Zach Brown                                      Help Received: Sean McKinney, Rory Groat, Ms. Smith

Ms. Smith                                                                                Word Count of Document: 1642

ERH-101-05

November 8, 2019

One Piece Comprised of Many

People read many articles each day for varying purposes. They may read them for entertainment, knowledge, or for research for a paper they may be writing or discussing. The articles they read have ties to multiple pieces, which form the article presented to the reader for them to understand and learn from a piece created out of various studies. The differences in human actions from two opposing sides has been an entertaining topic and interesting source of discussion for a long time. Humans have always wanted to understand why people act the way they do. The article “The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality” by Scott Berry Kaufman is an intriguing and insightful piece into this topic, but it has many components of other papers that formed its research. The discussion of the main piece by Kaufman is created through other studies that he incorporated into his own piece to form a proper work even though the articles may have some differences. The two articles incorporated into Kaufman’s have similarities and differences with the main article in order to appeal to the different audiences that are reading them and to set them apart.

The first article that was incorporated into “The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality” was from a journal website that allows writers to explain their ideas and thoughts on topics. “The Malevolent Side of Human Nature: A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of the Literature on the Dark Triad” was relatively short due to it being a journal and its main purpose was explaining the dark triad. The dark triad, as this article reviews it, is “the constellation of narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy”(Muris et al). This may seem small but it defines the central concept for half of what the main article is trying to discuss and gives a definition to one of the sides of the two triads. It also discusses how this term has been discussed more as the years have gone on. This occurs in the main article as well as when it discusses the study of the two triads being researched and accepted more with time. This article then continues on to state more facts about the dark triad, all of which could be incorporated into our main article as they are similar.

These articles may correlate due to their similarity in topics but they have differences in them as well. These differences set them apart and also show the reader which one is the main article and which one is drawn from it. The first difference between these two works is the length. “The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality” takes the points introduced by the incorporated piece and stretches them out to explain them further. “The Malevolent Side of Human Nature: A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of the Literature on the Dark Triad” is about one page when printed out, while the article we are focused on is about an eight page packet with information on both sides. The incorporated article is short and gives the key points necessary to understand the main discussion of the dark triad. These two pieces also differ in the complexity of the words used.

The shorter article uses words like “transgressive”, “antecedent”, and other word usage in sentences that make this article, not difficult to read, but somewhat difficult to understand. The main article fixes this by using sentence structure that is easy to understand as well as easy to read. It also incorporates a somewhat relaxed tone that speaks to the reader, unlike the incorporated piece. It says, “Socially aversive people certainly exist, but what about everyday saints?”, asking the reader a question and getting their mind thinking about the topic that the writer is about to explain (Kaufman). The main article does have a few words within it that are not commonly used but if one were to search for their definition they could find the sentence relatively well put together and understandable. “The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality”  is also written from a first person point of view. While its predecessor also uses some of these similar traits for first person by saying “our findings” or “our purpose” it still differs in the way it speaks to the writer as it just explains its discoveries instead of connecting and drawing the reader in. These differences noticed when comparing the articles may seem like something that should not occur when the topics are cohesive but the differences are what make for the main article to be created. These differences show the different audiences each article is trying to reach by their approaches to writing the separate but similar works.

“Clinical Correlates of Vulnerable and Grandiose Narcissism: A Personality Perspective”  is another study that was incorporated into this main piece. It was actually created by Kaufman and a group of his peers in an experimental study format. This article is quite extensive as it goes through the studies they conducted and the many ideas they have accumulated for the topic of the dark triad, the more researched of the two triads. It goes into in depth details of percentages and other factors that one may notice have some interaction in the main piece Kaufman created for the broader audience but in a less scientific calculation format. In “The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality” it says, “ While the two are negatively related to each other, the relationship is only moderate in size (a correlation of about .50), supporting the idea that there is at least a little bit of light and dark in each of us”, which gives a brief explanation of how each of these triads are within people without giving scientific studies seen in the other article created by Kaufman and his peers (Kaufman). These articles are linked by a common author which make for similarities due to Kaufman drawing some of his previous ideas and studies from his other work created for scientists and researchers. The studies from this stem piece were used in the main article brought to the reader. This was most likely a simple task for the author to do since he had already researched and helped create this original piece in which he could incorporate into his new work that would be presented to a much broader audience.

These works, however, have differences which set them apart and give them their defining aspects as separate articles. The stem article in this case is actually longer than the main piece. This means the author must have taken the extensive research made in the original and simplified it into an easier form to understand as well as a shorter version to keep the reader’s attention. The contributor article is also packed full with research and numbers while the main piece is more of summarizations of these studies which allow for the reader to understand what is going on without the hassle of reading pages of studies and research. For example is stated, “We examined which dimensions of narcissism are meaningfully related to a comprehensive array of clinically important psychopathological features…” which is an extremely difficult statement to understand if one does not know much about the topic (Kaufman et al). The main article also never uses the word “psychopathological” but instead explains these same ideas in the stem piece in a clearer view for a broader audience. This will also keep the reader drawn in to this more simplified version meant for knowledge, entertainment and not research like the contributory article. These differences, like with the first article implemented into the main piece, set these pieces apart from being identical but also give two separate compositions with different reasons for reading with the same key points as their backbones.

The similarities and differences within these articles are what made this study so intriguing. The similarities within the main article and these two articles are common as they both focus on the same topic and discuss similar properties of the discussion, but their differences are what really make these articles separate and differentiable. The differences in how the topics are displayed by difference of word choice and sentence structure separates these articles and permits the idea of how there are articles drawn into and used to form other articles for different audiences. The main article is the one used for the broadest audience and uses the best sentence structure to make it easy to read and understand the topic which the other two articles lack. This is how many other articles like this are created and many of the compositions one may read in a day are formed by articles they may never see but will understand the main discussion of since they read the main piece. “ The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality” is a piece created through other studies, discoveries, and ideas which has similarities with the articles used to create it, but also differences to create the new piece and give varying audiences the specific work that fits them.

Works Cited

Kaufman, Scott Barry. “The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality.” Scientific American Blog Network, 19 Mar. 2019, blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-light-triad-vs-dark-triad-of-personality/

.Muris, Peter, et al. “The Malevolent Side of Human Nature: A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of the Literature on the Dark Triad” (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy) – Peter Muris, Harald Merckelbach, Henry Otgaar, Ewout Meijer, 2017.” SAGE Journals, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691616666070?casa_token=iSYJRGtXJ2QAAAAA%3AuOouOp4qB_5057sUIJSwmfC2sXuyabicVd11qwEJ8EXondYm7vw8aXFrX1VDw5hIBrLBNB9A17J4xQ&journalCode=ppsa.

Kaufman, Scott Barry, et al. “CLINICAL CORRELATES OF VULNERABLE AND GRANDIOSE NARCISSISM: A PERSONALITY PERSPECTIVE .” CLINICAL CORRELATES OF VULNERABLE AND GRANDIOSE NARCISSISM: A PERSONALITY PERSPECTIVE , 2018, scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Kaufman-Weiss-Miller-Campbell-2018-Clinical-Correlates-of-Vulnerable-and-Grandiose-Narcissism-A-Personality-Perspective.pdf.

Zach Brown

ERH-101-05

Ms. Smith

12/4/2019

Word Count: 1559                Help Received: Ms. Smith and Rory Groat-Revision

Me, Myself, and Write

Writing has always been a difficult task for me. I have never been able to put my finger on what my problem with it is. It could be the long amounts of time sitting trying to stay focused or the pressure applied by teachers to write “the perfect paper.” Throughout this class, however, I have learned that writing is not about what others think but is instead just your everyday thoughts printed onto a piece of paper in Lexmark ink to show others what you truly want to say. This is where my view on writing changed. Writing when I was younger was one on my list of “never want to do,” but now I actually find it somewhat relieving to just put all of my ideas into something that others can understand. The writing process for me is not conventional, but it works for me, which is all that matters.  I am a person that has used writing to express what I often struggle to say in person.

As a kid I always dreaded going to my English class. The long boring class about a subject that, even as a child, I felt as though I should have understood since it was my primary language. However, I learned quickly that I had no clue what English was, and as I’ve learned throughout this class, neither do many professional writers. Writing is a difficult subject to teach, grade, and perform. The various styles make it hard to choose what is good and what is not so much. When I was younger I could never understand what I was doing wrong compared to the other kids in my class when it came to writing papers. This is why from a young age I strayed away and tried to avoid writing as much as I could. Unlike math, history, or science classes where there is one answer, in writing there are unlimited amounts of answers. This did not make sense to me as a kid as we learned that a question usually had one answer, but as I grew older I believe this difference is what brought me closer to the subject and understanding of writing.

As I started to grow closer to writing my writing improved. When I was younger and disliked writing, I remember my writing was not as efficient as it could have been. However, as I grew older and began to enjoy writing, due to some teachers that helped show me the usefulness in it, I began to write better papers. Now, this could be because of my greater vocabulary or understanding of the subject, but I believe it is because of my actual enjoyment of writing and more openness to my own ideas. I was taught in high school to use word choice to better my papers. This is where I started to like writing because it made me feel as though I was smarter and gave me a way of showing my knowledge. I remember sitting in my classroom on the second floor of  Eastern View High School in the back of the class enjoying writing a persuasive essay that had just been assigned to us because it made me feel empowered to say my personal opinion on the topic, which for this paper I believe I choose abortion or one of the other highly talked about social issues. Within this class, writing and rhetoric, I have now learned that I should express my own views, ideas, and style of writing. In the many articles and pieces we have read and made assigned reading sheets for we saw various styles of writing.

We have also learned how to look at our own writing and try to find our own style. I see my style through my writing process in which I like to just lay all of ideas out on a long piece with very little revision through this first step. Then after completing the amount of words requested I go back and thoroughly refine the piece. I cut the excess “fat”, being the words not needed to improve a sentence. Then I proceed to expand on the topics I brought up throughout the original paper. These original ideas tend to be broad so this expansion helps me show what I want to say. I usually have a difficult time speaking to people that I may not be in a close relationship with. In most occasions people can think that I am stuck up or think highly of myself since I may see them but not start up a conversation. However this is not the case, instead I am just a shy person who struggles with starting a conversation with people I only partially know, but I am an open book to anyone of my closest friends. This correlates into my writing as it helps me show people what I am like with my closer companions without me having to go directly to them and speaking with them in person.

In high school I had a selective group of friends that I trusted from Culpeper, my hometown, and the surrounding area. To these people I was an open book that would tell them anything that was on my mind, most times without any context or them even asking. Yet, I also had “acquaintances” that I was “cool” with but would never initiate conversations with. Many times I would even look at these acquaintances as I walked by them in the hallway, making eye contact without saying a word. This seems weird even to me, however, I could never seem to find the words to initiate a conversation. This is where writing has helped me. Writing gives me a way to just spit all of the things I want to say onto paper then go back and revise it to make sure I am saying what I truly mean. I believe this is what makes for my biggest problem with starting conversations with my partial friends. I feel as though I may make a mistake when I try to move my mouth to verbally exploit my sentences. Writing allows me to still depict my thoughts but go back and fix my mistakes before I present it.

This mindset has helped with my writing process. I tend to revise my paper’s many times looking for little mistakes from grammar to sentence structure. I find it enjoyable to do this as it gives me a way to perfect my ideas. I also have to do this as my papers start off with just bland ideas that I have for sentences that aren’t necessarily correct. The ideas that we have learned throughout our book for writing and rhetoric have taught me that these ideas are acceptable for writing. Some of the works we read showed how people just have different styles of writing. Others, like Shitty “First Drafts” by Anne Lamott, have showed me how students of all levels write terrible first drafts, but they dig deeper and find that even professional writers write bad first drafts from which they must revise and add onto multiple times to finally give a piece they are proud of. Anne Lamott said in Shitty First Drafts, “The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time”, showing how even from her professional stance that writing is a difficult task to complete (853). We tend to think that professional writers compose their final piece in one lapse, but they must revise it over and over again. As a young writer I take note of this and see how I am more like a professional writer than I thought. I also see the other necessary steps I must take to truly depict my ideas in a proper rhetorical manner.

My writing has developed along with me throughout my life. My writing process shows the type of person I am as I tend to struggle at stating the right thing the first time and need many revisions to truly say what I want. My early experiences with writing were not pleasant, but they helped bring me to the writer that I am now. I also used to see writing as something that could only be done well by professionals, but as I have seen from Anne Lamott’s piece, even the writers who focus most of their lives on perfecting writing cannot find a way to create a perfect draft. This has shown me that I am not alone in this step of the process and how creating a draft is difficult. It should not be perfect which I can relate to my process in the fact that I do not expect my drafts to be perfect but instead just a collection of my ideas that I want to say. These ideas I will revise later to make more sense for someone reading and trying to understand them. The final piece that I create helps me to show the reader the story or argument that I may have not been able to say.

Works Cited

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” Writing About Writing. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2017. 852-857. Print.

Zach Brown

Ms. Smith

ERH-101-05

December 9, 2019

Refection

This paper is the last submission for our ERH-101-05 for the fall semester. I used this paper to show all of the concepts I have learned throughout the class. I based this essay around my own personal writing process and how it has developed through my life and experiences I have had. I also put my own twist on the essay by implementing my idea on how writing has helped me to express the ideas that I sometimes cannot say to people verbally. I did this by first introducing my topic and the base of discussion in my introductory paragraph. After the introduction I gave the reader a short back story to my topic by displaying my past experiences with writing and how I struggled with it in the past. I then worked my conversation into the main discussion of my writing process and how it correlates with my real life experiences. I also show how my prior experiences that I mentioned before flow into my current experiences with writing. Throughout this I displayed my perception of how writing has helped me express the ideas I have and revise them before presenting them unlike when I try to start a conversation in person. I then wrapped up the entire essay with a conclusion to give the reader a summary of what I was displaying throughout the entire paper. This was a great paper to end our class with, and it gave me a real look into just how far my writing and myself have come and how it affects my life.

Respectfully Submitted,

Zach Brown

Zach Brown                                                                              Word Count:1554

Ms. Smith               Help Received: Ms. Smith, Sean Mckinney, and Stephen Hanley

ERH-101-05

October 14, 2019

Wrestling with the Concepts Discourse Communities

Discourse communities are a difficult topic to discuss being that they are everywhere around us, in varying shapes and forms. When many people talk about discourse communities, and John Swales major involvement in this discussion, they many times just focus their thoughts on the main influences like classes and other engines that would motivate or influence one’s writing. However, these organizations are so much more, and the reason that they become such a difficult topic to discuss is because all of the groups that we can consider discourse communities are all so different. They can vary from classes at a college, football coaches, and even organized sororities.  I have discourse communities that I am a part of in my own life. Whether it be the classes I take, VMI and its system, my brother rats and I at VMI, my friends or social groups, or the VMI wrestling team. The wrestling team may not seem like a subject that would be associated with an academic topic like discourse communities but it truly is one of these communities and I am proud to be a part of it even as a novice.

In many occasions we see academics and athletics as two completely different fields. Yet, these two correlate in the discussion of discourse communities. Sean Branick crafted a wonderful paper explaining how football coaches have their own discourse community and the plays they create relate to literacy. He also explained the different genres they must examine and how they all have a common goal.  One of the key components to a discourse community is whether the group has public goals in which they all are working for conjointly to achieve (Swales 220). Even though I am a novice in my own personal wrestling community, I don’t believe there is any other organized group that works harder to achieve their goal. I can see everyday throughout our long runs, sweaty practices, and muscle draining lifts that our entire wrestling community has the common public goal to win and get better every single day.

I was first introduced to wrestling through my father. I started when I was around four years old and was a novice in this wrestling field at my young age. I began in a small room in Culpeper, Virginia for Team Cobra youth wrestling organization. This is one of my first experiences that I can remember joining a discourse community. I was an oblivious novice at this young age and primarily started because of, like I previously stated, my father’s introduction of me into the sport and the community. As I continued throughout the years with Team Cobra I expanded my knowledge and understanding of the community as I began to creep out of the novice stage.  The new wrestling community that I am a part of makes me a novice because of my lack of experience in this new college level field. I will slowly gain more knowledge of the community the longer I am in it and will expand past the level of knowledge that I am currently at. Using the communication within the community as well as the community’s primary focus and public goal of winning, I can push past my current state and truly understand the organization that I am a part of and how it works. This happens in almost every discourse community as new members enter as novices and slowly gain knowledge of the discourse community and improve on their former rank.

One of the other aspects Branick discusses is “Lexis” which he describes as, “… may not make sense to most people but, among a team, make perfect sense and help the community better do its work (Branick 388).” Many people may not understand the terms our wrestling team has such as “shoot”, “high-c”, “scrap”, or “scramble” but the members of our wrestling community do and it helps us all achieve our community goal of winning and becoming better. We use these terms daily to help describe a certain technique and discuss wrestling in general. These simple conversations we have involving some of our “Lexis” help us to improve out of our novice state and help us expand out of our own personal knowledge by learning from other members within our community. Branick also describes the correlation between genres and the football coaches and gives the example of the playbook and how it is a genre of the football coaches’ discourse community. On our wrestling team we have our own genres. We have weight lifting workout schedules, scouting of other teams, and other genre related devices that are all for the same reason to better our chances of winning.

Branick’s discussion of interpersonal literacy plays a huge role in our wrestling community. To sum up his description of interpersonal literacies it is the ability to read people within the community. As wrestlers we cannot wrestle ourselves we must have a partner. This partner plays a vital role in whether we are successful individually and as a community as a whole. We must be able to read them. We must be able to see when they are tired and push them harder or when they have had a bad day and may not be feeling the “grind” of our practices. These are key aspects to keeping our discourse community together and on track to achieve our public goal. I have had days where I was too tired from the workout we may have previously had that same day or the day before and my partners understand this and push me to a point where I will get better and help the community’s goal of winning but not push me to a point where I will break. This aspect I have learned from past partners will help me as I am a novice in my new wrestling community as well as help me to improve my knowledge in the field.

Victoria Marro is also known for writing a piece in which she discusses her sorority and how it is a discourse community. One of her points that she explains is the communication between the different branches in their sorority (Marro 430). In our wrestling community we must use communication every single day to understand how to get better within our group, what we should do to improve, and when it is time to put these new ideas to work by relaying messages for designated practice times. We are connected through emails to discuss ways to get better as well as schedules throughout the weeks. I use emails to stay in touch with my teammates throughout the day to better our bond as well as relay messages on what the grueling workout may be in the afternoon practice session. This helps secrete us together as a community that will continue fighting for the common goal of winning. While relaying messages of the workouts for the day we also have conversations. We speak with each other before or after practices discussing how we can improve, which is ultimately the goal of any discourse community. Communication is key with any aspect in life, but within our wrestling community it is vital. Without it we may never have the whole team at a practice, may leave someone behind before a tournament, or even lose a match due to the lack of communication between wrestlers or a wrestler and coach.

Discourse communities are defined by many different elements and the reality is they come in so many different forms. I may be a novice to my new wrestling team at VMI but I can already see the many factors that can consider this group a discourse community. Many people do not usually correlate discourse communities with sports teams but Branick created a masterful piece that well explained a group not commonly thought of in this sense. Marro also showed another group that we usually associate with partying as a discourse community with systems of communication much like the ones we use within the wrestling community. One of the key aspects, public goal, is clearly shown by our hard work together and our intent to win and compete. Our “Lexis” also show how we all relate as a discourse community and differ from those not on the wrestling team that most likely do not understand our terms. Interpersonal literacies also give us another facet that we as an organization can relate to. We then see the ways we must communicate to keep all of our members in contact and focused on the goal. All of these components combine to show how our wrestling team is a discourse community and our common goal of wanting to win and improve everyday keeps us together and influences me everyday.

Works Cited

Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic

and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.

Branick, Sean. “Coaches Can Read, Too.” Writing About Writing, 3rd ed., Bedford/St.martins, 2017, pp. 384-93.

Marro, Victoria. “The Genres of Chi Omega: An Activity Analysis.” Stylus: A Journal of First-Year Writing, vol. 3,no. 1, 2012, pp. 25-32, writingandrhetoric.cah.ucf.edu/stylus/files/3_1/stylus_3_1_Maroo.pdf