My sister is a talker. Growing up, she was able to convince my parents of much more than I could. In high school, she was her class president. As her college education comes to a close, she finds herself working…
Author Archive for Alex Janney
Connecting with the Audience
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
I wasn’t a huge fan of Gayatri Spivak; I found some of her responses to be cold and political—“I can’t really comment on what goes on in the discipline of rhetoric” (2), “A domestication, a circumscription” (5), and “It is…
Discussion Questions for Class 04/22
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
Below are the questions I plan to ask for tonight’s discussion for people who may not be in class. I’m not posting with the intention of starting a discussion thread, but so that people can look at it if they’d…
Paper Proposal: The Image of Women’s Magazines
by Alex Janney • • 1 Comment
Women’s magazines are a prominent presence in society. Walk into a Target and it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to walk through the check-out without catching a glance of Marie Claire, Glamour, or Cosmopolitan if not all three. Magazines such…
Learning TESOL by Doing
by Alex Janney • • 1 Comment
In Spring 2009 I volunteered to teach a conversational ESL class without any formal training. My class consisted of 10 students from 7 different countries. All of them tested at the basic level, but their speaking abilities ranged from an…
Writing Culture Shock
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
Cultural variations in writing not only refer to differences across countries but across schooling systems as well. When I began college, I was lost. A first generation college student, I had limited guidance in what I could expect from the…
Commentary 6
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
The readings for this week reinforced the idea that word choice is an essential component of rhetoric. In Burke’s, Language as Symbolic Action he makes reference to how Pascal found a way around dueling. While his sneakiness had very little…
Commentary 5
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
There are so many things in life that people say a person should “take with a grain of salt;” I can’t help but wonder if translation is something I should add to my list along with the fashion ideas my…
Commentary 4
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
Despite our attempts at “everyone’s a winner” in the U.S., we still have a competitive mentality that seems like it’s engrained into our DNA. We have contests for everything (hotdog eating anyone?), and reward people who come in first, oftentimes…
Commentary 3
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
As I was reading Ramus for this week, I felt a little bit like I do when I get e-mail messages from friends and I can’t hear their tone of voice. Those messages that say things like, “I can’t believe…