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Technical Writing · Exposition & Argumentation · Non-fiction Creative Essays · Grammar and Usage of Standard English · The Structure of English · Analysis of Shakespeare
Analysis of Literary Language · Advanced Professional Papers · The History of the English Language · First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop · Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing
Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) · Theories of Communication & Technology (A Second Course in Methodology) · The Writer's Guild
UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" · UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" · Introduction to Journalism · Feature Writing · Science Writing Papers
Communicative Objective #1 (CO1): A re-contextualization of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
Blackboard Weekly Posts (A Bulletin Board Community)
Explanation, Parameters, Artifacts, and Narrative for Two Un-researched Communicative Practices · Rolling Credits for Two Un-researched Communicative Practices: Who Contributed to "This" Objective
The Goals and Choices Narrative · The Process Narrative
"Every project is constrained by three parameters: scope, cost, and time, every project."
Tasha Richburg,
UMBC Professor of Information Systems Project Management
"Everything is an argument, everything."
Nuel Belnap,
A.R. Anderson distinguished Professor University of Pittsburg, Philosophy Department
Introduction
If "every project is constrained by three parameters: scope, cost, and time" and "everything is an argument" then I am in search of is an argument for un-researched communicative practices or rather, unstudied communicative language literacies within a social space.
As of April 13 and April 18, 2006, I am sick and tired of writing papers or for that matter, proposing things for the purpose of being read by one person in order to receive a grade. I am at the point where I should be writing for a grander purpose with a larger audience in mind and I should be writing with the intention of submitting research papers to peer-reviewed journals.
What I am searching for is some topic that there is little to no existing academic research that requires primary research or topic areas where the academics have missed a vital part of an argument. My
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The global argument within the communicative practice was more and more women were turning to reading Hentai to retreat into a fantasy world to escape the message of “motherhood” delivered by the Japanese government’s ideology. Within the Hentai I discovered that the same message was being delivered semiotically due to Japanese censorship laws but Japanese women were not recognizing that the same message was being delivered in the retreat of this government censored communication. The connection everyone missed is why this ideology is so important to the Japanese government. The Japanese population is decreasing and fewer women are having children. The Japanese government has an apocalyptic fear of the Imperialist U.S. government. The Japanese government fears that one day Japanese/American relations will come down to one more apocalyptic showdown: nuclear destruction of Japan and an elimination of Japanese society. The Japanese have never forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This theme appears repeatedly throughout Japanese Anime and Manga.
Although Japanese culture embraces the idea of being "Ultra-Western" (more Western than Western Culture), the Japanese are ethnically Japanese and not only embrace being so, but consider inter-marriage with other Asian cultures as dilution of Japanese-ness. My point is that the Japanese government and its culture as a whole is afraid of loosing its Japanese heritage entirely due to plummeting birth rates and what is known as the "parasite singles" generation. Young Japanese men and women in their early twenties and thirties are refusing to marry and refusing to bear children (not so different for its Western counterpart societies.) The reason they are called "parasites" is because the only function they serve in society is that of the role of "consumers." The Parasite singles consume but do not raise off-spring resulting in a spiraling decrease in the ethnicity as a whole.
The link was found in a sub-genre of Hentai called “Tentacle-sex” where helpless women who appear to be teenage adolescents are raped by tentacle monsters who have apocalyptic orgasms with their victims sometimes to the point where the victim disintegrates. One paper drew a connection to the helpless adolescent girls representing Japan and the tentacle monsters as the United States. I found my connections through other various author’s text which demonstrated what seems like a loose connection, yet a strong bridge from one island of thought to another. The purpose of pushing motherhood in Japan is to increase the size of the Japanese population because a larger population increases the possibility of survival rate in the event of a Japanese/American apocalypse.
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I picked up the paper in the second week of the Spring 2005 and Dr. Carpenter thought I was really on to something worth pursuing. I have not had the time to straighten out the paper because of commitments in tutoring, 324, 407, and 495 but will return to the paper once the semester is over.
I believe I have the ability to make contributions in various academic areas but I want to research with a more lofty intended purpose: that of being published. I regularly look at the end of journal articles looking for statements an author has said something to the effect of “there is little research in ‘this’ area, more research is required in this area, the data is inconclusive, we are not aware of the effect on someone or some group," and other such phrases that indicate more research is necessary. My research is analogous to a kid standing in a stream overturning rocks looking for some new un-cataloged species of life. This has more purpose in my mind than just re-hashing the same old arguments using other scholar’s secondary research and support.
Topic One: Proposal to Caitlin for joint research in Manga and Hentai
Topic one was an email to Caitlin Wychgram and I to perform joint research in the topic of the Manga.
This a re-articulation of that email.
“Two things crop into my mind about the “Researching Communicative Practices” communicative objective. I am thinking about image analysis in terms of communication. I propose a joint research proposal in the analysis of Manga texts. There are several reasons for this. You (Caitlin) know how to read Japanese text and how to read Manga but you’re struggling with the course and with semiotics in general. I am not struggling with the course but I am struggling with analyzing of the Manga. I do not have any Manga and cannot afford to buy any. You on the other hand buy and read Manga on a regular basis. From my academic analysis of Hentai last semester I discovered that Manga and Hentai are two areas with little academic research yet there is a rich social discourse being conducted within these texts that few Westerners are able to read. On the other hand, Anime, Manga, and Hentai have become huge exports from Japan to Western cultures in particular the United States who’s citizens have more disposable income than anyone else in the world. In essence, as Westerners we are shut out of the social discourse being conducted within the Manga because very few Americans understand Japanese culture or Japanese history. We already had this conversation and we both know the Japanese culture is nothing like ours. The culture is entrenched in ancient traditions, ceremonies, rituals, both spiritual and secular most of which are expressed in the form of semiotics (the science of signs). If Shipka approves, we would be doing joint research but writing separately, provided that we can coordinate schedules for researching. If you chose not to take me up on my proposal you can feel free to enter the body of this email in your goals and choices as something you chose not to do.” |
Topic Two: Continuation on the Theme of Manga and Hentai
Proposal for a paper that demonstrates by removing visual samples and visual analysis and only permitting content analysis of Hentai constrains the analysis in conveying meaning within the visuals. This argument would demonstrate the affordances and constraints of both visual communication and written communication and is an area that has little research by academics.
Topic Three: Continuation on the Theme of Manga and Hentai
Steven Norfolk and I have been having continuing conversations about Japanese Anime since we both learned that we are watching the stuff and since Dr. Carpenter said the word “Anime” once and only once maybe the sixth week of the fall semester 2005. I have written two analytical papers in content analysis and mixed analysis while poking and prodding into the social discourses being conducted within these visual texts. Steven seems to have a good grasp on some of the aspects that elude me at times and may be able to provide some guidance in the literacy practices of reading the Manga from the Japanese perspective.
Topic Four: Research for Images through Websites
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East Meadow holds a similar history. I lived on the edge of two adjacent towns. Our postal address was Westbury but we actually lived on the edge of the “East Meadow.” The East Meadow Fire department served our area and not the Westbury Fire Department. We attended school in the East Meadow School district and not the Westbury School district. I lived next to a cultured manicured County Park larger than New York’s Central Park. There were two major airfields, one military, one civilian, a horse trotter’s racetrack, a county hospital in which my brother installed the elevators and a county jail. The literacy is in seeing images from different time periods of the area and the personal narratives the images generate. I once talked about this on the Internet and several people from various parts of the country and other countries were fascinated with the stories because my way of life and growing up was not theirs. Their claim was that my stories were unique and that what I experienced was not the norm. The suburb and I were practically born at the same time. The neighborhood I grew up in is the now famous “Levittown” project after WWII. I am not clear if this information exists in the UMBC library. I would feel rather passionate about this research and even writing a paper on the topic provided that I understood what journal I was targeting.
As an aside, the names of places on Long Island, specifically the area in which I lived, is worth expanding. Before WWII, there was little interest in this piece of real estate. Long Island, especially Nassau and Suffolk County were an important for National Security and a first line of defense in order to protect entrance into the ports of Manhattan. South Hampton and Nassau County North Shore were playgrounds or summer getaways for the rich to retreat from the rigors of Manhattan hence all the mansions sprawled all over the north coast of Nassau County. Beyond that use, the rest of the island was farmland. Some names were borrowed from the American Indian tribes that once inhabited the island such as Wantaugh, Massapequa, and others. Other places had no such names and were referred to by geographical landscape through a farmer’s naming convention. East Meadow was once referred to by the farmers as “The East Meadow.” Meadowbrook acquired its name from the brook that ran through the meadow, “The Meadow Brook” Westbury, being the burry in the west field. The places had no names before the thirties. When asking for directions a farmer would say, “sure, follow this trail into the west bury and turn onto the old country road (Old Country Road) till you see the meadow brook (Meadowbrook). When you arrive at the meadow brook, turn east and head toward the meadow, the east meadow (East Meadow). This is now some parts of Long Island acquired its names.
Topic Five: A Tangent of the Westbury Project/The Photographic History of the Land UMBC Resides On
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Topic Six: The Use of Music or Sound to Pass Secret Messages within a Listening Community
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Smaller public radio stations and college radio stations did this in N.Y., Lancaster, PA, and Philadelphia, PA, so I can’t see why this would be different in Baltimore. I also overheard or read one of Elisabeth’s posts about DJ’ing HipHop and Rap on weekends talking about the insider language within the community in which she spins records. Many times, these literacies are restricted to a specific nightclub. The use of conducting conversations through the music is nothing new. The way this worked is a person would go to the DJ and ask for a specific song to be played. Sometimes there was a request for a dedication, sometimes not. Sometimes there was what is known as a “shout out to the house.” In other words, someone’s small circle of friends would recognize the “nickname” used, recognize that the “shout out” was meant to address them and this was a “Hey, listen up...” Knowing the person and the song being played, the listeners could recognize the message being delivered either through the type of music requested, the style/tone of the sound, or by the lyrics. Another discourse that was conducted was to ask for three songs. One could construct a complex message for others by the same means as stated previously, but now the narrative was longer. Another case of special messaging was the use of music that had special meaning to someone. These songs would be played out of revenge to send an insult to someone they wanted to remove from the club either for the evening or permanently. This means of communication is also common in private parties. One person knows the other and also knows that a particular song holds a special meaning to them. In other cases they could be messages being passed between lovers or ex-lovers for the purpose of attraction or repulsion.
Elizabeth Piccirillo’s description of literacy practices on the club scene also fuels this interest. Sarah Miller could also provide valuable insight in this area. Because I know them somewhat as classmates they might be willing to introduce me to other people they know within the scene who may be willing to be interviewed within the space and explain the literacy practices being conducted thus providing primary research. These ladies listen to different genres of music; therefore, the languages may vary according to the genre and scene and some portions of the language may be universal when compared to my own experiences. I do not know what the possibilities are because I do not know what kind of scholarly research exists in the area or how to search for this literacy practice.
It turns out that the use music and sound being used as means of communication and also for conducting an argument spans two generations: mine and theirs. On this website this communication literacy is conducted in several places. These discourses may be found at the links as follows:
Topic Seven: Instant Messaging (IMing) in English Compositional Classes while Situated in Computer Labs as a Form of Disengagement and Rebellion
This I observed in a technical writing class where the professor was giving a presentation on presenting (talk about boring.) The computers were set up with old school seating and learning practices with the students in “flyer formation,” classic rows and columns all running parallel. This places the computer monitor in a position where the professor cannot see what the students are doing. While presenting using PowerPoint it is impossible to walk around the room and engage the class as some speakers may. The only process that could be used to facilitate active learning in this space would applying a "Jeopardy" game show format forcing attendees to complete sentences at will. With the monitor obscuring the professor’s view provides the opportunity for disinterested students to disengage with the presentation and entertain themselves by IMing classmates. I have never done this so I am curious about the content of these conversations. My proposal would be to capture the content and perform a content analysis.
Topic Eight: The Literacy of Chess
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The speed of this game is in the player’s mind where we are not privy to see. I think what may be interesting is interviewing many avid chess players after watching a particularly important chess game and analyze their particular views as to how they “read” a game. In other words, primary research of many chess players focused on one particularly high level tournament. The interesting part may be in how the community “reads” the particular game and how their “reads” differ. Interviewing the players may add a different insight for the players will undoubtedly will have “read” the game differently considering that they were center stage and within the “circle of conflict” while the observers or fans are far outside the “circle of conflict.”
Topic Nine: MOO’s
While in ENGL 486 I encountered a few papers in this area of literacy and I am curious as to what is a MOO. In addition I wonder considering this is not a well known area what may be learned about literacy in such a space.
Topic Ten: Extends from MOO’s/The Content of IMing While Playing as a Gaming Team within a Team Oriented Internet Game Space
Topic Eleven: Does a Online Tutoring Session Change the Dialog Between a Tutor and a Tutee? Is the Dialog the same or different? How does this literacy differ?
Topic Twelve: Proposal to study the discourses within my mother’s artwork created during the 1960’s or Struggling for Liberation: Georgina Morejon-Paul’s account of using art as a means of conducting a sociopolitical discourse.
The purpose is to record the artist’s words and explanations of what she meant by the imagery and symbols in a particular piece of work, i.e. what is your argument? What does the symbolism mean?
We all know her work will be left behind after she dies. The object is to capture the artist’s original intent, meaning, and content within a particular artifact. My mother’s strongest, most ambitious period of making these creations was the 1960’s, a period of civil upheaval: controversy over the Vietnam War, Civil Rights for Blacks, and the Women’s Liberation Movement.
As an example on painting is called “The Bluebird’s of Happiness.” The entire image is painted in bright pastel colors many of the symbols appear as though they are in tissue paper as one image is shown underneath another. In other words, some objects in the image are transparent. There is an image of a white horse kicking its head skyward, mouth open, teeth showing, one hoof up rearing on its hind legs. There are blue birds (as in the color blue) superimposed in strategic places or positions on the horse and are attacking the horse while other blue birds are in the process of descending on the horse with the rest of the blue bird community. The horse is a soul individual.
The argument is the wants of society versus the wants of the individual. The literal meaning is the blue birds insist that in order to be a part of the community, the horse must be happy. The horse on the other hand, is not happy and does not want to be happy. The horse wants to lead a life of misery self-designed by choice.
The horse’s discourse is “Why should I lead a false life in order to appease society? I see the world as cruel and miserable and chose to live within the bounds of society with a dark mind. For me, this is to accept the truth and not turn an eye away from the world’s ugliness. For even within ugliness there is beauty. I chose to be a realist and work with what I have been given. You (the blue birds) also make a choice (a false choice) to ignore misery by putting on a false persona of happiness when happiness is far and few between. In your macabre you think that by cloaking yourselves in happiness and gathering in unity that everyone should subscribe to your life philosophy. If not, this becomes a struggle between ‘us’ versus ‘other.’ Why must I lead a life that is false in order to appease society?” This is the horse’s discourse.
The blue bird’s discourse is “You’re right Ms. Horse, there is little happiness in this world but why wallow in the misery and rejoice to the fact that one is alive and that not all is darkness for God’s creatures, particularly man has an affinity for darkness. Yet God is the light and within that light is the happiness of loving God. Within the light is love, peace, and happiness.” This is the blue bird’s discourse.
Within the household are several discourses going on at the same time. My brother marries at age 18 because he gets his girlfriend pregnant. My older sister has married and in order to do so she has converted her religion from Catholicism to Protestant. My sister has now become over-religious and constantly quotes from the bible in her letters to home. My father is suspected of infidelity due to an incident at my brother’s wedding reception. Women in society are exercising their civil rights for equality as my mother also decides that she will exert her rights for liberation from being a mother and a housewife. with them but what those discourses are I do not know and they will only be revealed through a series of interviews with my mother the artist.
A main complication with this pursuit is my inability to get up to Pennsylvania to photograph the paintings and bring them into the research so that all can see these paintings and constructions. I do not have the time while in school nor the money to run back and forth to Pennsylvania. In addition, I do not own a digital camera which would make image capture less complicated considering lessons learned in creating the visual argument in the history of UMBC food in the ENGL 324 class.
End product
The entire product could be burned onto a DVD as a website or distributed on DVD. The Internet would provide for a multi-modal communication that would be more descriptive than an academic paper.
Method of delivery
This could be delivered as an advertising DVD demonstrating the goods and services The Integral Worm can provide. The DVD could be placed into a clear jewel case and some advertising blub/cover design could be used as the sleeve the DVD comes with. Inside the jacket could be the company name and an explanation of how to use the DVD in order to view the project.
NOTE: As of Wednesday, May 14, 2014, I have not been able to find the original process sketches referred to by figure number __ in "The Process Narrative-Sketch"; hence, this is why there are no hyperactive links to the Process Sketches.
In order to resolve this discontinuity in the communication I will elect two possible solutions as follows:
What’s you process?
The process begins with the second communicative objective being handed out by Shipka. This project becomes severely neglected right from the beginning because there are three plates spinning at once and this will now be the fourth. First the task order is bland and not Shipka’s style of communications. The length of the task order is a 1/4 of a page to 1/2 a page of text. This document has a serious tone to it: no bells and whistles. The project is to write a proposal for researching communicative practices. The parameters are simple and wide open: "given that you have unlimited resources and funding what do you propose to look at to conduct primary research in two un-studied social literacy within a social space, i.e. two proposals. In addition, you do not required to produce an "end-product." All that is required is the Goals and Choices and attendance and participation in two workshopping sessions." I read it, understand it, and find surprisingly this will require nothing but writing and paper, so I throw the task order into my 407 folder for the time being. My
Thursday we have
As thinking adult, I have three choices I can make as follows:
Shipka is an Adult Play Theorist. The argument is before Victorian times there was no separation between work and play. This is particularly evident when one analyses Shakespeare. Within his plays he switches dramatically between the dramatic seriousness of life and the stress relief of play or comic relief. It is the Victorians that segment the art of "play" as something for children and not for adults. Play an occupation for children and only for the purpose of learning and practicing for adulthood. Adults on the other hand, must focus on the dire drudgery of work as a means of living; therefore, there is no space for levity or play (stress relief).
With the introduction of the Internet, there were no set rules on how to use this new technology. As with all technologies, the technology feeds back to the user how it will be used and the user feeds back to the technology how the user "interprets" the technology; thereby using the technology in ways that were never intended by the developer. People begin to create websites that serve a dual purpose for themselves (such as this website): the professional self and the personal self creating a dialectic tension between seriousness and lunacy (play). This phenomenon also reveals itself on Bulletin Boards where the original intent of the bulletin board was designed for a serious discussion but because one thought leads to another, people would pursue trains of thought that would stray off topic and many times generated into levity.
This is a blast. We go out on a field trip and visit
The woman in charge doesn’t even smile when she sees us communicating through hand puppets and even barks at Elizabeth of all people. I must say here that Elizabeth is a superior and considerate communicator with vast people skills as a professional journalist. I was one of the few people next to her when this outburst occurred. Elizabeth leans into me and asks, "Was it me, what did I say that elicited 'that' response?" I simply said, "The person in charge of the Special Collections has no sense of humor. Obviously a continuing part of the Victorian mindset. I think she thinks we were a bunch of morons."
The gallery display of the month does nothing for me. I have always known it was here. To learn this depository of vital information was here was a huge discovery. I have been here since June of 2000 and never knew what was in that room. So many lost opportunities for more exciting research projects and now there’s only 5 weeks left to this semester and only two semesters before graduation. It really is such a shame and all universities are this way. It is impossible to know about every resource and everything that is available on a campus to a student. In some ways I feel UMBC keeps the "Special Collections" as a secret so undergrads don’t use it, as though we are not serious about research. Unless you're paying for a Masters or Doctorate degree, then you have no reason to be here. Now that I am reflecting upon this day it is not only sad and frightening, but it also angers me that Shipka a faculty member for barely two semesters and doesn’t know the campus that well herself is the only one to take a strong enough interest in us as students to introduce us to a wealth of resources on the UMBC campus. While I was there it shot through my mind that Shipka was basically leading us like thirsty dogs to a water trough. Here is a place where you can get some ideas for proposals in researching communicative practices that are beyond written text, mainly images
I go out and take a walk Friday night to UMBC to take advantage of the bandwidth speeds in the university computer labs, a breath of fresh air, and to collect the last of the food take-out menus for authorless text. A walk by myself always stimulates my creative processes because there is nothing else for my mind to do other than think. Two things crop into my mind about “this” communicative objective. I am thinking about image analysis in terms of communication. What about a joint proposal between Caitlin Wychgram and I to do an analysis of Manga. There are several reasons for this. Caitlin knows how to read Japanese text and how to read Manga but she is struggling with the course. We had a pleasant conversation on
Thursday, nine hours before attending the first of two workshops, I am not in good condition. Caitlin Wychgram has not responded to my email proposal so all I can assume is that she is not interested. Meantime I have all kinds of little pieces to clean up on all the other revolving projects. I finally close out what I need to do to say that my
Sarah Miller's argument simply blows everyone away and is the most complex of the arguments. I come to the realization that this young woman has an extremely dark mind like my own. The night that we worked together on the first
I meet Steven Norfolk down in the Writing Center by accident after following up with Ryan in my
On the other hand, I still want to get into Special Collections to see if there is anything that will allow me to take off on the analysis of the growth of my home town, Westbury, N.Y. When Steve goes home, I clean up all the loose ends on all the other projects to find myself facing this project finally at three in the morning knowing that I have to meet Steve at 9 a.m. to move the
I meet with Steven Norfolk Thursday morning at 9 a.m. with the intent of doing some work on the
Thursday, April 13 we have our
Elizabeth suggests looking at famous author’s novels (public writing space) and looking at the writing in their diaries (private writing space) and discussing the differences. Elizabeth says there is plenty of information out there which means she has probably walked through the stacks. Her suggestion raises my curiosity, as I know Anais Nin’s private diaries have been published and I know what she wrote publicly. Her writing may be interesting to look at comparing back and forth that’s if the library has her erotica which they may not because they may see no academic value in either. Shipka announces that “Pass It Forward Day” will be May 8 and not April 27 as the syllabus says. This provides me some breathing space because this project is barely moving because of the two presentation/activities I am currently working on
Saturday, April 15 I have a satori while waiting for the UMBC Red Line bus to come and take me to Wal-mart and work. I was reading Wysocki, Johnson-Eilola, Selfe, and Sirc’s Writing New Media: Theory Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition and on page 59 the text literally smacks me in the face. “What specific kinds of reading and writing, speaking and listening, viewing/interacting and composing did your parents do?" How stupid of me, I am busy running around looking outside when I should be looking inside. Both my parents were artists. I grew up in a home surrounded by semiotics. I grew up in the 60’s. My father was a conservative with classic artistic style: a formally trained commercial artist. My mother, on the other hand, was a creative artist. Within my mother’s work was a rich socio-political discourse about the times, specifically women’s liberation. I realize I have been looking in the wrong place and there is a rich discourse in my mother’s artwork that I can articulate better as an academic, writer, and researcher. I will look at her work, interview her, and collect data about the social discourses of the times dealing with women’s liberation
Tuesday, April 18 We have another workshop and this does not go well. Elizabeth Piccirillo who spoke for 15 minutes in the first shop now speaks for another 20 minutes in this workshop. Yolanda Martin, Crystal Gatton, and Ambereen Sheikh speak leaving no time for anyone else to get their ideas reviewed. I cannot even get in a word edgewise. All this does is stress me out further than I am already stressed out. Now I have to wait yet another week in order to get any feedback while the Pass it Forward date looms ever closer. Shipka should have asked Elisabeth to come up to the office if she wanted to talk more. this would have given the rest of us who had not spoken and wanted to speak and opportunity
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