Carbone & Sista Tongue

1. The Carbone essay seemed to be an insightful, realistic demonstration of how Alzheimer’s disease tangles both a brain and a family. Its argument was to explain the disease to those unfamiliar with it and inspire readers to become knowledgeable and empathetic with its victims. Its genres were simple, conspicuous, and short. It was definitely written to grab your attention and keep it page after page, rather than overwhelming you with long explanations or research. The short pages with pictures keeps it intentional, up front, and concise. The poems and letters and family photos make it personal. “Sista Tongue” was also informational, but a little more formal, and written both as personal accounts of accents/language issues and professional accounts of the history and status of things like bilingualism, dialect, Pidgin, and creole. Ultimately the essay argues that these "substandard" forms of English deserve more credit, tolerance, and respect in the standard English language. The effective part is the switch between, or in some cases the juxtaposition together, of official medical/science-type facts and dialogue, real examples of language, stories, etc.


2. The most effective pages in Carbone are the final ones—the final ends to long series of the same genre that builds up to a conclusion (the outline of a head without any pictures in it especially). These pages are important because we see the end of the progression that had previously been occurring in the essay, but they are a warning and a destination for the reader. For “Sista Tongue” I think the pages that have both the small, formal text and the big, wild-looking monologues are the most effective because I can compare the idea with an example simultaneously.

3. In Carbone the organization is the key to understanding the essay: it’s not a random conglomeration of tid bits about Alzheimer’s disease—it’s a carefully laid out progression of personal and professional encounters with victims and victim’s families. This format effectively brought in a lot of personal, informal information with some more factual, scientific information (not much, but a balance nonetheless). “Sista Tongue” is also a highly organized piece, but it’s more universally the same rather than having separate, continuous strands running throughout it. Though some pages are more about story and some about an experiment, for example, the same continuous balance between the formal analysis and informal demonstration is on almost every page (or every other). This format allowed the subject of the essay to be physically mirrored by the construction of the text, which adds an extra dimension to the argument as well as an interesting set-up for the reader.

4. Carbone has several very effective repretends—the brain outline filled with pictures, mind puzzles, poetry, family letters, and information from the medical world regarding the disease. These continuous runnings add a lot of emphasis and unity to the essay as a whole, and as each one layers on each other you get an organized, abstract idea instead of a bunch of random thoughts. “Sista Tongue” has two very important repetends—the small, boxed professional text and the quotations. There are also instances of stories, facts, historical documentation, and personal encounters but these two main figures seem to fight throughout the whole essay. They’re crucial to the essay because the contrast sets up and mirrors the exact argument of the essay, and they show the reader, not tell, how the spoken word can look and sound in different cultures.

5. I think the multigenre essay risks chaos. As an idea it practically begs to be overloaded and crowded with this and that and whatever else you can stuff in there that ‘fits.’ That’s what the monkey thing was. As both essays showed, it also has the potential to be very creative and artistic, unique to the writer and expressive of a personal theme. Though the “Sista Tongue” essay looks very hectic and scrambled, it is actually specifically made that way, I think, to better exemplify the random, chaotic message of language. It was also more finished than the pieces we looked at in class. It seems that multigenre writing has very few limits, and a lot of pitfalls. “Sista Tongue,” for example, got hard to read because of all the different directions and sizes of the text. My eye didn’t always know where to go. I think getting too abstract can suggest disorganization or difficulty for the reader, and I don’t think multigenre essays are supposed to be difficult. I think the point of using a lot of material and cutting it short is to hold their attention and make brief, sharp points rather than explain a lot. But too little explanation leaves fifty pages of random chunks of text for someone to read.