S-L-O-P, that's the way I spell sloppy...sloppy!
danah boyd posted a short reflection on what she's calling "sloppy speech acts," where she thinks about the various effects that IMing has had on her speech:
And then i started thinking about how sloppy my speech has been lately. I speak like i IM on my Sidekick - short, curt, coded... My speech has gotten super sloppy in recent years and i use my hands even more when i'm talking. I use whatever word comes to mind even if it doesn't fit well and i speak through impressions rather than using sound bites. I realize that my writing has gotten sloppier too and i find it far far far more painful to write now than before. I'm not particularly proud of either of these manifestations.
I'm not a big IMer--even though I have Sidekick envy, I lack the desire to overcome the massive inertia keeping me from joining the mobile (r)evolution. But I have noticed the shift, and even talked about it a time or two, in my own writing habits over the past couple of years of active blogging.
If there is a conventional wisdom about the relationship between blogging and writing, my sense is that it runs something like this: it's hard to get students to write, students don't improve their writing unless they write, and so anything that gets them writing earlier is bound to get them writing better. There's more to it than that, of course, but for me, that's the basic syllogism behind a great deal of technology and writing scholarship. For myself, I'd add that blogging can/should/may have the effect of getting students to think differently about writing, and in all sorts of ways that I find to be improvements over the default positions of most of us.
If there is a weakness in this line of reasoning for me, it's the baseline assumption that we all share the same threshold for putting pen to paper or finger to key. We have a tendency to assume that the world hates to write with roughly the same intensity, and it's that aversion that we must overcome as writing instructors. Fair enough, and perhaps even true most of the time. Certainly I don't walk into a classroom expecting to find a roomful of graphophiles. Heck, most of us could probably say the same about walking into department meetings. And even in the odd case that we could, it would be silly to imagine that everyone loves to write in the same way.
One of the differences that I've been thinking about with respect to danah's entry is this question of threshold, because I think that there are two specific features of it that vary widely from person to person: I think that each of us has hir own threshold for writing in general, and each of us juggles various thresholds from medium to medium and/or audience to audience. There are people whom I'd call on the phone and talk to for an hour before I'd return an email that asked for a one-line answer. There are people who only receive emails from me. And so on.
Lately, I've been having some trouble picking up my academic writing again, trouble that I haven't really experienced here. One answer to this concern is to say that blogging is interfering with my more strictly academic work, but that's not quite right. Closer to the truth is that, for a long time, my writing practice was pretty much monovocal (or maybe bivocal). I wrote emails to friends and colleagues (which I didn't think of as writing per se) and I wrote articles, presentations, etc., to a fairly general audience of my academic peers. Now, I like writing, and I like it enough such that my threshold for doing that work was never especially high. As a blogger, though, my threshold for writing has dropped even further--I never would have dreamed that I could write on a daily basis (or semi-daily, at least) for as long as I've maintained this space.
The trouble I've run into is that the thresholds for these two practices are themselves different. It's easier for me to throw up a post (obviously) than it is to work on an article, and once I cross the blog threshold and write, typically I do something else when I'm done. So blogging does in some ways "interfere," but really only in the sense that I feel like "I've written" when I'm done, and enough so that I end up starting over again to work up to the threshold for academic prose.
Well, that, and also that I find myself wanting to end articles simply by saying "That is all."
No grand conclusions here. I'm just thinking through some of these things myself, but I wonder if we spend too much of our attention on the notion that blogs will help us overcome resistance to writing and not enough on how it changes the practices of those (of us) whose resistance isn't as acute.
That is all.
Comments
Hmm. That's an interesting idea. I've been thinking of blogging for students as a transitional mode of writing, something that transitions them from speech or im toward something that resembles academic writing. I don't find that I feel "done" with writing after I blog. I think of it as a warmup, sort of like the 10 minutes on the treadmill before I have to go do the painful lower body workout. Sure, I'd love to stop after the 10 minutes. I'm already sweating, after all. But somehow I press on.
Now that doesn't happen every single time, but I do find that if I think of blogging in those terms--the warmup--then I'm more likely to move on to bigger (better?) things. A really interesting thought though about the way we graphophiles might be rethinking writing.
Posted by: Laura | January 17, 2006 6:37 PM
I'm interrupting my dissertation prospectus rewrite to comment, which just goes to show you, some kinds of writing are simply more fun.
I agree that "Changes the practices" is a better emphasis than "getting students to write"-even if their resistance is high. Approaches to writing that focuses on "getting students to write because it is hard to get them to" but ignores the nature of the practice as part of that effort weakens the likelihood that the practice will be effective.
Take free writing for instance-- we wouldn't identify it with free verse, though both have a view of the way constraints effect expression.
But free writing is a practice, among many other practices, that help students to write. But it needs to be understood as a practice among many. We might think of blogging as something easier for students to approach-- easier for many than something like free writing, which usually appeals to students who find it a relief or a release. But we wouldn't want to identify blogging with free writing, though both encourage students to produce more freely. If students aren't made awayre of the nature of the practice and its constraints, they can't adopt it as a practice-- or see its likeness to other practices.
Posted by: robert | January 19, 2006 10:29 AM
The trouble I've run into is that the thresholds for these two practices are themselves different. It's easier for me to throw up a post (obviously) than it is to work on an article, and once I cross the blog threshold and write, typically I do something else when I'm done. So blogging does in some ways "interfere," but really only in the sense that I feel like "I've written" when I'm done, and enough so that I end up starting over again to work up to the threshold for academic prose.
I have thought some about this sort of dynamic in the past. I tend to believe that it's because blogs, online publishing or even message board posts can provide nearly instantaneous feedback and conversation. There's an immediacy to it, and a sense of contact -- your words are reaching people nearly instantaneously -- and there is satiation in that effect. There is either no or minimal delay in the effects of the writing, and that is so much more satisfying than the solitary, delayed nature of much academic writing. And one doesn't need to jump through hoops, either, to get one's words heard and responded to. And when there is feedback, you can revise your writing/thinking within hours. There is a feedback loop that compels the writing forward.
Comp mafia can write virtually the equivalent of entire articles on message boards or via email with great ease. But then when comp mafia sits down and starts to think about writing for the typically-more-judgmental audience, the brain can freeze -- and freeze all the more after the ease of writing online.
Closer to the truth is that, for a long time, my writing practice was pretty much monovocal (or maybe bivocal). I wrote emails to friends and colleagues (which I didn't think of as writing per se) and I wrote articles, presentations, etc., to a fairly general audience of my academic peers.
Emails should count as writing -- think Letters for the Living -- emails can be just as substantive as articles at times and often far more interesting.
Posted by: c-m | January 19, 2006 7:27 PM
for me, i'll switch out of one screen & into the other to post to my blog in the middle of working on a paper--sometimes several posts a day worth of easy distractions!--because the writing is easier, & i do feel like i've written when i've done it, but then that also makes it easier to go back & keep writing. like, i remember that words *work* & i can actually use them to say things that are coherent, so it nudges me over stalling-out points & i can re-apply the lesson to the "real" task at hand.
would you mind if i quoted from this post, btw? theoretically, i'm doing a presentation for CCCCs about how blogging impacts the writing students/writers do in other contexts (& vice versa).
Posted by: tyra | January 19, 2006 11:51 PM
If the question about quotation is directed at comp mafia, comp mafia has no problem with quotation or citation. But I am assuming that it is directed at Collin.
I agree that online writing can also feed article writing -- to the extent that one doesn't become engaged in counter-productive debates. The nearly-instantaneous feedback loop can either help the clarification process or else it can create a tangled web that veers off from the real task at hand. It is only at that latter point that it becomes a real distraction, in my opinion.
Posted by: c-m | January 20, 2006 1:07 PM