Bartholomae & Haas

“Authors create texts and readers read texts in a complex of social relationships, motivated by goals sanctioned (or not) by the surrounding culture, to achieve purposes that are always in the broadest sense persuasive.” (358)

In this (somewhat) simple quote, Haas is basically describing the complex relationship that exists between an author and their reader. The author has motives within his writing that he wants to get across the readers. The reader also has his own motives when reading the text and has the job to challenge the author’s goals or believe, or even add to them. Through this “conversation” ideas are being expelled from the author to the reader.

Bartholomae adds to Haas’ text by stating, “A writers idea’s or his motives must be tailored to the needs and expectations of his audience. A writer has to “build bridges” between his point of view and his readers. He has to anticipate and acknowledge his reader’s assumptions and biases” (515).

In order to have a “two sided” conversation, Bartholomae is stating here that it is imperative to realize that the audience will have their own ideas on the subject before reading the text. Culture shapes that way people think and Bartholomae knows that persuasion can only occur if both sides are brought out in the conversation. The author must understand who they are talking to and who they are trying to persuade. The author must enter the “conversation” with the reader prepared to acknowledge what they know. By showing both sides to every situation, the author is not only having a social relationship with the culture, but is also creating a relationship with reader, acknowledging the fact that their ideas do matter. Without showing both sides, authority is certainly lost and the conversation begins to fade.

Bartholomae & Creativity Impromptu Reflective

The creativity impromptu came very challenging to me because I never pictured myself as a creative individual. When trying to describe the idea of creativity, I immediately thought of art class in elementary school. The problem with this was that I only thought of creativity when it came to art. I never even considered music, writing, or any other aspect of life as fitting into the idea of creativity. In this sense, I feel as though I was not thinking “out of the box,” and was not creative in my realm of thinking.

After reading Bartholomae’s essay, I realized that my essay followed the same pattern as the song writer’s essay. I noticed that throughout her essay, she changed her definition of creativity, realizing that she was not necessarily being creative because she was imitating music she had heard on the radio. However, by not purposely copying them, she was using them as inspiration while creating her own music. In my essay, I made the point that I had been creative because I made the only bumble bee in my fourth grade class. However, after thinking about this, I realized that all the students were being creative because they were making something of their own. At first, I thought creativity was something that had to be completely different from anything anyone has done. Then, I realized that I was wrong. Creativity is something that everyone possesses, something that is done by anyone who has an idea and creates it (in my essay it was a paper mache animal.)

I think that Bartholomae may have been pretty hard on my essay. After reading the advanced essay, I realized that the vocabulary I used was not advanced. I may not have had many grammatical errors, but the content was not at a high level. Furthermore, in my final statement “[creativity] will produce imaginative works of art that most people could not have even dreamed of” I created a commonplace, assuming that everyone sees creativity in art.

When writing my creativity impromptu essay, I knew that I was writing for an English professor and for my peers. With this in mind, I tried to describe creativity (at first) as a child would, and then “grow up” and describe creativity in its true sense so that the reader will see where I started from and where I was going to end. Realizing that creativity was just doing something different made me reconsider my thoughts about my “creative bumble bee.”

Bartholomae made some great points about writing but I’m still curious about his idea of grammar. Is it not true that most professors care just as much about grammar as they do about content? If a student writes with authority, but cannot spell or punctuate, doesn’t the professor lose some respect for the author? If grammar is forgotten about it the classroom won’t a lot of students have problems learning how to write without errors further down the road?