, whom she wants to reach, how best to appeal to her reader, and what
sources and evidence to use, along with other considerations. The next step for the writer is to choose
how to best respond to her rhetorical situation. Which genre or genres are the best social response to
her situation?
Genres Respond to Rhetorical Situations

If we examine a particular event, we can see that there are numerous ways someone might choose to
respond. After the Orlando shooting in the Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, people chose to respond
in a variety of ways. Former President Barack Obama responded by releasing a press statement that
included, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims." Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, "We grieve w ith our friends in the US & stand in solidarity
with the LGBTQ2 community after today's terror attack." Samantha Bee, a comedic television talk
show host, used her show Full Frontal to issue her response:
After a massacre, the standard operating procedure is you stand on stage and deliver some
well-meaning words about how we will get through this together, how love wins, how love
conquers hate. That is great, that is beautiful, but you know what? F--- it .
Many people changed their profile pictures on Facebook to show solidarity. Perhaps you read or
posted a blog about it. At the Tony Awards, which took place the evening after the shootings, Ha111ilto11
playwTight Lin- Manuel Miranda chose to respond in a lin e in his acceptance speech: " And love is love
is love is love is love is love is love is love can not be killed or swept aside."
Consider different ways people might protest against something. They might make signs and
march, give a speech, create a public service announcement, circulate a petition, or write a letter to the
editor.The genre is chosen based on the rhetorical situation.
There are times, however, when genre is stipulated for you . In academic settings, you are often
given an assignment and told to compose a research essay, write a poem, or create a lab report based
on an experiment. In business settings, you might need to create a proposal, write a recommendatio n
report, or prepare a presentation.
Chapter 2, "Guided R eading,: Rhetorical Situations & Genres Together," from Be,iford Book of Genres, Second Edition, by Amy
l:lrazillcr and Elizabeth Kleinfeld, pp. 28-30 (Chapter 3). Copyright © 2018 by l:lcdford/ St. Martin's.
14
What Do Rhetorical Situations Have to Do with Genres? CHAPTER 2
A Meme Responds to a Rhetorical Situation

An Internet meme is a concept chat spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet through
blogging, email, or social media. M cmcs arc easily replicated and altered; for example, when Elizabeth
sees that a blogger has posted a photo of his ferret wearing a party hat and looking irritated, she can
take that concept and post on her lnstagram account a photo of her dog wearing a cowboy hat and
looking irritated. Amy might then see Elizabeth's meme and post to her Face book status a photo of
her cat wearing a baseball cap and looking irritated.
The rhetorical situation that the original blogger and Elizabeth and Amy are all responding to
is simple: They all have pets that they think are just adorable and find their pets' reactions to being
anthropomorphized hilarious. They are participating in a long tradition of pet owners sharing the
silliness of their own pets (purpose) with ocher pet owners (audience).
A related example is the Hipster Uama meme (see page 16). Hipster Llama appears in many varia-
tions on line. like most memes, amhorship is not identified. R ather, the meme can be revised, remixed,
and shared repeatedly and anonymously onlinc. To unpack this particular memc, let's first consider that
a person or persons composed it (or revised an existing version of it). Like all composers, the meme
creators worked within a rhetorical situation. l et's start by asking:What are the meme creators
doing, and why? What arc some decisions they have made as composers' Following is a preliminary
reading:
The composers are providing a commentary (purpose).

They arc conununicating to like-m inded readers on the Internet (audience).
They are using humor and satire to connect with their audience (drawing on the rhetorical
appeal, pathos).
They are working with both text and imagery (mode) and delivering the composition digi-
tally, on.line (medium).
Now, let's think about the composers' choice of genre.What are memes? H ow do they function?
What arc their typical qualities and conventions?
Memes often parody or poke fun at something or someone. T hey take many for ms but often
feature an image and a brief caption written in informal language (elements and style).
Often an image is prominent, and the words- typically what the subj ect of the mcmc is
saying or thinking- are presented in a large display font (design).
Memes draw on current topics and popular culture (sources).
H erc we provide a partial reading of the Hipster Llm11a meme. Notice the structure of the annotations
on page 17.This is a "guided reading."
15
Hipster Llama
AUT HOR UNKNOW N
16
What Do Rhetorical Situations Have to Do with Genres? CHAPTER 2
RHETORICAL SITUATION & CHOICES GENRE CONVENTIONS
What is the composer of Hipster Llama The composer of Hipster Llama

doing? chose to create a meme. What are
the conventions of a meme? To what
Purpose
extent is the composer adhering to
The composer of Hipster Llama memes pokes fun
them?
at hipsters, making fun of t hings hipsters say, their
values, and specifically, their haircuts. This particular Elements of the Genre
meme focuses on t he stereotype t hat hipsters are
Humor: Memes are designed to be humorous. The
more concerned w ith exploring their aesthetic sides
composer of t he Hipster Llama memes uses humor
t han on focusing on paid w ork, and are perhaps
t o poke fun at a particular group.
more concerned w it h their personal style than w hat
they produce. Repetition: Th is meme is part of a series. Viewers
can instantly recognize the use of the llama and th e
Audience fact that t his is a part of a larger series.
Because hipsters are often self-referentially ironic, Social media: Memes are d istributed online. They
it's likely that hipsters themselves are an audience. can be sent by email, posted on a b log, or shared
People w ho make fun of hipsters are also clearly on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and
part of the audie nce. lnstagram.
Rhetorical Appeals Style

The humor in t he meme is an appeal to pathos The text in t his meme uses a conversational tone.
because laughter is considered an emot ional Additionally, the text in a meme is fa irly brief, as is
response. The composer's knowledge of hipster t he case here.
hairstyles and attitudes is an appeal to ethos.
Design
Modes & Media
Visual with text. The llama is the center of focus,
Modes= text and visual. The meaning of the with the text compleme nt ing it . A meme usually
meme depend s upon both the text and the visual begins with a funny p hoto and th en attaches a
working together. caption that amplifies the humor. Here t he visual
Medium = digital. Memes circulate on the Internet shows the Hipster Llama accompanied by words he
and so are digital. might say.
Font: The font is usually bold, sans serif, and not
t oo flashy.
Sources
Memes usually draw on ideas in popular culture,
respond to news events, or highlight a celebrity.
Memes are often remixes of a visua l and a quote
t hat already exist. Here, the meme focuses on the
concept of the h ipst er, a popular culture concept.
17
7
CHAPTER 3
Should Writers Use They Own English?

Vershawn Ashanti Young
What would a composit ion course based on the method I urge look like?[ ... ] First, you must
clear your mind of [the following ... ]: "We affirm the students' right to their own patterns
and varieties of language-the d ialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they
find their own identity and style."
-Stanley Fish, "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3."
Cultural critic Stanley Fish come talkin bout- in his three- piece New York Times "What Should
Colleges Teach?" suit- there only one way to speak and write to get ahead in the world, that writin
teachers should "clear [they] mind of the orthodoxies that have taken hold in the composition world"
("Part 3"). H e say dont no student have a rite to they own language if that language make them "vul-
nerable to prejudice"; that " it may be true that the standard language is [. .. ] a device for protecting the
status quo, but that very truth is a reason for teaching it to students" (Fish "Part 3").
Lord, lord, lord! Where do I begin, cuz this man sho tryin to take the nation back to a time when
\Ve were less tolerant oflinguistic and racial differences.Yeah, I said racial difference, tho my man Stan
be talkin explicitly bout language differences.The two be intertwined. U sed to be a time when a
black person could get hanged from the nearest tree just cuz they be black. And they fingers and heads
(double entendre intended) get chopped off sometimes. Stanley Fish say he be appalled at blatant
prejudice, and get even madder at prejudice exhibited by those who claim it dont happen no mo (Fish
" H enry Louis Gates") . And it do happen-as he know- when folks dont get no jobs or get fired or
whatever cuz they talk and write Asian or black or with an Applachian accent or sound like whatever
aint the status quo. And Fish himself acquiesce to this linguistic prejudice when he come saying that
people make theyselves targets for racism if and ,vhen they dont write and speak like he do.
But dont nobody's language, dialect, or style make them "vulnerable to prejudice." It's
ATTITUDES. It be the way folks with some power perceive other people's language. Like the way
some view, say, black English when used in school or at work. Black English dont make it own-self
oppressed. It be negative views about other people usin they own language, like what Fish expressed in
his l\fYTblog, that make it so.
Th.is explain why so many bloggers on Fish's NYT comment page was tryin to school him on
why teachin one correct way lend a hand to choppin off folks' tongues. But, let me be fair to my man
Stan. He prolly unware that he be supportin language discrimination, cuz he appeal to its acceptable
form-standard language ideology also called "dominant language ideology" (Lippi- Green). Standard
language ideology is the belief that there is one set of dominant language rules that stem from a single
dominant discourse (like standard English) that a ll writers and speakers of English must conform to in
order to communicate effectively. Dominant language ideology also say peeps can speak whatcva the
heck way they want to- BUT AT HOME!
D ont get m e wrong, Fish aint all wrong. One of his points almost on da money-the o ne when
he say teachers of writin courses need to spend a lot of time dcalin straight with writin, not only with
"Should Writers Use They Own English?" byVcrshawn Ashanti Young, from lo111aj()Hrt1itl of Culwml St11die.s,Volumc 12 (2010).
pp. 110-117. Used \Vith permission by the author.
18
Should Writers Use They Own English? CHAPTER 3
topics of war, gender, race, and peace. But he dont like no black English and Native Amer ican rhetoric
mimng with standard English. Yeah, he tell teachers to fake like students have language rites. H e say,
If students infected with the facile egalitarianism of soft multicu lturalism declare, "I have a
right to my own language," reply, "Yes, you do, and I am not here to take that language
from you; I'm here to teach you another one." (Who could object to learning a second
language?) And then get on with it. (Fish "Part 3")
llesides encouraging teachers to be snide and patronizing, Fish flat out confusin (I would say he !yin,
but Momma say be nice).You cam start off sayin, "disabuse yo'self of the notion that students have a
right to they dialect" and then say to tell students: "Y'all do have a right." That be hypocritical. It further
disingenuous of Fish to ask: "Who could object to learning a second language?" What he really mean
by this rhetorical question is chat the "multiculturals" should be thrilled to leave they own dialect and
learn another one, the one he promote. If he meant everybody should be thrilled to learn another
dialect, then wouldnt everybody be learnin everybody's dialect? Wouldnt we all become m ultidialectal
and pluralingual? And that's my exact argument, that we all should know everybody's dialect, at least as
many as we can, and be open to the mix of them in oral and written communication (Young) .
See, dont nobody all the time, nor do they in the same way subscribe to or follow standard modes
of expression. Everybody m ix the dialect they learn at home with whateva other dialect or language
they learn afterwards. That's how we understand accents; that's how we can hear that some people are
from a Polish, Spanish, or French language background when they speak English. It's how we can tell
somebody is from the South, from Appalachia, from Chicago or any other regional background.We
hear that background in they speech, and it's often expressed in they writin too. It's natural (Coleman).
But some would say, " You cant m ix no dialects at work; how would peeps w ho aint from yo hood
understand ym,,"Thcy say, " You just gotta use standard English."Yct, even folks with good jobs in the
corporate world dont follow no standard English. Check this out: Reporter Sam Dillon write about a
survey conducted by the National Commission on Writing in 2004. H e say " that a third of employees
in the nation's blue- chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1
billion annually on remedial training" (A23) .
Now, some peeps gone say this illustrate how Fish be rite, why we need to be teachin mo stan-
dard granunar and stuff. If you look at it from Fish view, yeah it mean that. But if you look at it from
my view, it most certainly dont mean that. Instead, it mean that the one set of rules that people be ap-
plyin to everybody's dialects leads to perceptions that writers need "remedial training" or that speakers
of dialects are dumb. Teachin speakin and writin prescriptively, as Fish want, force people into patterns
of language that aint natural or easy to understand. A whole lot of folk could be writin and speakin
real, real smart if Fish and others stop using one prescriptive, foot-long ruler to measure the language
of peeps who use a yard stick when they communicate.
Instead of prescribing how folks should write or speak, I say we teach language descriptively. This
mean we should, for instance, teach how language fi.111ctions within and from various cultural perspec-
tives. And we should teach what it take to understand, listen, and write in multiple dialects simultane-
ously.We should teach how to let dialects comingle, sho nuffblend together, like blending the dialect
Fish speak and the black vernacular that, say, a lot- certainly not all-black people speak.
See, people be mo pluralingual than we wanna recognize. What we need to do is enlarge our
perspective about what good writin is and how good writin can look at work, at home, and at school.
The narrow, prescriptive lens be messin writers and readers all the way up, cuz we all been taught to
respect the dominant way to write, even if we dont, cant, or wont ever write that one way ourselves.
That be hegemony. Internalized oppression. Linguistic self-hate. But we should be mo flexible, mo ac-
ceptin of language diversity, language expansion, and creative language usage from ourselves and from
others both in formal and in formal settings.Why? Cuz nobody can or gone really master all the rules
of any language or dialect.
So, what happen when peeps dont meet t he dominant language rules? Well, some folks can get
away w ith not meeting those rules while others get punished, sometimes severely, for not doing so. Let
me go a lil mo way with this: Even university presidents and highly regarded English professors dont
always speak and write in the dominant standard, even when they bebeve they do.
19
Remember when Fish put former Harvard President Lawrence Summers on blast in 2002'
What had happened was, Summers called professor Cornell West to his office and went straight off on
the brotha for w ritin books everybody could read, for writin clear, accessible scholarship. Summers
apologized after the media got involved, sayin: " I regret any facu lty member leaving a conversation
feeling they are not respected" (qtd. in Fish, "Say It Ain't So") . Fish say:"ln a short, 13- word sentence,
the chief academic officer of the highest ranked university in the country, and therefore in the entire
world, has committed three granunatical crimes, failure to mark the possessive case, failure to specify
the temporal and the causal relationships between the conversations he has and the effects he regrets,
and failure to observe noun-pronoun agreement" ("Say It Ain't So").
But get this: Fish's correction ofSununcrs is suspect, according to a grammar evaluation by
linguist Kyoko lnoue (2002). lnoue say, "What the writer/speaker says (or means) often controls the
for m of the sentence." She say Summers' intent make his sentence clear and understandable, not rules
from the g rammar police- man.
But Fish gone ignore Inoue again, as he did back then in 2002. Fish gone say that the examples
of Summers and the corporate workers show reasons why we should teach mo standard grammar,
that if corporations and high ranked universities got folks who cant write rite, we gotta do a better
job ofteachin the rules.And since most of those workers are white, he gone also say he not supportin
prejudice. He dont like it when whites dont speak rite,just the same as he dont like it when Latinos
not speakin rite. Race aint got nothin to do with it, he gone add. It be only about speakin and writin
standard English. H e say his words apply to everybody not just to those who be wantin "a r ight to
they 0\:\'11 language."
But here what Fish dont get: Standard language ideology insist that minority people will never
becon1e an Ivy League English depamnent chair or president of H arvard University if they dont per-
fect they mastery of standard English. At the sam.c time the ideology instruct that white men will gain
such positions, even with a questionable handle of standard grammar and rhetoric (I think here of the
regular comments made about former President Bush's bad grammar and poor rhetoric). Fish respond
that this the way our country is so let's accept it. I say: " N o way, brutha!"
Also, Fish use his experience teachin grad students as evidence for his claim. He say his grad stu-
dents couldnt write a decent sentence.Well, they wrote good enuff in they essays to get into grad school,
didnt they? And most grad schools admit students by conunittee, which mean some of his colleagues
thought the grad students could write rite. But it sound like Fish sayin he the only one who could judge
what good writin is- not his colleagues.What is Fish really on, what is he really tryin to prove'
I, for one, sho aint convinced by Fish. I dont believe the writin problems of graduate students is
due to lack of standard English; they problems likely come from learn in new theories and new ways of
thinkin and tryin to express that clearly, which take some time. New ideas dont always come out clear
and understandable the first few times they expressed. And, further, grad students also be tryi.n too hard
to sound smart, to write like the folk they be readin, instead of usin they own voices.
-------. In my own experience tcachin grad students, they also tend to try too hard to sound academic,
often using unnecessary convoluted language, using a big word where a Iii one would do, and stuff.
Give them students some credit, Fish! What you should tell them is there be rnore than one academic
way to write r ite. D idnt yo friend Professor Gerald Graff already school us on that in his book Clueless
in Academe (2003)? H e say he tell his students to be bilingual. He say, say it in the technical way, the
college-speak way, but also say it the way you say it to yo momma- in the same paper. N ow that's
some advice!
But Fish must done like this advice. He say that we should have students to translate the way they
talk into standard English on a chalk board. He say, leave the way they say it to momma on the board
and put the standard way on paper. This is wrongly called code switching. And many teachers be doin
this with they students.And it dont work.Why' Cuz most teachers of code switching dont know what
they be talkin bout. Code switching, from a linguistic perspective, is not translati.t1 one dialect into
another one. It's blendin two or mo dialects, languages, or rhetorical forms into one sentence, one ut-
terance, one paper. And not all the time is this blendin intentional, sometime it unintentional. And that's
the point.The two dialects somcti.tnc naturally, sometime intentionally, co- exist! This is code switching
from a linguistic perspective: two languages and dialects co-existing in one speech act (Auer}.
20
Should Writers Use They Own English? CHAPTER 3
But since so many teachers be jackin up code switching with they "speak this way at school and a
different way at home," we need a new term. I call it C ODE MESHING!
Code meshing is the new code switch ing; it's mulitdialectalism and pluralingualism in one speech
act, in one paper.
Let me drop some code meshing knowledge on y'all.
Code meshing what we all do whenever we communicate--writin, speakin, whateva.
Code meshing blend dialects, international languages, local idioms, chat- room lingo, and the rhe-
torical styles of various ethnic and cultural groups in both formal anti informal speech acts.
This mode of communication be j ust as frequently used by politicians and professors as it be
by j ournalists and advertisers. It be used by writers of color to compose full- lcngtl1 books; and it's
sometimes added intentionally to standard English to make the point that there aint no one way to
COl11111Ullicat e.
Code meshing also be used to add flavor and style, like journalist Tomas Palermo do in the
excerpt below from his interview with Jamal Cooks, profe.ssor of Education. In his online article
"R appin about Literacy Activism," Palermo write:
Teachers frequently encounter him on panels with titles like "The Expanding Canon:
Teaching Multicultural Literature In High School. " But the dude is also hella down to earth.
He was in some pretty successful "true-school" era hip-hop recording groups [... ]. Meet the
man who made it his passion to change the public education game, one class at a time.
With vernacular inserti ons such as " but the dude is also hella down to earth " (not to mention begin-
ning a sentence with the conjunction but) and adding the colloquial game to "public education," the
article, otherwise composed in mono-dialect standard English, shift into a code meshed text.
Herc some mo examples:
(1) Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley sent two tweets to President Obama in June 2009
(Werner). H is messages blend together common txtng abbrvs., standard English gram mar and a
African American rhetorical technique:
First Tweet: "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to
deliver' on hea lth care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND."
Second Tweet: "Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on health-
care' When you are a 'hammer' u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL."
(2) Professor Kermit Campbell uses m ultiple dialects to compose Cettin' Our Groove 011 (2005), a
study of college writing instruction. In it he say:
Middle class aspirations and an academic career have rubbed off on me, fo sho, but all hell
or Texas gotta freeze over befo you see me copping out on a genuine respect and love for
my native tongue.[... ] That's from the heart, you know. But I don't expect a lot of folks to
feel me. (3)
(3) Chris Ann Cleland, a real estate agent from Virginia, express disappointment about President
Obama's economic plan in an interview with the Washington Post (Rich):
"Nothing's changed for the common guy," she said. "I fee l like I've been punked."
(4) Referencing Cleland's remark, the title of New York Times columnist Frank Rich's Op- ed arti-
cle asks:" ls Obama Punking Us'" Rkh writes in the last paragraph of his article:
"The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as
the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy."
21
The contraction "nothing's," the colloquial phrase "common guy;' and the vernacular expression
"punked," are neither unusual nor sensational. Yet, when these examples get compared to the advice
giving about code switching, you get a glaring contradiction .
Students be told that vernacular language should be reserved for the playground w ith friends or
at a picnic with neighbors, and that standard English be used by professionals at work, in academic
writing, and when communicating with important officials. H owever, the colloquial language of two
white, middle-aged professionals (Cleland and Rich), which appears in two of our nations most highly
regarded newspapers prove this aint so, at least not no mo and prolly never was.The .BIG divide be-
tween vernacular and standard, formal and informal be eroding, if it aint already faded. And for many,
it's a good thing. I know it sho be for me.
The Internet, among other mass media, as well as the language habits of America's ever-growing
diverse ethnic populations be affecting how everybody talk and write 110\\\ too. A term like "punked,"
which come from black culture to describe someon e getting tricked, teased, or humiliated, used to be
taboo in formal communication as was black people wearin braided hair at work in the 1980s. The
professional world has become more tolerant of black hair styles. And chat same world not only tolera-
tin but incorporatin, and appropriatin, black language styles.
Actor Ashton Kutcher popularized the term "punked" with his hit TV show of the same title.
That's probably how the word seeped into the parlance of suburban professionals ("I feel punked";
"Obama[... ] punking voters"), although it still retains it colloquial essence.
Fish may reply, " But these examples be from TV and journalism; those expressions wont Ay
in academic or scholarly writing." But did you read Campbell's book, Fish" What about Geneva
Smitherman's 'la/kin and 'Jestifyin (1977)? ls you readin this essay? Campbell blends the granunars and
rhetorical styles of both black English and so-called standard English, along with the discourse of Rap
and Hip Hop. H e also blend in oral speech patterns (with the phonological representation of words
like "fo sho" and "befo"). And his book is published by an acade111ic press and 111arketed to teachers of
English. Campbell just one of many academics-professors of language and writin studies, no less-
who code m esh.
Still, Fish 111ay say, "Yeah, but look, they paid their dues. Those professors knew the rules of writin
before they broke them !'To this objection,Victor Villanueva, a Puerto Rican scholar of American
studies, as well as language and literacy, point to "writers of color who have been using the blended
for111 I-.. I from the get- go" (351 ). As he put it, "The blended form is our dues" (351 ).They dont have
to learn to the rules to write rite first; the blende d form or code meshing is writin rite.
This brings us back to Senator Grassley's tweets. It's obvious he learned som e cool techno- short-
hand (e.g., "WKEND" and " delivr") . He also uses both the long spelling of you and the abbrv. "u"
in the same line. "We still on skcdul" is a complete sentence; the backslash (" /") that follow it func-
tion like a semicolon to connect the emphatic fragment to the previous thought. And the caps in
" WKEND " and "NAIL" pu111p up the words with emphasis, which alleviates the need for formal
-------. exclamation marks.
Grassley's message be a form of loud-talking- a black English device where a speaker indirectly
insults an authority figure.The authority figure is meant to overhear the conversation (thus loud-
talking) so that the insult can be defended as unintentional. Grassley sent the message over his Twitter
social network but he address Obama. H e wanna point out what seem like a contradiction: Jfhealth-
eare reform is so important to Obama, why is he sightseeing in Paris?
Grassley didnt send no standard English as a tweet. Twitter allow messages with 140 characters.
The standard English question- If healthcare refor111 is so i111portant to Oba111a, why is he sightseeing
in Paris'- is 80 characters. Why didnt Grassley use this question or compose one like it' Cuz all kinds
of folks know, understand, and like code meslring. So Grassley code meshed.
Code meshing be everywhere. It be used by all types of people. It allow writers and speakers to
bridge multiple codes and modes of expression that Fish say disparate and unmi.xable. The metaphori-
cal language tool box be expandin, baby.
Plus code meshing benefit everybody.
22
Should Writers Use Th ey Own English? CHAPTER 3
In the 1970's linguist William Labov noted that black students w ere ostracized because they spoke
and wrote black dialect. Yet he noted that black speakers were more attuned to argumentation. Labov
say that "in many ways [blackJ working-class speakers are more effective narrators, reasoners, and debat-
ers than many middle- class [white) speakers, who temporize, qualify, and lose their argument in a mass
of irrelevant detail" (qtd in Graff37).
So when we teach the rhetorical devices of blacks we can add to the writing proficiency of
whites and everybody else. Now, that's something, aint i t? Code meshing use the way people already
speak and write and help them be more rhetorically effective. It do include teaching some punctua-
tion rules, attentio n to meaning and word choice, and various kinds of sentence structures and some
standard English .This mean too that good writin gone look and sound a bit different than some may
now expect.
And another real, real, good result is w e gone help reduce prejudice.Yes, mam. Now that's a goal
to reach for.
Works Cited
Auer, Peter, Codr-Sivitching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. New York: Routledge, 1988.
Campbell, Kermit. Gettin' Our Groove On: Rhetoric, Lang11age, and Literacy for The Hip H op Generation,
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.
Coleman, Charles F. "Our Students Write with Accents. Oral Paradigms for ESD Students." CCC 48.4
(1997): 486-500.
Dillon, Sam. "What Corporate Amer ica Can't Build:A Sentence." New York Times 7 D ec. 2004: A23.
Fish, Stanley. " H enry Louis Gates: Deja Vu All Over Again." Opiniouator: Excl11sive O nline Commentary
From 77,e Times. The New York Times, 24 July 2009. < http:/ / opinionator.blogs.nytimes.
com/2009 / 07 /24/henry-louis- ga tes- deja- vu-all- over- again/ > .
---. "Say It Ain't So." Chronicle of Higher Jiducation. 21 June 2002. < http:// chronicle.com/ article/
Say- It- Ain-t- So/ 46137>.
---. " What Should Colleges Teach?" Opinionafor: Exclusive O nline Commentary l'rom The Times.
The New York T imes, 24 Aug. 2009. <http:// fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/
whal-shou ld-colleges-teach/ >.
---. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 2." Opiniona/or: Exc/11sive Online Com111entary From T he
Times. The New York T imes, 31 Aug. 2009. <http:// fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/ 08/ 3 l/
what-should-colleges- teach- part- 2/ > .
---. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3." Opinionator: Exc/11sive Online Com111entary From The
Times.The New York Times, 7 Sept. 2009. <http:// fish .blogs.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 09/07/
what-should-colleges- teach-part- 3/ >.
Graff, Gerald. C/11eless in Academe: Ho 111 Schooling Obswres the Life of the Mind. New H aven: Yale
University Press, 2003.
Inoue, Kyoko. "A Linguist's Perspective on Teaching Grammar." Unpublished paper. University of
Illinois at Chicago. Oct. 2002.
Lippi- Green, Rosina, Eng/isl, wit/, an Accent: Lang111we, Tdeology and Discrimination in the United States.
London: Routledge, 1997.
Palermo, Tomas. " R appin about Literacy Activism." WireTap Online Magaz ine, 13 July 2007, <http://
,vww.wiretapmag.org/ education/ 43160/ >.
Rich, Frank. " ls Obama Punking Us?" N ew York Ti,11es 9 Aug. 2009: WK8.
Smitherman, Geneva. Ta/kin and Testifyin:Tl,e Language ef Black America. D etroit:Wayne State University
Press, 1977.
Villanueva, Victor. "Personally Speaking: Experience as Evidence in Academic Discourse." Rhetoric
Review 25.3 (2006) : 348-352.
Werner, Erica, "Grassley Lashes Out at Obama Via Twitter," Gaz ette [Cedar R apids- Iowa C ity, IA) 8
June 2009, F: IA.
Yo ung,Vershawn. Your Average Nig~a: Pe,fimning Race, Literacy, and 1vfaswliJJity. Detroit:Wayne State
University Press, 2007.
23
CHAPTER 4
Style and Standards in the

Composition/Communication
Classroom
Douglas S. Kern, Senior Lecturer, Department of English
Having assigned Vershawn Ashanti Young's "Should W ricers Use They Own English?," I once had a
srudent declare that sht: didn't like the thought of using "howeva" in her writing. T his is fine, of course.
As an experienced instructor of rhetoric and composition, I've taught Young's essay multiple times,
and I've seen students respond differently to his work. This particular student's discomfort, to my mind,
proves Young's point- it's important that this student recognize her own standards, and continue to
negotiate her own style, voice, and systernatic granunatical nuances. It's also irnperative, though, that
she learn to recognize and accept the standards and styles employed by others. H ow else will we suc-
cessfully enter and engage with diverse academjc discourses if we don't?
After that student made her comment regarding her hesitation to use "howeva,'' I asked the entire
class if they ever use "howev-J" in speech or writing. Of course, some said yes, and many of the stu-
dents came to the conclusion that just because some writers wouldn't use certain linguistic variations
within their writing, doesn't mean others can't. Most students agreed that Young successfully employed
" howeva" in his published article. But the next questions for many students were trickier: can oth-
ers-students especially-do w hat Young has done and code-mesh in their academic writing' Should
they' That is, should they blend so-called undervalued Englishes with so-called "standard" English in
both written and orJl communication' I signal students here knowingly, as you too might have similar
questions as you strive to succeed here at UMD.
At the heart of this inquiry arc additional questions about how to define what many call
Standard Written English (SWE) and the relationship between identity and language.You likely came
to English 101 with the expectation that you'd learn academic writing, and indeed you w ill learn
standards and grammatical conventions often associated with this form (the Learning Outcomes for
English 101 make this point clear). But a key concern for this class is to learn the rhetorical significance
of your language choices: all language choices do something; they affect you and your readers, and
they add depth, nuance, and purpose to your writing.Young's use of"howeva" says something about
him and does something to his readers and for his argument. He makes purposeful and rhetorically
effective moves with every instance of code- meshing in his essay. A goal of English 101 is for you to
gain the rhetorical acuity to make similarly dfective moves while employing the language choices you
believe best suit your writing goals. Yo11 might not choose to w rite "howeva" in a formal or academic
paper.That doesn't mean someone else wouldn't . Indeed, Dr.Young did.
Critically, we all need to think about what SWE and what code- meshing can do for writers and
to rhetorical situations. To be sure, in various contexts inside and outside the university, some define
or even wield SWE as exclusionary (e.g., if you don't follow the perceived conventions ofSWE, you
don't belong). But, we should see that envisioning and even imposing SWE in this way, without clear-
ly understanding it as a language form among others, can potentially silence students and writers from
composing in the forms they most closely identify with. What if we negotiate and reevaluate SWE as
"Style and Standards in the Composition/Communication. Classroom" by Uouglas Kern.

24
Style and Standards in the Composition/Communication C lassroom CHAPTER 4
inclusive and rethink the possibilities of academic writing by opening ourselves up to different modes
of writing that are meshed and blended and that combine all the wonderful nuances our unique
Englishes (and even other languages) offer?
The relationship between language with identity adds significance to this question. Indeed, schol-
ars and writers from Young and Geneva Smitherman to Gloria Anz.1ldua and M in Zhan Lu argue that
language and identity are closely intertwined and that all writers-including students-should be able
to write in the forms they sec fit, so that learning about rhetoric and writing docs not mean the era-
sure of identity or the strict adherence to one form. This point is extended through a policy statement
crafted by the Conference o n College Composition and Communication-the national organization
that studies student writing and the teaching of rhetoric and composition-which decided back in
1974 that students "have a right to their own language."This policy statement makes clear:
We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language-the dia-
lects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find t heir own identity and style.
Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any
va lidity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social
group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers
and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and
its cu ltural and racia l variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that
teachers must have the experiences and training that w ill enable them to respect diversity
and uphold the right of students to their own language.1
This statement is important to your experience in English 101 at UMD.

We all come to English 101 equipped with clever strategies for incorporating our own unique
discourses- our hometown variations and turns of phrase; cultural nuances and grammars; languages
and accents; and discipline specific terminology. Some of us have a lot of practice reading and writing
in a variety of forms in digital spaces as well.We employ these unique styles and forms of communi-
cation in our daily lives all the time. And, in schools and universities, we certainly write in and practice
1nore than one struc ture, inure than one fonn, inure than one genre, and 1nore than one standard.
So, is the primary concern here--one central to this debate regardingYoung's use of"howeva"-that
institutions privilege one "standard" above others, which silences voices? Or are writers and students,
by adhering only to perceive d conventions of SWE, nussing key rhetorical opportunities? Well, both.
For some, this isn't a simple issue of choice or opportunity. Writing in one's own tongue or in the
discourses familiar and fluent to them is never mere strategy or, more simply, a tool. As writers and stu-
dents of rhetoric, composition, and conununication, how might we then negotiate and connect these
two concerns by leveraging the unique discourses and knowledge we bring to our classrooms'
Code- meshing, as Young demonstrates in his essay, can serve your academic writing and enable
you to pursue this question.And, indeed, we see this kind of writing in action every day. Consider,
for instance, how Google--an American multinational corporation- chooses to "tell" its users that a
webpage has crashed:
1 http://cccc.ncte.org/ cccc/ resources/ positions/ srtolsummary
25
Assuming users reading and writing in English scan a typical page left to right and top to bottom,
Google code- meshes in three significant ways.The first code Google displays is strictly visual: a dot
matrix style image of a folder with a sad face indicating something's not quite right. Moving down the
page, we see that Google employs a w ritten message as its second code: " Aw, Snap!"-a style which
might be categorized as "non-standard" writing by som e in the academy.As a third code, Google's
used what som e might identify as more formal writing:"Something went wrong while displaying
this webpage." To be sure, code- m eshing is at work, and, as a student of rhetoric, the key for you is to
consider how and ,vhy a corporation like Google would blend or mesh codes in this partiwlar fashion as
a way of communicating a message, and it should prompt you to evaluate how SWE is pressed against,
negotiated, and expanded upo n every day.
English 101 is a place for you not just to think about and analyze the efficacy ofthis kind of writ-
ing but also to try it out yourself. A goal fo r the course is for you to make purposeful language choices
and to sec this classroom as a safe and inviting space to explore the critical connections between your
writing and your identity and to experiment with the rhetorical richness of language varieties and
forms.
26
CHAPTER 5
Shattering Black Flesh: Black

Intellectual Writing in the Age of
Ferguson
Julius B. Fleming, Jr.
I am a black intellectual. I love black people. I abho r antiblackness. Black freedom, for me,
is an urgent priority.
In the 2014 film, Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King.Jr. is represented as asking this penetrating
question: "Who murdered J imm.ie Lee Jackson''"'Who," he repeats, "murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson?"
In this scene, as he looks out from the pulpit of a Southern church bursting at the seams with black
mourners, the famous clergyman is perched over a casket topped with a striking spray of flowers (that
Jimmie can see and smell no longer).The dead man was robbed of every sense he possessed-of smell,
of sight, of tasting collard greens and cornbread that were filled with the soul of an oppressed but
resilient people; of hearing and grooving to the sounds of Ray Charles and Dinah Washington; robbed
of the chance to touch the body of another. Using a bullet covered in the armor of hate, a crook shat-
tered Jimmie's black flesh . He tore it into a million little pieces, before escaping into the night with a
life and a basket full of senses he did not even want and in fact despised.
Jinunie Lee Jackson was a civil rights activist who, in the 1960s, helped to propel the local civil
rights movement in and around Selma, Alabama.While participating in a nonviolent protest, a white
police officer shattered Jimrn.ic's flesh .
As I write this meditation more than 50 years after Jackson's murder, it is troubling that I can add
to this query a few more questions: who murdered Eric Garner?Who 1nurderedYvette Smith?Tamir
R.ice? Akai Gurley,Aiyana Stanley-Jones,Jonathan Ferrell, and John Crawford, lll? Who mutilated
R.odney King in the thick of a Los Angeles night' Whoever it was stood under the cover of a white
moon- that same moon that stood by for years as the men of quick horses, the men of long ropes, the
men of crisp white sheets shattered black flesh as if they could find more for a dime a dozen.
I am a black intellectual. I love black people. I abho r antiblackness. Black freedom, for me,
The men of the ropes, the horses, and the sheets enter my mind. An invitation is rare; their pres-
ence, frequent. There they stand- reveling in a rnock bravery that can only be forged through a toxic
alchemy of cowardice, mob security, and drunkenness with one's own sense of power.As someone
who writes about the literatures and cultures of African-descended peoples, I have often paused-
sometimes against my will it seems- to gaze into their eyes, knowing full well that the act of looking
into these eyes rubs up against, unsettles, the protocols of history.
As I look, memories of pristine white communion dresses come rush ing fonvard.When I was a
child, there was very little that I loved more than the promises of second Sunday: singing that in-
flamed goose bumps and ignited tears; preaching that le t the ushers know to stand guard (and led my
not-so-religious, nursing-degree- having cousin to exclaim: "Yo' pastor has COPD!"); a needed snack
"Shattering Black Flesh: Black lntcllccrnal Writing in the Age of Ferguson," by Julius Flcming, Jr,, from American Literary History
28.4 (2016), pp. 828-834. Used by permission of Oxford University Press.
27
of crackers and juice one could only gulp down after petitioning God to forgive one's sins. And then
there was the pageantry of the walk-r ight, sip-right, chew- right ritual known otherwise as commu-
nion. The choreography was seductive. White dresses Aoating around the altar, moving to a pomp
and some circumstances that only those who have been black and oppressed, whose flesh has risked
being murdered while walk.ing to the store, while whispering a prayer to Jesus in the belly of a South
Carolina church, can ever understand.
Like the wearers of the dresses on those Holy Ghost-filled second Sundays, you, too, dear sirs,
were eating bodies and drinking blood. .l:lut as I look into your eyes, and notice your own pretty
little white dresses, I realize that you will never b e as brave as Sister Lila Mae J ones, sitting dignified
on the front pew until her sitting days were over. And you will never be as fierce as Mother Hattie L.
Chapman, who at 86 sashays around the altar as if her hips are still the thingamajig rumored to have
made wo/men of the cloth lay down their religion.
And then, I find myself wondering: who ,vashed those pretty little white dresses after you soiled
them while destroying black Aesh? Did you summon people's mothers and g randmothers and wives
and sisters to hold the weight of all that flesh- shattered flesh and murderous flesh-in the palms of
their hands?
The only comfort I find is in the fact that black people know how to craft beauty out of shattered
things.
I am a black intellectual. I love black people. I abhor antiblackness. Black freedom, for me,
is an urgent pri ority.
And yet, if the truth of these claims is to be adj udicated by my public writing, perhaps I have lied.
Where was I when the drama of Ferguson was unfolding>Where was I when Ty Underwood, Sandra
Bland, R.ekia Boyd, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and scores of others were being robbed of their
lives? N ot even a Facebook post? A tweet' As I ponder, and even obsess over, King's putative ques-
tion- and its reverberations in the contemporary moment-I often feel that I am absent, crouched
behind books and computers and facu lty meetings and conunittces and article writings and mentor-
ship obligations that I use to rationalize a lack of public visibility but that perhaps, in the final analysis,
position me among the culprits for whom King is dramatized as searching so desperately. I shrink
under the weight of cavalier posts on social media that reprimand people like me who remain silent.
And now I find myself- a black intellectual, writer, and freedom dreamer-asking a pivotal
question: what does it mean to "write black" in the Age of Ferguson' One answer, of course, lies in
the probing, often excellent social media posts and think pieces that engage directly with issues that
have accrued social and political relevance. But here I want to highlight, and celebrate, other modes
of"writing black" that in my estimation are as critical to realizing black freedom dreams, to altering
the shape of a universe that makes no bones about privileging whiteness, richness, maleness, straight-
ness, cisness, ableness, and healthiness. More specifically, I want to turn brieAy to recent social media
-------.
posts by black intellectuals tl1at have nothing and everytl1ing to do with "writing black" in the Age of
Ferguson; that are nothing other than writing black in the Age of Ferguson.
My first example is from l mani Perry. A part of what is so earnest and brave about Perry's posts is
her willingness to engage the exigencies of health, to recognize the bodily limits black intellectuals of-
ten work within and around. Her stories of chronic illness are a constant reminder of the wide-rang-
ing vulnerabilities black bodies often confront. (Alas, the Selma police officer is not the only answer to
the question: Who murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson?) These posts have inspired me to schedule routine
wellness visits. To listen to my body when it testifies. To hear it when it whispers in a key that seems
off-kilter. To cherish my body.To have hopes and dreams for my body, while being honest about its
current realities.
I have learned much about joy from Koritha Mitchell. Her posts demonstrate an intentional
nurturing oflove(s), both animate and inanimate, long runs and life partners. When considered along-
side the singularity of antiblack violence, and its routine denials of black joy, this brand of writing is
certainly key to black survival. From Brittney Cooper, I have learned the value of being articulately
28
Shattering Black Flesh: Black Intellectual Wr iting in the Age of Ferguson CHAPTER 5
there, and then of not being there when the body and the soul insist that you pr ioritize the ir survival.
Cooper has been one of the bravest and most consistent bborers in the vineyard of black freedom
dreams. But her recent hiatus from social media served as a radical reminder of the necessity of self-
care, of the reality that even our best trombones must sometimes rest, readying themselves for the next
1neasures.
And then there is Kiese Laymon, who writes about us.To us. For us. H e loves us.Visits to his
Faccbook page yield nuanced perspectives on race and sports, black life and black death, black writing
and black rights, and the r ights of blacks who write. His voice has been baptized in the oil of black
Southernness; I know the healing properties. His conversatio ns about his Southern g ranny- who was
trained in the same " bless your heart" pedagogy that gave the world my own granny and Zora N eale
Hurston ali ke-have, on several occasions, given me the drive to write another sentence, to prepare for
another class, to be a resource for rny graduate and undergraduate students.
And then there were flowers. As I sat pondering the loss of black freedom fighter Muhammad
Ali ; as I grappled with the reality that a convicted rapist was sentenced to only a few months in prison;
as I chuckled nervously at the chicanery animating the 2016 presidential election, I turned to social
media. On these fronts, my timelines were filled with probing and m oving and critical analyses. Yet
the discourse that resonated most was not even writing-at least not in the ordinary sense. It was four
arresting images of flowers that Farah Jasmine Griffin posted to her Facebook timeline. T he burst of
color had a granunar of its own. A familiar grammar it was. I had learned to read it in my parents'
rosebushes, which always demanded that passersby confront their beauty, become conscious of their
thorns, and recognize how they had managed to live atop blistering landscapes that had been struc-
tured to force their withering. And I had encountered this grammar in other images of flowers Griffin
posted to her tirneline in the months prior. These images, this black w riting, seerned tailor-fitted to the
demands of living in a world that readily and religiously renders black flesh vulnerable to the nation's
shattering praxis.What I read in those flowers that day was enough to rekindle the embers of my own
freedom dreams, to broker a renewal of my commitment to the ethical imperatives of black freedom.
These arc the circuits through which my black tho ughts often flow as they labor to become black
writing in the Age of Ferguson. What can you do when you study the shattering of your own flesh,
when you teach the historical destruction of that fl esh, write about it, present on it, find it tucked
away in the recesses of archives the world over? H ow arc you to write of black flesh as you face the
daily possibility that your own flesh stands to be violated at any moment? From this vantage point,
critical distance seems a tall if not impossible- dare I say unethicaP- order. When critical distance
makes flesh a st ranger to itself and incentivizes a misrecognition of o ne's self, it is high time to em -
brace, indeed to invent, another way. And let us not assu me that one always has a choice in the matter.
D oing so discounts the forces of history and mem ory; it undermines the lingering clutch of trauma.
I sit down to write a talk about the film Selma.And against my will, I find myself a spectator in a
theater of lynching, a child sitting excitedly in church on communion Sunday, a black intellectual con-
templating the beauty, the wisdom , the horror that has animated my g randmother's life. This winding
j ourney toward putting words on a page is a curious circumlocution, a dark stream of consciousness
that I can only explain as the living residue of African slavery; it has found residence in my soul, w ithin
my flesh . I suspect that such is the case for many black intellectuals who carry the weight of black flesh
as they labor to "write black" in the Age of Ferguson.
So what is black intellectual writing at this historical juncture' Fo r far too many, the principal an-
swer to this question is a robust writerly presence on Facebook and Twitter.According to this rubric,
social media operates as the standard by which one is said to be an authentic black writer, a comm.itted
black intellectual. This is a curious calculus roote d in a thick irony.The rub, of course, is the sobering
reality that social media outlets traffic in and reify neoliberal logics of racial capitalism that are far too
often complicit in the ugliest of the ugliness facilitating and carrying forward the decimation of black
--------
29
flesh. Radical uses and subversions of these technologies are possible and already apparent. But what
does it mean, after all, that these platforms have succeeded in transforming their apparatuses into the
barometers we-especially black intellectuals of my generation-use to judge who is writing and who
is not? Who is "saying something" and who has remained silent' In a tradition that has historically
placed a premium on the words of black intellectuals, the charge of silence is a heavy accusation.
These are the circuits through which my b lack thoughts often flow as they labor to become
black writing in the Age of Ferguson. What can you do when you study the shattering
of your own flesh, when you teach the historical destruction of that flesh, write about it,
present on it, find it tucked away in the recesses of archives the world over?
Perhaps, a part of the work that remains to be done is retraining ourselves to hear and to see the
black writing that might not present itself as such, the black writing that often transpires beyond the
precincts of social media .Then, too, we must strive to unsettle, or at least be honest about, the some-
times self-serving, the often self-promotional logics that have enabled social media to function as the
repository for our political and intellectual receipts. We will never know fully the gallons of ink that
have been spilled writing encouraging, life-sustaining en1.1ils to students who feel incapable of collect-
ing the pieces of themselves.We are often clueless about the marches, the town halls, and the many
other efforcs that seek to dismantle the global project of shattering black flesh .
What we stand in need of, in part, is more generous reading practices that enable us to discern
the multiple forms of black w riting unfolding in the Age of Ferguson and thus to know that our eyes
and ears cannot behold the totality of this writing. The flowers. The conversations about grannies, life
partners, running, health, and self- care. These things are as central to pointing the way forward as the
performative utterances that crescendo in the wake of tragedy and ostensibly bring us into (social me-
dia) being as legitimate and committed black writers and intellectuals in d1ese troubled and troubling
times.
As I finish this meditation, I receive news about a violent, hornophobic rnass killing that has left
some 49 people dead at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Black intellectual writing in the Age
of Ferguson must necessarily grapple with, not jettison, the linkages between the shattering of queer
flesh and black flesh-that is, if one assumes they ever diverge. Papi Edwards. Sandra. Trayvon. Rekia.
Victims of Pulse. M embers of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. We speak your
names. We commit you to memory.We labor on your behalf in the vineyard ofjustice.
I have no prescription for what black writing should look like in this moment. But w hat I know
is that with careful thought, sincere intentions, constructive criticisms, and barrels and barrels of love
we can work across our differences, around our busy schedules, through our ignorances, over our
mistakes, and outside of our egos to make black writing in d1is age something that history cannot, and
shall not, forget. I guess what I am advocating, then, are various and varied forms of black writing that
-------. advance black freedom dreams, generous and flexible literacies whose purviews both encompass and
move beyond social media, and an unabashed openness to the art of radical proximity as a praxis and
methodology for black writing in the Age of Ferguson- which is also to say black writing in the Age
of Orlando, Charleston, Cleveland, Baton R ouge, and the many other geographies and temporalities of
global terror upon which the shattering of black flesh is routinely staged.
30
Shattering Black Flesh: Black Intellectual Wr iting in the Age of Ferguson CHAPTER 5
Coda
Less than one month after submitting the initial draft of this essay, I received the editor's comments. By
this time, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were dead-both slain by police. By the time I complet-
ed the revisions, each police officer tried for the death of Freddie Gray had been acquitted. In other
words, the US judicial system had provided a stark, even startling, answer to a version of K ing's Selma
question: No one murdered Freddie Gray. In fact, how can you murder the unmurderabk.~take value
from the one who has no value?
As I revise this essay about writing black in the face of such circumstances, the process of revi-
sion heaps a palpable weight upon my shoulders. As sentences become shorter, the inventory of black
people killed by police grows longer; there is no sign o f j ustice to come. Each time I add yet another
name to the scroll of shattered black flesh- and face the glaring reality that, before this essay is ever
printed, even more black flesh (this time, perhaps, my own) will have been shattered-a visceral mix-
ture of grief, anger, sadness, and hopeless hopefulness wells up, erupting over and against my efforts to
suppress it.
There is no one, I realize, more skilled in the art of the remix than white supremacy.The routine
extermination of black bodies in the present is a vile perfo rmance of repetition with a difference. Each
restaging endorses and concrctizcs a racial order that is as ancient as the nation's myth of discovery.
These acts of violence, in short, are variations of anti.blackness-clever remixes that revise the tracks of
white supremacy, retrofitting its primordial hies to thrive in these ostensibly modern times.
31
7
CHAPTER 6
Writing in Public: English IO I

Just Writing: Academic Writing as
Worldbuilding
Elizabeth Catchmark
Academic writing marshals the knowledge and skills you have to deepen your under-
standing of the world so you can leave it better than you found it. In other words, the
best writing can also be justice work. I know what you're thinking-this isn't what I signed up
for! English 101 is about improving my writing skills so I can be more confident in my writing and
succeed in my classes and fitture career, isn't it?Yes. But it's also much more. In order to understand
all you learn when you develop your writing skills, we need to first establish some key features of
academic writing:
First, the academic research process is really an approach for developing ethical ar-
guments. The skills you need to write effectively in the academic context are the same skills nec-
essary for participating in public life and making compassionate decisions.These skills include asking
complex questions, listening empathetically to different viewpoints, identifying and critically analyzing
existing perspectives, and, finally, developing intellectually rigorous arguments.Whether you are draft-
ing your Position Paper about making college education accessible to everyone, chatting w ith a family
member about an upcoming election, or debating representation of diversity in comics with a friend,
you w ill need to think both critically and empathetically about all relevant viewpoints and develop
your own argument, grounde d in carefully researched, rhetorically effective claims. Ethical arguments
are also deeply reflective, meaning that you consider the effectiveness of your writing, the develop-
ment of your position, the conversation around your issue, and more. Openness to change through
reflection is at the heart of the research and writing process.
The majority of this process happens well before you decide on your argument,
through the development and investigation of an open-ended research question. In o rder
to engage in academic inquiry, you will need to ask a question you can't yet answer, that experts who
study the issue you're interested in are actively debating. Sometimes these questions map neatly onto
questions you already have and sometimes your research will surprise you and take your inquiry in a
new direction. In this course, you won't decide on your argument for your research paper until near
the end of the semester.The majority of the course will be spent identifying something that troubles
you or that you'd like to learn more about, refining that curiosity into a real question with public
stakes, and carefully readjng and analyzing the perspectives of others on your issue. ily suspending your
decision on your argument until the very end of your w riting process, you will participate in a kind
of deliberation, attending to the arguments of the groups affected by your issue to develop the most
compassionate answer to your question.
Effective academic arguments often start from your own personal experience and
interests. As you will explore in later chapters, many English 101 students draw from their own
experiences, seeking answers to the questions that have already em erged for them and solutions to the
"Writing in Public: English lO l" by Eliza be-th Catchmark.

32
Writing in Public: English 101 CHAPTER 6
problems they have faced and injustices they have experienced. Every question you might ask has pub-
lic stakes, or, meaningful repercussions for the world around you, so starting from personal experience
is a wonderful way to deepen and enhance your research. In this textbook, you can find essays from
fellow English 101 students that started from experiences as common as planning a first date, going
to the doctor's office, and chatting with a beloved family member. These everyday moments became,
for these students, the impetus for powerful explorations of the lifelong consequences of harassment,
medical ethics, and xenophobia (Chapter 25, "What D o You Wonder?: From Personal Experience to
Inquiry"). Your experiences are powerful sites to explore some of the most pressing questions and
concerns we face and can be the start of complex, detailed solutions.
There is no such thing as universally good writing. In fact, writing isn't good or bad
at all, only more or less effec tive at achieving its goals. In English 101 your instructor will
sornetimes emphasize conventions and language choices that characterize scholarship in acaden1ia, but
this writing isn't "better'' than any other kind of writing, say, the writing you do when you're tex-
ting your friends, posting on a blog, or sending an email. Effective writing is diverse, purposeful, and
contextual. This means there are innumerable ways to write compelling, powerful arguments, and the
language and argumentation that might be effective for a paper in one course could be terribly suited
to another genre and context. Sometimes Standard Written English is an effective rhetorical choice;
in many cases it isn't. Som etimes a dispassionate, formal tone is very persuasive and convincing, where
in other contexts such an approach will decrease your credibility and diminish your claims. So, your
English 101 class won't teach you how to "write well," because there is no one way to write effec-
tively in all contexts. Instead, you will learn how to become a more purposeful writer, aware of all th e
possibilities available to you when you craft your arguments so that you can choose consciously among
rhen1.
Finally, evidence of the academic research process is everywhere, in nearly everything
you read and do. We often think about academic writing and research as discrete skills housed in
our classrooms that never escape into the "real" world. fostead, the process of rigorously and carefully
investigating a thoughtful question by using the resources available to you is infinitely applicable. H ow
does a costume designer for a film o r TV show decide what the characters' clothing should look like?
How do speechwriters for politicians identify facts and statistics to support their arguments? How do
companies decide the most effective ways to advertise their products? In each case, answers emerge
through inquiry and research, much like the work you will do in English 101 . Next time you're walk-
ing around campus, try to identify· evidence of academic research around you, in the flyers hanging
on the walls, in the notifications that ping your phone, in the signs and speeches you might see your
fellow students holding or giving. Every claim made by these rhetors is grounded in research and
shaped by the context and genre in which it's written. Even if you never take another English class,
the research and argumentation skills you develop here are useful in all the contexts in which you'll be
writing and speaking.
So, when we say academic writing can be justice work, what we really mean is that
every aspect of writing and research is e mbedded with questions of power and equity,
and that to argue effectively is to argue justly, with compassion, care, and responsibility.
This kind of responsibility is grounded in the recognition that you are incredibly powerfol and the
arguments you make reflect the power you have.You do have the knowledge and skills to make critical
interventions in the most pressing debates of our time.You can transform your world and build a more
just, equitable future.Your possibilities are infinite and English 101 is, in part, about attending you to
all you can do w ith the power you have.
33
Sun1rnary
In your own writing, you might paraphrase a few sentences or even a few paragraphs, but you
certainly would not paraphrase a whole essay (much less a whole book). In constructing your argu-
ments, however, you will often have to summarize the main points of the lengthy texts with which
you are in conversation.
Hoth paraphrasing and sunm1arizing are means to inquiry. That is, the act of recasting someone
else's words or ideas into your own language, to suit your argument and reach your readers, forces
you to think critically:What docs this passage really mean? What is most im portant about it for my
argument? H ow can I best present it to my readers? It r equires making choices, not least of which is
Chapter 7, "From \Vriting Su rmnaries and Paraphrases co W riting Yo ursel f in ro Academic Conversation" from From lnquiry to
Academic Wri1i11g, Fourd1 Edition, by Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky, pp. 64-79 (Chapter 3). Copyright © 2018 by Bedford/
St. Martin 's .
35
SECTION 2 Summary
determining the best way to present the information- through paraphrase, summary, or direct q uota-
tion. In general, the following rules apply:
Paraphrase when all the information in the passage is important, but the language is not key to
your discussio n, or if it may be difficu lt for your readers to understand.
Summarize when you need to present only the key ideas of a passage (or an essay or a book)
to advance your argument.
Quote when the passage is so effective---so clear, so concise, so authoritative, so
memorable- that you would be hard-pressed to improve on it.
Writing a Paraphrase
A paraphrase is a restatement of all the infor mation in a passage in your own words, using your o,vn
sentence structure and composed with your own audience in mind to advance your argument.
When you paraphrase a passage, start by identifying key words and phrases, and think of other
ways to state them. You may have to reread what led up to the passage to remind yourself of
the context. For example, did the writer define terms earl ier that he o r she uses in the passage
and now expects you to know'
Continue by exper imenting with word order and sentence structure, combining and recom -
bining phrases to convey what the writer says w ithout replicating his o r her style. As you
consider how best to state the writer's idea in your own words, you should come to a much
better understanding of what the writer is saying. By thinking critically, then, you are clarify-
ing the passage for yourself as much as for your readers.
Let 's look at a paraphrase of a passage from science fiction writer and scholar James Gunn's essay
" Harry Potter as Schooldays Novel" 1:
Original Passage
The situation and portrayal of Harry as an ordinary child w ith an extraord inary ta lent make
him interesting. He elicits our sympathy at every turn. He plays a Cinderella-like role as the
abused child of mean-spirited foster parents w ho favor other, less-worthy children, and also
fits another fantasy role, that of changeling. Millions of children have nursed the notion that
they cannot be the offspring of such unremarkable parents; in the Harry Potter books, the
metaphor is often literal truth.
-------. Paraphrase
Accord ing to James Gunn, the circumstances and depiction of Harry Potter as a normal
boy w ith special abilities captivate us by playing on our empathy. Gunn observes that, like
Cinderella, Harry is scorned by his guardians, who treat him far worse than they treat his
less-admirable peers. And like another fairy-ta le figure, t he changeling, Harry embodies
the fantasies of children who refuse to believe that they were born of their undistinguished
parents (146).
In this paraphrase, the w riter uses his own words to express key terms (circumstmues and depiction for
"situation and portrayal," guardians for "foster parents") and rearranges the structure of the original
sentences. But the paraphrase is about the same length as the original and says essentially the same
things as Gunn's original.
1 Gunn's essay appears in Mappi11g tl,e World of Harry Potter:A11 U11a11t/1oriz ed Explomtio11 oftlze Bestselli11g Fa11tasy
Series ofA ll Time, edited by Mercedes Lackey (Dallas: BenBella, 2006).
36
From Writing Summaries and Paraphrases to Writing Yourself into Academic Conversations CHAPTER 7
Now, compare the paraphrase with this sununary:
Summary
James Gunn observes that Harry Potter's character is compelling because readers empa-
thize with Harry's fairy tale-like plight as an orphan whose gifts a re ignored by his foster
parents (146).
The summ,1ry condenses the passage, conveying Gunn's main point without restating the details.
Notice how both the paraphrase and the sununary indicate that the ideas are James Gunn's, not the
writer's-"According to Jarnes Gunn,""Jarnes Gunn observes"- and signal, with page references,
where Gunn's ideas end. ii is essential that you ackno,vledge your sources, a subject we come back to in our
discussion of plagiarism in Chapter SO.The point we want to make here is that borrowing from the
work of others is not always intentional. Many students stumble into plagiarism, especially when they
are attempting to paraphrase. R emember that it's not enough to change the words in a paraphrase; you
must also change the structure of the sentences and cite your source.
You may be wondering: "If paraphrasing is so tricky, why bother? What does it add? I can see
how the summary of Gunn's paragraph presents information more concisely and efficiently than the
original, but the paraphrase doesn't seem to be all that different from the source and doesn't seem to
add anything to it. Why not simply quote the original or sumnurizc it>"
Good questions. The answer is that you paraphrase when tl,e ideas in a passage are important but
the language is not key to your discussion or it may be difficult for readers to understand.When aca-
demics write for their peers, they draw on the specialized vocabulary of their disciplines to make their
arguments. By paraphrasing, you may be helping your readers, providing a translation of sorts for those
who do not speak the language.
Consider this paragraph by George Lipsitz from his academic book Time Passages: Collective
Memory and America11 Popular Culture (1990), and compare the paraphrase that follows it:
Original Passage
The transformations in behavior and collective memory fueled by the contradictions of
the nineteenth century have passed through three major stages in the United States. The
first involved the establishment and codification of commercialized leisure from the inven-
t ion of the telegraph to the 189Os. The second involved the transition from Victorian to
consumer-hedonist values between 1890 and 1945. The th ird and most important stage,
from World War II to the present, involved extraordinary expansion in both the d istribution
of consumer purchasing power and in both the reach and scope of electronic mass media.
The d islocations of urban renewal, suburbanization, and deindustrialization accelerated the
demise of tradition in America, while the worldwide pace of change undermined stability
e lsewhere. The period from World War II to the present marks the final triumph of commer-
cialized leisure, and with it an augmented crisis over the loss of connection to the past.
Paraphrase
Historian George Lipsitz argues that Americans' sense of the past is rooted in cultural
changes dating from the 1800s and has evolved through three stages. In the first stage,
technological innovations of the nineteenth century gave rise to widespread commercial
entertainment. In the second stage, dating from the 189Os to about 1945, attitudes toward
the consumption of goods and services changed. Since 1945, in the third stage, increased
consumer spending and the growth of the mass media have led to a crisis in which
Americans find themselves cut off from their traditions and the memories that g ive meaning
to them (12). --------
37
SECTION 2 Summary
Notice that the paraphrase is not a word-for- word translation of the original. Instead, the writer has
made choices that resulted in a slightly briefer and more accessible restatement of Lipsitz's thinking.
(Although this paraphrase is shorter than the original passage, a paraphrase can also be a little longer
than the original if extra words are needed to help readers understand the original.)
Notice too that several specialized terms and phrases from the original passage-the "codification
of commercialized leisure," " the transition from Victorian to consumer-hedonist values,""the disloca-
tions of urban renewal, suburbanization, and deindustrialization"- have disappeared. T he writer not
only looked up these terms and phrases in the dictionary but also reread the several pages that preced-
ed the original passage to understand what Lipsitz meant by them .
The paraphrase is not meant to be an in1provcment on the original passage- in fact, historians
would most likely prefer what Lipsitz wrote- but it may help readers who do not share Lipsitz's ex-
pertise understand his point without distorting his argument.
Now compare this summary to the paraphrase:
Summary
Historian George Lipsitz argues that technological, social, and economic changes dating
from the nineteenth century have culm inated in what he calls a "crisis over the loss of
connection to the past," in which Americans find themselves cut off from the memories of
their traditions (12).
Which is better, the paraphrase or the summary? Neither is better or worse in and of itself. T heir
correctness and appropriateness depend on how the restatements are used in a given argument.That
is, the decision to paraphrase or summarize depends entirely on the information you need to convey.
Would the details in the paraphrase strengthen your argument' Or is a summar y sufficient? In this
case, if you plan to focus your argument on the causes of America's loss of cultural memory (the rise
of commercial entertainment, changes in spending habits, globalization), then a paraphrase might be
more helpful. But if you plan to define loss efwltural memory, then a summary may provide enough
context for the next stage of your argun1ent.
1 Decide whether to paraphrase. If your readers don't need all the information in the
passage, consider summarizing it or presen ting the key points as part of a summary of a longer
passage. If a passage is clear, concise, and memorable as originally written, consider quoting
instead of paraphrasing. Otherwise, and especially if the original was written for an academic
audience, you m.ay want to paraphrase the original to make its substance more accessible to
your readers.
2 Understand the passage. Start by identifying key words, phrases, and ideas. If necessary,
reread the pages leading up to the passage, to place it in context.
3 Draft your paraphrase. ~eplace key words and phrases with synonyms and alternative
phrases (possibly gleaned from the context provided by the surrounding text). Experiment
wi th word order and sentence structure until the paraphrase captures your understanding of
the passage, in your own language, for your readers.
4 Acknowledge your sourc e. Protect yourself from a charge of plagiarism and give credit for
ideas you borrow.
38
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Western physics exhibits the “how” and the “how long” as distinct in
essence. As soon as the question is pressed home, causality
restricts its answer rigidly to the statement that something happens
—and not when it happens. The “effect” must of necessity be put
with the “cause.” The distance between them belongs to a different
order, it lies within the act of understanding itself (which is an
element of life) and not within the thing or things understood. It is of
the essence of the extended that it overcomes directedness, and of
Space that it contradicts Time, and yet the latter, as the more
fundamental, precedes and underlies the former. Destiny claims the
same precedence; we begin with the idea of Destiny, and only later,
when our waking-consciousness looks fearfully for a spell that will
bind in the sense-world and overcome the death that cannot be
evaded, do we conceive causality as an anti-Fate, and make it
create another world to protect us from and console us for this. And
as the web of cause and effect gradually spreads over the visible
surfaces there is formed a convincing picture of timeless duration—
essentially, Being, but Being endowed with attributes by the sheer
force of pure thought. This tendency underlies the feeling, well
known in all mature Cultures, that “Knowledge is Power,” the power
that is meant being power over Destiny. The abstract savant, the
natural-science researcher, the thinker in systems, whose whole
intellectual existence bases itself on the causality principle, are “late”
manifestations of an unconscious hatred of the powers of
incomprehensible Destiny. “Pure Reason” denies all possibilities that
are outside itself. Here strict thought and great art are eternally in
conflict. The one keeps its feet, and the other lets itself go. A man
like Kant must always feel himself as superior to a Beethoven as the
adult is to the child, but this will not prevent a Beethoven from
regarding the “Critique of Pure Reason” as a pitiable sort of
philosophy. Teleology, that nonsense of all nonsenses within
science, is a misdirected attempt to deal mechanically with the living
content of scientific knowledge (for knowledge implies someone to
know, and though the substance of thought may be “Nature” the act
of thought is history), and so with life itself as an inverted causality.
Teleology is a caricature of the Destiny-idea which transforms the
vocation of Dante into the aim of the savant. It is the deepest and
most characteristic tendency both of Darwinism—the megalopolitan-
intellectual product of the most abstract of all Civilizations—and of
the materialist conception of history which springs from the same
root as Darwinism and, like it, kills all that is organic and fateful. Thus
the morphological element of the Causal is a Principle, and the
morphological element of Destiny is an Idea, an idea that is
incapable of being “cognized,” described or defined, and can only be
felt and inwardly lived. This idea is something of which one is either
entirely ignorant or else—like the man of the spring and every truly
significant man of the late seasons, believer, lover, artist, poet—
entirely certain.
Thus Destiny is seen to be the true existence-mode of the prime
phenomenon, that in which the living idea of becoming unfolds itself
immediately to the intuitive vision. And therefore the Destiny-idea
dominates the whole world-picture of history, while causality, which is
the existence-mode of objects and stamps out of the world of
sensations a set of well-distinguished and well-defined things,
properties and relations, dominates and penetrates, as the form of
the understanding, the Nature-world that is the understanding’s “alter
ego.”
But inquiry into the degree of validity of causal connexions within a
presentation of nature, or (what is henceforth the same thing for us)
into the destinies involved in that presentation, becomes far more
difficult still when we come to realize that for primitive man or for the
child no comprehensive causally-ordered world exists at all as yet
and that we ourselves, though “late” men with a consciousness
disciplined by powerful speech-sharpened thought, can do no more,
even in moments of the most strained attention (the only ones, really,
in which we are exactly in the physical focus), than assert that the
causal order which we see in such a moment is continuously present
in the actuality around us. Even waking, we take in the actual, “the
living garment of the Deity,” physiognomically, and we do so
involuntarily and by virtue of a power of experience that is rooted in
the deep sources of life.
A systematic delineation, on the contrary, is the expression of an
understanding emancipated from perception, and by means of it we
bring the mental picture of all times and all men into conformity with
the moment’s picture of Nature as ordered by ourselves. But the
mode of this ordering, which has a history that we cannot interfere
with in the smallest degree, is not the working of a cause, but a
destiny.
II
The way to the problem of Time, then, begins in the primitive

wistfulness and passes through its clearer issue the Destiny-idea.
We have now to try to outline, briefly, the content of that problem, so
far as it affects the subject of this book.
The word Time is a sort of charm to summon up that intensely
personal something designated earlier as the “proper,” which with an
inner certainty we oppose to the “alien” something that is borne in
upon each of us amongst and within the crowding impressions of the
sense-life. “The Proper,” “Destiny” and “Time” are interchangeable
words.
The problem of Time, like that of Destiny, has been completely
misunderstood by all thinkers who have confined themselves to the
systematic of the Become. In Kant’s celebrated theory there is not
one word about its character of directedness. Not only so, but the
omission has never even been noticed. But what is time as a length,
time without direction? Everything living, we can only repeat, has
“life,” direction, impulse, will, a movement-quality (Bewegtheit) that is
most intimately allied to yearning and has not the smallest element in
common with the “motion” (Bewegung) of the physicists. The living is
indivisible and irreversible, once and uniquely occurring, and its
course is entirely indeterminable by mechanics. For all such qualities
belong to the essence of Destiny, and “Time”—that which we actually
feel at the sound of the word, which is clearer in music than in
language, and in poetry than in prose—has this organic essence,
while Space has not. Hence, Kant and the rest notwithstanding, it is
impossible to bring Time with Space under one general Critique.
Space is a conception, but time is a word to indicate something
inconceivable, a sound-symbol, and to use it as a notion,
scientifically, is utterly to misconceive its nature. Even the word
direction—which unfortunately cannot be replaced by another—is
liable to mislead owing to its visual content. The vector-notion in
physics is a case in point.
For primitive man the word “time” can have no meaning. He simply
lives, without any necessity of specifying an opposition to something
else. He has time, but he knows nothing of it. All of us are conscious,
as being aware, of space only, and not of time. Space “is,” (i.e.
exists, in and with our sense-world)—as a self-extension while we
are living the ordinary life of dream, impulse, intuition and conduct,
and as space in the strict sense in the moments of strained attention.
“Time,” on the contrary, is a discovery, which is only made by
thinking. We create it as an idea or notion and do not begin till much
later to suspect that we ourselves are Time, inasmuch as we live.[102]
And only the higher Cultures, whose world-conceptions have
reached the mechanical-Nature stage, are capable of deriving from
their consciousness of a well-ordered measurable and
comprehensible Spatial, the projected image of time, the phantom
time,[103] which satisfies their need of comprehending, measuring and
causally ordering all. And this impulse—a sign of the sophistication
of existence that makes its appearance quite early in every Culture—
fashions, outside and beyond the real life-feeling, that which is called
time in all higher languages and has become for the town-intellect a
completely inorganic magnitude, as deceptive as it is current. But, if
the characteristics, or rather the characteristic, of extension—limit
and causality—is really wizard’s gear wherewith our proper soul
attempts to conjure and bind alien powers—Goethe speaks
somewhere of the “principle of reasonable order that we bear within
ourselves and could impress as the seal of our power upon
everything that we touch”—if all law is a fetter which our world-dread
hurries to fix upon the incrowding sensuous, a deep necessity of
self-preservation, so also the invention of a time that is knowable
and spatially representable within causality is a later act of this same
self-preservation, an attempt to bind by the force of notion the
tormenting inward riddle that is doubly tormenting to the intellect that
has attained power only to find itself defied. Always a subtle hatred
underlies the intellectual process by which anything is forced into the
domain and form-world of measure and law. The living is killed by
being introduced into space, for space is dead and makes dead.
With birth is given death, with the fulfilment the end. Something dies
within the woman when she conceives—hence comes that eternal
hatred of the sexes, child of world-fear. The man destroys, in a very
deep sense, when he begets—by bodily act in the sensuous world,
by “knowing” in the intellectual. Even in Luther[104] the word “know”
has the secondary genital sense. And with the “knowledge” of life—
which remains alien to the lower animals—the knowledge of death
has gained that power which dominates man’s whole waking
consciousness. By a picture of time the actual is changed into the
transitory.[105]
The mere creation of the name Time was an unparalleled
deliverance. To name anything by a name is to win power over it.
This is the essence of primitive man’s art of magic—the evil powers
are constrained by naming them, and the enemy is weakened or
killed by coupling certain magic procedures with his name.[106]
And there is something of this primitive expression of world-fear in
the way in which all systematic philosophies use mere names as a
last resort for getting rid of the Incomprehensible, the Almighty that is
all too mighty for the intellect. We name something or other the
“Absolute,” and we feel ourselves at once its superior. Philosophy,
the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the
incomprehensible. What is named, comprehended, measured is ipso
facto overpowered, made inert and taboo.[107] Once more,
“knowledge is power.” Herein lies one root of the difference between
the idealist’s and the realist’s attitude towards the Unapproachable; it
is expressed by the two meanings of the German word Scheu—
respect and abhorrence.[108] The idealist contemplates, the realist
would subject, mechanize, render innocuous. Plato and Goethe
accept the secret in humility, Aristotle and Kant would open it up and
destroy it. The most deeply significant example of this realism is in
its treatment of the Time problem. The dread mystery of Time, life
itself, must be spellbound and, by the magic of comprehensibility,
neutralized.
All that has been said about time in “scientific” philosophy,
psychology and physics—the supposed answer to a question that
had better never have been asked, namely what is time?—touches,
not at any point the secret itself, but only a spatially-formed
representative phantom. The livingness and directedness and fated
course of real Time is replaced by a figure which, be it never so
intimately absorbed, is only a line, measurable, divisible, reversible,
and not a portrait of that which is incapable of being portrayed; by a
“time” that can be mathematically expressed in such forms as √t, t², -
t, from which the assumption of a time of zero magnitude or of
negative times is, to say the least, not excluded.[109] Obviously this is
something quite outside the domain of Life, Destiny, and living
historical Time; it is a purely conceptual time-system that is remote
even from the sensuous life. One has only to substitute, in any
philosophical or physical treatise that one pleases, this word
“Destiny” for the word “time” and one will instantly see how
understanding loses its way when language has emancipated it from
sensation, and how impossible the group “time and space” is. What
is not experienced and felt, what is merely thought, necessarily takes
a spatial form, and this explains why no systematic philosopher has
been able to make anything out of the mystery-clouded, far-echoing
sound symbols “Past” and “Future.” In Kant’s utterances concerning
time they do not even occur, and in fact one cannot see any relation
which could connect them with what is said there. But only this
spatial form enables time and space to be brought into functional
interdependence as magnitudes of the same order, as four-
dimensional vector analysis[110] conspicuously shows. As early as
1813 Lagrange frankly described mechanics as a four-dimensional
geometry, and even Newton’s cautious conception of “tempus
absolutum sive duratio” is not exempt from this intellectually
inevitable transformation of the living into mere extension. In the
older philosophy I have found one, and only one, profound and
reverent presentation of Time; it is in Augustine—“If no one
questions me, I know: if I would explain to a questioner, I know
not.”[111]
When philosophers of the present-day West “hedge”—as they all
do—by saying that things are in time as in space and that “outside”
them nothing is “conceivable,” they are merely putting another kind
of space (Räumlichkeit) beside the ordinary one, just as one might, if
one chose, call hope and electricity the two forces of the universe. It
ought not, surely, to have escaped Kant when he spoke of the “two
forms” of perception, that whereas it is easy enough to come to a
scientific understanding about space (though not to “explain” it, in the
ordinary sense of the word, for that is beyond human powers),
treatment of time on the same lines breaks down utterly. The reader
of the “Critique of Pure Reason” and the “Prolegomena” will observe
that Kant gives a well-considered proof for the connexion of space
and geometry but carefully avoids doing the same for time and
arithmetic. There he did not go beyond enunciation, and constant
reassertion of analogy between the two conceptions lured him over a
gap that would have been fatal to his system. Vis-à-vis the Where
and the How, the When forms a world of its own as distinct as is
metaphysics from physics. Space, object, number, notion, causality
are so intimately akin that it is impossible—as countless mistaken
systems prove—to treat the one independently of the other.
Mechanics is a copy of the logic of its day and vice versa. The
picture of thought as psychology builds it up and the picture of the
space-world as contemporary physics describes it are reflections of
one another. Conceptions and things, reasons and causes,
conclusions and processes coincide so nicely, as received by the
consciousness, that the abstract thinker himself has again and again
succumbed to the temptation of setting forth the thought-“process”
graphically and schematically—witness Aristotle’s and Kant’s
tabulated categories. “Where there is no scheme, there is no
philosophy” is the objection of principle—unacknowledged though it
may be—that all professional philosophers have against the
“intuitives,” to whom inwardly they feel themselves far superior. That
is why Kant crossly describes the Platonic style of thinking “as the art
of spending good words in babble” (die Kunst, wortreich zu
schwatzen), and why even to-day the lecture-room philosopher has
not a word to say about Goethe’s philosophy. Every logical operation
is capable of being drawn, every system a geometrical method of
handling thoughts. And therefore Time either finds no place in the
system at all, or is made its victim.
This is the refutation of that widely-spread misunderstanding which
connects time with arithmetic and space with geometry by superficial
analogies, an error to which Kant ought never to have succumbed—
though it is hardly surprising that Schopenhauer, with his incapacity
for understanding mathematics, did so. Because the living act of
numbering is somehow or other related to time, number and time are
constantly confused. But numbering is not number, any more than
drawing is a drawing. Numbering and drawing are a becoming,
numbers and figures are things become. Kant and the rest have in
mind now the living act (numbering) and now the result thereof (the
relations of the finished figure); but the one belongs to the domain of
Life and Time, the other to that of Extension and Causality. That I
calculate is the business of organic, what I calculate the business of
inorganic, logic. Mathematics as a whole—in common language,
arithmetic and geometry—answers the How? and the What?—that
is, the problem of the Natural order of things. In opposition to this
problem stands that of the When? of things, the specifically historical
problem of destiny, future and past; and all these things are
comprised in the word Chronology, which simple mankind
understands fully and unequivocally.
Between arithmetic and geometry there is no opposition.[112] Every
kind of number, as has been sufficiently shown in an earlier chapter,
belongs entirely to the realm of the extended and the become,
whether as a Euclidean magnitude or as an analytical function; and
to which heading should we have to assign the cyclometric[113]
functions, the Binomial Theorem, the Riemann surfaces, the Theory
of Groups? Kant’s scheme was refuted by Euler and d’Alembert
before he even set it up, and only the unfamiliarity of his successors
with the mathematics of their time—what a contrast to Descartes,
Pascal and Leibniz, who evolved the mathematics of their time from
the depths of their own philosophy!—made it possible for
mathematical notions of a relation between time and arithmetic to be
passed on like an heirloom, almost uncriticized.
But between Becoming and any part whatsoever of mathematics
there is not the slightest contact. Newton indeed was profoundly
convinced (and he was no mean philosopher) that in the principles of
his Calculus of Fluxions[114] he had grasped the problem of
Becoming, and therefore of Time—in a far subtler form, by the way,
than Kant’s. But even Newton’s view could not be upheld, even
though it may find advocates to this day. Since Weierstrass proved
that continuous functions exist which either cannot be differentiated
at all or are capable only of partial differentiation, this most deep-
searching of all efforts to close with the Time-problem
mathematically has been abandoned.
III
Time is a counter-conception (Gegenbegriff) to Space, arising out
of Space, just as the notion (as distinct from the fact) of Life arises
only in opposition to thought, and the notion (as distinct from the
fact) of birth and generation only in opposition to death.[115] This is
implicit in the very essence of all awareness. Just as any sense-
impression is only remarked when it detaches itself from another, so
any kind of understanding that is genuine critical activity[116] is only
made possible through the setting-up of a new concept as anti-pole
to one already present, or through the divorce (if we may call it so) of
a pair of inwardly-polar concepts which as long as they are mere
constituents, possess no actuality.[117] It has long been presumed—
and rightly, beyond a doubt—that all root-words, whether they
express things or properties, have come into being by pairs; but
even later, even to-day, the connotation that every new word
receives is a reflection of some other. And so, guided by language,
the understanding, incapable of fitting a sure inward subjective
certainty of Destiny into its form-world, created “time” out of space as
its opposite. But for this we should possess neither the word nor its
connotation. And so far is this process of word-formation carried that
the particular style of extension possessed by the Classical world led
to a specifically Classical notion of time, differing from the time-
notions of India, China and the West exactly as Classical space
differs from the space of these Cultures.[118]
For this reason, the notion of an art-form—which again is a
“counter-concept”—has only arisen when men became aware that
their art-creations had a connotation (Gehalt) at all, that is, when the
expression-language of the art, along with its effects, had ceased to
be something perfectly natural and taken-for-granted, as it still was in
the time of the Pyramid-Builders, in that of the Mycenæan
strongholds and in that of the early Gothic cathedrals. Men become
suddenly aware of the existence of “works,” and then for the first
time the understanding eye is able to distinguish a causal side and a
destiny side in every living art.
In every work that displays the whole man and the whole meaning
of the existence, fear and longing lie close together, but they are and
they remain different. To the fear, to the Causal, belongs the whole
“taboo” side of art—its stock of motives, developed in strict schools
and long craft-training, carefully protected and piously transmitted; all
of it that is comprehensible, learnable, numerical; all the logic of
colour, line, structure, order, which constitutes the mother-tongue of
every worthy artist and every great epoch. But the other side,
opposed to the “taboo” as the directed is to the extended and as the
development-destiny within a form-language to its syllogisms, comes
out in genius (namely, in that which is wholly personal to the
individual artists, their imaginative powers, creative passion, depth
and richness, as against all mere mastery of form) and, beyond even
genius, in that superabundance of creativeness in the race which
conditions the rise and fall of whole arts. This is the “totem” side, and
owing to it—notwithstanding all the æsthetics ever penned—there is
no timeless and solely-true way of art, but only a history of art,
marked like everything that lives with the sign of irreversibility.[119]
And this is why architecture of the grand style—which is the only
one of the arts that handles the alien and fear-instilling itself, the
immediate Extended, the stone—is naturally the early art in all
Cultures, and only step by step yields its primacy to the special arts
of the city with their more mundane forms—the statue, the picture,
the musical composition. Of all the great artists of the West, it was
probably Michelangelo who suffered most acutely under the constant
nightmare of world-fear, and it was he also who, alone among the
Renaissance masters, never freed himself from the architectural. He
even painted as though his surfaces were stone, become, stiff,
hateful. His work was a bitter wrestle with the powers of the cosmos
which faced him and challenged him in the form of material, whereas
in the yearning Leonardo’s colour we see, as it were, a glad
materialization of the spiritual. But in every large architectural
problem an implacable causal logic, not to say mathematic, comes to
expression—in the Classical orders of columns a Euclidean relation
of beam and load, in the “analytically” disposed thrust-system of
Gothic vaulting the dynamic relation of force and mass. Cottage-
building traditions—which are to be traced in the one and in the
other, which are the necessary background even of Egyptian
architecture, which in fact develop in every early period and are
regularly lost in every later—contain the whole sum of this logic of
the extended. But the symbolism of direction and destiny is beyond
all the “technique” of the great arts and hardly approachable by way
of æsthetics. It lies—to take some instances—in the contrast that is
always felt (but never, either by Lessing or by Hebbel, elucidated)
between Classical and Western tragedy; in the succession of scenes
of old Egyptian relief and generally in the serial arrangement of
Egyptian statues, sphinxes, temple-halls; in the choice, as distinct
from the treatment, of materials (hardest diorite to affirm, and softest
wood to deny, the future); in the occurrence, and not in the grammar,
of the individual arts, e.g., the victory of arabesque over the Early
Christian picture, the retreat of oil-painting before chamber music in
the Baroque; in the utter diversity of intention in Egyptian, Chinese
and Classical statuary. All these are not matters of “can” but of
“must,” and therefore it is not mathematics and abstract thought, but
the great arts in their kinship with the contemporary religions, that
give the key to the problem of Time, a problem that can hardly be
solved within the domain of history[120] alone.
IV
It follows from the meaning that we have attached to the Culture
as a prime phenomenon and to destiny as the organic logic of
existence, that each Culture must necessarily possess its own
destiny-idea. Indeed, this conclusion is implicit from the first in the
feeling that every great Culture is nothing but the actualizing and
form of a single, singularly-constituted (einzigartig) soul. And what
cannot be felt by one sort of men exactly as it is felt by another
(since the life of each is the expression of the idea proper to himself)
and still less transcribed, what is named by us “conjuncture,”
“accident,” “Providence” or “Fate,” by Classical man “Nemesis,”
“Ananke,” “Tyche” or “Fatum,” by the Arab “Kismet,” by everyone in
some way of his own, is just that of which each unique and
unreproduceable soul-constitution, quite clear to those who share in
it, is a rendering.
The Classical form of the Destiny-idea I shall venture to call
Euclidean. Thus it is the sense-actual person of Œdipus, his
“empirical ego,” nay, his σῶμα that is hunted and thrown by Destiny.
Œdipus complains that Creon has misused his “body”[121] and that
the oracle applied to his “body.”[122] Æschylus, again, speaks of
Agamemnon as the “royal body, leader of fleets.”[123] It is this same
word σῶμα that the mathematicians employ more than once for the
“bodies” with which they deal. But the destiny of King Lear is of the
“analytical” type—to use here also the term suggested by the
corresponding number-world—and consists in dark inner
relationships. The idea of fatherhood emerges; spiritual threads
weave themselves into the action, incorporeal and transcendental,
and are weirdly illuminated by the counterpoint of the secondary
tragedy of Gloster’s house. Lear is at the last a mere name, the axis
of something unbounded. This conception of destiny is the
“infinitesimal” conception. It stretches out into infinite time and infinite
space. It touches the bodily, Euclidean existence not at all, but
affects only the Soul. Consider the mad King between the fool and
the outcast in the storm on the heath, and then look at the Laocoön
group; the first is the Faustian, the other the Apollinian way of
suffering. Sophocles, too, wrote a Laocoön drama; and we may be
certain that there was nothing of pure soul-agony in it. Antigone goes
below ground in the body, because she has buried her brother’s
body. Think of Ajax and Philoctetes, and then of the Prince of
Homburg and Goethe’s Tasso—is not the difference between
magnitude and relation traceable right into the depths of artistic
creation?
This brings us to another connexion of high symbolic significance.
The drama of the West is ordinarily designated Character-Drama.
That of the Greeks, on the other hand, is best described as
Situation-Drama, and in the antithesis we can perceive what it is that
Western, and what it is that Classical, man respectively feel as the
basic life-form that is imperilled by the onsets of tragedy and fate. If
in lieu of “direction” we say “irreversibility,” if we let ourselves sink
into the terrible meaning of those words “too late” wherewith we
resign a fleeting bit of the present to the eternal past, we find the
deep foundation of every tragic crisis. It is Time that is the tragic, and
it is by the meaning that it intuitively attaches to Time that one
Culture is differentiated from another; and consequently “tragedy” of
the grand order has only developed in the Culture which has most
passionately affirmed, and in that which has most passionately
denied, Time. The sentiment of the ahistoric soul gives us a
Classical tragedy of the moment, and that of the ultrahistorical soul
puts before us Western tragedy that deals with the development of a
whole life. Our tragedy arises from the feeling of an inexorable Logic
of becoming, while the Greek feels the illogical, blind Casual of the
moment—the life of Lear matures inwardly towards a catastrophe,
and that of Œdipus stumbles without warning upon a situation. And
now one may perceive how it is that synchronously with Western
drama there rose and fell a mighty portrait-art (culminating in
Rembrandt), a kind of historical and biographical art which (because
it was so) was sternly discountenanced in Classical Greece at the
apogee of Attic drama. Consider the veto on likeness-statuary in
votive offerings[124] and note how—from Demetrius of Alopeke (about
400)[125]—a timid art of “ideal” portraiture began to venture forth
when, and only when, grand tragedy had been thrown into the
background by the light society-pieces of the “Middle Comedy.”[126]
Fundamentally all Greek statues were standard masks, like the
actors in the theatre of Dionysus; all bring to expression, in
significantly strict form, somatic attitudes and positions.
Physiognomically they are dumb, corporeal and of necessity nude—
character-heads of definite individuals came only with the Hellenistic
age. Once more we are reminded of the contrast between the Greek
number-world, with its computations of tangible results, and the
other, our own, in which the relations between groups of functions or
equations or, generally, formula-elements of the same order are
investigated morphologically, and the character of these relations
fixed as such in express laws.
V
In the capacity of experientially living history and the way in which
history, particularly the history of personal becoming, is lived, one
man differs very greatly from another.
Every Culture possesses a wholly individual way of looking at and
comprehending the world-as-Nature; or (what comes to the same
thing) it has its own peculiar “Nature” which no other sort of man can
possess in exactly the same form. But in a far greater degree still,
every Culture—including the individuals comprising it (who are
separated only by minor distinctions)—possesses a specific and
peculiar sort of history—and it is in the picture of this and the style of
this that the general and the personal, the inner and the outer, the
world-historical and the biographical becoming, are immediately
perceived, felt and lived. Thus the autobiographical tendency of
Western man—revealed even in Gothic times in the symbol of
auricular confession[127]—is utterly alien to Classical man; while his
intense historical awareness is in complete contrast to the almost
dreamy unconsciousness of the Indian. And when Magian man—
primitive Christian or ripe scholar of Islam—uses the words “world-
history,” what is it that he sees before him?
But it is difficult enough to form an exact idea even of the “Nature”
proper to another kind of man, although in this domain things
specifically cognizable are causally ordered and unified in a
communicable system. And it is quite impossible for us to penetrate
completely a historical world-aspect of “becoming” formed by a soul
that is quite differently constituted from our own. Here there must
always be an intractable residue, greater or smaller in proportion to
our historical instinct, physiognomic tact and knowledge of men. All
the same, the solution of this very problem is the condition-precedent
of all really deep understanding of the world. The historical
environment of another is a part of his essence, and no such other
can be understood without the knowledge of his time-sense, his
destiny-idea and the style and degree of acuity of his inner life. In so
far therefore as these things are not directly confessed, we have to
extract them from the symbolism of the alien Culture. And as it is
thus and only thus that we can approach the incomprehensible, the
style of an alien Culture, and the great time-symbols belonging
thereto acquire an immeasurable importance.
As an example of these hitherto almost uncomprehended signs we
may take the clock, a creation of highly developed Cultures that
becomes more and more mysterious as one examines it. Classical
man managed to do without the clock, and his abstention was more
or less deliberate. To the Augustan period, and far beyond it, the
time of day was estimated by the length of one’s shadow,[128]
although sun-dials and water-clocks, designed in conformity with a
strict time-reckoning and imposed by a deep sense of past and
future, had been in regular use in both the older Cultures of Egypt
and Babylonia.[129] Classical man’s existence—Euclidean,
relationless, point-formed—was wholly contained in the instant.
Nothing must remind him of past or future. For the true Classical,
archæology did not exist, nor did its spiritual inversion, astrology.
The Oracle and the Sibyl, like the Etruscan-Roman “haruspices” and
“augurs,” did not foretell any distant future but merely gave
indications on particular questions of immediate bearing. No time-
reckoning entered intimately into everyday life (for the Olympiad
sequence was a mere literary expedient) and what really matters is
not the goodness or badness of a calendar but the questions: “who
uses it?” and “does the life of the nation run by it?” In Classical cities
nothing suggested duration, or old times or times to come—there
was no pious preservation of ruins, no work conceived for the benefit
of future generations; in them we do not find that durable[130] material
was deliberately chosen. The Dorian Greek ignored the Mycenæan
stone-technique and built in wood or clay, though Mycenæan and
Egyptian work was before him and the country produced first-class
building-stone. The Doric style is a timber style—even in
Pausanias’s day some wooden columns still lingered in the Heræum
of Olympia. The real organ of history is “memory” in the sense which
is always postulated in this book, viz., that which preserves as a
constant present the image of one’s personal past and of a national
and a world-historical past[131] as well, and is conscious of the course
both of personal and of super-personal becoming. That organ was
not present in the make-up of a Classical soul. There was no “Time”
in it. Immediately behind his proper present, the Classical historian
sees a background that is already destitute of temporal and therefore
of inward order. For Thucydides the Persian Wars, for Tacitus the
agitation of the Gracchi, were already in this vague background;[132]
and the great families of Rome had traditions that were pure
romance—witness Cæsar’s slayer, Brutus, with his firm belief in his
reputed tyrannicide ancestor. Cæsar’s reform of the calendar may
almost be regarded as a deed of emancipation from the Classical
life-feeling. But it must not be forgotten that Cæsar also imagined a
renunciation of Rome and a transformation of the City-State into an
empire which was to be dynastic—marked with the badge of duration
—and to have its centre of gravity in Alexandria, which in fact is the
birthplace of his calendar. His assassination seems to us a last
outburst of the antiduration feeling that was incarnate in the Polis
and the Urbs Roma.
Even then Classical mankind was still living every hour and every
day for itself; and this is equally true whether we take the individual
Greek or Roman, or the city, or the nation, or the whole Culture. The
hot-blooded pageantry, palace-orgies, circus-battles of Nero or
Caligula—Tacitus is a true Roman in describing only these and
ignoring the smooth progress of life in the distant provinces—are
final and flamboyant expressions of the Euclidean world-feeling that
deified the body and the present.
The Indians also have no sort of time-reckoning (the absence of it
in their case expressing their Nirvana) and no clocks, and therefore
no history, no life memories, no care. What the conspicuously
historical West calls “Indian history” achieved itself without the
smallest consciousness of what it was doing.[133] The millennium of
the Indian Culture between the Vedas and Buddha seems like the
stirrings of a sleeper; here life was actually a dream. From all this our
Western Culture is unimaginably remote. And, indeed, man has
never—not even in the “contemporary” China of the Chóu period
with its highly-developed sense of eras and epochs[134]—been so
awake and aware, so deeply sensible of time and conscious of
direction and fate and movement as he has been in the West.
Western history was willed and Indian history happened. In Classical
existence years, in Indian centuries scarcely counted, but here the
hour, the minute, yea the second, is of importance. Of the tragic
tension of a historical crisis like that of August, 1914, when even
moments seem overpowering, neither a Greek nor an Indian could
have had any idea.[135] Such crises, too, a deep-feeling man of the
West can experience within himself, as a true Greek could never do.
Over our country-side, day and night from thousands of belfries, ring
the bells[136] that join future to past and fuse the point-moments of the
Classical present into a grand relation. The epoch which marks the
birth of our Culture—the time of the Saxon Emperors—marks also
the discovery of the wheel-clock.[137] Without exact time-
measurement, without a chronology of becoming to correspond with
his imperative need of archæology (the preservation, excavation and
collection of things-become), Western man is unthinkable. The
Baroque age intensified the Gothic symbol of the belfry to the point
of grotesqueness, and produced the pocket watch that constantly
accompanies the individual.[138]
Another symbol, as deeply significant and as little understood as
the symbol of the clock, is that of the funeral customs which all great
Cultures have consecrated by ritual and by art. The grand style in
India begins with tomb-temples, in the Classical world with funerary
urns, in Egypt with pyramids, in early Christianity with catacombs
and sarcophagi. In the dawn, innumerable equally-possible forms
still cross one another chaotically and obscurely, dependent on clan-
custom and external necessities and conveniences. But every
Culture promptly elevates one or another of them to the highest
degree of symbolism. Classical man, obedient to his deep
unconscious life-feeling, picked upon burning, an act of annihilation
in which the Euclidean, the here-and-now, type of existence was
powerfully expressed. He willed to have no history, no duration,
neither past nor future, neither preservation nor dissolution, and
therefore he destroyed that which no longer possessed a present,
the body of a Pericles, a Cæsar, a Sophocles, a Phidias. And the
soul passed to join the vague crowd to which the living members of
the clan paid (but soon ceased to pay) the homage of ancestor-
worship and soul-feast, and which in its formlessness presents an
utter contrast to the ancestor-series, the genealogical tree, that is
eternalized with all the marks of historical order in the family-vault of
the West. In this (with one striking exception, the Vedic dawn in
India) no other Culture parallels the Classical.[139] And be it noted that
the Doric-Homeric spring, and above all the “Iliad,” invested this act
of burning with all the vivid feeling of a new-born symbol; for those
very warriors whose deeds probably formed the nucleus of the epic
were in fact buried almost in the Egyptian manner in the graves of
Mycenæ, Tiryns, Orchomenos and other places. And when in
Imperial times the sarcophagus or “flesh-consumer”[140] began to
supersede the vase of ashes, it was again, as in the time when the
Homeric urn superseded the shaft-grave of Mycenæ, a changed
sense of Time that underlay the change of rite.
The Egyptians, who preserved their past in memorials of stone
and hieroglyph so purposefully that we, four thousand years after
them, can determine the order of their kings’ reigns, so thoroughly
eternalized their bodies that today the great Pharaohs lie in our
museums, recognizable in every lineament, a symbol of grim triumph
—while of Dorian kings not even the names have survived. For our
own part, we know the exact birthdays and deathdays of almost
every great man since Dante, and, moreover, we see nothing
strange in the fact. Yet in the time of Aristotle, the very zenith of
Classical education, it was no longer known with certainty if
Leucippus, the founder of Atomism and a contemporary of Pericles
—i.e., hardly a century before—had ever existed at all; much as
though for us the existence of Giordano Bruno was a matter of
doubt[141] and the Renaissance had become pure saga.
And these museums themselves, in which we assemble
everything that is left of the corporeally-sensible past! Are not they a
symbol of the highest rank? Are they not intended to conserve in
mummy the entire “body” of cultural development?
As we collect countless data in milliards of printed books, do we
not also collect all the works of all the dead Cultures in these myriad
halls of West-European cities, in the mass of the collection depriving
each individual piece of that instant of actualized purpose that is its
own—the one property that the Classical soul would have respected
—and ipso facto dissolving it into our unending and unresting Time?

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Fearless Writing: Rhetoric, Inquiry,

Argument 2nd Edition University Of

Selected chapters from:

The Bedford Book of Genres, Second Edition

The Bedford Handbook, Tenth Edition

From Inquiry to A cademic Writing, Fourth Edition

The Writer)s Loop, First Edition

Writer / Designer, Second Edition

--1 bedford /st.martin's

Bedford/St. Martin's - 9781319377540

T11e Bedford Book of Genres, Second Edition

T11e Bedford Ha11dbook,Tenth Edition

From lnq11iry to Acade111ic Writing, Fourth Edition

·1he Writers Loop, First Edition

Writer/ Designer, Second Edition

Macmillan Learning Curriculum Solutions

Bedford/St. Martin's - 9781319377540

SECTION 3 Rhetorical Analysis 52

SECTION 5 Inquiry 167

SECTION 6 Digital Composing 218

SECTION 7 Argume nt 264

SECTION 8 Public Remediation 329

SECTION 9 Style, Revision, and Reflection 384

60 Citing Sources; Avoiding Plagiarism 416

What Is Academic Writing?

What Are the Habits of Mind of Academic Writers?

Academic Writers Make Inquiries

Academic Writers Seek and Value Complexity

Academic Writers See Writing as a Conversation

Although it is important to develop untapped resources in remote areas of the United

Academic Writers Understand That Writing Is a Process

Collect Information and Material

Steps to Collecting Information and Material

Draft. and Draft Again

1 Draft and revise the introduction and conclusion.

Academic Writers Reflect

Was I resourceful in terms of finding information, resources, and materials?

What Do Rhetorical Situations Have to

Genres Respond to Rhetorical Situations

A Meme Responds to a Rhetorical Situation

The composers are providing a commentary (purpose).

RHETORICAL SITUATION & CHOICES GENRE CONVENTIONS

What is the composer of Hipster Llama The composer of Hipster Llama

Rhetorical Appeals Style

Should Writers Use They Own English?

Style and Standards in the

"Style and Standards in the Composition/Communication. Classroom" by Uouglas Kern.

This statement is important to your experience in English 101 at UMD.

1 http://cccc.ncte.org/ cccc/ resources/ positions/ srtolsummary

Shattering Black Flesh: Black

Writing in Public: English IO I

"Writing in Public: English lO l" by Eliza be-th Catchmark.

Now, compare the paraphrase with this sununary:

The way to the problem of Time, then, begins in the primitive

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