The "religious poem" that we talked about in class today really made me start thinking about the way that people think and the constructs that people use to make sense of reality. In my literature class we are discussing the postmodern period. The postmodern period in literature is characterized by a break in "normal" human thinking. Writers began to use their works to question "What is real and what is just fabricated to help us make sense of the world around us?"
This made me realize that the way that you interpret and view the world is all based on your prior knowledge, and the connection that you make between these new things and the things that you already know. If a group 5th graders walked into the room and saw that reading list/"religious poem" on the board they would interpret it completely differently than the religion students did. The way that something is interpreted by people is based on their prior knowledge and constructs that they decide to use. Everyone uses their own schemas to understand the world around them.
I couldn't agree more. The art of rhetoric plays a lot on peoples' prior knowledge and "bends" it just slightly to make them buy into a topic; thats part of why understanding your audience is so important.
ReplyDeleteOn the same note, peoples' preconceived notions are what makes writing instructions so difficult to do successfully.