FYW Journal Prompts
Spring 2016
Why does Joseph Harris make a point of creating a distinction between a “thesis statement” and what he calls the writer’s “project”? Which one is he more interested in discussing? Why?
11) In response to James Gee’s “What is Literacy?”
Try to list at least five different “discourses” (following Gee’s definition) that you
possess. (For example, Dave Yockel, Jr. is an Italian-American man, a NY Mets fan, a poet, writing teacher, musician, and someone learning to drive a stick shift…)
Do you agree with James Gee’s statement that an individual is “simply the meeting point of many, sometimes conflicting, socially and historically defined discourses”? If so, why? If not, what is the definition of an “individual”?
In his chapter on forwarding Joseph Harris says that “[i]f you look to another text for an example, you need to make it an example of what you have to say” (39). As academic writers, we need to see others’ texts as material to use in the construction of our own project. And, unlike a thesis, a “project” usually begins with a “question or idea or issue that a writer wants to explore” (39). So, just for some practice “forwarding”, we will watch several TV commercials with this general “idea or issue” in mind:
[S]ome advertisements seem to promote not so much a product as an experience or sensibility.
After watching these commercials “rewrite” one of the ads with the above idea in mind.
13.) Harris believes to counter a text we need to do more than just note its limitations. We must use these differing perspectives or “points of divergence” as a catapult into something we would not be able to otherwise say.
With this in mind, please counter one of the following quotes:
“We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning.”
– Donald Trump
Before entering rehab and having a meltdown, Mariah Carey said, “I just want one day off when I can go swimming and eat ice cream and look at rainbows.”
“Christianity will go,” John Lennon said. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
“Just because you say something doesn’t make it controversial, and it doesn’t make you a bad person
– Charles Barkley
“I used to tweet, but it’s an act of futility. You’re not really making any impact, and if you find yourself in a mood when you wanna be a bit controversial and you post something, you suddenly realize, ‘Oh my God!’ because you’ve opened yourself up to a bunch of criticism from strangers.”
– Sylvester Stallone
“Just because someone is holding a gun doesn’t make an image controversial. It all depends on where you put the gun, who is holding it.”
– Carine Roitfeld (Former Editor, Vogue Paris)
“If you’ve got a big mouth and you’re controversial, you’re going to get attention.”
– Simon Cowell
“I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.”
Nora Ephron
14.) Vershawn Ashanti-Young’s “Should Writers Use They Own English?” is as close to a direct rebuttal of another author (in this case, Stanley Fish) as you’ll see in an academic essay. He frames his piece with a passage from Fish’s “What Should Colleges Teach?” a three-part essay first published by The New York Times in 2009, in which Fish states that students should not have the “right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style.” For this entry, please respond to this statement. Do you believe that college students should have the “right to their own patterns and varieties of language”? Why or why not?
Last Completed Projects
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