I’m not sure if anyone from class will check my blog
again except for Doug, but this is the long awaited blog I mentioned in my last
blog post (& I believe this will be my very last blog for WRIT 372). It’s
been a fun class even though I didn’t need it to graduate (I already have all
my writing electives). My main goal when I signed up for this class was to
explore the Writing major more because there wasn’t anything in the Writing
major that interested me as a career. All I knew is that I love thinking about
writing and language in general. I think I succeeded in my goal :) because I think
now I have a pretty good grasp of what I’m interested in.
This semester I slowly realized that I really enjoy analyzing language/ideas/concepts. I love thinking of how texts are written a specific way and I love playing with the ideas that they contain. I also think it’s fun to think of what may or may not have been explored before.
For my critical discourse analysis piece, I analyzed Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? I thought it was so neat to see how he used language (e.g metaphors and narrative scenes) to not only lead the readers into thinking that his view of how Facebook causes loneliness has merit but also to cause conflict within the Facebook Discourse while doing so. I was really, really impressed with his writing style to be honest. I wanted to hate him, but at the same time, I couldn’t because I thought his deception was extremely well calculated. He was freaking smart, no matter how offensive he may have been to his readers.
After I read Gee’s article to understand how to analyze Steven Marche’s Facebook article, I realized that my last blogpost was pretty much describing what a Discourse is. … I think it’s so cool how close I was. In that post I also said that I wanted to make connections between Discourse and all the concepts that have come up for me in class, well, here they (briefly) are:
* Passion
-- When people are in the same Discourse, they will value the same thing as each other and it makes me wonder… Will their level of passion be the same as well? Thinking back to our discussions about putting passion into what we write, I’m pondering this: If we choose to write about something that we’re really passionate about, could that maybe mess the words/phrases that are directed toward our target audience? To be more clear: As a writer, we’re essentially having conversations with other Discourses. If we put too much passion into our work/piece, would that make us forget what words/phrases may make our target audience happy or unhappy?
* Interpretation
-- This is giving me chills. In my notes on Dillard, before I read Gee and talked with Doug, I wrote that perhaps people in the same Discourse interpret visuals in the same way and how this could relate to texts, passages and sentences etc. Up until this point I’ve learned that when people share common values and ways of thinking, they will interpret something the same way.
* Opinion
-- I wonder if maybe our opinions/our views are shaped by our conversations with other people within our own Discourse relative to specific topics. Because we interpret what we read in the same way as our fellow Discourse members, I wonder if maybe our opinion is not really our own, but is the opinion as the people within our Discourse as well because they share similar thoughts and interpretations as us.
* Context
-- I’m thinking about how in one of my readings (can’t remember if it’s Gee or not) had mentioned that if we paused a moment in a video, we probably wouldn’t get the same meaning out of it if we played a little bit more of the video. I feel like if we weren’t all culturally trained to think a certain way via conversations within our Discourses/other Discourses, we wouldn’t get the same meaning out of a picture or out of a video. For example, an alien or someone living in a bomb shelter for the first 35 years of their life (Blast From the Past reference), probably wouldn’t understand what certain pictures or words mean if they were not within the same Discourse (e.g 9/11 or certain presidential election moments). In other words, they wouldn’t interpret things the same way because they wouldn’t have the same basis of knowledge for what they are reading and/or seeing as other people within that societal Discourse.
* Objectivity
-- I’m beginning to see that this word is a cultural construct. There’s passion and emotion behind everything we do (oral, body and written communication). Our society paints that word as being emotionless, but we really can’t be emotionless. The way we think is always centered on what we feel. When we write, no matter if it’s a science journal report, it’s not objective because we’re accommodating to a specific Discourse who values the contents within that journal article. Because they value what they read, there is passion there.
This semester I slowly realized that I really enjoy analyzing language/ideas/concepts. I love thinking of how texts are written a specific way and I love playing with the ideas that they contain. I also think it’s fun to think of what may or may not have been explored before.
For my critical discourse analysis piece, I analyzed Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? I thought it was so neat to see how he used language (e.g metaphors and narrative scenes) to not only lead the readers into thinking that his view of how Facebook causes loneliness has merit but also to cause conflict within the Facebook Discourse while doing so. I was really, really impressed with his writing style to be honest. I wanted to hate him, but at the same time, I couldn’t because I thought his deception was extremely well calculated. He was freaking smart, no matter how offensive he may have been to his readers.
After I read Gee’s article to understand how to analyze Steven Marche’s Facebook article, I realized that my last blogpost was pretty much describing what a Discourse is. … I think it’s so cool how close I was. In that post I also said that I wanted to make connections between Discourse and all the concepts that have come up for me in class, well, here they (briefly) are:
* Passion
-- When people are in the same Discourse, they will value the same thing as each other and it makes me wonder… Will their level of passion be the same as well? Thinking back to our discussions about putting passion into what we write, I’m pondering this: If we choose to write about something that we’re really passionate about, could that maybe mess the words/phrases that are directed toward our target audience? To be more clear: As a writer, we’re essentially having conversations with other Discourses. If we put too much passion into our work/piece, would that make us forget what words/phrases may make our target audience happy or unhappy?
* Interpretation
-- This is giving me chills. In my notes on Dillard, before I read Gee and talked with Doug, I wrote that perhaps people in the same Discourse interpret visuals in the same way and how this could relate to texts, passages and sentences etc. Up until this point I’ve learned that when people share common values and ways of thinking, they will interpret something the same way.
* Opinion
-- I wonder if maybe our opinions/our views are shaped by our conversations with other people within our own Discourse relative to specific topics. Because we interpret what we read in the same way as our fellow Discourse members, I wonder if maybe our opinion is not really our own, but is the opinion as the people within our Discourse as well because they share similar thoughts and interpretations as us.
* Context
-- I’m thinking about how in one of my readings (can’t remember if it’s Gee or not) had mentioned that if we paused a moment in a video, we probably wouldn’t get the same meaning out of it if we played a little bit more of the video. I feel like if we weren’t all culturally trained to think a certain way via conversations within our Discourses/other Discourses, we wouldn’t get the same meaning out of a picture or out of a video. For example, an alien or someone living in a bomb shelter for the first 35 years of their life (Blast From the Past reference), probably wouldn’t understand what certain pictures or words mean if they were not within the same Discourse (e.g 9/11 or certain presidential election moments). In other words, they wouldn’t interpret things the same way because they wouldn’t have the same basis of knowledge for what they are reading and/or seeing as other people within that societal Discourse.
* Objectivity
-- I’m beginning to see that this word is a cultural construct. There’s passion and emotion behind everything we do (oral, body and written communication). Our society paints that word as being emotionless, but we really can’t be emotionless. The way we think is always centered on what we feel. When we write, no matter if it’s a science journal report, it’s not objective because we’re accommodating to a specific Discourse who values the contents within that journal article. Because they value what they read, there is passion there.
* Certainty/Uncertainty & truth
-- I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps people in our society don’t like reading uncertain words such as “probably” or “maybe” because of how they’ve been conditioned to do so. Sure, nothing is ever proven, but I also wonder if maybe the basis of that expectation is dependent on how certain we are from research evidence etc.,. Because of our cultural dependency on “certainty” as “truth”, I’m beginning to understand what Doug had told me a while ago. He told me that “truth” is a cultural construct. (At least I believe he did – )
* Faith
-- When I think of this word, I think of two things: Scientists believe that experiments will turn out a certain way and how we value things that aren’t proven like the existence of God. I wonder: When we say we value something, are we essentially putting faith into it? And if Discourses are derived of ways of thinking, ways of knowing, specific values etc, are they driven by faith as well?
* Authority
-- I wonder… As writers we have the power to direct our pieces toward any given target audience. We also have the power to think of how our readers will interpret our pieces and thus we have the power to write to accommodate the needs/desires of our target Discourse.
Side note: I had this thought on knowledge a few days ago: My psychology class and my writing classes play with knowledge creation differently. For my psychology classes we’re being trained to think a certain way before we can create our experiments to further knowledge within our field. For my writing classes, we’re creating and shaping that knowledge as we’re learning the ways of this field. It’s interesting to think about :)
On a final note, I love how I discovered the Discourse lens and applied it to the terms that I’ve been thinking about all semester. I definitely don’t think it’s the only way to see these terms, but I think it’s one way. I shall miss this class. It’s been a lot of fun. I hope the revisions and projects for other classes treat everyone well. :)
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