ENGL 505B

Because I'm gonna, so go ahead and try to stop me. I've got two reactions to Kynard's article.

One: What a freakin' great use of technology. Rhetorically sound, totally relevant, easily teachable, pedagogically fertile... this is the kind of thing that cheezes me off because I want to do this kind of stuff with my students, but I'm not this clever. Yet.

Two: and here's my potentially explosive reaction: I can't do this stuff. I'm always trying to tell my students to "find their voice" or "use their voice," and I'll damn well bet that they think my "voice" is a little like yoda's "force." Invisible, unclear, and totally fictional. I tell them that when I write I try to sound like me. But, uh, how do I sound? aside from dripping sarcasm there isn't much to mark my "voice" rhetorically speaking, in my writing. Hell, I'm not even southern or appalachian, or from new york, which would at least give me some dialect color. I'm from Ohio. You tell me how I tell anyone to sound more like themselves. I can't because I don't have this formal/informal dialect/standard whatever! @$$ split personality. (I really just wanted to try and type like the real "me" there...) And even if I could, at this university where 80 percent of both my first two classes have been white, how do I tell them to sound authentic, to communicate in a medium and a style that is more them? What's more them? Can I then turn to my one Egyptian, two black, one Latino student and single them out and tell them to sound more like themselves, implying that they should sound different than they do on paper if they sound formal? I'm afraid of a reverse kind of judgement working here that I end up tying myself in knots over. This is a diatribe. Its not well thought out. I'm probably gonna read this in class tomorrow and want to hide in a hole. I don't want this to be glossed over. I'm frustrated because I "feel" Kynard is soooooo right on that its ridiculous, but I also "feel" that I have no idea what that means for me or my students... Is it ok just to let Kynard and other create this kind of space? That seems lazy and irresponsible. I want to play in this game. I just don't know the rules.

Why can't I ever just post "Hey, I liked this article"...