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Aydin Bruce Thomas

UWRT 1104-28

Professor Turgeon

7 November 2017

Write Me A Letter: A Dialogical Relationship

Presentation Reflection

I always knew I was an individual, from the minute I realized how much my words could

be put into action--I could have said a word not even in the english dictionary, and still get what I

wanted at four years of age. I found it comforting to see how my voice could alter itself from

living in an environment where every bit of context one had to offer was irrelevant, and nothing

one would say was safe. I welcomed the opportunity to develop a healthy outlet for real world

occurrences that show us the reason literature exists. To communicate behind closed lips. The

identity that has to grow behind this mental excursion composes an innate draw to an

individualistic resource. This being the writers identity.

Reflection falls hand in hand with awareness; something my separate identity tends to

gravitate towards. Inward and outward reflection, often practiced through being aware of ones

surroundings, including the people, and of oneself. With this dual-edged ideology, it is easy to

apply it to the writers identity; look at all the components to rhetoric. The interpretation of ones

audience, and the purpose behind what is being elaborated on, enables the fluidity in ones

writing. Follow up, it also brings forth awareness to the genre, and how this creates a space for

this writing process to occur. Before I ever engaged in the personal example within my 1104

UWRT class of returning messages to my peers in order to gain critical reflection, I never saw

the importance to a friendly and affirmative piece of feedback. Having never paid attention to the
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importance of revision in the first place, this method of dialogical construction gave leeway to an

abundance of learning opportunities that would in turn build my writers identity. Personally, I

had paid little to no attention to others, assuming a narcissistic attitude that my writing was good

enough as it was. I was not completely wrong to think of myself in confidence, but I remained

ignorant to the fact that my writing was only good in one particular way: this would put a slight

amount of blockage between the audience and I. This particular way consisted of an audience

only composed of a single person party, and my discourse community became limited and

disengaged. Through the attention paid to my work from many different minds and many

different eyes, intervening with different contexts, I developed a stronger sense of purpose

through my dialogical relationship with the reader.

The importance of a dialogical relationships is to provide construction that will play a

role in not only developing that one piece of work one did, but the writer behind what they did.

An important aspect of writing letters, Mayfield pointed out, is the intimacy through the idea that

your letter has direct intent in distributing communication to the reader. Which means one has to

power to be heard, and if one can be listened to, the writer identity becomes fully acknowledged

and reveals itself as the purpose behind why one started writing in the first place.

Learning a part of oneself is highly indicative of growth and development in healthy

mechanisms. Writing became my go to mechanism a long time ago, when I realized the person

behind the pen cared enough about what they were saying, and how they were saying it, to whom

they were saying it. Enough time spent in thoughtful, critical revision triggers a thought process

that brings out the best in all of our writing. If it was pertinent to direct attention to the biggest

message believed to be Hannah Mayfields purpose, it would be the importance of taking a

writers opportunity to reflect at first glance, without hesitation. To immediately develop a sense
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of an audience and find the reader enveloped in the writers identity, building the Dialogical

Relationship.