Spot Lighting Discourse Community!

Justin Linse

Zuzu

Writ 101

11/1/11

“Spot Lighting”

Through my 19 years of existence I have been a part of many different types of discourse communities. Baseball, basketball, football, golf, hunting, just overall athletic communities. But one discourse community I particularly enjoy is the Spot Lighting community. Most people are not familiar with this community because not many people like guns as much as my friends and I do. Growing up with a father that always shot guns and a mother that always hated guns, I really found myself in a kind of tug-of-war between the two, but I decided that weapons are awesome so I gave them a try. Living in Montana really helped my love of guns and other weapons grow more than I could have ever imagined. Once I got with a group of guys that really loved the same things I did, I realized that the sky was the limit for what we could do with them.

It all started with my first kill. I was just messing around with a pellet gun and I saw a little bird on a telephone line and that was end of story for that little creature. From there I just wanted bigger guns and more things to shoot at. When I finally got to shoot a .22, just a very small caliber gun, is when I started my killing rampage. From birds to foxes, to even the house cat. Needless to say, my grandparents weren’t so happy with me after that kill, I learned a valuable lesson: Make sure you don’t get caught! From there on whatever I killed I kept to myself.

The fun just got better from there on. Once my friends and I got our first cars we began going for more “Crafty” kills. My friend Garson had just gotten a high powered airsoft rifle which virtually made no sound at all so as a group we drove around town during the day and shot bunnies and birds wherever we saw them. We were not scared of getting caught because an air rifle is barely considered a gun in Montana, so no one would have been expecting it. But later on we found that we desired more. As we got older and wiser, so did our plans of attack. So one night Garson, Ryan and myself decided to grab a spotlight and some .22s and go shoot some little animals in the middle of the night.

This was obvious what this was called “Spotlighting”. “It’s really fun” said Garson in an interview that I had with him. “Just an example of this would be this one time 3 of us shot a little kitten in the face and out of a tree and it was fun as shit.” Garson is one of us seasoned veterans in the act of spotlighting. He always knows where to go that will be a solid place to shine a light and kill animals. “They just don’t expect to be shot in the face,” he says.

As a discourse community we don’t really write down much at all. We basically just go out in the middle of the night and shine unexpecting animals then shoot them. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. It’s a thinking man’s game. We use calls a lot and different colored lights work in different ways. Everything we do as a community has the same goal, and that’s to get as many kills as possible in one night. It’s not for everyone that’s for sure, but it’s a blast once you get into the sport and really get involved with everything going on.

The cars we use have a huge impact on how well our night will go. The ideal vehicle that we used was an SUV that Garson had. It had a sun roof that people could sit out of, and the back seat was great for holding way more guns than people in the car. Trucks were also very effective especially if the back window could slide open. Anything that could carry a lot of people and that could get to the places that we went. So a car would not be a practical vehicle for the rides on the bad terrain.

The lights that we use can play a big role in what goes on too. The normal light that we shine goes out farther and we can see eyes better, but the animals can see it better. We also have a red lenses that does not go out as far, but the animals can’t see the light so they don’t run when they are looking at us. They both have pros and cons, but as long as you have a light, something is bound to die.

Guns. This is probably the most important part of the whole community and it really ties the whole game together. A .22 is sometimes the ideal weapon of choice. It’s not very loud and it can get kills no matter where you are at. Depending on where we are at has an effect on the guns that we use. Sometimes when we are out in the middle of nowhere we will pull out a 7 mm. That is a hunting rifle that is commonly used to take down elk. It’s very loud but when an animal is hit, it generally explodes. A .223 is also a very good gun to use while out in the boonies (middle of nowhere). It’s pretty loud, but the round is perfect for taking down any animal we are out to shoot. Hand guns are also very vital to the weapon arsenal. We usually have at least one if not two different hand guns on us to finish off the animals. We have used a .40, .22, .357, or a .38 special. All of these hand guns serve the same purpose in the end.

A thing that we use that is never overlooked is hunting knives. These can be used in a wide variety, but usually they are used to finish off a fatally wounded animal. One time we were out and had shot a couple raccoons and they are feisty little critters. Almost being bitten multiple times I finally got a jab that finished the job. 

As a whole, we don’t really have many code words at all. We basically just see the animals and shoot them. But music is definitely a job for the heavy metal. We turn the volume all the way up and go out into the night not to return until early morning. To go out that late, sometimes it gets pretty chilly, so make sure to bundle up nicely or weather appropriate for leaning outside the window or riding on top of a car going about 20mph.

Spotlighting is highly illegal in most cases. It is not “recommended” by me or the other members to do unless you know you will not be caught. Unless you have some private land that you own or have permission to shoot on, you probably should use extreme caution.

We are all great friends and all have a great time in the night together. It’s not a smart idea to go out with people that you don’t like because with a bunch of guns you don’t want anything bad to happen in the middle of nowhere.

As a whole, spotlighting is a ton of fun if that’s the kind of thing you are into. As my friend Luke said in our interview “It’s just a ton of fun shooting animals in the dark.” It doesn’t take much to go out and do this. It just takes a car a few people, a spot light, and a couple guns. If you think it’s for you, I recommend going out with some close hunting friends and giving it a try. Just remember that when you go out, it’s the middle of the night and not many people will see you, so shoot what you see and keep it to yourself. I know that I will be out shooting in the middle of the night with some buddies and a spotlight in hand till the day that I die. Happy Spotlighting!

Discourse

Discourse has many different views. As this is completely true with the articles written by Gee, Swales, and Mirabelli. They all have different insight and different ideas on the topic of what discourse is. Discourse, loosely is where you came from and what you learned on your own. To this I say is plain to see is correct, but the ideas that some of the men had, I believe are wrong.
Gee says you cannot become apart of a different discourse. This may be true with genetics and ethnicity, but i believe he is wrong in a few aspects. He says that no matter what no one can be taught to be a linguist... i believe that anyone can. For example, if a child grows up with an english father and a spanish mother, they will more than likely be bilingual naturally, just cause they grew up with it. But even as a young child, naturally we are trying to understand what is going on so we teach ourselves and learn from our parents words and sentence structure by just hearing it. If a person is not spanish but full english and they wish to learn spanish, they can take classes and buy tapes and eventually learn it. this would all be for self improvement. no one doesn't want to learn. thats part of being a human. so we must have the desire to learn these different discourses. What i believe could be taken from what Gee is saying (not that i agree) is that we are all of no discourse. To him, no one can become a mathemetition or an english person who speaks spanish, or a person who is a history major. we have to have the desire to learn the different discourses before we can say we know different things.
now with john swales, i kind of agree with what he says about the speech and discourse communities. we are just surrounded by all of the kinds of people we want to be surrounded by. in my case, english speaking, athletes, and people with a good sense of humor and know how to have a good time.
in short i think we make our own discourses as life goes on. we chose to learn what we desire to become better at. it is this desire to learn that makes apart of every discourse that we want to be.

(I want to apologize for the uncapitalized and misspelled words. My laptop broke, and the computer in the lab has a difficult shift key, i hope you don't get too upset over this)

Deborah Brant's "Sponsors of Literacy" in a nut shell

Justin Linse

Rhetorical Reading

Zuzu Feder

Writ 101

The Purpose of the “Sponsors of Literacy”

I will show readers evidence for my reading by carefully dissecting Brant’s work in this article. I will show how she goes about telling students about the differences in writing and our past sponsors impact on how we write today as a person. Everyone will have their own interpretations of pieces of literacy, but this will only be my interpretation and I will try and convince my class mates that I have looked into the article enough to find out what she exactly means when writing about “Sponsors of Literacy”.

The article that I chose to do in this Rhetorical Reading paper is “Sponsors of Literacy” by Deborah Brandt. Brandt, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, wrote this article in 1998. The Context of the article “Sponsors of Literacy” by Deborah Brandt is some of the common misconceptions people have with literacy sponsors, and “opens” and “closes” some doors about their aspects. The journal this article appeared in originally was the College Composition and Communication, a writing journal that many prestigious writers go to with their work. The Journal’s Intended audience is the students of Montana State University that bought the book and were reading her article. Also the article Brandt wrote was for the other thousands of people that commonly read the journal this originally appeared in. Or just another person trying to further advance their knowledge of literacy. Brant is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, she has also written many books and a few scholarly research articles about literacy and what literacy is about. The article was written in 1998. The situation Brandt is trying to convey is the tension between people and their literary sponsors. Brant says that literacy is sponsored by people and other various fields that add to the subject. This woman clearly has done her studying and research because she is very experienced in this field.

The conversation of the article is the combination of literacies that make people unique. Everyone has a different writing style and a way of going about writing. It is these things that makes everyone different. No matter what it is, people will have different views and perspectives on a subject. No two people will be exactly the same in anything and this is definitely the same for writing. The millions of books that have been written over the years all are different in one way or another it just depends on the point of view taken. She says that “The field of writing studies has had much to say about individual literacy development”. This means that everyone will have a different writing style and no two pieces of literacy will be alike. An individual’s way of perceiving something is exactly what she is talking about when this point is made. To me she is saying that everyone is on their own to figure out whatever it is that we like to do, and make something look like we were putting our thought and time into a piece.  

The writer is talking about everyone having a different way about going to write a paper, she says everything will have some differences and the readers must understand that it is these differences that make literacy very interesting.

Brant’s motivation is to have us as young writers look back and see who our first “teachers” of writing were. It teaches us to explore our past and shape our future as literary students and maybe someday literary experts. Throughout my personal experiences I have only begun to find out who I am. And I know that in these next 70 or 80 years of my life, my understandings will only grow tenfold and I will, till the day that I die, be learning about literacy and its sponsors.

Deborah Brandt speaks of two women who only by the end of the 20^th century helped literacy become “a permissible feminine activity”. These two women, Carol White and Sarah Steele, were innovators of this time with the stereotypical woman identity of the time turning teacher and avid learners of literacy. These two accounts are meant to “shed light” of the process of teaching and learning these certain arts.

The extent that people go through to find out what is going on in their community and how they can have even a slight effect of what goes down, but at the same time furthering their knowledge of the situation at hand. Dwayne Lowery went from building things to informing people about society. He had to learn how to read and write in a completely different way than he was used to. From a car factory to a representative for public employees, you can imagine the change he had to make. The vocabulary and the paper work and the sophistication was far greater than he had ever experienced before. There is an example in this: “I was sixteen years old before I knew that goddamn Republicans was two words”. Lowry, only after leaving the manufacturing company and getting back out into the world, saw that new papers existed again.

Literacy is available to almost everyone, at least a small amount. It is the people who go above and beyond the call of duty, and really dig deep that actually learn a significant amount about whatever it is that they want to figure out. Everyone has the access, it’s just the people who go after it that excel and accomplish something in life. People can use race, gender, or even financial status either for or against their argument, but in any case if you believe you can’t do something then you will never achieve greatness. There is a story of a boy named Raymond Branch who went after what he wanted and through his work and effort only did he finally become a contributor to society.

I had a teacher in high school who was by far the smartest man I had ever met in my life. He believed that only about ten percent of people in the world were actually contributing to the welfare of society and the other ninety percent of people were just filling up dead space in the world, holding us back from greater achievements. I thought about this and really took it to heart. It makes a ton of sense to me that people who are not going after their dreams are only fooling themselves in the end. Now I’m not saying that he was one hundred percent accurate with his claim, but it does have to come down to two factors: Those that do and those who wait. If you don’t go after something for yourself you will never see what is on the other side of the tunnel. The world is just a mess and your life is wasted and gone. You only have one life to live, so you might as well take some chances and better your situation as a human being. And being part of this race, you should almost be motivated to do so.

Dora Lopez is also a fantastic example in this reading of someone who took the bull by the horns and bettered her situation as a Mexican- American in a predominantly Caucasian nation. I’m not one to be hypocritical, but she really got her stuff together and figured herself out as a person. She went from knowing not much English to teaching herself to read and write, and she soon became a translator, communication for her supervisors, from Spanish to English, back again.

This whole article is about finding who you are as a person and your place in society. Bettering your situation as a human being if you will. I know that through all of this paper that I just wrote, people will have their own interpretations and opinions but that’s just it! That’s the point! Everyone will have their own view on a subject. Whether or not the person will do what they can to further better themselves is up to them, but I know that I’m doing all I can to be as productive a person as possible. This is what I got from Deborah Brand’s article, people can say what they want, but I believe it is a solid summary and explanation for many things that go on in this world we live in today. You have to chase what you believe in; the only person stopping you in the end will be yourself.

Rough Draft and Notes on Brant's "Sponsors of Literacy"

The Context of the article is sponsors of literacy. The journal it appeared in is Debora Brant’s article about the “Sponsors of Literacy”. The Journal’s Intended audience is the students of Montana State University that bought the book and were reading her article. The author is Debora Brant. Brant is an English professor at the university of Wisconsin- Madison, she has also written many books and a few scholarly research articles about literacy and what literacy is about. The article was written in 1998. The situation it was written in describes the tension between people and their literary sponsors.

The conversation of the article is the combination of literacies that make people unique.

She says that “The field of writing studies has had much to say about individual literacy development”. This means that everyone will have a different writing style and no two pieces of literature will be alike.

The writer is talking about everyone having a different way about going to write a paper, she says everything will have some differences and the readers must understand that it is these differences that make literacy very interesting.

Brant’s motivation is to have us as young writers look back and see who our first “teachers” of writing were. It teaches us to explore our past and shape our future as literary students and maybe someday literary experts.

I will show readers evidence for my reading by carefully dissecting Brant’s work in this article. I will show how she goes about telling students about the differences in writing and our past sponsors impact on how we write today as a person. Everyone will have their own interpretations of pieces of literacy, but this will only be my interpretation and I will try and convince my class mates that I have looked into the article enough to find out what she exactly means when writing about “Sponsors of Literacy”.

All Writing is Autobiography

Murray is constantly talking about all writing being autobiography just like the title states. No matter how hard people try to not make it an autobiography, it always turns out to being one. Its inevitable. No one can, according to Murray, change this. I thought about it and it does make a lot of sense since everyone writing has to make the piece their own some how.

Like i stated in the previous paragraph, I can see how Murray feels this way about writing. I mean not only is he an established writer, his points make a lot of sense to me. I'm going to sound like a broken record, but no matter what everyone has to make a piece of writing part of themselves some how.

They make me realize that regardless of what I think, a piece of writing that I do will always be my own. It will make me think about writing more and try and see how one piece is different from another as they are written by different authors. My eyes have been opened a little by this article by Murray.

Rhetorical Situations

          A "Rhetorical Situation" is something that in my mind, is trying to convey something through what I believe could be subliminal messaging. If you say something that someone already knows the answer to, then they will understand what you are talking about and might also possibly pick up other messages you intended to point out in your conversation. Whether the point you are trying to get across is right in their face or more subtle, that is up to the one who is speaking. But whether or not the person receiving the message understands is, well that’s just up to them.

          As for the article itself, well it could have been a little more interesting. Needless to say it was very informative. My old understanding of rhetorical situations was ones just of sarcasm or someone trying to be a jerk. But now I understand that they are used all over the place in readings and other pieces of literature. The read was very dull. It took me a while to get motivated for it, and then once I was, I quickly became bored with it and tossed it to the side to finish later. Like I said, it is full of useful information; it’s just extremely flat and boring.

"My Paper" (Final Draft)

My writing experience has by no means been very successful. I’ve had my ups and downs, but for the most part they have all been downs. Although my writings have become more elaborate and distinct, I’m still trying to find my writing “Nitch.” Reading over the years had certainly been my down fall. In 2010 I read one book that I actually loved, and this year I read another book cover to cover just because my girlfriend said it was good. So basically my reading and writing abilities as a whole are not as sharp as I would like them to be. This by no means makes me think I’m a bad reader or writer. I actually believe my reading and writing skills are great, it’s just that I’ve never been able to take hold of something and really put my mark on it and make it my own.

            As a child I remember reading the Dr. Seuss books just like everyone else. The pictures and rhymes had always been what have caught my attention… Mostly the pictures. I read the Calvin and Hobbes books too because I was his age and I always wanted to have an imaginary stuffed tiger to go on adventures with. So out of school that was the only real reading I ever did. In school there were always the required readings that the whole class did together. While every kid in my class was eager to get their try at reading the text, I usually just drew on my desk. Other than this I can’t recall all the other readings and what not that all the other kids were getting into.

Harry Potter and the Series of unfortunate events were books commonly read amongst my friends but I was always too busy outside exploring my yard or riding bikes with a good friend. I found that outdoors and activities were always much more enjoyable than reading a silly book. This goes the same for reading for school as well. I never read a school text book until my senior year in my civics class. In this case I read the book from cover to cover not only cause it helped out in the class, but also because American government had always attracted me. It takes something that interests me to write about or read about before I get into it. And to be honest this paper does not exactly fall under the category of “fun” for me either.

Currently or in the recent past of my high school years I generally just read or write the bear minimum to just skip past the glares of the teachers who assigned them. I specifically remember reading my sister’s diary (looking back on it, it was a bad idea.) and after that I gave a try of starting my own journal, which still today has that one entry. That journal is now somewhere in a dump after I threw it away years ago. Today I’ll generally only write about things that are required. Never have I felt compelled to write on my own because it simply bores me to death trying to get ideas from my mind onto a piece of paper, and when it makes it on the paper I quickly get irritated because the ideas never sound as good on paper than they did in my head.

I have listened to books on tape before and found that much more enjoyable cause that takes zero effort on my part. But stories and adventures of other people have never been a hard thing for me to pay attention to. I found that I enjoy music a lot only because of the stories most of the songs tell. I listen to every kind of music and every genera has a different story to be told. Rock is usually about how someone is going to kick some other guy’s ass because he stole his girlfriend. All rap music is about the same stuff; sex, money, drugs, and success. As I write this paper in front of me I am indeed listening to music. Lately I have been listening to a lot of country music. The stories are much better and are almost never about sex, money, drugs, or kicking ass. They are generally about love and the obstacles one faces to achieve to find true love. So this is much more of an adventure in itself listening to the stories of other people and their journey to gain that in their own lives.

The writing I do today like I said has changed immensely over the years. From small half page assignments to five page essays I have to write for this class. I approach it the same way, I’m going to dread it and I’m not going to give it every bit of the attention from me that it may deserve. My favorite writings are about the topics I know the most about; hunting, sports, government, and life. I see myself with a blank stare looking at a computer screen and typing tediously to meet the deadline. Ear buds are in and the music is filling my head. Most of this paper in front of me is a distant memory past the last paragraph. I’ve never felt like I have ever had the ability to make a piece of writing my own. It has no identity and is a nameless face in the sea of the other countless no name papers I have written in the past.

I feel that with every letter written or typed is another moment in my life that has passed that I could have been doing to do something that has some self-worth to me instead of something that a teacher of mine or some students will read. It has no real point to me. To other people, I’m sure, it’s just as bit as exciting that they want it to be. But to me it’s nothing special.

For intelligent writing, I feel that I should be using words way past my vocabulary and the context must be sophisticated and advanced for it to be good. I usually pick things that spark my interest and then I can write for hours, but I never get to write about my interests. Even in the times in class that I was told to write a paper about whatever I wanted, still it never seems right when it comes out. If I could I would just sit on a mountain side somewhere and listen to music, stories of other people’s experiences.

Reading is just like writing. If it doesn’t seem like it’s helping me out then why do it? All the required readings I had to force myself through in school never really had any point at all. It’s just another book that some author wrote for other people to read. Fiction, or non-fiction, it’s all the same to me. The only book I read in 2010 was called “Beyond Belief.” This was a story about my favorite baseball player, Josh Hamilton, who overcame an addiction to cocaine and other detrimental things to get back onto the field and live his own dream. Sometimes when reading books that I enjoy I wish it was real life and the main character was me. I wish I was the one falling in love or taking down an entire nation’s army all by myself.

My high school writing classes always taught the same things. They told me how to write and the proper techniques I should use to become a great writer. None of these things ever caught me. I still have no idea what the hell the teacher was talking about half the time only because I wished it was more interesting or wishing I was outside having an adventure of my own. If I could I would read or write about my own life and my experiences. I wish I could write a book and sell it, but so many people write these books and no one ever takes a second look at them in the store. It’s all so pointless to me. I understand that writing is something that is vital in the today’s world, but why does it have to be something everyone has to do? Why must the kids that have no interest in it, be forced to write hours on end against their will?

All of this said, I have no real interest in becoming a writer myself and have no plan of further pursuing writing as a career for me. Papers are papers. They all have words written on them. Most of the papers written have the same outlook as I do. It’s always to just get by in that class. Maybe I’m just naive or difficult to the “world of writing and reading” that I’m missing out on. But being myself and going out into the woods with a gun and a pocket of shells and animals to slay will always win over writing a paper. To be honest I found that writing this paper went from a task to something I actually found enjoyable. I just hope that future papers are as enjoyable as this one. Looking back on my life as a writer and reader has opened my eyes to all the things I have done. I’m in college now and I’m on my own. I have responsibilities and I have to keep writing papers that feel like no one will ever look at them once they are graded. Writing in school is now is inevitable for now and maybe it will never change. I certainly hope that not everyone in the world has the same outlook as I do, but I guarantee that after this year is past and after the final period has been put on this paper, no one will ever look at it again. It will be lost in the sea of other papers that I have written. But one thing this paper will have over the others will be a name. “My Paper.”