Reading and Writing Without Authority

In Penrose and Geisler’s writing, they provide a clear explanation of how differently two people write based on their authority. They took two different people in which one of them was a man who was in school to complete his doctoral degree in philosophy, and then a girl who was a new college student in her freshman year. After giving both of them the same topic to write about and writing down what their thoughts were on the word paternalism. From the study, they examined word for word in each of their writings and came to a conclusion that the college freshman had some trouble gathering her thoughts and putting it down on paper. The college freshman seems to have a hard time putting her thoughts into arguments, and uses the information from the authors as facts rather than claims or arguments. Throughout Penrose and Geisler’s writing, they explain that the college freshman doesn’t have the authority to put her thoughts and ideas onto paper, whereas the man in the doctoral program has an easier time fighting the arguments that the author made. People have different authorities when writing a paper. One can argue what the author is saying and it comes easy to them to put the thoughts down on paper, whereas others have a hard time trying to gather thoughts and writing the way they are thinking. some people feel that they don’t have the authority to argue the authors point, which makes doesn’t make their writing the way they want it to be. Roger and Janet are very different and have different views with their writing. Janet seems to want to get all of the facts and she wants to please the audience just enough for them to say that she wrote a good paper. Whereas, Roger likes to challenge the ideas of whatever he is writing, and writing seems to come easier and natural to him. I have been in both of these situations before when writing a paper. When i have to write a paper i have no interest in writing, i seem to relate more to Janet because i am only writing to please the audience. However, i have also been in Roger’s mindset, where if i were writing something that gained my interest, writing would come naturally to me, and i like to challenge my ideas on that specific topic.

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