SCHC 456 H02 31307

EngLit, Humanities, AIU

Notes:

Maximum Impact: Names, Brands, Slogans, Catch phrases, Sound bytes, one-liners, Rules, and Proverbs. The highest premium is paid in developed cultures in mastering brief communication—that which conveys instantly one’s attitude, mission, stance, product, cause, or idea. This Honors Course explores the theory and practice of the briefest forms of linguistic communication, seeking to determine the most efficient, affecting, and memorable kinds of expressions. The course will be in part a laboratory for writing, experimenting in greater cogency, trenchancy, pithiness, and surprise in sentence length and shorter forms. The course will be in part a research workshop seeking to understand what makes classic examples of proverbs, maxims, aphorisms, epigrams, adages, and rejoinders work. Readings will include writings by Erasmus, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, George Carlin, H. D. Thoreau, Nas, Benjamin Franklin, the Book of Proverbs, Maggie Nelson. We shall read marketing case histories concerning the naming of Verizon, a series of bad branding decisions, and discuss the problems surrounding clichés, non sequiturs, and jokes and communicative forms. Outcomes: Students will have the ability to identify the generic characteristics of various short forms of writing: adage, aphorism, proverb, maxim, witticism, epigram, motto, and catch phrase. Students will have a general knowledge of the rules governing the selections of new product names and brands. Students will be able to detect clichés.Students will have some sense of the use of idioms and figures of speech in proverbs and mottos. Most of the readings will be web based, but the following works should be purchased in kindle form Maggie Nelson, Bluets, Wave Books 2009 ISBN-13: 978-1933517407James Geary, Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists