“Chapter 4: Perception And Readings On Argument”
Chapter 4: Perception and Readings on Argument
Think back to the first day of classes. Did you plan ahead for what you were going to wear? Did you get the typical school supplies together? Did you try to find your classrooms ahead of time or look for the syllabus online? Did you look up your professors on an online professor evaluation site? Based on your answers to these questions, I could form an impression of who you are as a student. But would that perception be accurate? Would it match up with how you see yourself as a student? And perception, of course, is a two-way street. You also formed impressions about your professors based on their appearance, dress, organization, intelligence, and approachability. As a professor who teaches others how to teach, I instruct my student-teachers to really take the first day of class seriously. The impressions that both teacher and student make on the first day help set the tone for the rest of the semester.
As we go through our daily lives we perceive all sorts of people and objects, and we often make sense of these perceptions by using previous experiences to help filter and organize the information we take in. Sometimes we encounter new or contradictory information that changes the way we think about a person, group, or object. The perceptions that we make of others and that others make of us affect how we communicate and act. In this chapter, we will learn about the perception process, how we perceive others, how we perceive and present ourselves, and how we can improve our perceptions.
Perception Process
Learning Objectives
1. Define perception.
2. Discuss how salience influences the selection of perceptual information.
3. Explain the ways in which we organize perceptual information.
4. Discuss the role of schemata in the interpretation of perceptual information.
Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information. This process, which is shown in Figure 2.1 “The Perception Process”, includes the perception of select stimuli that pass through our perceptual filters, are organized into our existing structures and patterns, and are then interpreted based on previous experiences. Although perception is a largely cognitive and psychological process, how we perceive the people and objects around us affects our communication. We respond differently to an object or person that we perceive favorably than we do to something we find unfavorable. But how do we filter through the mass amounts of incoming information, organize it, and make meaning from what makes it through our perceptual filters and into our social realities?
Selecting Information
We take in information through all five of our senses, but our perceptual field (the world around us) includes so many stimuli that it is impossible for our brains to process and make sense of it all. So, as information comes in through our senses, various factors influence what actually continues on through the perception process (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Selecting is the first part of the perception process, in which we focus our attention on certain incoming sensory information. Think about how, out of many other possible stimuli to pay attention to, you may hear a familiar voice in the hallway, see a pair of shoes you want to buy from across the mall, or smell something cooking for dinner when you get home from work. We quickly cut through and push to the background all kinds of sights, smells, sounds, and other stimuli, but how do we decide what to select and what to leave out?
Figure 2.1 The Perception Process
We tend to pay attention to information that is salient. Salience is the degree to which something attracts our attention in a particular context. The thing attracting our attention can be abstract, like a concept, or concrete, like an object. For example, a person’s identity as a Native American may become salient when they are protesting at the Columbus Day parade in Denver, Colorado. Or a bright flashlight shining in your face while camping at night is sure to be salient. The degree of salience depends on three features (Fiske & Tayor, 1991). We tend to find salient things that are visually or aurally stimulating and things that meet our needs or interests. Lastly, expectations affect what we find salient.
Visual and Aural Stimulation
It is probably not surprising to learn that visually and/or aurally stimulating things become salient in our perceptual field and get our attention. Creatures ranging from fish to hummingbirds are attracted to things like silver spinners on fishing poles or red and yellow bird feeders. Having our senses stimulated isn’t always a positive thing though. Think about the couple that won’t stop talking during the movie or the upstairs neighbor whose subwoofer shakes your ceiling at night. In short, stimuli can be attention-getting in a productive or distracting way. As communicators, we can use this knowledge to our benefit by minimizing distractions when we have something important to say. It’s probably better to have a serious conversation with a significant other in a quiet place rather than a crowded food court. As we will learn later in “Public Speaking in Various Contexts”, altering the rate, volume, and pitch of your voice, known as vocal variety, can help keep your audience engaged, as can gestures and movement. Conversely, nonverbal adaptors, or nervous movements we do to relieve anxiety like pacing or twirling our hair, can be distracting. Aside from minimizing distractions and delivering our messages enthusiastically, the content of our communication also affects salience.
Needs and Interests
We tend to pay attention to information that we perceive to meet our needs or interests in some way. This type of selective attention can help us meet instrumental needs and get things done. When you need to speak with a financial aid officer about your scholarships and loans, you sit in the waiting room and listen for your name to be called. Paying close attention to whose name is called means you can be ready to start your meeting and hopefully get your business handled. When we don’t think certain messages meet our needs, stimuli that would normally get our attention may be completely lost. Imagine you are in the grocery store and you hear someone say your name. You turn around, only to hear that person say, “Finally! I said your name three times. I thought you forgot who I was!” A few seconds before, when you were focused on figuring out which kind of orange juice to get, you were attending to the various pulp options to the point that you tuned other stimuli out, even something as familiar as the sound of someone calling your name. Again, as communicators, especially in persuasive contexts, we can use this to our advantage by making it clear how our message or proposition meets the needs of our audience members. Whether a sign helps us find the nearest gas station, the sound of a ringtone helps us find our missing cell phone, or a speaker tells us how avoiding processed foods will improve our health, we select and attend to information that meets our needs.
If you’re engrossed in an interesting video game, you may not notice other perceptual cues.
R Pollard – tex playing video games – CC BY 2.0.
We also find salient information that interests us. Of course, many times, stimuli that meet our needs are also interesting, but it’s worth discussing these two items separately because sometimes we find things interesting that don’t necessarily meet our needs. I’m sure we’ve all gotten sucked into a television show, video game, or random project and paid attention to that at the expense of something that actually meets our needs like cleaning or spending time with a significant other. Paying attention to things that interest us but don’t meet specific needs seems like the basic formula for procrastination that we are all familiar with.
In many cases we know what interests us and we automatically gravitate toward stimuli that match up with that. For example, as you filter through radio stations, you likely already have an idea of what kind of music interests you and will stop on a station playing something in that genre while skipping right past stations playing something you aren’t interested in. Because of this tendency, we often have to end up being forced into or accidentally experiencing something new in order to create or discover new interests. For example, you may not realize you are interested in Asian history until you are required to take such a course and have an engaging professor who sparks that interest in you. Or you may accidentally stumble on a new area of interest when you take a class you wouldn’t otherwise because it fits into your schedule. As communicators, you can take advantage of this perceptual tendency by adapting your topic and content to the interests of your audience.
Expectations
The relationship between salience and expectations is a little more complex. Basically, we can find expected things salient and find things that are unexpected salient. While this may sound confusing, a couple examples should illustrate this point. If you are expecting a package to be delivered, you might pick up on the slightest noise of a truck engine or someone’s footsteps approaching your front door. Since we expect something to happen, we may be extra tuned in to clues that it is coming. In terms of the unexpected, if you have a shy and soft-spoken friend who you overhear raising the volume and pitch of his voice while talking to another friend, you may pick up on that and assume that something out of the ordinary is going on. For something unexpected to become salient, it has to reach a certain threshold of difference. If you walked into your regular class and there were one or two more students there than normal, you may not even notice. If you walked into your class and there was someone dressed up as a wizard, you would probably notice. So, if we expect to experience something out of the routine, like a package delivery, we will find stimuli related to that expectation salient. If we experience something that we weren’t expecting and that is significantly different from our routine experiences, then we will likely find it salient. We can also apply this concept to our communication. I always encourage my students to include supporting material in their speeches that defies our expectations. You can help keep your audience engaged by employing good research skills to find such information.
There is a middle area where slight deviations from routine experiences may go unnoticed because we aren’t expecting them. To go back to the earlier example, if you aren’t expecting a package, and you regularly hear vehicle engines and sidewalk foot traffic outside your house, those pretty routine sounds wouldn’t be as likely to catch your attention, even if it were slightly more or less traffic than expected. This is because our expectations are often based on previous experience and patterns we have observed and internalized, which allows our brains to go on “autopilot” sometimes and fill in things that are missing or overlook extra things. Look at the following sentence and read it aloud: Percpetoin is bsaed on pateetrns, maening we otfen raech a cocnlsuion witouht cosnidreing ecah indviidaul elmenet. This example illustrates a test of our expectation and an annoyance to every college student. We have all had the experience of getting a paper back with typos and spelling errors circled. This can be frustrating, especially if we actually took the time to proofread.
When we first learned to read and write, we learned letter by letter. A teacher or parent would show us a card with A P-P-L-E written on it, and we would sound it out. Over time, we learned the patterns of letters and sounds and could see combinations of letters and pronounce the word quickly. Since we know what to expect when we see a certain pattern of letters, and know what comes next in a sentence since we wrote the paper, we don’t take the time to look at each letter as we proofread. This can lead us to overlook common typos and spelling errors, even if we proofread something multiple times. As a side note, I’ll share two tips to help you avoid proofreading errors: First, have a friend proofread your paper. Since they didn’t write it, they have fewer expectations regarding the content. Second, read your papers backward. Since patterns of speech aren’t the same in reverse you have to stop and focus on each word. Now that we know how we select stimuli, let’s turn our attention to how we organize the information we receive.
Organizing Information
Organizing is the second part of the perception process, in which we sort and categorize information that we perceive based on innate and learned cognitive patterns. Three ways we sort things into patterns are by using proximity, similarity, and difference (Coren, 1980). In terms of proximity, we tend to think that things that are close together go together. For example, have you ever been waiting to be helped in a business and the clerk assumes that you and the person standing beside you are together? The slightly awkward moment usually ends when you and the other person in line look at each other, then back at the clerk, and one of you explains that you are not together. Even though you may have never met that other person in your life, the clerk used a basic perceptual organizing cue to group you together because you were standing in proximity to one another.
Since we organize perceptual information based on proximity, a person may perceive that two people are together, just because they are standing close together in line. Wikimedia Commons – public domain.
We also group things together based on similarity. We tend to think similar-looking or similar-acting things belong together. I have two friends that I occasionally go out with, and we are all three males, around the same age, of the same race, with short hair and glasses. Aside from that, we don’t really look alike, but on more than one occasion a server at a restaurant has assumed that we’re brothers. Despite the fact that many of our other features are different, the salient features are organized based on similarity and the three of us are suddenly related.
We also organize information that we take in based on difference. In this case, we assume that the item that looks or acts different from the rest doesn’t belong with the group. Perceptual errors involving people and assumptions of difference can be especially awkward, if not offensive. My friend’s mother, who is Vietnamese American, was attending a conference at which another attendee assumed she was a hotel worker and asked her to throw something away for her. In this case, my friend’s mother was a person of color at a convention with mostly white attendees, so an impression was formed based on the other person’s perception of this difference.
These strategies for organizing information are so common that they are built into how we teach our children basic skills and how we function in our daily lives. I’m sure we all had to look at pictures in grade school and determine which things went together and which thing didn’t belong. If you think of the literal act of organizing something, like your desk at home or work, we follow these same strategies. If you have a bunch of papers and mail on the top of your desk, you will likely sort papers into separate piles for separate classes or put bills in a separate place than personal mail. You may have one drawer for pens, pencils, and other supplies and another drawer for files. In this case you are grouping items based on similarities and differences. You may also group things based on proximity, for example, by putting financial items like your checkbook, a calculator, and your pay stubs in one area so you can update your budget efficiently. In summary, we simplify information and look for patterns to help us more efficiently communicate and get through life.
Simplification and categorizing based on patterns isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, without this capability we would likely not have the ability to speak, read, or engage in other complex cognitive/behavioral functions. Our brain innately categorizes and files information and experiences away for later retrieval, and different parts of the brain are responsible for different sensory experiences. In short, it is natural for things to group together in some ways. There are differences among people, and looking for patterns helps us in many practical ways. However, the judgments we place on various patterns and categories are not natural; they are learned and culturally and contextually relative. Our perceptual patterns do become unproductive and even unethical when the judgments we associate with certain patterns are based on stereotypical or prejudicial thinking.
We also organize interactions and interpersonal experiences based on our firsthand experiences. When two people experience the same encounter differently, misunderstandings and conflict may result. Punctuation refers to the structuring of information into a timeline to determine the cause (stimulus) and effect (response) of our communication interactions (Sillars, 1980). Applying this concept to interpersonal conflict can help us see how the perception process extends beyond the individual to the interpersonal level. This concept also helps illustrate how organization and interpretation can happen together and how interpretation can influence how we organize information and vice versa.
Where does a conflict begin and end? The answer to this question depends on how the people involved in the conflict punctuate, or structure, their conflict experience. Punctuation differences can often escalate conflict, which can lead to a variety of relationship problems (Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 1967). For example, Linda and Joe are on a project team at work and have a deadline approaching. Linda has been working on the project over the weekend in anticipation of her meeting with Joe first thing Monday morning. She has had some questions along the way and has e-mailed Joe for clarification and input, but he hasn’t responded. On Monday morning, Linda walks into the meeting room, sees Joe, and says, “I’ve been working on this project all weekend and needed your help. I e-mailed you three times! What were you doing?” Joe responds, “I had no idea you e-mailed me. I was gone all weekend on a camping trip.” In this instance, the conflict started for Linda two days ago and has just started for Joe. So, for the two of them to most effectively manage this conflict, they need to communicate so that their punctuation, or where the conflict started for each one, is clear and matches up. In this example, Linda made an impression about Joe’s level of commitment to the project based on an interpretation she made after selecting and organizing incoming information. Being aware of punctuation is an important part of perception checking, which we will discuss later. Let’s now take a closer look at how interpretation plays into the perception process.
Interpreting Information
Although selecting and organizing incoming stimuli happens very quickly, and sometimes without much conscious thought, interpretation can be a much more deliberate and conscious step in the perception process. Interpretation is the third part of the perception process, in which we assign meaning to our experiences using mental structures known as schemata. Schemata are like databases of stored, related information that we use to interpret new experiences. We all have fairly complicated schemata that have developed over time as small units of information combine to make more meaningful complexes of information.
Schemata are like lenses that help us make sense of the perceptual cues around us based on previous knowledge and experience. Darren Shaw – Glasses – CC BY-NC 2.0.
We have an overall schema about education and how to interpret experiences with teachers and classmates. This schema started developing before we even went to preschool based on things that parents, peers, and the media told us about school. For example, you learned that certain symbols and objects like an apple, a ruler, a calculator, and a notebook are associated with being a student or teacher. You learned new concepts like grades and recess, and you engaged in new practices like doing homework, studying, and taking tests. You also formed new relationships with teachers, administrators, and classmates. As you progressed through your education, your schema adapted to the changing environment. How smooth or troubling schema reevaluation and revision is varies from situation to situation and person to person. For example, some students adapt their schema relatively easily as they move from elementary, to middle, to high school, and on to college and are faced with new expectations for behavior and academic engagement. Other students don’t adapt as easily, and holding onto their old schema creates problems as they try to interpret new information through old, incompatible schema. We’ve all been in a similar situation at some point in our lives, so we know that revising our schemata can be stressful and that such revision takes effort and usually involves some mistakes, disappointments, and frustrations. But being able to adapt our schemata is a sign of cognitive complexity, which is an important part of communication competence. So, even though the process may be challenging, it can also be a time for learning and growth.
It’s important to be aware of schemata because our interpretations affect our behavior. For example, if you are doing a group project for class and you perceive a group member to be shy based on your schema of how shy people communicate, you may avoid giving him presentation responsibilities in your group project because you do not think shy people make good public speakers. Schemata also guide our interactions, providing a script for our behaviors. We know, in general, how to act and communicate in a waiting room, in a classroom, on a first date, and on a game show. Even a person who has never been on a game show can develop a schema for how to act in that environment by watching The Price Is Right, for example. People go to great lengths to make shirts with clever sayings or act enthusiastically in hopes of being picked to be a part of the studio audience and hopefully become a contestant on the show.
We often include what we do for a living in our self-introductions, which then provides a schema through which others interpret our communication.
David Weekly – Professions! – CC BY 2.0.
As we have seen, schemata are used to interpret others’ behavior and form impressions about who they are as a person. To help this process along, we often solicit information from people to help us place them into a preexisting schema. In the United States and many other Western cultures, people’s identities are often closely tied to what they do for a living. When we introduce others, or ourselves, occupation is usually one of the first things we mention. Think about how your communication with someone might differ if he or she were introduced to you as an artist versus a doctor. We make similar interpretations based on where people are from, their age, their race, and other social and cultural factors. We will learn more about how culture, gender, and other factors influence our perceptions as we continue through the chapter. In summary, we have schemata about individuals, groups, places, and things, and these schemata filter our perceptions before, during, and after interactions. As schemata are retrieved from memory, they are executed, like computer programs or apps on your smartphone, to help us interpret the world around us. Just like computer programs and apps must be regularly updated to improve their functioning, competent communicators update and adapt their schemata as they have new experiences.
“Getting Real”
Police Officers, Schemata, and Perception/Interpretation
Prime-time cable and network television shows like the Law and Order franchise and Southland have long offered viewers a glimpse into the lives of law enforcement officers. COPS, the first and longest-running prime-time reality television show, and newer reality-themed and educational shows like The First 48 and Lockdown, offer a more realistic look into techniques used by law enforcement. Perception is a crucial part of an officer’s skill set. Specifically, during police-citizen encounters, where tensions may be high and time for decision making limited, officers rely on schemata developed through personal experience off the job and training and experience on the job (Rozelle & Baxter, 1975). Moreover, police officers often have to make perceptions based on incomplete and sometimes unreliable information. So, how do police officers use perception to help them do their jobs?
Research has examined how police officers use perception to make judgments about personality traits, credibility, deception, and the presence or absence of a weapon, among others things, and just like you and me, officers use the same process of selection, organization, and interpretation. This research has found that officers, like us, rely on schema to help them make decisions under time and situational constraints. In terms of selection, expectations influence officer perception. At preshift meetings, officers are briefed on ongoing issues and “things to be on the lookout for,” which provides them with a set of expectations—for example, the make and model of a stolen car—that can guide their selection process. They must also be prepared for things that defy their expectations, which is not a job skill that many other professionals have to consider every day. They never know when a traffic stop could turn into a pursuit or a seemingly gentle person could turn violent. These expectations can then connect to organization strategies. For example, if an officer knows to be alert for a criminal suspect, they will actively organize incoming perceptual information into categories based on whether or not people look similar to or different from the suspect description.
Proximity also plays into police work. If a person is in a car with a driver who has an unregistered handgun, the officer is likely to assume that the other person also has criminal intent. While these practices are not inherently bad, there are obvious problems that can develop when these patterns become rigid schema. Some research has shown that certain prejudices based on racial schema can lead to perceptual errors—in this case, police officers mistakenly perceiving a weapon in the possession of black suspects more often than white suspects (Payne, 2001). Additionally, racial profiling (think of how profiles are similar to schemata) has become an issue that’s gotten much attention since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the passage of immigration laws in states like Arizona and Alabama that have been critiqued as targeting migrant workers and other undocumented immigrants. As you can see, law enforcement officers and civilians use the same perception process, but such a career brings with it responsibilities and challenges that highlight the imperfect nature of the perception process.
1. What communication skills do you think are key for a law enforcement officer to have in order to do their job effectively and why?
2. Describe an encounter that you have had with a law enforcement officer (if you haven’t had a direct experience you can use a hypothetical or fictional example). What were your perceptions of the officer? What do you think his or her perceptions were of you? What schemata do you think contributed to each of your interpretations?
3. What perceptual errors create potential ethical challenges in law enforcement? For example, how should the organizing principles of proximity, similarity, and difference be employed?
Readings on Argument
Hi. Guess what? You already know stuff. Yes, you already know how to argue. So, before jumping headfirst into “an introduction of argument,” let’s give our brain cells a tiny workout and an argumentative lesson. Let’s see what you already know!
Quick Review of Terminology
You don’t necessarily have to memorize these terms, but let’s cover them to make sure we’re all on the same page.
ARGUMENT:2
“A discussion in which disagreement is expressed; a debate” or “A quarrel; a dispute” or “A reason or matter for dispute or contention.”
Example: God doesn’t exist.
FACT:3
“Knowledge or information based on real occurrences” or “Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed” or “A real occurrence; an event.”
Example: The Buddha commonly depicted in statues and pictures is a different person entirely. The real Buddha was actually incredibly skinny because of self-deprivation.
OPINION:4
“A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof: synonym: view” or “A judgment based on special knowledge and given by an expert” or “A judgment or estimation of the merit of a person or thing.”
Example: iPhones are better than Samsung phones.
PREMISE:5 “A proposition upon which an argument is based or from which a conclusion is drawn” or “One of the propositions in a deductive argument.”
Examples: All students like pizza. All swans are white. All dogs are mammals.
RHETORIC:6 “The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.”
A pitstop before jumping into argument would be to think briefly about how writing is subjective, how we need to be good about spotting bullshit, and fake news. These topics may infiltrate much of the creation of your arguments as well as be sidenotes to the arguments you read, see, or hear.
Writing is Subjective
Let’s start with this: writing is subjective. Let’s also start with this tweet by Dan Martin:
"I try to teach students to let go of the notion that good writing has a universal definition or that anyone can define what good writing is or can be for every situation." @danmartin_7
How can one claim that writing is subjective? Well, for one, no one can agree on ONE author or one book that is truly THE BEST of all time. Sure, people will argue that they can. Your high school English teachers might’ve adored X,Y, and Z. But that’s their opinion. My favorite writers haven’t been part of the mainstream. They are different. They have affected me in ways that I’ll never quite comprehend. That’s what makes them the best to me, and you probably like completely different authors and books, too. Where does young adult literature fit into all this? Where do graphic novels? See? It’s subjective as hell!
What can we do, if writing is subjective and doesn’t have PERFECT rules then? We just practice argumentation. We give it our best shot. We just learn new things and practice them and then practice argumentation styles some more…
The "White People Language
I've9 been fumbling around w/this idea for a while, & I dunno if I'll say it correctly, yet I also know I'm not the first to say it: when we tell Ss to write "professionally" or use "appropriate language/grammar/spelling," we're saying, "You should sound like a white person." T/F?
People10 consistently lament that kids today can’t speak properly or that people coming to this country need to learn to write correctly. These lamentations are based on the notion that there is a single correct way of speaking and writing. Currently, the general sentiment is that people should just learn to speak and write proper English. This understanding of writing is rooted called current traditional rhetoric, which focuses on a prescriptive and formulaic way of teaching writing that assumes there is only one way to write (or speak) something for it to be correct. However, over the past several decades, scholars in writing studies have examined the ways in which writing has a close dialectical relationship with identity, style genre, and culture. In other words, the rules for writing shift with the people and the community involved as well as the purpose and type of writing.
This means that while minority students and lower-class students are ostensibly being given greater access to education, careers, and other facets of society they had been previously barred from, they are still facing serious barriers that their upper-class white counterparts do not, particularly in terms of culture, language, and literacy.
The way that we conceptualize language is not just detrimental to minorities; it also devalues the identities that working- and lower-class people bring to communicative situations, including the classroom. Lynn Z. Bloom writes that “Freshman Composition is an unabashedly middle-class enterprise.” She argues that one of the reasons composition is required for all students is because it promulgates middle-class values and ways of thinking. These values in the writing classroom are embodied in everything from the notion of property, which undergirds the way that plagiarism and intellectual property are treated, to formality of language and rhetorical choices that are encouraged in papers. Indeed, the way many instructors teach writing, plagiarism, citation, and word choice in papers is not in and of itself good but rather is the socially accepted way of interacting with text as defined by the middle class. Mike Rose and Irvin Peckham write about the tension of middle class values on working class students and the cognitive dissonance and struggles with identity that come with imposing such values in writing under the guise of correctness. The idea that there is one correct way of writing devalues the writing, thoughts, intelligence, and identities of people from lower-class backgrounds.
In order to value the diversity of communication and identities that exist in the U.S., we need to start teaching and envisioning writing as a cultural and social activity. We need a more nuanced view of writing in society that encourages everyone to adapt to their audiences and contexts rather than placing an undue burden on those who do not fit the mold of standard English. One strategy for teaching academic English without devaluing a writer’s identity is code-switching, a concept already taught in schools with significant minority populations as a way of empowering young people. While instruction in code-switching is valuable because it teaches students that they can adopt different linguistic choices to appeal to different audiences, it is deeply problematic that the impetus is still placed on minority students with non-standard dialects to adapt. While code-switching is meant to empower people, it is still rooted in the mentality that there is one correct way of writing, because even as code switching teaches an incredibly nuanced way of thinking about writing, it is still being taught in the context of preparing writers to deal with a society that will use errors in speaking as evidence that they are lesser. As a result, it is a less-than ideal solution because it plays into— rather than undermines—the racism of academic English.
When we focus on the ways that African American Language and Standard American English are different,11 communicators are able to better understand, acquire, and switch between both, and society is more capable of recognizing the validity of the language and its users. Conflating the two into one linguistic variety is confusing at best and damaging at worst. We need to understand and explain African American Language and Standard American English as different languages, each with its own set of grammatical, phonological, and morphological rules (even though they share a lexicon or vocabulary).
In the writing classroom, teachers can help students navigate Standard American English expectations while not suggesting a linguistic hierarchy. By speaking about language choices in terms of difference rather than deficiency and in relation to academic and nonacademic conventions, we can value both (or any) languages. Delpit suggests validating students by welcoming their home languages—and, therefore, their cultures and identities—into the classroom so they feel respected and might be more willing to add Standard American English to their linguistic repertoires. If students understand that different audiences and contexts expect different language choices and that African American Language is different from Standard American English but that neither is better or worse than the other, then they are better able to accept and use both proficiently.
12
Spotting Bullsh*t13
First-year writing also works like no other course to push students to explore the possibilities of language, to work with new and uncomfortable ideas and genres, and to analyze important issues and how they are argued in the public sphere. Part of this means getting students to develop better methods of writing and reading in digital environments, which involves discerning what philosopher Harry Frankfurt has called bullshit. A recent survey found that 84% of American students indicated they would benefit from learning whether or not certain online sources are trustworthy. Another study reported that around 82% of middle-schoolers were unable to determine what was sponsored content and what was a real news story on a website. And being able to sift through the bullshit to find reliable sources, meaningful arguments, and a deeper intellectual exchange in public deliberation is a literacy skill developed specifically in first-year writing.
Fake News
Fake News14 is "false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared online for the purpose of generating ad revenue via web traffic or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc." Fake News is a type of disinformation (false information with the intent to deceive), and disinformation is a type of misinformation (false or misleading information). In scientific literature, Fake News has been defined as disinformation that "mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent.” Fake News often goes beyond this definition to describe misinformation, disinformation, errors, false predictions, and reporting that people don't like.
Fake News itself can be divided into different categories such as:
- Clickbait: Sensational article titles created to increase views in order to "increase ad revenue for websites"
- Propaganda: "Promotes a biased point of view or particular political cause/agenda" Satire / Parody: Fake stories that are published for entertainment
- Sloppy Journalism: Stories published containing unreliable information or that are not fact-checked
- Misleading Headings: Using a misleading title to distort story as "only headlines and small snippets...are displayed on...newsfeeds"
- Biased / Slanted News: Confirms and polarizes the biases and beliefs of a particular user
Internet Changes of Perspectives15
“I am going to study abroad.” “We are traveling to those countries.” “Which countries have you been to?” These conversations often taken place in this globalized world. However, it must have been different a couple decades ago. Even though there were some people who traveled around the world back then, the number of those who did that must have been much fewer than what it is now. What makes this difference? I suppose one of the causes that makes this happen is people’s thoughts towards other countries. I am studying in the US now. In terms of me studying abroad, I had a lot of different opinions from my family and friends. At that time, I realized that the opinions were different based on their ages. My grandparents and my parents have quite a few ideas in common, but my friends and people in my generation tend to have different ideas. One of the biggest social changes between my parents’ generation and ours is the Internet. Internet or media changes our perspectives dramatically in a widespread way, and their own experience or ones of someone closer to you affect individual points of view.
I interviewed my grandparents, parents, and my friends about their images of the US and researched whether there are somethings in common or different among the three generations. My grandfather said to me, “I used to have very negative images of America and hated it since we experienced WWⅡ. Because of the US, we needed to lead a severe and miserable life.” My grandfather was the oldest kid in his family, which means he needed to take care of younger siblings and support his family financially. Therefore, he gave going to high school and started working, even though his grades were remarkable in school and had the opportunity to have better quality of life by getting a higher education. At that time, he blamed America for the hard life. Now, he thinks it is history and he doesn’t have any hatred anymore, but still he is slightly afraid of America.
The same as him, my grandmother was scared of the US due to the stereotype of American having guns everywhere or its lack of safety. For her, guns are strongly connected to taking human lives so she cannot help but to be worried about it. Thus, she strongly disagreed with me studying in the US. She thought it was too dangerous for women to go or study there by themselves.
My parents have similar ideas and different ones. They were still worried about how safe the US was because of gun use or military. However, they thought that people were friendly, outgoing, and cheerful. They were concerned about the system of the US, but had a good image of the people. My friends have completely different ideas from any of them. They think that there are a bunch of classic and modern items or that everything is fashionable. Moreover, some talk about aspects which they are interested in, such as sports, fashion, music, and so on. Almost all of them say that it is one of the bucket list destinations because of their interest.
Grandparents and parents’ generations tend to have common thoughts even though there are slight differences, and our generation has completely different ideas from them.
We collect information by using several tools. I believe that the ways to get to know about other countries are changing over times. According to Japanese Ministry of Internal affairs and Communications’ study on what media they use, my grandparents’ generation use newspaper the most. My parents’ generation use newspaper as well, but more people use internet compared to my grandparents’ generation. Our generation mainly use internet and barely read newspaper to gain information (Basic Date and Policy Trend). From this fact, we can see there is a very huge difference of the amount of information people get.
Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications shows the other significant difference between our generation and other generations is the number of people who watch TV. The population who watch TV is big in grandparents’ and parents’ generations. However, the number of younger people who do it is half as many as that of the other two generations. Instead of TV, we use the internet (Basic Date and Policy Trend). TV has limited programs as same as newspaper so that automatically those who watch TV have same input about things. On the other hand, internet enables us to access any information we want and search things without any limitation. Accordingly, it is easier to find interesting topics or have different perspective on America. Internet gives us accessibility to more information that matches each person, and people can keep discovering new things by themselves. Therefore, we can find a big difference on the images of America between our generation and the other generations. People’s perspectives started to change right after internet became popular.
There is another way to switch people’s opinions. After I left Japan and started studying here in the US, my grandparents and my parents’ images of America have been changing. Now that I am living here, which is away from my home and where my family has never been, I need to tell them that I am doing good about the life in the US to let them know here is not like the place that they are imagining. Being able to hear the real situations from those who they rely on or feel close to helps them get rid of negative thoughts. My grandparents tell me that they not only feel less anxiety about me studying in the US, but also, they are very interested in what this country is like right now even though they had their own bitter experiences in the past. They are taking more time to learn about America.
We are living in societies which are changing so quickly. In particular, the amount of information that people can get is increasing remarkably thanks to development of the internet. Younger generations are used to dealing with this plentiful amount of information compared to older generations. By using that skill, they collect information following their interest. Therefore, young people see the world with a positive attitude rather than negative perspective or prejudice. If they have unsavory notion, their ideas can be changed by their later experience or stories from significant others. What is obvious is having less information sometimes helps people hold unfavorable opinion on something based on their negative images. I hope this world becomes more and more peaceful by using information properly.
Work Cited:
Basic Date and Policy Trend. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2018. www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/whitepaper/ja/h30/html/nd252510.html
Bonus Feature: You are a Writer16
Obviously you can write. And in the age of Facebook and smartphones, you might be writing all the time, perhaps more often than speaking. Many students today are awash in text like no other generation before. You may have even performed so well in high school that you’re deemed fully competent in college level writing and are now excused from taking a composition course.
So why spend yet more time and attention on writing skills? Research shows that deliberate practice—that is, close focus on improving one’s skills—makes all the difference in how one performs. Revisiting the craft of writing—especially on the early end of college—will improve your writing much more than simply producing page after page in the same old way. Becoming an excellent communicator will save you a lot of time and hassle in your studies, advance your career, and promote better relationships and a higher quality of life off the job. Honing your writing is a good use of your scarce time.
Also consider this: a recent survey of employers conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 89 percent of employers say that colleges and universities should place more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing.” It was the single-most favored skill in this survey.
The most important belief17 that a writing teacher can have about writing is, as Peter Elbow (a well-known teacher of writing) put it, that everyone can write. And at the heart of that belief is the assumption that everyone’s experience and perspective is already worth writing about as soon as they arrive in the classroom. To expand that belief beyond the classroom, we should generally believe that everyone’s experience and perspective is already worth writing about as soon as they arrive at the page or screen. If this belief is essential for teachers of writing, it is even more so for the writers themselves.
Questions for Reflection
- Do you agree with Peter Elbow that “everyone can write”? Why or why not?
- Do you believe you are a writer? Why or why not?
By the time19 students arrive in college, stories beginning with “once upon a time” are long gone, and in their place are difficult and dense texts—often multimedia texts— from a range of fields each with its own set of conventions. Instead of drawing on models of early literacy education that focus on teaching reading and writing simultaneously, college and universities largely privilege writing over reading. This hierarchy is evidenced by the universal first-year writing requirement in American colleges and universities, as well as by writing across the curriculum programs. The integrated approach to teaching reading and writing falls away to students’ peril and causes great frustration in the professors who often attribute students’ struggles in their courses to poor writing ability, when these problems are often related to students’ reading difficulties. While students’ eyes may make their way over every word, that does not mean that students have comprehended a text or that they are prepared to successfully complete the writing tasks associated with the reading, which often involve summary, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation.
More importantly, if students are not given the opportunity to continue working on their reading throughout their college careers, they may struggle analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating all that surrounds them since comprehension is a crucial step toward these more advanced interpretive practices. Students may lack the ability to read the world around them because they do not have the tools to recognize the values and assumptions that inform the images, advertisements, news stories, political campaigns, and ideas with which they come into contact daily. By not focusing on reading as an equally creative and active enterprise as writing—very much writing’s counterpart in the creation of meaning— colleges and universities are potentially producing students, or citizens, who think reading is passive. These students might blindly accept whatever comes their way rather than actively engaging ideas, asking questions, and seeking out multiple perspectives.
Although writing is more often thought of as a creative act, reading is just as creative. When one writes, one is creating meaning by putting words and ideas together. […] This is why a few people might read the same novel but each take something different from it. That personal transaction with the text has affected how each reader creates meaning. When reading and writing are taught alongside each other in the college-level classroom, students can gain practice experiencing and relishing in opportunities to create meaning not just through writing, but through reading everything from print texts to art to websites to national news events, all of which they will continue to engage beyond school. Focusing on active reading approaches, including everything from comprehension strategies to ways of determining something’s inherent values and biases to productive methods of responding, is crucial if students are going to leave postsecondary institutions prepared to be informed, aware, and engaged citizens.
Questions for Reflection
- How many arguments do you think you read (via social media, TV, texts from people) on a daily basis? Try to tally them all up. Is there a theme?
Bonus Feature: Active Reading Tips
Start20 by getting familiar with the basic parts and structure of the text:
- What kind of text are you reading? An essay? A web site?
- Every author has a purpose; find it.
- Who is the audience and how does the author try to appeal to them?
- What argument is the author making/question does the text try to answer? What evidence does the author provide?
- Are there any key terms the author defines?
- As you’re reading, make note of anything that especially catches your attention:
Is there a fact or point that challenged your assumptions?
- Any surprises?
- Did the author make a point or argument that you disagree with?
- Are there any inconsistencies in the text?
- Does the text contain anything (words, phrases, ideas) that you don’t understand?
After you’ve finished reading, read it again:
- Are there things you didn’t notice the first time reading the text?
- Does the text leave some questions open-ended?
- Imagine the author is sitting across from you: what would you ask them about the text? Why?
If the text is visual in nature, try these extra tips:
- What first strikes you about the image?
- Who/what is the main subject of the visual?
- What colors/textures dominate the visual?
- What objects/people are in the background/foreground?
- Do words or numbers play any role in the visual?
- When was the visual created?
Reading Strategies21
Most discussions and writing assignments–from brief responses to in-depth research papers– will depend on your ability to understand what you read. Following are some strategies for getting the most out of assigned readings.
- PURPOSE. When you start a reading assignment, identify your purpose and write it down somewhere such as on a sticky that you put on the first page of the book or on your computer screen. Keep that information nearby and refer to it occasionally as you read.
- GOAL. Your primary goal is to identify the main point, the idea the writer wants to communicate. Finding the main point helps you understand the details–the facts and explanations that develop and clarify the main point. It also helps you relate the reading to things you learned in class or in other assignments.
- PAUSE. Regardless of what you read, stop occasionally and assess how well you under stand what you are reading. If you aren’t confident, go back and read it again. Don’t just push ahead.22
- MARK IT UP. The best way to remember the information you read is to do something physical with it, something beyond just letting your eyes scan the page. For example, taking notes as you read helps your brain retain the information.
- TALK ABOUT IT. A good way to review and reinforce what you’ve learned is to discuss the reading with classmates. Discussions can help you determine whether your understanding is the same as that of your peers. They can also spark new ideas or insights.
References
Coren, S., “Principles of Perceptual Organization and Spatial Distortion: The Gestalt Illusions,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 6, no. 3 (1980): 404–12.
Fiske, S. T., and Shelley E. Taylor, Social Cognition, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1991).
Payne, B. K., “Prejudice and Perception: The Role of Automatic and Controlled Processes in Misperceiving a Weapon,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 2 (2001): 181–92.
Rozelle, R. M., and James C. Baxter, “Impression Formation and Danger Recognition in Experienced Police Officers,” Journal of Social Psychology 96 (1975): 54.
Sillars, A. L., “Attributions and Communication in Roommate Conflicts,” Communication Monographs 47, no. 3 (1980): 180–200.
Watzlawick, P., Janet Beavin Bavelas, and Don D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1967), 56.
Endnotes
[Missing endnotes were missing from original source]
2 From American Heritage Dictionary.
3 From American Heritage Dictionary.
4 From American Heritage Dictionary.
5 Image created on Pixlr.com with an Unsplash image from marc Olivier jodoin. Text on image comes from: Richard Nordquist’s article “Premise Definition and Examples in Arguments” on ThoughtCo.com; written January 28, 2020. https://www.thoughtco.com/premise-argument-1691662
6 From American Heritage Dictionary.
9 Sybil’s Tweet from February 3, 2021.
10 Snippet from = Pattanayak, Anjali. “There is One Correct Way of Writing and Speaking.” Bad Ideas About Writing. Edited by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Libraries, Digital Publishing Institute, 2017. CC-BY.
11 Cunningham, Jennifer M. “African American Language is Not Good English.” Bad Ideas About Writing. This resource is licensed CC-BY.
12 Tweeted July 25, 2018.
13 Branson, Tyler. “First-Year Composition Prepares Students for Academic Writing.” Bad Ideas About Writing. CC-BY.
14 “Lentis." Wikibooks, The Free Textbook Project. 11 Dec 2019, 17:54 UTC. 10 May 2020, 21:40 <https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Lentis&oldid=3623847>.
15 This piece from Yuki Inata comes from Writing LCC; Writing LCC by is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
16 Writing in College by Amy Guptill is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
17 Snippet from = Brooks, Ronald Clark. “You Need My Credentials to be a Writer.” Bad Ideas About Writing. Edited by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Libraries, Digital Publishing Institute, 2017. CC-BY.
18 Blog entry by Sybil Priebe; licensed CC-BY.
19 Snippet from = Carillo, Ellen C. “Reading and Writing Are Not Connected.” Bad Ideas About Writing. Edited by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Libraries, Digital Publishing Institute, 2017. CC-BY.
20 About Writing: A Guide by Robin Jeffrey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/.
21 1, 2, 3 Write! by Gay Monteverde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. 22 This tip might as well be called The Power of the Pause. Pause in your reading. Take a minute to understand that last sentence or paragraph.
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