Thlog #6

            So what I learned this week was that I use hedged language in everyday life; I just didn’t know the name for it. What I need to do now is learn how to use it more in my writing. After the WP1, I noticed that I tend to include a lot of my own prior knowledge in my paper. Not only does the information lack evidence, it is also stated very directly. I’m basically throwing out my assumptions to my readers. Sometimes I have trouble distinguishing a personal analysis between a personal assumption. So in case I have one of those moments, I could generalize the statement or make it less direct.

            Another thing I learned this week was parallelism. Like hedged language, I have also used parallelism before but didn’t know what it was called. When I read my paper to make sure it sounds right, I check by ear. Now that I’m aware of parallelism, I can visually check for a sound sentence by looking at the words and sentence structures. Before, I would just write words and hope they would form a nice sounding sentence; but now that I know the formula to what makes a sentence sound nice in the first place, I can intently write them.

            A lot of this week’s lessons covered stuff we use in our regular lives. For example, even when I write an ordinary text, I find myself using euphemistic language. Actually I don’t see myself using since it’s just been an old habit of mine, but hearing about it in class makes me aware of it. Now when I talk to my friend or something I’d be thinking of connotations and denotations, and it makes me feel that my texts are fabricated and not as genuine. I guess it’s just weird knowing that I put effort in writing a simple casual text.