Forwarding

In his book Rewriting Joseph Harris writes, “Much of academic discourse thus tends to proceed sideways, as writers take ideas and phrases from what they have read and reuse them in approaching a different set of texts and issues.” I believe that this is the best way to summarize the concept of forwarding in this chapter. According to Harris, there are four main ways to forward a text: illustrating or finding examples in other texts, authorizing or using another’s expertise to support your ideas, borrowing or using terms and ideas taken from another text to formulate your ideas, and extending or putting your own spin on another’s concepts. When using any of these four methods, the author is taking the ideas found in another text and recirculating them. Harris summarized an idea of Plato’s when writing, “…texts can become “fatherless,” detached from their authors and interpreted recklessly.” This can be easily seen with the circulation of information on the internet. I was casually scrolling through the Daily Dish, when I saw an article that looked rather interesting. I don’t have a very firm stance on ‘marriage-equality’, but it is interesting to hear how varied the views on this subject are. The blog in the Daily Dish took a quote directly from the blog Adam Serwer wrote for The American Prospect, Tapped. Although the opinions were very similar, it was interesting to see this example of authorizing. The Daily Dish used Adam Serwer’s work and reinforced it, giving it more emphasis and more of an impact on the reader. Oftentimes students feel like they need to quote someone famous or influential for it to be a valid quote. Although I recognize the importance of valid sources, I think that one can forward the ideas of people who may not be as well known but make a strong point, and have an even stronger point. After all, isn’t that the idea of academic writing? To discover new minds, with fresh ideas?