So I was meant to post this question earlier, but I finally decided to post this after I read a post about the font reading just now.
I agree with Meredith that the author personalized the fonts so that the fonts make more sense to us. That’s interesting. Why does the author personalized the fonts? How does he personalize? What I find is that he uses some analogies. He is trying to give the readers a sense of what he is talking about by linking the font with something else, something that can represent the font clearly. What else, he describes the analogy in a context, which means that he actually contextualized the thing that he used to refer to the original font. This is not something new. According to what I read in Experience Design this week, it seems that these critiques just love to use analogies to critique. Why? Why is it so popular for critiques to use analogies?
I guess my questions are not too early for this class. I’m just interested in writing.
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January 24, 2013 at 12:32 pm
Katie O'Donnell
Your post made me think about personification and why we might do it.
I personified my car in the fall when it got hit by a construction company doing work near my apartment. I wasn’t sure if it would be totaled or if I’d be able to drive my car again. Suddenly my little Saturn became a “she” and not an “it”, and I started apologizing to “her” for what happened. Weird. I felt a strong connection to my car as part of my life, something I relied on, and that I had sentimental feelings toward (it use to be my grandma’s car).
Personification is one way of showing/articulating the connection and meanings that we have associated with a thing?
January 25, 2013 at 10:54 am
Rayne Zhou
I guess this might be one important part of personification, at least I do the same thing sometimes myself, such as when I break a cup or something. However, it’s weird to say something like this but your comment does give me some insights about the ethnography research we are going to do this weekend for Shaowen’s Methods, because it’s related with clutter and hoarding.
January 25, 2013 at 1:26 am
spoppesnp
I think it is because it provides a relatable context so the reader remembers the information, it is more than a style choice. It is a device to improve the understanding of those reading the text. The key here is relatable or identifiable. For instance, when selling a house, you stage it. The owners typically remove all personal photos and decorate in such a way that future buyers can imagine them living there and building a life in that house. So, when writing, we ‘stage’ the text, we set up the environment to achieve the desired goal which in many cases is remembering or understanding what is written.
Another reason is that we all live inside our own heads, so when you say something I can relate to, I think about me and that makes me feel good and then I am more likely to remember what you said because of those chemical reactions.
January 25, 2013 at 10:56 am
Rayne Zhou
Yes, I agree with you. These can be the reasons.
January 25, 2013 at 12:28 pm
jeffreybardzell
I love the staging metaphor–totally agree!
January 25, 2013 at 11:30 am
jordanbeck
Echoing Poppe’s response, I see analogies as an effective means to cultivate understanding in your audience. I recall reading as much in books about argumentative essay writing back in the days of undergrad.
Also, I think this particular criticism is an excellent opportunity to engage in meta-criticism in that we can scrutnize the analogies through a socio-cultural lens to uncover the biases that drive the analogies.