3 x 3 in Cullowhee

I was recently notified by a Google Scholar Alert that a work of mine had been newly cited.  Naturally, I clicked through the link to see what had been cited and where.

The article that I was cited in is: Dean, Deborah. “Shifting Perspectives about Grammar: Changing what and how we Teach.” English Journal 100.4 (2011): 20-26.

I skimmed along until I found the moment in the article where I had been cited by the author.

And then I was dismayed, dismayed because what the citation attributed to me is not my own unique work, and indeed is work that I never have nor would attempt to take credit for.  So, I’ll explain, and offer a correction to the author of the article.

Dean’s passage reads: “In a recent conference presentation, Nate Kreuter noted another element that may be part of the future perspective. When we go online, he explains, ‘Information is not in short supply. Attention is.’ He suggests that one key to effective communication in this new writing space might be style-an idea that should inform future shifts in perspective.”

Those familiar with Richard Lanham‘s work will immediately recognize that the ideas attributed to me by Dean are really Lanham’s ideas, the ones he articulates at length in The Economics of Attention.  I don’t recall the exact details of the conference presentation of two years ago, except to say that I am sure of two things: 1) that I certainly would have referenced Lanham in the presentation, and 2) that I attributed Lanham’s ideas to him.

In many ways, Dean’s understandable error, but error nonetheless, illustrates the risks of citing a conference presentation.  Usually delivered verbally and without leaving an enduring video or audio recording, scholars are apt to misremember or misconstrue a conference presentation after the fact, particularly since most of us are not trained in the methods of responsible journalism.

Frankly, I’m also a bit surprised that English Journal‘s blind reviewers didn’t, 1) nix the idea of citing a conference presentation for which there is no enduring record, and/or 2) recognize immediately that the ideas incorrectly attributed to me are in fact the quite famous thesis of Richard Lanham’s most recent book, especially given the fact that Lanham is quite important to the field and that I, well, am not.

I have been an evangelist on behalf of Richard Lanham’s work for some time now.  I’m happy that his ideas on the economics of attention (incorrectly attributed to me by Dean in this case) are finding purchase with a range of scholars.  I do believe, from what I observe in the world, that Lanham’s notion that attention, rather than information, is what’s in short supply in the information economy, is correct.  And that the notion is correct has potentially dramatic consequences for rhetoric and rhetorical instruction.  And while I have evangelized widely on behalf of Lanham’s idea, I certainly couldn’t take credit for it.

A bit late, I’ve posted my syllabi for the Spring ’12 semester.

The info for my grad class, ENGL 614, 20th Century Rhetorical Theory, may undergo some refinements, and largely is intended to fulfill the needs of our rhet/comp MA students preparing for their comprehensive exams, but with my own spin.

I have also revised and updated the syllabus for my version of our sophomore rhet/comp course, ENGL 202 Rhetorical and Critical Inquiry.  I haven’t gotten the major assignments posted for this one yet, but will have them up within 48-72 hours.  I’ve left more wiggle room in this syllabus than in the past, so some things will be filled in as we go along.

As always, please feel free to crib from here, or from any of my past courses, but I appreciate attribution.

Stephen Bloom, professor of journalism at the University of Iowa, recently published an opinion piece in The Atlantic, titled Observations from 20 Years of Iowa Life.  The piece is elitist and condescending and patronizing to a degree rarely seen in prose.  My Iowa friends, native and non-native alike, are up in arms, and rightly so.

I’ll offer  this as my only comment:

Among his many unjust criticisms of Iowa and Iowans, Bloom relays at the end of his article an anecdote of doubtful veracity about a driver asking him as he walks his dog, “Do much hunting with the bitch?.” The point of the anecdote remains obscure to me.

What bothers me most, perhaps, about the anecdote though, and Bloom’s telling of the anecdote, is that Bloom has not yet, despite his twenty years in the state, managed to grasp the dry wit for which Iowans are famous.  When, as he relays in his self-loathing article, a driver supposedly asked the dog-walking Bloom, “Do much hunting with the bitch?,” I myself assumed that the native Iowan interlocutor in the pickup truck was talking to the dog.

Pity that the humor was lost on Bloom.

-Nate Kreuter

BA, English, University of Iowa, ’02, with Honors and Highest Distinction, Collegiate Scholar, ’02

PhD, English (Rhetoric and Writing), University of Texas at Austin, ’10

Henceforth and until further notice the word “this” is banned in all formal writings that graduate students undertake in my courses.  The ban does not apply to the less formal writing of correspondence with the instructor, microthemes, or reviews.  However, in the course’s lone formal assignment, the conference papers, the ban is total and will be enforced without mercy or humor.  I encourage students to police themselves with the aid of the “Find” and “Edit” tools in the word processing software that they use to compose their papers.  Nota Bene, I’m totally serious about “this.” Consequences for violations of “This Ban” will be negotiated with the students when we meet tonight, but my own leanings are toward penalties that are simultaneously petty and malicious (OK, not really on this last point).

Those who know me personally know that I’m not too often serious, and that I have a profound, blood-borne hatred for rules that I perceive to be arbitrary.  Why then am I so suddenly issuing such a seemingly arbitrary and senseless and rigid decree?  This ban is (notice, the ban does not apply to me, and I’m completely willing to be hypocritical THIS time around) admittedly a suddenly imposed rule that initially appears to bear all the hallmarks of tyranny and madness rolled up into one stupid moment.  This rule, at the outset, seems to smack of our worst memories of the worst writing instructors, those humorless and rhetorically naive instructors we’ve all encountered in our pasts who harped upon pet grammatical peeves without any sense that grammar is a rhetorical and social and political construction, or that grammar is a fluidly drifting constellation of conventions, not a rigid and universal set of commandments.

So, then, why “this”? Why “this”? Why this? Why this ban on “this”?  Why this ban on this?

Because it’s necessary.  But neither is the ban actually arbitrary or capricious, or related very directly even to issues of correctness or a pet peeve.  The ban is about encouraging precision in graduate student writing, and discouraging imprecision.  For the past three semesters I have noticed a surprising tendency in graduate student writing.  The tendency is for students to use the word “this” without specifying what the word demonstrates or refers to, as if the idea(s) it is intended to indicate are self-evident, when in fact (or, in rhetorical effect) those ideas are not self-evident and need to be explained or elaborated for the reader.

I’m going to go a little Wikipedia here.  The word “this” is the “singular proximal demonstrative” in the English language.  As the Wikipedia explains in terms easier to simply cite than to translate into my own terms:

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference) that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others. Demonstratives are employed for spatial deixis (using the context of the physical surroundings of the speaker and sometimes the listener) and for discourse deixis (including abstract concepts) where the meaning is dependent on something other than the relative physical location of the speaker, for example whether something is currently been said or was said earlier. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This)

The problem is occurring primarily in grad student discussions of abstract concepts, where the referent that the word “this” should point to has been left unstated, or has not been restated in a way that allows the reader to follow the writer’s logic.  What is self-evident to the writer is not stated for the reader, and to confusing effect.  The problem is not, typically, with the students’ logic or thinking in these cases (for some reason it only seems to be happening with “this” and not with the plural demonstrative “these), but with their written representations of their logic and thinking.  I’ve spoken with many grad students about this issue in their writing over the past three semesters, and last spring I banned the word for one student in particular, and with positive end results.  So, as a grand thought/writing experiment, I’m banning the word “this” for the entire class for the remainder of the semester. I’ll report back on the results.

As a last note, I’ll point out that in object-orient computer languages (Java, C++, etc)  “this” frequently functions as a keyword (learned all this crap from the Wikipedia today) to refer to the object being worked upon.  In these object-oriented computer languages, it is a word that indicates itself, and the object as a self, a me.  That’s sort of the problem coming up in some cases with grad students–the word points to the selves of their own private thoughts, and not to externally articulated ideas that the reader needs to share access to in order to access the writer’s text(s). The result is that I as a reader feel like I’m falling off of someone else’s mental cliff, and I assume that other readers would feel similarly  . . .

In my ongoing effort to archive links to my Inside Higher Ed columns, here are my six most recent efforts.  It’s always a wonder which columns will elicit strong reactions, and which ones will go more or less unnoticed.  The nature of the reactions is always unpredictable as well.  So far writing the column has been a pleasure, and a welcome change of pace from my ongoing, traditional scholarship.

The Freedom to Fail

Teaching Student-Athletes with contributions from Eric Dieter

The Frustration of Not Seeing

To Moonlight or Not

Get a Financial Education

Advice on Academic Advice