In "All Writing is Autobiography," Donald Murray
is asking the audience to think about all of the things that shape and
individuals writing. One's experiences, beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes are
all constructs that affect the way that people write which is what Murray means
by autobiography. For example, two authors can write about the exact same topic
using the same number of facts, same layout, etc., but the way they write it
will still be different because they each have different personal items that
affect them. In every piece of writing a person does, they add a little bit of
themselves. This relates to the kinds of writing we find in Wikipedia or an
encyclopedia because those are pieces that are all made to be objective.
Objective means without personal influence so it should all appear to be
written the exact same author, but if you look closely enough at the articles
you can see bits and pieces of individuality.
I couldn't agree more. A lot of writing is based off the author's experiences, beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes which leaves "pieces of them" on the pages that they write. Even if they try to stay objective, sometime those piece still find a way to leak on the page.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree a lot with what you wrote. I also talked about how we all came from different backgrounds and have been taught by various different teachers. If we all were given the same topic in class to write about, we would all write it differently. Even if, like you said, we were displayed with the same topic, the same number of facts and the same layout. Wikipedia does claim to be objective, but how can we really get past that when we all write differently?
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