Tag: form

Genre Sirc-umvention

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

We have evolved a very limited notion of academic writing (or any genre,
really).  Our texts are conventional in every sense of the word; they write
themselves. They are almost wholly determined by the texts that have gone
before; a radical break from the conventions of a form or genre (and I’m not
speaking here about the academic convention of the smug, sanctioned
transgression, e.g. Jane Tompkins) would perplex–how is that history writing? 
what community group would need that for its newsletter?  how is that going
to help you get a job? A Happenings spirit would begin at the point of Elbow’s
"life is long and college is short" queasiness with academic writing
("Reflections on Academic Discourse" 136). (10)

A-la Geoff Sirc’s English Composition as a Happening.

Lose and Lose and

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 4 mins

Philadelphia Eagles (3-0) def. Detroit Lions (2-1), 30-13

But I didn’t watch much because, instead, I was piling word by carefully
chosen word through a summary of the last chapter from The Order of Things
for class tomorrow night. I’ll post it in the extended entry area since I
wouldn’t want to misrepresent this as aToo Orangey
academic blog exactly.  Not yet.  Plus, the summary is
terminologically hip-boots marshy; it gets by on borrowed terms, awkwardly
jumbled, squishy.  But it’ll do the trick, I think, and I was just so
Fouc-ing relieved to be at the end of The Order of Things that a bit of
disorderliness was due.  Seriously, though, I hope we will sort out whether
F.’s rhetoric as epistemic tags him as a sophist (au wisdom) or a skeptic
(au infinite regress)…or neither.  Both?

***

When I clicked on the slogan
generator this morning, it brought up "Too Orangey For Braddock
Essays."  A’right!  However, I’d never heard the slogan. 
Found it gets play in this fun advertisement (mpg,
4.2mb) for Kia-ora.  Is it orange soda?  

***

Eating baked potatoes for tonight’s meal when Andy
Rooney came on the tube.  I haven’t watched 60 Minutes in a long
time, and tonight, having caught only the end, it was 5 Minutes. 
The guru crabster was carrying on about disingenuous efforts to mobilize the
votary public.  Get out and vote campaigns, he grumbled, are a crock; they
stir disinterested, uninformed dummies, rustle the lethargic from civic
slumber….  Like-always Rooney.  Pure crust.  But then he
said, 

I’d be willing to bet that it’s the dumbest people among us who are least
likely to vote too, and that’s fine with me. I don’t want anyone dumber than I
am voting.

[…]

If you’re a new citizen, wait another four years until you understand
English well enough to know what the candidates are talking about before you
vote.

Way to go, CBS.  How completely asinine does it have to be before you
relieve his crotchety-ness from making a total, hateful fool of himself? 
At once I felt a tinge of pity because he’s so confused and a wave of
shock because he spoke in such unapologetic and  irrevocable seriousness to hundreds of thousands of viewers saying, insomanywords, that non-English speakers, despite U.S. citizenship, ought to learn English before voting.  

*** 

Continue reading →