My Wikipedia Article

Athens Lunatic Asylum

Toward a Composing Model of Reading

Everytime I sit down to write something I self-consciously utilize the five steps that Tierney and Pearson talk about in their article, "Toward a Composing Model of Reading".  From a young age, you're taught how to plan and set up a message and purpose you're trying to convey.  I remember choosing a topic and then making web diagrams from there with smaller topics to back up my main idea.  I remember the drafting process of using my peers for help and getting others' opinions on how my message sounded to a bigger audience.  Aligning is a concept where I am not sure I see the difference from revising, but with revising, I would go back over my drafts with a fine toothed comb and make sure that everything in the paper ultimately tied together.  Monitoring was always nice to receive a paper back with positive feedback and use the critical feedback to better my other papers I wrote down the road.

Regarding this Wikipedia article, I definitely can now look back and see how I used all five of these techniques.  I wanted to do something local within Athens and had recently been taken up to The Ridges so, I thought about doing something particularly on the Tuberculosis Ward because it was the only building that remained unrennovated.  I had also heard so many interesting stories about that building in particular, I thought for sure I would be able to find information on it.  The internet provided no legitimate sources towards the history of the grounds so I thought I would try something new and go to the archives in the library.  When the man told me they had hardly anything on that ward, I had to change up my tactics and finally decided on revamping the current Wikipedia page on the hospital in general.

There was so much information I found in the archives that had not been included on the page so I was so excited to be able to really put forth the correct information and  tell the true story about the hospital.  At first I added small facts and edits into my draft, then I began adding huge paragraphs of information that never seemed to make it onto the page.  I then went back over it and made sure everything sounded perfect.  I used a thesaurus to make sure I had a good variety of words and didn't sound repetitive.  I also tried to use a neutral, factual voice when I was writing it.  I don't think there is a way to be really "for" or "against" the athens lunatic asylum though...

I haven't yet submitted the final version of the page yet because I am going to look over it some more tomorrow morning and add some pictures perhaps to the article, but when I do finally save changes, I will watch the article grow and get edited by others.  It was such interesting subject matter, I'd love to learn more even.

Intertextuality and the Discourse Community

It's safe to say that Donald Murray's article, "All Writing is Autobiographical" and James Porter's article, "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" are far apart in viewpoints when it comes to writing and something being original or not.  Murray will argue that all writing is autobiographical whether it's in third person or not. That each work of literature and each student essay written, includes a fragment of that person's knowledge and experiences.  But Porter argues in his article that, everything we know is borrowed or has traces from previous things we've known.  It's almost as if Murray has a positive outlook on writing and Porter does not since he believes it is all stolen from previous sources we've encountered.  I think Murray does a better job drawing in my attention and making me believe his point of view on this topic, however Porter did have some enjoyable things to read in his article.  I thought his take on The Declaration of Independence being borrowed traces from other resources was really interesting.  Porter says that Benjamin Franklin, does not deserve nearly as much credit as he has been given, because most of the Declaration of Independence was formed from Franklin's knowledge of the past.

Honestly, everyone has a past so it's sort of impossible to completely take what all you've learned and write something.  It's physically impossible so that why I agree more with Murray than Porter because Porter might as well mock the the whole system of education if he says everything we write has traces from somewhere else and lacks originality.

All Writing is Autobiography

This was the first article out of all of them we have had to read so far that I actually feel like I agree with the author.  It's a very valid point that everything we write includes some bit of our own personal selves whether it be our morals, beliefs or feelings we're unsure we feel.  They all appear and come out through writing as Donald M. Murray explains in his article titled, "All Writing is Autobiography".  Within this article he brings up good points such as how no matter the subject matter, each piece of writing will turn out different.  We all have different writing styles and like to decide where things fit into the message we are trying to convey through writing, so when we begin to write our Wikipedia pages we have to be sure not to include any personal testimony on pages we make.  It all has to be factual, useful information, but no matter what each Wikipedia article will be slightly different and that's what makes it different from other encyclopedias.

Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents

Keith Grant-Davie, author of the, Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents, begins his article by first addressing how rhetoric, can be defined. Composition theorists like Grant-Davie himself, say it can be explained as an activity, an event or situation.  His example of advertisements really helps convey how rhetorical situations form.  Sometimes they are forced messages and other times they happen naturally.  "Language does things" is a simple way to conclude what and how rhetorical situations occur.

Rhetorical situations don't stand alone either.  They are made up of constituents as well.  Those constituents being, exigence, rhetors, audience and constraints.  The rhetor is the person who generates the discourse(discourse is the action being taken) and is often looked at as the "authorial voice".  The exigence happens when the rhetor senses a situation needs discourse or a time where discourse is resolved.  This discourse action happens to an audience whether it negative or positive.  And the final constituent is constraints where a factor may affect the overall outcome and prosperity of reaching rhetorical objectives.

Lastly, a compound rhetorical situation is when the constituents match up similarly within a group of people.  Grant-Davie gives an example of a public debate, "Examples of this kind of compound rhetorical situation can be found whenever public debate arrises, as it did recently in the editorial pages of a local newspaper in a rural community in the Rocky Mountains."  There are always people with their own opinions on each side, but to more complex issues not everyone is going to be exactly the same regarding feelings, emotions and thoughts.  That's what makes the situation rhetorically compound.  Each rhetor is trying to create exigence and changes the other rhetors' minds.

Phenomenology of Error

The Phenomenology of Error has an interesting concept behind it, and one I never actually took time to think about until now.  Joseph Williams, author of the article, begins by talking about constructs and the difference between a social construct and an average construct.  A construct is a standard in which we define the way we operate and write.  Each culture has their own, just as they also have their own social constructs.  Social constructs can be thought about as a chain of knowledge and how something became the way it is today.  Going off of an example Williams brings up, say you have an essay.  That essay exists because of what was in the student's mind and what was in the student's mind exists because of a book he/she was reading and that book he/she was reading was written by a writer who had other former knowledge in their head as well. Somewhere down the line, each fact, each story, develops it's own minor details.  Who decides which facts and stories are legitimate enough to be deemed academically correct though?

The errors found on Wikipedia today, are much more of a grammatical academic error, rather than the abrupt strange attacks on particular articles that the site used to face.  Wikipedia receives a lot of criticism for the mistakes that occasionally grace the site, but I think people forget that Wikipedia was created as a site specifically based on social constructs.

Brittanica has been called academically acceptable by someone anonymous who most of the general public do not know.  One person or just a few, decided on the correct ways to spell things, use commas, list facts about history etc, and those facts were placed in an encyclopedia.  Wikipedia however, allows users to act on their own knowledge and provide valuable information to a page where perhaps the author before them missed a couple of interesting facts.  If everyone shares something on the site it all adds up and joins the community that Wikipedia tried to set up in the first place.  I can honestly say, I have never been on Wikipedia and seen a messed up page and the facts I do record, I compare to books and legitimately based library sites and the knowledge matches up.  I don't believe we give the general public as much praise we deserve.  Sometimes I guess it is just easier to leave it up to one person to decide what's factual and what is not.

About Me

My name is Katie Chesnes and I am a junior at Ohio University studying retail merchandising.  I am Vice President Event Planning for my sorority, Pi Beta Phi and plan on furthering my interest in event planning for Limited Brands Corporation.

            I am from Columbus, Ohio and graduated from Worthington Kilbourne High School in 2009.  I spent majority of my childhood focusing on ballet all the way up until age 17.  I decided against auditioning for companies due to uncertainty with my future.  I didn’t like that I would have little to no control over knowing where I would stand because companies were extremely competitive, even for someone like myself who had trained for months with some of the best.   I enjoy business and decided I wanted to stand out from the average business major, so I chose retail merchandising which is the business selling process of apparel.

            My English 151 class did not teach me as much as I had expected, but surprisingly held my attention in different ways.  My professor asked me what I thought a lot and to apply my thoughts to what a textbook may be asking me.

            The course guidelines for 308J however, seem appealing and different, just like that 151 class.  I am excited to work on things through the computer and I never would have thought I’d be writing something for a Wikipedia page.  It’s a wonderful idea to have students within this class to create a blogging community because it allows us to get to know more students on campus as well as understand each person’s different styles of writing.  I taught myself HTML and CSS when I was younger and may come as a shock to most that I still remember some of the basic codes.  I’m excited to put those to use and really push myself to my full potential in this class.