A Citizen’s Role in Public Deliberation

In McDonald’s chapter of Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation he defines an individual’s place in the public sphere: “individuals become citizens by discursively - and thus rhetorically - engaging one another in the public sphere” (McDonald 199). McDonald explains how citizens are involved in these academic sociotechnical controversies when he says, “Sociotechnical controversies, that is, those pertaining to society, science, and technology, seem to occupy a particularly important place in the contemporary public sphere and are the subject of numerous analyses in various disciplines, including rhetoric and the sociology of science and technology” (McDonald 201). Ordinary citizens are usually not welcomed into contributing to sociotechnical controversies because they typically lack expertise in these fields; however, the presence of these controversies in the public sphere gives credibility to these lay audiences whose public lives revolve around sociotechnical stock issues. 

In “A Plan for Teaching the Development of Original Policy Arguments” David S. Kaufer defines stock issues: “Stock issues are points of disagreement that recur regularly when people deliberate on questions of justice or public policy” (Kaufer 57). Stock issues are widely addressed among individual citizens, especially in today’s digital world where they can discuss and respond to stock issues on public forums like blogs or social media. In the article, Kaufer says, “They knew that stock issues (1) aid invention by helping speakers single out from the list of stock issues those obtaining in the immediate case; (2) aid organization (or arrangement) by insuring speakers against omitting information needed to marshal a comprehensive argument; (3) aid adaptation of speech to audiences by guiding speakers to include the points audiences expected them to address” (Kaufer 57). In this instance, Kaufer is referring directly to students learning how to write about public policy but these aims of raising and discussing stock issues can also apply to individual citizens who interact with these stock issues outside the classroom. 

Both Kaufer and McDonald support the role of the individual citizen’s participation in these issues. Kaufer explains the role of the student - which can also be applied to individual citizens in general - when he says, “Instead of urging or opposing legal judgments, student policy writers urge or oppose actions…They are the judge because they are finally responsible for deciding the greater merit of one side over the other. They are the advocates because they must try to maximize the possibility that their decision has been informed, even if not equally influenced by, the analogies of both sides” (Kaufer 62). McDonald also takes a stance on individual citizens being beneficial to the deliberation process saying, “They suggest that, for a rhetorical democracy to flourish, controversies should be welcomed, encouraged, stimulated, and even organized in order to implicate ordinary citizens in government decision making” (McDonald 200).

Sociotechnical issues are often not seen as issues that the general public is knowledgeable about. In his chapter, McDonald says, “The main particularity of these controversies is their heterogeneity: the issues come from several registers, from ethics to economics, from psychology to atomic physics. As Lyne affirms, ‘science and technology controversies are not just about science and technology. They are also about our culture, our comfort, and our metaphysics’” (McDonald 201). This is, therefore, why the public is not often involved in the deliberation of these issues. McDonald, however, recognizes that the public should be involved in contributing to discussions and solutions of these issues because sociotechnical issues are about more than just science and technology at academic levels.

Individual citizens clearly have a place in the deliberation of stock issues or sociotechnical controversies, but what are the benefits of their involvement? McDonald defines public deliberation for us: “The aim of public deliberation therefore need not be to consolidate different points of view but rather to learn, understand, and test a party’s beliefs about an issue by juxtaposing them with those of an opposing party. Thus deliberation has the potential to generate new ways of interpreting a controversy, even when the parties do not arrive at an agreement” (McDonald 200). Allowing individual citizens to involve themselves in issues of public deliberation can be beneficial in resolving these issues because they are members of the general public who experience, relate to, respond to, or maybe sometimes even cause these issues. In his chapter, McDonald recognizes this important role of these individual citizens saying, “Remy and Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe have shown that ordinary citizens, when discussing technical issues, can think of solutions to complex scientific problems that have been overlooked by experts” (McDonald 201). 

These texts also both address that public deliberation does not always lead to one conclusion or solution. McDonald says, “This suggests that public deliberation is not only about persuasive strategies but also about developing a better comprehension of important issues and consequently modifying one’s initial opinion” (McDonald 215). This clearly suggests that the point of public deliberation is not always to achieve clearly outlined answers. Public deliberation is complex and because it involves so many audiences and contributors. Endless ideas and rhetorical situations can be created and each member of the public deliberation can learn something new or view an idea from a new perspective. 

- Christina Morgan

Kaufer, David S. "A Plan for Teaching the Development of Original Policy Arguments." College Composition and Communication. 35.1 (Feb. 1984): 57-70. Web. 

McDonald, James. "I Agree, But...Finding Alternatives to Controversial Projects Through Public Deliberation." Rhetoric and Public Deliberation. 199-217. Web. 

Analytic Reflection

For my Sci/Tech Blog “A New-Age Twist on Longhand Note-Taking” I focused on Mueller and Oppenheimer’s article “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard” using additional sources from Wired.com and International New York Times to build my own argument. The principal source that I used, the Mueller/Oppenheimer article, focused on how laptop note-taking in the current digital age is leading to decreased academic performance compared to traditional longhand note-taking. The other two sources that I used focused on the importance of newer technologies and how they are shaping the face of note-taking today. None of these articles focused on putting these two things together though. So for my blog post I brought out a new idea: what if new technologies like smartpens would allow for digital versions of handwritten notes so that students are still transcribing their own ideas and not losing out on information by typing lectures verbatim. 

To create a blog narrative, I took Rettberg’s Blogging into account, focusing on her definition of “blogging.” In the text, Rettberg uses the Oxford English Dictionary definition of “blog” as “A frequently updated website consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites” (Rettberg 34). This definition precisely describes the blog post that I created. My individual class blog takes my personal observations of note-taking as a current student into account while bringing in other sources through hyperlinks to their articles to provide credibility and citation on old and new note-taking technologies. Part of the assignment in creating a Sci/Tech blog was also to give our blogs a “Sci/Tech” appearance. I changed my blog temporarily for this assignment, changing the background and fonts. I created a new green background that I feel is fitting for the assignment and chose a serif font to give my blog post a sharp appearance. 

Rettberg also focuses on how blogging changed how we define authors and publishing saying that blogging “[opened] up publishing to regular people” (Rettberg 12). This is an important concept to consider for this assignment because as students and young professionals it is necessary to still take a credible stance on the issue. While I am not strictly a professional in the field of note-taking, I am a student who relies on note-taking to receive an education on a daily basis, thus giving me credibility on this issue. For some classes I use a laptop for note-taking and in others I am prohibited from using a laptop so I can argue for the benefits and detriments of both. 

In “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” Fahnestock focuses on how science writers accommodate to their non-science audiences. Referencing how science writers address their lay audiences, Fahnestock says, “Accommodating the scholarly piece for the non scholarly magazine is not, therefore, simply a matter of translating technical jargon into nontechnical equivalents” (Fahnestock 280). The same was necessary in writing my Sci/Tech blog. While I was translating information and creating a new idea about note-taking in the modern age, I was still writing for an academic audience; therefore, the assignment was not just about translating the issue into more understandable material, but presenting a new argument for a new audience. Fahnestock also says, “In the space limits of a short notice in a magazine of popularized science, there is not room for the qualifications a more knowledgeable audience would demand, qualifications that show the author’s awareness of the criticism and refutation that an expert audience could raise against his inferences” (Fahnestock 283). While only composing a short individual blog post, I had to establish credibility in that amount of space but only the credibility necessary for the audience I was trying to reach. This intended audience would be other students and frequent note-takers like myself. I established credibility quickly because of my knowledge of note-taking as an academic student as well as by providing hyperlinks for the articles I referenced so that readers can access them and gain more information for themselves without my unnecessarily lengthening my post to provide extraneous information that does not directly add to my specific argument. 

Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts.” Written Communication 3.3 (Jul. 1986): 275-96. JSTOR.

Rettburg, Jill Walker. Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series. Cambirdge, 2014. Print. 

A New-Age Twist on Longhand Note-Taking

Note-taking has recently become a topic of intellectual interest. Experiments have been conducted and conferences have been held to determine how modern technology has changed the face of note-taking and how this is affecting one’s ability to effectively take in and regurgitate information. The benefits of traditional longhand note-taking versus laptop note-taking have been widely discussed, but an alternative medium like the smartpen could be the answer to making hand-written notes digital for purposes of sustainability and shareability. 

Taking notes is an important mode of learning. Each individual person has their own methodology for note-taking in a manner that best facilitates their learning style. Ann Blair, a professor of history at Harvard is quoted in “Note-Taking’s Past, Deciphered Today” asking, “What is reading, after all? Even if you look introspectively, it’s hard to really know what you’re taking away at any given time. But notes give us hope of getting close to an intellectual process” (Schuessler). This stresses the importance of note-taking and why we should be working toward discovering the most effective note-taking mediums. 

While taking notes on a laptop allows for a student to record more information at a quicker pace, professors express concerns over the distractions that laptops offer. In the article “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard” Mueller and Oppenheimer state, “Empirical research tends to support the professors’ view, finding that students using laptops are not on task during lectures, show decreased academic performance, and are actually less satisfied with their education than their peers who do not use laptops in class” (Mueller/Oppenheimer 1). 

Because most students today are far more computer literate than previous generations, laptop note-taking allows them to record information quickly enough that their notes are verbatim to the lectures they are hearing. Mueller and Oppenheimer conducted three experiments, which are further explained in the previously linked article, to investigate how academic performance is affected by laptop versus longhand note-taking. The first experiment simply compared longhand and laptop notes without any instruction. Aiming to replicate these findings, the second experiment attempted to determine if instructional intervention not to record verbatim notes on laptops had an effect on performance. The third experiment tested whether students performed better after studying longhand notes versus laptop notes. 

All of these experiments ended with similar results. Those taking longhand notes recorded far fewer words than those using laptops and the lack of verbatim notes when using longhand resulted in superior performance in each experiment. Even when instructed not to take verbatim notes in the second experiment, it was completely ineffective in reducing verbatim content, once again leading to results proving superior academic performance after longhand note-taking. Mueller and Oppenheimer take these results into consideration, concluding, “For that reason, laptop use in classrooms should be viewed with a healthy dose of caution; despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in classrooms than good” (Mueller/Oppenheimer 8). 

Schuessler’s article focuses on a conference called “Take Note” which was intended to explore the history and future of the book. An attendee of the conference, Peter Burke, addresses the comparison of enthusiastic note-takers to “compulsive hoarders” saying, “But I distrusted the students who took lots of notes as much as the students who didn't take any” (Schuessler). This is a similar concern for professors who are beginning to ban the use of laptops in their classrooms due to the decreasing academic performance that results from verbatim note-taking on laptops. 

In addition, Schuessler includes that scholars at “Take Note” discussed the benefits of digital note-taking because it gives the ability to put notes in a more lasting form than paper and allows for easier sharing. David Weinberger, a Harvard technologist who attended the conference, is quoted in Schuessler’s article as saying, “Private note-taking seems selfish to me. Make it all public, using standards. Big clouds of notes!” (Schuessler). 

While there is adequate defense for both longhand and laptop note-taking, neither of these articles sought a medium that would encompass the benefits of both. Several smartpens have been created in recent years, which operate using wi-fi, allowing students to hand-write notes which are directly uploaded to a digital format. These pens can also simultaneously record audio so that students can go back and listen to lectures again and record any additional information they may not have had time to write down. In her article “Hands-On With Livescribe’s Sky Wi-Fi Smartpen,” Christina Bonnington discusses her personal experience using the smartpen and how the convenient technology allows for making hand-written notes digital. 

Technologies like the Sky Smartpen are still new mediums for note-taking and their affect on academic performance has yet to be fully tested. However, smartpens do provide a medium that allows for taking longhand notes that can be converted to a digital format, eliminating issues of laptop note-taking like verbatim content.

Analytic Reflection

Bonnington, Christina. “Hands-On With Livescribe’s Sky Wi-Fi Smartpen.” Wired.com. 29 

October 2012. Web. 

Mueller, Pam A. and Daniel M. Oppenheimer. “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: 

Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking.” Psychological Science. 23 April 

2014. Web. 

Schuessler, Jennifer. “Note-Taking’s Past, Deciphered Today.” International New York Times. 6 

November 2012. Web. 

Eradicating Criminalizing Homelessness through Mediated Public Discourse

In a report published by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, issues of how the homeless populations around the country are being criminalized as opposed to offering them a solution and giving them the means and education necessary to prevent homelessness to begin with are addressed. Early on in the article it is stated that, “The following report will document that people experiencing homelessness are subject to basic violations of their civil rights through the unconstitutional application of laws, arbitrary police practices and discriminatory public regulations” (6). This is an issue that is often just removed from sight rather than actually seeking a solution that benefits both the homeless communities and the rest of society who are concerned with how they are affected by these outcast members of their community. The organizations that created this report are in agreement that this is not an effective way to handle the issue, stating that, “We believe that working toward ending the causes of homelessness and not simply removing homeless people from view is cost effective, as well as just, and if presented to the general public in moral and economic terms would be widely supported” (7). 

The White Paper “Illegal to Be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States” acts explanatory in nature, detailing how and why homelessness is criminalized, while simultaneously functioning as a citizen’s genre by defending the homeless citizens of a community and offering a solution to end the “causes of homelessness” in a cost effective and just way. This public genre works surprisingly as mediated discourse in the way that it tackles this issue head on and offers real solutions to a problem that is often ignored out of convenience. It also complicates the notion of publicly mediated discourse by raising questions for the public to ponder and to persuade them to take action. 

By raising questions for the audience to take into account and act upon, this text creates a unique rhetorical situation to tackle this serious problem of civil and human rights. In her article “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” Fahnestock says, “With a significant change in rhetorical situation comes a change in genre” (Fahnestock 278). The organizations responsible for authoring this report change the rhetorical situation of issues of homelessness by uniquely pointing out how these citizens are being criminalized rather than being offered help to remove them from their negative living situations. Raising questions and thoroughly explaining what criminalizing the homeless means, a new citizen’s genre is created. Several questions are raised including, “Is society, willing to accept an economic system that not only tolerates but exacerbates homelessness?” and “Removing homeless people from public spaces in the name of improving the ‘quality of life’ of our cities begs the question - whose ‘quality of life’ are we improving and at what social and economic costs?” (79, 38). 

While this report of criminalizing homelessness is not strictly a scientific piece, its dealing with human rights and civil rights issues relates back to the Killingsworth/Palmer article on how scientific journalistic writing focuses on human interest. These scientific journalists use this focus on human interest to their benefit because, “It portrays what scientists often disparagingly call the ‘popular image of science,’ preferring applied research and engineering to theoretical concerns, and wavering between reverence and mistrust in its portrayal of the esoteric knowledge of scientists” (Killingsworth, Palmer 141). Killingsworth and Palmer’s discourse exemplifies how “Illegal to Be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States” complicates the notion of publicly mediated discourse because rather than this report becoming a ‘popular image’ it becomes the opposite. Governmental agencies who are largely responsible for criminalizing homelessness don’t want to shed light on this issue and attempt to solve the issue with solutions like the ones offered in this text, but rather cover up the issue. 

The way in which issues of criminalizing homelessness are ignored is because for many members of society, making these populations disappear without actually creating solutions still removes the issue from their site. This is what creates the human rights issues though, because, “The passage of laws that target behaviors associated with the state of being homeless, such as sleeping, bathing, sitting, cooking, lying down, urinating, or storing personal belongings in public spaces are unconstitutional because collectively, they target people based on their housing status, not for behaviors that, in and of themselves are criminal” (12). 

Homelessness continues to be a problem because of increasing housing costs while incomes remain the same, lack of education and other necessary resources, and the way in which poverty has become institutionalized, making a career out of the economic situations of these individuals. The organizations responsible for this article also address concerns for why these human rights issues are not widely addressed, pointing out that, “The average individual in this country is unaware of the causes of homelessness, the conditions in which homeless people are forced to live, as well as solutions to this most desperate form of poverty” (53). This report’s explanatory nature on how and why homelessness is criminalized creates a citizen’s genre that protects homeless populations and offers real solutions to eradicating homelessness in the US; however, whether these types of reports are widely shared and read by the public to create a mediated discourse in which the issue can be adequately tackled is still in question. 

Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific

Facts.” Written Communication 3.3 (Jul. 1986): 275-96. JSTOR.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, and Jacqueline S. Palmer. “Transformations of Scientific Discourse in the News Media.” In Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois U P, 1992. 133-60. Print.

Can Blogs Stand As Their Own Genre?

The term “blog” is one that has continually evolved since its initial existence. The first blogs were called “weblogs” and the term was eventually shortened to “blog” as the cultural definition of the word changed and was eventually included in the Oxford English Dictionary as, “A frequently updated website consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary” (Rettberg 34). 

As blogs transformed into what we define blogs as today, it “[opened] up publishing to regular people” (Rettburg 12). This is true with social media as well, especially with sites like Twitter and Facebook where anyone can be an author and publish private and personal information for the whole world to see. An online diarist, Carolyn Burke, who Rettburg mentions in her book, talks about how blogging allowed for people to freely expose their lives for the first time. Rettburg describes this saying, “The early years of the web were characterized by utopianism and optimism: finally, everybody would be able to communicate freely” (Rettburg 12).  This was an amazing phenomenon in the early years of the web but as blogs have expanded and changed it is important to consider what the results are. What happens when people can freely communicate and expose their inner lives? Are people really being open and honest or is the system abused at times?

Rettburg discusses the rapidity with which blogging became a large part of social media culture: “These figures are astounding in demonstrating the eagerness of humanity to communicate. In 2008, the term ‘social media’ was adopted and rapidly entered the mainstream as a broad category that describes the online many-to-many communication” (Rettburg 13). Miller and Shepherd recognize two themes of this blogging that is omnipresent in today’s culture, “self-expression and community development” (Miller/Shepherd). These themes are what fuel the masses to blog and the even bigger masses to consume blogs, but the intent from bloggers and expectations of blog readers has been largely debated. 

As the “eagerness of humanity to communicate” has led to the transformation of what we consider to be blogging today, the intent to both cultivate the self and to provide for the public has created a unique and vast medium that is a genre of its own. 

Blogging has largely begun to intersect with journalism. Bloggers have the ability to give first-hand accounts of events around the world, to tell stories, and to follow and filter mainstream media and news. Rettburg offers a description of how this differs from journalism: “…central tenet of journalism: the expectation that journalists are reliable and tell the truth objectively…” (Rettburg 93). Because bloggers do not follow the same guidelines as journalists, their writing is subjective and offers no guarantee of the truth. This causes concern over what happens when telling the truth isn't enforced, but Rettburg offers statistics that show this may not actually be very concerning to the majority of blog readers when she says, “In this survey, 61.4 per cent of respondents stated that they read blogs because there was ‘more honesty’, while 50.3 per cent found the ‘transparent biases’ of blogs an important factor in their choice to read blogs” (Rettburg 98). These statistics are surprising and beg the question of how much we actually trust journalism and how and why bloggers are creating this sense of trust and validity in their readers. 

The article by Miller and Shepherd takes a different stance on blogging, saying, “The blog-as-genre is a contemporary contribution to the art of the self” (Miller/Shepherd). This article largely focuses on how individual bloggers are more concerned with self validation and exposing their private lives than with the complex rhetorical situations that their blogs are creating when they are read by the masses. Miller and Shepherd provide proof for this stance on blogging intentions when they say, “Because the personal form of the blog is what seems to both motivate and satisfy the readers and writers of blogs and thus to have particular evolutionary survival value, we suspect that the generic exigence that motivates bloggers is related less to the need for information than to the self and the relations between selves” (Miller/Shepherd). This focus on the self rather than the result of how the information will be interpreted by large audiences has created a “mediated identity” according to Miller and Shepherd. Being able to cultivate the self in such a public setting is something unique to blogging and this is what caused the resulting genre of the blog. This genre can be broken down into many things, as the vast definition of what a blog actually is has been previously mentioned. However, this definition of the blog as its own genre accurately showcases how central the self is to the world of blogging. 

The ability of the world to so freely expose their inner lives has had many positive and negative results. Miller and Shepherd’s article refers to several examples at the beginning in which bloggers were initially unaware of the large audience that their writing received and this often did not end how they wanted. There are also positive aspects when bloggers build their fan base and credibility and can deliver fast and first-person views of world events like the Virginia Tech shooting or the War in Iraq in ways that journalism can not. 

The worldwide use of social media, which is very similar to blogging in a micro sense, may continue to change the way we view and utilize blogging. What are the results of this free communication? And what will be the results of anyone being able to expose their inner lives? 



Miller, Carolyn R. and Dawn Shepherd. “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog.” Into the Blogosphere [Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs]. North Carolina State University. Web. 14 September 2014. 

Rettburg, Jill Walker. Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series. Cambirdge, 2014. Print. 

In Response to Ethical Concerns: http://aubreyburrough.blogspot.com

When the audience for scientific writing shifts from the scientific community to the general public, changes must be made to accommodate to a wider audience. Both “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts” by Jeanne Fahnestock and “Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America” by Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline Palmer address whether these accommodations are ethically sound.

Fahnestock explains the genre shift that occurs when a rhetorical situation necessitates that the science address a larger audience: “With a significant change in rhetorical situation comes a change in genre, and instead of simply reporting facts for a different audience, scientific accommodations are overwhelmingly epideictic, their main purpose is to celebrate rather than validate” (Fahnestock 278-279). This genre shift is also addressed by Killingsworth and Palmer who focus on how appealing to human interests rather than a scientific community causes change: “The emphasis on human interest carries the journalist out of the field of natural science and into the action-oriented fields of social movements and politics” (Killingsworth, Palmer 135).

In response to whether these accommodations of scientific texts for broader audiences is ethically sound: These accommodations, while appealing to a larger audience, take on epideictic aims in which the public is learning about new scientific findings but the facts are no longer validated which is causing these texts to lose their pedagogical nature. This also begs the question of what the public is actually gaining if the information is not validated and scientifically accurate.

In “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” Fahnestock examines two magazines, both published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in which two texts on the same subject provide very different background information and scientific information because their intended audience and purpose for reading changes from the scientific community to a lay audience. Fahnestock says, “Accommodating the scholarly piece for the non scholarly magazine is not, therefore, simply a matter of translating technical jargon into nontechnical equivalents” (Fahnestock 280). While the change in jargon is only intended to accommodate readers who are not experts on the subject, the information is still changed in the shift of this rhetorical situation, which Fahnestock mentions saying, “The science accommodator is not telling an untruth; he simply selects only the information that serves his epideictic purpose” (Fahnestock 281). Even though these changes may not be made with any intention of lessening the information provided to the broader audience, if the broader audiences are unaware of the information they may be losing, ethics can be called into question.

Killingsworth and Palmer address the ethics of the change in rhetorical situation from a scientific audience to a broader audience by examining what happens when there is a change from a “news” story to a “human interest” story. According the “Ecospeak” article, “Human interest is the leading factor in determining what scientific activities will be covered as big stories” (Killingsworth, Palmer 134). Killingsworth and Palmer recognize two issues with the human interest approach: “First, it insists that science must have social value outside of its own pursuits…that science cannot be an end in itself…Second, this approach insists that science must not only be applied to general human problems but…science must solve human problems” (Killingsworth, Palmer 135). This is creating a movement from providing information from a scientific outlook to a journalistic approach based on social movements and politics to draw attention rather than provide accurate information to the public. It appears that this is also an issue for Fahnestock who says, “In the space limits of a short notice in a magazine of popularized science, there is not room for the qualifications a more knowledgeable audience would demand, qualifications that show the author’s awareness of the criticism and refutation that an expert audience could raise against his inferences” (Fahnestock 283). Because broader audiences are unaware of the lack of information they are receiving in comparison to expert audiences, there is no demand for a change in the way popularized science magazines and journals present their information.

The “Ecospeak” article pays particular attention to magazines like Time, one of the largest circulated magazines in the world. Because these types of publications focus largely on human interest stories, “It portrays what scientists often disparagingly call the ‘popular image of science,’ preferring applied research and engineering to theoretical concerns, and wavering between reverence and mistrust in its portrayal of the esoteric knowledge of scientists” (Killingsworth, Palmer 141). Rather than focusing on providing accurate and scientific information to its broad audience, these magazines pick articles highlighting big issues for their cover stories to receive attention and readership.

Whether it should still be considered ethically unsound to provide inaccurate and unvalidated information to a general audience who is unaware of this issue is a difficult question to tackle but one that is worthy of attention and discussion.

Christina Morgan

http://aubreyburrough.blogspot.com

Short Assignment #1 - "The Future of Reading" by Jonah Lehrer

In a blog post titled “The Future of Reading,” Jonah Lehrer brings to light a pertinent issue that is arising in response to current technology making it easier than ever before to read and buy books; however, “[His] problem is that consumer technology moves in a single direction: It’s constantly making it easier for us to perceive the content” (Lehrer). The ongoing shift to e-books becoming the main medium for reading allows for content to be more accessible but this deters readers from reading slowly and actually taking in the content. Lehrer explains the reason for this by bringing in research from Stanislas Dehaene, a neuroscientist at College de France. According to Dehaene, the literate brain has two distinct pathways for making sense of words. The first is the ventral route which is a process of grouping letters into words into semantic meaning. Lehrer says, “When you are reading a straightforward sentence, or a paragraph full of tropes and cliches, you're almost certainly relying on this ventral neural highway” (Lehrer). Whenever something on a page forces us to pay conscious attention to a sentence, the second reading pathway, called the dorsal stream, is turned on. This force to pay closer attention to what we are reading is necessary for Lehrer who suggests a solution to the easily perceivable content provided by consumer technology: “I’d love them to include a feature that allows us to undo their ease, to make the act of reading just a little bit more difficult” (Lehrer). By bringing in an intertextual component through the use of the neuroscience research regarding the brain’s two distinct reading pathways, the rhetorical situation that Lehrer creates in “The Future of Reading” brings meaning to this discourse as an argument for the way in which consumer technology is making it easier to perceive content. 

In his journal article “Rhetorical Situations and their Constituents,” Grant-Davie defines the rhetorical situation as “a situation where a speaker or writer sees a need to change reality and sees that the change may be effected through rhetorical discourse” (Grant-Davie 265). Lehrer has created the kind of rhetorical situation that Grant-Davie is referring to as he sees a need to change the way in which consumer technology is making content easier for readers to perceive and affecting their ability to really understand texts. In order to address this rhetorical situation, Lehrer’s discourse touches on all four of Grant-Davie’s constituents for situation. The first, exigence, is clearly explained by Lehrer when he says, “I do have a nagging problem with the merger of screens and sentences. My problem is that consumer technology moves in a single direction: It’s constantly making it easier for us to perceive the content” (Lehrer). This clearly addresses what the discourse is about and why it is needed and Lehrer also later explains in the article what accomplishing his discourse will do: make reading more difficult so that readers will better understand the words they are consuming. Grant-Davie’s second constituent, rhetor(s), makes Lehrer the rhetor in this situation as he is the only one directly providing the discourse. The third constituent is audience which Grant-Davie defines as “Those people, real or imagined, with whom rhetors negotiate through discourse to achieve the rhetorical objectives” (Grant-Davie 270). Following this definition, the many audiences for Lehrer’s discourse include book consumers and those involved in industries providing books to consumers. The final constituent, the constraints, are “Factors in the situation’s context that may affect the achievement of the rhetorical objectives” (Grant-Davie 272). Numerous constraints can arise in any given rhetorical situation and Lehrer’s in particular include intertextual information like the neuroscience study on distinct reading pathways (which could be considered a positive constraint) and the fact that it has never been easier to buy and read books (which could be considered a negative constraint as most people would view this as a good thing). 

Using Porter’s definition for “intertextuality” from his article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” the way in which Lehrer’s blog post functions as an “intertext” can be clearly understood. According to Porter, all texts are interdependent and we can understand a text only insofar as we understand its precursors (Porter 34). This leads Porter to define intertextuality as, “the principle that all writing and speech - and, indeed, all signs - arise from a single network” (Porter 34). In “The Future of Reading” Lehrer provides several examples of “intertext” which include e-books like the Kindle, a reference to Shakespearean language, and included the most, information from a neuroscientist on the two distinct literary brain pathways and how these come into play in reference to new consumer technology. These examples of “intertext” present in Lehrer’s blog represent both of Porter’s types of intertextuality. Presupposition, which Porter says, “refers to assumptions a text makes about its referent, its readers, and its context,” would include the reference to Shakespeare in the blog because Lehrer does not include any sort of background information on Shakespeare as he is an important literary figure whose name provides all of the information necessary (Porter 35). The inclusion of the distinct literary brain pathways, however, is an example of iterability which, “refers to the ‘repeatability’ of certain textual fragments, to citation in its broadest sense to include…unannounced sources and influences…” (Porter 35). If Lehrer had simply mentioned that a neuroscientist had previously defined two types of brain pathways for reading, the average reader would not understand how this information applies to the rest of the blog post. Lehrer brings in this information then explains in depth what the two distinct pathways are and how they affect the ability of readers to perceive a text through new consumer technology. By providing this explanation, Lehrer gives meaning to his discourse so that the rhetorical situation he has created can be understood by his audience and a solution can be provided to force consumers to step away from the technology and begin receiving a deep understanding from reading once again.