Love, Academic Writing

In this week’s episode of the Love, Academic Writing podcast, the Love Doctors, Allison and Lee, talk about this week’s writing but: BUT WRITER’S BLOCK! Click here to get your buts therapized for free on the podcast! Lee takes you through their latest bout of so-called block (turns out, it was just a bunch of excuses!) and some strategies for getting unblocked: 1. not beating the shit out of yourself for not writing 2. celebrating the small wins, and 3. creating minimum baselines. So...

In the inaugural episode of the Love, Academic Writing podcast, the Love Doctors, Allison and Lee, talk about this week’s writing but: BUT WRITER’S BLOCK! Click here to get your buts therapized for free on the podcast! Plz plz plz rate and review the show so that other writers can find it! The struggle is real. “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” ~James Baldwin Plz plz plz...

Get ready for the Love Academic Writing (and hopefully other kinds of writing too) podcast! Hosted by Dr. Lee Pierce, assistant professor and rhetorical scholar, and Dr. Allison Harbin, academic-exile, freelance writer, blogger, and dev editor. Together, they are the Love Writing Doctors! (It’s funny because they ARE doctors). They are here to help you stop whining and start writing…through a LOT of bitching. Click here to get your buts therapized for free on the podcast! Each episode...

Read the blog version: *Have thoughts? Hit me up on social media or at rhetoriclee@gmail.com

Takeaways: Jargon, sometimes called buzzwords, sometimes called slang, sometimes called bureaucratese, is basically non-standard language meant to bring into being non-standard thought. Jargon is inclusive and expands our collective understanding of the world when it is used carefully, defined, in tons of examples, and solves a problem by bringing a different awareness than other words in its orbit. However, jargon is exclusive and narrows our collective understanding of the world when it...

This episode is a reading of a recent piece by Amanda Montell for Sunday Edit titled "Language Lowdown: Why Phrases Like "I Feel Like" and "If That Makes Sense" Aren't Actually Bad." Montell's piece discusses patriarchal language standards and the importance of critiquing our norms for "authoritative speech" and it features my two cents about language as something we want to use intentionally not necessarily "correctly" (because standards for correctness are caught up in all kinds of sexism,...

The first crossover episode between May it Displease the Court, which looks at corruption in the courts from judges through dark money anti-democratic far-Right donors, and RhetoricLee Speaking, banishing banality one speech at a time. Your co-hosts, Mary and Lee, look at censorship, free speech vs. hate speech, and counter speech. Here are the highlights: 1) as much as we may want the law to recognize hate speech sometimes when truly vile opinions (in our opinions) are being circulated,...

The problem with phrasing the rules or norms or whatever you want to call them around the word n-i** as a prohibition, as a thou shalt not, is that not only does it NOT address the more implicit racism of feeling entitled to say the word when there’s no one around “to be offended,” but it also begs the very people to transgress that you’re trying to get to stop transgressing because most people--especially people who fancy themselves edgy intellectuals or truth tellers or the last stalwarts...

I chatted recently with Nadeje of the Unleashed Unapologetically podcast about thought work, rhetoric, tension, cliches, and internal debate. The episode is called "The Thoughts About the Thoughts." Click on the link below to listen. Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Anchor Listen on the Web

Black women remain subjects who must recite power to have any power even though the power of the reciter is never the power of the subject who originates the lines to be recited. Amidst the praise that critics have rightfully heaped upon “The Hill We Climb” since January 6, only a few critics, mostly Black women, have noticed how her language testifies to American slavery, 1619-present. For example, Gorman’s opening lines contain several middle passage metaphors, including “the loss we...

In honor of National Sex Ed Day on February 2nd, I’m teaching you how to talk dirty! You’re welcome. Let me tell you who this episode is for. It is for people who are excited about the idea of dirty talk, or sexy talk, or explicit talk but have no idea how to start or aren’t sure if their partner is receptive or have had a bad experience or been turned off by stereotypes in the media. It is for people whose sex life has gotten stale but role playing and expensive toys and one-size-fits-all...

The Myth of Dr. King’s Absolute Nonviolence There is a story about Dr. King, apparently true, that during one of his Christian leadership conferences a man jumped out of the audience and started punching him repeatedly in the face. King just stood there. When King’s supporters tried to interfere, King told them to stay back. He was getting the absolute shit knocked out of him and he kept saying “‘Don’t touch him, don’t hurt him.’” It wasn’t until King was clearly in mortal peril that people...

When you’re talking about anything pro-Black in America, you’re going to run into a crossroads between making Black culture accessible, translatable to White hegemony or making it about elevating and celebrating Black culture in its distinctness from Whiteness. There is no right answer here. It’s just an ever-present decision. One of the ways that tension gets navigated is the degree to which a text uses cliches. From comforting reassurance and quippy banality to unsettling juxtaposition...

With New Year’s fast approaching, we are all in store for our usual turning-of-the clock epiphany. Suddenly, everything changes and, at that moment, we just know. Except not. Epiphanies are cliches that keep us from doing the hard work of understanding how persuasion happens. The epiphany collapses the event that happens with our response to it as opposed to the rhetorical figure peripeteia, which marks an event as an opportunity for change. Joe Biden used both epiphany and peripeteia in...

Back in January, basketball legend Michael Jordan gave a eulogy for other basketball legend Kobe Bryant after Kobe died tragically in a plane crash with his daughter Gianna. Commentators praised the speech because it was “tearful,” “moving,” and “heartfelt.” I agree that Jordan’s speech is AN example of a eulogy. But I disagree that it is a model for ALL eulogies. It praises Kobe for a bunch of different attributes, all of those attributes are probably what anyone would select if asked to...

It's the last week of August 2020 and the #rhetoricnerds are sending summer off in style with the inaugural week of The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival! Eight podcasts are participating this week on the theme The Digital Future of Rhetoric and Composition including yours truly. In addition to checking out this week's episode of RhetoricLee Speaking, be sure to check out the other podcasts participating in the carnival, including: https://globalrhetorics.com...

Of all the leaders on The Walking Dead, which is a show that takes place in a zombie apocalypse, I would choose the flamboyant, Shakespearean Black man with the giant tiger. Why? Because he, who goes by the name King Ezekiel, is the most rhetorical character. When I say that Ezekiel is the most rhetorical character, I mean that he is the most aware that meaning is something that has to be created--that there is no such thing as the “right” belief or the most “authentic” person. There are...

Quick announcement after a long hiatus! A lot is going on in the world. It’s a wonderful and terrible time to be a rhetorician #blacklivesmatter and #stillpodcasting RhetoricLee Speaking will be back soon with a new episode feat. King Ezekiel of The Walking Dead. In the meantime, head over to the podcast Rhetoricity hosted by fellow rhetorician Eric Detweiler and check out a new episode featuring several analyses of juxtaposition (putting two things side by side to make an...

An anecdote is not a story. An anecdote is a quick, “this thing happened to me.” An anecdote is a one-dimensional series of facts that people call a story when they don’t know better. An anecdote may have had a point. It might even have some concrete detail. But the one thing it doesn’t have is the one thing that a good story can’t exist without: Plot. Structure. What’s missing from the anecdote is what we call in rhetoric “vicarious experience.” The whole reason stories exist is to trick...

Corny-ass comedy: I'm here for it! Comedian Chris D’Elia’s new standup, “No Pain,” which premiered on Netflix a few weeks ago and was unanimously a let down to everyone who analyzed it. D’Elia has been a mid-level stand-up for a while now. He really took off last year as the host of the podcast, “Congratulations with Chris D’Elia.” At its best, “No Pain” transgresses and pokes fun at the expectation that people have to suffer to be interesting. That’s a totally worthy theme. D’Elia even...