Course Title

Innovating Language:
Effective Communication of Technology Leaders | C-U 001

Course Instructor
Dr. Brainerd Prince

Teaching Assistants
Apoorv Katoch, Joseph Thomas Thachil, and Dhwaanii Arora

Bibliography:

1. Heidegger, Martin. 2001. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
2. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. Listening. New York: Fordham University Press.
3. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2006. Truth and Method. London: Continuum
4. Bhom, David. 1996. On Dialogue. London: Routledge.
5. Lee, D. M. 1969. What Is Reading? The Reading Teacher, 22(5), 403–413.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20196140
6. Freire, Paulo. 1983. ‘The Importance of the Act of Reading’. Journal of Education.
165(1): 5-11.
7. J. Herbert Blackhurst. 1933. ‘The Nature of the Reading Process’. The Elementary
English Review. 10(4): 83–85, 111. doi:10.2307/41381567

Listening:

Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. Listening. New York: Fordham University Press.

To hear vs to listen

If ‘‘to hear’’ is to understand the sense (either in the so called figurative sense, or in the so-
called proper sense: to hear a siren, a bird, or a drum is already each time to understand at
least the rough outline of a situation, a context if not a text), to listen is to be straining
toward a possible meaning, and consequently one that is not immediately accessible.

We listen to someone who is giving a speech we want to understand, or else we listen to

what can arise from silence and provide a signal or a sign, or else we listen to what is called
‘‘music.’’ In the case of these first two examples, one can say, at least to simplify (if you
forget voices, timbres), that listening strains toward a present sense beyond sound. In the
latter case, that of music, it is from sound itself that sense is offered to auscultation. In one
case, sound has a propensity to disappear; in the other case, sense has a propensity to
become sound. But here there are only two tendencies, precisely, and listening aims at—or
is aroused by—the one where sound and sense mix together and resonate in each other, or
through each other. (Which signifies that—and here again, in a tendential way—if, on the
one hand, sense is sought in sound, on the other hand, sound, resonance, is also looked for
in sense.)

What is to be listening?

When he was six years old, Stravinsky listened to a mute peasant who produced unusual
sounds with his arms, which the future musician tried to reproduce: he was looking for a
different voice, one more or less vocal than the one that comes from the mouth; another
sound for another sense than the one that is spoken. A meaning with frontiers or one on the
fringes of meaning, to paraphrase Charles Rosen. To be listening is always to be on the edge
of meaning, or in an edgy meaning of extremity, and as if the sound were precisely nothing
else than this edge, this fringe, this margin—at least the sound that is musically listened to,
that is gathered and scrutinised for itself, not, however, as an acoustic phenomenon (or not
merely as one) but as a resonant meaning, a meaning whose sense is supposed to be found
in resonance, and only in resonance.

Sound and meaning

But what can be the shared space of meaning and sound? Meaning consists in a reference
[renvoi]. In fact, it is made of a totality of referrals: from a sign to a thing, from a state of
things to a quality, from a subject to another subject or to itself, all simultaneously. Sound is
also made of referrals: it spreads in space, where it resounds while still resounding ‘‘in me,’’
as we say (we will return to this ‘‘inside’’ of the subject; we will return to nothing but that).

In the external or internal space, it resounds, that is, it re-emits itself while still actually
‘‘sounding,’’ which is already ‘‘re-sounding’’ since that’s nothing else but referring back to
itself. To sound is to vibrate in itself or by itself: it is not only, for the sonorous body, to emit
a sound, but it is also to stretch out, to carry itself and be resolved into vibrations that both
return it to itself and place it outside itself. (22 -23)

One can say, then, at least, that meaning and sound share the space of a referral, in which
at the same time they refer to each other, and that, in a very general way, this space can be
defined as the space of a self, a subject. A self is nothing other than a form or function of
referral: a self is made of a relationship to self, or of a presence to self, which is nothing
other than the mutual referral between a perceptible individuation and an intelligible
identity (not just the individual in the current sense of the word, but in him the singular
occurrences of a state, a tension, or, precisely, a ‘‘sense’’)—this referral itself would have to
be infinite, and the point or occurrence of a subject in the substantial sense would have
never taken place except in the referral, thus in spacing and resonance, at the very most as
the dimensionless point of the re- of this resonance: the repetition where the sound is
amplified and spreads, as well as the turning back [rebroussement] where the echo is made
by making itself heard. A subject feels: that is his characteristic and his definition. This
means that he hears (himself), sees (himself ), touches (himself ), tastes (himself ), and so
on, and that he thinks himself or represents himself, approaches himself and strays from
himself, and thus always feels himself feeling a ‘‘self’’ that escapes [s’e´chappe] or hides [se
retranche] as long as it resounds elsewhere as it does in itself, in a world and in the other.
(7-8)

To be listening will always, then, be to be straining toward or in an approach to the self (one
should say, in a pathological manner, a fit of self: isn’t [sonorous] sense first of all, every
time, a crisis of self?).

Approach to the self: neither to a proper self (I), nor to the self of an other, but to the form
or structure of self as such, that is to say, to the form, structure, and movement of an
infinite referral [renvoi], since it refers to something (itself ) that is nothing outside of the
referral. When one is listening, one is on the lookout for a subject, something (itself ) that
identifies itself by resonating from self to self, in itself and for itself, hence outside of itself,
at once the same as and other than itself, one in the echo of the other, and this echo is like
the very sound of its sense.17 But the sound of sense is how it refers to itself or how it sends
back to itself [s’envoie] or addresses itself, and thus how it makes sense. (9)

Visual vs sound

But here it is a question of being on the watch [eˆtre aux aguets] for a way that is precisely
not that of a watch [guet] in the sense of a visual surveillance.18 The sonorous here makes
clear its singularity in relation to the optical register, where the relationship to the
intelligible as a theoretical relationship (theoretical is linked, in Greek, to seeing) is more
manifestly, if we can use this word, in play.19 In terms of the gaze, the subject is referred
back to itself as object. In terms of listening, it is, in a way, to itself that the subject refers or
refers back. Thus, in a certain way there is no relationship between the two. A writer notes:
‘‘I can hear what I see: a piano, or some leaves stirred by the wind. But I can never see what
I hear. Between sight and hearing there is no reciprocity.’’20 In the same way, I would say
that music floats around painting much more than painting is outlined around music. Or, in
semi-Lacanian terms, the visual is on the side of an imaginary capture (which does not imply
that it is reduced to that), while the sonorous is on the side of a symbolic referral/renvoi
(which does not imply that it exhausts its amplitude). In still other words, the visual is
tendentially mimetic, and the sonorous tendentially methexic (that is, having to do with
participation, sharing, or contagion), which does not mean that these tendencies do not
intersect. A musician writes: ‘‘How is it that sound has such a particular impact, a capacity to
affect us, which is like nothing else, and is very different from what has to do with the visual
and with touch? It is a realm we still do not know.’’ (12)

Melody

One should recall here Husserl’s whole analysis of time, but only in order to lead it to Gerard
Granel’s masterly treatment of it.37 If I may be forgiven for grossly oversimplifying, I will
recall only this: in order to describe awareness of time, Husserl uses the paradigm of
listening to a melody.38 He analyses how the present of this perception is a present formed
by the overlapping, in it or on it, of the present impression and the retention of the past
impression, opening forward onto the impression to come. It is a present, consequently,
that is not instantaneous, but differential in itself. Melody thus becomes the matrix of a
thought of unity of and in diversity—even in divergence or in ‘‘divorcity’’ (separation in
opposite directions [sens])—as much as of a diversity or divergence of and in unity. There is
certainly no chance in the fact that music, and more precisely its listening, comes to support
and expose a capture in principle [une saisie principelle] of unity in difference, and of the
latter in the former. The unity of unity and the unity of difference, the unity of monitoring
the melody and its modulation, its tune and its notes, if we can put it that way, is
effectuated in what Husserl calls the ‘‘living present.’’ This present is the now of a subject
that gives, on first or final hearing [instance], its presence to the present, or its present to
presence. In the terms I use here, I will say that the ‘‘living present’’ resounds, or that it is
itself resonance and is only that: resonance of instances or stances of the instant, in each
other.

Granel, however, raises his Heideggerian objection to this point: for this analysis, the
difference was implicitly assigned as unity from which ‘‘the phenomenological gaze already
causes to bring out [ressortir]’’ both unity and diversity grasped or pronounced as such.
Phenomenological intentionality thus diverges from what it had nonetheless been aiming
for: the original ‘‘retreat’’ of each trait, unity and diversity, which does not offer itself as
such but, on the contrary, plunges into what Granel calls ‘‘the Tacit’’ or ‘‘the silent
difference that bears fruit in anything perceived.’’ This is not, for Granel, anything but the
retreat, the fugitivity, and the modesty of being in its Heideggerian sense. And this sense—
to add a word to Granel’s text—is the transitive sense of the verb to be, 40 according to
which being ‘‘is being [est l’e´tant]’’ in a transitive mode (which is, however, neither a
‘‘doing’’ nor any operation . . .): a sense, thus, that is impossible to hear/ understand, an
unsignifiable sense but one that, perhaps, lets itself . . . be listened to. Forgetful of this
retreat from being, Husserl, according to Granel, perpetuates the ‘‘forgetting of being’’ in
the Heideggerian sense, and this occurs to the very extent that he does not concentrate his
ear on musical resonance but rather converts it ahead of time into the object of an intention
that configures it. Sound (and/or sense) is what is not at first intended. It is not first
‘‘intentioned’’: on the contrary, sound is what places its subject, which has not preceded it
with an aim, in tension, or under tension. (19-20)

On this account, we should say—even if this goes beyond Granel’s statement—that music
(or even sound in general) is not exactly a phenomenon; that is to say, it does not stem from
a logic of manifestation. It stems from a different logic, which would have to be called
evocation, but in this precise sense: while manifestation brings presence to light, evocation
summons (convokes, invokes) presence to itself. It does not establish it any more than it
supposes it already established. It anticipates its arrival and remembers its departure, itself
remaining suspended and straining between the two: time and sonority, sonority as time
and meaning. Evocation: a call and, in the call, breath, exhalation, inspiration and expiration.
In appellare, what comes first is not the idea of ‘‘naming,’’ but that of a pressure, an
impulsion.

Silence

According to Granel: from melody to the silence that declares it by silencing the unity of its
unity and of its difference, such is the beyond-phenomenological ascent—that is to say
ontological, still in the sense that in this case being continuously differs from all being-here-
and now. Which does not just mean that it is always different, but that it does not stop
differing this difference itself: it does not let the difference be identified between two
identities, since it is as the diffe´rant, indifferent to identity and to difference.

I propose to paraphrase by saying that it is a question of going back to, or opening oneself
up to, the resonance of being, or to being as resonance. ‘‘Silence’’ in fact must here be
understood [s’entendre, heard] not as a privation but as an arrangement of resonance: a
little—or even exactly . . .—as when in a perfect condition of silence you hear your own
body resonate, your own breath, your heart and all its resounding cave.42 It is a question,
then, of going back from the phenomenological subject, an intentional line of sight, to a
resonant subject, an intensive spacing of a rebound that does not end in any return to self
without immediately relaunching, as an echo, a call to that same self. While the subject of
the target is always already given, posed in itself to its point of view, the subject of listening
is always still yet to come, spaced, traversed, and called by itself, sounded by itself, if I can
allow myself all these plays on words, trivial though they are, that the French language
suggests here.

Although Granel did not formally declare it, the step he wants to take, by so thoroughly
working through the Husserlian description, from phenomenological order to ontological
retreat and recoil, is not accidentally a step that goes from the gaze to listening: in a sense,
it comes back to suggesting that Husserl persists in ‘‘seeing’’ the melody instead of listening
to it . . . The subject of the listening or the subject who is listening (but also the one who is
‘‘subject to listening’’ in the sense that one can be ‘‘subject to’’ unease, an ailment, or a
crisis) is not a phenomenological subject. This means that he is not a philosophical subject,
and, finally, he is perhaps no subject at all, except as the place of resonance, of its infinite
tension and rebound, the amplitude of sonorous deployment and the slightness of its
simultaneous redeployment—by which a voice is modulated in which the singular of a cry, a
call, or a song vibrates by retreating from it (a ‘‘voice’’: we have to understand what sounds
from a human throat without being language, which emerges from an animal gullet or from
any kind of instrument, even from the wind in the branches: the rustling toward which we
strain or lend an ear). (22)

We will thus have established that listening opens (itself ) up to resonance and that
resonance opens (itself ) up to the self: that is to say both that it opens to self (to the
resonant body, to its vibration) and that it opens to the self (to the being just as its being is
put into play for itself ). But being put into play [une mise en jeu], or the referral [renvoi] of
a presence to something other than itself, or to an absence of thing, the referral of a here to
an elsewhere, of a given to a gift, and always, in some respect, of something to nothing (to
the res [thing] of rien [nothing])—that is called sense, or meaning [le sens, ou du sens].

Thus, the listener (if I can call him that) is straining to end in sense (rather than straining
toward, intentionally), or else he is offered, exposed to sense. (In this respect, moreover,
and to say it again, listening comes at the unity and disparity of sensorial dispositions
sideways. It makes the perceptible registers and the intelligible register resound among
themselves —whether it be consonance or dissonance, symphony or Klangfarbenmelodie,
even euphony or cacophony, or some other relationship of resolution or tension.)
Sense opens up in silence. But it is not a question of leading to silence as if to the mystery of
the sonorous, as if to the ineffable sublimity that is always too quickly attributed to the
musical in order to make an absolute sense heard there (at least according to a tradition
born with romanticism—but certainly not foreign to the history of sense and of its truth in
the West, if not elsewhere too). It is indeed a question, it must be a question till the end, of
listening to this silence of meaning [sens]. This phrase is not a verbal evasion. Listening must
be examined—itself auscultated—at the keenest or tightest point of its tension and its
penetration. The ear is stretched [tendue] by or according to meaning—perhaps one should
say that its tension is meaning already, or made of meaning, from the sounds and cries that
signal danger or sex to the animal, onward to analytical listening, which is, after all, nothing
but listening taking shape or function as being inclined toward affect and not just toward
concept (which does not have to do with understanding [entendre]), as it can always play
(or ‘‘analyze’’), even in a conversation, in a classroom or a courtroom. Musical listening
seems, then, to be like the permission, the elaboration, and the intensification of the
keenest disposition of the ‘‘auditory sense.’’ (Musical listening means, in the end, music
itself, the music that, above all, is listened to [s’e´coute], whether it is written down or not,
and when it is written, from its composition all the way to its execution. It is listened to
according to the different possible inflections of expression: it is made to be listened to, but
it is first of all, in itself, the listening of self.) (27)

Monologue:

Through the years detailed attention has been given to the lyric, epic, short-story, drama,
novel, and other literary forms, but comparatively few references have been made to the
dramatic monologue. Perhaps a reason for the relative neglect of this interesting genre is
that it seems to be a familiar form easily understood because it has appropriated several
characteristics of related types.

Brooke was of the opinion that dramatic monologues "belong directly to the tragedy and to
the comedy of life." Tennyson's Rizpah, Despair, and The First Quarrel were given as
examples of tragedy; and all dialect examples were listed as illustrations of comedy. Brooke
did not overlook poems of social or ethical implications, as can be noted in his discussion of
the second Locksley Hall and The Wreck. In comparing Tennyson and Browning as writers of
the dramatic monologue, Brooke stated that the former "scarcely varies at all" in his use of
the type; whereas, the latter's examples are "sometimes lyrical, sometimes narrative,
sometimes reflective.""

When Curry discussed the genre he said that as Browning exemplified it the dramatic
monologue was "one end of a conversation" and that a definite speaker was present in a
dramatic situation.14 Further, he said that "usually" a well-defined hearer was present,
"though his character is understood entirely from the impression he produces upon the
speaker."'5 In elaborating on the occasion, he explained that the "conversation" is not an
abstract affair but "takes place in a definite situation as a part of human life."' (504)
Conversation

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2006. Truth and Method. London: Continuum

We say that we "conduct" a conversation, but the more genuine a conversation is, the less
its conduct lies within the will of either partner. Thus a genuine conversation is never the
one that we wanted to conduct. Rather, it is generally more correct to say that we fall into
conversation, or even that we become involved in it. The way one word follows another,
with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be
conducted in some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than the
led. No one knows in advance what will "come out" of a conversation. Understanding or its
failure is like an event that happens to us. Thus we can say that something was a good
conversation or that it was ill fated. All this shows that a conversation has a spirit of its own,
and that the language in which it is conducted bears its own truth within it—i.e., that it
allows something to "emerge" which henceforth exists.

In our analysis of romantic hermeneutics we have already seen that understanding is not
based on transposing oneself into another person, on one person's immediate participation
with another. To understand what a person says is, as we saw, to come to an understanding
about the subject matter, not to get inside another person and relive his experiences
(Erlebnisse). We emphasised that the experience (Erfahrung) of meaning that takes place in
understanding always includes application. Now we are to note that this whole process is
verbal. It is not for nothing that the special problematic of understanding and the attempt to
master it as an art - the concern of hermeneutics—belongs traditionally to the sphere of
grammar and rhetoric. Language is the medium in which substantive understanding and
agreement take place between two people.

In situations where coming to an understanding is disrupted or impeded, we first become

conscious of the conditions of all understanding. Thus the verbal process whereby a
conversation in two different languages is made possible through translation is especially
informative. Here the translator must translate the meaning to be understood into the
context in which the other speaker lives. This does not, of course, mean that he is at liberty
to falsify the meaning of what the other person says. Rather, the meaning must be
preserved, but since it must be understood within a new language world, it must establish
its validity within it in a new way. Thus every translation is at the same time an
interpretation. We can even say that the translation is the culmination of the interpretation
that the translator has made of the words given him.

The example of translation, then, makes us aware that language as the medium of
understanding must be consciously created by an explicit mediation. This kind of explicit
process is undoubtedly not the norm in a conversation. Nor is translation the norm in the
way we approach a foreign language. Rather, having to rely on translation is tantamount to
two people giving up their independent authority. Where a translation is necessary, the gap
between the spirit of the original words and that of their reproduction must be taken into
account. It is a gap that can never be completely closed. But in these cases understanding
does not really take place between the partners of the conversation, but between the
interpreters, who can really have an encounter in a common world of understanding. (It is
well known that nothing is more difficult than a dialogue in two different languages in which
one person speaks one and the other person the other, each understanding the other's
language but not speaking it. As if impelled by a higher force, one of the languages always
tries to establish itself over the other as the medium of understanding.)

Where there is understanding, there is not translation but speech. To understand a foreign
language means that we do not need to translate it into our own. When we really master a
language, then no translation is necessary—in fact, any translation seems impossible.
Understanding how to speak is not yet of itself real understanding and does not involve an
interpretive process; it is an accomplishment of life. For you understand a language by living
in it—a statement that is true, as we know, not only living but dead languages as well. Thus
the hermeneutical problem concerns not the correct mastery of language but coming to a
proper understanding about the subject matter, which takes place in the medium of
language. Every language can be learned so perfectly that using it no longer means
translating from or into one's native tongue, but thinking in the foreign language. Mastering
the language is a necessary precondition for coming to an understanding in a conversation.
Every conversation obviously presupposes that the two speakers speak the same language.
Only when two people can make themselves understood through language by talking
together can the problem of understanding and agreement even be raised. Having to
depend on an interpreter's translation is an extreme case that doubles the hermeneutical
process, namely the conversation: there is one conversation between the interpreter and
the other, and a second between the interpreter and oneself.

Conversation is a process of coming to an understanding. Thus it belongs to every true

conversation that each person opens himself to the other, truly accepts his point of view as
valid and transposes himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the
particular individual but what he says. What is to be grasped is the substantive Tightness of
his opinion, so that we can be at one with each other on the subject. Thus we do not relate
the other's opinion to him but to our own opinions and views. Where a person is concerned
with the other as individuality—e.g., in a therapeutic conversation or the interrogation of a
man accused of a crime—this is not really a situation in which two people are trying to come
to an understanding. (385-7)

Dialogue and discussion

Bhom, David. 1996. On Dialogue. London: Routledge.

The way we start a dialogue group is usually by talking about dialogue—talking it over,
discussing why we’re doing it, what it means, and so forth. I don’t think it is wise to start a
group before people have gone into all that, at least somewhat. You can, but then you’ll
have to trust that the group will continue, and that these questions will come out later. So if
you are thinking of meeting in a group, one thing which I suggest is to have a discussion or a
seminar about dialogue for a while, and those who are interested can then go on to have
the dialogue. And you mustn’t worry too much whether you are or are not having
dialogue—that’s one of the blocks. It may be mixed. So we will discuss dialogue for a
while—what is its nature?
I give a meaning to the word “dialogue” that is somewhat different from what is commonly
used. The derivations of words often help to suggest a deeper meaning. “Dialogue” comes
from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means “the word,” or in our case we would think of
the “meaning of the word.” And dia means “through”—it doesn’t mean “two.” A dialogue
can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of
dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture or image that this
derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between
us. This will make possible a flow of meaning in the whole group, out of which may emerge
some new understanding. It’s something new, which may not have been in the starting
point at all. It’s something creative. And this shared meaning is the “glue” or “cement” that
holds people and societies together. (6)

Contrast this with the word “discussion,” which has the same root as “percussion” and
“concussion.” It really means to break things up. It emphasises the idea of analysis, where
there may be many points of view, and where everybody is presenting a different one—
analysing and breaking up. That obviously has its value, but it is limited, and it will not get us
very far beyond our various points of view. Discussion is almost like a ping-pong game,
where people are batting the ideas back and forth and the object of the game is to win or to
get points for yourself. Possibly you will take up somebody else’s ideas to back up your
own— you may agree with some and disagree with others—but the basic point is to win the
game. That’s very frequently the case in a discussion.

In a dialogue, however, nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a
different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your
particular view prevail. Rather, whenever any mistake is discovered on the part of anybody,
everybody gains. It’s a situation called win-win, whereas the other game is win-lose—if I
win, you lose. But a dialogue is something more of a common participation, in which we are
not playing a game against each other, but with each other. In a dialogue, everybody wins.
(7)

Now, why do we need dialogue? People have difficulty communicating even in small groups.
But in a group of thirty or forty or more, many may find it very hard to communicate unless
there is a set purpose, or unless somebody is leading it.Why is that? For one thing,
everybody has different assumptions and opinions. They are basic assumptions—not merely
superficial assumptions—such as assumptions about the meaning of life; about your own
self-interest, your country’s interest, or your religious interest; about what you really think is
important.

And these assumptions are defended when they are challenged. People frequently can’t
resist defending them, and they tend to defend them with an emotional charge. We’ll
discuss that in more detail later, but I’ll give an example now. We organized a dialogue in
Israel a number of years ago. At one stage the people were discussing politics, and
somebody said, just in passing, “Zionism is creating a great difficulty in good relations
between Jews and Arabs. It is the principal barrier that’s in the way.” He said it very quietly.
Then suddenly somebody else couldn’t contain himself and jumped up. He was full of
emotion. His blood pressure was high and his eyes were popping out. He said, “Without
Zionism the country would fall to pieces!” That fellow had one basic assumption, and the
other person had another one. And those two assumptions were really in conflict. Then the
question is, “What can you do?” You see, those are the kinds of assumptions that are
causing all the trouble politically, all over the world. And the case I just described is
relatively easier than some of the assumptions that we have to handle in politics. The point
is that we have all sorts of assumptions, not only about politics or economics or religion, but
also about what we think an individual should do, or what life is all about, and so forth.

We could also call these assumptions “opinions.” An opinion is an assumption. The word
“opinion” is used in several senses. When a doctor has an opinion, that’s the best
assumption that he can make based on the evidence. He may then say, “Okay, I’m not quite
sure, so let’s get a second opinion.” In that case, if he is a good doctor he does not react to
defend his assumption. If the second opinion turns out to be different from his, he doesn’t
jump up with an emotional charge, such as the fellow did on the question of Zionism, and
say, “How can you say such things?” That doctor’s opinion would be an example of a
rational sort of opinion. But most are not of that nature—mostly they are defended with a
strong reaction. In other words, a person We could also call these assumptions “opinions.”

An opinion is an assumption. The word “opinion” is used in several senses. When a doctor
has an opinion, that’s the best assumption that he can make based on the evidence. He may
then say, “Okay, I’m not quite sure, so let’s get a second opinion.” In that case, if he is a
good doctor he does not react to defend his assumption. If the second opinion turns out to
be different from his, he doesn’t jump up with an emotional charge, such as the fellow did
on the question of Zionism, and say, “How can you say such things?” That doctor’s opinion
would be an example of a rational sort of opinion. But most are not of that nature—mostly
they are defended with a strong reaction. In other words, a person identifies himself with
them. They are tied up with his investment in self-interest.

The point is that dialogue has to go into all the pressures that are behind our assumptions. It
goes into the process of thought behind the assumptions, not just the assumptions
themselves. (9)
Reading:

Lee, D. M. 1969. What Is Reading? The Reading Teacher, 22(5), 403–413.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20196140

What is Reading?

There seem to be two general categories of answers to the question of what reading is. One
canters around such phrases as translating symbols into sound, saying words, getting meaning
from the printed page. The other may be stated as bringing personal meaning to the printed
page, reacting to the ideas, evaluating the author's recorded thoughts, gaining increased
understanding through experiencing the recorded understandings of another (403).

Finding personal meanings

Most children, as they grow up normally, have learned creative and critical thinking as a
natural way of reacting. They listen and respond in terms of their own experience and feelings.
They absorb that which they feel has value and personal meaning for them. They ignore that
which does not since there is no way in which they can relate it to their world (404-405). As
they come to school, virtually all are eager to learn and eager to please. Many come with a
great deal of self-confidence born of earlier acceptance and success. Others are less
confident. Some have faced so much rejection, so much failure already that, while willing and
desirous, they are not very hopeful. The less confidence a child has, the more easily he
becomes confused and discouraged. When he can make no sense and see no personal
meaning in what the teacher is presenting, he may still try to follow directions, but his lack of
understanding or sense of purpose or relationship to his own experiences (the only basis he
has for knowing) almost dooms him to failure. The extent to which he is able to relate school
experiences to his own personal understandings probably determines his degree of school
success. At best he may be able to say back what the teacher is asking him to learn. As this
gains approval, he may be able to build a structure of knowledge apart from his prior
experience which may serve him more or less well. Thus, many children learn to "read" by
pronouncing words as requested, by finding "what the book says" as requested and so receive
approval for "reading."

Planning for true reading

Look now at the reactions of children in a classroom designed to develop true rather than
pseudo reading, a creative and critical reading which all significant reading is. Each child
comes to school a unique individual, having learned much from living and ready and eager to
extend his living and learning. One must respect his individuality and plan the environment to
include that which is familiar along with that which is new. In this way he will find much which
has personal meaning. He will be able to use it in his own unique way to extend that meaning
(406). When he suddenly finds he can know what the author of a printed book is thinking and
feeling, he is beginning to find the true excitement of reading. As he explores further, some
books make little or no sense to him and he lays these aside, searching for others to which he
can relate. Out of this freedom to select that to which he can react in his own unique way, he
grows in his understanding of himself and others and his world. He is reading creatively. As
he searches for what has value for him, he learns to read critically, and evaluatively. From this
point, he can easily learn to add other bases for evaluation and become more selective in his
reading and what he accepts from his reading (407)

Critical reading:

Freire, Paulo. 1983. ‘The Importance of the Act of Reading’. Journal of Education. 165(1): 5-
11.

In an attempt to speak about the importance of reading, it is indispensable for me to say

something about my preparation for being here today, something about the process I
inserted myself while writing the text I now read, a process that involves the critical
understanding of the act of reading. Reading is not exhausted merely by decoding the
written word or written language but rather anticipated by extending into the knowledge of
the world. Reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the
word cannot dispense with continually reading the world. Language and reality are
dynamically intertwined. The understanding attained by critical reading of a text implies
perceiving the relationship between text and context (5).

As I began writing about the importance of the act or reading, I felt drawn enthusiastically to
re-reading essentials moments in my own practice of reading whose memory I retained
from the most remote experiences of childhood, adolescence, from young manhood, when
a critical understanding of the act of reading took shape in me. In writing this text, I put
objective distance between myself and the different moments in which the act of reading
occurred in my existential experience: first, reading the world, the tiny world in which I
moved; afterwards, reading the word, not always the word-world in the course of my
schooling. It was precisely my parents who introduced me to reading the word at a certain
moment in this rich experience of understanding my immediate world. Deciphering the
word flowed naturally from reading my particular world; it was not something
superimposed on it. I learned to read and write on the ground of the backyard of my house,
in the shade of the mango trees, with words from my world rather than from the wider
world of my parents. The earth was my blackboard; sticks, my chalk (7-8).

Insistence on a quantity of readings without due internalisation of texts proposed for

understanding rather than mechanical memorising reveals a magical view of the written
word, a view that must be superseded (10). I need to go no further into what I've developed
at different times in the complex process of teaching adults to read and write. I would like to
return, however, to one point referred to elsewhere in this text because of its significance
for the critical understanding of the act of reading and writing, and consequently, for the
project, I am dedicated to, teaching adults to read and write. Reading the world always
precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world. As I
suggested earlier, this movement from the world to the word and from the word to the
world is always present; even the spoken word flows from our reading of the world. In a
way, however, we can go further, and say that reading the word is not preceded merely by
reading the world, but by a certain form of writing it or re-writing it, that is, of transforming
it by means of conscious practical work. For me, this dynamic movement is central to the
literacy process. For this reason, I have always insisted that words used in organizing a
literacy program come from the word universe of the people who are learning, expressing
their actual language, their anxieties, fears, demands, and dreams. Words should be laden
with the meaning of the people's existential experience, and not of the teacher's
experience. Surveying what I call the word universe thus gives us the people's words,
pregnant with the world, words from the people's reading of the world. We then give the
words back to the people inserted in what I call codifications, pictures imaging real
situations. The word brick, for example, might be inserted in a pictorial representation of a
group of bricklayers constructing a house (10-11).
Before giving a written form to the popular spoken word, however, we customarily
challenge the learners with a group of codified situations, so they will apprehend the word
rather than mechanically memorise it. De- codifying or reading the situations pictured leads
them to a critical perception of the meaning of culture by leading them to understand how
human practice or work transforms the world. Basically, the pictures of concrete situations
enable people to reflect on their former interpretation of the world before going on to read
the word. This more critical reading of the prior less critical reading of the world enables
them to understand their indigence differently from the fatalistic way they sometimes view
injustice.

In this way, a critical reading of reality, whether it takes place in the literacy process or not
and associated above all with the clearly political practices of mobilising and organising,
constitutes an instrument of what Gramsci calls counter-hegemony. To sum up, reading
always involves critical perception, interpretation, and re-writing what is read. I would like
to close by saying that for these reflections on the importance of the act of reading I
resolved to adopt the procedure I used because it was consonant with my way of being and
with what I am capable of doing (11).

Wardeberg, H. L. (1967). Critical Reading. Elementary English, 44(3), 247–251.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41387622

Cursory Reading:

J. Herbert Blackhurst. 1933. ‘The Nature of the Reading Process’. The Elementary English
Review. 10(4): 83–85, 111. doi:10.2307/41381567

In emphasising the importance of speed of reading it should be noted that speed is an asset
only to the extent that it represents a mastery of the mechanics of the process. Thinking in
reading does not go on effectively when the stimuli directing the process are not
automatically received. Fixations must move forward in a rhythmic manner without halting
or regression. Furthermore, the background of experience must be adequate to meet the
requirements of reflection. To emphasise speed to the point of neglecting the thinking is
both wasteful at the time and conducive to non-scholarly habits of reading. The good reader
will at times put the book aside and carry on a train of thought which has been stimulated
by the reading process; he may return to the passages previously read for further reflection;
or he may read a line many times before going forward. The thinking aspect of the reading
process has generally been neglected in teaching individuals to read. Of course, in the
question of speed, much will depend upon the kind of material which is being read. The
reading of fiction, for example, is rather in the nature of day-dreaming than of solid thinking.
The thought content is usually so light that the mental process of the reader can easily keep
pace with the incoming stimulation from the symbols. Hence, in cursory reading the speed
of the process is a fair criterion of the quality of reading. This is not true when the material
is of a problem-solving nature. (85)

Reading to Write: The Mechanics of Writing an Academic Paper - Brainerd Prince

Writing academic papers is all about reading. It is all about reading what and when, in the process of
writing, and yet there is writing to be accomplished different from reading. So, what role does
reading play in writing? I would like to claim that there are three kinds of reading in the process of
writing.

First, reading to narrow down on the title or theme. Let's call this Cursory Reading, a reading widely,
that often uses the tool of speed reading. We begin with a pre-understanding, informed by our past
readings, of a potential theme to work on. Cursory reading, confirms the theme within us, even as it
ensures that writing on that theme is a viable academic project. Here the reading enables the writer
to know the material that is available on the theme, as well as how deeply has the theme been
thematized in existing literature within disciplinary bounds. Cursory reading gives confidence to the
writer, that she is indeed investigating a theme that is important, one that has been engaged by
others, and hence has a history of engagement, which will provide her dialogue partners and finally
confidence that her script will definitely take this line of enquiry further and make a meaningful
contribution to a body of knowledge.

Secondly, once the theme is finalized, the next goal is to get a structure of the paper. Of course we
are taught from our early time of education that a good piece has three parts - Introduction, Body,
Conclusion. Guess what, it is still great advise, albeit, all these three parts or sections maybe
differently understood now than then. The body is what academic writing is all about. It must have
three to four main sub-sections. Each section providing evidence, engaging an argument, in support
of the central claim of the theme of the paper. Now, there are no rules about how each sub-section
must be related to another. This is one reason we talk about internal rationality. The rationality of
the piece evolves from the inside of the piece being conceived to be written. This relating and
connecting is done by the author, and hence authorial rationality. The quality of paper depends on
how deeply are these sub-sections connected to each other as well as to the central argument
propounded in the script. Often writers string together rather superficially sections containing
similar/different ideas, but not really interconnected. That would be an example of a weak paper.
What has reading to do with this? Everything! It is here that the writer begins to do what I call as
Committed Reading. This is the long trudge of the night. It is reading deeply, about the sub-themes.
Now, one does not have a sub-theme to begin with, these sub-themes, or the different arguments
being put forward will appear to one's horizon even as one committedly reads on the theme. They
come upon the reader. Let's try and put a method to this madness. When we did cursory reading, we
got a theme, and also a list of bibliography that we surveyed. While sifting through texts, we
identified the semantic dense texts for our project and had already made note of the central
interlocutors in our paper. All of this has been accomplished through cursory reading. With
committed reading, we have three aims: first, to identify the main debate upon the selected theme
and the history of its development. I would say that focus on the twentieth century, and use
eighteenth and nineteenth century for grounding and locating the debate. Secondly, to find the
different points of views or positions of that debate and the scholars holding those positions. This is
again done historically, in a sense, you can't pit Hegel against Habermas in a horizontal sense, on two
sides of the debate. Having a historical sense is of extreme importance. Finally, to identify your
position, and argument. This is called the central argument. An argument consists of an assertion or
a claim, which is supported by premises. The evidence one provides for the premises, and the
validity of the premises determines the strength of the argument. Now, these different premises and
evidences, must be correlated and must possess an internal structure. Each of them provides a part
to the whole argument. It is these interconnected parts that form the sub-sections of the body of the
paper. Committed reading is not cursory, it reads both exhaustively and extensively on these
different points. The main texts of the main interlocutors are read completely, so that you can
represent their positions confidently. The conceptual structure of the script develops within yourself
during this phase of committed reading. At the end of this season of reading, you should be able to
put out a conceptual framework, clearly outlining the development of the argument. This is the real
grind. There are absolutely no visible marks for how exhaustively and extensively you read, no one
sees your hard work, but your final script will bear the marks of your hard work. It is here that the
writer would be highly tempted to take short cuts, to read summaries, to read introduction and
relevant chapters, et al, and to all these devious schemes of the devil that may tempt us, I say, stand
fast, don't give in. Read with commitment. It is here that boys are separated from the men.

The third phase of writing a script is to simply write the damn script out! By now not only do you
know clearly the theme located within a body of literature that you are going to address in your
script, but you also know the argument you are presenting, the different positions or schools of
views on the theme, which you might critique positively or negatively, and you also know the
premises/evidences that coherently form the structure that embodies your argument. Now to put
flesh to this skeleton is the articulation of your script. It is the easiest as well as the hardest thing to
do. Here there is a general misconception, that once we have the idea in our head, writing out is
merely a verbalizing of the idea. It is merely putting into language what we already know. This is an
epistemological issue about the relationship between idea and its representation and the role of
language in it. The crucial question is can there be ideas without words? Furthermore, what do we
mean by putting ideas into words. I am not going to address this issue head-on except to say that
writing takes the place of an author's intent to discourse. I follow Ricoeur in this. Writing is not
transcribing an already existing speech, rather takes the place of speech. Hence writing is like
speaking. It is an art that is informed by both cursory and committed readings, but is a different act
altogether. To construct a sentence, and to construct a paragraph requires a set of skills that are
different from those required for reading and speaking. Before I talk a bit about the skills involved in
writing, the question I want to address is, is there a form of reading relevant to this final phase of
scripting the piece. Yes there is, and let us call it Critical Reading. Now, this is not really reading in
either the cursory or committed sense. It is reading in the service of writing. Reading here plays
second fiddle to writing. You read to support, to evidence, to critique. The written text bears on you
to read more, in order to write and develop the script. If your cursory and committed readings have
been done well, then often it is the revisiting of those texts that you have already read and
underlined, or taken notes of. However, it might also be a new path that your writing forges out
with, for which new readings have to be done, in support of an argument, or to clarify a point you
are making. This is strictly business-reading, you have to be swift and ruthless. This is paid work,
every minute counts in this reading that is called upon to serve writing. The temptation here is to
read to enquire further, or your self will tell you that you need to read more to know more, but you
have to resist the temptation to be carried away by reading. These temptations to read are
distractions, where reading itself becomes a distraction in the composition of the script. Here the
devil is on the other side. Earlier the devil didn't want you to read, and to cut corners, now the devil
wants to take you on the long garden path, a wild goose chase. So keep critical reading close to the
script you are constructing.

With this we have seen the three forms of reading - Cursory, Committed, Critical - that are in
operation in different stages of the act of writing. I will end with a few thoughts on writing and the
skills it requires. In writing, the key is to write out a single coherent piece with all the various
parts/sections embodied in paragraphs clearly relating and connecting together coherently. There
are no points for empty descriptions that do not serve any purpose. Every paragraph must advance
the central argument creatively. A good paragraph has four sections - (a) state clearly and simply the
particular point it is making in other words describe the point being made, (b) discuss the point, by
showing the different positions on it and by bringing together the divergent schools into a
conversation, (c) evidence your position/point by debate, and (d) finally, deploy the point made
towards the extension of the larger or central point/thesis/argument you are advancing in the piece.
It is here in (d) that all the hard work of (a), (b), (c) will pay off if the connection to the larger thesis
and argument is made strongly. This is YOUR contribution. How you connect is YOUR creation of
knowledge. I must also mention about writing styles here. Each writer must develop a style unique
to one's own style of discourse. However, just as everything one's own begins with imitation and
only much later brings about a certain uniqueness through innovation, I suggest, that it is the same
in the act of writing - imitate the styles of authors you respect. When you read don't read for
substance alone, but read to understand their methodology and also styles of writing. Imitate them.
Use their styles of writing and meticulously learn from them. Be an apprentice to their skill of
writing. As you write fluidly, then bring your innovation to it. Make changes and create a new style
for others to imitate. Finally, the skill of writing lies in re-writing. Often one can have 12-15 drafts
before the script begins to make sense. But the more you write, the rewriting becomes less. But still
there is rewriting, lots of it. It is like chiselling the sculpture so that it is smooth like butter. Ironing
out knots, holes, straightening out unnecessary twists and turns - bringing about clarity, simplicity,
and thrust.

The goal of writing is to be read, and the underlying goal of being read is that your text will give new
insights, directions, and energy to the reader, so that her action in the world will imitate the
structures you have laid down in your script with a hope that they will act better in the world. Thus
writing is a powerful means to change the world, by changing the actions and decisions of readers.
Perhaps it can be said that investing in learning the skills of writing is indeed investing in the
transformation of the world. So it would only be appropriate to end by saying - read to write and
write to be read.