Looking Beyond Words

I think today's class brought up some very interesting thoughts on writing in the public sphere. I am not a particularly avid sports fan, never mind a football follower (I do not think I have ever even held a football). Even with that in mind, I was not exposed to the open letter by football player Chris Klowe by any social media outlet such as Facebook or the newspaper. I came into this letter and finished reading the whole thing without knowing the author or the background story that triggered the response. My first thoughts expressed my distaste for his use of profanity. I admittedly use profanity in my everyday discourse amongst my friends, but I felt as though a public piece of writing, especially one on such an established website such as the Huffington Post, should have veered away from such diction. Although I found the word-choice entertaining, I personally think that whatever points that need to be addressed must be done so with restraint and class. I then remembered that we were supposed to focus on writing in the public sphere. I then erased all of my judgements and reread the letter and focused on how he appealed to a public audience. I realized that the very colorful and descriptive name-calling was actually what brought people to support Klowe's claims and arguments. I started thinking about everyday life and how complete strangers would start interacting out of the blue. I am often exposed to this type of situation on public transportation because there are always people complaining about our lovely MBTA system. The fact that the train or bus has frequent delays is already bad enough, but the aggravated T-passengers just top the cake. I observe quiet people join in on random conversations complaining about the service and they converse with profanity very comfortably. I always that swearing was just something that has become engrained within our society that it has become “not a big deal”. After thinking about the public sphere, I actually think that incorporating swears into conversations brings strangers' opinions onto the same plane as your own (assuming you agree with them). You still remain strangers and you do not know anything about the other person but their opinion; however, just from the shared opinion, you start feeling accepted. I think the same thing happened with Klowe's letter in which, like we mentioned in class, he represented a specific group, which also included the audience. I suppose it is a societal metamorphosis that has us accepting profanity in public places. The appeal of his letter was the topic of the legalities of gay marriage, but it was the familiarity or “homeliness” of his diction that convinced people to stay and give it attention. A classmate mentioned that this letter wasn't meant to be public, but the reality of it is that it now is. I find it interesting how once it became public, he became a representative figure of his now public audience. His name-calling was not longer simply geared to put someone down, but it became a decision that added to his rhetorical appeal. I feel like the letter was written with at least a feeling that it would eventually become public.