Analytical Reflection

Throughout this spring semester, I was introduced to countless gruesome yet exciting projects in Advanced Editing an Writing of which I have learned to withhold an argument and connection with my audience to creating claims and working on editing tasks. However, our Wikipedia project was by far the hardest struggle I had to endure throughout this course but also, it was insightful and prepared me for the type of job I hope to get out of college.

During this course I was taught to draw from each critical texts we had to read that week and argue and connect (sometimes contrast) what their concepts are with how you feel towards a certain topic that was discussed. Our Wikipedia article that spoke on the subject of “Multimodality” had countless theorists and authors referenced but the most important aspect of all was that we had no original claims, and everything that was written was written from our own writing with help to support our argument using other texts.

According to Ridolfo and DeVoss in order to create rhetorical velocity, one would have to “mix, mash and merge.” With Wikipedia, rhetorical velocity is a common factor to be used and executed, especially with this type of online encyclopedia. It creates a much simpler way of knowing how to create and identify a digital composition to your audience. Creating a digital composition such as this Wikipedia entry, I struggled with the claims of each subsection of our article to include in the Lead. The reoccurring question was “What is important in this section that the reader must know in the Lead?” However, with applying rhetorical velocity my group and I found it much easier to make each and every claim flow and come together.

On another note, Lazere taught me that oversimplification isn’t something as valuable as rhetoric. Within Wikipedia and following its rules of “not too wordy” with “no original claims,” etc., rhetoric gives the best dialectical discourse and connection between audience and speaker. Even though Wikipedia isn’t an “essay based” website nor is it a collegiate level website but, it is one that most young teens/adults use. Without my knowledge of rhetoric, I would have found it extremely difficult to deliver my argument and connect with my audience.

Hood really prepared me to lookout for bias information and original research. She mentions in her article, "to focus, then, on the accuracy or inaccuracy of facts, the biased presentation of information, or even the appearance of an obscene fragment of text in a Wikipedia entry..." Because writing is such a process, it becomes a recursive task in which makes us constantly change our opinions in what we want to argue or even simply to get our point across. This Wikipedia project really put a lot in perspective for me along the lines of possible job careers and with my own writing itself.

Work Cited:

Lazere, Donald. “Avoiding Oversimplification and Recognizing Complexity.” In Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005. 244-256.

Ridolfo, Jim, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss. “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery.” Kairos 13.2 (2008).http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/13.2/topoi/ridolfo_devoss/intro.html

Hood, Cara Leah. “Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy.” 2008. Available online at http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/english/cconline/wiki_hood/index.html

"Mix Mash and Merge"

As a writer, it is important to be aware of your flaws so you repeat them less and less to where you have completely gotten rid of it. To a certain extent, we as writers attempt to untangle grammatically incorrect statements and attack others opinions to revitalize our own but Jones made it clear that we all have different and multiple standpoints. Editing the Wikipedia article “Rhetorical Velocity,” gave me a lot of insight and practice on editing the larger portion of this assignment. Small errors are my main forefront of writing errors. Actually performing the edits and seeing these edits from a different standpoint, allowed me to completely grasp what my problem is.

In Lazere’s article, chapter 10, “Avoiding Oversimplification and Recognizing Complexity,” she mentions that oversimplification is the essence of generalities such as advertising, talk radio, TV programs, propaganda, etc. When this statement from Lazere came to mind, I thought would this apply to rhetorical velocity? Ridolfo and DeVoss created a much simpler way of knowing how to create and identify rhetorical velocity which is to “mix, mash and merge.” Since rhetorical velocity can be considered to be a digital composition, I wanted to apply the concept when I edited the Wikipedia article I chose. The article, “Construction Sets” had little to no information, no references and no in-text citations nor were there any references inside the text itself. Instantly, I knew my first task was to search for reliable references that my audience and I can refer to when reading and understanding the process of “construction sets.” It is crucial to concentrate more on the body of the product and the claim and its importance rather than focusing on completing a product.

Because I am trained to react to worry about “completing” an assignment rather than focusing on certain aspects of the product, Hood really prepared me to lookout for bias information and original research. Hood mentions in her article, "to focus, then, on the accuracy or inaccuracy of facts, the biased presentation of information, or even the appearance of an obscene fragment of text in a Wikipedia entry..." Because writing is such a process, it becomes a recursive task in which makes us constantly change our opinions in what we want to argue or even simply to get our point across.

However, Lazere taught me that oversimplification isn’t something as valuable as rhetoric. Where as rhetoric gives the best dialectical discourse and connection between audience and speaker and oversimplification gives the lowest result of that. I felt no connection once reading my Wikipedia article. I want to improve my writing skills by being able to expand a work that has many generalities but, the medium being Wikipedia, I was nervous and skeptical on how I should word my input. I want my audience, and Wikipedia’s audience,  to be able to workout through example and by meaning and discourse, what construction sets were and how they worked and their purpose. Congressman Newt Gingrich quoted, “You have to give them confrontation;” something to work through the audience’s thinking to get them to oversimplify.

Another quality of the article I noticed before I edited was its overgeneralizations and its wordy phrases and statements. In fact, the Lead was what confused me so much; I actually was going in circles trying to unpack exactly what this previous author was struggling to say. After skyping with our friend from Wikipedia, she gave me a ton of insight but one in particular stuck out to me which was to remember that majority of the writers are students and young adults, however, not everyone has a collegiate brain and some don’t understand what the word “discourse” entails and what it does. In other words, that is what I mostly struggled with, allowing myself to still be formal and professional in my writing but not to sound too “smart” and be “wordy.” The previous author seemed as if they did not fully prepare their facts and evidence with cases to back up their claim. If Corbett and Eberly were to have read this article they would have responded with, “You can spot discourses that beg the question by looking for such words as obviously… any defense lower would say ‘objection!’ if the prosecution were to say to the jury, ‘obviously, she is guilty.’”

                                                              Work Cited

Ridolfo, Jim, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss. “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery.” Kairos 13.2 (2008). http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/13.2/topoi/ridolfo_devoss/intro.html

Lazere, Donald. “Avoiding Oversimplification and Recognizing Complexity.” In Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005. 244-256.

Ridolfo, Jim, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss. “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery.” Kairos 13.2 (2008). http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/13.2/topoi/ridolfo_devoss/intro.html

Hood, Cara Leah. “Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy.” 2008. Available online at http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/english/cconline/wiki_hood/index.html