Essay 1 English 320 - Writing in an Electronic World
Spring 2002
Draft Due February 7
Final Due February 14

This essay asks you to inquire into what "human and free" means in the twenty-first century world of public discourse.

Overview

The Questions:

What does public discourse on the Web look like? How can the various spaces or conversations or exchanges be classified? What conditions seem to support rich or quality conversations, the kinds of conversations Judith Rodin and Deborah Tannen define?

The Steps:

1. Gather data: locate a variety of types of spaces, conversations, exchanges. This is primary research. (Err on the side of excess here; then cut back to suit your purposes.)

2. Classify your findings: How are the spaces and conversations alike; how are they unlike? Describe them using carefully selected examples. Let the reader "see" the logic behind your classification scheme.

3. Evaluate your findings: Which spaces, conversations, and/or exchanges look promising and which don't? What are the strengths and limitations of certain types of public discourse?

4. Theorize a bit (optional and take caution): Can you come to some tentative conclusions about how to generate and support "good" public discourse?

The Form and the Audience:

This assignment will take shape as a traditional academic essay addressed to your classmates and to me, who share your interest in investigating these questions. We'll be studying "closed form" writing, which corresponds to the traditional academic essay.

--Write 8-10 pages (your descriptions and examples will take up a fair amount of space, so you need the length)
--Turn in a paper copy and digital copy.
--Preface your paper with a short (one-to-two pages) reflective statement about your research procedures, about your sense of the strengths and limitations of your study, and about other issues you want to talk about.
--Be sure to document sources carefully! I'll be using your findings to enrich and expand the class web site so links must be accurate.

Extended Discussion

"Public discourse" is a concept that has been around for a long time; it's associated with "civil society," which is a term possibly coming from a Latin translation (societas civilis) of the Greek koinonia politiké. The concept of a public forum is historically associated with the term "rhetoric," which refers to the type of language used when people get together to talk about issues of common interest (the common good). Rhetoric may be usefully defined as the art of "conjoint reasoning," that is, talking with others about things that we cannot be absolutely sure of and that we want to explore with others. It's the language that operates in the realm of the probable, that is, where truth is not certain, where disagreement is a necessary condition. This definition of rhetoric assumes an audience of people in exploration mode--uncertain, willing to listen, wanting alternative perspectives, even calling for them. Some say that current rhetorical practice (or public discourse) is weakened by a contemporary fascination with combative discourses (Fox channel, Jerry Springer). Others bemoan the merging of "public reasoning" with "entertainment" or the cooption of public discourse by mass media. You may find it useful to explore one or more of these critiques in your paper (and/or other critiques of contemporary public discourse, such as meme theory), depending on what you see happening in the spaces available for public discourse.

Topics placed under discussion in public discourse vary according to historical exigencies, of course, and learning to raise issues so that they become public is probably one of the arts of public discourse. Note that in many forums, topics are supplied for you in various ways.

For purposes of this paper, we are focusing on spaces and conversations that you are able to join as a writer, and this includes very limited spaces (letters, responses) as well as larger spaces (interactive sites, places to post longer essays), mainstream sites and alternative sites. I'll be adding links to the web site, hoping that you will find many useful ones and tell me about them.

My pedagogical goals for this paper are these:

1. You learn about what's out there on the Web--for better or for worse--that looks like public discourse.
2. You locate several places that you like; you become a discerning writer and reader, fussy about what information you swallow and fussy about the types of discourse you find useful, yet well acquainted with a range of places and types of discourse.
3. You develop the habit of assessing the types of publications that support a given discourse--their political persuasion, their degrees of openness, the quality of the information housed there.
4. You become attuned to the way people use language to persuade and control public conversations (you begin to think like Rodin, Lakoff, Said, Reynolds, even if you don't agree with them entirely).
5. You get some practice in "closed form" writing--perfecting your expertise in the art of academic discourse.