English 1006T
An exercise
29 November 2011
Attending to expectations and assumptions
I've scanned in five of the original paragraphs people offered as examples
of texts that are "just describing or explaining." I've left out a couple
where the text was pretty clearly making a very clear argument (not that
you can't do this same thing with that sort of text; it's just that the
assumptions are a lot harder to see when the text is argumentative). I've
highlighted some words I want to attend to, and I want to begin by asking
you to attend to them. I've put the words I'd like to think about in boldface
type.
Read through them, paying special attention to the boldfaced
phrases. Pick any eight, write each out (just the boldfaced part), and
then say what you think the effect of the phrase is on a reader, and if
you can propose an alternative that would mean the same thing, but have
a different effect (this second may not always be possible; for instance,
sometimes simply leaving the phrase out wouldn't affect the meaning of
the passage at all, but would change its effect).
Here's an example:
former Governor General of Canada -- this not only
helps us think this is an important, respectable deal, it also assumes
we accept that "Governor General" is a really important office, and what's
done in its name must be worth considering.
Take a half hour or so for this, and get me your page of explanations as
soon as possible.
The Trumpet of Conscience features five lectures
that Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered in November and December 1967 for
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Massey Lectures. Founded in
1961 to honor Vincent Massey, former Governor General of Canada,
the annual Massey Lectures served as a venue for earlier speakers such
as John Kenneth Galbraith and Paul Goodman.
The trauma associated with
9/11 affected and continues to influence children, families,
and other groups of people. While research is cataloguing the various
coping difficulties experienced, few studies specifically address
issues related to parenting perceptions and related activities or behaviours.
We examined individuals
employed in close proximity to Ground Zero
and considered these individuals' perspectives regarding their parenting
perceptions and behaviours.
It might be argued that American civil religion became
something of a joke in the era of political cynicism associated with
Vietnam and Watergate (although it was revived very briefly during the
Bicentennial). It certainly has not been a conspicuous element in the national
consciousness during the subsequent decades of increasingly bitter
interest-group politics. Social scientists, heir to the positivist
traditions of Comte and Marx, accepted as a given the trend of modern societies
toward "secularization," and hence have grown increasingly impatient with
the notion that religion--even a "civil" one--has any place in a modern
polity (Wilson 1998).
On February 28, 1993, the United States Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) launched the largest assault in its
history against a small religious community in central Texas. Approximately
eighty armed agents invaded the compound, purportedly to
execute a single search and arrest warrant. The raid went badly;
six Branch Davidians and four agents were killed, and after a fifty-one-day
standoff the United States Justice Department approved a plan to
use CS gas against those barricaded inside. Tanks carrying the CS gas entered
the compound. Later that day, fire broke out, and all seventy-four
men, women and children inside perished.
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great
a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien
guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in
lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves
as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have
a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience,
a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert
myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily
undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so
benevolently
taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far
greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the
step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first
made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure
that these docile creatures will not take a single step without
the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show
them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone.
Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times
they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind
makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.
"very serious about the effect. Anguish would be
an alternate." "without the word people wouldn't know what a big deal 9/11
was."
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