Oh, So That's Who You Are

For this post I want to reflect upon your responses to the cartoon “American River Ganges.”  Now, my point in asking you to respond to this cartoon was to illustrate how one can use the questions and concerns of readers to make decisions about how to focus a topic and how to generate content about that topic.  

To recap ideas I mentioned elsewhere, if a topic is too broad, researching it can be a nightmare as we confront an overwhelming amount of information.  In research, a focused topic can make the research easier, more efficient and more effective. By having you point to things that caught your attention or puzzled you, I was able to zero in on potential ways to focus my research.  

Second, a common issue for student writers is finding stuff to say (especially when required to meet a certain page length).  That’s when it’s especially tempting to keep the topic Big, because that would seem to guarantee that one can meet that page length.  Five page essay? No problem--I’ll just choose a Huge Topic like Poverty. There are literally millions of articles about that, so filling five pages will be a breeze.  Those five pages probably won’t be very good, but at least they’ll be filled. On the other hand, if we do something such as what I did with The American River Ganges, then we find out what readers need to know and want to know.  In other words, the readers are telling us what specific things we can write about. We’ll still be able to fill those five pages, but at least now we would be filling it with stuff that has a purpose, stuff that’s more focused.

Okay, so what jumps out at me when I take a look at your responses? And assuming I want to write about “The American River Ganges” with you as my readership, what do I need to focus on, what do I need to make sure I write about in order to engage with my readers?  (Remember, writing is about communication, and communication doesn’t happen unless readers understand AND care about what it is that I’m writing.) Well, I don’t have to guess about that--you’re telling me what you’d like to know.

When I look at your responses to the first question--what is the first thing you notice?--two things overwhelmingly jumped out at you: the crocodile-like creatures emerging from the water, and the children being protected from them by the man.  The fact that you overwhelmingly noticed those things tells me that if I have even an ounce of common sense, I better explain and discuss that. Now, I make no claims about this being a brilliant observation on my part, and that’s the point. I don’t need special talents to figure out what I want to focus on here.  As I mention above, you’re telling me what you want to know about. You’re making my life as a writer much easier.

As far as your responses to the second question--what’s your first reaction, etc.?--your responses were very thorough (what I was hoping for) and basically wrote my hypothetical essay about this cartoon for me.  (Not literally--that would be plagiarism.) For many of you the operative word was “confused.” Not surprising, considering we’re looking at something created almost 150 years ago about an aspect of America’s history few people know anything about anymore.  (I happen to know about it because I’ve long been fascinated by and studied late-19th century/early 20th century American culture.) What’s useful for me, though, is not that you were confused, but that you explained what confused or puzzled you. By telling me this, you’re telling me specifically what I need to explain and clarify.  I don’t have to guess about that.  You, the readers, are giving me solid direction about what I need to write.

The purpose of the second question was to dig deeper into what you were thinking when you looked at this.  For instance, Andrea, Cheyenne, Abby and Susan zero in on the buildings in the background (others, like Lynette or Laura, also hinted at that by thinking that this cartoon was somehow government or religion related).  Basically, you were wondering about the political and religious context of this cartoon. So now you’re not only helping me with content, you’re pointing me in the direction of a potential thesis, a central focus for my hypothetical essay (as in “American attitudes towards Catholicism as expressed in Thomas Nast’s cartoon ‘The American River Ganges.’”)

Example of 19th c. American Anti-Catholicism.  Note the first entry in the Opposed To column

The second question also helps me gauge how much factual information my potential readers knew already; that in turn helps me figure out what facts I need to explain.  For example, while many of you detected religious undertones to this cartoon, only Cheyenne and Xhonane specifically made the connection to Catholicism. This suggests to me that few people know about America’s troubled history with Catholicism in the late 19th century (again, no surprise), so I better provide some background before talking about the cartoon itself.  As an other, more basic example, a few of you thought that you saw a guillotine in the background. It’s actually a scaffold for hanging (Susan and Jessica recognized it as such). If I didn’t know that some folks thought it was a guillotine, I may not have said anything about it, so there would be a bunch of readers out there thinking that structure was something that it’s not.  

Finally, the third question leads me to your own questions that you want answered.  As with the other two questions, I look for patterns to see if there are questions that keep recurring, which tells me that it’s probably important for me to answer those questions.  Some questions open up whole avenue of thoughts for me, again helping me to get a focus for my hypothetical essay. Examples of that would be Susan asking “Does this cartoon have something to do with a battle between government and religion?” (yes, it does, specifically with Catholicism) or Cheyenne’s question “Was there a court ruling or legislation passed at the time regarding religious instruction in public schools?” (The concern was more about Catholics establishing their own school system.)  Other questions point me to things I need to explain while discussing my thesis. Examples of that would be Ariana’s question, “Why are most of the victims children?” or a question many of you asked, “Why is the American flag upside down?”

More anti-Catholic bias, in this case Catholic clergy as sexual predators

Now, we’re going to be trying something similar to this with your own topics for your final project (which is why I asked you to post the topic(s) you’re considering).  We’re going to try to crowd-source ideas for your project and see what your target readership needs and wants to know. I will have that particular exercise set up and ready to go by either Sunday or Monday.

Who Are You People?

Who Are You People?

One of the more important factors in good critical/college writing is readership--more specifically, recognizing that someone is going to read what you write, and so adjusting and adapting your language and content accordingly. 

Recognizing the presence of a readership is important because good writing is about communicating.  Communication is NOT just putting words on a page.  Communication is putting words on a page that someone who we likely don't know will understand.  No understanding, no communication.  To use an admittedly flawed analogy, I can explain to my cats in my most eloquent and precise fashion why I think they should not eat spiders, but if the cats don't understand (and they don't), then there is no communication in spite of the glorious way in which I am using language.  Furthermore, since I am the writer/communicator, I am the one who has to adapt how I communicate, not the cats.

Think communicating clearly to your audience doesn't matter?  Enjoy this commercial for Berlitz, featuring a trainee for the German Coast Guard:

 

Now you are not going to be writing to cats, but you are going to be writing to … somebody, or at least that’s how you need to approach your writing.  A major and common problem with college writing is that the writers know that the teacher is likely the only one who is going to be reading a document.  Since Teachers Know Everything, and since Teachers Read as Evaluators, Not as Humans Who Want to be Enlightened and Entertained (or so the perception goes), we’re actually a pretty crappy readership.  We read because we have to read, and we already know the subject, so there’s no compelling need on the part of the writer to be thorough and detailed.  In other words, a problem with college writing is that it can seem as if the burden to actually communicate is lifted off of the shoulders of the writer.

Unfortunately, the teacher thinks differently. The teacher (including me) usually tries to read as a representative of a larger readership and tries to understand how well your writing would communicate to that larger readership.  For example, in some of the assignments in here I ask you to write for a readership of peers: reasonably intelligent college students, who are reading in an academic setting.  When I read, then, I try to put myself in the place of that audience, and evaluate in terms of how well I think you're communicating to them, not me. (Note that I say an audience of college students, not an audience of 17 - 22 year olds.  Yes, the two are often the same, but I’m focused on the peer reader in an academic context, and readers that may include students outside of the traditional age range.) 

In future posts and exercises we’ll get into the finer points of readership.  For now, my message is simple: write to communicate to readers.  This is particularly helpful in dealing with one of the most common problems encountered by college writers: generating content.  Likely most or all of us at one time or another have encountered a problem meeting an assigned length for a college essay.  Ignoring for the moment that double-spaced college essays don't really exist in the world outside of college, we frequently find ourselves falling short of an assigned length.  Usually, then, out comes the filler, which only makes things worse.  Much of this problem extends from a misplaced focus on what we are trying to accomplish as writers.  When we are confronted with the problem of generating content, we commonly ask ourselves "what am I going to write about?" 

This is where readership can help.  Try to reframe the question, so that now the question is: "What do my readers need and want to know?"  Let the readers help generate the content.

Let me give you an example.  For the sake of argument, say that I’m writing an essay on the editorial cartoon below, by Thomas Nast, originally published in 1871.  (By the way, this is akin to what I’ll be asking you to do for future writing assignments, so consider this practice.  This is also similar to what I just asked you to do with "(Ya Got) Trouble"):


This cartoon, to quote from the Library of Congress, is “[a]n indictment of sectarianism in the public schools and Tammany's sacrifice of children's education for Catholic votes.”  Sounds good, and maybe I’d just throw the quote into the essay and be done with it (after, of course, properly citing the Library of Congress as the source for both the cartoon and the comment).  The problem is, I would not be doing a very good job of communicating if that’s all I did.  What I would need to do is take a look at the cartoon and ask myself, “What might my readers not know or understand in this cartoon that I should explain.”  It doesn’t matter whether I understand everything or not; what matters is what my readers do or do not understand.  What matters is what I think my readers need to know.

So perhaps I should explain who Thomas Nast is.  Maybe my readers won’t understand what the Ganges is and why Nast is referring to it.  Who or what are those people crawling out of the water?  Who or what exactly is Tammany?  Why is a "U.S. Public School" featured in the top center of the cartoon?  What the heck is going on in the upper right hand of the cartoon; is that a gallows?  The quote from the Library of Congress suggests that in 1871 there were some issues with Catholicism in America—maybe I should find out some information about that, so I can pass it on to my readers who may know nothing about that.

Basically what I’ve just done is generated content—meaningful words and information to put in my essay.  How did I discover that content?  I simply wondered about what my readers might need to know about.  Is it a problem that the questions I have above are questions I may need to answer for myself first?  Of course not.  It’s only a problem if we ask ourselves these questions and decide it’s not worth the effort to find them out. 

Your Turn

Below I have another cartoon.  What I’d like you to do is similar to what I’ve just done: indicate what elements of the cartoon might readers need to know about in order to understand the cartoon.  However, there are ground rules to this exercise.  I want you to ask two questions, one of which pertains to the physical details of the cartoon, the second of which pertains to analytical questions.  Here are your questions: 

1. What specific, concrete detail--no matter how large or small--catches your attention, piques your curiosity, puzzles you, or engages you?  I'm not asking you to identify a detail that's important (though that will happen in many cases); I'm asking you to identify something that puzzles or intrigues you.
2. What question do you think you need to have answered in order to better understand what the cartoon is about, and what it's "message" is?

I want you to enter you responses in the discussion area I set up in Piazza for this post. 

But wait--there's more!  (And no, it's not a stylish free monogrammed carrying case.)   You cannot repeat or duplicate anyone else's response.  Repeating what someone else has said means you don't get credit for participation.  In part this is a clever tactic on my part to get folks to read what others are saying.  However, this is also a way for me to accumulate information with which I can work.  After this part of the exercise is done, I will then take your information and try to demonstrate how, as a writer, I would use it.

What I will tell you is that cartoon is titled “The War Scare in Hogan’s Alley”; the rest of the information I will omit.

Please post your responses to the Piazza site by Thursday, March 13.