Pompous Diction

In first period today, Aubrey shared with us the MOST FABULOUS website – one that we felt should be sponsored by the College Board AP test writers. (At the very least, it appears to be fertile ground for us to submit entries for consideration from the AP exam.) Here is a link:   http://www.pompousasswords.com/www/index.htm

Our challenge as we move forward this semester, as I see it, is to A) be on the look out for submissions  and B) to try our best to be become veritable hierophants of PAWs in as witty a means as feasible.  This will allow us to create a rapprochement between teenage discourse communities and those of the more pretentious PAW enthusiasts. 

I encourage you to review their fabulous deconstruction of particularly onerous  PAW abuses.  Our recent passage from the practice AP multiple choice passage would surely qualify for this kind of analysis.  (Opprobrious, anyone?)

Since I am a teacher and I am supposed to reflexively think in terms of essential questions, it seems to me the big one is: where is the line between plain speaking and vague/uneducated/lazy writing?  Our language is so vast with so many nuanced and precise words that I feel it truly a sin to stick with words like stuff, good, things, sad when words like transcendent and despondent are available.  And as I have said many a time in class, I nearly swoon when a writer or speaker can find that sweet-spot between being precise and succinct and obfuscation.  J  I think that is why I am so very fond of the paragraph on the main page of this site where the author takes pains to explain what is and what is NOT a PAW… and it seems that the definition is intended dissuade reader of the notion that just because a word is more nuanced doesn’t mean it is pretentious.  (Consider, specifically, the example used of erstatz.) Anyway, thanks Aubrey, and I will enjoy trolling around this site. 

TED Talks 2013

How exciting to get a chance to introduce (or reacquaint) my students to the wealth of rhetorical GOLD on the TED site. As we wind through our rhetorical peregrination this year, this is a wonderful stop. My husband, who is a voracious and inquisitive explorer, found this site last year. You can get lost searching through and listening to all the topics. My most recent favorite is from Brene Brown (http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html) who is a social scientist who studied and wrote about vulnerability. Her talk was full of my favorite kind of pathos combo: poignant stories mixed with gentle and self-deprecating humor. As it happens when you are engaged in intellectual curiosity, connections seem to come...and shortly after, I caught the end of an interview with Dr. Brown on the radio show On Being with Krista Tippett where she delved a little more deeply into the subject with a more spiritual resonance. Last year my students found many delights from this site - and we shared our favorites in class after AP exams...a tradition I would love to continue.

As a reminder, your first assignment is to watch a TED talk of your choice and to write your first entry doing some rhetorical analysis of that talk. Rely on the format we have been drilling in class – make sure your first sentences acquaint the reader to the point/argument of the piece and then analyze how the speaker was able to develop his or her point. Comment on the visual aspect of the talk and how this contributed rhetorically to the argument.  Your opinions about the efficacy of the speaker’s strategies are welcome, as are your recommendations to your peers about whether or not to watch the video.  Remember to post by midnight on Monday, Feb. 4^th…and then comment on at least two blogs of fellow AP Lang classmates in the following week (by Friday, Feb. 8).

 

TED Talk review

I was curious to find something on writing and communication in our modern age and happened upon a talk by Mena Trott – touted as the “Founding Mother” of blogging.  She founded Moveable Type which we use at CHS for our teacher blogs.  Given that I am trying to nudge myself…and all of you…to experiment with this form, I thought it would be an appropriate talk to review for my first post.

Her primary argument seemed to be that we, as a culture, need to move away from the perception of blogs being scary or attack oriented (by which I think she means those blogs that are designed to go after public figures, or blogs which seem to encourage negative comments from readers…I wasn’t totally clear on this as I don’t have such an impression), and to see how blogs can essentially “flatten our world.”  That she was such a young woman (just 27) and yet considered a tested veteran and leader in the field shows how this medium of communication is still in the early stages of adoption.  This was evident in her argument as well: she urges the audience to try out blogging, to explore how it might fit in our lives.  She primarily appealed to pathos through the use of stories of how bloggers used their blogs to share inspirational or moving stories that were able to reach readers around the world.  She developed her talk through the use of example, beginning with her own story of blogging and some self-deprecating stories.  Her humor was augmented by the use of surprising or funny photos from her blog such as a photo of her husband dressed in a less-than-flattering costume of her design which she used to prove that he is a wonderful, supportive husband and an incredibly good sport.  There were other examples of blogs that effectively used photographs to help tell a story, several of which charted the growth of a child or documented members of a family tree.


Trott spent little time on her own company, using initially to help add ethos, and then later as an explanation as to how one British woman’s blog about her ultimately unsuccessful fight with cancer touched all the members of her own company.  The woman was an early adopter/Beta tester of their company’s blogging site, and Trott used screen shots of the blog along with a narrative to drive home her ultimate argument of how blogs can (and should) be used to help connect us across a very large, very diverse planet.  She ended with a plea for those listening to her talk to consider starting a blog as well.