Firemen Burning Books

I focused on the "commonplace" in my response to Bartholomae's "Inventing the University," and I want to address two related ideas. My struggle with approximating the "discourse" was and continues to be essentially the same problem every student faces: I developed a series of key phrases and escape-words that moved my writing along when I was floundering. The result was often a useless and lazy production that meant nothing to me, just as the idioms meant nothing to me. I soon stumbled upon an essay, program or maybe movie (I've obviously forgotten the source) that discussed owning our words, and everything changed. I realized the depth of my ignorance and quickly reevaluated my writing. I was sick of a vocabulary replete with nonsense and a language over which I had no control. We own our language and we choose our words, therefore my "discourse" was a reflection of either my perception of the world or my complacency. I still slip into the "commonplace", but for the most part I now either own my words or admit my ignorance.
Now to Ray Bradbury. When Montag meets Faber in Fahrenheit 451 they discuss something important. Faber mentions how so many people waste their lives in ignorance to appear knowledgeable, and how pushing out our ignorance (e.g. admitting we don't know the meaning of a certain word rather than nodding our heads in agreement) is always the better alternative -- because we learn. The idea affected me profoundly, and I think there is a general fear in students that we might appear stupid if we don't grasp a concept or definition, which makes us hide our ignorance and write essays full of bloated diction and awkward sentences.
So the next time I seriously use the word "phantasmagoria," you can assume I looked it up before you punch me in the face.