Ledbetter's and Daniels' Form and Meaning

In both J.T. Ledbetter's and Harvey Daniels' articles in "Forum" their form, as discussed in Winterowd's "Dispositio" have a major effect on their respective arguments. In "Dispositio" Winterowd posits that the form and the meaning of any written material go hand in hand. If you alter the form, you alter the meaning. Let's first look at Ledbetter's argument that literacy is declining in the way of children losing interest in literature. He forms his argument by first starting out describing the plight of today's English teacher, who has to put up with constantly changing reading programs. Ledbetter notably does not go straight into his core claim. He doesn't arrive at a concrete example of his claim until about three-fourths of the way through the article, when he says, "Part of the definition of literate is 'familiar with literature.' There can be little doubt that this is declining." Had Ledbetter chosen to explicitly state this at the very beginning of his article, the meaning would be radically altered.

Daniels approaches his argument with a much different form. He basically lists, one by one, instances in history in which scholars foretold of a literary apocalypse and the death of language. By doing this, his meaning takes the form of historical irony, showing wrong all these figures from history have been. He juxtaposes current criers of literacy decline with the old one, showing their similarities. Had Daniels chosen to merely list these historical instances and then go through and list the people today who say their is a literacy decline, the argument would be much less ironic and probably less persuasive.

The Hipster in History: Chasing Cool via the Subculture. I want to analyze the history of the hipster, i.e the youth subcultures throughout the decades and the specific cultures that they were attempting to counter against. This would include the beatniks of the 50s, the hippies of the 60s, the punk rockers of the 70s, the grunge scene in the 90s. (Notice I don't know what the counterculture scene was in the 1980s...I may ask my parents.) The discourse here would be in the strong hatred found between each group: the hipsters of each era and those deemed part of the mainstream culture in which said hipsters chose to rebel against.

I think I will be able to find numerous articles online about the emergence of the hipster today and what they stand for (and against), and youth counterculture throughout history, at least the second half of the 20th century. The discourse between these groups would be strongly rooted in cultural context of their respective times, but I think that the differences between the "subculture" and the "mainstream" have been, at their core, the same for each historical group.