Notes

Notes, etc. of Samuel Flint

Writing and Communities

Day 1

Terms

  • purpose

  • context

  • writing in a community

Questions

  • What prior experiences are being built upon?

    • highschool/middle school writing assignments

    • work reports

    • essays from school

  • What do you mean by educational community?

    • schools

    • any group of people you're surrounded by

    • academic subjects and the like

    • the standards and jargon used in a specific subject

  • How are we defining social dynamics?

    • interpersonal intearctions and behaviors in social situations

    • social morés

    • audience

    • who's there

    • what are they looking for

    • any two groups

  • What are the various forms of writing that we'll be using?

    • essays more than anything is my guess

    • persuasive essays

    • rhetorical analysis

    • formal writing

    • research based

Terms, part deux

  • discourse

  • reciprocity

  • inquiry

  • rhetoric :: rhetorical analysis (understanding how people use communication methods to convey ideas and opinions, not just emotion, logic or authority (παφος, λογος, εφος)), satire and irony are part of it also, as is usage

Assignments

  • profile of a community member

    • choose a community, preferably social

  • rhetorical analysis of multi-voiced community issue

    • multiple sides of an argument

  • advocate for an issue

Day 2

Exercise

  1. Afghani military

  2. goals

    • centralization of state

    • stability

  3. Significance of community/uniqueness/reflective

    • on news every other day

    • effects 12k US families

    • longest war US involved in

    • NATO

  4. recent issues

    • radicals

    • terrorists

    • nationalists

    • taliban

    • India/Pakistan/China

    • US increasing involvement – integration of politics and state building

  5. Major Figures

    • Afhghan Government

      • Karzai

      • Ashraf Ghani

    • Trump

    • Gorbachev

    • Bresnev

Day 3

  • very, very political class (yuck!)

  • subtext – what's in between the lines, implied but not directly stated

  • useful in text

    • diff btw trad and org intellectual, pp 6

    • basics of academic reading, pp 10

    • review questions, pp 7

    • pp 13-14, things to note

    • pp 18, review of the chapter

Community Analysis Exercise, ENGL 254

  • communities

    • unl

    • turningpoint usa

    • english department

    • union employees

    • unl police

  • subtext

    • her point of view may be a bit on the ridiculous side

  • rhetorical technique

    • pauses

    • indirect quotes

  • context

    • issues between the left and right sides of the aisle

    • potentially some free-speech issues and civility

  • What actually happened

    • someone made a polarizing comment/performd a polarizing action, someone else got annoyed, and things blew up because of tension that currently exists

Criteria for a community

  • can answer most of the questions in the essay before having to talk to them

Day 5

  • know meaning of terms

    multimodal

    use of different technologies and techniques

    midpoint

    a place between two or more different communities

  • how does acad discourse creates new communities?

    • the use of multimodal writing will help find a midpoint. finding a midpoint will often generate a new community, or more likely reveal the existence of a hidden community

  • what do these terms mean in academic discourse?

    • see above

  • examples

    midpoint

    bioinformatics – a midpoint between biology and computer science

    multimodal

    digital history archives – traditional writing and interactive presentation of data / Virtual Reality

  • What is academic discourse and why?

    • it's the patterns of communication within an academic community and/or field

    • it provides a way to communicate ideas in a more succinct manner, often neglecting a lot of background information

  • notes

    • numberphile is very informal, less complete, more of a lecture, no review of literature, not reviewed by peers, popular language

    • stanford encyclopedia of philosophy is more formal, rigorous, relies on literature, reviewed by peers, particularly well-trained mathemeticians and logicians