Yes/No/Okay, But

Honestly, this chapter made me laugh out loud like a Christopher Moore book. “Yes/No/Okay, But” attached a definition, a “thing,” I do in my writing. See, I have this cloud that always surrounds my writing, something I got from one of my first English classes: Always write like your reader doesn’t know. Taking this to heart, I have a tendency to over-explain everything in my paper which doesn’t allow the reader to participate. This makes the paper long-winded, pompous, and patronizing which overshadows the thesis of the work. My style of writing comes off like a self-important, congratulatory exercise meant to bolster my self confidence at the expense of the reader. When in reality it is nothing more than an attempt to stay true an adage of a former instructor.
With the templates and the tools they lay out, I can see clear, easy ways to show how I agree or disagree with the established premise, how to construct my arguments better and ultimately use my writing to persuade, not to use it to didactically condescend.

Advantages and Disadvantages to Browsing 46-98

Although Mann presents a few premises to exacerbate his point, I can't help but wonder what his motives are in doing so. It seems to me that he is a researcher from the pre-computer days when tactile, physical searching through book stacks was not only the best way, but the only way. Although admitting the computer seraches are quicker and can be more effective, the advantage of "discovery by serendipity or recognition" is far more valuable than the efficiency of the computer search (49). What he's done here is to the advantage of of the computer search, the way he does not prefer, and turned into an advantage for his favored means of gathering information.

Having statements like"when you search the library catalog, you are not searching the full texts of the actual books; you are searching only catalog records of the books" it seems as though Mann is making an argument for the tactile in that a computer will only give out information it has been programed into it (48). Obviously this does not allow for serendipitous spontaneity he has based his premise on.

Jarratt's Metacognition ISMLL 73-139

My first real exposure to rhetoric came from my English 306 class, Expository Writing. In that class we were presented with two books, Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. What we look at was how both books, contemporaries of each other, told of the same people, the same historical events, of the American people. The difference being in how each book relates the story. Since they were both “right” in the sense that accuracy was not in question, it became a quest to figure out why they chose to relate their stories in such a way. What I learned is that by emphasizing one aspect, and down playing another, the story of American people is told a certain way: Johnson’s story emphasizing the tradition party line while Zinn’s approach shows a more Marxist, Colonialist view. So in my beginnings with rhetoric it was imperative to discover the “what” and the “why’s” of the argument, but also the how; the “so what” factor.

Because my brain works so differently—mostly laboring laterally—after reading Susan C. Jarratt’s Rhetoric, the notion hit me to look at her article for the rhetoric she is employing to describe rhetoric. Right from the beginning she establishes that “a standard definition [of] rhetoric concerns itself with the ways human beings use speech to influence one another’s attitudes and behavior” (Jarratt 75). In an article that uses rhetoric to describe rhetoric must be, at best, metacognitive. Essentially, it is using itself to describe a concept it is employing. This convoluted argument takes what is seemingly a very dry subject matter, something that initially seems not to have a “so what” element, and places it within article itself; essentially allowing the argument to look upon itself for the very rhetorical elements it is describing. Very cool.

TheySay/I Say 1-38 The "So What" Factor

One of the biggest problems plaguing my writing throughout my adademic career is not the topics, but about the "So What Factor." I define the "So What Factor," or swf, as the small yet essential element that asnwers, 'why should anyone care about this?' It is the reason why I wrote the paper, made the argument; it is the impetus. The swf makes the writing into a piece rhetoric rather than a listing of why's and whynot's, do's and don'ts, and especially not to show your dexterity with vocabulary. Without swf, what my writing attains is simply an eruditive exercise. Simply put, swf gives my writing a point. Not only does this "keep the audience engaged," but it gives me a point of reference: something I can keep returning to throughout the paper.

The way the Graff and Birkenstein's layout of the swf in the first paragraph of the first chapter calls to mind that this is self-refering piece: the give instructions of how to do it and compliment it by doing it themselves. By pointing out the foibles of not doing using the swf, they succussfully prove the point. The whole construction and use gives further credence and weight to the swf argument.