Observation Activity

Observation Activity

Date: September 20 and September 24, 2007

Time: 4:30-5:30 p.m. and 2:00-3:00 p.m.

Participants: Waitstaff, diners

Location: Easy Street Café

First observation (September 20, 4:30 p.m.): The physical environment

Observation	Notes
The restaurant is dimly lit	Perhaps this is to help create a more relaxing atmosphere?
The restaurant is lit by several antique-style light fixtures – most tables have one overhead.  Each lampshade seems to be different in design.	This use of different antique-style lighting adds to the charm and ambiance of the restaurant.
Wood tables and booths line either side of the main aisle of the restaurant.  Each table is set with paper napkins, a knife, a fork, salt, pepper, and a stand-alone mini-menu of featured items	The choice of materials communicates something about what kind of restaurant this is.  I would guess by the fact that there are place settings that this is not a “fast-food” joint; however, I would guess by the presence of paper napkins that this is not an upscale fine-dining establishment, either.
Brick walls display an array of pictures, including framed photos of celebrities.  A bulletin board near the front of the restaurant also displays fliers for upcoming events, as well as advertisements for Grumpy Dave’s (the bar upstairs), and menu items.  The current big promotion seems to be for the Buffalo Burger.	The pictures and assorted fliers and posters project an image of a locally-invested establishment – an establishment that cares about partnering and promoting artists/businesses/others in the local community.
There is a slightly raised seating area (one step up) near the front of the restaurant (to the right upon first entering the door, in front of the window).	I wonder what motivated this kind of architectural approach…?  Was the restaurant specifically designed with this window area, or was the building already structured like this, prior to the restaurant?  For that matter, what businesses/organizations existed in this space prior to it being a restaurant?
Upon entering the front door, the bar area is ahead and to the left.  There is a giant fan-like contraption displayed over the bar.  It looks like an antique.	I wonder what the story is behind this unique item.

Second observation (September 24, 2:00 p.m.): The Human Interaction

Observation	Notes
A male employee, seeming to be in his late twenties or early thirties, is seating the customers. He has short blonde hair, is about 6 feet tall and is probably around 230 pounds.  In addition to seating people, he distributes the menus and states who the waitstaff will be.	He seems a little abrupt in his customer service – is he new?  Or maybe he’s having a bad day?  Or maybe I’m having a bad day?
There don’t seem to be too many people working – I can only see two waitresses, a bartender, and the “host” who seats people.	Perhaps this isn’t typically a busy time of day.  I wonder how many people are working in the back.  I wonder what hours are the busiest for this establishment.
I can easily see two occupied tables from where I’m sitting. One is occupied by a woman appearing to be in her late fifties to early sixties.  She is eating alone.  She appears to have been shopping, as there is an Elder-Beerman bag at her feet.  The other table is occupied by a male and a female, both of whom have just received a very fragrant plate of barbecue chicken.
Our waitress greets us and takes our drink order.  She looks to be in her twenties, about 5’5, maybe 130 pounds.  She has dark hair and glasses.  I order an unsweetened iced tea, as does my dining companion.
My dining companion and I engage in light conversation as we decide on what to order.  I notice people at the tables around me doing the same thing.  People seem subdued – not unhappy, but not overly exuberant, either.
The waitress returns to take our orders.  I order first – a half-sized Cobb salad without croutons, pepperoncini, or red onion.  My companion also orders a Cobb salad, with no deletions.  I notice that the waitress does not write the order down.	Why doesn’t she write down the order?  The waitress I had when I came here a few days ago definitely used a notepad and pen to take orders.
My dining companion and I continue our conversation.  I notice the table to our left stand up to leave – there are four of them: three adults (two seeming to be in their fifties, one perhaps in her thirties) and a child of about five, who is sporting pigtails and a red/white checkered dress.
Our order arrives.  My order is correct, much to my delight.  The waitress asks if she can bring us anything else, and we tell her that we’re fine.  We eat our lunch and continue our conversation.  I stop trying to take notes at this point.

 

Journal Analyses

Computers and Composition: An International Journal and Computers and Composition Online. Editors: Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher (print version); Kristine Blair (online version)

Established in 1983, Computers and Composition is devoted to exploring the many intersections between computers and composition studies. As such, the journal welcomes reviews, letters, and articles that are of interest to readers, including pedagogical issues related to computers and composition, tenure and promotion issues for professionals in computers and composition environments, studies on digital literacy, and ethical issues for those in the field. Submissions to the print version should be in APA style. In addition to the print version, Computers and Composition Online (established in 1996) is edited by one of our very own BGSU faculty, Dr. Kristine Blair.  The goal of the online journal is “to be a significant online resource for scholar-teachers interested in the impact of new and emerging media upon the teaching of language and literacy in both virtual and face-to-face forums.” Submissions are to be directed toward one of the following sections: Theory into Practice, The Virtual Classroom, Professional Development, Print to Screen, and Reviews.  Submissions to the online journal must be sent in a Web-friendly format (e.g. as a Web page, rather than a Microsoft Word document). The print version of the journal is published quarterly, with a subscription fee of $66.  Archives are available through the Jerome Library. The online journal is published twice a year and is free through the Web. These journals are probably the most relevant and well-established journals for my specific areas of interest.

KAIROS:  A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Editors:  Douglas Eyman, James A. Inman, Cheryl Ball, Beth Hewett

This refereed journal is devoted to exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy, with a clear privileging of “webtexts,” or projects that are created specifically for Web consumption.  From the description on the Web site, it seems that Kairos is not only interested in publishing topics related to the three areas mentioned above, but also in using its unconventional Web journal format to interrogate some of the boundaries between digital and print media.  Additionally, the journal makes a point of inviting graduate students, adjunct, and part-time faculty to submit their works, in an effort to “bring forward and support the voices of those too often marginalized in the academy.” Submissions are continually accepted for the “Topoi” section (large-scale issues related to rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy) and the “Praxis” section.  The journal is published twice a year and is available online without subscription and through the Jerome Library. Overall, I like the spirit of this journal – it’s friendly and welcoming to newbies like me, but also meaningful for continuing professionals in the field.  I wonder if this same welcoming spirit affects the credibility or relative “weight” that a publication in this journal might bring.  Does it?

Currents in Electronic Literacy. Editors: John Slatin, Douglas Freeman

Published by the Computer Writing ad Research Lab at The University of Texas at Austin, this peer-reviewed e-journal is devoted to electronic literacy.  As such, the journal publishes scholarship related to the intersections of technology and e-texts with reading, writing, teaching, and learning.  The journal welcomes discussion of these issues as relevant to such fields as languages and literature (including foreign and ESL), rhetoric and composition, communications, media studies, and education – a pretty broad audience of language and literacy professionals.  The site offers separate sections for software reviews, website/blog reviews, literature/conference reviews, and calls for papers. Scholarly articles should be around 5,000 words in length, and individual reviews should be around 1,500 words.  The journal is free and available online.  As someone who is interested in technology and digital rhetorics, I was excited to stumble upon this journal.  I also was interested to see that the journal included a place for software reviews – this is something I will keep in mind, not only so that I might read and learn about new software, but also so that I might explore this as a future publication option.

College Composition and Communication. Editor:  Deborah H. Holdstein

This is the official journal of CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication), which, according to the Web site, has been “the largest professional organization of writing, rhetoric, and composition scholars and teachers” since 1949. The journal targets a broad audience of writing teachers at the college level and invites submissions from a variety of disciplines and subfields, so long as the subject matter’s relevance to college writing teachers is readily apparent.  Submissions typically run about 4,000 to 7,000 words (16-28 double-spaced pages) in length and should utilize MLA format.  Interestingly, while there is a companion site, CCC Online, it does not appear to reproduce the content of the print version or publish journal-length articles on the Web site; instead, its goal is to provide “metadata” about the print version of CCC (abstracts, bibliographic information, reflections about issue content, etc). The print journal is published quarterly, with subscription fees of $25/ NCTE members, $75/non-members, and $7.50/students. This journal is widely available in printed and electronic forms, through BGSU and JSTOR.  This is one of the “big,” well-established, highly respected journals of the field, and as such it would be remiss not to pay attention to this publication for current conversations taking place in the broad field of composition studies.

Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Editor: Gregory Clark

This journal is published by the Rhetoric Society of America and has been in existence since 1976.  RSQ publishes articles relevant to the theory, pedagogy, history, and criticism of rhetoric, and as such is geared toward a more interdisciplinary audience than some of the other, more specialized journals I’ve selected.  A brief glance at some of the abstracts listed on the Web site also suggest that the journal may tend to privilege topics dealing with historical or “traditional” rhetorics, perhaps favoring the speech-communication tradition more so than the English/composition tradition.  This is not to say that the journal is not relevant to those in composition studies; on the contrary, I think that this journal is a good starting point for getting a sense of how some related fields are talking about and valuing rhetoric, as there is much to be gained from such an enterprise.  Submissions are generally between 8,000 and 10,000 words and should utilize MLA format.  The journal is published quarterly with a subscription fee of $48/year and is available in print and digital formats through the Jerome Library.  One of my professors recently suggested that I might consider revising a seminar paper to submit to this journal, which is why I chose it for this assignment.  Browsing some of the abstracts, I can see how the topic might fit in nicely with some of the other things being discussed, especially since the paper focuses on epideictic rhetoric.