Sunday, February 28, 2010

When writing any piece of literature, you are writing for an audience. Depends on who you are speaking to, you use different tones, lingo, and dialect. When speaking to friends, it tends to be more casual and loose instead of when u are speaking to someone higher ranked or someone you are trying to persuade.

The performance self and authentic self are in essence the same thing to me. If you knew something that was correct that know one had ever come up with, obviously you would choose to work with that information over the knowledge that may be common. How ever the performance self if when you have a predetermined goal you need to accomplish in our writing. You must use proven facts and methods in order to prove your point, which might seem to limit the possibilities available. When writing a piece from an authentic self view, you are writing for you, originally and creatively without needing to use someone else’s ideas to help you own thought. This is the type of writing I enjoy most. Not being criticized on the material, but how you present it.

Patch writing is where you use someone else’s work, as a mold almost and manipulate their work and submit it as your own. This is very different than writing in the performance self.

I am excited for the writing we will be doing in this class because I feel with the determination of an instructor that we are lucky to have in this class, and the hard work of our classmates, our writing can be DRAMATICALLY improved on all ends.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Week 3 blog assignment

Should a charge of plagiarism ruin you life?” discusses several occasions where there has been theft, not necessarily of physical property, but a thought or a sound. What are the guidelines between basing your story off someone else’s, and copying? Byrony Lavery did not commit a crime by basing his play off of the true life of Dorothy Lewis. However, after this incident was announced to the public, she was bashed out of the business. Malcom said that he didn’t even wish this upon the thief of his work. Lavery should have approached Gladwell and asked permission in order to make his play right. The reputation of Lavery would still be in tact if he had done so.

The medical journal written by Gladwell based on Lewis’s interactions with serial killers set a perfect basis for the play written by Lavery. Although the play was not literally word for word with the medical journal, there were several instances where in fact the words did match up and the events were too detailed and close to be a coincidence.

The Beastie Boys were also accused of steal a 6 second introduction to their song from James Newton. James Newton tried to sue the Beastie Boys, however his evidence was not strong enough to convince to courts of anything. In order to borrow parts of a song, you must first ask permission from the label, then the musician, then if there is a separate owner to the song, them also. The Black Eyed Peas are another example of a group who are being accused of stealing the instrumentals from Freeland. I listened to it myself and it couldn’t be any more obvious it was stolen.

Although plagiarism is wrong, it is very tough deciphering what plagiarism exactly is. The two basic types of plagiarism are intentional and unintentional. When someone intentionally plagiarizes or steals something, they deserve to be punished or sued. How ever, unless it is blatantly obvious that someone was intentionally copying, the offender should be taught how to properly cite of give credit to the originator.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Thursday, February 4, 2010

What is an essay?

There is more to the word "essay" than most people know. To students, the word "essay" typically means a paper they must compose, that they will be constructively criticized or assigned a grade. However, this is only one meaning of the word when it is looked at as a noun. You may also use the word "essay" as a verb. Essay means to try, attempt, or put something to trial. Before this assignment, I never knew double meaning to this word. I think it would be interesting if I saw an example of someone using the word "essay" as a verb.
The favorite essay I have ever written happened to be my History 114 final. I was asked to compare the Roman Empire along with the Chinese empire. I knew a lot about this topic which made it very easy for me to think of material to write.

Monday, February 1, 2010