PB2B- Watch My Every Move

Moves—dance moves, karate moves, basketball moves. Have you ever wondered what the heck a move is? Apparently I am the only person who had never thought of it until now, but guess what? I’m using my moves on you as you read this. Now you’re probably thinking “is this supposed to be funny?” and the answer is yes. I just used another move on you and you are either smirking stupidly at your computer or really annoyed and possibly shaking your head at what you’ve just read. Either way I have your attention now, which is what I intended to do with my slick moves.

            A move, as defined by dictionary.com, is an action toward an objective or goal; step. However, when we think of moves, we don’t typically think of “writing” moves, or perhaps we do, but we never even stop to think about it. Often times we find ourselves going back to our writing and changing things here and there so that it becomes more interesting to our readers—or maybe more “academic” so our professors will give us higher scores. Whether or not we realize it, we are constantly making moves in our writing and in our daily lives in general. We have a specific audience to cater to, and that leads us to make specific word, subject, and style choices. Moves help students and professional writers alike make their writing as effective as it can possibly be, and these moves can be as small as using a certain word or as big as writing ten pages on a specific subject.

            As I previously stated, a move can be using a certain word. In the case of one of our readings, Writing Spaces by Losh and Alexander, the main move was turning the reading into a comic book. Although it seems obvious, some of us probably did not even realize it was a move at first. If you are anything like me, I’m sure when you saw that the first assigned reading was a coming book, you probably thought something along the lines of: “Sweet!” Just my reaction, and perhaps yours, gives you a good indication of why the authors decided to turn the reading into a comic book—it made the reading fun. Without the illustrations and the very strange situations depicted, talking about rhetoric might have become dull, and that would be especially obnoxious considering it was our first assignment. The authors used this “comic” move to keep the content fun and relevant to college students. The authors approached their piece in a very modern way. They made sure to include relevant topics such as texting, the Internet, and the Human Rights Campaign while introducing visual literacy. They went above and beyond interesting their audience by using a “relevance” move. In other words, they kept it real. The move that most caught my attention was the “alternating” move they implemented. Every several frames, rather than throwing more information at the reader, they included a humorous frame to ease into a new topic—something I’d like to call the “break” move.

            Losh and Alexander, in addition to their “comic,” “revelance,” and “break” moves, used several moves widely practiced by the writing community. They used the I Say You Say “Standard Views” move to introduce widely accepted ideas. For example, while discussing visual literacy, Writing Spaces introduced a widely accepted idea by saying: “Our culture has taught us that depicting closeness or distance in an image might suggest something about the intimacy between the people shown” (12). The authors also used the “addition” word move. They often introduced new ideas and examples by using transitions like “in fact” and embedded voice messages by starting the sentence with phrases like “I often” (9).

            Another move I noticed while revisiting Writing Spaces was that they included conversations throughout the writing. This “conversation” move was between the characters but sometimes included the reader (me) in the comic but gave the piece a fun and conversational vibe, which consequently made me more interested in the piece (example on page 11 on page 9 of reader). Much like Writing Spaces, Kerry Dirk, author of Navigating Genres maintained a conversational tone throughout his piece. However, Kirk introduced a new move: the “scenario” move (see page 24). Kirk put the reader in extraordinary situations, such as a kidnapping, in order to illustrate his point—genres. Kirk also included some of the You Say I Say moves on his piece, such as “Agreeing with Disagreeing Simultaneously” by using phrases such as “I will admit” when stating his opinion, which helped him successfully state his opinion while also incorporating humor (19). In order to smoothly include more sources into his writing, Kirk used the “Signaling Who Is Saying What” move. On page 18, he introduced other writers’ experiences by stating: “some writers admitted that they did not know anything … and others went as far as to admit ignorance” (18).

            There were many more moves included that I did not examine or possibly even notice while revisiting our past readings, but one thing I realized was the importance of moves. Some moves are universal and some unique to certain writers. By using moves, writers are able to cater to a variety of different audiences and successfully get their points across. Moves give paper character, and they also help build the reader’s knowledge. Without moves, papers would be dull and difficult, and neither writers nor readers would ever accomplish anything, as brash as that may sound.