To me a writer is anyone who has an idea that they are able to express through words and put them on a piece of paper. Writing doesn’t always need to be some deep and philosophical way of thinking out loud like some people try to make it seem. It can just be as simple as saying you saw a bird fly into a tree and feed its babies and that’s it. My style of writing is really just whatever comes to mind and then some minor adjustments without losing who I am and my experience within it depending on what I’m writing about and who for. I tend to lean more towards depressing and serious topics because that’s just the sad truth of how the word is, it isn’t for everyone but I’m not writing for everyone’s amusement. I personally find darker subjects to be more interesting and creative to talk about because sunshine and rainbows can only be expressed so many times before it’s repetitive and banal.

Celeste Headlee is giving pointers to a crowd on how to better communicate with people by listening and working on the way they speak to one another. Every job requires communicating but due to technology speaking directly face to face isn’t really necessary and has caused some people who rely heavily on technology to lack in their communication skills. A point that I find useful is when I don’t know something I should probably let it be known that I don’t know. The only reason I don’t do this sometimes is because I feel like what I’m going to ask is something that everybody else already knows and then I’ll look like Boo Boo the Fool. Another piece of advice that I should use is trying not to repeat myself because when I’m talking about something I actually am interested in I end up rambling a lot and saying my same point over and over. 

JD @imjdollaz Caption: “are you masc or fem?” nigga i’m a grown ass gay man.

The social media post that I’ve chosen to analyze the rhetoric of is by the openly homosexual African American sex worker, JD, and his tweet regarding the societal stigma placed on gay men to group themselves in boxes to further more emphasize their identities. We can tell that JD’s first sentence is a rhetorical question because it is in quotation marks and that the second is his response to it. At first glance his statement may seem like not much of an argument but to his eleven thousand followers mostly composed of other Black gay men, this could interpreted as slightly controversial. JD seems to not like the terms “masc” or “fem” when asked to describe himself because he is a man nevertheless his sexuality and shouldn’t have to confine himself to any category. This may be a reach but the tweet could be an ethos driven rhetoric, he’s indirectly stating his belief and is using that to appeal to others that might feel the same way he does. The author’s use of AAVE and other slang words lets the reader know in the most blunt and simple way possible how he feels. The way he says it may be considered informal or even inappropriate to some people but the message is delivered all the same. It may not look like it but the text actually is a perfectly structured declarative sentence if you disregard everything being in lowercase form which was more than likely just for aesthetic purposes. The initial impact of reading his tweet caught my attention because it works as a doorway to a more complex conversation of stereotypes surrounding the gay community and toxic masculinity. The deeper impact his tweet left with me is why is it that in our society being gay is thought as being less of a man? Straight men aren’t asked to label themselves as masculine or feminine so why do that to gay men? If a man walks into a room rainbowed down head to toe wearing a forty inch wig he is just as much of a man as Jason Mamoa or The Rock. Despite what so many have been led to believe throughout history, being tough, aggressive and hairy doesn’t mean masculine, only being a man does. And there’s no right or wrong way of being a man.

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Grant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” Rhetoric Review, Volume 15, Issue 2, 1997, 246-279.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	Grant-Davie takes the time to discover the original and true meaning behind the term rhetorical situation. He goes on to explain how rhetors create the situations rather than somehow stumbling upon them and I agree. To me rhetorical situations are like seeds that we plant in our head with the idea that we are somehow going to sprout a solution or visualization of a scene in our life. We try to predict outcomes based on what we’ve already experienced and prior knowledge to the circumstance. Every rhetorical situation requires three things: an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	Compound rhetorical situations are when discussions of one subject has different rhetors and audiences.
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	On a previous assignment I had to create a rhetorical ethical dilemma so it connects in that way.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	Does rhetorical questions require the same three components as a rhetorical situation?

 

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Jones, Rebecca. “Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic?” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, 2010.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	Jones explains how over the course of time the word “argument” has become synonymous with negative vibes. A lot of the time our brains look at the word “argument” and see it as being a bad thing when it’s really just two people going back and forward explaining how they feel. It can be good and that’s what Jones is trying to express to the reader here. While reading this I really appreciated the metaphors about an argument being a war that ends with a winner and loser because so often people just end up thinking the exact same way before the argument. It defeats the entire purpose because if your mindset is the same then you just said a whole lot of nothing.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	The concept of an argument being a war I found pretty interesting and original.
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	We’ve read other people’s opinions that oppose to some other people so in a way that’s also an argument.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	Who decides who lost the argument?

 

1. Adverse childhood experiences are traumatic events that impact a person’s mental and physical health throughout their life. Toxic stresses are things that you do that have a negative effect on you.

2. Poverty can have a huge affect on a child’s development because the struggle of simply trying to live but not knowing when or if you’ll be able to have your next meal puts unnecessary stress on them. Being a child having to fight racism is like putting weights on them before a race, they’re automatically put at a disadvantage knowing they’ll lose no matter how fast they are and because they know that some won’t even run. Exposure to violence changes children in ways they may not even notice until adulthood, you become numb to it and pain becomes something that is expected to you.

3. Adverse childhood experiences can affect literacy stopping you from being open to reading.

1. Dr. Mona raised awareness and let the people of Flint know what the problem was going on with their water. She exposed the crisis that was happening in the city that officials ignored which led to the people getting sick.
2. Some people that lived near me didn’t know that there was quick sand at the levee we went to so I told them. I got stuck in it once so I didn’t want them to accidentally go through that like I did.
3. I think showing a bit more compassion for people that you tend to overlook as irrelevant will guide you on a path of general positivity. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and actually taking a step in their lives will lead to more sympathy and less violence towards one another. Listening to other people’s stories and experiences is also a way of caring and providing them with a safe space.

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Murray, Donald M. “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts”
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	Murray is discussing the differences between professional and amateur writers by using the first draft as an example of distinction. For most typical everyday writers and students the first draft is really the final draft but with a few grammatical errors and a couple of sentences short of the requirement. But to experienced writers the first draft acts as an outline of plot points and things to build off of rather than the unfinished end product. I understand where he’s coming from because when it comes to writing I sometimes do the same thing depending on what I am writing for. By the time I finish editing the first draft I may have created an entirely new story with barely anything left from the original.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	Apparently journeymen is the opposite of craftsmen so that’s a new word to my mental dictionary.
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	It helps me to understand the type of writer I am and the steps needed to be taken to improve my writing in class.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	What kind of writer are you?

 

Literacy to me is the capability of reading and writing with comprehension of the words that are being interpreted. It is a lot easier to understand words when they are being said out loud with a collection of other words around them. So you may be able to understand words using context clues when a person is speaking but seeing an individual word on a piece of paper is completely different. Just because you are able to pronounce and spell the words correctly or even use it in a sentence doesn’t exactly mean that you exactly have comprehension of that word.

 

One of my sponsors of literacy was my elementary teacher Ms.Nance. She was this kind white woman that actually put in effort to help me learn no matter how many times I just gave up in her class. She read us stories around the holidays, called on us to read with her and just overall made Reading and Language Arts class a fun experience.

 

Ms.Nance: What word are you having trouble with?

Me: It starts with cat.

Ms.Nance: You mean caterpillar?

Me: CatERpilLar?

Ms.Nance: Try to visualize the sound each letter makes and how it would sound when they come together. Try again slowly. The word is caterpillar.

Me: C-A-T-E-R-P-I-L-L-A-R. Caterpillar.

 

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Fishman, Andrea R. “Literacy and Cultural Context: A Lesson from the Amish.” National Council of Teachers of English, Volume 64, Issue 8, 1987, 842-849.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	Andrea is telling a story about her Amish daily and what literacy means to people like them who have not received a fully developed formal version of education. She says that no one in her family has stayed in school past the 8th grade and I personally knew a guy that dropped out of school in the 7th grade due to religious reasons but he wasn’t Amish. I get that every person has the right to feel how they feel about government education and the parents don’t mind if they continue to keep going to school but I think they should be a lot more involved in matters like that.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	She mentioned that a book about the KGB was a common thing in American Christian households which I didn’t know were a real thing. I knew it was something about Russian spies but I’ve only heard them be mentioned in Blacklist and Umbrella Academy on Netflix so I just thought is was some made up secret society like the Illuminati.
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	It opened the doors to how other ways of life and cultures use literacy and learn from it.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	What’s the difference between middle school and high school to the Amish?