Goodbye Ramage, Hello Lakoff

Well I must admit that I enjoyed the first chapter of this book more than all of Ramage's chapters put together. I am thankful to be moving on, even though I just LOVED "Rhetoric: A Users Guide" (ITS SARCASM PEOPLE).

I was a little nervous to begin the first chapter after reading the introduction. I felt we were going to cover another book that does not deal with definites and definitions. But after starting the first chapter, I felt a little more at ease. I enjoyed this first chapter. I had to laugh when he described out culture as a 'culture of narcissism.' Who ever thought of the Undo Attention Test is one smart cookie, let me tell you! No, but it really does show the issues that we americans hate to let go of..and just taking a look at those issues says a lot! Then he moves on to use the term "serious people" and I had a horrible flashback.

He enjoyed the section on Language, and how it is not tanglible, it is merely air, but yet it has such a huge significant impact on our reality. Without it, we could not 'construct and analyze' reality at all. This air has the ability to not only construct and analyze reality, but to change it all together. J. L. Austin then takes us through the different types of language...the declarative and performative.

Lakoff describes to us the different kinds, and applications of the applogy. When he wrote that women are more prone to using appoligies, even when they are not needed reminded me of myself. I am always appologizing!! My mother actually yells at me for that! I should hook her up with Lakoff. If true appologies are always painful how many people actualllllly give true appologies...seeing the regression froma true apology to blaming the owner of a CAT was actually a clear example of how I see most apologies carried out. These demonstrate language politics in action.

In my opinion, there is a HUGE difference between a public apology and a private apology. A point so simple, as how public leaders may withhold an apology as to not appear as the aggressor in war is something that I have never noticed before. There are things that have been pointed out to me in this class (esp while watching the Persuaders) that i would rather not have had pointed out to me. Like the section on our first Bush. I do feel however that the section on the Un-Apology made a lot of sense. Should our leaders be percieved as imperfect and apologize, or portray the man that is the strenth of our nation? The Mrs. King section had me completely torn between admitting to making a mistake (our PRESIDENT) or keeping his image because he IS the president.

Overall I enjyoed this reading, partly becasue it had much easier concepts to understand, just by the way it is written. However, I do feel that some things are trivial, and there can be no ONE conclusion. This is one frustrating part of literature, I cant stand when authors focus on issues that will only start debate because there can be NO ONE SOLUTION. anyway thats about all I have to say! goodnight!