Spending the Day with Gopen
Dr. Gopen started his seminar speaking directly to my heart. He took a disruptive voice and outlined all the ways in which we have been taught incorrectly and that most importantly, many of the rules that we have be taught are often counter productive to our ability to communicate. Often our writing has been artificial in that the audience has been the teacher. Writing has ultimately been aimed to be above your capacity as a writer. Teachers historically mark everything that you have done “wrong” or more importantly, inconvenient for the teacher. When the teacher left comments, often remarks that were unactionable. Remarks such as “unclear,” leave the reader with little instruction on how to make their writing more clear. Additionally, grammatical “rules” have been used to determine power and class. He see’s language as greater than grammatical rules, instead he sees language as a function to effectively communicate. Most poigantly to my heart he stated “equality is against our nature. You have to discipline yourself to embrace egalitarian concepts. Human nature is to use language to evaluate where you stand in the hierarchy. This can happen in about 90 seconds.”
He dictates three crucial components of language: 1) Context which controls meaning; 2) Structure which controls the readers use of energy; 3) Substance, which is the story being told. The strongest relationship is between structure and substance. “Readers of contemporary professional American English prose have literately expectations of where in the structure of a unite of discourse (any size) to look for the arrival of certain kinds of substance.” Readers look for what is going on; who’s story is being told; how does the sentence relate backwards and forwards to its neighbors; and what word should I be reading with extra emphasis. The stress position of a sentence is usually at the end of a sentence.
More on the crucial components of language in American English, Dr. Gopen iterates that passive voice is not toxic, instead understandability is king. Readers expect that the action of the sentence be articulated by the verb. Nominalization, the expression of a verb as a noun, is one of the largest culprits of preventing the verb from communicating the action. This is especially common in scientific writing.
Sentence structure consists of three parts: 1)Beginning, middle, and end. Any unit of discourse has at least a beginning and an end. Substantially, sentences tell whose’s story is it and recap of old information in the beginning of the sentence. The stress position, the end of the sentence then possesses new information. Within this model, readers prioritize emphasize sequentially: 1)end placement (most important); 2) main clause (of secondary importance); 3) clauses length (the clause that has the most number of words is seen as more important those shorter clauses).
My first thought after attending Dr. Gopen’s workshop was the his strategies would be great for the dental draft in the revision process. However, after practicing his style for the past couple of day, I believe, it is equally useful for the down draft stages. My down draft writing process is often when I develop clarity for what I actually think. I rarely have a well formulated thought and put that thought down on paper perfectly. Instead, my writing is the process of developing an understanding of what I want to say. Writing becomes my process of thinking. When treating writing in this way, using Dr. Gopen’s technique of considering how sentences relate to its neighbors facilitates more clear thinking. Writing thus becomes an exercise in strong and critical thinking. If the down draft is process of thinking, then the down draft is when I should use Dr. Gopen’s sentence placement technique.
On the other hand, identifying sentences emphasis can be done during the updraft. Since (hopefully) and understanding of the writing topic is fully fleshed out after the down draft, the updraft processes can be used to clarify my thinking through use of emphasis and using stress positions. While the down draft helps me get clarity in what I want to say, the updraft will focus on making sure that the reader understands. Using the three principles of emphasis will help with communicating with clarity.
Hopefully, after continual practice it will be second nature to follow Dr. Gopen’s advice. Following his advice, hopefully will naturally become incorporated into the the down and up draft steps of writing.
