I enjoyed reading this week’s chapter. However, I have to admit that I am having great difficulty in writing this week’s blog. I felt that a lot of my thoughts and comments centered on ideas that we have either already discussed or that I have already mentioned in other blogs. So after a long day in an airport waiting for my flight home, I came up with the idea for this blog. I felt that this week’s chapter dealt at different spots with the ideals surrounding a thesis, a great author (Peter Elbow) and election materials.
All of us in this class are grad students and so we all are working on the thesis. The strength or weakness of the thesis completely depends on the arrangement of one’s materials around the central (and original) point. At the start of the chapter, Crowley and Hawhee quote form Cicero’s De Orante. According to Cicero’s statement, “in my own case when I am collecting arguments fro my cases I make it my practice not so much to count them as to weigh them” (292). The whole point of a thesis is to arrange the text in a way that will support your claim and will hopefully be accepted by the academic community. Thus, a writer will utilize the most vital claims that are supportive to the work. Last year while in HUM 500, we were told to remember that while working on our thesis we were to utilize only the evidence that was needed and not to overdo it. Otherwise, if the writer utilized numerous citations, the readers would be unable to determine the thesis’ point or the author’s scholastic ability. This point supports Crowley and Hawhee’s claim that “attention to kairos in arrangement means knowing when and where to marshal particular proofs. Kairos suggests the possibility of achieving an advantage with optimal placement of arguments…” (293). This statement supports Cicero’s idea on understanding the value and worth of one’s evidence instead of the amount. Hence, this chapter is helpful to those working on their thesis, especially the points on the “six parts” that “were more or less standard” (294).
While reading this chapter, my thoughts drifted towards Peter Elbow. As previously mentioned in another blog, I am reading Peter Elbow in another class. His book, Writing Without Teachers, centers on the idea of encouraging students to embrace writing and see themselves as writers. Elbow discusses the popular technique of cut n paste, which literally allows the student to take apart his or her paper and to rearrange it. While Crowley and Hawhee’s chapter is based on arrangement, it is not this Elbow technique that I wish to discuss. Elbow wants students to write often and to get comfortable with it. Indeed, he seeks to destroy the idea “that great writers are born with an inherent creative ability that is denied to the rest of us” which “is so powerful in our culture that it sometimes discourages people from even trying to learn how to write better” (Crowley and Hawhee 319). Elbow writes that students need to write often and he supports peer reviews and writing groups which foster writing. However, Crowley, Hawhee and Elbow all share one item in common; they both discuss the valuable use of reading out loud. Elbow writes that “Hearing your own words out loud gives you the vicarious experience of being someone else. Reading your words out loud stresses what is most important: writing is really a voice spread out over time, not marks spread out in space” (Elbow 82). Crowley and Hawhee also believe that reading out loud is beneficial. Crowley and Hawhee write “Reading aloud develops an ear for sentence rhythm, and it strengthens reading skills as well. Reading aloud from the work of others may also enable you to absorb some habits of style that are not currently in your repertoire… Read aloud to yourself or to others… In fact, you should get in the habit of reading your own writing aloud; this will help you to spot places where punctuation is needed (or not) and to determine whether the rhythm of the sentence is pleasing to the ear” (322). In other words, reading out loud aids both the speaker and the writer. The writer gains advice and aid, while the speaker gains confidence and control which is important to most political candidates.
While on the debate team, we were instructed to never let the other team know that they caught us off guard when they would refute our statement. Our voices were trained to not squeak or dip. In order to do this, our coach made us read from various books, speeches, etc. We were never allowed time to review the reading ahead of time. We were randomly called on to read and had to read till told to stop. It aided us in learning how to control our composure while listening to a great refute that we had not even imagined. My next coach trained us to think about every possible refute to an answer. Crowley and Hawhee write that “Sometimes it is necessary for a rhetor to anticipate arguments that might damage her ethos or her case if her audience accepts them” (310). One group of human beings that desperately need to be trained in the practice of refutation is that of political candidates. Their whole campaign is based on their ethos and their acceptance by a voting audience. Thus, they must be constantly ready to respond to allegations. Crowley and Hawhee write that “Thorough attention to invention should disclose arguments that need to be anticipated and refuted” (310). While I was sitting in an airport near a TV waiting for my flight home, I saw continuous proof of refutation in political commercials. It seems that most of the commercials that I saw were based on refuting an attack or anticipating an attack. Thus, one can see that the ancient practice is still relevant in today’s busy world.
I really enjoyed this chapter and am looking forward to Thursday’s discussion.
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