Gee Response

BEFORE YOU READ:
The term means contraband, in prison it is a legal object that is obtained illegally.

SUMMARY:
Gee talks about in his article about Discourses, he talks about primary and secondary communities. He gives details about how each effects the members and the requirements needed to be involved. He talks about how some Discourses have tension or conflict when the communities do not interact well. He also ties most of the definitions to language and how it is mistaken for grammar.

SYNTHESIS: 3
Gee's article compares to Porter much like it does with Swales because they all three talk about discourse communities and how they effect and control the individuals involved. Also compares to McCloud on the leg of the Mask and the Individual. McCloud mentions how we change our outside appearance and how we act depending on our surroundings and the people around us.

DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK:

RESPONSE	QUOTES:
I agree with this quote because some people do not know the difference between the two.	"Language is a misleading term; it too often suggests 'grammar'." page 483
This ties to a "primary group" in sociology which is the first group to socialize an individual, most likely a small group, ex: family or friends.	"This initial Discourse, which I call our primary Discourse, is the one we first use to make sense of the world and interact with others". page 485
This ties the two types together because if it is mastery it is most likely a secondary discourse community.	"We can talk about dominant literacies and non-dominant literacies in terms of whether they involve mastery of dominate or non-dominant secondary discourses". page 486
This I do not agree with because the primary source is always the one to open up the literacy.	"Primary Discourses, no matter whose they are, can never be liberating literacies". page 487
Discourses are for peer review and helping each other, so you would teach others more than you would write for them.	"Within a Discourse you are always teaching more than writing or reading". page 488

META MOMENT:
I think that I agree with Gee's comment that you can not be a part time member. I think that to do your best you have to give your all. If you don't try and be a dedicated participant you can not truly understand and be involved in the conversation and the movements and activities that the community takes on.

THOUGHTS:
I enjoyed Gee's article a lot. Much of what he says and the terms he use are similar to something we are learning about in my sociology class. We are talking about institutions, the statuses, roles, and other things that make up the institutions and what makes them run properly. Much of what Gee says makes me think that he could possibly do some writing for a sociology book.

Swales response

BEFORE YOU READ:
I felt out of place in the first week of college. I lived in a new town, room, and with strangers, and I had no idea what to think of what my classes or professors would be like. Would I find my way around campus? Should I go out on the weekends? What if I can't find decent friends? I quickly tried to get involved and found people that I had more that one class with and we would walk together. Also the people I live with became very close with everyone and we hang out all the time. I feel more at home in Athens now, and laugh about how unsure I was.

SUMMARY:
Swales' article talks about what makes up a discourse community. He talks about how we join them and how it becomes the bases for our lives and actions. "Community involves discourse and discourse involves community" page 469, makes you understand that the two are interchangeable. Swales also talks about the criteria for a DC, giving us six characteristics that id the communities. He talks about how they vary in type and activities, and that you can have temporary membership to them, you do not always have to be involved in everything they do.

SYNTHESIS:
Swales's article compares to Porters' obviously with the topic of discourse community. Although Swales goes into more detail about what exactly makes up a community and their development levels. Also compares to Malcolm X with talking about the lexus and that compares to Malcolm's sponsorship with why people learn or join communities. Also compares to Gee with Discourse community and and both mention how people need to belong to the community and meet requirements.

QD:
5.) My learning community that I belong to is my mod. We are all here to get degrees and hopefully use them to get good jobs in the future. We have a lexus and genre that is affected differently be each of us as individuals and we come from different backgrounds and different upbringings.

6.) Recently my roommate began having problems and I thought that moving out would help things, at least let me be happier. The people in my mod held a meeting between me and my roommate to work things out. I didn't want to talk things out I just wanted to leave, but by talking and getting things out on the table we worked things out and got back on the same page. Now we are working towards making things work between us again and the people in my mod are happier knowing that I'm staying and happy.

THOUGHTS:
I really didn't like his article I felt that he was very condescending  Also I feel that sometimes communities don't meet every requirement but that doesn't mean that it is any less of a discourse community. I did agree however with how he said you can be a partial participant and not always be involved with the community. I liked how his article was similar to Gee's as well.

Pollan Responses

SUMMARY:
In Pollan's article he talks about how the food industry has changed since previous years. He talks about how the way that our food has been prepared has changed, how health conditions have become more serious about how the food we eat, changes not only our bodies, but our genetic makeup. Also how our food is prepared, based on fossil fuels, has increased over time.

SYNTHESIS:
Pollan's article compares to Glenn's because they both talk about how the main point of everything is profit. They talk about how no matter what the field is, the means of making money is the highest priority of all. We take short cuts to keep their own costs down, but have no compassion to the spending the expenses needed to care for the products. The article also compares to Porter, with how all information we have comes from previous things we have read and the information we get from outside sources. This ties in with the stats and detailed ideas and suggestions.

DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK:

RESPONSE	QUOTE
This talks about how the amount and pricing of food is not the only issue we face in the food industry. It talks about how we "double talk" like Glenn's article talks about, that a secretary does what ever the central nerve tells the cells of the body to do about bad press.	"Complicating matters is the fact that the price and abundance of food are not only problems we face; if they were, you could simply follow Nixon's example, appoint a latter day Earl Butz as your secretary of agriculture and instruct him or her to do whatever it takes to boost production."
This quote makes me sick, because it makes me think that our food is actually bad for us, and that things that we are told are good for us, aren't.	"Put another way, when we eat from the industrial food system, we are eating oil and spewing green house gases."
This is a weird statement but it makes us think that if the President of the United States eats organic, wouldn't it become a bigger trend?	"Your probably thinking that growing and eating organic foods in the White House carries a certain political risk."
This makes me think of how in high school I was in a class that not only taught us about the food groups and how to be smart eaters, but we would have labs where we were taught to cook ourselves.	"To change our children's food culture, we'll need to plant gardens in every primary school, build fully equipped kitchens, train a new generation of lunch ladies (and gentleman) who can once again cook, and teach children to cook.
This talks about how if we change our food industry we would benefit greatly.	"A decentralized food system offers a great many other benefits as well."

 THOUGHTS:

I think that this article has a lot of valid points and ideas. There were a lot of facts and stats compared and contrasted throughout decades in America's food industry. The problem I had that impacted my reading the most was that it was difficult to read and hard to comprehend because it was in letter form, and because of all the facts and stats. I think that Pollan has good ideas, but I don't think that our industry will change or allow for the market to break down the way they believe it should be.

Glenn Response

BEFORE YOU READ:

1.        I really wasn't around a lot of farm animals growing up. I lived in the city and the only family we had that was "farm-ish" was my great uncle Bob and my great aunt Vicki. They lived a little outside the Heath/Newark area about twenty minutes with a large cattle farm. They would occasionally have the whole family out for special parties. The cows would be out behind the house in a large pin that had lots of room to move around. Being as young as I was I wasn't told what was done with the animals exactly. I still do not know what was done with them, but I hope it wasn't the same as what is done in some videos I've seen on the internet. 

SUMMARY:
In the beginning of her article she gives a historical background on the farms and in a way the animals treatments and how nature is used. Then she talks about "double speak" which is a discourse style associated with the factory farm industry, and is in meaning of promotion and also redeeming, in the ways of covering for bad press. She follows up talking about animal rights and "happy cows". She finishes her article with different ways to study, revise, and remodel not only the way animals are treated but also the education levels that consumers are taught to know more about what is really going on.

SYNTHESIS:
Glenn's article compares to Porter's article because both talk about discourse communities. Glenn actually goes into details to mention specific communities involved with animal treatment and such. She mentions how to better educate these same communities in her third sub section. It also compares to Pollan's article with teh means of profit. Profit is thought to be over everything. So we are known for giving animals cheap grains and other types of food sources to save money for the company.

DIALECTICAL NOTEBOOK: five quotes

Response:	Quote:
This makes me think about the way that we treat "domestic animals", like cats or dogs, which we feed, shelter, love, even treat as children. And then how we treat "wild" and "farm" animals, as if they are products solely for consumption.	"In these three narratives, the human animals are directly connected to the land and to the nonhuman animals they use and consume- thy live with, hunt alongside, know, understand, and respect both the land and other animals they exploit." page 144
Discourses and problems with animals's rights have been an underlying problem that has been pulsing throughout our nation since it was founded. Before animals were used for not only food, but also for labor. Now that we use technology, they are only seen as product for consumption.	"The technological meta-discourse, influenced by colonial discourses, assumes that human's relationship to their environment is one mediated by the use of technology to facilitate a consumerist approach to natural resource exploitation." page 146
This mentions doublespeak which is where they turn the tables on negative press that they receive for the way the animals are treated.	"Dunayer points to numerous examples of factory-farming language that, I argue, constitute doublespeak, and each accomplishes the same objective: using sterile language to hide violence." page 147
This is an example of doublespeak, but also an example of "spinning". Spinning which is very popular among the rich and famous and the media, is a way to turn key words into double meanings.	"The factory farming discourse hides vicious practices by constructing them as 'natural', 'accommodating', and 'comfortable' for the animals confined in the factory." page 149
This is disheartening because if we treat animals as if they are a product, how would we treat humans in the same aspect. Not stating that we should eat them, but rather than see something as a stat, we should see it for what it is, a living being.	"For the factory farm, as in other corporations, the bottom line is profit." page 149

Q.D.1:

The main characteristics are, the creation, sustainability, and constructed strategies to make things cruel and dangerous to the environment. This makes the factory farm seem like a looming and intimidating problem that no one knows how to handle. And the discourse is unethical because if whether or not the farm actually does practice humane treatment of animals, there will always be people who do not agree and support them. We need to get the facts out on the table and not have double speak or spinning added to the argument at hand and let the facts and realities speak for themselves so that we can move forward in means of creating more safe, sanitary, and better for all those involved farms.

THOUGHTS: 

I think that Glenn has a decent argument and did loads of research before entering into the argument and positioning herself among others who feel similar. She does however seem to be biased and very self centered with what she wants the outcome to be for not only the animals, but the entire discourse community. She makes good points and I liked that she gave the definitions to terms that she coined and discovered during research. I think that she could have used less graphic wording for some examples because hearing about what happens to baby pigs made me sick to my stomach.  

Wysocki Response

• Do 1 "Before you Read" exercise
• Looked up Frankenstein
• Summarize
• In her article "The sticky embrace of beauty", Anne Francis Wysocki talks about the way that advertisement and the way that the human form are used to promote several different types of responses. She talks about how the female form is not always used in a sexual or explicit way, but rather a maternal, nurturing way to remind us of our mothers, since that is our first memory. She explains that when the woman's form is used in the sexual or explicit form is when problems arise and men and other women become violent in nature and misuse the art form.
• Synthesize
• I saw many different connections in this article, the first is clearly with Berger, who in his article  talks about the female form and the usage. He also talks about how females are very self aware and Wysocki also mentions this. I also connected it to McCloud, who discusses how images and pictures are a good way to get one's point across and also persuade. Also McCloud brings up the "mask" which can be consistent with photo shop and also just model selection, which Wysocki talks about in how the body is seen with out imperfections and the articles of clothing are like paper doll clothes, placed on at random. I also assoicated Wysocki's article with Kantz's article with the Rhetorical Triangle. In Wysocki's article it is an arch and mentions the connection between concept and sensation. This is similar to Kantz's with the connections between the author, audience, topic, ect. (insert any ideas into the triangle and its connectors). 
• Dialectical notebook (include at least 5 quotations, typed out in fll)

• 	This example states that it is natural for people, both male and female to be drawn to the woman's body shape. It is a simple and easy advertisment ploy and does not have sexual prefrences or hidden meaning.	"That is, with Kant, we are to understand our bodily responses and tastes as being the same as everyone else's because the categories we use for creating understanding out of sensation." page 95
  She explains in a similar way to Berger that women are objectified in pictures to be explicit and sexual as a means to sell products and make revenue for companies.	"It is easy to articulate a particular and well-known kind of anger about the Peek layout, about the layout being just one more in the endless piled of painted, photographed, and drawn representations of women shown as only sexual and now used for selling, so that we all- men and women- are pushed to see women only as sexual objects, as objects serving as means to the ends of others." page 93
  This ties together with her little chart that is similar to the Rhetorical Triangle, yet Wysocki's example is an arch.	"Aesthetic judgement is thus the awareness of a harmonious and interpenetrating relation between the parts of Kant's analysis, between the necessity of nature and the freedom of reason." page 89
  This quote is alittle creepy to me, I feel that it may be true because the first memory that most people have is of their mother. But I feel that our attention should not be drawn to that of a naked woman's body in memory of our mother.	"Another response to the possibility that we are meant to see this woman as alone with her thoughts comes from Bang, from her suggestion that I have the pleasure I do in seeing the curves of this woman's body because they are a sweet memory of maternal security and comfort." page 85
  This explains why we look where we do at the article. This has to do with the point of reference, which is an art term.	"It is because of this contrast: this is the lightest thing in the design and the only large rounded shape." page 80

• AE 1 1.      Why do you think that one artwork is up for interpretation? Have you felt differently than your peers or the general consensus about a piece of art? Elaborate on your thoughts.
• Art work can be seen many different ways. Its mostly based on the reaction or response of the viewer. But much like in Berger's article he mentions that the artist is not the viewer but rather the owner is. So therefore art is responded to differently  by all people. Not only that but also intertextuality could play a factor in the way a piece is viewed. How does it relate to the viewer? Have they experienced a similar action? What is happening in the piece do they know what is going on?
• Your thoughts (go as in depth as you can)
• My thoughts on this article were that I felt like i was reading a very extended synthesis. I understood what she was trying to explain about the advertisement but I feel that she compared and contrasted and quoted too many different sources that I became bored and uninterested. I was drawn in by her opening statement and the example of the picture, as I am sure most readers are, but I feel that I would have not only paid more attention and retained more information, but rather I would have enjoyed the piece better had it not been so repetitive with the synthesis theme. This article reminded me a lot of Berger's and McCloud's with the topic and also the examples to placement and usage. 

Baron Responset

• "Before you read" 
• pencil
• blogs
• computer
• sources (online, books, articles, journals)
• microsoft word
• Summary
• In Baron's article "Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies" he talks about how the pencil has been replaced by the leaps and bounds of technology in society. He touches base on how the pencil was first created and how it evolved into what it is today. He also talks about how technology is used and almost feared when it first comes out. The unknown power of new technology instills an uncertainty in most people who are hesitant to buy into the fad. In more modern times since this article was written ( a 13 year gap) we realize now that people line up days before a product is released to be the first to have it. We find this connection to the past difficult after people would not buy products until they were certain that they would be needed. Now we buy products because they are new. 
• Synthesis 
• I would say that Baron's article is similar to the articles of Allen and LaMott. Baron's article ties to Allen and LaMott's for the same reason, process and evolution of writing. Allen and LaMott both talk about how the writing process takes time and changes and growns, LaMott talks about having multiple drafts and expansion. Baron's article talks about how technology not only changes and evolves itself, but also the writing process and the way we write. 
• Dialectical notebook 

• This quote makes me realize that computers are a common way that children learn now a days. Many schools not only use them to teach but also there are programs that teach children to read and also other tasks.	"The computer is also touted as a gateway to literacy." page 423
  Anyone can post anything on the internet whether it be true or not. There is a commercial where the girl says she met a guy on the internet who claims he is a "french model" and she believes it even though he knows no french and is unattractive.	"One of the greatest concerns about computer communications today involves their authentication and their potential for fraud." page 425
  Without the pencil being invented would we have the same written language we do today? The question, and many like it go unanswered because the invention and evolution of writing created literacy.	"The development of the pencil is also a paradigm of the development of literacy." page 426
  Writing was not the same as it was for cave people as it is for our generation. They did it to tell stories and record events, now a days it is used as many more things like communication and education as well as story telling and event records.	"We normally assume that writing was invented to transcribe speech, but that is not strictly correct." page 427
  Like all new things, people fear change. That is why when different things come about it is almost shunned before it is accepted.	"Just like the telegraph and the computer, writing was once an innovation strongly resisted by traditionalists because it was unnatural and untrustworthy." page 426

• QD 1
• The Uni bomber was an individual who would mail homemade bombs to different writers and computer literate people and harm them for fear of computer and writing spreading. He was finally caught and created tons of turmoil in the american public's mind and in the news. 
• Your thoughts
• This article made me think a lot about how our lives are effected by technology anymore. Its odd to think that pencils and writing can be grouped into "technology" but just like an electronic, it evolved and took hold in peoples lives as an every day thing. I think that the article is very accurate other than its almost 15 years old, and our technology acceptance has grown since when the first computers and other types of technology began emerging.

Learning to Read

Much like the average Kindergarten student, I sat at my desk with my over sized pencil gripped in a shaking sweaty little fist and slowly started the practiced curves of my name. G. I. N. A. Learning to read and write for me was a bit of a challenge I want to say. If I remember correctly I hated going out into the hall to run through my letter flashcards and was bored with it. I loved my mom reading me stories at bedtime. And my thought was, 'Why should I learn if I have her?' Eventually I caved in and became obsessed with books, by the fifth grade I had a high school reading level and was pursuing books that were beyond most kids in my class. English was my favorite subject, but I didn't learn how to spell my full name until a fourth grade history class when we learned about the state of Virginia.
I remember the painful nights at the kitchen table with my mom begging me to read her one line out of the book. Once I learned to read she and I would read story after story and talk about what we liked best from the book and things we didn't like, and do research on things we didn't know. My mom is probably one of my main literacy sponsors, if we use Brandt's terminology. She knew I would come around, she dug down and sailed through my resistance. My teachers were amazed at my flying colors on my response to things read in class and my English work. I still enjoy reading to this day, but unfortunetly since starting college I have not had much free time to crack a nonacademic book for fun. Which I do not like! Reading can be an escape and give you an alternate life to live for a short time and take you on adventures far beyond what you can really do in life.