Forwading ... .... .....

Harris’s idea of “forwarding”, I had thought, wasn’t a big enough topic to take 20 pages of the textbook. It turns out that it is though. My previous concept of “forwarding” was in every way similar to forwarding an email for example. Add a few comments about the joke and zip it along to all your contacts.

Harris’s definition is a little more than that though. He says that a writer forwards a text by “taking words, images, or ideas from it and putting them to use in new contexts”. In forwarding a text, a writer tests the strength of its insights and the range and flexibility of its phrasings. In forwarding, the focus of the readers is shifted from what the author has to say onto the writers own project. This is done in four ways: Illustrating, Authorizing, Borrowing, and Extending.

Out of the blogs I keep up with (Rotten Tomatoes and Hot Air), Rotten Tomatoes isn’t exactly the site where forwarding is apparent; this is mostly because it is full of videos, pictures, synopsis(es?) and opinions. On the other hand, Hot Air is the perfect example of forwarding. For example, one of the articles posted in the site was titled ‘Gay Marriage rejected in Maine’. It is started out backed by facts and linked to other sites, especially news sites such as Yahoo News and bangordailynews.com. There’s the illustration and authorizing.

Evidence of borrowing is evident in the article but isn’t expressly shown while the extending is there too. After the facts come the author’s main purpose; it is condensed into a sentence: “The recognition of marriage is a legitimate public policy question, one that should be decided through either the legislature or by direct vote in referendums”. From then on, the author puts in his own spin on the concepts he took from the news. In this forwarding, the straight out facts are kept and everything else is changed to fit the authors point.