What goes without saying (yet again)

Almost all of what I've asked you to do and think about in the weeks we've been attending to how language works have been intended to make your life more complicated, by making you more self-conscious about what's happening when you read. The five articles I invited you to read for today are yet another attempt to offer you a chance to do that.

If your response was posted by 1:00 I'll have reformatted it and printed it.

Choosing the five articles, I was looking for examples of writing on the same subjects we'd been looking at that went to extremes. Especially, I was looking for examples that went to an extreme that the writer clearly did not expect her reader to accept. I didn't find them for all of them, but some of these articles, in my view, are like that.

What I'd like to do is look for how we come to believe whether the writer is seriously advancing a position, or offering an argument that she knows (or hopes) the reader will disagree with so deeply that she'll recognize she wasn't supposed to agree. (When I say "That Rush Limbaugh sure is a thoughtful, sensitive person," or "That Terry Jones sometimes lets his tolerance and gentleness get out of control," you'd probably know what I meant.) How you know it is another question. Let's explore it, or start to.

We'll do this this way: We'll count off five random groups, and I'll give each group a couple of copies of the original article, and all the responses posted on the Forum by 1:00. Your job will be, as a group, to decide whether the article is straightforward or ironic (that is, whether the author is seriously arguing what she says, or expecting you to know what she means, really), and decide where in the article are pieces of evidence that support that decision. Write an explanation of what your group's position is on this issue, and what you think the strongest arguments supporting it are, and sign it. Don't be satisfied with a single sentence: give your evidence, and explain it. Make it persuasive. Start it by saying, "We think this article is (or is not) straightforward, and here's why." Sign it.

I'll have these transcribed and posted, and we'll come back to them as we start the English disciplinary seminars next term.

The last part of class will be given over to a prompt about managing the midterm transition back to interdisciplinary meetings.