Journal Entry #1

Style play and Reflection

To be submitted on 2/6/2021

Reflection Journal
This was a very difficult writing project. I struggled in the beginning to figure out what I
was doing. But then I went to start writing my paper. I stared at that blank page FOREVER. I
finally got started but the only ideas coming out had nothing to do with the idea I had posted for
my project one plan. Of course! I did however get professor Graves’ permission to go ahead
with this idea to write about how my failure of so many classes and experiences with writing as
a punishment affected my writing attitude and self esteem. Some of the best things that got me
going was to just free write. I think I free wrote a whole page before going through and picking
out the theme I liked most. I am so proud of the result though! My favorite aspect is of course
the fact that I already gave myself an “F” right there on my paper. There was something so
cathartic about marking my own paper that way before my teacher could. In the end I think this
was a total success and almost therapeutic . I loved it so much, just a place to be heard about
how much I really struggle with any sort of structured writing. It was tough but probably some of
my best writing ever.

Style Play Journal

For this style play I’m going to take an excerpt from one of the essays we had to
annotate “Should Writers Use They Own English” and essentially translate it. Then write a small
paragraph about what this exercise has taught me.

EXCERPT : Lord, lord, lord! Where do I begin, cuz this man sho tryin to take the
nation back to a time when we were less tolerant of linguistic and racial
differences. Yeah, I said racial difference, tho my man Stan try to dismiss
race when he speak on language differences. But the two be sho nuff
intertwined. Remember when a black person could get hanged from the
nearest tree just cuz they be black? And they fingers and heads (double
entendre intended) get chopped off sometime? Stanley Fish (2009a)
say he be appalled at this kind of violent racism, and get even madder
at the subtle prejudice exhibited nowadays by those who claim that race
is dead, that racism don’t happen no mo. But it do happen—as Fish
know—when folks don’t get no jobs or get fired from jobs and worse
cuz they talk and write Asian or black or with an Appalachian accent or
sound like whatever ain’t the status quo. And Fish himself acquiesce to
this linguistic prejudice when he come sayin that people make theyselves
targets for racism if and when they don’t write and speak like he do.

TRANSLATION : I don’t know where to begin because Stanley Fish is trying to return the world
to a time when people were less tolerant of different writing, speaking, and racial differences.
Although Stanley Fish tries to dismiss race when speaking about writing and speaking
differences the two tend to go hand in hand. Do you remember a time when black people
suffered horrible atrocities just because of their race? Their body part could be removed or they
could simply be hung. Stanley Fish says that these historical facts appall him and that he is
even more so appalled at the continuing transgressions against the black community today
committed by those who say racism no longer exists. But racism does still exist and Stanley
Fish knows it does. He knows that people are overlooked for jobs or fired from them because
they talk or write with the english they grew up with. This could be black english, asian english,
or simply a hard to understand dialect. Mr. Fish is a part of the issue of racism by saying that
people make themselves a target for it when they don’t use the same type of english that he
does when writing or speaking.

WHAT I LEARNED : This exercise was very good at teaching me about tone and audience. You
have to use an english that your audience will understand but at the same time you must also
realize that the english you choose could lend itself to one tone more than another. For example
I believe that my translation sounds more professional. While the original text sounds more
informal while being educational. The main take away I got was to find a good balance and get
the two to work together to create a piece that has the tone I intend while still being
understandable to my audience.

Journal Entry #2
Style play and Reflection
To be submitted on 3/3/2021

Reflection Journal
Project two was hard for so many reasons but the main three reasons are that the
rhetorical summaries are so short, I have to make the rhetorical summaries interconnect in
some way in order to bring them into conversation with one another,, I’m trying a way of writing
that I haven't really ever tried before. I've learned how to better read scholarly articles. I even
learned how to find them and some cool things about how I can better my revision strategies. A
big question that this assignment has left me with is in regards to a scholarly journal that I
chose. In the journal the author claims that with a lighter workload and broader expectations you
have the best environment for writing improvement my question was could I do this within my
deadlines and still create an ideal environment to improve my writing. I was also going to
mention that I made realizations about my writing because of the required articles we read and
summarized : I tend to patchwrite, I view revision as a rewording instead of reimagining and that
I don’t use summary nearly as much as maybe I should. This project has given me a lot of tips
and some questions two all in all a challenging but fun experience.

Style Play Journal

For this style play I will do some recording from Mark Twain commenting on the sound
and how it was achieved, then I will try to imitate those sounds using my recording as a
reference.

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when
he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

^This quote sounds more uneducated because of the use of a double negative and southern
due to the word ‘ain’t’ . All in all this sounds like a southern drawl.

Imitation : “Ain’t nobody fixin’ to tell me what to do!”

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”

^ This quote sounds more educated because of the use of words like ‘cease’ and ‘seldom’
these words make overall syntax of the sentence seem calm.

Imitation : “In order to assess the issue I examined it closer.”

“Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.”

^This quote seems wise and authoritative because it is more of a command

Imitation : “Be kind to the people you meet”

WHAT I LEARNED: I learned that specific words and the way someone writes something can
indicate important things like authority or intelligence.
 Journal Entry #3
Style Play and Reflection
To be submitted on 13/4/2021

Reflection Journal
This project was probably the one I most enjoyed and the one that was the easiest for
me. We got so much creative freedom (as usual in this class) and I was able to explore
something I wasn’t even sure counted as writing at all. I saw some very obvious patterns as
advertisements share a singular goal: to get your attention and make you buy a product. This
project really opened my eyes as to what counts as writing and has allowed me to loosen up my
definition of what writing is. I also ended up getting a pretty good idea on what makes an
advertisement good/effective. So I started by stating the purpose of my project. To help widen
first year writing student’s definition of writing and what counts as writing. After I did that I moved
on to finding some good and simple examples of written advertisements and noted all the things
in common I found interesting.Then, I explained why my findings regarding advertising were
important to the other students. I then finished my presentation with a works cited page. I also
included a questions page n so that I could clear up any confusion the other students had
regarding my presentation or information.

Style Play Journal

For this style play journal I will be writing a dictionary of sorts using popular sayings and
lingo today and documenting the tone difference of each term and how someone older might
say the same thing.

TERMS AND DEFINITIONS:

Finna - about to
Lit - fun or exciting (might also refer to someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol)
Fire - good (often referring to a song)
Out of pocket - used to describe something out of control or out of line

COMPARISONS:
when someone says “finna” they are essentially dating themselves as a young person while
also possibly seeming uneducated. This could be said for almost all of the terms listed but it
could also be a sort of code around the older generations if you are talking about how ‘lit’ you
were around your grandma.

WHAT I LEARNED:
Doing this exercise I learned that the younger generation will always find new meaning for old
words or even create new words. It reminds me how fluid writing is and how it represents a
living and changing language.