I chose to read some of my peer’s responses to see their views and touch on things I might have missed. This assignment fits the chapters because they are about the changing of language, and the different techniques people use to express language and understanding.
One concept I did not really touch on was Kerouac’s rhetoric of race. He used his spontaneous writing to connect more images, feelings and stereotypes about races. In using his example of Leo and Mardou biracial relationship, Kerouac is at the same time denouncing his words. “At first I had doubts, because she was a Negro,” is a very bias statement but the fact that the relationship worked proves that these words are null and void of any meaning. An interesting story I heard about a popular black nationalist who wrote a book he titled n*gg*r, and wrote in the dedication to his mother that the next time she heard that offensive word, it will because someone is discussing his book. He is taking ownership of the word, and changing the meaning. Like Jennifer said, Kerouac uses the rhetoric to stir people’s emotion and I believe that Kerouac uses this rhetoric of race to not to show his bias, but to juxtaposition and change the meaning of these images and stereotypes by relating them to different ones.
http://3372.edublogs.org/2005/11/08/reading-response-4-4/
Jessica stated that scratching is like freewriting, and it is. She also stated that it requires that you understand how language works. Language is many things. It can be oral language, using a pencil, the print press, a website, or a scratch in a song. There are not many original ideas, but since we have so many resources to create from people like dj’s can make a new idea from something old. Every concept of language has many things incorporated in it. Scratching incorporates technology. Scratching proves that things don’t need to be segregated, they can be combined to make something new in harmony.
http://3372.edublogs.org/2005/11/07/chapter-11-12/
Houston wrote something interesting that words are only sounds until we give them a meaning. If this weren’t true than the Beat movement would have meant nothing. Also, spontaneous writing or any kind of writing would not be revolutionary ideas. Every word we have learned has certain feelings or backgrounds to it, which differ according to how you were raised or the culture you lived in. Giving new meanings to words moves our world forward to new understandings. Kerouac’s rhetoric of race and even scratching gives new meaning to old traditions of prejudice and what music “should” sound like. The spontaneous writing invites the reader to be in the text, not just reading it. This way someone has more freedom to decide what a word will mean to them, not what society has told them to understand.
http://3372.edublogs.org/2005/11/09/112/
