Popular culture is a natural subject for composition because it greatly shapes the way the cultural memory is formed, how public and private identities are constructed, and how lifestyle decisions are promoted.

—Diane Penrod, Miss Grundy Doesn't Teach Here Anymore 12

I would say, “Let me show you what it means to be human.” And then I would take them to the theater, the symphony hall, the opera house, the movies, the museums. I would…read poems, tell stories…take them to see the paintings of da Vinci, Georgia O’Keefe, and Picasso, to a Greek tragedy or a comedy by Shakespeare, to hear Louis Armstrong, Mozart, and Oklahoma! I would show them the grace of dancers, the elegance of a bow passed across a violin’s strings, and the profundity of a child drawing a picture of her mother…. And then I would ask them, “What is art where you live?” (Leonard Nimoy, Actor and Director)

“Go back! You can get killed here!” (Edward G. Rendell, Mayor, Philadelphia)

At last! An impartial jury for the O. J. Simpson trial. (Joseph Duffy, Director, U.S. Information Agency)

Provenance: 

Citation Format: Fox, Roy F."“What Would You Say to an Alien?” The American Culture Portfolio." The Writing Instructor. 2001. http://www.writinginstructor.com/areas/englished/fox_alien.html (Date Accessed).

Review Process: Roy F. Fox's essay was accepted for publication following blind, peer review.

The interesting writer, the informative speaker, the accurate thinker, and the sane individual operate on all levels of the abstraction ladder, moving quickly and gracefully and in orderly fashion from higher to lower, from lower to higher, with minds as lithe and deft and beautiful as monkeys in a tree.

—S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action (1991)

Introduction

After nearly 30 years of experimentation in teaching writing, reading, thinking, and media, as well as researching and speculating in these areas (read “mucking around”), certain notions persist in the bones, several of which I would like to note in this article.

Population

College composition students who are studying argumentation principles and persuasive writing.

Rationale

None of our students is likely to write in the passive voice quite as dramatically as acclaimed French Author Raymond Queneau in his Exercises in Style (1981). In this text, he wrote poetic versions of a conflict between two men on a bus in France, including this passive selection:

It was midday. The bus was being got into by passengers. They were being squashed together. A hat was being worn on the head of a young gentlemen. [. . .] A long neck was one of the characteristics of the young gentlemen. The man standing next to him was being grumbled at by the latter because of the jostling which was being inflicted on him by him. As soon as a vacant seat was espied by the young gentlemen it was made the object of his precipitate movements and it became sat down upon (72).

Provenance: 

Citation Format: Wink, Karen."Rhetorical Pedagogy for Active and Passive Voice" The Writing Instructor. 2002. http://www.writinginstructor.com/classroom/wink.html (Date Accessed).

Review Process: Karen Wink's essay was accepted for publication following blind, peer review.