Dear Internets,
I have a dare for you: find one of your embarassing undergraduate writings and blog it for the world to see.
With regards,
a crooked and pained Lauren
Upon looking for example literary thesis statements among my own academic writing for class tomorrow, I ran across this essay I wrote four years ago when I was forced to take COM 114. COM 114, if you don’t know, is my university’s evil public presentation course, better known to high schoolers as Speech class.
The assignment was to defend the course and all the things we learned. This is yet another example of me poking fun at assignments I don’t want to do. See the false positivity runneth over.
Be kind, Internets:
My first COM 114 speech was given on the various compelling reasons that I participate in the Internet blog community. I gave my speech; shook violently while hating myself for being nervous; and sat down feeling that I had yet to convey exactly was it was that I meant to say. That night, I went home and blogged about the experience. I ripped on my instructor, on the university, and on my classmates for making copious athletic analogies without obvious merit. Despite having blogged about my discontent, I gave the URL to my instructor upon request.
I am glad she responded in the manner that she did, as her response set the tone for the rest of my classroom experience. Not only have I grown to admire my instructor and respect my classmates, but also the class has become my favorite of the semester. Like blogging, COM 114 gives me the opportunity to express my opinion, albeit in a more organized fashion, and provides me with an audience to which I preach. In addition, the merits of the class have become apparent. The instruction I have obtained in COM 114 can be practically applied to my responsibilities as a mother, an activist feminist, and as a public high school teacher based on what I have learned from Bitzer’s “Rhetorical Situation” and R.E. Smith’s Principles of Communication.
Effective motherhood obviously requires many skills, but most importantly, it requires skills of communication that deftly handle situations ranging from the incensed to the delicate. Much of my time as a parent is spent trying to appeal to Ethan, my one-person audience, in convincing him why it is beneficial to finish his dinner or put on his socks. Two-year-olds don’t respond well to any well-planned intellectual argument. In fact, they respond better to bribery. Still, I must find ways to hold Ethan’s attention long enough to make it relevant to his immediate future. In other words, I have to use the technique of appealing to my audience with audience relevance. In putting on his socks, he might get a sticker on his “Good Listener Chart”. If he refuses to do so, he may frustrate me deeply enough to get a time out, something he never finds appealing. I dread the day that Ethan realizes that his mother is making him a victim to the fallacy of the false dichotomy (Smith 154), in which case he might opt for the hidden third choice of telling Mommy off.
In the future, I imagine I will find myself in many situations that will require me to try and persuade Ethan to action. In his teen years, I might try and persuade him to remain abstinent or to practice the use of birth control once he becomes sexually active. As a young adult, I may try to persuade him to practice a monthly budget or to avoid the overuse of credit cards. Today, I use persuasion to influence Ethan into action, usually at dinnertime and bedtime. My most strenuous concern is keeping Ethan off the computer, as he is known for cramming various things into the CD-ROM. However, I have been able to convince him to ask permission and to use the computer only under adult supervision using a simple presentation of the facts that immediately pertain to him. Try explaining computer hardware issues to a two-year-old.
For these reasons, rhetoric seems to be the primary form of communication as a parent. My mother, too, had to persuade me to change the way I thought, acted, and felt about certain societal rules, including dress codes; appropriate use of language; and avoiding troublesome characters; by laying out my various choices and their desirable and undesirable consequences. Unfortunately, it took me awhile to realize her credibility as a rhetor lay in years of life experience as a woman and as a worker in the public system. Still, her lessons remain concise in my mind, whether I choose today to agree with her reasons or not. As an adult, I have the power of dissection and criticism and can accept or reject what I choose. In that way, I was and remain the catalyst for change based in her rhetoric. I suppose that with my mother, I will always have the option of agreement or refusal; however, I will have even more of that option once I am no longer forced to take her money.
Communication is also a vital aspect of participating in feminist activism. Rhetoric is often used to push the latent follower into an active member of the public. Frequently in feminist literature, authors include various appendixes that encourage the reader to write letters, join groups, write opinion pieces, develop and post flyers, or attend conferences and benefits related to the feminist cause. Not only is the feminist author attempting to coerce the reader to agree with her opinion, but also the author is attempting to persuade the reader to take part in reconstructing society. I have been convinced to take part in protests, join formal organizations, write letters to government officials, and to boycott certain companies and media outlets on the basis of questionable ethics, however, the author first had to persuade me that my action is needed in the first place.
Public speaking becomes an important skill for me, as I am frequently compelled to defend my points of view in regards to feminist theory. This is a difficult task because people have false or misguided preconceived notions of this particular societal group. In this case, I have to present my views in a smart, respectful manner so I don’t lose my audience before I gotten to the meat of my argument.
Another important point of this kind of communication, if one considers the initial moral disagreement as the rhetorical exigence, is the keep the argument short and concise. There is no need to bog down a disbeliever with showy arguments and source quotations. All the dissenter needs to know in these situations is your point of view, mainly so they may turn it back on you in an attempt to convert you to some sect of Christianity. But I digress.
During protests, I have been approached by anti-abortionists who try to change my opinion on the issue. While I remain steadfast in my views, some have used similar techniques to my own that allow me to respect their viewpoint, rather than end up rolling on the ground playing fisticuffs. I don’t want someone to by turned off by my viewpoint only because I portray myself in the wrong way. That is definitely not the goal. Still, conflict in communication is so prevalent in this situation because of heightened emotion, as is inherent in any activism, and such conflict can easily escalate into the exchange of irretrievable verbal assaults, something that any ethical activist abhors. As R.E. Smith says on page 81 of Principles of Human Communication, “A respect for truth and an ethical consideration of others also means respecting the rights of others in regard to information and access to information.” The communication of feminist theory is so important to me because I feel the theory itself, if presented in the proper way, can be used as a valuable tool for societal change.
Teaching is arguably another venue for societal change, and for this reason, rhetoric is a valuable tool in the classroom. As my instructor suggested, teaching is all about persuading the students to learn. For more pragmatic reasons that COM 114 has been beneficial to me, I have improved in my speech organization skills and in my speaking skills. I have learned to refine an outline and scrap unneeded information, even though my tendency is to add the deleted information back into the speech as I give it. Despite my speaking quirks, this skill will be incredibly important, mostly because I will have to speak to a group of students within a strict time limit about significant curriculum. Without the skill of speaking organization, I will be a boring lecturer, a flighty instructor, and thus a bad teacher.
Another important aspect of speaking in a classroom is keeping one’s audience in mind. In my case, I will be speaking to a group of middle or high school students who have a million other thing they want to do rather than read A Tale of Two Cities. On these grounds, my job as an instructor will be to relevant and interesting information in a way that appeals to the students. One thing I would like to do for my students that my English teachers did not do is aptly draw connections between the required readings and the student’s lives. Some things I might consider about my students are their age, gender, general educational level, religious values, social class, race, and the circumstances under which they are meeting (Smith 43). However, I want to avoid being the teacher that tries too hard to connect with the students, listening to Afroman and slinging around street lingo during passing periods.
Overall, this class has been more rewarding than I previously expected. Thankfully the athletic metaphors and anecdotes have subsided, and as my instructor forewarned, I have learned much more about my peers and my university than I ever needed to know.