Imitation Exercise 2

For my imitation I chose a book by author Larry Doyle entitled "I Love You, Beth Cooper." First will be the original page from the book, followed by my imitation of the style and structure.

Original:

"Let's see under there," Beth said. Denis whimpered
as softly as he could as Beth removed the waffles. The
blast area was already purple en route to black and
beyond.
"Open."
The eyelid stuttered as it retracted.
"Pee-yuke," Treece noted.
"Dude." Rich grossed out. "That's NC-17."
It looked worse than it was, since it looked like Denis
was at least blind, perhaps dying, and possibly a
brain-eating zombie.
From the inside, it looked: bloody. Denis tried to
focus on Beth's face, which he knew was only inches
away. What he saw, swirling in a red sea, was a blurry
pink mass with two darker circular areas in the upper
half and a small horizontal smear in the middle of
the lower half. If that was a face, then:

"MY CONTACT!" Denis gasped.
Beth snapped her fingers again.
"Contact down!"
Treece and Cammy initiated contact-retrieval ma-
neuvers, dropping to squats and sweeping the floor
with their fingertips in long, overlapping arcs.
"Dont worry," Beth told Denis. "We'll find it. We
always do."
"You wear contacts?" Denis asked, enthralled by
the defect they apparently shared. "What's your pre-
scription?"
Beither either could comprehend the deep geekitude
of the question, and before Denis could compund it
with whatever he might say next:
"Found it!" Treece said.
She held up the champagne cork. A geltinous dol-
lop clung to the metallic cap. Quite proud of herself,
she marched over and presented it to Beth.

Imitation:

"It's going to be fine," his mom said. "You're going to
forget all about me and your father." Connor couldn't
help but feel a little guilty. She said he would be fine
as if it were him were would be lonely. If they barely
spent time together living in the same house then being
across the country attending college would be as though
he were off to join the Star Trek Federation.
"Where is your box with all your awards and certif-
icates?" his mom asked.
He pointed to the corner of the room. "Next to the
one with my winter clothes."
"Ahhgg!" his mom shrieked. "How in the world
did you let your room get this dusty? It was better to
just not answer that one Connor thought to himself.
Connor's mom left the room to go get more masking
tape to finish boxing up the rest of his Star Wars figur-
ines, which to anyone else may have been called dolls,
not suitable for anyone over the age of puberty. "What
was I thinking choosing UCLA," Connor mumbled to
himself as he fell onto his bed, arms spread wide, as
though he was playing that trust game he learned
during Leadership Summer Camp two years ago. "I
need to get out of this place though," he continued.
"Beam me up Scottie."

4/23 Activity 3

The particular passage that I have previously written that I will be revising into a more formal piece will be an e-mail that I sent to a lawyer who, after giving him and his son a tour of the WVU campus, gave me his card and explained that if I ever had any questions or concerns with law school to shoot him and e-mail or give him a call.



Original Passage:



Mr. Cosenza,

It's Austin Maynard, your tour guide from your visit to WVU. I know it's been awhile since you and Nicholas came on tour with me, but I hope things are well and any other college visits you guys are making are going smooth! You gave me your card after tour and explained to me that if I had any questions concerning law school or the like that I could contact you, so I was hoping to take advantage of that if you are still open to the idea.



My main questions have to deal with preparations for law school. Was there any specific internships/job shadowing you did before attending law school? Did you take any prep courses like the ones that Kaplan offers for examples, before taking the LSAT? I am currently enrolled in one that will begin this Thursday, the 9th, and I hope that it increases my confidence about taking the test this June! Basically any knowledge or feedback you could pass along to me would be greatly appreciated and I am excited to hear back from you! Lastly, if it is alright with you, I would like to hold onto your card and contact information in case I were to run into any other questions or concerns concerning law school, and also just to have for my future in general. Again, thank you for your time and if you or Nicholas have any other questions or interests in anything affiliated with WVU, please let me know!



-Austin Maynard





Formal Revision:



Dear Mr. George Cosenza,



My name is Austin Maynard and I was your tour guide when you came to visit the campus of West Virginia University with your son Nicholas on the morning of February the 19th. I hope you both found the tour to be helpful in your goal to find the right college environment for Nicholas and that West Virginia University filled that objective. I apologize for the time difference between your tour and this e-mail but I hope that you are still available to me as a guide to the obstacles of law school. I only have a few concerns and I would greatly appreciate it if you would provide me with any and all feedback you find necessary in being able to aid my pre-law issues.



My main concern to date is the preperations that many students take before entering into the law school application process. What advice would you give to a student interested in attending law school with just about a year left of undergrad? This could include any internships or prep-courses or even methods of studying for the LSAT. I am currently enrolled in the Kaplan LSAT prep-course here in Morgantown but I know this is only one step in being adequately prepared for taking the test and then applying to schools, a process that I am aware of being long and tedious.

I also hope that you will allow me to keep your contact information and be able to stay in touch with you throughout this process and perhaps through my years of Law School. I know a large portion of law can come down to "who you know" and I feel as though you would make a great addition to my networking circle. Thank you very much for taking the time to read through this correspondence. I appreciate any and all help that you can provide me and I hope to hear from you soon. Lastly, if you or Nicholas have any more questions or concerns about West Virginia University or anything affiliated with it, please do not hesitate to ask me for any help that I can extend to you both.

Sincerely,

Austin Maynard
amaynard@mix.wvu.edu
(304) 680-3058

"Remediate"

Being able to accurately transpose work that you have done within professional writing into a different format of media can really help you within goals that you are trying to reach. Trying to expand your audience, making someone or a group of people act on a particular subject, or just attempting to enhance your message are just some of the ways that transfering between types of media can be beneficial.

For a previous class we were given an assignment in which the objective was to present a non-profit organization with an improvement they could make to their facility or staff to better the company as a whole. This could range from topics such as helping them write clearer grant proposals in hopes of receiving more money for the foundation or perhaps getting the word out about how helpful a spefici organization is the the community in an effort to peak the interest of those looking to help, aka getting more volunteers. I chose to try and convince the Morgantown Boys & Girls Club to replace part of their parking lot with a playground area for the younger kids, creating a much more inviting and an exponentially safer environment for the kids. I completed this through just a straightforward powerpoint presentation, but it could have benefited also by being transfered into multiple other medias to help convey my points and purposes.

The new media I would like to experiment with would be a children's book to help get the attention of the children, who's opinion in turn means alot to the project as a whole. Without their desire to have a playground area, it would be almost a complete waste of funding from the Boys & Girls Club that could aid them in plenty of other facets.

The children's book would obviously not be as detailed or worded the same way as my original presentationed proposal, but would remain simple in that it's audience would range mostly from Kindergardners through Elementary 5th graders. Using simple sentences and also plenty of pictures of sad children without playground equipment, possibly getting hurt on concret parking hurts, and then happy children using safe playground equipment would be the bulk of the children's book. The actual visuals in the book would be the main tool in showing the kids the difference between their current setting and what they could have in the near future should they side with me. This appeal to the actual children rather than the volunteers would be another to reach the my first audience, through the aid and interest of the children. This linked combination of pieces of writing would expand my audience into a larger group, but also help me to obtain the help of one group to accurately convince my original, smaller audience (using the group of kids to help convince the group of volunteers of the neccessity of the equipment).

Emotional Appeal Activity 3

Emotions obviously play a huge role within writing style. Playing to a certain emotion can be useful whether one is simply trying to motivate or grab the intention of an individual, or it could be used to muster up the courage of many. Either way, being able to accurately use the right emotion within a piece of work can help your cause immensely. A situation that would call for anger appeal could be some sort of protest. If you were to write a speech with disgust towards the side that everyone is protesting against then everyone struggling against that side will most likely back you and your writing up.

For example: A Protest Against Big Tobacco Companies
"My friends, family, and those of you who simply fall on the side of that which is good. We all know why we are here today and that reason to make ourselves known. We will no longer stand by helplessly as we watch friends and family and other Americans suffer from the harmful effects of those wretched big tobacco companies and their ever-present evil products. We know the statistics, we know the facts, so all that is left to do is to act!"

So as the speech continues, you will only play more and more to the anger of those around you, using motivational and stirring words of kindness when adressing the audience, but words of scorn and hatred toward the common evil; in this case the tobacco companies. At the end of such a speech you could even throw in an almost completely different cause and possibly convince your audience to follow you on that subject as well, simply because of the common goal you all currently share.

Other emotions are equally powerful, the main thing to remember is to always keep in mind what your objective is, whether it is persuasion, selling a product, making a point, etc. An appeal to shame could be effective when trying to convince an audience of something they have done wrong and should either be punished for or made to apologize. Compassion could be helpful in trying to obtain fundraising or donations for a particular organization. For instance, the commercials which are trying to get the audience to donate money to 3rd world countries, specifically children, by playing to your emotional appeal of compassion. The ones that have an American adult amongst children in a poor village saying things like, "You too can make a difference in Khalil's life by donating only 20 cents a day so that we will be able to provide for his 5 brothers and 6 sisters and still be able to attend the local schoolhouse." Lastly, even an emotion such as hopelessness can be used within a peice of work to help your stance. One could include hopelessness in the previous example just given, but it could also work in a multitude of other cases such as trying to get an audience to give aid to the homeless, or any other group of people that most would label as having very little to depend on.
In short, playing to a group of people or even an individuals emotions can make a complete difference in a piece of writing, and I would go so far as to even conclude that almost every document or piece or work includes some sort of emotional appeal.

Ethos

Ethos can be defined as the character or disposition of a community, group, or person. Throughout my education, I have really only discussed ethos on a literary level, so it's interesting to look at it as a professional writer. After checking out a couple articles it seems that authors, just as anyone else, establishes their credibility by using examples, statistics, graphs, other outside sources, ect. However, I think a main way that many poeple have established their credibility and are able to use ethos comes in a way that they sometimes may not even recognize. I think that titles, jobs, or experiences that one has had in their past can boast what others think about someone's intelligence. For instance, you would probably take someone's word on a subject automatically if you came to find out that they had a degree in that field from Harvard, rather then someone who may have graduated from a smaller, less known college. Also, if you were looking to have a bridge built in your area and you begin asking different engineers how to go about it, you will probably take the word of the engineer who has built 10 bridges rather than the engineer who has built 1. Basically, as much as examples and statistics can help, I also think that alot of established ethos comes quietly through a person's previous (work)experience and education.

Enthymemes, Examples, Maxims, and Signs

After searching through a Sports Illustrated magazine for any use of the different proofs, an ad located off to the side of a March Madness article really caught my eye, and I feel like instantly noticed its use of a dubious premise within an enthymeme. The ad reads as so:

"To crash with a Volvo is extremely safe.. ...if you're sitting in a Saab."

This a dubious premise to the enthymeme because it is suggesting that all Saab vehicles are going to be safer during an accident than any Volvo. It makes you think that the ad is for Volvo until it flips it on its head and humorously fakes you out a little bit. Because safety is so important when considering a vehicle, Saab made a great move here by not only increasing the public's opinion of their safety ratings, but also putting down a competitor at the same time.

Kairos

The only magazines my 4 roomates and I typically have around the house are Sports Illusstrated and Maxim, so for this assignment I chose to use the more interesting, and less risque, SI articles. Within the SI issue I found a great article on steroid use in baseball, more specfically the case of Alex Rodriguez. Interestingly enough, I found an article on the same subject in one of the more recent Maxim issues, what a coincedence right?

Baseball and its athletes have certainly been under the microscope lately when it comes to steroid scandals. With reports coming out left and right about different abusers and "cheaters," one would think that simply coming clean before-hand would still hold an athlete in high respect to their fans, however, most players are still choosing to keep things hush-hush. Because they choose to let things play out in this manner, there is alot of kairos dependent on the media to be able to cover such allegations that come out against players just like Alex Rodriguez. Both of the articles that I read had come out within a 2 week period after A-Rod admitted to his 3-year use of banned substances. I thought this was interesting lack of kairos because both magazines are monthly and they were forced to wait for their next publication in order to print any opinions their writers had or any insight they may have had either. They basically missed out on the most opportune moment to print the articles, which was basically the next morning. Other stories came immediately from everywhere whether it was ESPN or Yahoo Sports or even newspapers around the U.S. and even in the Dominican Republic.

The only way these articles could accurately draw succesfully on kairos was to include new information that other articles had lacked due their immediate printing, therefore the two articles I read ended up benefiting from waiting a little while because they were then able to add much more insight and inside information and interviews and the like to really back up their story and to create a much more interesting article on this specific subject in general.

Rhetorical Activity

As I picked up the newspaper to try find some use of rhetoric, it hit me immediately that the political section would be full of it. Politicians use rhetoric almost every day, whether they choose to use facts to back up their arguements against other running mates or whether they use "empty promises" to persuade citizens to vote for them or to aid their cause in general. For example, the article I read on President Obama's budget plan even contained a section which was titled "the assumptions" and a section right after that titled "reality check." I found this interesting because it was basically putting both the made up and the factual rhetoric arguement right beside eachother. They actually read like this...

"The assumptions: Reduce the deficit by $637 billion over 10 years by letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 for singles making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000."

"Reality check: Letting the tax cuts expire has a good chance of happening. But the savings that achieves could be undercut if two other revenue raising efforts don't pan out."


It is as if actually calling yourself out on empty promises is a whole new strategy to convince your peers of something. If you call yourself out on having made empty promises with new preomises of filling the previous ones, you could essentially re-persuade a group of people with the same emtpy promises. Perhaps twice if you choose not to fulfill them again! Ha!

Artifact Exchange

After reading through what Nicole had written about our interview process and all the ideas and observations she took down on my tattoo, it was refreshing to see how appreciative and sentimental she was. It was nice to have someone else really appreciate something so special to me, much as you might feel when someone really enjoys a painting you have made or some sort of art piece you've constructed. Nicole and I have been friends for quite awhile now so I expected our interview to go smoothly in that manner, but never did I realize we could learn that much more about eachother through a simple observation/interview assignment.

I learned a couple things about myself as an interviewer. As an outgoing person with somewhat of a creative mind I like to think that I am a fairly good interviewer. I can be personable or serious, and I always manage to find good details and background information on whatever it is im trying to interview about or discuss with the informant. However, I believe my main weakness that I discovered was my ability to write fast enough to keep a steady interview. I need to work on either a short hand for myself to read, or have a laptop with me when taking notes and asking question simply so I can remain at a good pace during the interview process. One other weakness that I ran into was my preconceptions of tattoos during our interview. Being that I have 2 of my own, it was easy to use my own experiences to make assumptions about Nicoles, which sometimes I hit the head on the nail and other times I missed completely. It's going to be important for me, from now on, to keep a clear mind and open mind in any interviewing circumstance so I'm able to adequately get all of the details of someone else's experience rather then utilizing my own.

Although I have known Nicole for a fairly long time now, there are still times when I learn something new about her and this time was no different. When I tried to find something of hers that I imagined could have some meaning to her I ran into some difficulty, but soon noticed the tattoo on her right ring finger. I had known it was there, but I realized that I've never really asked her about it, so it ended up being the perfect "artifact."

The tattoo is located on the outside ride side of her right ring finger, bewteen her knuckle and the middle of her finger. It is about the size of a dime and is in black ink, but it's also slightly faded. It is a peace sign symbol, which i recognized as something very fitting to Nicole's personality and style. I figured that the tattoo ranged between $20 and $50 and I was almost dead on as Nicole informed me that it cost her $45 total. She actually got it done back in May of 2008, which could explain some of the fading. It was done at a small hole-the-wall parlor during a beach trip she took to Outer Banks.

Most tattoos that people get are symbolic of a person or experience or even an emotion, so it was obvious to ask her if the tattoo had any meaning behind it and how important it was to her. Nicole explained to me that a huge reason why it is important to her is because her and 3 of her friends, Caitlin, Nikki, and Kat all got one together, in the same location. She cares about them each alot so this was a great way to forever embody those feelings. They originally all wanted the same thing in the same location, but soon discovered that deciding on one thing between all of them would be way too difficult. They settled on just getting different symbols in the same location, and Nicole ended up being the last to go. This was mostly due to the fact that she was still slightly nervous about her mother's reaction and also just a general worry of how painful it would be. Luckily, she claimed it wasn't painful at all and took very little time. In fact, all she had to do was sit in a normal chair, but she twisted her hand slightly backward to give the tattoo artist the best angle in which he could adequately tattoo her finger.

Nicole lastly clued me into the fact that it was actually the 3rd of her tattoos, following a star on her foot, and 2 more stars added at a second tattooing appointment. Nicole was also quick to mention that she definitely plans on getting a fourth or possibly more. "It's expressing yourself," she calmy explained.

February 10 Blog

Textbooks for different subjects are obviously written for the purpose to teach people the in's and out's of whatever subject that textbook falls under, but it is interesting to look at what textbooks do and how they do it when considering the opinions of Charles Bazerman.  After reading through his writing on genres and the like, I consider typification and social activity to hold strong roles in the use of textbooks within their features, functions, and student activity.

Textbooks are usually written by professors or those that are skilled in the field in which the textbook is about, so after reading the text within the book, it is safe to say that one will immediately believe that text to be factual. The standard formats of typification within textbooks will help educators get points across to students that will aid them in other situations that they will run into later in life.  For instance, when you find yourself in a Biology class, the scientific genre of text is going to aid you if you find yourself desiring a position within a health research field or perhaps a physical therapy career later in life.  

Features that a Biology textbook will include will be the obvious lessons that cover different topics that fall under that specific field. Also, it will probably point out important terms that students should be aware of by bolding the font when the come up on the page.  Features of a Biology book may differ from that of a different subject because of such a strong need for graphics to help convey ideas and scientific processes.  Individualistic of a science subject textbook will also include experiments to help students learn in a hands-on manner.

The functions of a Biology book are seemingly obvious, because the purpose that they serve is to educate and prepare students with knowledge that will aid them in any Biology related field or career, or even an upper level class that requires previous and probably basic background knowledge in the subject.  It will also serve to aid those who are doing research in the Biology field so that they can come up with solutions to illnesses or even to produce new and usable technology.

Lastly, textbooks will obviously include social activity that will help increase a student's awareness of the particular subject.  Biology books will use review questions at the end of different chapters to help students go back over information given within the chapter.  This will help every student retain the information so that they are able to put it to good use at a later date.  Specific to science subjects, as I mentioned earlier, will be scientific experiments.  Some people obviously learn better through hands on activities rather than just reading texts.  Typifying things beyond textual information will include social activity within the classroom.  For example, this could be the case when having students work in groups together on said experiments.  

The textbook, an interesting genre of professional writing, can be viewed in many different ways and analyzed through different aspects, but however one goes about doing so, I believe these features, functions, and student activities will remain the same.

Feb. 3 Blog

When considering a scholarly article that utilizes different aspects and uses of prior publications, I find it best to look back to Jack Selzer's piece on Nelson, the engineer. Prior publications played a large role in many of Nelson's projects and reports that he completes. Whether he used a small portion of a particular text to form a new one, or a massive part of a prior text to form a new one, the previous "building block" texts were part of Nelson's process to writing a report or project before he even puts pen to paper or fingers to keyboards. By that I mean that using previous texts came so natural to Nelson and he utilized them so often, it was almost an everyday thing for him to break out prior completed projects to help him form new ones, especially when forming new documents for similar or previous audiences!

I firmly believe that Nelson is a perfect example of a professional writer that has acquired an accurate and strong use for intertextuality. He considers all angles of a project for perhaps hours before even starting to do any physical work on a project, which means that he considers what old texts are best to use for whatever audience, how to use them, how they will affect him and the project, or even how they will be viewed by outside audience members. Although the book states that we hardly notice when intertextuality can occur, I find it to be obvious and apparent when analyzing Selzer's study of Nelson.

Jan 22 Blog

In order to participate effectively in the workplace when considering the "social perspective" that Faigley suggests, I believe a professional writer must first and foremost be aware of the audience that will be looking over any document one puts forth. Although the initial two perspectives that Faigley discusses include a need for an understand of a writer's audience, the social perspective takes the need of this knowledge a step further.

The social perspective differs in its use for an awareness of audience in that it requires a knowledge of that audience's place in the workplace and even the world. A professional writer, viewed from the social perspective, needs to know how different audiences have been formed, continued, or even how they have made relationships with other audiences! Basically, a deep background knowledge for different audiences will be necessary. This is so because as Faigley states that you can only ask yourself how a writer learns to write about their field when you assume that "writing is a social act that takes place in a structure of authority, changes constantly as society changes, has consequences in economic and political realms, and shapes the writer as much as it is shaped by the writer."

As confusing as that may sound, when you think of a single document as "a moment in the continuous process of communication," it becomes clear that each individual document is in short, one building block of an entire society. It falls obviously under what could be known as a "communication" category, but what society do you know of that works without having vast communicative details and processes?

Basically, I feel as though communication would be the breads and pastas of the food pyramid, which would make it necessary for any professional writers "societal diet."