Dealing with Conflict: Public Deliberation

Response to: "Public Spheres and Controversies and What Not"

There is one sentence in particular in Daniella's blog post that I would like to expound upon.  "An issue can be controversial without having two opposing viewpoints," she claims at the beginning of her second paragraph.  This struck a particular chord with me.  Perhaps it was the fact that it's currently 2 in the morning. Perhaps it's because I took particularly close notes on tonight's readings for no particular reason.  Whatever the case, there is a lot of unpacking which I would like to do.

Firstly, I would like to point to one David S. Kaufer.  In Kaufer's text "A Plan for Teaching the Development of Original Policy Arguments," he gives a list of what he considers the causes of policy conflict. They are the following:

1. The misunderstanding of sense or reference of certain statements.
2. The misunderstanding of the frame of reference of certain statements.
3. Conflicting evidence.
4. Conflicting local values.
5. Conflicting global values.

Daniella uses the example of Venezuela to reinforce her presented idea of controversy.  The argument given is that with the government holding its citizens in a vice grip of censorship, there are no opposing points of view within the country and therefore no controversy. Here, I would like to divulge the fifth cause of policy conflict: conflicting global values.  It may or may not be true that there is no internal controversy in the case of dictatorship (I say may not because teens have a habit of rebelling against the system), but from the global point of view, dictatorship is synonymous with "bad" or even "evil."  Especially since the reign of the Führer Adolf Hitler, when someone says "dictator" one almost immediately thinks of war, devastation, starvation, and a leader sitting on a throne of bones (maybe not literally a throne of bones). There is always another way of looking at something that will create controversy.  Even if that controversy is not impassioned, the beauty of the human complex is that there is always another viewpoint.  This is what one must keep in mind.  

This moves me to my next point of the citizen's input in public spheres.   Both Kaufer and James McDonald touch upon an ordinary person's role in the discourse forum.  Kaufer uses the opportunity to reveal a method of teaching.  He uses the example of students creating an argument for or against changing the legal drinking age in the US to 18.  Although he only barely touched upon the possibility of the student's impact, the reader came away with the knowledge that anyone can make a solid argument for whatever they need, just so long as they dig into the deeper levels of the argument (i.e. the list above).  

McDonald, in his text "I Agree, But...",  uses the opportunity to explain the situation of "The Case of Le Suroît" and the Canadian people's response against the building of the natural-gas fired electrical plant.  The people were able to create a forum of debate, which eventually led to the cancellation of the building of the plant.  However, occasionally a people's revolt does not have such clean results.  For example, the protesting in Ferguson over the killing of a boy.  This leads into a stock issue of police brutality that is being largely ignored by the general public.  

This local scale value controversy has not as of yet reached the global phenomenon that it needs to be a successful discourse.  At the same time McDonald's point of accepting the key opinions of the opposing party have not been met. The same can be said for a number of arguments which have been hardly moved over time.  Even though from one's standpoint it appears that the opposition is in the wrong, it is always wise to consider what fundamental values that both parties have in common.  It is also important to consider all levels of public discourse controversy when constructing an argument.  This includes the notion that public discourse may lead to little or no consequences.  Even discourse can't solve all the world's problems.

Tapping into Homeless Discourse

For this Short Assignment I will be looking into the text “Homes Not Handcuffs.”  The portion of the text we will be looking into only contains up to the conclusion of the executive summary. Within this portion we see a number of details about the dilemma of homelessness in the US as well as the negative (and positive) ways it has been dealt with. What I want to do is look into the set-up and the connotation that the author uses to provide the argument, as well as the thought process behind it. 

Firstly, after the air is cleared of the “about the law center” and the “about the coalition,” the text quickly jumps into the argument without so much as a forward. This submersion into the topic at first might overwhelm the reader, especially with the plethora of percentages and bullet points of laws enacted against homelessness. This tactic of outpouring the bad news before anything else is integral into getting the interest of the reader or anyone coming in contact with the piece. Why else would the cover be a set of handcuffs? 

This sense of immediacy gives rise to the kairos of the issue. Homelessness permeates the country. As stated on page eight of the text, “On March 27, 2008, CBS News reported that 38 percent of foreclosures involved rental properties, affecting at least 168,000 households.” These numbers are shocking in that of themselves, but in spite of the kairos, the average individual tends to ignore the problem. 

However, there is a metaphorical light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel. It begins with the ‘about’ sections, where it is explained that the members are individuals ranging from lawyers to the homeless themselves. This accumulation of varied individuals shows that even the basest of citizens can help in the cause. Also, after the horrors of the criminalizing laws and their effects have been explained, the text puts to light the cities and organizations working to positively affect the issue. This discourse allows the reader to understand the different spectrums of the issue and-through careful organization and wording- agree or disagree with the given argument on the grounds of tether they believe more in police force or charitable giving. 

-Melissa DeHart

Big Brother Is Watching... And So Is Everyone Else

Blogs are personal, intricate, intimate beings.  The owner of particular blog is very keen to nurture his or her brainchild, to ensure that it grows and receives proper attention.  Ever since its parent was born in 1994 with the first online diaries, the concept and the physicality of the blog has grown rapidly to admit literal millions of participants.  The participants in question are able to sire dozens of blogs if they so desire, and each one is unique in its own way.

So what exactly makes up a blog?

Jill Rettberg's book "Blogging" settles on defining a blog as a medium.  It holds varied forms of media; much like how YouTube has videos, comments, suggestions, the blog has posts, comments, and different archives and genres to choose from.  However, is medium the right word for it? Just because the concept of the blog is able to hold different forms of media (pictures, text, videos, etc.), does it necessarily mean that the blog is in itself an overarching being- an end-all be-all like the television or the Pope? Or is it just another cog in the intricate steampunk robot of the modern internet age, making it simply a genre with various sub-genres under its command? 

Another problem facing the blog-o-sphere is the following question: what exactly is personal when it comes to blogs?  Individual blogging sites may have terms and conditions, but such conditions only relate to what one can and cannot post.  Nothing is said about the privacy of the individuals post.  In fact, Miller & Shepherd's Blogging as a Social Action... piece gives a number of examples on how personal material has reached the eyes of audiences that were never meant to be aware.  A student's personal diary (in blog form) was investigated by the FBI; a woman's vented frustrations of her upbringing and career experience was seen by the people she wrote about.  Nothing seems to be safe, so why do people still post intimate details about their lives?

Lastly, the question of the night comes down to what is the future of the blog?  Already we have seen an exponential growth in the number of blogs since inception of the word in 1997, so much so that sites such as Technorati have had to scale down their indexing of blogs from all in existence to the top 100.  Rettberg explains how blogging has now come hand in hand with journalism in a pseudo-symbiotic relationship.  Miller & Shepherd reveal that through studying the kairos associated with the blog, the time is now.  Will blogs continue to expand due to the individual's desire to be heard?  I think so.



-Melissa DeHart


Sources:

Miller, Carolyn R., and Dawn Shephard. "Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture 
     of Weblogs: Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog." Into the Blogosphere:        Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs: Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of         the Weblog. University of Minnesota, 25 Sept. 2004. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.

Rettberg, Jill Walker. Blogging. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity, 2014. Print.

Formulating Policy Arguments and their Relevance Through Time

Today, we will be discussing racism, elitism, history, and the discourse that brings it all together.

The article in question which we will be examining is one America's War on Language by Dennis Baron.  This article, published on September 3rd of this year, gave a rousing look into a war that I at least was not entirely aware of.  The "War on Language," according to Baron, began around the time of World War I. The language war, an ideological spin-off of the Great War, intensified the purge of all languages other than English (though the primary target was German, go figure) on American soil. This purge is still in effect with, as Baron puts it, "immigrants abandoning their first languages faster than ever."  This idea of American elitism has been ingrained into the population's psyche, and though we are no longer chanting "I will say a good American 'yes' and 'no' in place of an Indian grunt 'un-hum' and 'nup-um' or a foreign 'ya' or 'yeh' and 'nope.'" in schools we are still looking down on the use of of anything other than English in our day-to-day lives.

"Why should I care about this?" you may be asking yourself.  "What does this have to do with discourse and intertextuality?"

Why, I'm so glad that you asked.

In fact, this article packs a large punch in terms of the discourse community.  For our purposes we will be looking into how this article ties in with the works of Frank D'Angelo and James Porter.  Let's begin with D'Angelo...

The first of D'Angelo's three main points is that of exigence.  The first set of exigence questions-- that is, the question that deals with the fundamental issues of the article-- concern what I stated in the beginning paragraph: Dennis Baron's piece deals with racism and the lack of foreign acceptance.  Digging deeper, it deals with the shift of ideologies and how the discourse of the media and public figures influences such ideologies.  The second set of questions-- dealing with what prompted the discourse-- comes from the centennial anniversary of World War I and the continuing schism with how Americans deal with those whose native language is not English.  Finally, the third and the deepest set of questions-- dealing with the goals of the discourse-- is a push to relieve persons of their ignorance and elitism.  In order to be fully knowledgeable of proper discourse, one must be able to appropriate the knowledge of different languages, cultures, and ideologies that are not one's own.

The second of D'Angelo's points is that of the audience, both the audience addressed and the audience invoked.  This point is the most straightforward of the three.  Seeing as that this article was posted on the website for the University of Illinois, it is rather obvious that the audience addressed are the students and peers of the university.  Not only that, but the audience addressed is for any of those who research or are interested in the topics discussed in the article.  Audience invoked includes a much wider spectrum of people.  These include that of the entirely of the education system, as well as American history scholars and those interested in the politics behind some of the more elitist tendencies in the minds of America.

      Thirdly, there are a number of constraints for the article are numerous and broad in value.  Despite the connotation that comes with the word "constraint," the meaning that D'Angelo gives is "restraints that the rhetor harnesses so as to “constrain the audience to take the desired action or point of view."  These restraints include those of guilt, reflection on the past, and appeal to the elitism in the public forum (the push to 'freedom fries' instead of french fries and 'freedom cabbage' instead of sauerkraut).  These constraints, put together and given into the environment of high-tempered rights politics, make an illustrative argument.

      James Porter, on the other hand, has fewer points to share with Baron's article.  That does not mean that his points are less relevant or intriguing.  In fact, the main point that I take from Porter is the most compelling of them all and could spark a conversation lasting for days.  Before we get to the good stuff, though, let us look at his views of presupposition and Baron's role in said realm.

      Presupposition is a powerful tool which Porter expands upon.  Every author has presupposition about its audiences, and Baron is no exception.  There is basic knowledge one must have to fully understand the argument that Baron makes in his article.  Firstly, one must have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the horrors of World War I.  He does not, however, presuppose that his readers know what happened "on the homefront" so to speak, hence his numerous examples of the events and publications that reveal how so much changed over the course of a war and how it continues to shape the daily lives of the people in the country.  Other presuppositions involve that of possible knowledge of some of American's elitism regarding the English language, as well as the historical knowledge of America's disregard for foreigners/natives (which is basically the early history of America). 

      However, the most important point Porter gives is the one heavier than most of the points given by D'Angelo.  The intertextuality of it all is what Porter is all about.  Baron's article is saturated with intertextuality to the point that if one were too look up all the texts used, one would be reading for days.  He uses sources from the New York Times, the Executive Department of Iowa, posters from the Art Institute of Chicago, etc. etc.  One could create a museum on the topic that Baron which Baron barely scratches the surface.  The article and everything that it deals with is fascinating to say the lease, and the underlying themes of the discourse could fill a book.

 

      Sources:

      Baron, Dennis. "America's War on Language." The Web of Language. N.p., 3 Sept. 2014. Web. 08 Sept. 2014.

Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Rhetoric Review 5.1 (Autumn 1986): 34-47. JSTOR.

      D’Angelo, Frank. “The Rhetoric of Intertextuality.” Rhetoric Review 29.1 (Dec. 2009): 31-47. JSTOR.