DEAR

Dearest, Wisest, Kennedy,

What happened? Why would you compare “Eskimos” courtship to red deer stags? Why don’t you understand that “Eskimo quarrels over women: insults, threatening gestures, and fights in the form of butting or wrestling contests” (460) are not different from ivory tower intellectual man quarrels over women. And if there is a difference I would say it is in medium—maybe that’s the message you are trying to make here. In your wisdom you assumed we would understand you mean that certain mediums of communication have taken on meanings as communication has changed. Some have come to mean prestige and others primitive.

Apologies—I just needed to re-interpret. If I don’t my world will be destroyed.

Truly,
Paul Muhlhauser

Dear Mr. Lyons,
After reading and agreeing with the information you presented about how Kennedy’s generalization that locates Indians in a subordinate position in the Great Chain of Speaking, I must know how your use of Indian rhetoric, Indian sovereignty, and an Indian “we” does not commit a similar categorical error. I think I am confused because of how you agree with the idea that Indians think of sovereignty in terms of peoples, and how when you speak of Indians it is always Indians and not Indian peoples. Am I being ridiculous? Maybe there is no other way to write about this.
Another item that troubles me is your assumption about Indian voice and that it “Ideally, that voice would often employ Native language” (462) because “ ‘Language in particular helps to decolonize the mind…Thinking in one’s own cultural referents leads to conceptualizing in one’s own world view which in turn leads to disagreement with and eventual opposition to dominant ideology” (462). I read Sapir-Whorf’s ideas about language here and it frightens me because it reads as if you assume languages mean there are different kinds of thinking. Also, couldn’t it just as easily be typed, “language in particular helps to re-colonize the mind”?
Lastly, I am curious about locations in your conception of rhetoric that are sovereign. Your examples are legal examples of Indian—not federal—law. I am curious to know if your conceptions of rhetorical sovereignty include style sovereignty and genre sovereignty. I wonder about this because your examples use legalese. I read that though they are promoting and generating new ideas, they just seem to be doing the same things the same way as any other legal writing. At any rate, I want to know if in the generation of rhetorical sovereignty for schools, the medium of rhetorical sovereignty is not rhetorically sovereign. You define rhetorical sovereignty as “the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, and languages of public discourse” (194).

Sincerely,

Paul Muhlhauser

Dear Jim Haendiggity,

I appreciate that Lyons includes in his definition of rhetorical sovereignty “modes.” I appreciate this because I am beginning to think all types of communication can be considered material. What I mean is—and here is the tough one to buy—there is no discursive. All text is non-discursive or bodily. Even writing when read produces feelings—affects the corporeal. Haendiggity, help me out here. Is this worth anything? I am trying to go dissertation here.

Love,

Paul

Mao
This may be a misinterpretation of what he means by “we.” So when this “we” happens it may be the beginning of the end for my understanding of this reading. Mao writes, “That is why we do not find fortune cookies in restaurants in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Europe at all—and we don’t feel cheated, either, for not eating them at the end of meals over there” (430). If I am part of the we of he, then I vehemently disagree.

I would feel cheated. Cheated because of a slew of experiences and assumptions created about Chinese restaurants in the US. And, regardless of whether or not I feel cheated by this exclusion, I doubt I would agree with the continuation of Mao’s fortune cookie discussion especially in the continuation of his “cheated” idea where he writes, “In a sense, Chinese fortune cookies become a product of contradictions: they are born of two competing traditions and made viable—not to mention their tastiness—in a border zone where two cultures come into contact with one another…” (430). I have trouble understanding how these two uses of fortune cookies (describes earlier on the same page) as a contradiction. Perhaps, when I felt cheated at a restaurant in China, I might have viewed this as a contradiction—how can it be possible for American Chinese restaurants to do this when authentic (“real” Chinese) restaurants do not (this assumption denies Chinese American culture/rhetoric or places it as lesser—a poser). But if I did not feel cheated and was part of that we of he, then I suppose I would not view it as a contradiction because Chinese American restaurants (cultures) are not the same as Chinese restaurants (cultures). What contradiction is Mao writing about?

Getting a Facial: A brief comment on face
Western interpretation=a public-self image that people across discourse and culture want to claim for themselves in face-to-face communication” (435).
==> Positive=the desire that one’s wants be appreciated and approved of (435).
==> Negative=the basic claim to freedom of action and freedom from imposition (435).
Mao’s interpretation of Chinese face=a public image that the self likes to claim or enhance from others in a communicative event
==> Lian=respect of the group for a person with good moral reputation and by embodying the confidence of society in the integrity of ego’s moral character…it becomes both a social sanction for enforcing moral standards and an internalized sanction (435).
==> Mianzi=connoting prestige or reputation which is either achieved through getting on in life or ascribed (or even imagined, I might add) by members of one’s own community. Mianzi in this sense becomes a property obtained and owned by the individual in a public space (435-36).
I get the feeling we are being taken on a rhetorical joyride here. Very little time is devoted to developing the notion of Western face and how it does have to do with “society” and “members of community.” I am unclear what the differences are regarding all these faces and wonder if it is a question of motivation regarding face maintenance. Please help me understand.

Bizzel
I wonder why she chooses such dramatic examples of hybrid discourse and the use of rationality as a rhetorical strategy in unequal rhetorical “games.” In other words, I read her as trying to show how power differences in discourse mean that no discursive playing field is level or fair. Yet her main example in this work to showcase this inequity is so far removed from any real-world experience my students (my assumption to deal with) are having I find this point is lost. Her example does not fit what she claims to be doing.

intercultural communications
I want to remind many that media is not necessarily forced down our throats anymore. It is a choice. What does it mean to choose a Fox broadcast over a CNN broadcast? Does this mean we are constructing (controlling) our identities and ideologies—not the media?

What does it mean when people choose to represent stereotypes?

And I still want to know: Considering Hall’s notion of a “grammar of race” (103), I was wondering if race can be defined as a symbol system. Can it? What does it read like?

out of conTEXT

Lunsford Interviews Anzaldúa
Some of Anzaldúa’s—or at least Lunsford’s interpretations—ideas do not make sense to me. Please help me understand. When Lunsford writes that Anzaldúa means, “it is possible to take in the labels of society to transform them, to find all others in one’s self; one’s self in all others” (44), I am unsure how this paradigm works. By transforming, does she mean creating new semantics from existing symbols and symbol systems? By finding all others in one’s self mean some kind of generalization about being human—that we all have something inherently in common? What is finding one’s self in all others? Is this projection?

Another thing I am confused about is the notion that we should “tolerate contradictions” and “tolerate ambiguity.” Is it fair to tolerate in all conditions? For instance do we tolerate a mother-in-law’s insistence that she loves her daughter-in-law’s visual image in a couple’s portrait though later the son finds this image ripped in two so that the son is now the featured visual image? And here’s me being silly—does contradiction bring to mind binary oppositions? How about “multradictions”?

Also, when I read “Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having to translate…my tongue will be illegitimate” (46), I want to know more about this context. Does this mean free to be published and earn money? Is her freedom capitalistic? Or is it more a comment on educational systems and the privilege of academic discourse?

Finally, for one who seems to be a social constructionist, I find it funny she states in comparing her sense of identity to students states, “ You and I have already passed mid-life. We can have a sense of identity and of self that is not so much based on other people’s reactions anymore” (61). It is not just age that has done this. It is her success and her power, which allows for this ability to this sense of identity. Moreover, this indifference to “people’s reactions” is not accurate. My assumption regarding identity and self is that it is always informed by audience—other people’s reactions.

Monroe’s Works
What is “critical literacy” exactly? And whatever “critical literacy” is is it an occidental construct?
I was thinking about how I would add to the classroom implications section. I think that instead of just talking and writing about movies, students should storyboard and create movies. I don’t know. I reckon instead of being vicarious about movies, it might help to experience this sort of textual production. If access to technology is a problem, I think plays, theatre, acting might be another way to approach writing for those with a more developed TV or film literacy.

intertextual communications
Considering Hall’s notion of a “grammar of race” (103), I was wondering if race can be defined as a symbol system. Can it? What does it read like?