The LMD Journal should be a separate—and separable—section of your notebook where you produce entries exploring, examining, and evaluating the readings in the course and your encounters with media use of language during the course.  You will be responsible for at least twenty entries, but you may do more if you wish.  Each entry should be thorough and thoughtful, an attempt on the part of the writer to discuss with him/herself ideas which arise through confrontation with other material.

For example, with the readings, the entry might record your understanding of the passage read and your estimate of its significance; it might also record your confusion about the passage and discuss what problems it presents for you.  You may agree or disagree with what you've read or you may attempt to tie what you've read on one day to what you've read previously, thus synthesizing the readings for the course.

With the media, you should always focus on the rhetorical effects you're observing, the ways language (or the "language" of that medium) is being used or presented, the significance of that media artifact as an example of discourse.  You may also relate one artifact to another and build on your observations.  Journal entries can provide the impetus for some of the formal papers in the course.

Other than thoughtfulness and thoroughness--and legibility, as well,--there are no requirements of the journal entries, particularly none of preparation and revision.  Journal entries are not formal presentations--save your formal presentational skills for the papers to be assigned.  Fifteen specific journal entries will be handed out during the course and available through links on this page; each student will be responsible for at least twenty, although he/she may have more, depending on the number of non-assigned, independently generated entries written.  One option is to write frequently and select the best five self-generated entries for inclusion in the journal.
 

Exploring Your Relationship With Media (Journal Entries 1 & 2)

To get us started with journal-keeping and, as a preliminary to reading the text and handouts and discussing language and media over the semester, examine what you know and think about language and media discourse.  That is, for the next thirty minutes, I'd like you to try to describe your feelings about the uses of language in the media, whether rhetorical, aesthetic, semantic, or stylistic.   What kind of media are you familiar with—what television shows do you watch? what kind of music do you listen to? what newspapers or magazines do you read? what films have you seen?  what kind of experience have you had on the Internet? on e-mail or in chatgroups? on multimedia?  What do you recall about specific uses of language in these media?  How has language interacted with other aspects of media (images, sounds, action)?  Where do you tend to notice language most—advertising? news and commentary? entertainment?  How does language use in media differ from language use anywhere else?  Write for the next thirty minutes on these or other questions of your own making. (In-Class January 13, 2003)

Read the assigned pages in Practices of Looking and then explore your own holdings in media.  Look at the ads in your magazines, the headlines in your newspapers, the covers of your books, the pictures on your tee-shirts, the posters on your walls, the photos on your dresser, the commercials and music videos and programming on your television—anything you can encounter in the space where you live—and reflect upon the kind of language you're reading and hearing and the kinds of images you see all the time.  Connect what you're hearing and seeing to what you've read, if you can, but in any case try to explore what you encounter in writing for thirty minutes or so and complete the journal entry before you come to class. (Due January 20, 2003)
 

The Rhetoric of Advertising (Journal Entries 3-7)

The Rhetoric of Information (Journal Entries 8-9)

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