posted
Grumpy Old Guy, I would like to suggest to you the topic of clarity instead of significance. People often learn a lot by trying to teach a concept.
Often, writers who don't understand something can't express what they mean clearly. Seriously, how many posts did it take you to get to Freytag? Maybe in a few more posts you might get to Aristotle. In any event, instead of playing with your loins you should read some books about clarity. I'd suggest a few, but I too have to go fish lest I fall pray to some Darwinian forces.
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posted
The original post contained ample content for discussion prompts: unity, premise, how they connect and connect to a plan or to a direction of writing, and considerations of content and organization targeted for a selected audience.
Reading the full texts of the cited works was not assigned reading. Lubbock alone is 400,000 words; the four showcase and dozen other texts Lubbock contrasts and compares from his text each also number words in that range. Likewise, Freytag, a number of lengthy showcase texts and other texts and a lengthy aesthetics text itself. And tedious, though, from an open-minded and passionate approach, they are informative and delightful texts. Aristotle, Poe, etc., too. And none of the texts cost any monetary toll.
Self-selection, not assigned reading. Self-selection, too, whether to contribute to the discussion, whether to ask for clarification, whether to elaborate on topical subjects, whether to provide further sources for similar texts, self-selection too whether to follow, study, and cognitively process and understand the discussion, and whether to muddle the discussion instead of participate.
Self-selection, too, to succeed, to get by, or to underachieve in life, in writing, in unity. Self-selection is the order of the times. No one here is under compulsion of force majeure, mandate, imperative, or assignment. Self-selection is voluntary participation.
posted
Oh well, in for a penny, in for a Benjamin.
The lamented liveliness and courteous discussion of an earlier Hatrack era evidences mutual respect, passion, and efforts to understand difficult topics and contributions and struggles. Chest-thumping dominance displays or peer pressure abuses of accusations that shared knowledge exhibited dominance displays happened far less much. Dissent was, when expressed, considerate, topical, and respectful.
What happened between then and since? I don't know. Though to be blunt, not least of which about myself, negatively, emotionally charged terms or comments disrupt conversation. Disruptive deviations disrupt conversation. They are changes of subject likely to contaminate productive discussion. In rhetorical theory, as at times expression vice or virtue or both, diversions strategically avoid a topic for self-involved agendas.
For example, fallicious argumentation: ad hoc; ergo, propter hoc: cum hoc; ergo, propter hoc; post hoc; ergo, propter hoc fallacies assign illogical causation to influences. Ad hominem, ad nauseaum, and tu quo que fallacies emphasize pathos appeals at the expense of logos and ethos appeals. Pathos appeals are a prose priority, though ideally not at the expense of logos and ethos, as well as other matters of rhetorical decorum: kleos, kairos, and, at last a common term that's not graecismic, audience.
The above laundry list of Greek and Latin terms are accessible, defined, and illustrated by examples at mostly the Silva Rhetoricae. Or Wikipedia, or in dictionaries, or two or more sources. For a minimum of effort and at no other expense, not assigned mandates.
They are offered in their Greek and Latin forms because their meanings and uses in English provide a stable vocabulary of composition topics that, otherwise, are informally invented and limited-to-individual group idioms that are widely and wildly inaccessible due to their idiomatic unconventionality. They are both offered to instruct -- more anon -- and to enhance at least my grasp and interested individuals of their timeliness, timelessness, and relevance to artfully crafted prose and, possibly, poetry composition conventions.
Sharing is learning. Instruction is learning. Learning, sharing, instruction, are share-able and each to another enhancements of the others. This is what propels education passion: learning, sharing, and instruction. A dispassionate instructor burns out from single-minded, one-direction tell directed to equally dispassionate auditors in rote and unimaginative lecture methods. For example, one plus one equals two. That's it. Learn it. After a semester or more of drilling that expression into resistant memories, it becomes tired air. A passionate instructor continues to learn and explore sharing, learning, and instructing methods.
For one, a convention of instruction methods used across society: informally, formally, publicly, and privately is Socratic irony. Socratic irony, like most, if not everything, in creation spans a continuum of negative, neutral, and positive emotional charge.
The negative charge is motivated by a gotcha ambush trap of a naive, hapless, trusting individual. Socratic irony's negative agenda poses feigned innocence and ignorance for the sake of luring an unwitting victim into a logic trap. One and what equals what, for example, deliberately leaves out a variable necessary to satisfy the expression. Gotcha if the answer is limited to, well, doesn't one and one equal two? An algebraic expression expresses the whole variable set: a + b equals c. The satisfaction then is the variable values' set for when a + b equals c.
Neutral Socratic irony holds no agenda except persuasion for a shared good, perhaps mutual outcomes, perhaps reciprocal outcomes, certainly noble outcomes regardless.
Positive Socratic irony entails an agenda and noble outcomes. In the case of a math instructor teaching, not rote memory repetition methods, though, mathematical reasoning skills. Solutions to expressions are withheld so that, one, a learner develops mathematical reasoning skills; and, two, more if not most, persuasively valuable, self-satisfies a puzzle and is able to independently satisfy similar puzzles, and is self-rewarded by those learnings.
Who of an age consistent with independent privilege and obligation wants a puzzle solution or a plot outcome prematurely revealed, told, mandated? The term "plot spoiler alert," for example, evidences that consideration. Productive instructors similarly offer ample cues and hints and clues so that an individual who makes a likewise productive effort may self-solve a mystery, a puzzle, a plot and develops skills and aptitude for independent, self-managed reasoning of considerations and solutions and satisfactions. A passionate instructor leaves room for self-solutions.
Perhaps an instructor, deficient in full realization of a concept, scratches at the edges of an idea and uses Socratic irony to conceal that lack, then, through instruction processes, learns more or as much as practical about the topic as simultaneously do puzzle solvers. Maybe, ideally, for a time, this instructor maintains a lead on instructees so that kleos and ethos continue, for a time, to persuasively maintain auditors' interests and attentions. Perhaps, an instructee may exceed an instructor, too.
Perhaps an instructor, unsure of a focal idea and intent, uses Socratic irony and the positive benefits therefrom to develop and narrow the idea so that manageability develops. Informal conversations, publicly and privately, express through whichever Socractic intent for common or individual well-being or ill-being.
I feel respect and courtesy demand that discussion remain topical, civil, and, most of all, patiently understanding of motivations, purposes, and outcomes and, you know, strugglers, of which we are all of equal standing.
Now, human hypocrite that I am, I've also used negative emotionally charged comments. For me, their use is a lose-lose outcome, which of a least worse lose to weigh of a lose-lose double bind. Hypocrisy triggers my emotional explosions. I too become hypocritical and am grievously wounded because I trespass. My patience and resilience wear thin, as I expect and know and note does others'. I explode as well because I feel triggered to abreact, for which I confess and sincerely feel sorrow for those I trespass against directly, indirectly, uncontrollably or intentionally, individually, socially, publicly, privately, and for my wounds personally.
To wit, getting down and around tu-it: I don't care for negative heat, it upsets me and withers my resilience. Yes, I'm weak, though that's no cause for punching my or anyone's trigger buttons or my punching others' triggers. The hypocrisy I most loathe is when an individual or individuals enrich his or her self-esteem at the expense of others' esteem. My explosion, so to speak, then takes the form of hitting back to inform, caution, castigate, control that vile, maladjusted behavior. Yet I am admittedly maladjusted myself. Who do I think I am? Better than others? Am I the final authority on behavioral matters? God? How can I be if I'm as flawed or more, and frail, as the others I instruct? I'm a human being who is as privileged and obligated as any otherwise reasonable adult to express my behavioral misgivings. If it takes a village to raise a healthy child, it takes a village's cooperation; and a divided village raises an unhealthy child.
Those latter considerations are for me guiding values when understanding and patience are foremost strained up to a break point. Yet an ongoing constant barrage of thinly veiled negative and derisive emotionally charged commentary following me across the cosmos, harried and harassed, from and directed at anyone or me exceeds my resilience capacity. I explode.
Get and stay off my back, like it's a personal grudge to be worried persistently and that demands personal satisfaction through opposition's total annihilation on the field of honor. And I won't explode. Stop hitting and hitting back, please. Employ it in the expression on the manuscript page instead.
posted
I think my mistake also was to not just let Phil and Extrinsic converse with each other. I'll keep that in mind in the future. These obscure texts and overly dense responses aren't worth the effort.
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To all those, except extrinsic, who couldn't read and comprehend plain English text and who started remonstrating about things they demonstrably don't understand, let me re-post part of my reply to Denevius' first attempt at dismissing the subject matter out of hand.
quote:Setting that detour aside, the point of the post was to wonder if contributors, when writing their stories, actually know where they are going and what the point of the story is before they start writing . . .
Kathleen, would you please close this thread now? If no-one actually understands what it's about, or is interested in expanding their understanding, what's the point?
Phil.
[ February 11, 2015, 03:19 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
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posted
Now who doesn't understand plain English? Maybe you should look up what "gird" means. Noah Webster wrote a wonderful book that might contain some helpful insight into the term. You can also use it to look up "loins."
As for calling you stupid, I did no such thing. I suggested, rather helpfully I might add, that you look into clarity. For example, your statement where you said many people didn't understand you. "To all those, except extrinsic, who couldn't read and comprehend plain English text and who started remonstrating about things they demonstrably don't understand...." You interjected extrinsic into the main structure of that sentence: "To all those who couldn't read and comprehend plain English text and who started remonstrating about things the demonstrably don't understand...." The way you exempted extrinsic still groups him with "those...who couldn't read and comprehend plain English." You've only excluded him from the next clause. Think of it this way. Imagine I'm watching a group of kids consisting of seven boys and three girls. Four of the boys and Jennie need to pee but the restrooms aren't clearly marked (buoys and gulls or some other claptrap). So to clarify I tell the group "To all of you who need to use the restroom, let me suggest you use the restroom on the right except Jennie." I could also say, "All of you who need to pee, except Jennie, let me remind you to use the restroom on the right." I didn't exclude Jennie from needing to pee, only from using the restroom on the right.
To go back to your comment, you've specifically called out extrinsic and said some negative things that I think might deserve an apology. Either that, or you're lacking clarity.
And that, Mr. Grumpy, was a demonstration of how I believe you're writing things you think are clear, but in actuality are not. I tried to help you clarify the vague term "premise" earlier by providing some clearly defined terms and examples, but you simple refuted the terms while providing none of your own. You didn't demonstrate how my terms were bad terms, however, you simply said (perhaps with a grumpy stomp) that you didn't agree. Perhaps that's your didactic style. Perhaps you're not taking into account your audience when you write. Perhaps you are just smarter than all of us and we just can't comprehend your brilliance.
I hope this thread doesn't close so that others can read it and see your idea of discourse compared to the discourse models of others. I think people would be able to learn a lot. I know I have.
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posted
So, babooher, you are so obsessed with refuting anything I say that you are slavering at the bit to refute a post I left up for three minutes before deleting. Oh, what pitiful stuff.
And, just to clarify premise in a literary sense for you, in case you're confused: A proposition containing a conclusion; for example, obsessive love leads to death as a premise to Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet As for loins, there is the butcher's definition and the Biblical and poetic one. That definition is: The part of the body that should be clothed and girded, or which is regarded as the seat of physical strength and generative power. Please note: Generative power. However, the dictionary definition of loincloth also refers specifically to a cloth to cover the hips and loins. So, just what location on the body are you talking about?
Have a nice day.
Phil.
[ February 11, 2015, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
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posted
Haha. There's something so "male" about all of this. I'm reminded of grade school where the boys would get in a fight, but it was always important that they shake hands afterwards.
The virtual reality of the internet doesn't allow for that type of physical relief, however.
Phil and Extrinsic, I have no particular dislike towards you. Please don't take this too seriously. And what I've taken away from this is to be even more selective in what I respond to. I don't comment in every thread, and this is a thread that I should have left alone because of my initial misgivings.
posted
The phrase which excludes extrinsic and then the subsequent restrictive subordination clause singles extrinsic out as the individual who can't read and comprehend plain English. Proximity of non-numbered though by default singular pronoun "who" to antecedent subject "extrinsic" connects the phrase and clause to each other and lends "who" the number value of singular.
The restrictive subordination clause after the conjunction "and" and by default plural non-numbered "who" about remonstration then connects plural pronoun "they" to farther proximity plural antecedent subject "To all those" and lends "who" the plural number value. Prescriptively anyway.
I understand the intent, though. I am delighted, too, by the unintended situational irony of intent and meaning disparity that are nonetheless readily interpretable and reconcilable.
quote: Originally posted by Robert Nowall: I admit I'm at a loss to understand what's going on here.
quote:Originally posted by Denevius: Much ado about nothing.
quote:Originally posted by Grumpy old guy: Oh, my. Was that last irony?
More than one rhetorical figure of irony, one or more through invoked allegory to Shakespeare's play of the title name. And, for examples, see "Paralipsis" and, more specifically, "Proslepsis."
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