Reporters and Rhetoric

The essay Reporters and Rhetoric by Geoffrey Cowan, agrees with Orwell's perspective on the essay "Politics and the English Language". He also adds on that the media should also be aware and be careful with their word choice when writing articles or providing news coverage. Reporters should be making sure to not only cover the issues but also spend time analyzing the issues for themselves. As he says, " Rather than allowing any political figure or administration to define the terms of public debate, reporters and editors should examine the issue for themselves and reach an honest conclusion." I strongly agree with Cowan's argument. It should be the reporters job to get all the facts out and use them to form their own conclusion on whats going on...instead of flipping through the channels and hearing the same report over and over again about the same issue just said by different people. This serves as a reminder that we cant always go by what the reporters write we as Americans owe it to our country to keep ourselves informed and to form our own conclusions based on our own ideas and perspectives.

The Limits Of Language

In the essay, The Limits Of Language, Nicholas Leman agrees with Orwell's 1946, Politics and the English Language essay that clear language can lead to better politics. He agrees that simple, clear and to the point is better than something long complicated and confusing. He adds however that a more frightening thing to him than the corruption of language is the corruption of information. He feels that we should guard and focus more on the corruption of information. I feel that we should focus on both english lanuguage and the corruption of information. I feel that the corruption of english language sometimes twists the truth/facts and that ends up going along with the corruption of information.

Revising

In Harris book Rewriting, he gives us tips in how to revise our writings. He suggests we first ask ourselves questions as a form of coming to terms, forwarding, countering, and taking an approach. He mentions three general steps in writing. The first one being "drafting, or general text". Second being "revising, or working with the text you've created, rethinking and reshaping what you want to say" . The third being "editing, or working on your text as an artifact, preparing the final version of your document". I thought this was great advice. I always have a hard time revising and usually don't even put much effort into it because I just end up getting overwhelmed. With Harris advice however he makes it easy to organize yourself in revising by coming to terms with your writing, forwarding, countering and taking an approach to your essay. I also found the advice of the three general steps very helpful. Especially to me because I didn't even have a writing process or knew of this writing steps. I usually write, revise, and move my essay around as I go along. If I can focus on certain writing goals at a certain amount of time it would make my writing process easier for me.