Free Post - 12/6/2007

This is one of the rare free posts in which I do not know what to write....so I will continue a draft version of a paper I am writing currently. This paper is a commentary on the poetic and linguistic construction of a Rudyard Kipling poem called "How Fear Came." It goes like this:

The stream is shrunk – the pool is dry,
And we be comrades, thou and I;
With fevered jowl and dusty flank
Each jostling each along the bank;
And by one drouthy fear made still,
Forgoing thought of quest or kill.
Now ‘neath his dam the fawn may see,
The lean pack-Wolf as cowed as he,
And the tall buck, unflinching, note
The fangs that tore his father’s throat.
The pools are shrunk – the streams are dry.
And we be playmates, thou and I,
Till yonder cloud – Good Hunting! – loose
The rain that breaks our Water Truce.

- Rudyard Kipling
from The Jungle Book’s “How Fear Came,” 1894

Now, this is not my free post (that would be against the rules - old Rudyard wrote this, not me!).

Here's my in-production draft commentary:

Much of what was unsaid – the silential relations of the text – occurred in the poetic devices implemented. These were mentioned in the commentaries below each line, and included such devices as epanalepsis, anaphora, chiasmus, repetition, and polyptoton to name a few. Kipling artfully implemented their use, and I resolved to either leave them untouched or preserve at least a related meaning in translation.

In contemplating the experience, one may realize that much was felt or understood while little was said. Without the interlinear gloss and the commentary the poem last all of fourteen lines. The translated version includes one hundred seven words, the original a mere ninety-nine. We indeed may see that a message of profound meaning, possibly beyond the scope of what we thought possible for a fourteen-line poem, was detailed without a multitude of words. It was detailed in the mind of the reader, and experienced in a place individual words may not go alone.

Now, with a little revision and a little magic, that might actually go into the paper!

Rhetorical Analysis - 12/4/2007

I recently looked at an article published by UCLA's Political Science department regarding political bias in major media outlets. The article can be found

here

.

The point (or argument) being made in this article is, of course, that bias in media does in fact exist - more specifically, that a left-leaning or politically-liberal bias exists as an average across the nation's media outlets, and that even many of the outlets which are touted as leaning 'right' or conservative are in fact, left-leaning.

The audience for this article is fairly broad - anyone who cares about the possibility or apparent existence of bias in political and news coverage and reporting is the obvious general audience. Political scientists, news agencies themselves, concerned students, political activists, consipiracy theorists, statisticians, you name it. In fact, it may be better to talk about who is not the audience, because they may be in the minority. Generally speaking, conservative audiences are more concerned with a liberal news bias because it does not reflect many of their values or beliefs, so this may be another qualification of the intended audience: conservative viewers/listeners/readers.

The method used here in arguing the case is a strong one - a seemingly unbiased and objective data-gathering and data-analyzing mult-year empirically-based study reveals a linear graded measurement of any major media outlet's political leanings (or lack thereof...). The argument was convincing and enlightening in many respects because it presented raw and organized data in a convincing manner, with clear indications that the argument was not only valid but practically factual.

I was especially surprised to see that The Wall Street Journal, which I always understood to be a fairly unbiased, if not conservatively-geared, daily publication did in fact have liberal leanings. It seems that, according to the methodology of the study and the published results, an outlet's op/ed (opinions/editorials) sections or segments may lean one way (as should be expected from such a section - it's supposed to be opinionated and argumentative!) while the actual news reporting sections or segments might lean the other way! This was the case with The Wall Street Journal - although their op/eds were conservative in nature, their news reporting was fairly liberal (again, according to the scoring rubric of the study).

This was an effective argument to target anyone concerned with the topic - it confirmed many of the beliefs of concerned conservatives, and objectively and empirically showed persuasive results.