ENGL 245: Writing and Money

Watch the video of a specific cultural activity.

Use the field notes guide to take observation notes: Start with the left side (description) and move toward the right (interpretation and reflection) as you go along. Take particularly care in distinguishing your description from your interpretation. After you observe the activity and begin some initial observations, take a few moments to reflect on what you’ve observed and its significance. Post your reflections on your blog. You may also use your blog to write down your field notes if you’d like.

Feel free to work in groups/ pairs or independently on this. Post your answers to your blog.

1. What questions about writing in the workplace or people who write for a living came up for you while engaging with the readings in the last few weeks? (Think back to Mc Millan Cottom’s take on how the new economy is shaping education, Gregg’s argument about the emotional constraints of white-collar work in conditions of flexibility or Brandt’s discussion of writers as the new mediational tools of the information economy. Or you might consider Bourdieu or Lanham’s ideas and how they might say something about what it means to write for a living). Take a few moments to brainstorm a few ideas of potential interesting strands of thinking of questions.
2. Try to turn one of these ideas into a research question. Remember the parameters of a good primary research question: specific, narrow, and discoverable through primary methods (but not too narrow to be Google-able).
3. Consider each of the data collection methods (interviews, observations, and text analysis) and describe how each method would allow you to find out the answer to the question in a particularly way. What would each method allow you to see? What would be the limitations of each? Which methods would be best for answering your research question?

Option 1: Brandt describes “mediation and synthesis” as key features in the writing demands of knowledge workers. In what ways have you engaged in this process of mediation in your own writing? Describe one example: what entities or interests were you mediating between? What are the challenges of mediation? What distinguishes mediation as a particular skill or practice in writing?

Option 2: Since we’re shifting toward discussions of career and labor, what career or future job to you envision having after graduation? With Brandt’s article in mind, think of the various ways that writing might be a part of your future job: How do you imagine writing as being part of that career? What particular texts will you write? Who will you write for or with? What will happen to your texts after you write them? What will be the stakes of your writing? In what settings will you write?

I’d like you to read this article by Jia Tolentino about the #MeToo movement, and think about it as a rhetorical analysis that exists to address a particular exigency: How does she use rhetoric? And for what purpose? Does this rhetorical analysis mediate the exigency? Please reflect on these questions on your blog.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/one-year-of-metoo-what-womens-speech-is-still-not-allowed-to-do

Complete either of these as a blog post entry: you can work individually or in pairs/small groups.

Option 1: Write a passive aggressive note. What makes up the genre of the passive aggressive note? What do you have to consider about audience and context?

Option 2: Do you have a story of receiving or writing a passive aggressive note? Please share.