readings for today

I've always been fascinated with Bakhtin ever since I wrote a paper about him relating to heteroglossia and monoglossia in the original Snow White story and the Disney version. Bakhtin says that "any instrument of production may be ideologically decorated," (B&H 1211) and this is very true.

In Dr. Ostler's contrastive rhetoric course she once asked us to tell us the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the word "flower." Each of us had different ideas. Therefore, the images we relate to mean different things to different people. When we looked at the same word, there were different images in our minds. When we looked at the same exact image, we had different words to describe them. Bakhtin's idea may be related to rhetoric. If a piece of writing is the product, then rhetoric must be the decoration employed, right?

Kinneavy described his purpose as "an attempt to show the relevance of some important concepts of classical rhetoric to modern composition" (221). This again brought me back to Villanueva's belief that we should learn about the past to understand the present and possibly the future. I've always wondered whether students would appreciate some rhetoric history in their courses. However, they might be like me: blame the Arabs for inventing math. :P I think it would be valuable for them to see why things are the way they are in composition and see the great minds who have helped us come thus far. In addition to this, I've even contemplated sharing with them the history of the English language because language is something that we tend to take for granted. Most American students know when something does not make sense, but international students can explain the rules. It's very ironic that our native English-speaking students hardly know where their own language comes from.

From Paula Gunn Allen's writings, we can see that she values language and culture. Therefore, ignorance of one's culture can be just as close as losing one's culture.
She also says that native Americans have begun to write so they don't lose record of their existence. Having studied various aspects of second language acquisition, I have been intrigued by oral cultures and I know that native American language and traditions have been primarily oral. Therefore, it's important for them to become literate in their own languages so they can pass on or inform others of their traditions. This proves that a newer tradition, writing, can help them preserve their old ones.

Writing is so important. I wish our students could see this.