Response of a Laboratory Rat--or, Being Protocoled

It is without a doubt that there is not one perfect writer on this planet. From the dawn to the dusk of humanity, no one will ever be able to harness the beast known as the English Language and utilize it to make a "perfect" piece. "Perfect" is in the eye of the beholder, and, there are approximately 8 billion sets of eyes on this planet. Though no writer is perfect, more effective and experienced writers consistently try to expand the literary minds of their students. In his response to Dr. Carol Berkenkotter's study, Donald Murray said, "I find it very difficult to make my students aware of the layers of concern through which the writing writer must oscillate at such a speed that it appears the concerns are dealt with instantaneously." After reading this quote, I believe that Murray's relationship with his audience is an attempt to get unexperienced writers on his level of writing. In order to do so, Murray must both show examples of his experienced writing and try to essentially "dumb himself down" to get his students to understand the message he is trying to convey. Since I am quite an unexperienced writer myself, I believe I relate to my audience without trying to do so. Though my vocabularly may be large and my writing style may be different, I believe that I am an easy writer to follow. Since I've never really had anyone complain about not understanding the message I was trying to convey, I never have really thought about my audience directly. I write for me.

Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool

Honestly, as pompous and ignorant as this may sound, I feel as though my punctuation skills and intuition are on-target. Whenever I write, I feel as though I automatically know what punctuation to use within my literary work. As if it has been engrained in me, I use commas, quotations, hyphens, and semi-colons with no hesitation or worry. Dawkins’ scholarly article has, without a doubt, been the most useless article to me. All of the other articles in class have stimulated my mind into approaching writing and reading in different ways. Personally, I believe Dawkins failed to make me feel differently about punctuation.

Donald Murray's "All Writing is Autobiography"

Compared to many other scholarly writings, it is undeniable that Donald Murray’s “All writing is Autobiography” is more informal and understandable. Personally, I believe Murray wrote his article partially in laymen’s terms in order to make his argument more conversational and persuasive. When an author uses a conversational tone, it is much easier to understand and relate to the text because it feels as though the rhetor and audience are engaging in an active conversation. In addition, by using pieces of his own writings, Murray proves that even award-winning scholars like him put their own worldviews and perceptions directly in their writing. Murray highlights this fact when he says, “In writing this paper I have begun to understand, better than I ever have before, that all writing, in many different ways, is autobiographical, and that our autobiography grows from a few deep taproots that are set down into our past in childhood, (Murray 49).” He knows that as a human being, his writing is being affected by his past experiences. It’s hard to write an unbiased text when our lives are full of situations that make us more partial to one side of a conflict. Through writing this way, Murray highlights that no rhetor is above outside influence and we are always going to make our own writings appeal to ourselves first.

Analysis of "Why Women Aren't Funny" by Christopher Hitchens

In my opinion, Christopher Hitchens wrote his overtly controversial article “Why Women Aren’t Funny” in order to bring to light the fact that, in general, the female sex is not immediately linked with the characteristic of humor. As Hitchens said in the beginning of his article, a male does not typically think of finding a female counterpart based off her natural ability to make him laugh. Because it is majorly aggressive, pre-emptive, and controversial, humor does not seem to set well with the publics’ consensus that the female sex is naturally thoughtful and nurturing. Undoubtedly, Vanity Fair is mainly known as a female magazine that stays faithful to traditional values of women. A feminine activist who rides a motorcycle to work and wears oversized t-shirts would most likely not be caught dead reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair. As a rhetor, Hitchens chose a great audience because they typically believe that there are intellectual, emotional, social, and cultural differences between men and women. The exigence of his article was to highlight that humor is more idealistic in men because of women’s values.
Hitchens effectively used a combination of logos, ethos, and pathos to support his claim that humor is not as socioculturally important to women as it is to men. He first appeals to logic and underlines his credibility by highlighting a Stanford University School of Medicine study that revealed that a woman’s brain is more stimulated by humor than a man’s. Secondly, Hitchens suggests that because humor is a sign of intelligence and aggressiveness, the delicate female race are arguably frowned upon for using it. Overall I believe Hitchens was trying to stress that, although equality is often the goal between sexes, it is a cold, hard fact that men and women have different socioculutral expectations. It is their roles as members of society of those expectations are acceptable or not.