Writer and Reader: voice, assumptions and expectations
What this is about, again
Because I can't be there this afternoon, I want to do something a bit different.
Way back before spring break, I quoted Prompt #15:
As part of my continuing attempt to help people think more clearly about how readers and writers connect with each other by means of texts (it's not a matter of moving information from one brain to another) I want to invite you to look at how, when writers bring other people's ideas, and words, into their texts, they can let the reader know why they're doing it, and how they expect the reader to respond to the ideas and words.Partly as a way of seeing how the ideas I've been trying to introduce (or deepen) have been made clear, and partly to help you revisit and perhaps renew them, I've created an exercise in which I'm hoping to give you an opportunity to apply some of those ideas to new texts. There's a forum on the English 1006T Moodle site, where you'll find a dozen short passages from various texts. You'll rcognize them. Here's what you should do during what would have been class time today.
For each text, read it, think about it, consider the questions I've suggested, and write whatever seems relevant. You might simply respond to my questions, but more usefully, you might think about what it is that the short passage is calling on the reader to already agree with, to value, to believe (or to pretend to agree with, value, or believe), to get the point the writer seems to want to make.
Spend five minutes or so with each, and post a reply to each. Do this during what would have been class time (that is, by 4:00). Prompt #18 will be on the Web site, with an assignment for Thursday afternoon.