WSS Featured Blogger: Mataliandy of Rhetoric 101

Name: Mataliandy

Blog: Rhetoric 101 (mataliandy.blogspot.com)

Location: rural New England

1. How did you start blogging? Why do you keep at it?
I started blogging in response to the Republican National Convention of 2004. I was housebound at the time and watched the whole bloody thing. The deceptive rhetoric blew me away, so I parodied some of the more outrageous speeches. It was very cathartic, and some of my friends liked it, so I just kept going.

2. What are your most important issues?
I'm very concerned about the manipulative way in which the right uses language, and, by contrast, the ineffectiveness of the language used by the left.

3. What's the nicest recognition you've ever received from the media and/or the blogosphere?
Beyond being added to a couple of people's blogrolls, which IS a very nice compliment, there's been no discernible recognition, yet.

4. Who is your audience? What is unique about your blog?
I'm not sure exactly who the audience is, but since more people read it than I've told about it, I hope that it's read by people who want to explore the issue of language as a manipulative tool in politics.

For uniqueness, I try to tie current topics to the historic record or news reports, so that people can see some of the background for the opinion I'm expressing, which hopefully makes it easier to formulate counter-arguments. Though sometimes I just spout my opinion... It depends on how much time is available.

5. Most frustrating aspect of blogging?
It's amazingly hard to come up with the time to post, so I don't keep the content as fresh as I'd like.

6. What's the one point you'd like a reader to take away from your blog- the one thing for them to really "get".
I want people to be aware of the ways in which specific words and phrases are used to manipulate people, so hopefully we can counter some of the more dangerous (to our democracy) elements of the neocon rhetoric.