It read like an instruction manual and it read like you could replace the phrase “real Indian” with “real country club member” or “real cheerleader” regarding many of the stereotypical behaviors they were describing. Weider and Pratt’s generalizations of Indian behaviors—for example, the silent Indian—appear to violate a Holliday, Hyde and Kullman’s suggestions regarding intercultural communication. It doesn’t read like Weider and Pratt were “aware of the media, political and institutional influences in our own society which lead us to see people from other cultural backgrounds in a certain way” and they didn’t “see through these images and fictions when we encounter people from other cultural backgrounds, and always try to consider alternative representations” (41). That insider troubles me though. I feel influenced by that credibility—not sure how to criticize it. Help.

I also disliked the objective writing stance of Weider and Pratt in “On Being a Recognizable Indian Among Indians.” This tone made it seem like an observation about how White American chattiness on an airline is absolute Truth. It really made it seem like they had gone onto airlines and done an empirical study about these communicating differences.

I didn’t read “Concerted Cultivation” this way. I think the less objective tone and the acknowledgment that what they studied came from a limited set of experiences helped. HOWever, I always wish there was a statement that said something like, “This is a study regarding how these families behave when this set of researchers comes to study them and create information.” Here’s me trying to control. Are there any studies being done on families by recording them with video cameras? Would this be a better way to create such information?

I liked the last page of “Concerted Cultivation” because of the importance of context and relativism—“In other historical moments, a ten-year-old child who gave orders to a doctor would have been chastised for engaging in disrespectful and inappropriate behavior” (13).

Bizzel’s essay, I liked the most. I like that she writes, “I don’t think we should encourage them to think that each one has a unique, “authentic-voice” sort of hybrid discourse that he or she must discover” (20 or 56). But I wonder if this works with or against what Corbett writes about. In different words, does not encouraging a hybrid voice lead to resistance to writing? What do you think? Am I crazy? Lastly, she emphasizes the use of imitation in a writing class. Why? What are the assumptions here?

In Bliss’ article, I only have one question. Are any researchers talking to writing teachers from other cultures in an effort to understand how students from other cultures are being instructed? And if this isn’t happening, why not? Seems like it could be a good way to interculturally communicate about writing.

THInk my thoughts

I am going into this with blog prejudice. I am an inexperienced blogger who essentializes blogs as a medium that is less formal than WebCT, printed pages, critical responses, and even writing journals. The bloggles I wear allow me to see blogs as a form of weblishing (web-publishing) diaries where bloggers create stream of consciousness products for their own pleasure. It is a medium centered on the writer and what pleases him or herself where meaning, like audience, is secondary. It is a place profound thoughts have been thinked before and where colonies of rants infest as though digital was sugar.

In more of my words, I know I do not yet understand the nuanced intricacies of the True blog medium. As I stumble and crash around in this culture, I hope to move past the neophyte position called blahgger and become a seasoned veteran—a blogger with a black-belt if you will—whose bloggles adjust and allow me to see acronyms and ☺ ☹ as subtle strokes in the creation of high art.

At any rate, here I go messing around with rhetorical freedom trying to get down from my high horse.

Definitions I need (Please define as you see fit):
Culture
Rhetoric of Authenticity

Confusions:
intercultural communications
They say, “…the aim is not to describe what someone from a particular culture is like and then suggest how to communicate with them” (2). And then they say, “The purpose of this book is to engage in a dialogue with the reader. We do not believe there is only one route to intercultural communication” (3). And after that they say “1.Take what people say…”, “2.Avoid…”, and “3.Understand…” So how should I read this book? Isn’t it a guide? They are describing situations where particular someones from different cultures are meeting in contact zones. And they are explaining what can be done to avoid essentialism and misunnoncommunication.

Also, for a text which discusses the pitfalls regarding essentializing, I was surprised to read the following positivistic statement, “However, Units A2.1, A2.2 will look more deeply at the forces prevent us all from seeing people as they really are” (21). As if it is possible to “see” people as they really are. My question, which I put to you: What would be a better way to say this? What would be constructivist? I refuse to write the refuse I created to answer this question because it is clunky and ugly and I am embarrassed—alright here is an example (it is a blog after all), “…prevent us from seeing people as they appear to be using stereotypes.” Now that I re-read this, I have to say my initial inclination was correct. Help.

Arts of the Contact Zone
Mary Louise Pratt defines contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they lived out in many parts of the world today” (2). Sounds good except—and this is not fully developed especially after reading about the love that was lost in intercultural communications’ cultural dealing section (25-29)—that I want to add something about cultural creation. Unless there is a temporal and numerical clause regarding the establishment of a culture, I think the middle culture described in intercultural communications regardless of how long it exists or how many people are a part of it constitutes the creation of culture through the “meet, clash, and grapple…” But now that I metathink my metathoughts, I wonder if it is worth it to include creation. Maybe contact zone implies creation. What do you think?

HEy,

you may not know this but I am in my fourth semester of the PhD program Rhet/Comp. I have a couple areas of interest regarding my dissertation topic.

One of the ideas regards how the body is created, manipulated, managed through rhetoric by examining egg and sperm “donation” websites.  My favorite is http://www.eggdonor.com


The other idea regards cell-phones—their uses, meanings, and rhetorics.  I reckon I am obsessed with the “need” being manufactured for these cybernetic devices and what they mean to current notions (rhetorics) of public and private.

Through this course, I hope to develop these topics with regards to how non-dominant cultures are discursively responding and adapting to these technologies.  I am also interested in developing a cell-phone pedagogy—not sure what I mean, yet.