First thoughts about spin, slant and tilt

We took some time to read a newspaper article. Each person had one or the other of the two versions of the article you can see by clicking here. Everyone wrote out answers to the three questions at the end of the article.

Then I explained that there were actually two versions of the article, and gave everyone a copy of both, printed in parallel columns. The assignment for Thursday was to compare the two and identify the changes between them, thinking about what their possible consequences for a reader might be, and whether they might lead us to have different impressions of the "voice" we hear in the article.
 

English 1006T
Prompt #2
17 November 2011

Looking at the mechanics of spin, slant and tilt

Everyone should have looked at the parallel texts and identified the changes I made.  I've had the responses to the questions everyone answered transcribed, and although the changes might have made a difference, it's not clear quite what it is.

I'll set up some groups of two or three to look at the texts and decide which one or two of the changes you'd like to talk about -- either because you think you can see how it works, or because you can't see why I made the change.

I'll give groups about ten minutes to make a decision about which changes to talk about, and then we'll discuss the changes. We'll also have a quick look at the evidence for the effects of those changes in the comments people made, and at some of the other factors at work.

For next time, at the same time as you're reading your text(s) you've been assigned for Tuesday, do this: find a paragraph (25-100 words) in which you think you could change a word or two which, without changing the meaning of the text,  would possibly change the way the reader (and the writer) are expected, or assumed, to agree on assumptions. Copy the text out, print it, and highlight what you'd change. Bring it to class Tuesday.

Some explanation, for people who are helped by reading text

When we create language, we choose words and put ideas in order without conscious thought, mostly. We don't first decide what we believe fundamentally, and then plan how we can say what we do in order to move others to agree with us about those things (or at least most of us don't, most of the time: professional persuaders like speechwriters and advertising copy writers do this all the time).

What we do is choose our words and arrange our ideas according to who we are and what we're thinking about at the moment, in the immediate situation. We do this quickly (amazingly quickly) when we're talking and a lot slower when we're writing. Doing it slowly, in fact, gives us more chance to become conscious of what we're doing, and do some planning.

When we look at the changes I made in the Reuters news story, I think we can see what might have happened if the writers had been different people, with different fundamental assumptions -- about who the Dalai Lama is (and how they, and their readers, feel about him), about what sort of place "Communist China" is, and about what we, and they, feel and believe about the Waco incident and David Koresh. If they felt very differently, they'd possibly have written differently -- but since they were part of an editorial collective, writing for a news service that wanted to sell its copy to newspapers and Web sites (who share a "western" set of values about those things), they might actually have made the same decisions they did, whatever they personally believed. And, of course, we can't know what they personally believed or valued: all we can know is what their "voice" makes them sound as though they believed and valued.

I should say that I don't think this is dishonest; it's what we do when we use language. It's how we create communities of people who share assumptions.

One further thought: there are already assumptions out there. You can't change them immediately; what you can do is use them to further gradual changes. For instance, a fundamental western value is that there's something admirable in defying authority and being an underdog: simply by describing the Dalai Lama using terms loaded in the opposite direction isn't likely to change that. What can happen is that an attempt to tilt the discourse in that direction may become obvious, or unacceptable, to a reader who can't accept the tilt. That's bad; you'll have blown your cover.