In your response you interpolated the phrase "As is conversation?" To
which I say yes. I was trying to lay out the features of 'textual
conversation' and perhaps didn't make that clear.
I guess your response brings me to two points. One, different fyc
programs seem to have different missions, or at least different fyc
teachers do. I'd love to hear how your department defines the purpose of
fyc. My guess is that more departments or programs than not would be
happy to have students simply write a decent academic essay. But I'm not
a good guesser often. It's just been that in my experience teachers
disparage students for not being able to write a good essay on the 'Five
Causes of the Civil War' more than ever seem to worry about or even talk
about rhetoric in any form.
It's that very attitude that makes so many (Birkets, Postman, Boyle) not
trust Net forms. For some
reason it's not real, perhaps as you suggest because it is too grass
roots, and for some reason, while grass roots are o.k. to study and
intellectualize upon, little to nothing of actual intellectual content
grows from those roots.
My second point is a question, rephrased from my previous post, what do you
teach when you teach on-line rhetoric? Or, is it the speed and fluidity
that changes the shape and feeling of rhetoric?, and if it is, what are
those new shapes, what are their properties,and how can they be taught?
Nick
nickc@marlboro.edu
@->-->-- (One ASCII rose in honor of your successful dissertation
defense.)