Let's Do a Little Rhetorical Analysis, Shall We?

I received the following chart in an e-mail. The person who sent it e-mailed it to a group of people saying, "here's a great chart that will give you all the straight facts on the issues." Read the chart. Who do you think the creator of this chart favors?

E-mail text:

This is a really neat comparison table that someone took the time to create - but really shows GOOD comparison to the candidates and what they stand for and the web sites do substantiate their platforms

We all need educated discernment for this election

2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE COMPARISON TALKING POINTS

ISSUE		JOHN McCAIN	BARAK OBAMA
Favors new drilling offshore US		Yes	No
Will appoint judges who interpret the law not make it		Yes	No
Served in the US Armed Forces		Yes	No
Amount of time served in the US Senate		22 YEARS	173 DAYS
Will institute a socialized national health care plan		No	Yes
Supports abortion throughout the pregnancy		No	Yes
Would pull troops out of Iraq immediately		No	Yes
Supports gun ownership rights		Yes	No
Supports homosexual marriage		No	Yes
Proposed programs will mean a huge tax increase		No	Yes
Voted for making English the official language		Yes	No
Voted to give Social Security benefits to illegals		No	Yes
CAPITAL GAINS TAX
MCCAIN	0% on home sales up to $500,000 per home (couples). McCain does not propose any change in existing home sales income tax.
OBAMA	28% on profit from ALL home sales. (How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you will pay 28% of your gain on taxes. If you are heading toward retirement and would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28% of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their homes as part of their retirement income.)
DIVIDEND TAX
MCCAIN	15% (no change)
OBAMA	39.6% - (How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market, IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly 40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama becomes president. The experts predict that 'Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash the stock market, yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit.')
INCOME TAX
MCCAIN (no changes)	Single making 30K - tax $4,500 Single making 50K - tax $12,500 Single making 75K - tax $18,750 Married making 60K- tax $9,000 Married making 75K - tax $18,750 Married making 125K - tax $31,250
OBAMA (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)	Single making 30K - tax $8,400 Single making 50K -=2 0tax $14,000 Single making 75K - tax $23,250 Married making 60K - tax $16,800 Married making 75K - tax $21,000 Married making 125K - tax $38 ,750 Under Obama, your taxes could almost double!
INHERITANCE TAX
MCCAIN	- 0% (No change,20Bush repealed this tax)
OBAMA	Restore the inheritance tax Many families have lost businesses, farms, ranches, and homes that have been in their families for generations because they could not afford the inheritance tax.
NEW TAXES PROPOSED BY OBAMA
New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet. New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren't high enough already) New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity) New taxes on retirement accounts, and last but not least....New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level of medical care as other third-world countries!!!

Rules for New Teachers

Or, "Rules for Short, Young Looking Teachers." Coming, of course, from exactly one week of teaching experience.

Rule #1: Use the Fear They Came With

After months of going back and forth between what my students should call me, I decided to go with my first name for several reasons:
1. My personal pedagogy really does dictate it.
2. They are more scared than I am
3. Since they are more scared than I am, one more barrier isn't necessary.
Thus, Rhetorical it is.
The school system has already sufficiently pounded them into submission, so use that natural fear if you have first time teacher concerns. Sure, it may go against your personal feminist philosophy, but damn, it sure helps you get through that first week! (Besides, being called "Ms. Twist" made my insides curl...)


Rule #2: Get a Killer Outfit

If you are scared out of your mind about teaching, you need The Killer Outfit. Put your well honed visual rhetoric skills to work: gray dress slacks, a black button down shirt, heels, and pearls (not real pearls, mind you, but they get the job done). This creates "instant teacher," otherwise known as: "I am older than you, despite external signifiers that may indicate otherwise." There is something super official sounding about high heels clicking on those wooden floors. To complete the persona, perfect the jingle of keys in your hands that indicates, "I have an office," and the stride. To maximize the official sounding click from those high heels, you have to get the pacing right. It can't be too hurried, nor too leisurely. It has to be just right and clearly convey, "I've got heels on. Fear me 'cause I'm all kinds of official."

Rule #3: Learn the Proper Facial Expressions

No matter how huge that silence is in your class, never let the very casual, "I've done this SO many times before" look come off your your face. This can be really difficult if you walk into class 10 minutes early to set up and they are completely silent, just STARING at you, even after saying, "you guys can keep chatting you know." Silence. "Or not." It will be the 10 bloody longest minutes of your life, but don't break.

Rule #4: Lie your ass off

For the nervous first time teacher, a few well placed indicators that you've taught before, or you're older than you look, can be helpful. Practice phrases such as these:
~"I had a student once..."
~"When I was an undergrad (of course, that was back in the day)..."
~"I've been studying English longer than I care to admit"
~"I'm going to try something that I haven't previously attempted in my other classes..."

Yeah, you are lying, but it does make you giggle a little on the inside.

Favorite Conversation of the First Week

Scene: Satellite L, ENG 100, Computer Lab.
The students are about to embark on an in-class writing sample.

Me: Ok everyone, let me know if you have any questions.

*glances over to Student's computer*

Me: Student, no myspace--turn that off.

Student: But Prof. Dochoc I need to listen to music to write. It helps me flooooowww *makes gangsta "flow" motion*

Me: I understand, but not when you're in a classroom with others who need silence.

Student: Oh no no Prof. Dochoc, it's ok! Really! I already talked to the people next to me...they don't mind.

Me: Student...turn it off.

Student: *reluctant sigh with a slight grin* Ok Prof. Dochoc....

High Body Counts in Critical Theory

Or, The Death of the Author, and the Critic, and, Well, Pretty Much Everybody

So, today in one of my classes we did a Roland Barthes hit-and-run, the kind of discussion where we touched on a point here and there without getting into the meat of the essay. Now, I’ve never been a fan of his ubiquitous manifesto (1977, I think?), but not being able to get into it in class left me rather unsatisfied. So this may be a bit of a rant. For those who would rather not (re)read it, the essay goes something like this (but is much longer and more complicated and lacks my amiable tone and asides):

The voice that we hear as we read a text is often mistaken for the voice of the Author, but it is actually so many different voices, layered over one another (characters, narrators, and the various voices of the writer), that it is impossible to distinguish a single voice of the author. Since the author has no distinguishable voice, it is impossible to point to an interpretation and say, "this is what the Author intended." Thus, the traditional critical approach ("the Author encoded a meaning in this text; the Critic deciphers it") is rendered useless. This end to the myth of the Author’s… well, authority, is what Barthes means by the "death of the Author." Thus rendered obsolete, the Critic subsequently succumbs to a somewhat less publicized death in a garret somewhere. Tragic.

Writers, have you been under the impression that you have intentions or your work has a meaning? Nope, sorry, guess again. Since the language you use, the phrases and the ideas, are just borrowed from what you’ve read, heard, seen, and learned from the world around you, there isn’t actually any such thing as "self-expression," and you can’t control the innumerable meanings that are consequent to your use of language. Nice try.

By the way, this new way of thinking about writing is "properly revolutionary." That’s because to deny there is one fixed meaning in a text "is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law." *

So, if a text is just a mish-mash of recycled meanings and images and ideas with no unifying meaning, and the author is dead, what comes next? Well, next we have the reader, who acts as a sort of receptacle for all these ideas. But the reader must be impersonal in order to comprehend all the elements and potential meanings of the text without limit or prejudice.

And I have to quote his conclusion in its entirety, because… well, just because:

"The reader has never been the concern of classical criticism; for it, there is no other man in literature but the one who writes. We are now beginning to be the dupes no longer of such antiphrases, by which our society proudly champions precisely what it dismisses, ignores, smothers or destroys; we know that to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author." [emphasis mine]

First of all, I think Barthes must have been a scientist in a past life, because he removes his subjects from their messy human contexts and dissects them entirely in the abstract. I suppose he’s trying to pursue a sort of pure theory or something. (What’s up with that, Humanities people? Why do we buy into this idea that our work needs to be framed in the language of labs and theories in order to seem legitimate? But that’s probably a rant for another day [or another writer- I know Twist has some experience in this area].)

Anyway, after all that trouble to sound scientific, it’s rather jarring when he leaps into this rousing speech at the end. It leaves me with the vague sense that I’ve been challenged to join some sort of battle. But, like an outsider watching Don Quixote posture against his imagined enemies, I really can’t tell what all the saber-rattling is about, or what the real point of all the theory has been.

I do understand what he’s getting at. Traditional criticism is based on a misguided distribution of power. The Author isn’t the source of Truth, and the critic’s job is not to decipher the meaning of a text. Meaning happens in the reader.

The problem is, his ideal reader is an impossible theoretical construct, impersonal and capable of comprehending all meanings. S/he does not exist. Barthes’s revolution does not privilege the reader (the real person reading); it privileges the text. "It is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality… to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not ‘me’," he writes. Language is the only variable in his equation capable of pure existence; the text is only space in which all its potential meanings can be held, because it has not been limited by the intentions, assumptions, and prejudices of actual people.

And, since I’m not much for lab work, actual people are the ones who really interest me.
Thoughts?


*This acknowledgement that these principles have implications for existing power structures is as close as Barthes gets to practical application. There is a lot of potential for applying his ideas about authority, criticism, the role of the reader etc to the politics of the literary canon, among other things. But he doesn’t go there; he remains firmly planted in the abstract.

This is the Part of My Life I Call "Meeting People Who Won't Be My Friends"

Or, starting grad school, part I.

A fine tradition in many academic communities is the annual welcome party, designed to introduce new graduate students to the old ones, those folks ranging from the "young and idealistic" to the "is that my 30th birthday rapidly approaching?" We new grad students look forward to this kind of thing, hoping to make a friend or two in the sea of people in this enormous university. We don our spiffiest duds, spending time negotiating the fine line between "too dressy" and "not dressy enough" so that we might make our best first impression.

I should interject with my first lesson of my grad school career: when the host of said party tells you to bring a drink, you might want to consider something along the lines of beer or cheap wine. Not orange soda. You'll be the only one walking in with your 2 liter bottle of bright freakin' orange beverage, and you might feel, well, a little silly. Time for a paradigm shift, kiddos.

So. In order to make this a successful welcoming party, you are as nice as possible and engage all kinds of people in conversation, no matter how shady they might look. You smile, introduce yourself, and listen carefully to what they have to say. It's a given that in any social group there will be some bad eggs. Here I present lesson #2: beware of the bad eggs.

I got stuck with four bad eggs. FOUR! [Well, #4 has since redeemed himself] Avoid these kinds of bad eggs:

Bad egg #1: The Traditionalist
This young scholar has a thing for Milton, which is fine, but be very careful when trying to joke in any way with him. He doesn't like jokes, especially when they are about Milton. He'll get offended. After discussing our particular research interests, The Traditionalist said to me, "you know, I just don't like Composition Theory." Thinking, "ah ha! Time for a joke!" I said, "Oh, that's okay, I don't like Milton! We need some of each of us in this world." He looked at me with a wide-eyed, deer in the headlights expression and sputtered, "what?! Do you have some sort of crazy feminist bias against Milton?!" Crazy feminist? Did he just call me a crazy feminist? Oh, the blood begins to boil...but no! No blood boiling is allowed at such parties, because one must be on their best behavior. So I made nice with him. ["Next time, Gadget, next time..."]

Bad egg #2: The Conservative
This mature scholar has a thing for lecturing, which, you know, whatever. Do your thing, man, do your thing. However, he also has a thing against alternative methods of teaching, and began to inform me just exactly what is wrong with the work of Paulo Freire. Now, I don't mind if you disagree with one of my favorite dead people in this world, but at least have a good reason. Saying, "oh, if I lecture, Freire says that I am an oppressive monster who is taking away the humanity of my students in the interest of serving the fascist regime" does not fall under the category of productive discourse. So I just ended the conversation politely by excusing myself and saying that I had to *mumble mumble* nice talking to you *mumble mumble* See you around *mumble mumble*

Bad Egg #3: The Racist, Who Only Confirms Your Prejudice Against People from the South
And his wife, too. I discovered that I actually live quite close to this young couple from Alabama. I got really excited! We're neighbors! We can do neighborly things together! Like...borrow sugar! That kind of thing! But no. No, I will not borrow sugar from them. He asks, "so, do we live in the ghetto or something?" I tried to pick my mouth off the floor as I replied, "Um...excuse me? I'm not sure that I understand you." "Well," wifey says, "some of the houses around us look rather run down, and it's just the people who live there...I don't know. There are lots of minorities, you know what I am saying?" So I was horrified, but was still very polite and said, "you object to living where we are because of the...African American...population?" All she said was, "well, it's not what we are used to." Umm. Another instance to quickly think of a get away excuse. The poor folks. How did such a lovely white couple end up HERE? Poor dears. [And for the record, the neighborhood is not run down. I don't know where the hell these people lived before...]

Bad Egg #4: The Inebriated Creative Writing Student
Pretty self explanatory. He nearly fell on me when trying to introduce himself. This child is now one of my office mates, and we have desks right across from each other. He has since redeemed himself, so there's no urgent need for me to totally avoid him. Unless he keeps up the subtle flirting. Then we've got a problem. ("Sorry dear, but I happen to be totally in love with Teacher Poet, and you just don't compare. I'm sure her poetry is better than yours anyway...")

In the next episode: "This is the Part of My Life I Call 'Orientation,'" a segment in several parts.

And I Shall Call Thee...

...Professor Coffee Beans!

Love,
Me

Happy, Happy, Disconnect: see subtitles

Button Up Your Geek!
As I left the Education Building and danced my way over to the English Building the thought crossed my mind that most people, if they knew the reason for my elation, would yell, "button up your geek!" But that didn't stop me. I took the stairs two at a time and knocked on Mrs. Awesome Assistant's door with a huge smile on my face. I opened with, "Guess what I found out today? My student teaching placements!"

Her eyes widened and she humored me, "Ooh. Where are you going to be?" That's one of the things I love about her, she isn't just humoring you. She cares. And, of course, I told her and she was happy for me. Then I went straight for Dr. Rhetorical Action's office. I had to tell him! I was, after all, in his office when he got the phone call that his book was finally and completely ready for print. He would understand, is what I'm saying. So I said, "I know my placements! They don't tell you until December but yadda yadda yadda and I had to talk to the Field Experience office about it so blah blah and they told me where I'll be placed!"

Now you have to understand something here. Dr. Rhetorical Action's blood is made of, well, Life or something. When he laughs, it carries down the entire hall. And when you hear his laughter, you can't help but smile and walk with more spring in your step. Yeah, he's awesome. (And, shoot, he's probably reading this but I don't care. It be a true account.)

So I totally gushed and told him, "I'm placed at Cream of the Crop Middle School! And, it gets better: Small Town High School!!! Ahh, this is totally what I want! This is... Well, this is exactly the sort of placements I've been talking to [my mentor] about wanting to have all along! My mentor rocks! The practicum teacher rocks! Yay!"

Bag of Books
Then I got to have a nice chat with Dr. Rhetorical Action. Such dialogs always prove
1) refreshing
2) engaging
3) inspiring
He also showed me the books he's going to send to Rhetorical Twist. His hot-off-the-press book is included in the stash. I looked over the titles and none of them are already on Rhetorical Twist's bookshelf. She will be very happy when she receives them, let me tell you! It'll be a kid at the candy store sort of reaction. Oh, man, it was a great day.

Parental Units
When I told my dad about my placements he was, of course, very happy that I was happy. I love my dad to pieces. (I also love my mom to pieces, in case you were wondering.) But sometimes... there is a disconnect.

I explained to him how I'm glad I'm placed at Cream of the Crop MS because it should be a good experience. However, I would never apply to Cream of the Crop School District because, well, I dunno, the students' allowances happen to be more than my salary would be! The price tag on their cars, too. Something tells me that I'd be dealing a little too much with concerned parents. By concerned I mean, in this instance, parents who make so much money they think they can bully a teacher into changing grades because they earn too much salary for their child to get a [insert B, C, D, F] on the paper/test/report card. Yea, thanks but no thanks. My father, on the other hand, did not hear what I said. Okay, let me rephrase that. He heard, all right, but he didn't understand what I said. His response? "A job is a job." So I said, "Right. But why would I apply to a district that I had no desire to teach in?" Teach, that is. I have plenty desire to student teach there. It's different, don't ask.

Then there's the part about how everyone seems to apply to that school district. In other words, Cream of the Crop also has its pick of the cream staff. "You don't have a 4.0? Sorry." I don't, by the way, have a 4.0. What does my dad say? Well, there's what they want to hire and what they will hire." Um, hello? Did you just hear what I said? Green teachers flock to apply at Cream of the Crop. Teachers teaching in other districts repeatedly apply to Cream of the Crop. FOUR POINT OH. This isn't the sort of situation where they say, "we want 4.0 graduates" and then hire someone with less than that because they already have a kazillion 4.0 applicants for one position. But, whatever. It was just a small disconnect. He was very happy that I was so stoked, and probably rather proud that I'm so excited about my vocation. At any rate, unless I had an absolute ball while student teaching at CCMS and was offered a job before I left student teaching, I can tell you this: I won't be applying.

My eye finds Small Town High School (and its ilk) much more pleasing. That's just how I am.

Oh, yes. It didn't take long before I text messaged the love of my life about the good news, either. That's right. You get your own photo!