Assignment Two

For Monday, August 29, I'd like you to find a YouTube video in which you can identify at least two distinctive Discourses. Embed the video on your blog. Then, characterize (in some writing) the different Discourses you see. Are they in alignment? Do they collide? Do they create humor? Something else?

"Perfect Strangers" is a great example of an entire show based on Discourses.  Balki of Mepos is the foreign character, with an entirely different identity to everyone in the show!  He is ethnically, culturally, racial, socially, and physically different than everyone else.  Larry Appleton is the stereotypical american with all american ways .. and the entire show is set around the comical differences of these people ... They express the discourses in their own identities as being "Perfect Strangers!"

Assignment One ...

For Friday, August 26, I'd like you to write about this topic: What were you taught NEVER to do as a writer? Come up with about two or three such mandates, and write some of your reflections about each one. Was this rule a good one? Are there sound reasons for it? Are there times when you can/should ignore it?


My first degree is in communications, so writing is something I enjoy.  A few things I was taught never to do ...

• Use a double Negative. 

There really is never a time this is a good thing to do!  And example would be: I did not get no ice cream with dinner.  EH!  Another example would be more of a verbal sentence than written, such as, The Sounds did not win the game against the Braves, no they did not! 

• Structure an incomplete sentence (subject/noun/verb/predicate)

I was taught structure was everything, and i remember deeply enjoying labeling and diagraming sentences in grade school (wow, I just admitted that!).  

• Use I and me interchangeably. 

I alway have to think about this one as I write.  The premise is that when you take one out, the sentence should still make sense ... Chad and I are married.  (I am married) not Chad and me are married. (me is married.)