Montanan Drag, What does it communicate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N--8BoAAo1M

I have always been fascinated by gender. I always wanted to wear makeup as a kid, so naturally Halloween was my favorite holiday.  The first time I dressed in drag I was 10, and I dressed as my grandmother to go to a Halloween party at my parents church.  As I was getting ready, I told my mom I wanted to  be a princess the year after, but she thought that would be taking things too far.  Perhaps she was right.  I went to the party, the other kids teased me endlessly and kept snatching my wig and running away. I was devastated! At such a young age, these kids already had a clear definition of gender norms, and my grandma outfit stuck out from the other boys in their superhero getups. In spite of this, my fascination with makeup and and feminine things continued throughout my childhood, and I always hid extra Halloween makeup in the bathroom and practiced painting my face after my parents went to sleep.  When I came into adulthood, doing drag was the natural progression of things.

Montana is certainly not the first place people think of when they think of Drag. Locals even,  are often surprised to find that there are drag shows in the area, as they aren’t a staple in nightlife here.  In spite of this, there are drag performers all over Montana who travel across the state to be on a stage.  None of us have booking fee’s and typically shows are held in the name of different charities, so Montanan drag performers certainly aren’t doing it for personal gain. Considering the cost of travel, cosmetics, and costuming, drag is one expensive hobby. With all of the hassle, I often find myself wondering why I put so much time and money into it for just a few minutes of stage time 4-5 times a year. More importantly, what does this desire to gender bend say about me and the other local performers?  

Drag is highly rhetorical, as I think all forms of performance are.  Without an audience with whom you have something to convey, performance cannot exist. This interaction between performer and audience is a communicative transaction. But what message is coming across in these transactions?  By doing these interviews I hoped to find out what performers were communicating to their audience and their motivation for doing so.  

What surprised me most was how similar the responses were.  Most of the interviewed performers focused on celebrating individuality and promoting equality.  I expected this, but I also expected more diversity in these responses. Personally, I’ve tried to model my myself after performance art, and there’s usually an underlying concept or theme I’m trying to convey to an audience.  Drag on the national level is often a commentary (more often than not a mockery) on pop culture and social norms. While none of the performers brought this intention up in their interviews, I think this is still evident in their drag performance.  By taking popular media and filtering it through our rhetorical mindset, we become farcical celebrities for the night, which allows us to act as or poke fun at the entertainment industry. I think the reason most performers focused on the social implications of drag rather than their artistic processes behind it, is because Montana has a lot of growing to do in terms of cultural diversity, and we’re all trying to make it a more inclusive place to live.

Several of the responses in the video bring up exposing the community to non-gender norms or gender fluidity and the like, and I cannot stress the importance of this enough!  To me, this is one of the greatest messages drag performers can send to an audience.  By crossing over the gender binary, we show the community that it’s okay to not fit within that binary. People who identify as transgender struggle tremendously to fit into society.  Finding work, having identification (that matches the gender they present as), and using public restrooms are all confusing hurdles for a trans person, not to mention the fear they experience of not being accepted by the community. Doing drag leads to education on these matters and we hope that makes makes our culture more accepting towards people of diverse gender.

The most unique interview I took was with Micah Harder.  His report of how performing as a man has helped him handle his aspergers in his real life, exemplifies how drag can help us become better people outside of the persona. Drag is a confidence builder.  Getting on a stage dressed as the opposite gender takes nerve, and by repeating that action, we build our confidence in situations outside of drag.  When you’re halfway through a number and your wig falls off, or you trip, or you forget the lyrics, you learn to just keep performing.  In  my experience, the audience always applauds a recovery, and it’s a method I’ve applied to my life out of drag. Pick yourself up when you fall down is such a cliche’, but applying it to a performance and seeing an instant positive reaction solidifies that advice and makes it easier to apply in your real life.

The Montanan drag scene is still in it’s infancy, but each show raises thousands for local charities, many of which are not LGBT related.  We aren’t only concerned about the LGBT community, because no matter how you identify we are all a part of the same community, whether you’re gay, straight, or transgender etc.  Our mission is to encourage diversity, and make Montana a beautiful place to live for all individuals, and maybe, if we give it time, kids can feel more confident dressing as their grandmothers for Halloween.

New Draft!

This is my rough draft, and rough might be putting it lightly.  I've never edited footage before, so I'll appreciate any advice/pointers.  I really struggled trying to take all of the clips and put them together in something that resembled a story.  Let me know what you think!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-5e1nmTSujcR1llcGg4emxEczg/view?usp=sharing

A Really Rough Draft/Preview #rhetoricaldragqueenrealness

Please watch and comments and critique would be very helpful!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zp8hVZ9wrs

Conflicting truths

Erin & Kelly,

I'm really intrigued by your notions of truth being different for every individual. Throughout your post and our discussion on Thursday, I kept being reminded of my relationship with my mom. We come from very different world views and our "truth" is typically quite different. She's hyper religious, and I'm well... crude and lewd, and quite homosexual, so we don't see eye to eye. We used to fight ALL THE TIME, but I've learned that no matter how hard I try to prove her wrong, I can't. She see's the world through the lens of her religion (her truth), and once I realized that, I was able to see how difficult parenting someone like me must have been for her. It's been a clash of the century. I think she's blinded by a wall of misplaced faith, and she thinks I'm a misguided soul that she needs to guide towards salvation. When it comes to cases of differing worldviews, you really do have to accept that you can't always change the truth of others.

Kelly posed the question of "How do we pinpoint ultimate truths?" And after thinking about it, I'm starting to wonder if there aren't any. What if truth beyond the general level doesn't exist? Once the mass majority of people agree on something, a truth can be considered general knowledge, but there often seem to be variances lying underneath them. For example, as Americans, the general public identifies murder as evil, so we put laws in place to discourage it. However, thanks to the death penalty, we have murdered many murderers for their crimes (I'm reminded of my mom saying "two wrongs don't make a right"). But when we murder murderers, most of us don't feel too bad about it, instead, many of us feel relieved that there is one less bad person on the planet. This complicates things further, as this makes the crime conditional, meaning we've made it okay to kill if the killing seems justified. Where do we draw the line between justice and murder? Now, the truth of "murder is wrong" is much more complex and open to interpretation, which is why the death penalty is still a controversial issue.

I've often thought about world peace and how easy everything would seem if we could all agree to disagree and try to get along. It seems so simple. However, it is this very subject of conflicting truths that renders such a thing impossible. We can't all get along and we never will. When it comes to deep, heart felt truths, the emotional connection to that truth often outweighs our accepting of others with different truths. Take any conflicting individuals on any hot button topic, and put them in a room together. Whether the topic is the death penalty, gay marriage, or abortion etc. the chances are that little understanding of the other's views will be accomplished. Instead what happens is each desperately trying to force the other to see their truth, typically to no fruition. At least, this is the truth the way I've seen it.

When do we believe something?

Kelly, the last few questions in your post are quite intriguing, “How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if everyone has different definitions in different situations for what counts as logical and credible in Truth? How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if people ultimately have different experiences which shape their values in-which pre-determines what they may be persuaded to believe in as true?”

Between reading those questions and thinking about our discussion in class on Tuesday that revolved around another equally perplexing question (“Is there a difference between what is believable and what should be believable?”) I am reminded of a story I recently read in the news and am even more perplexed.

So I apologize in advance if this doesn’t connect but please bear with me! The example I’m about to give is incredibly random, but hopefully I can tie it back in with this conversation. So, on Saturday (3/29) it was reported that two men just became the first same-sex inmates to ever marry each other in a British prison. But, what makes the story interesting is that both of the men are serving life in prison…for hate-crime murders against gay men. There is a lot of controversy surrounding their marriage, some people are taking the stance of “hey they’re in love, let them get married!” while others are saying this is some sick psychopathic plot that the men thought up in their spare time and another argument is that the men will try to use this as a ploy for early release from prison.

Now, in a situation like this what should I believe? Maybe they are actually in love, in which case – great, get married! But what if it is some sick backhanded plot with ulterior motives? How do I know what to believe? Of course in this scenario it is not pressing that I decide what to believe, because at the end of the day my opinion in the issue really doesn’t affect anything. But what about cases when it does matter? What if I am on jury duty for some court case and I am having trouble figuring out what to believe? Usually, anything backed up with scientific evidence or logos is pretty easy to believe. So, it is usually the cases that rely/play off of emotions that really blur the lines of believably?

It seems pretty easy to come to ‘general truths’ as Kelly mentioned when logos are involved. For example, Ebola has claimed 10,445 deaths according to the CDC. I’m going to assume that most people that we know will agree that Ebola is extremely contagious and severe. Those statements are based off of the facts. Easy-peasy. But what about when the facts begin to become less clear? What then? How does our 'gut' lead us to believe something?

Values & Persuasion

Hi Ashton,

“Perelman proves how interconnected rhetoric is with philosophy.”

I disagree. He doesn’t prove anything :). I think he’s just stating his narrative, which is different than our own narratives. And when you said that rhetoric that rhetoric isn’t simple, I agree to a point. I believe that how we define something depends on our lens and the values we harbor within that frame of mind. So even when your friend said that rhetoric is “how you argue,” I don’t think she’s wrong. I think she’s right in her way of thinking. Similar with Perelman, I don’t think he’s wrong either – He’s just stating his point of view.

Before reading the Perelman article I hated Socrates because he was anti-rhetoric, but when I read this I realized that the reason why I didn’t like Socrates was because he was acting out his values and his beliefs. He was stating his argument based on his values, and even when I felt he acted closed minded, he was just clashing against my personal views. The more I thought/realized that everyone’s point of view is fair/legit/correct, the easier it was for me to read and take in what the philosophical people had to say throughout the article.

I definitely thought it was interesting in class today when Kim talked about relating/connecting with other people. I think she said that if people don’t believe in what other people believe, then what would be the point of believing in it.  However, I wonder though, do we have a choice in what we believe? Can we really just throw away our values if they don’t relate with anyone else? And now I have another thought: If experience shapes our values and is influenced by who we interact with, can we really not have people in our lives (or the world even) who does not share our values and beliefs? I suppose we could if we were raised by gorillas on a deserted island, but somewhere there must have been someone who shared the same experience as us or at least a similar value, yes?

Another thing that caught my eye in this reading was how philosophy seemed to base their criteria for truth and how they persuade their audience with the concepts of ethos and logos. I wonder if according to them opinion is driven by pathos. I wonder if they think that rhetoric is driven by pathos and that is why they think it’s biased. I also wondered another thing: How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if everyone has different definitions in different situations for what counts as logical and credible in Truth? How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if people ultimately have different experiences which shape their values in-which pre-determines what they may be persuaded to believe in as true?   

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I was prepared to list me as next week's blog poster, but.... I guess this is our last required blog post round of the whole semester. I was kind of looking forward to posting to be honest, but oh well :) -- Let's finish strong guys! :)

Rational and Personal

Perelman proves how interconnected rhetoric is with philosophy. I think the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy is one that I would have never guessed exists until I took this course, which often feels like a philosophy class. It was funny, I was working on the synthesis paper a little while ago and a friend asked me to define rhetoric...it took forever because I could never settle on an answer. My friend responded something like, "It's not that hard, it's how you argue." (Before this class I would have said something like that too.) I responded, "It cannot be that simple!!!" I think that the reason that rhetoric is so complex is because it is rooted in our values...which is a very complex system. There is a lot more that goes into our arguments than evidence. Evidence is created, chosen, formulated by our narratives, who we are, and the values that shape our identity (kind of like Ramage claimed in ch. 2). Perelman claims, "The preeminent realm of argumentation, dialectic, and rhetoric is that in which values come into play" (160).

Last week's post I talked about binaries (yay!) in rhetoric being rational and imaginative, like of what Campbell was talking about. Perelman, I noticed, confirms that a large part of rhetoric is gaining both of the binaries, blending them in a way that appeals to an audience while supporting a claim. He claims that how we argue rationally is mathematical. "A hypothesis, to be accepted, must be supported by good reasons, recognized as such by other people, members of the same scientific community. The status of knowledge thus ceases to be impersonal because every scientific thought becomes a human one, i.e., fallible, situated in and subjected to controversy" (159). What I found interesting about his approach to argumentation is that he claims that it is mathematical, we form a hypothesis (we often use "thesis") and wrap evidence around it to persuade our audience, but also personal. Every scientific thought is rooted in our values. This quote shattered my conception of there being a rational binary as well as an personal one. Our rationality is formed by our personality, or values. Rhetoric is personal and rational at the same time. "In identifying this rhetoric with the general theory of persuasive discourse, which seeks to gain both the intellectual and the emotional adherence to any sort of audience, we affirm that every discourse which does not claim an impersonal validity belongs to rhetoric" (161-162).  I never have thought of rhetoric being both a rational and personal way of approaching argumentation.

Relating this back to Ramage's concepts of statsis, toolmin and Burke's Pentad, Perelman could claim that our values form our policies and evidence for our claim (which is a human thought rooted in values). I like thinking of purpose as motives, like Kelly brought up last week. Our motives are formed by our values and our motives guide how we form a claim and our evidence in supporting that claim is chosen by our values.

Ashton and Kelly, I found both of your posts extremely relatable. To begin, I totally agree with your first paragraph Ashton. It seems as if the relationship between an individual identity and a communal identity within discourse communities are inherently intertwined. I do not think the two can ever be fully separated, because, as you said, they have direct effects on each other. One is not possible without the other and vice versa.

As far as the 'identifying with the audience to persuade them section' ... I also belong to the "I don't understand science stuff" discourse community. This semester, I made the mistake of enrolling in a 400 level WGSS class which is heavily tied to psychology. As you can imagine, I have an extremely hard time comprehending the papers we read in that class. And when I say a hard time, I mean a hard time. Like a 'pulling my hair out' type of time. I felt as if the author wasn't even trying to appeal to the reader, but then I checked myself (before I wrecked myself) and remembered that I am not an expert in this discourse community and therefore I do not understand the layout/methods/lexis etc. So of course I don't get it! However, I still believe the authors arguement, because as you pointed out we "can be persuaded by his/her scientific knowledge." I think the knowledge (whether it is actual knowledge or just the readers assumption) of the rhetor seems to be one of the most influential ways in which any author appeals to their audience. We assume that if someone has had their work published in a reliable publication, then their work is true and therefore we can allow them to persuade us that "Ramen isn't good for your health" (...it's a bad example I know, but somehow that's where my mind wandered) because they back up it with 'facts' that they have scientifically proved. And of course, the author writes for who he intends to read it, but alas, a much larger crowd than the intended audience will likely read it. Therefore, we rely on the presumed knowledge and expertise of the author to persuade us. 

 Hmm... Hitler's rhetoric. I guess I have always viewed Hitler as a terrific rhetorician. It feels wrong to type that but after all...he did change the world forever didn't he? To persuade an entire community into believing something so extreme means that either the people are incapable of thought, orrr the more plausible solution: the speaker knows what he is doing. And he's doing it damn well. And of course, we are led to believe that Hitler really thought his actions were right/moral/correct so he did not think he was leading people astray right? I think it is impossible to make the argument that if the rhetor is using rhetoric for bad then it is bad rhetoric. Because bad and good are all relative. Of course, (almost) everyone you meet will believe Hitler's usage of rhetoric was pure evil, but people cannot claim that it is a fact that Hitlers rhetoric was evil. And regardless of the motive behind the rhetoric, at the end of the day his rhetoric was extremely successful because people believed him. Because definitions of bad/good are all relative, it seems impossible that we could ever even begin to attempt to separate rhetoric into two such definitive categories. 

So now that I have rambled on unnecessarily long .. we come to Binaries.. I can see how the rhetoric and logical binaries combine, and how the imagination and intellectual binary seem to as well. As Ashton touched on, I can understand how both binaries work together. Although I too would have assumed just logic was used at first, I now understand how a more creative, artistic role plays into this. But to be completely frank, these binaries are still confusing. Who knows, maybe I'll understand one day or at another time that is not 3 a.m.

Binaries within Binaries

Kelly,
I like how you tied in values and discourse community to persuasion and argumentation. It seem like you connected Ramage's identity chapter, which I believe was chapter 2, to the argument and persuasion chapters really well. When I read your blog, I remembered his concept of having an individual identity and a communal identity (or discourse community identity). The separation between them is a little blurred in that aspects of our individual make us members of certain communities and the communities that we play part in shape our individual identities. The values that shape our identities reflect themselves in the ways that we approach, present, and the evidence that we use persuade our arguments. Also, I really like how you tie motive to purpose to values, that really clicked with me for some reason.

I thought what you said about identifying with audience to persuade them was interesting, "Even if you are not a part of someone's discourse community, you still have to find some way to connect with the person you're writing to otherwise they may not be able to find what you have to say as credible, logical, or emotionally sound." I think, in most cases, yes, especially when you are considering intended audience. Some cases, especially in unintended audiences, I think can still be persuaded by the fact that the author knows a discourse community better than the reader does. For instance, I am a member of the "I don't understand science stuff" discourse community. When I read an article from one a member of the "I do understand science stuff" discourse community, the author doesn't try to relate to my lack of scientific knowledge because since he has an abundance of it, he cannot. I still can be persuaded by his scientific knowledge simply because he understands a discourse community better than I do, which makes me trust what he has to say. I think that we cannot be fully aware of who all partakes in being our actual audience, so we can try identify with who we intend to be our audience to be but our intended audience doesn't always fully include our actual audience. If we didn't intentionally identify with a member of our actual audience, it doesn't mean that the member can't be persuaded by us. If that made any sense.

I also have been interested in what makes rhetoric good or bad and have never saw it the way you have. You base the result of good or bad on values and ethics (Adolf Hitler example) which I've never thought of before. I thought of "good" rhetoric as rhetoric as rhetoric that effectively persuades by giving both sides of an argument and by reflecting one's identity into writing. I'm not really I understand what all partakes in making rhetoric "bad," but it's interesting to wonder if self motives/deceitfulness make "bad" rhetoric. Would it be "bad" rhetorical to write to an intended audience and fake the values that they have in order that they see your point as credible? Or just ethically wrong? Not really sure...that whole idea honestly is so unclear to me because if one is unintentionally be rhetorical, how does one categorize that into being good or bad?

I also wanted to talk a little bit about Campbell because a lot of what he had to say, I never thought of in my previous ideas about rhetoric. In the past, we have discussed the binaries falling into the two categories: logic and rhetoric. Campbell's article presents that within the rhetorical binary, there are two binaries...(I think I'm understanding why I still don't have a solid definition for what rhetoric is). There's the mathematical/intellectual binary and the moral/imaginary/passion binary. The intellectual binary, Campbell claim, "Results entirely from propriety and simplicity of diction, and from accuracy of method, where the mind is regularly, step by step, conducted forwards in the same track, the attention no way diverted, nothing left to be supplied, no one unnecessary word or idea introduced" (750). Awhile ago, when we were in the topics of binaries, I concluded that there is logic in being rhetorical....this intellectual binary seems to me like it consists of the logical part of rhetoric. The imagination binary Campbell describes, "Is addressed by exhibiting to it a lively and beautiful representation of a suitable object" (750). He associates this binary with persuasion...changing our audience's will. Campbell associates the imagination binary to the concept of sublime which raises admiration because we address our passions (If I understood that correctly). It is also associated to sense and expression of our "body and soul." (On a random side note, I thought it was interesting that Campbell gives masculinity to the intellectual binary and refers the imaginary binary as a "she"...just something interesting I noticed.)

Just as the rhetoric/ logical binaries fall into each other, the imagination binary and intellectual binary seem to fall into each other. "It is by the sense that rhetoric holds of logic, and by the expression that she holds of grammar" (753). Campbell claims that rhetoric needs assistance from both binaries but that the imagination binary isn't as included as the intellectual binary. I always have limited rhetoric to only one category (more of the intellectual). For instance, I never thought that their was such a thing as grammatical art or logical art....that always seemed like a paradox to me, yet it makes sense. We artfully frame our arguments, thoughts and reasons within the rules of a particular language. I was always told that if you break a grammatical rule in your writing that you need a rhetorical reason for doing so, and I think that concept is true: we approach grammar as an art, using it to convey the passions that we have in a particular way.

 I never thought of rhetoric having any association to passions but solely thinking about our audience in order that we can artfully persuade them. I'm starting to think that to artfully persuade, we need to express our values that guide our purpose in why we pose the different arguments that we do. The combination (I may have completely understood this incorrectly) of the intellectual binary and the imagination binary achieves eloquence. Campbell defines eloquence as "'That art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its end'" (749). He also claims that while logic seeks truth and only regards the audience, eloquence considers both the audience and writer. I used to approach rhetoric as if it was focused solely on the audience and that writing rhetorically meant that one needed to write with the sole focus of appealing to audience. I never thought of rhetoric as also the expressing of our passions, values, and purposes in our arguments.

Persuasion & Argument

A lot of this reading reminded me of Discourse and Discourse theory and so I was able to make a lot of connections because of that. For example, Ramage discussed that in order to persuade the audience, the writer has to mediate to their values, beliefs, ways of thinking, ways of doing etc. 

For a quick rundown, Discourse is a particular label that people identify with based on their values. The people who all fit under that label are a part of a discourse community. In order to be a part of a discourse community, they must share ways of thinking/ways of acting/value systems/beliefs/language usages etc depending on who they are and who they are interacting with. For example, I’d say this ENGL 450 class is a Discourse because we all value rhetoric to some degree, use words that have the same meaning to each other and we have a better grasp of what some phrases mean than some people who are not in the class such as “synthesis paper” and “canons of rhetoric.”

So, when I read things like relativism that say that it is impossible to talk to the audience without including some of their values within what we write, all I can see is Discourse Theory.  Pluralism also hinted at Discourse theory because it mentioned identity. One of things I found different in that inclusion of identity is that in order to persuade the audience, you must be able to identify with them first. I didn’t actually think about that before, but I feel like it makes sense. … Even if you are not a part of someone’s discourse community, you still have to find some way to connect with the person you’re writing to otherwise they may not be able to find what you have to say as credible, logical or emotionally sound.

In addition to identity, I also found the differences between propaganda and literature regarding persuasion to be interesting. It mentioned that coercion, which is a part of propaganda, is selfish because the writer attempts to persuades in order to meet their own needs/goals rather than including the audience’s best interests at heart. I didn’t actually think of persuasion in terms of categories. I just assumed that persuasion enticed the audience to act in the way that writer wants them to.

However, now as I think about it more: Can any persuasion not be deceptive? Is any of it straight forward? I guess I was thinking of my analysis endeavors like my capstone project for over this article and how the writers have used credibility in seemingly deceiving ways. Or perhaps that’s just my interpretation because that article was relying heavily on credibility to make their argument.

But in terms of literature, I wonder if straightforward is doing stuff such as including examples that actually relate with their topic instead of using semi-related examples to support their argument. Not only does literature use things like examples to be more credible with their claims, but because they are looking to spread knowledge between themselves and their audience, is that what determines “good?” Is being coercive what “bad rhetoric” looks like?

To be more precise with my previous paragraph, does good & bad rhetoric mean propaganda vs. literature in the rhetorical lens? Would Adolf Hitler be using “bad rhetoric” when he was trying to persuade people with his speech, then?

I still like to connect intention with what determines whether rhetoric is good or bad and so I feel like Hitler’s rhetoric can be good from his perspective, but in terms of the rhetorical lens, I wonder if his rhetorical usage would be an example of “bad rhetoric.”

Lemme just take a detour here and wonder about when a person acts as result of being persuaded: Does each action come as a result of a value/knowledge change? Can we be motivated to act without changing our opinions/views? I was thinking we can because, for example, if we see a poster about a car we really wanted and we go out and buy it, are we being persuaded? If the purpose was the remind us to do something, does that count as an argument and as an act as persuasion?

In terms of argument:

The discussion of premise was familiar to me because of my psychological statics class from a couple semesters ago. However, I had not thought about the stasis approach or defining the problem and determining the ethics behind the problem/reason before, but I found them to be interesting.

In class today I liked how we defined argument as “motive.” By defining it as “motive,” it made me want to connect it to “purpose” in which made me want to connect it to values. To be honest, I previously thought argument was just a statement that came as a product of our goals. However, as I think about it more depth, I think that our argument is constructed on the foundation of our values.

In class, I got a better idea of something: We discussed how an argument made with a “value judgement” wouldn’t win over an audience that that wanted opinions on parking. However, I think what we were getting at is that how we word our argument is dependent on who our audience is. I totally believe that we can’t remove pathos from our argument because then we’d be removing our motivation from constructing the argument to begin with. However, how we form the sentence of our argument is dependent on how our audience will interpret it and whether or not that interpretation will make them happy or sad.

Basically, I think that an argument’s idea not only was brought into existence from our values, but its outer appearance (sentence structure) depends on who our audience is, the situation and what our audience values within that particular situation.

P.S. Fellow group members, I just wanted to reiterate that Ashton has the first blog post for Monday (3/30) by 5 pm this upcoming week. :)

Project Proposal!

As most of you know, I started out with the idea of analyzing how the relationship between the maker and his/her object influences the relationship that the object has on its audience. While I think it's an interesting question that is worth investing research in, my brain hasn't generated a feasible way to approach this....maybe I'll utilize some aspect of that question in analyzing our class readings for the synthesis project. We'll see, but for this project, I have decided to ditch it :/

However! My brain did redeem itself by generating a new idea...one that I haven't really fine tuned the details or even the focus of my question, but I believe I have a solid starting point. My new idea: how does rap and spoken word poetry rhetorically and effectively integrate the balance of the logic and emotional binaries in the creation of their performative art? I know that there has been a preexisting debate on whether rap and spoken word poetry can be considered poetry and I know, at least the last that I've heard, it does. I think that the main difference it has from from written poetry, besides the fact that it is read aloud and presented differently, is that rap and spoken word artists are trying to create a successful relationship between integrating the emotional pull that poetry has and logically structuring it for an audience's engagement. To me, rap and spoken word seem more rhetorical in that they consider their audience more, in their writing processes, than most (not all, of coarse) written poetry. Rap and spoken word focuses more on performance while written poetry focuses on emotional reflection. I realize that other elements contribute to both forms of poetry like sound, tone, presentation, etc. and that these elements differ in rap/spoken word and written poetry and I would like to invest in that more. However, I'm primarily interested in the writing construction and process of these forms of poetry and how writers of both forms play around with the relationship between the binaries that we have thoroughly discussed in class.

I'm interested in this topic because I grew up in a very pious religious community that, to say this nicely, overlooked rap as art. I grew up calling it "rap crap" until I discovered a Christian rap artist (my church would probably consider this as a paradox) named Lecrae. His lyrics and the way that he performed them spoke more to me than any hymn or poem or really any creative genre ever did. I had an epiphany that I enjoy rap crap and that I and many people I know overlook it as art and especially as rhetorical art. For spoken word poems, I think they share a lot of similar features that rap shares in that their construction contains strong performative influences. I like written poems but rap and spoken word poems have always engaged and spoken to me more, yet their genres are overlooked in much of academia (I think it would be so sweet to have a rhetorical rap class....right??...maybe one day). Rap/spoken words are becoming more popular and I think that in analyzing, teaching, and considering them as rhetorical art, it could reshape traditional ideologies of what genres rhetoric can be. Before this class and my Digital Rhetorics class, I limited rhetoric to the academic field and I think that is a lot of people's first impressions of what rhetoric is. By showing that rhetoric also appears in genres that are more prevalent to audiences outside of the academic/writing comp. world, maybe more people would be interested in the topic of rhetoric and try to apply it to other forms of art.

How to approach this? Excellent question. I obviously want to research how much this topic has been discussed and what those discussions are. If I can, I want to interview some spoken word/rap artists about how they compose their poetry and how the fact that they know that they are physically performing it for an audience changes what they write. I also want to know how much of the emotional binary they integrate into their writing. I would also like to analyze poems written as rap/spoken word versus poems that are not and try to find reoccurring themes in their differences and similarities. I'm still trying to fine tune my methodology of this proposal but these are my ideas thus far.  Let me know what you think!

Truths in Narratives

In class we said that experience shapes values, while this book discussed that you can’t run from your identities/values and be truly happy in your choice to do so. I think that coming into contact with other narratives (which includes identities and values) shapes how you perceive the world and what you choose to believe in as a truth.  

In reference to Ashton’s second paragraph where she discussed the quotes briefly, my take on those quotes is that Dorothy had to tell herself the stories in dark situations in order to make herself believe them because those stories were also constructed based on her values to find happiness. By believing in those fictitious stories, she was able to take a lens that contradicted her situation with her father. She was able to believe in the truth that everything in her situation would be okay. And by believing in the truth she constructed, she was able to not crumble, but to find hope and a reason to move forward with her life. In essence, I believe that values that are shaped by our experiences can help to construct our narratives/stories regarding what we see and experience within our lives.   

Because the “truth” is constructed based on our values, narratives and experiences, I believe that it along with “objectivity" are both subjective and it makes me think of a quote my high school teacher told my class many years ago “if something is true to you, then it’s true and that’s all that matters.” This is where I wish to rant about Socrates. Even though he thought he was being logical/rational, he was still very much driven by pathos because he believed so strongly in his point of view. He failed to recognize that the “truth” he held on to so much was constructed based on his narrative’s interaction with other narratives. He failed to understand that his view was subjective because he held so strongly to his values and because he followed those lines of rhetoric like everyone else, he was still doing rhetoric, whether he cared to admit it or not.   

And I think I touched on this in my blog post in Digital Rhetorics with regards to Gorgias, but I did not like how closed-minded and arrogant Socrates came off to me. I disliked that he tried to “prove” he was right without listening/understanding the other side. I felt in that if he tried to understand the rhetorical point of view, he might have been able to bridge the gap a little bit more between him and the non-philosophical people.

Ramage made me see that in order to persuade the audience, you must be willing to befriend the audience and thus earn their trust. I feel like if Socrates or the other group wanted to get their argument across in a moment of persuasion, they needed to try to be open-minded to the other group’s ways of thinking and ways of communicating. If he was able to do that, then maybe he could try to lead them subtly into his way of thinking.

And something else that I also thought about after reading Dorothy’s text is that in order to persuade someone else, you must persuade yourself of the same thing. If you are not passionate or have faith in what you are saying or doing, then how can anyone else feel the same way? Perhaps believing in your own words and actions can give credibility to the audience as well.

I’m too tired in this instance to look for the specific page in Ramage that goes with the motorcycle example you posed, but Jared, I wonder if you felt like Ramage was being too stereotypical. If that’s the case, I respectfully disagree. I feel like he was describing situations in terms of how people see and experience their situations in which end up being dictated by their own values and the values of the people they come in contact with. That contact creates a structurally built in relationship with one another. In other words, the parties in a given situation know what happens and understand the language in those relationships/situations because they personally experience those relationships.

To elaborate further, the given identity that Ramage posed can be where when you’re in a friendship with a friend, you take up roles/actions/beliefs/interpretations that are characteristics of a friendship such as spending time together and doing things that you both enjoy. For the ready-made identity environment, you behave/interpret/think a certain way because of the rules/roles of the environment that you’re in such as a classroom setting because you end up taking up the roles of a student and teacher.

Stereotypes, however, are expectations/judgments people place on the situations that they themselves are not a part of. For example, some people may think that adolescents rebel against their parents at any given instant. However, this is a stereotype because what the outside parties believe do not necessarily align with the values within the parent & adolescent narrative/perspective.

Lastly, I’d like to say that I think it’s interesting how the identities that Ramage poses and the concepts of narratives remind me of values and the characteristics within a given Discourse. I suppose I should try to clear my understanding of how I know it thus far. I believe a Discourse revolves around the interactions & understandings between people in a given situation, identities are who we are in a given situation (and/or Discourse) in which allows us to understand how things are interpreted relative to our situation and lastly, a narrative is the lens we have that is comprised of both identities and Discourses.

... At least that's my interpretation of everything. I do not mean to convey a tone of authority (or a tone that suggests that I know everything). I just wanted to make that clear :).