High-Middle-Low

What I’ve enjoyed most about this class so far is how it has helped me analyze my own writings and given me ideas on how to further shape what I write in the future. Today’s lesson is the high-middle-low styles of writing and each of them has its own time and place where some work better than others.

High style writing, in my opinion, is the elegant form which people will use when they want to appear sophisticated and powerful. It’s a tough style to use sometimes because it can create confusion or mumbled words if used incorrectly. The examples Lanham uses come from powerful world leaders such as Churchill during the World War as well as other examples. He finds several of the following in one of the passages that is using high style: diction, anaphora and climax, isocolon, alliteration, the epic catalog, ploce, etc. Each of these turns a writing into high style by making a normal way to say it into a more sophisticated, smarter sounding way. Compared the low style of writing, it can be much smoother and sound more educated. Low style writing takes the conversation approach where the entire piece will be casual and straightforward. You’ll still find metaphors, analogies, etc. in a low style writing, but it’s much more relatable to the audience as they are things that most people would catch onto, where as high style takes the approach of “you must be wise enough to catch these references/understandings.” Then, of course, there’s the middle style which is mostly a combination of the two.

Those are my understandings from the reading. Taking those ideas and applying them to my writing, I’m not sure that I have used them frequently. I think the times that I have used them depended on the audience and the topic. For example, I can picture myself using high style when I’m trying to prove that I know enough about a topic or to show that I am on the right side of an argument. The closest example I can think of for that is if I was writing about my white identity and I was reflecting on the history of whiteness in the United States of America. I would want to use the high style to show that I know what I’m talking about. For the low style, I would most likely use that in a writing where I was trying to convince someone of an argument of mine. To make sure people understand what I am talking about, I would want to use figurative language that the audience would most likely understand rather than confusing them with words they may not know right off the bat.

I don’t know that I would use one of these exclusively, however. I believe that most people would want to use a mixture of the two in order to sound educated as well as not to be too sophisticated that the audience becomes confused. Harnessing both of these techniques would benefit any writer and it’s definitely something I am going to pay attention to now.

Apple's Use of Language

Apple just recently hosted their keynote event where they presented the new iPhones for 2019 along with several other pieces of technology. Apple is very much a flashy tech company that aims to put elegant and rich feeling technology into the hands of average Americans. The design of everything in their company screams fashion trend and people buy into it because it is the quickest and easiest way to feel wealthier with this tech. It's easy to feel that way when the new phone can cost anywhere from $750 - $1100 a piece. Not to mention the material of the phone and the design of it is indeed elegant. I mean look at this phone:

It truly is a gorgeous device and people feel empowered by it. However, some might take a little extra convincing and this is where Apple really steps up their game.

Apple's website is another example of elegance and refinery. They have mastered the ability to sell their devices with words alone. In a video that displays the new set of phones, the narrator uses words such as "uncompromising,"expansive super retina display," "most durable glass ever developed," "reinvents," etc. They are using powerful words to show just how unique this new iPhone is and pushes viewers to feel like they need this ultra powerful device that their lives must surely require. Apple even uses some of the grammatical tools we recently learned about on their website. For example, they use  a polysyndeton to describe their phone design: "A beautiful new gold finish, achieved with an atomic-level process. Precision-machined, surgical-grade stainless steel bands." Looking back at those examples, they may not be polysyndetons, but they are powerful statements nonetheless.

This kind of language use is important for companies because they need to make users feel empowered by these devices and it also urges customers to purchase the next phone, no matter how old their current phone is. Apple does a phenomenal job with this and I must admit that it even makes me want to purchase an iPhone and I'm a Google fanboy. Language is truly a powerful tool.

My thoughts on "Rhetorics of Speaking and Writing"

What I love most about written language is its ability to communicate through time. Anything I write down now can be read again in 10 years or even further. I could leave advice for my future relatives after I pass away or leave them stories of my life for them to look upon and see how much the world has changed. Someone could even discover the cure to a disease and even if we somehow disappeared and a new generation of humans found it, they would eventually be able to understand what that cure was. It’s quite amazing really.

There is one draw back when it comes to written language and it’s that there is no context to go with the information stored on that piece of paper. The Chapter discusses this issue a little bit and talks about how Face-to-Face interactions can give a lot of contextual information vs something being read on paper. For example, when we read documents from hundreds of years ago and we see something rather different than what we do today, we might think that it’s barbaric or maybe even better than today’s standards. However, without being able to see the context that these writings were written in, we truly have no way of knowing what the actual feelings of the writer were or if the actions were deemed normal back then, etc. It’s tough to truly know what exactly these authors meant and yet we pretend like we know exactly what they intended.

I think the Bible is fine example of this kind of interpretation. The Bible was written a very long time ago and hundreds of years later we still utilize it as a base for our actions. We read it, interpret it, and then go about our day as if everything we do is justified based on those interpretations. The Bible was used as an excuse by slave holders back in the day to punish slaves for their “misbehavior” and thus it allowed severe cruelty to exist when there shouldn’t have been. This is but one example, however it goes to show that while the ability for written language to pass on information for years to come can be great, it also has its drawbacks and that’s interpreting the context in which the information was written.

After reading this chapter I found myself wondering: how do we make sure that language down the road doesn’t present misinformation or misinterpretations? Is that possible at all? The chapter also discusses the potential of audio recordings and what we are able to glean from them. Unlike written language, audio recordings allow a listener to hear an accent, a tone, an attitude toward a thought, etc. There’s a whole new wave of information that can help develop context from just sound. Face-to-Face is obviously the best scenario in which the correct context can be obtained due to visual of surroundings, facial expressions of the speaker, etc.

Written language may last longer than other medias, but with the way technology is advancing, video recordings may be more accessible than writing in the future. Our ability to store electronic information is getting better and I even remember reading about the idea that scientists are working on figuring out how to store information on DNA strands so that if anything happens where physical or electronic copies are no longer available, information will live on within us and will remain accessible for much longer periods of time.

It’ll be definitely interesting to see where written information takes off, but for now I am content with being amazed at how we are able to communicate with one another with just a few words on a piece of paper.

September 6, 2018 (In-Class)

What are some of your writing habits and are they okay? What would you like to improve?

I think some of my writing habits are okay, but I also think they are a bit repetitive. For instance, my essay structure is typically the same and the way I style my paragraphs is often similar. I think I could also stand to put a little bit more effort and time into my work than I currently do. I typically wait for the last second to do my writing and thus my work is rushed and not as great as it could be. With that said, I am pretty decent at writing in the last minute. I typically manage to walk away with a decent grade when I write my essay the night before and I think it pushes me to pump out ideas and the format of the essay. I should pair that with a proof read afterwards, but I don't typically do that.

Apparently I enjoy using the word 'typically'. Anyway, the toughest part about continuing a thought from an in-class exercise is I don't remember what I wanted to write about. Thus, I'm going to leave this one right here.

September 4, 2018 (In-Class)

What is good prose style?

I'm going to be honest here by saying I'm not exactly sure what prose style is. It has come up before in other English classes that I have taken, but it's never been studied by myself. So, winging off of the collection of knowledge from my other courses, I'm going to say that good prose style is the format of writing that best matches the surrounding context. This would include punctuation, slang, vocabulary, etc.

An example I am thinking of would be an advertisement for a company (let's go with Menards). The text there is short & sweet, but powerful enough to inform & attract guests into buying something or learning more about that item. I think this would categorize itself into advertisement content and that type of content requires a special type of prose style. Item descriptions can't take up too much space on the page so editors have to choose the quickest (and most accurate) way to inform the reader of the item while at the same time being able to sell it to them, or rather make it worth it for the guest to come into the store and purchase the item.

With the above example, they're can't be room for any grammatical errors, which there aren't many cases where that would be okay. However, in this context, it is vital because that advertisement is representing the company and because the guest is most likely not already in the store, it would be difficult to get them there if the outgoing ad is riddled with poor writing.

I guess what I'm trying to say over all is that a good prose style depends on the situation. There are going to be some cases where sloppy writing is well received and other areas where it is not tolerated. Maybe I'm completely off on this question, but I think it's definitely something to consider when writing a document, no matter who it is for.