Writing's Myths

We began our readings with Frank Smith's "Myths of Writing" and ended this unit with Socrates relating to young Phaedrus the "Myth of Theuth."Myths are very important because they are often unstated assumptions or tacit knowledge shared by a group of people. Often, people do not even know they believe these myths even when you point them out. Derrida, in his re-reading of the myth from Phaedrus, was simply trying to point out a myth of Western civilization. But myths are not benign fairly tales. They serve a function in that they help a group orient itself toward group goals and objectives. This is to say that they help structure activity as well as perception.

We have looked at the following myths, as well as others:
* writing is essentially good grammar and mechanics
* writing is separate from thinking
* writing is as a fairly linear activity moving from thought to handing someone else a piece of paper
* writing is not technological
* writing is just good speech or thought put on paper

 All of these things have a tremendous impact on the ways we teach others to write as well as ways we ourselves approach various writing tasks.

Given social media like Facebook, the comment feature on the Amazon Kindle, email, and regular computer-based internet fora, we are quite arguably writing more now than at any other point in human history. And it is attracting attention.

What do you think the future holds for writing? What will be considered "good writing" in ten years? Twenty? A hundred? What myths do you think will persist and which ones will perish? Why do you think that? Is anything needed to help writing's future or should it be content with laboring against these myths?

Welcome to Theory and Practice of Writing @ UNI

No, I am not going to repeat the syllabus here. Why make two documents exactly the same? Besides, as we will learn here and in other courses, content changes according to context. At least, it should...

Enough of the meta-discussion, though. There will be time for that later in the course. To quote Willy Wonka, "There is so much time and so little to do. Strike that -- reverse it!"

We will use this blog to post (approximately) weekly responses to the readings. These need not be fully revised drafts of sheer grace and stunning perfection which collect the light of wisdom and transmute it straight to our brains, but they should be something more polished than a poem written by an Neanderthal child on her first day of kindergarten. By that, I mean try to use correct punctuation and grammar, but beyond that really focus on the hard task of learning theory:

the task of taking risks with it and exploring its assumptions and orientations to the world it attempts to explain.

It is really that simple. If I could make it into a formula, it might be expressed as the following, where T = Theory, i = ideas, and r = reality:

T= i/r

As the syllabus indicates, we will examine various topics each week and apply those insights to our own writing in order to produce a final portfolio in which we explain those applications using revised and polished final products. Because each week could conceivably take up the whole of a semester,  (and it will, should you decide to pursue a graduate education) and because the work of theory is often to use "reality"to dig out tacit assumptions inherent in the ideas, then this blog will allow us to do two very important things:

1) post or link to our own responses to the readings, responses that demonstrate how we look at specific instances in the texts we read and begin to explicate them as part of our own understanding and

2) respond to others about their explications, helping to constructively guide them in their thinking and/or building off what others have said.

So, for #1, you can take a section, description, metaphor, or part of a single reading OR you might put two or more readings against one another and see where they match/ disagree and why. Alternatively, you may bring in knowledge from some other area/ course and apply that to a reading and see where that takes you. These should not simply be opinion pieces. You need to work with theory as an object distinct from your own predilections. It is grounded in the language used in the readings and should open that language, not impose your own language and ideas on it. Beyond that, everything is pretty much fair game. Poets often do well at this part.

W/r/t #2, teacher education students often get a chance to hone their response skills and professional writers often get to practice collaborative work. The main thing here is to be constructive and positive, looking at the ideas of the responder as objectively as possible and using language to display that. So, language such as "this is a bunch of racist trash, you moron" is NOT appropriate. However, one could point out that "while what you say could be very true or persuasive to the vast majority of Americans right now, I am not so sure it is persuasive to many of the disenfranchised. How would you address their concerns?"

In the first instance, there is a direct attack on the person. This is an accusation of the author -- not a focus on the idea. In the second, the emphasis is on the ideas, not the person. Further, notice how in the second instance, the writer takes on much of the responsibility for any action with "I am not so sure..." and ends with an appeal for more information and clarity. In other words, there is a give and take here where each writer takes responsibility for clarifying their own ideas through language. While this focuses on communication during times of crisis, it still has principles applicable for any open and free exchange of ideas that avoids personal attacks.

I look forward to these discussions and this semester. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at david.grant@uni.edu.