Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jason Bradley
Professor Malek
Writing with Style 001
3/13/15
Commonplace Book
Cover Letter
My commonplace book contains passages from five different sources, each
followed by an analysis of some performative aspect which I specify in the
title. I used this class text, Stanley Fishs How to Write a Sentence and How
to Read One, for the first entry, mostly because it was very convenient. I
used a single excerpt, which proved to be rich with tropes, from an online
article on a satirical news website called Fair City News for entries three,
four, and five. A novel from another class, Ann Petrys The Street, yielded
excerpts for entries five, six, seven and eight. I also used a short story from
the same class, Dorothy Wests The Typewriter for the imitation exercise,
and finally Wallace Stevens (who is my favorite poet) The Plain Sense of
Things for the poetry to prose exercise. Once I began looking for them, I
found multiple performative aspects that would be interesting to analyze in
many of the passages, but I tried to limit myself to the aspect that was most
significant to creating meaning for the reader (with the exception of the Fair
City News article, where I couldnt help myself.) I also made an effort to
cover a wide range of performative and rhetorical areas, though the heaviest
emphasis turned out to be on tropes and schemes.
When beginning the commonplace book, I found it difficult to read for style
analysis and for content. I could easily read for the content as I normally
would, or I could read for style analysis, looking for tropes and schemes and
other performative aspects, but I found it difficult to do both. I think this
difficulty was because of how entwined in our language many of these
stylistic tools are; they exist in the structure of the sentence, informing the
meaning, but in such a way that its not consciously noticed. I was pleased
to find picking up on these performative aspects got a lot easier, and I
noticed them not only in written text, but in other sources also, like an NPR
news story (though that one didnt make it into the book.) I think there is a
lot of value in identifying these performative aspects, because understanding
how language performs not only allows me to extract more meaning from it,
but of course its also something I hope to, with practice, integrate into my
own writing.
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This excerpt from Ann Petrys The Street uses the rhetorical scheme of
parallelism to structure a contrast between the building superintendent
(Super) with Mrs. Hedges (one of the female residents). Petry emphasizes
the physical difference between the two characters by using the structural
similarity of he was (adjective, adjective), she was (adjective, adjective).
The parallel structure makes it easy for the reader to identify the contrasting
descriptive adjectives because they occur at the same place in the sentence.
The parallelism falls short of isocolon however, because the phrase
describing Mrs. Hedges is longer than the phrase describing the super. I
believe the decision to avoid isocolon and use two word descriptors for Mrs.
Hedges and only one word descriptors for the super emphasizes the mass
and presence of Mrs. Hedges, being all hard, firm flesh, whereas the super
is reduced and diminished, being thin [and] gaunt. Even setting aside the
meaning of the adjectives used, the very fact that the description of Mrs.
Hedges takes up more space on the page and has more syllables gives her a
presence which dominates the super.
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7. Synecdoche
She started up the stairs. They went up and up ahead of her. They
were steeper than she remembered them. And she thought vaguely of
all the feet that had passed over them in order to wear the treads
down like this young feet and old feet; feet tired from work; feet that
skipped up them because some dream made them less than nothing to
climb; feet that moved reluctantly because some tragedy slowed them
up. (Petry 312)
Source:
Petry, Ann. The Street. New York: Mariner Books, 1974. Print.
In this passage Petry uses Synecdoche by referring to only a specific part,
that is the feet, of the subject of the sentence, which is all of the
downtrodden black tenants in the apartment building. Reducing the tenants
of the building to feet connotatively suggests the idea of progress and
movement. Because the foot is essential to human locomotion, focusing
only on the tenants feet puts the reader in the mind of forward movement,
not just literally, but also in the sense of social progress. It seems to suggest
that no matter how steep the path ahead, and no matter whether the feet
are young or old, the feet will continue on up the stairs, same as they have
always done, as is evidenced by the worn out tread on the steps.
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8. Parenthesis
As it was and this time she acknowledged the thought, explored it
boldly as it was, she was going somewhere else to live. (Petry 354)
Source:
Petry, Ann. The Street. New York: Mariner Books, 1974. Print.
This excerpt from Petrys The Street uses parenthesis when it engages in a
sort of meta-discourse which is set aside by hyphens. At this point in the
story, a character named Min has just come to the sudden realization that
she is going to leave the abusive relationship she is in with Jones, and
determinedly decides to move out of his apartment. The parenthetical aside
to the reader that Min has actually acknowledged the thought, explored it
boldly, is important commentary because it emphasizes how very out of
character this is for her. In the preceding chapters Min is depicted as very
submissive, withdrawn character, so her boldness and decisiveness comes as
such a sudden surprise that its as if the narrator needs to step out of the
story and directly address the reader to emphasize how unusual and
important her realization is.
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