Ranting
1) According to the author, a rant is a passionate protest against something that the ranter is usually powerless of changing. The baseball example qualified as a rant because it had all of the common ingredients of a rant: humorous, knowledgeable, angry, tongue-in-cheek, and filled with expletives. While there are many different styles of ranting, the baseball example is one of the most common styles.
2) In the age of the internet, rants have began to come more frequently as written rants. However, these rants are often sloppy and not as formal as written rants have been in the past.
This definition essay, defines rants by focusing on its history and the different categories of rants, while giving many different examples.
3) “Some of the first rants of the modern era-at least some of the first to be referred to as such-were associated with a short-lived, 17th-century English sect known (to their enemies) as the “Ranters.’” This quote shows how the essay presents the historical definition of the word. “These softer-edged letters may not seem to be rants at all, but they are merely embracing a frequently overlooked sense of the word—”a boisterous, riotous frolic or merry-making.”‘ This quote shows how the author uses categorization to help define the word.
4) Not all rants are bad. Many times they are seen negatively because they can be unnecessarily mean and filled with furry, but this is not true with all rants. When a rant is stating a reasonable point of view that is backed with strong evidence and reasoning, it can be a valuable piece of criticism that can help people look at something from a different perspective.
Filed by efsw18 at March 6th, 2009 under Uncategorized
