ENG 335 RandWaPublicDiscourse

   Yes, it is that time of the semester again where students are panicking, stressing, and probably crying over their midterms. To make it all worse, it has been almost a year since we entered a pandemic and we have no spring break. At least we get three study days, that makes up for it, right?  Besides my bitter attitude towards how the University is handling situations during the pandemic, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at one of our very first readings in this class. Perhaps it will help as a refresher for the midterm.  Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre is one of the most used readings by Ball State English professors. Is it really? I am not totally sure, but I do know I have read it in almost every single one of my rhetoric related classes. As much as I hate having to re-read materials, McIntyre's work is actually something I don't mind re-reading mainly because it is still relevant today.  So what is Post-Truth? As mentioned in McIntyre's w...

 Chapter 7 of Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves To Death" talks about how news on TV is disjointed. Our attention is only focused on one tragic story at a time for less than a minute. Then the news station says "Okay, that's enough of that sad story. We're going to cut to commercial then come back and tell you another sad story!". But, it seems like there isn't much of a pause in the stories anymore, no ellipses, no time to digest the information thrown at us. It's making me think that perhaps the ellipses between "Now...This" has turned into a comma, meaning that we only have time for a breath before we're plunged into another news story. Sometimes it feels like we might not even have that.  Generation Z gets all of their news from social media. Instead of having a commercial break to break up the stories, we scroll through our feed and see article after article of the same story. This has been called "doom scrolling" mea...

  Ah, 2020. Year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a presidential election, a Capitol insurrection, and arguably one of the most divisive times in modern American history. I know a lot of people ask the question, “how did we get to this point?” I argue that there are many different reasons as to why/how we as a nation are at the point we are now. As we are all enrolled in this wonderful class titled writing and reading public discourse; I think it would be appropriate to write about just that: public discourse in America and the reason it has gotten so intense. Let’s start with a little refresher: what is public discourse? Simply put, public discourse is the public stating opinions or thoughts about a certain topic. A debate is a great example of public discourse, as are speeches, presentations, videos, articles, the news, etc.  With this in mind, let’s think about how/where we get our information from. This is important to think about because where we get information from directly af...

If you were not one of the 33.8 million people who tuned in to watch President Joe Biden's Inauguration, you have probably only seen and read small tidbits regarding the historic event.  Well, I watched it so you do not have to.  Biden's inauguration, during this pandemic, along with the mob that stormed the capital just two weeks prior, was certainly one to remember. This is without even mentioning the incredibly polarizing campaign between himself and Former President Donald J. Trump, who was running for reelection. His speech was a fascinating event that I have read, listened to, and commentated on below. One of the first things I understood in his speech was that he emphasized temporary victory. "We've learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed." He acknowledged that democracy has been saved and preserved, but his victory is a small, temporary event in America. He also appealed to the count...

 My senior year of high school at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis any student or teacher who didn't know me personally probably knew me as the girl with the camera. Why? Well, that year I was the only official photographer on the school's newspaper, The Megaphone. So it may come as no surprise than that I think Postman's argument against the photograph per se is just a bit truncated.  Postman quotes Gavriel Salomon who said "pictures need to be recognized, words need to be understood"  and Postman adds his  commentary that Salomon meant "that the photograph presents the world as an object; language, the world as an idea."  While Postman does have a good point here that photographs often do objective things they can also show what is internally going on in someone's mind and even present emotions.  Take this photo for example from my sister Samantha's wedding reception on July 18, 2015: In the foreground of the photograph you can see my sist...

 This may start a little long-winded, but please bear with me.  I am on the autism spectrum. I'm on the higher end, so I could easily pass as 'normal' and call it a day. When I was younger, though, there was no way you couldn't tell because quite simply I was more intense and hadn't yet figured out how to properly be me.  Why bring this up, you may ask? We're talking about public discourse, but you're showing off your diagnosis?  I bring this up because one of my salvations as a child, so to speak, was television. Through television I was able to understand the world better and not be totally overwhelmed. As I write this, perhaps salvation is not the right word. No, it's not; the right word is escape.  I loved being with my family, don't get me wrong, but there were days I sometimes needed television to help me get through the day and cope with life as a whole. I'll admit that I still hold onto the vice of being on some form of electronics far to...

How ever could the devil triumph over a person whose language is so powerful? Through his “clearness and downright  simplicity  of statement , his vast comprehensiveness of topics, his fertility in illustrations drawn from practical sources; his keen analysis , and suggestions of difficulties; his power in disentangling a complicated proposition, and resolving it in elements so plain as to reach the most common minds; his vigor in generalizations , planting his own arguments behind the whole battery of his opponents; his wariness and caution no t to   betray  himself  by heat into untenable positions, or to spread his forces over useless ground”, he is unconquerable by evil  (Postman, 58).  But the devil can triumph over such individuals. Many cult leaders possess harrowing, enticing aptitude for oral discourse in order to attract followers to their cause. Oral discourse is more likely to become tainted, and more likely to entice audiences without qu...

If you currently are or once was a student, I want you to think of a time when you had to provide knowledge on a specific subject. (Don't worry, I'll give you a moment.) Did you have to write or type the information, or did you have to verbally say it to the professor or class? Throughout my experiences as a student, I had to transcribe my thoughts and ideas on a piece of paper or a computer screen. It was rare that I had to verbally tell my professor the answers to a quiz.  If the experience of typically formulating answers through written response resonates with you, why do you believe this way of providing knowledge is commonly used?  In Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves To Death," Chapter 2 delves into the power between written and verbal forms of public discourse. As I read this chapter, I couldn't help but formulate questions regarding people believing written or verbal forms of discourse.  What if one is a good speaker or a poor speaker? What if one has...

                              In the second chapter of, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business," by Neil Postman, he focuses on the concept of Epistemology and how it is affected in media. Many people, including myself, may have not heard of the word "epistemology" before and are wondering what it means. The way that Postman describes it is a complex and usually opaque subject concerned with the origins and nature of knowledge. (Postman, 17) If this definition is too complicated, I will try to break it down in simpler terms. It is simply the philosophy of knowledge and it seeks to answer certain questions about knowledge: what it is exactly and how does one acquire it?                Within this chapter, Postman tries to explain why it is necessary to drive hard the point that the weight assigned to any form of truth-te...

Postman's second chapter revolves around the idea of seeing "media as epistemology". For those of you who may not have read this chapter in full, I will provide Postman's definition of this term for you: "Epistemology is a complex and usually opaque subject concerned with the origins and nature of knowledge", though Postman is focused more so on the "interest [epistemology] takes in definitions of truth and the sources from which such definitions come" within his second chapter (Postman, 17).  Because his definition may be considered lengthy and hard to digest, below is a diagram that may help with comprehending what this term really entails: Now that we've covered what epistemology really  means, let's dive into what exactly Postman was claiming in this chapter. Midway through Postman's chapter, he states that he hopes to persuade his readers that "the decline of a print-based epistemology and the accompanying rise of a television...

“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.”-Captain Beatty, Pg 56   Among the plethora of dystopian literature, there has been one title I’ve always found particularly fascinating. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 envisions a future ruled by entertainment and technology, where the written word and creative thinking have been abolished in favor of harmonistic mental junk food. It seems to me that this classic can’t ever seem to reach the same level recognition that George Orwell’s prolific 1984 enjoys, which, honestly, is a crying shame. Fahrenheit 451 contains not on...

It seems like the more experience with the world I have, the more I start to see how incredibly accurate Parks and Recreation 's portrayal of government discourse is. Unfortunately, it is a lot less funny to live this reality than see it play out on a screen.  Specifically, I'm talking about how oversaturated and meaningless public discourse has become, not that it was ever perfect in the first place--we're definitely not experiencing anything new in terms of how nonsensical people can be, that 's just how we are. However, there is an addition to the public discourse of our time: we have the most efficient means of communication and media ever and an itch for things that will keep our short attention spans engaged. This is how we decide what topics we want to discuss; we either present or are distracted by arguments that serve to rile us up without ever getting anywhere, influenced heavily by our culture of entertainment. And because I admittedly rely heavily on enterta...