Almost done! Now, don’t be stressed but I’m going to give you the prompt for the Literacy Narrative Revision. I wanted to provide it now so you had a chance to read it over before class on 9/17.

So, read it over now. Post a comment below for any questions you have about the revision. 

We will be learning more before you submit your revision, so here are some of the things that are coming your way:

• More on revision (e.g., revision plans, writing session plans and writing goals)
• More on genre, to include models of the genres you are asked to choose from in the prompt
• More on style, to include sentence-level work in addition to word-level work we did in Learning Module 2.
• The Liao reading is due for 9/17, which will help this prompt make more sense, too.

After commenting below about any questions you have (or, if you have no questions, post “I have no questions”), click the “Click here to continue” button below.

One of the big adjustments in college if you are coming right from high school (but, really, for everyone) is managing when and how to get your work done.

The when and how coalesce (mostly the “when”) though around time management. Sometimes, we write at the last minute which doesn’t always produce the best (I know, I know, some of you swear it does but I bet many of you who swear that have only done the procrastinator’s method! And, that one won’t always work once your writing projects get a lot larger).

Go to Blackboard>Course Documents>Assignment Prompts>Process Documents. Download “Writing Schedule Activity.”

You’ll complete this for homework due for 9/17, but read through it now to make sure you understand it. In a comment below, let me know if you have any questions about this assignment due for 9/17 by 3pm. If you don’t have a question, just type “I have no questions.”

After commenting below, click the “Click here to continue” button to move on.

Let’s take a pause now to have a brief check-in on how your writing practice and writing process have been going (see here for a reminder on writing process and also a reminder here on writing practice from the last Learning Module). Talk about one of the following in our Slack channel on writing practice and process:

1. What has been working well or not so well in your writing practice while working on the first draft of your Literacy Narrative?
2. What has been working well or not so well in your writing process while working on the first draft of your Literacy Narrative?

Instead of directly answering these questions, you may answer them a bit more organically in response to another student (unless you are the first person who posts to the Slack channel on this!).

Do you get distracted a lot? If you are having issues with distractions, check out my Distraction Management Guide I have on Blackboard>Course Documents!!!!!!!!!!!!

After posting in Slack, make sure you comment below “I have posted to Slack.”

After posting and commenting, click the “Click here to continue” button below to move on. Almost done!

In addition to word origins, another way to think about how clusters of words impact style is register. This is a term from linguistics and essentially refers to word clusters or patterns in syntax (i.e., sentence order/arrangement) that frequently re-occur around a specific topic or tone: formality, discipline of study, workplace, industry, etc.

Writing in your academic discipline or industry means learning the appropriate register or registers (e.g., register for communication among co-workers may be a register slightly or even drastically different from register used in customer service; register for a lab report may be different from register for a test answer in Biology).

Finding the right register for your situation can be important; it can send a message that you are in solidarity with your audience (you are one of us) or that you have expertise on a subject (to know this language is to know this content). Using appropriate register is an important rhetorical skill.

Shifting and Mixing Registers

Shifting and mixing registers can also have rhetorical effect.

Rhetoric scholar Jeanne Fahnestock (2011, p. 87) notes that it could be as little as a word or it could be a phrase or sentence. For instance, a long academic passage with clusters of words like hypothesis, generality, explanation could suddenly have a word like “bullshit” in there. Such a word draws attention to itself not only by its own force, but by its contrast between a register that word normally occurs in compared to the register it is contrasting with. This is a shift in register.

Register mixing involves a more extensive integration between registers. Fahnestock (p. 88) cites the following example from a money market fund’s seminannual report:

The first six months of 2003 were a good period for both stocks and bonds. Interest rates continued to fall and stock prices rose broadly. In addition, new tax cut legislation was enacted and corporate earnings showed signs of improvement.

American Balanced Fund posted a total return of 10.0% for the six-month period ended June 30. The fund outpaced the Lipper Balanced Fund Index, which had a total return of 8.9%. Stocks, as measured by Standard & Poor’s 500 Composite Index, gained 11.8%. Bonds, as measured by the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index, rose 3.9%. The market indexes are unmanaged. (cited in Fahnestock; American Balanced Fund 2003, 1).

This is a similar move to what you were asked to do on the last page in your QSR sentence rewrite, no?

Register Mixing and Translingualism

You might also mix registers when mixing dialects or other languages. For instance, if you speak and write in a community that would respond well to versions of African American Vernacular English, New York Latino Spanish, or South Philly English, you could mix in words, phrases, or entire sentences inflected with a dialect or language.

Mixing registers through different kinds of languages that have a lot of associations with one’s identity can:

• make a point of emphasis (like the world “bullshit”)
• build solidarity with an audience that might also speak that language or dialect
• achieve various rhetorical aims that take advantage of the symbolizing effect of using a different language/dialect or just the rhetorical force from a given instance of that language/dialect as compared to the White Mainstream English version.

For example, to emphasize urgency:

I’m not sure we can do this. Is there any way to complete the report by the proposed deadline? We really gonna get dat jawn goin by den?

It might be even more subtle than this:

I’m not sure we can do this. Is der any way to complete da report by da proposed deadline? We really gonna get it done?

Registers are more commonly associated with really specialized language situations, but they effectively mean “a way of talking/writing” so there is much in common with translingualism and the act of using all of your linguistic resources to communicate in various ways in various settings.

Before clicking the “Click here to continue” button below, respond to the following question about the 2 paragraphs from the seminannual report. Here is the question:

What is the difference in information provided in paragraph 1 compared to paragraph 2? What does that tell you about mixing of registers and why it might have occurred?

To start in style is to start with words. Which words should you choose to help accumulate, for you, a certain style? Word origins may play a role–and these are things you already sort of know just from being a writer and speaker of English, for however long you have been doing that. Below, I outline (mostly with the help of Jeanne Fahnestock’s Rhetorical Style book that is basically my Bible) how word origins relate to different kinds of stylistic decisions writers might make.

Here is what English sounded like about 1,000 years ago:

The influences on English are extensive and are continuing—English has become a global language over the last 50 or so years and there will be/are a lot of borrowings, split dialects, etc. as a result of various world Englishes influencing the more standardized forms we hear and read in the media and in professional contexts.

The “Core” of English Words

For the version of English we speak today, in terms of vocabulary rather than syntax/sentence structure, the words that come from what you just heard are primarily from the “core” English words of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian influence on English.

These words are some of the connective tissue of English that we rely on so often today: a, can, the, to, is, etc.

But also other very common words are from this core: warn, think, car. And many of the closest to material reality: bread, milk, sun.

The most frequent words we use come from this core. The more people use the core vocabulary, the more likely readers will find it as simple and straightforward.

For some speakers, these are the words that are associated with early memories of speaking English and are the sorts of words they are most accustomed to using.

French Influence

After the Norman Conquest (i.e., France colonizing England way back), French had a large influence on the development of English. French, for a long time, was exclusively the language of the state (and, thus, of writing). However, over time, borrowings occurred that influenced English speaking and writing quite a bit.

Many borrowings from Old French, today, are associated with elevation, elegance, beauty, etc. Words like: autumn, glory, stunning, capture, cherish, adorned, accented, auburn, authenticity, acquire.

These are the sorts of words that are more likely to be used in perfume commercials, romantic texts, or anything that might want to sound a bit elevated in terms of grace/class/etc.

Latin and Greek Influence

Several centuries from the early 1000s through the Renaissance and further out, much scholarship was written exclusively in Latin and some Greek. Thus, many of the words associated with knowledge and with formality are borrowings from Latin and Greek.

Words like substance, corporeal, composite, finite, sentient, cerebral, fact, explain, necessitate, crisis, appropriate, external, scheme, system, obstruction all come from Latin and Greek.

Take-Aways: “Formality”

It is not always true that core words are perceived as “simple and concrete” or French words are always “elevated” or that Latin/Greek are always “scholarly” (e.g., “practice” is fairly simple word from French), but this rule generally applies.

Why think about this? A common stereotype about professional and academic writing is that you should try to sound “formal.” This is sort of true, but it is difficult to pin down exactly what this means.

Further, it often conflicts with another stereotype that professional and academic writing should be “clear, direct, concise, etc.” What is true is that depending on the situation, you might want to be more formal, or more informal, or more concrete, or more abstract…or, well, probably a combination of all of these.

Here are some examples of synonyms across core, French, and Latin/Greek:

walk/ stroll/ ambulate

hate/loathing/antipathy

fix/ correct/ emend

Using different words for tone

One tactic you can take for “formal” styles is that you can write formally but then restate the same thing informally. This can both take on the tone that you wanted to have but also put things in a way that might be more easily apprehended (or, understood!).

For instance, here’s a sentence I might write:

Systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) is built on the assumption that language is a social semiotic system. SFL is about what a language can do in a given context, rather than what it “is,” which makes it a good partner for rhetoric.

The first sentence has several words derived from French (systemic, system, social), Latin (functional, linguistics), and Greek (semiotic). It does have some core, too, (built, on, the, that, is, a ), but only “built” makes much more central meaning whereas “on,” “the,” “that,” “is,” and “a” all fill roles to connect the sentence together.

The second sentence restates the first, but uses much more core language to explain further but also amplify to emphasize what the point is. Here, core words like “about,” “what,” “it,” “‘is,'” “which,” “makes,” “good,” “can,” and “do” play a large role in the point of this sentence: this theory of language is about how people use language rather than what language is and thus helpful theory for studying rhetoric. There is Latin (“context”), French (“partner”, “language”), and Greek (“rhetoric”) here, but they play more minor roles.

This can frequently be a good move, especially in places you feel obligated to be high on the spectrum of formality, jargon, technical language, etc.

Another thing to try: Synonymia is deliberate use of many synonyms. If you want to work your prose up to a place of elevation or scholarly tone, you could start from the core and go to borrowings or vice versa. Moving from elevation/scholarly to core is essentially the above style example.

You might do this across a passage (e.g., starting your essay with more French/Latin/Greek derived words and then ending with more core by the end to drive a point home; you might use core to grab attention at beginning of essay before ending with more “scholarly” language toward the end).

You could also do this in a sentence with a list. For instance:

So ambulate, take a stroll, stride on down, just walk out here.

So what is the point here?

The main idea is that, usually, it doesn’t make much sense to get caught up in figuring out if you should be “formal” or “informal.” All languages and contexts for language use typically are a mix of formal/informal, let alone other stylistic labels you might use (e.g., reassuring, warm, intimidating, humorous).

Let’s try some stuff here

In a comment below, take a sentence that you wrote in QSR1 or QSR2 and rewrite it in one of two ways followed by a brief explanation. Choose one of the options below:

1. Rewrite as two sentences. The first sentence will sound more formal/scholarly/elevated. The second sentence will sound more informal/concrete/direct. Feel free to look up some word origins to help you out! Take one or two more sentences to explain how this might be effective and why you made the choices you made.
2. Use synonymia and rewrite a sentence that uses a bunch of synonyms that either uses a bunch of scholarly/elevated words to start before working to core words, or take the other direction and work from the core down. Take one or two more sentences to explain how this might be effective and why you made the choices you made.

Once you did your rewriting and explaining in a comment below, click the “Click here to continue” button to move on to the next page in the module.

Belmihoub and Corcoran sum up the recent linguistic research about how we learn and use language. The main gist is this: there really aren’t separate languages, only mix of the ones we use based on the different stores of words and grammar we learn. So, it might be more accurate to say that we all have our own “language” that we speak, which is a mix of different languages to make up the total communicative resources we have.

We have different competencies.

1. Linguistic competence: knowledge of grammar and vocabulary for a language you speak
2. Strategic competence: using non-linguistic features to help communicate (e.g., body language)
3. Discourse competence: is it coherent, is it complete (enough)
4. Sociolinguistic competence: culturally appropriate to situation

You have this whole wide amount of resources, why not use them all where you see fit and where you want to use them? Feel free to play around with them where you are comfortable. That’s why I wanted to focus on “joy” in your QSR responses. You all have many languages and some of them really feel like home. Lean into that when you want and where you are comfortable.

In the coming weeks, when we talk about style, we will also have moments where we consider how translanguaging can be part of that discussion. This week, we will focus on “words,” so we will have some attention to how to translanguage with words. In future weeks on sentences and on rhetorical tropes and figures, we will also consider translingualism there.

To get a sense of the resources you have to draw from, let’s try to brainstorm all of the linguistic resources you have.

Here are my unofficial languages, for an example:

• US White Mainstream English
• “Academic” English (e.g., “let’s unpack that”; “problematize”; “dissertation”)
• US government / military English (e.g., “get the digits for that,” “what are the due outs?”, “shut up and color”)
• South Philly / South Jersey English (e.g., “looka dis strapper,” “wooder,” “don’t need no beggels”)
• Western Pennsylvania English (e.g., “nebby”, “dippy eggs,” “slippy,” “chip-chop ham”)
• Restaurant Work English (e.g., “right behind you”)
• Italian American English (e.g., “galamar,” “moozarell,” “greaseball”)
• Gaming (e.g., “gg”)
• US Sports Fan (e.g., “defense wins championships,” “establish the run game,” “want the shot”)
• Parenting English (I speak a different way to my young kids!: “potty,” “bye bye”)
• Internet(??) English (from computers in general, Twitter, Reddit, etc.: “evergreen,” “tweet through it,” “tl;dr”, “hard restart”)
• Very Basic School Spanish (e.g., “ir a la playa,” and so on…I’m sorry, I liked to go to the beach when I wrote essays for Spanish)
• Very Basic School German (e.g., Don’t make me try to remember this 6 week class)
• Italian Curse Words (really, just part of Italian American above) (e.g., “fongool”/”fanculo,” “marone”)

There are 2 tasks before moving on in the module.

1. Brainstorm all of the languages you speak/write below in the comments section on this page (see my examples above for me, but you will undoubtedly have different languages than the ones I speak/write).
2. Comment on 2 QSR2 posts due from last Tuesday about something liked about the languages the author talked about (either generally speaking or specific to the languages they wrote about for “joy”). Try to comment on ones that haven’t been commented on yet if you see any by the time you comment!

Once you have done the 2 tasks above, click on “Click here to continue” button below:

Style can also be associated with voice. Voice is something that is hard to pin down, but one way to think about it is your idiosyncratic patterns that are unique to how you speak and write. Audiences will always expect things in specific rhetorical situations (see previous Learning Module 1!), but if they know you, they might also expect ways of speaking and writing from you.

Your voice might be kind of natural and it might change depending on the rhetorical situation (e.g., think of how you speak and write in various different contexts to older family members vs. co-workers vs. friends vs. strangers). Your voice might have shared attributes across rhetorical situations, but it really is very difficult to suggest there is something easily identifiable as Your Voice.

So, style absolutely has to do with audience. But don’t get too wrapped up in writing 100% for your audience. Another part of the rhetorical situation is called the exigence, sometimes called the purpose (exigence usually relates more to a shared problem or issue that calls someone to write whereas purpose is a bit more singular). It is about what you want to do, about what you feel is right in terms of what you say in response to what calls you to speak or write.

What are the patterns, repetitions, and disruptions of words, sentences, paragraphing, etc. that make the most sense for your exigence/purpose? What feels right to YOU.

Three reasons why this is important:

1. It’s your writing, and sometimes audiences need to receive information in ways that they might not be comfortable receiving. Sometimes something comforting is easy to forget or ignore.
2. It is sometimes not possible to know how an audience will receive something. We can’t know until you try something. You know a lot, but you might not know for sure how an audience will receive what you say. Sometimes it might be better to write something in the best way you think rather than worry a lot about how an audience might best receive it.
3. Sometimes you just wanna write what you wanna write, even if you have an audience besides yourself. So, just do what you wanna do.

Has anyone ever made a comment about your “voice” or “style” in your writing or speaking? Do you have a perspective on the kind of “voice” you have as a writer? In 30-50 words, comment below in response to these questions.

After commenting below, click on the “Click here to continue” button to go to the next module page.

Style, a definition:

Using certain kinds of sentences and words that serve the your and your audience’s values, expectations, and goals.

Style can be thought of how you manage patterns, repetition, and disruptions of those patterns and repetitions. Deciding on those patterns, repetitions, and disruptions matters when you consider your audience.

In the Blankenship reading, the consideration of audience is what that audience might expect from you and what your audience’s values and expectations are:

• what sorts of words are they used to hearing? (e.g., technical vocabulary, colloquial language) What do they value? (e.g., investors respond well to language that centers a return on investment)
• what kinds of sentences would your audience expect and value? (e.g., long ones, complex ones, simple ones)
• what kinds of organization or paragraphing? (e.g., long paragraphs, short ones)

Here is what we will focus on this semester, more specifically, in regard to style:

• Voice and Audience
• Word origins and tone
• Words and register
• Sentences: Phrases and Clauses
• Sentences: Active and passive voice
• Sentences: Cohesion
• Sentences: Types
• Sentences: Length
• Sentences: Punctuation
• Sentences: Tropes and Figures

When you think about style, what comes to mind OTHER than writing and speaking? Comment below in response to this question by naming 1-2 things in the comments section below and how style in that domain is similar and/or different from how style is used in terms of writing and speaking.

After commenting below, click on the “Click here to continue” button to go to the next module page.