Not only do our students today rely on Twitter, but public figures, politicians, and celebrities also use this platform for various rhetorical exchanges. This paper seeks to consider the following questions: What objective is achieved by expressing oneself in the form of a tweet? Does social media serve as a vital space for expressive writing? Does the immediate sense of audience provided by a user’s followers, combined with an equally powerful sense of joining in on a conversation already in progress (via a hash tag), lend greater legitimacy and urgency to one’s voice? How does this new rhetorical exchange allow for listening to some voices while silencing others? Ultimately, what is gained and what is lost in translating our less formal, more immediate ideas into prose that is easily available and potentially distributable among a large public readership? In an attempt to answer these questions, I will consider two specific examples of recent instances in which public tweets caused controversy surrounding their use of “the n-word.” More pointedly, I will examine how those individuals composing such tweets insisted on a narrative of misinterpretation, or poor translation, once the consequences of such tweets presented themselves. In both of these examples, I plan to consider the content, context, criticism, and defense of these tweets before moving to a consideration of how these examples can be pedagogically useful in the composition classroom. Ultimately, I argue that these two examples can serve as a way of teaching composition students about personal accountability with their writing, as well as about the complexity involved in translating personal ideas and beliefs via social media.
About the presenterKristina R Fennelly
I am an Associate Professor of English at Kutztown University in Kutztown, PA, where I teach rhetoric and composition with a focus on argument writing. My other academic interests include gender studies, transatlantic Modernism, and popular culture.