>Joanna wrote:
> >
> > > This was not addressed to factory workers; it was addressed to other
> > university students, who are intimately acquainted with the promise and
> > quicksand of privilege.
>
>Yes. Joanna has nailed it down.
because she's a technical writer and intimately familiar with writing for particular audiences and skilled at knowing how to change her approach depending on that audience and her goals. her writing goals (and here I'm assuming) also have to get people to do something most of the time -- or help them do something.
Consequently, she approaches the text asking, "who is the audience?"
>Dennis C wanted to know my reasons for saying no one on this list was in
>a position to judge the text.
we are in a position to judge it if you do so as Joanna did. Which is what you're actually saying in more detail below. It's not that no one can judge it, it's that it should be judged appropriately. It's perfectly possible to still end up having criticisms, but in this case Max's criticism is based on a misreading of the text to begin with, since the author isn't running around assuming that the university is irredeemable.
shag
> It was posted here, he said. But that
>won't do. If someone quoted on this list pages from a text in theory of
>equations, we would judge that page from the perspective of someone
>trying to teach or to learn theory of equations. The same principle
>applies here. Again I emphasize genere, which for at least a couple
>millenia has been regarded as the point of departure for judging written
>texts. (Milton called decorum the secret of writing, and the basis for
>decorum is genre.) Does this text speak to the students it is addressed
>to?
>
>And of course it is not even addressed to ALL students. It is addressed
>only to those students who might be expected to share some fundamental
>assumptions with the writers of the text. This a lso is a principle
>taken for granted for well over two millenia. Cornford in his notes to
>the first book of the Republic begins by noting that Socrates appeals to
>a principle he shares with Thrasymachus. In other words, one only
>addresses those who already agree in some imortant respects with your
>aims. (I've always beenn astounded on this list when I state somethng
>that has been a commonplace for centuries or millenia and find it
>treated as a new and shocking idea of myown.)
>
>This leaflet (and it is essentially a leaflet) is a call to arms issued
>to those who ar ready to welcome such a call. Does it reach that
>audience? If it does, then it is well written. That is sprecisely what
>either Pope or Milton would have said.
>
>Carrol
>
>Carrol
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)