I just finished a full practice exam in Composition Studies. I feel good about this one. I don’t think Comp Studies will give me much grief on test day. My real concern has always been (and remains) the Rhetoric exam.
***Update nearly two years later. I passed both exams with distinction. My fears about the Rhetoric exam, it seems, were absolutely unfounded.**
Issues of Power and Powerlessness
Shor, Mitchell
As I sit to work on this theme, I realize that I don’t really know what it means, or at least what it will achieve that my work with feminism and multiculturalism didn’t already accomplish. As such, I’m only going to look at Shor and Mitchell, but in a question on this topic would probably also bring in some of the people I’ve already talked about.
Ira Shor
In When Students Have Power, Shor experiments with making his classroom more democratic in an attempt to defeat the dreaded Siberian Syndrome. He allowed students to negotiate some of the course policies and how classes were conducted, and even created an after class group (ACG) of students who would tell him how he did and what he could do to serve them better. The result of the experiment seems overwhelmingly positive. Shor explained that more people than ever were invested in the course and its content simply because they had some say in how it was run. He even reached some of the students who began in Siberia; they didn’t move, but they were more engaged in the class than they probably would have been otherwise. The implications of Shor’s research are that when students have some of the power, they are more invested in the course and engaged in the content. They’ve been conditioned to sit in a subordinate position within the classroom their whole lives, but Shor gave them an opportunity to level the playing field and take control of some aspects of the classroom.
Candace Mitchell
In Writing and Power, Candace Mitchell argues that academic power lies in the ability to write in academic discourses. Students who are not given access to the genres and skills required to craft an acceptable academic essay are denied the opportunity to grow through writing, and their chances of succeeding in college and beyond are lowered. Implicit in this systemic hierarchicalization is the notion that if one does not become a good writer, it is the individual (not the institutions) who is at fault; a further implication is that failure stems from the misapplication of skills or failure to work hard enough. Such mindsets are dangerous for students (usually underprivileged or foreign) who think this way. It can cause them to drop out, thus continuing the cycle of keeping power with the few elite (usually white) who have mastered the dominant discourse. Thus, Mitchell argues that comp teachers need to reflect critically on our practices and assumptions (a la Hillocks) to ensure that we do not perpetuate a cycle of marginalization.
How I would answer a question on this theme
As I said earlier, I would incorporate Shor’s and Mitchell’s explicit notions related to power into a larger cultural discussion that could include such authors as Pratt, Hawisher and Sullivan, and Elbow. Including these three sources could lead to an interesting discussion about where power is located in the university and how the comp classroom can serve to deconstruct, decenter, redefine, or displace it.
Multiculturalism in Composition Studies
Kent, Foster, Pratt, Elbow, Mitchell, Smitherman
David Foster
Post Process Theory, as Kent describes it, is based in the notion that there is generalizable writing process to which everyone could comfortably adhere. He argues that the three main assumptions behind Post Process Theory are that writing is public, interpretive, and situated, all of which suggest that each person has an individualized process that cannot be universally codified. However, David Foster is hesitant to let process theory go and embrace post-process theories, specifically a cultural critical approach. He argues that process theory enhanced the importance of schooling by naturalizing it in a framework of analytic conversation between student and teacher. Foster also argues that by leaving behind process and moving to a cultural critical pedagogy, teachers introduce a lot of unnecessary risk to the composition classroom: turning toward the social and emphasizing difference leads to unpredictable and unstable interactions, which then leads to conflict. Thus, comp studies must think carefully about the effects of dissonance and conflict on writing scenes because articulating difference is risky, stressful, and potentially painful.
Mary Louise Pratt
Pratt does not support the Process Movement, but argues for classrooms to confront difference in the way that Foster urges us to refrain from doing so. She explains that classrooms are “contact zones,” or social spaces in which cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other. Pratt points out our classrooms are potentially full of underprivileged and underrepresented students, and that we can change our classroom practice so that they can gain more of a voice in the composition classroom. She suggests that teachers should embrace the difference and incorporate nontraditional assignments (like ethnographic narratives) in order to allow cultures to deal with the tension each one has because it is different from the others. Pratt does not deny that this could potentially be risky (that students could get angry or upset as their culture clashes with another), but she urges that the pedagogical benefits are worth the risk because we will be able to produce a critically aware student body that can approach social and cultural issues in an appropriate manner.
Peter Elbow
Elbow has made many contributions to comp studies, but one of the most important ones is the notion that students should be allowed to compose initial drafts of text in what he calls their “mother tongue(s),” by which he means the dialect(s) with which the students are most comfortable (likely the one they were raised speaking with their family). This means that students could stop worrying about their writing being judged incorrect or inadequate; the classroom becomes a safe space in which they can use their own dialects freely. However, in order for this safety to continue, Elbow argues, it is imperative that students’ final drafts are in Standard Written English (SWE). In other words, they can write as many drafts as they need to in their “mother tongue,” but by the time their final draft is submitted, it must resemble an academic essay (although he admits no such thing truly exists). If students do not learn to translate their home dialects into SWE, we are doing them a grave disservice; though our classroom may be safe for the time being, the rest of the university will not be. Elbow’s notions have implications for multiculturalism because they provide a framework from which to both teach students SWE while encouraging them to maintain their “mother tongue.” He acknowledges that no one speaks SWE as their “mother tongue,” but some have had access to language that is closer to it; the ones whose “mother tongues” are vastly different from SWE need to work through a period of transition, and we should encourage and help students who need it. On the other hand, if we simply try to quash out any minority dialects, we run the risk of writers drifting toward the dominant language and losing their “mother tongues” through lack of use; therefore, we risk wiping out minority dialects. Elbow argues that such dialects will not flourish unless there are legitimized in our classrooms.
Candace Mitchell
Mitchell also grapples with the tension between students being required to write in SWE but also needing to hold onto their home discourse. She argues that we must absolutely teach them how to write in academic settings. Mitchell brings up an instance from her own experience in which she witnessed composition teachers whose only graded writing assignments were journal entries. Such assignments were valuable in that they validated the writing of (especially underprivileged) students who were able to write in whatever way seemed comfortable to them. However, she argues that relying so heavily (indeed, entirely) on a nonacademic form of writing did those students a grave disservice because they did not achieve practice in writing academic discourse. Mitchell explains that the genres of the academy hold the key to power; the students who succeed in such genres as the academic essay are the ones most likely to succeed in college and beyond. Thus, it is imperative that students learn how to write correctly in academic genres; to refrain from doing so is to deny them access to particular forms of discourse that could prove indispensable in the future. Mitchell does not think requiring underprivileged students to learn SWE is unfair or Imperialistic; she sees it merely as a tool for advancement. Indeed she appears to draw from Spivak’s answer to her own question at the end of “Can the Subaltern Speak?”: yes, but only through the dominant discourse. But Mitchelle does not believe the two (a student’s home discourse and the dominant discourse) to be mutually exclusive. Like Elbow, she encourages a classroom space where students’ home dialects are safe but where they are also learning to use translate their writing into the dominant discourse.
Geneva Smitherman
Smitherman discusses the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language,” the document that worked toward wider social legitimacy of underprivileged and foreign students’ languages and dialects and to bring about mainstream acceptance of marginalized cultures, history, and language. The goals of this document are to 1) Heighten awareness of language attitudes, 2) Promote the value of linguistic diversity, and 3) Convey facts and information about language and language variation that would help teach nontraditional students more effectively. Smitherman’s discussion goes well with Elbow’s and Mitchell’s (and really, Foster’s and Pratt’s as well) because, even though this document has been in effect since 1974, it addresses a language issue with which comp studies still struggles today.
How I would answer a question on this theme
Pretty much as I have here, except I would add one more connection among the resources. In order to enact Pratt’s contact zone classroom in a way that would not bring pain and hurt to students (as Foster fears), the teacher would need to adapt Elbow’s and Pratt’s notions about nontraditional discourses in the classroom.
Feminism and Composition
Sullivan, Gearhart, Annas, Lunsford and Ede, Lamb, S. Miller, Selfe, Hawisher and Sullivan
Pamala Annas
Annas argues that women should be allowed to ground their writing in the self (personal experience) and women’s lives. She asks, is it fair to ask marginalized students to ignore these aspects of themselves? In order to achieve the required academic distance. No, it isn’t. For some, it’s impossible. Instead, students should use writing to validate their own lives. As instructors, we can help them to find a way to do so.
[Plays well with Elbow and Mitchell, who argue on a similar topic.]
Sally Miller Gearhart
Gearhart recognizes that students have a variety of backgrounds and languages (literacies?), but that not all of them are recognized by the academy. She asks, is this an act of violence? An extension of Imperialist ideals (asking them to give up their “home” ways of expression for traditional academic ways)? Yes, it certainly can be. Gearhart argues that feminism rejects this notion in favor of creating a classroom space that invites (rather than forces) students to change.
[Both Annas and Gearhart focus on politicized approaches that combine feminism and comp in order to create a classroom space where all aspects of the self come together to stimulate and create change.]
Patricia Sullivan
Sullivan argues that composition studies is too slow in examining how gender informs writing. She analyzes several aspects of the writing classroom and finds that androcentrism remains pervasive in comp studies. Thus, we must ask how gender shapes the meaning of a writing situation.
[This works well with Annas and Gearhart because all three recognize that different backgrounds lead to different approaches to composition; thus, being female can lead to a different approach to composition than being male would.]
Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede
Lunsford and Ede found two primary modes of communication in comp studies classrooms. The first is hierarchical and was determined to be masculine: writing is delegated by a superior and implies bureaucratic writing; the superior values efficiency; multiple voices and shifting authority are problems. The second is dialogic and was determined to be feminine: writing values fluidity in meaning, openness, and creative tension; writing is producing (not discovering) knowledge; it has the potential to challenge phallogocentric, subject-centered discourse.
[Lunsford’s and Ede’s study has implications for Sullivan’s notion that gender shapes the meaning of a writing situation. They have shown that it shapes how a writer will respond to and write within a particular situation.]
Catherine Lamb
Lamb argues for a “maternal” view of argument that does not promote conflict. Power is not a quality to exercise on others, but is instead a force that energizes and enables competence and reduces hierarchy. Lamb explains that adapting negotiation and mediation (cooperative approaches to resolve conflicts) to writing will help avoid the divisiveness of monologic argument (which emphasizes its own interests and only acknowledges opposition to refute it). In other words, monologic argument is only interested in winning, whereas Lamb’s maternal argument is interested in finding a resolution that is fair to all sides: the goals are to see knowledge as collaborative, cooperative, and constructed. Lamb argues that written argument should be a give-and-take and power should be mutually enabling.
[Lamb’s argument plays well with Sullivan, Lunsford, and Ede because she suggests a kind of argument that is “maternal” (not paternal), and therefore feminine in nature. Thus, she suggests that this negotiative, collaborative, knowledge-making, and hierarchy-dissolving kind of argument is feminine as well.]
Susan Miller
Miller points out that the notion that composition is feminized must be challenged; she shows that the negative connotations with feminist approaches to composition reinforce the notion that composition is marginalized. Instead, we need to use political action to change the negative connotation of the “feminization” of composition, and for intellectual/political movements toward gender balance in composition studies. We must explore the status of females as lower on the hierarchy of the academy. Miller argues here and in Textual Carnivals that composition studies is a culturally designated space for political action. She adds that composition is the discourse of the majority, so it’s an effective place for counterhegemonic intellectual politics.
Gail E. Hawisher and Patricia Sullivan
Hawisher and Sullivan study women’s self-representation in digital environments. They point out that feminists have focused almost exclusively on the textual environments of computer-mediated composition, but since the Web has more possibilities for self-representation, they argue that a simple transfer of arguments about women’s verbal online lives is inadequate as a strategy for exploring visual representations. In other words, new methods for examination must be created or adapted in order to study women’s visual self-representation.
It was once promised that online spaces would be egalitarian, but, since women and other underrepresented people are often unduly harassed, that has not happened. Often, women are shut out entirely of mixed-group electronic discussions; they make fewer and shorter contributions than men, and both men and women respond more frequently to men’s postings than to women’s. Neither have these spaces proven to be devoid of communicative power for women, as was also predicted.
Hawisher and Sullivan argue that in order to extend and complicate electronic discourse theories, we need to examine online visual depictions in a variety of discursive settings. In other words, the digital realm is full of images that people view and interpret daily, and which exert influence over them; thus, we need to examine how these visuals impact their viewers. When women become visual objects online and have no say in the ways in which they are represented, the outcome is predictable. Old identities like the “pin-up girl” or academic talking head are reproduced, and traditional narratives are re-created with new technologies.
Cynthia Selfe
Selfe reinforces what Hawisher and Sullivan argue. She explains that the representations used to sell computers often reinforce the same traditional gender narratives of our culture. These conventional stories told in the context of new technologies remind us of our ethical responsibilities to work as college English teachers toward productive change. It’s our job to both analyze, critique, and deconstruct these hierarchicalizing narratives and replace them with egalitarian notions, and to teach our students to do so. Some cultural stories we are telling ourselves about computers are that 1) the electronic landscape is open to everybody (it isn’t), 2) gender will no longer be a predictor of success (it still is). Just because we now have technology does not mean social progress will automatically follow. Instead, we must educate students on how to culturally critique electronic artifacts so that they may recognize the inequalities that challenge humanity (ethnocentrism, racism, classism, sexism).
If I had to answer a question on this theme
Since a lot of these texts play well together, there are a few different approaches I can take. Annas and Gearhart argue that women (and other underrepresented) writers should write in their own voices, even if that means using personal experience or disrupting traditional hegemonic-academic notions of writing. Ede and Lunsford tie into their arguments well by showing that men and women write differently, thus calling for an acceptance of feminine/dialogic writing as well as traditional masculine/hierarchical writing. Then, Lamb goes into greater depth about what such feminine/dialogic/maternal argumentation could look like.
Susan Miller kind of stands on her own, but her notions could easily fit into a discussion of Comp’s power/powerlessness in the university, or of the politics of composition.
Finally, Hawisher and Sullivan and Selfe discuss issues of women’s identity in electronic spaces. All three scholars show that visual representations of women reinscribes traditional gender narratives into new digital spaces. They call for new approaches to studying women’s self-representations, and well as cultural productions of women in these spaces.
History of Composition Studies
Berlin, North, S. Miller, Connors, Crowley, Smit
James Berlin
Berlin makes an argument in Rhetoric and Reality that we should consider “rhetorics” (plural) instead of “rhetoric (singular) because rhetoric is epistemological and therefore each rhetorical system is based on the natures of each knower’s reality. There are three epistemological categories of rhetoric: objective (reality is within the external, material world of experience), subjective (reality is within the subject and discovered internally), and transactional (reality is the interaction of subject and object, mediated by audience and language). For objective rhetoric, the writer’s job is to record experience exactly as it has been experienced; CTR is objective because it requires finding truth through observation and then finding the language to describe it. Subjective rhetoric is demonstrated by Plato, who believes that truth transcends the material world; it can be known, but not communicated or taught. Weaver sees rhetoric similarly, but its possibility is expanded by the suggestion that metaphor can suggest the supersensory. The writer’s role is to offer positive knowledge or correct error in order to help lead the audience to truth via a private discovery. Transactional rhetoric types are classical (truth is located in a social construct); cognitive (correspondence between structures of mind and nature); and epistemic (reality involves all elements of the rhetorical situation). In this view, rhetoric is implicated in all human behavior, and language mediates reality and truth. In another article, “Contemporary Composition,” Berlin argues for the superiority of epistemic rhetoric because it is the most practical.
In the 19th century, the university was opened to anyone from the middle class who could meet the requirements, and at Harvard in 1874 Eliot introduced the writing test as an entrance requirement. This led to the rise of what has been called CTR, a pedagogy that focuses heavily on surface perfection, like an error-free composition but pays little attention to thought processes; the influence of CTR is still felt in classrooms that focus mainly on grammar and mechanics.
In the early 20th century, there were three main approaches: CTR; an approach that inspired only those who possessed “genius” (usually elitist and aristocratic); and an approach that emphasized writing as training for participation in the democratic process. There was also an “ideas approach” that connected learning to social political life. The Efficiency Movement study of the NCTE determined that composition classrooms should have no more than 50 pupils per teacher and that the course should only be taught by the best teachers.
Between 1920 and 1940, college enrollments grew. CTR still held dominance, but began to be challenged by a subjective rhetoric that favored the individual. FYC programs were developed and headed by directors to provide an administrative structure for students and faculty. Objective writing tests were used to place and evaluate students who were grouped into classes by ability in order to respond to their individual differences. Expressionist rhetoric began to form as an indirect result of the liberal culture’s philosophic idealism and emphasis on self-cultivation.
Between 1940 and 1960, the most significant curricular development was the general education movement, which resulted in the rise of COMS (writing, speaking, and listening). CCCC was developed in 1949 after a 1948 NCTE conference presentation spawned a long discussion about composition that needed to be continued; the founding of 4Cs led to a burgeoning sense of professional identity. Many comp teachers taught writing through literature; great literature was needed to provide knowledge and stimulation to keep the teacher’s career active and vital. In the 1950s, there was a renewed interest in rhetoric as a discipline of historical importance and contemporary value.
Between 1960 and 1975, there were growing numbers of graduate programs in rhetoric; it began to be seen as a respectable specialty, especially with the growing numbers of students demanding more teachers and leading to a need for professionalization. The process movement began to take off during this time as well. There were many theories grouped under the category “new rhetoric,” but none of them became dominant. Instead, there was a multiplicity of rhetorics in which each was unique in describing elements of rhetoric. The major pedagogical approaches of this time were CTR, Expressionistic, Classical/Transactional, Rhetoric of Cognitive Psychology, and Epistemic Rhetoric. The biggest transition from the 19th century to 1975 was the shift from writing courses for cultivation of taste, to writing for preparing students for a profession, to writing for preparing students for citizenship in a democracy and enabling self-discovery.
Stephen North
North describes and accounts for the emergence of a methodological community in composition. First, he describes the Practitioners: scholars and researchers make knowledge, but practitioners apply it. They contribute to the “lore” of how writing is done, learned, and taught; lore is a body of knowledge housed in either ritual (passed along by example), writing (textbooks), and/or talk (conversations with other practitioners).
There are three kinds of Scholars: Historians, Philosophers, and Critics. The Historians write the pedagogical history of composition through a complex web of cause and effect relationships. The making of history is a neverending cycle of interpretation and reinterpretation. The Philosophers account for, frame, critique, and analyze the field’s fundamental assumptions and beliefs. Thus, they can help us choose teaching methods. The Critics establish a canon, interpret it, and generate theories about both how they created it and how they interpreted it.
There are four kinds of Researchers: Experimentalists, Clinicians, Formalists, and Ethnographers. The Experimentalists discover generalizable “laws” that can account for the ways people do, teach, and learn writing; they try to measure the impact of a manageable feature of a pedagogy on students. The Clinicians focus on individual “cases” and how they do, teach, and learn writing; they are concerned with what is unique or particular to some unit within a population, but bring the larger population to bear on their observations. The Formalists build modes and simulations to examine formal properties under study; they focus almost exclusively on modeling writing in order to highlight what we do not understand. The Ethnographers make stories or fictions for people as members of communities. North is not very optimistic for ethnography’s potential, but it has become one of the most valid approaches for cultural inquiry.
With all of these different approaches available and competing, North explains that there has been a “methodological land rush” as various inquiries scramble to claim what constitutes knowledge in composition. There are two themes that result from this inter-communal struggle: 1) there is the notion that there is a knowledge and method crisis that justifies radical action in teaching writing, and 2) Practitioners have been targeted as lacking knowledge and methods to do anything on their own. Therefore, some have pointed out that since the ability to generate or control knowledge rests with non-Practitioners, they must import their knowledge in order to repair the practices of the Practitioners. There are two assumptions operating here: 1) that Practitioners are 2nd class knowledge users (not makers), and 2) they should become the recipients of a random flow of information.
Since Practitioners have become a communal target, there hasn’t been much inter-disciplinary conflict. In fact, many inquirers use knowledge from various groups. However, as each community puts out new research, the field’s self-image of multi-methodological “progress” is harder to keep up. The stakes for methodological dominance are power, prestige, professional recognition, and advancement. However, North does not envision comp studies as a discipline because such a term implies unity and preparation for doing something. He offers three conditions that must be met in order for composition to be an independent discipline: heightened methodological awareness, methodological egalitarianism, and re-establishing the validity of practice-as-inquiry. North fears that each community will be absorbed by other fields and literary studies will continue to dominate. In order for composition to survive, he argues that we must break away from literature by either taking a larger share of knowledge making or by moving out of English departments, and/or we must establish inter-methodological peace to keep its vital core. North ends by predicting that composition as we know it will disappear and we can only survive by breaking institutional ties with English; however, he also clarifies that he prefers for composition more strongly with English.
Susan Miller
Miller argues that writing in higher education is simultaneously marginal and central. Part of this is because composition is confused about its own goals; thus, it is undermined in universities, and especially by literary studies in English departments. Literary studies are devoted to displacing the ordinary composition circumstances around texts it calls extraordinary; in other words, literary studies must be dissociated from the textual product so that the history of literature is told by “authorship,” whose origins, successes and privileges are considered unbound to the material circumstances of readers and writers.
One justification for why composition became part of English departments is that literary studies needed something practical to add to burgeoning English departments. Both replaced the classics, both were utilitarian means to an educated populace. Each could instill refinements of taste and correct grammar (both necessary in order to be “cultured”). Composition became the location where the unwashed were cleaned; where the masses were convinced of their dirtiness while being saved from it.
The subjectivity of a composition student is often infantilized: comp is seen as a transition-to-college course and often relies on pedagogies used at earlier levels. The student has no choice how the course is run; instead, they are unified with the university’s ideologies, often unaware that such a thing is happening. Miller argues for a politically aware composition course that prepares students to generically “be” writers in the classroom and other settings. Such a move could allow the students and teachers to acknowledge and analyze these hegemonic demands and their implications for the composition students.
Process theory has become one way in composition as legitimated itself as a field (though Lisa Ede would disagree with this notion). However, Miller argues that the paradigm shift for which it called has not yet happened. In fact, she still sees elements of CTR everywhere, and CTR and Process share some elements: priority of speech over writing, student-centered but independent individual, a “goal text” that can accurately represent intentions, and seeing words as having settled meanings. Still, Process Theory stabilized the field because it is “scientific” and gives composition an object of study and allow it to discover self-contained “meanings” in the act of writing. Miller also brings up the issue of the feminization of composition. Not only is it a marginalized field, but it is also taught by more women than men, thus further marginalizing and stigmatizing it. Composition is not considered to be a respectable field to teach. But Process works to reinforce the profession’s claim on a “normal” identity among colleagues. Miller ends by arguing that Composition could make a new identity by acknowledging that it is a culturally designated place for political action; it can work counterhegemonically while showing that making new knowledge is a shared process. We must reconceive the student subjectivity as responsibly, participatory, and potentially influential in writing.
Robert Connors
There is no such thing as CTR: Fogarty (1959) coined it, Young (1978) refined it, but no one has ever claimed to be part of a CTR movement (Eded points to a similar occurrence for Process Theory).
In the 19th century there was a shift from oral/argumentative rhetoric to written/multimodal rhetoric, which required that the 2500-year-old rhetorical tradition adopt new theory, pedagogies, and cultural status. Women entered the university for the first time, which shifted the possibilities available to genders; the rhetoric in the classroom shifted from agonistic/male to irenic/males and females. Writing tended to be perceive as something both men and women could do, not only men. Through most of the 19th century, information on composition disseminated through textbooks, not journals or other publications; in 1949, CCCC was founded and journals began to be established. From the 1940s-1990s, journals and textbooks struggled for epistemological primacy.
Connors also points out that the composition teacher used to be revered and well-paid, but is now overworked, ill-paid, and often marginalized.
Sharon Crowley
One of the reasons comp is marginalized is because it tends to focus on processes of learning rather than on acquisition of knowledge. Composition pedagogy focuses on change and development, encourages collaboration, and recognized the work of women long before other fields. In general, composition has little status in the university simply because most other fields tend to forget that it exists and can be a fruitful location for materialist, feminist, ethnicist, and postmodern theories. Teachers of comp are overworked and underpaid (as Miller pointed out) and often employed on a contingent basis. The majority of teachers are part-timers and graduate students, ostensibly because nobody wants to teach it. FYC is associated with teaching, not scholarship; research lead to promotion, but teaching is seen as drudgery.
Like Miller, Crowley also picks up on the tension between comp and lit in English departments. Using literature texts in composition classes only affirms the universal importance of literary study and reinforces the dominance of literature over composition. Also like Miller, Crowley determines that one of the reasons there is such tension between lit and comp is because literary studies suppresses the role of composition in producing literature; they have redefined completed literature as an embodiment of “full, central, and immediate human experience” without accounting for the process it took to get there.
Crowley finds impractical the notion that Comp must prepare students for their fields; every field has such specific requirements that they cannot all be contained in one course.
To Crowley, the pedagogy of tastes (19th century) is a policing mechanism that works to naturalize that which is culturally instituted and harden class distinctions.
Crowley argues against a universal FYC requirement. She says it exploits teachers and students while having negative effects on curriculum, classroom climates, disciplinary and institutional aspects, and professional issues. She wants us to instill writing vertically and horizontally, across fields. Crowley thinks enrollment will remain high, especially with high caliber instruction. The FYC requirement has nothing to do with student needs, but everything to do with the academy’s image of itself as a place with special language needs.
David Smit
Despite ongoing efforts to unify and professionalize composition studies, Smit argues that we still haven’t come up with a unitary definition of what it is. Smit offers four tenets that can help work toward interdisciplinary consensus about language and how it works: 1) Writing is always constrained by students’ interest and motivation (background and experience), 2) Formal instruction will never be able to supply novice writers with adequate training because language development happens via acquisition, 3) All writing is subject to a range of interpretations, whether intentional or not, 4) All writing is constrained by social context and by the circumstances/concerns of the reader via introspection. He makes two assumptions about comp studies: 1) Writing is a global activity, 2) It is foundational to advanced learning.
Smit believes that Comp should not belong in English departments; instead, individual disiplines should teach their own version of writing.
How I would answer a question on this theme
I probably won’t need to. This document is really just to organize the main theories about the history and state of comp studies.
I just finished my first full (4-hour, 3-question) practice exam, and it was intense. I’ve been answering practice questions one at a time and synthesizing themes for a while now, but this was my first time sitting for the full four hours and answering all three questions. I had someone else pick six questions from a list of previous exam questions and copy them into a new document (so I could approach it in the same way as I will on exam day: having no idea what the question options will be until I get them). I have some thoughts:
After I decide which three questions to answer, make full(ish) outlines before answering them. I just scribbled down a few notes on a page and started writing as soon as possible, but I think that did me more harm than good. I ended up pausing to think a lot and working out the argument I wanted to make. If I had spent five more minutes outlining, I might have saved myself up to half an hour of rethinking and organizing my argument.
I need to be sure to answer the question. My first answer strays from the parameters of the question (though, in my defense, it’s a terrible question that is way too big to adequately answer in the time frame of the exam). In fact, I’m not even sure it answers the question adequately. I feel pretty confident about the second and third answers. The second one dealt with one of my research interests (genre), and the third one was all about my research and teaching interests (identity and social media). The first should have been easy since I’m also interested in digital technologies and writing, but I think I was thrown by the “briefly compare oral and written styles.” In what way? I outlined how Ong compares them, but it struck me in the final moments of the exam that perhaps it meant that I should compare Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero to Richards, Weaver, and Burke, or something like that; that I should compare the rhetoric of orality to the rhetoric of literacy. Hopefully there’s a coherent answer somewhere in the 6-page jumble of ideas I presented in response to that question. I’ll read it over again with fresh eyes tomorrow and see how I feel about it.
The first question makes me feel uneasy, but I have solid answers for the second and third. I’m cautiously optimistic that my actual exam will go smoothly next Monday.
Influences on My Research
This is a question I am likely to get: I will need to show how the readings on my list will impact my research. I take this to mean I will need to identify which sources could best support my future research, show how, and explain why. Since my research will be focused on identity (especially gender) and social media, two sources that I will definitely use are Cheryl Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold, Judith Butler’s Excitable Speech, and Kenneth Burke’s Rhetoric of Motives; I will also undoubtedly use some of the many digital rhetoric resources on my Composition Studies reading list.
Cheryl Glenn argues for a broader definition of rhetoric that includes women and other minorities in the rhetorical canon. Such a redefinition calls for a rhetoric of silence to be included. For example, Anne Askew’s refusal to answer her Inquisitor’s questions upon her arrest signify that she was aware of her rhetorical situation enough to realize that speaking would not change her audience’s minds. Instead, she chose not to speak, and in such a refusal denied the Inquisitor power over her. Surely this is not the only occasion when a marginalized figure exercised silence in a rhetorical manner (a typically arhetorical maneuver) . It might be difficult to measure rhetorical silence in social media, since to participate in social media is to interact in some way with the platform or artifacts on it (for example, posting a photo or liking a status, or even simply increase the page visit counter by one more page view), but perhaps there are other typically arhetorical maneuvers used in rhetorical ways.
Judith Butler also has some interesting notions pertaining to identity and language. Specifically, she discusses the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy as it pertains to stating homosexual desire and intention. The presumption behind the policy is that a statement of homosexual desire is also a statement of intention to act on that desire, but Butler cautions us not to conflate desire with intention. Such a conflation oversimplifies language. She also points out that the distinction between desire and intention is observed when someone makes a racist threat; it is generally taken for granted that that particular person may not intend to act on the stated (violent?) desire, thus keeping desire and intent separated. This distinction has implications for digital rhetoric, especially considering some of the rhetorical sites I may study in the future (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube comments sections, Instagram, Reddit, 4chan) are some areas where cyber bullying and threats are most prevalent. The distinction also has implications for issues of power and marginalization: if racist threats are written off as desire with no intent, but issues of homosexuality and gender are not, what does that say about who is allowed to express their identity and who is not? Why does the racist threat get to slip by, while the homosexual declaration is penalized? These are issues of identity that will likely appear in my research, and Judith Butler will be able to give me a framework from which to examine them.
Kenneth Burke’s notion of identification is also an interesting concept to apply to studies of social media. Many people (especially my generation and younger) have spent a lot of their lives on social media and use it as a main route for communication with family, friends, and sometimes complete strangers. Users create an online identity for themselves that may or may not match who they are in real life: they choose which photos, tweets, statuses to post; what photos, tweets, and statuses to like, comment on, and retweet; and what pages or accounts to follow or subscribe to. In effect, they choose how they are represented to a select circle of people, usually with the hope of being accepted or liked by them. Thus, users engage in identification in order to choose which artifacts to post to their social media.
Another resources I can use is Bakhtin’s concept of double-voicedness (saying something simultaneously literally and figuratively) as it plays out in social media, especially as it could pertain to Burkean identification: how people say something that can be taken multiple ways in order to both make fun of and refrain from alienating some people.
I could also use Miller’s concept of genre as a social action for some fruitful discussions about digital rhetoric. I co-authored an article that examined how women feel less comfortable writing in certain genres than others because of the kind of knowledge each genre precludes, which is tied to the kind of social action it is meant to perform.
Classical Canons in Rhetoric
Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Blair, Ridolfo and DeVoss
The five classical canons are invention (thinking of what to say), arrangement (saying it in the order you want to), style (saying it in the way you want to), memory (memorizing it), and delivery (conveying it to the audience).
Plato
Plato makes his views on memory clear in the Phaedrus. Memory is the most important facility to exercise. Delivering a speech from memory to an audience show more skill than writing one and reading it to them. Such delivery is boring, whereas the delivery of a memorized speech can be more exciting and dynamic because the orator is able to improvise more freely. Plato is against writing because he says it cripples memory.
Aristotle
In the Rhetoric, Aristotle only focuses on three canons: invention, arrangement, and style. For invention, he offers the general and special lines of argument (such as questions of conduct), five matters on which everyone debates (such as ways and means), the common topics (example, enthymeme, and maxim), and the 28 lines of proof (such as defining your terms) as resources from which an orator may draw in order to determine what to say. Aristotle also determines four parts for arrangement: introduction, thesis, proof, and conclusion; since the audience is the primary target of the oratory, they should be the deciding factor in how best to arrange those four parts to mirror their thought process. Finally, Aristotle argues that good style should be clear and appropriate; thus, its foundation is correctness.
Cicero
For Cicero, style is amplification: saying the same thing in 2-3 different ways by adding to, elaborating, or qualifying clauses. Delivery is also important. Cicero talks about how the orator must sound and move naturally while speaking, and not exaggerate his tone and/or body movements. They must train like the best actors in order to master using their body while speaking in a way that does not seem rehearsed or robotic.
Augustine
For Augustine, invention is not important because God will tell the preacher what to say. Style should be clear so that the congregation will be able to understand him. Memory and delivery are also important: the preacher should not read a pre-written sermon, but should instead trust that God will give him the right words to say at the right moment.
Blair
Blair also largely ignores invention, claiming that genius is far more important: in other words, writers and orators do not invent new ideas, but learn to manage them; therefore, they need the intelligence to be able to do so, not the ability to come up with new topics on which to write or speak. Blair argues that good style has perspicuity and ornament: it requires purity, propriety, and precision, which means words that belong to our language, selecting pure words, and distinctiveness and accuracy.
Ridolfo and DeVoss
With the prominence of writing over oratory, the canons of memory and delivery fell by the wayside because fewer people were orally presenting their rhetorical artifacts. However, with the rise of digital technologies (part of what Ong refers to as a period of secondary orality), the need for attention to delivery becomes apparent again (some refer to memory as the ability for our computers to store our compositions, but that seems to me like a pretty lame way to re-include memory). Ridolfo and DeVoss argue in “Composition for Recomposition” that because digital artifacts are often used as part(s) of new compositions, it is important for composers to consider their audience and how they may receive the composition; then they must consider how best to compose their artifact in order to have the intended impact (in in order to be potentially useful to those audience members who decide to take elements of composition and use them in their own artifacts in a process that Alexander Reid refers to as “Rip. Mix. Burn.”). Thus, delivery carries many of the same implications it always has, but in the digital realm it necessarily includes some new aspects, such as deciding where or if to place a video, image, sound clip, or other artifact that can be used in composition.
How I would answer a question on this theme
[This could also be an answer to an Aristotle’s Time Machine question]
I would spend the majority of the time tracing delivery through history, perhaps briefly touching on the other canons. Delivery has undergone the most interesting change from being a main part of the oral rhetorical tradition, to disappearing when writing came to the fore (because delivery mostly meant 12pt, Times New Roman font, on 8 ½ x 11 paper), to completely changing with the introduction of digital rhetoric. I briefly mentioned Reid above, but I could draw on him and Yancey as well as Ridolfo and DeVoss for a fruitful discussion of delivery in new media.
Audience in Rhetorical Theory
Burke, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Booth
Plato
In the Phaedrus, Plato articulates that good rhetoric is the art of influencing the soul (for the better, toward truth) through words. Thus, he also outlines how the good rhetor must catalog the various kinds of human soul so that s/he can adapt the discourse to an audience. Some people may be persuaded in one manner, but others would be persuaded in a different way, so the rhetorician must be able to perceive and adapt to each kind of person in order to help lead them to truth.
Aristotle
In his Rhetoric, Aristotle defines rhetoric as the study of “all of the available means of persuasion.” But he also clarifies that, even if the orator has mastered every available mean of persuasion, said orator must also be able to appeal to his/her audience. In all three kinds of oratory (forensic, deliberative, epideictic), the audience is addressed and must be persuaded. Persuasion is only successful, Aristotle contends, when the audience believes that the speaker has goodwill toward them, when they believe that the orator has their best interests in mind. Thus, the orator must establish this goodwill with his/her audience, preferably early in the speech. Aristotle explains that one way to establish a rapport with and audience is to argue from common values, from notions possessed by everyone. Aristotle also methodically defines and explores each significant emotion in order to instruct future orators how best to appeal to them.
Augustine
Augustine argues that the only rhetoric that matters is that used by a preacher to preach to his congregation, so the only audience with which he is concerned are the members of a church. He has distinguished three offices of rhetoric (adapted from Cicero)—to please, to instruct, to move to action—that correspond to the three style—plain, middle, and grand, respectively. He emphasizes that teaching through the plain style is the most important, since the preacher must convey the Scripture so that his congregation will understand right from and how to correct wrongs. Thus, preachers must also be very clear in their speaking; eloquence is not nearly as important as clarity since it is imperative that the congregation understand their teachings. Augustine finishes by explaining that the preacher must be genuinely virtuous in order to serve as an example to his congregation.
Burke
Kenneth Burke outlines his theory of identification in The Rhetoric of Motives. Identification occurs when a speaker appeals to his/her audience through the invocation of a commonality; the audience, believing themselves to consubstantial at the intersection of the invoked identities, identifies with the speaker and is thus more likely to be persuaded by the argument presented. For example, if a politician speaking before a farming community declares that he grew up on a farm, that farming community will perceive a similarity and identify themselves as just like the politician. However, Burke points out that identification does not need to be sincere (though, of course, it may) in order to enact persuasion. In other words, Burke is not concerned with conveying truth to his audience; he is instead concerned with the possibility of persuasion through identification. Thus, a speaker may outright lie to his/her audience, as long as s/he successfully persuades them.
This is in stark contrast to Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, all three of whom are concerned with conveying truth to an audience while also taking their best interests into account.
Booth
In Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Booth takes a completely different approach to audience than Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Burke. He argues that rhetoric is tainted by its concern for audience; it can never be pure because it alters itself according to audiences; opinions. Booth redefines “good” rhetoric as that which moves its audience with good reasons, not audience-based persuasion. We have been taught that “being reasonable” means remaining neutral until solid proof is given. But Booth thinks we have been taught wrong. Remaining neutral is the same thing as doubting, so he argues that we tend to approach new arguments always already suspicious of them. He outlines motivism as an explanation for why this happens: motivism is the belief that we are constantly influenced by our values and present motives or desires. Therefore, we only need to look for a rhetorician’s secret motive (influenced by their own selfish values and motives; based in Burke’s pentad) in order to discover the real reason they are making an argument. Once you find that reason, you have explained away the surface reasons for accepting it. The problem with motivism is that it is self-affirming: any attempt to refute it can by dismissed by its hypothesis.
Booth’s response to this motivism is that we need to look for a philosophy of “good reasons.” We need a way of discovering how motives becomes reasons and how they sometimes can and should influence our choices. Thus, Booth argues that we should approach arguments with assent rather than doubt; that way, we discover new beliefs that fit our structure of perception rather than reject them outright. This new approach of assent would also allow us to think of ourselves a community of persons who have more in common than we previously thought, and language becomes the medium in which selves grow.
How I would answer a question on this theme
[This could also be an answer to an Aristotle’s Time Machine question]
I would point out that Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine all follow similar notions of how to appeal to and convey truth to an audience in a persuasive manner. Burke differs from the three because he is not concerned with truth. Booth differs from all four because his rhetoric of assent is not only a call for rhetoricians to change how they address audiences; it is also, and uniquely, a call for audiences to change how they respond to discourse and rhetoric. Whereas Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Burke provided methods for rhetoricians to appeal to and persuade audiences, Booth puts some of the impetus on the audience themselves by asking them to change how they approach a rhetorical situation.
Disciplinarity in Rhetorical Theory
Bazerman, Dillon, Prior
Bazerman
In Shaping Written Knowledge, Charles Bazerman studies four contexts of writing that must be balanced when writing in any discipline: lexicon used, balance between explicit citation and implicit knowledge, attention to audience, and the author’s values, assumptions, expertise, and originality of claims. In particular, Bazerman compares and contrasts three essay from three different disciplines and discovers that while each discipline’s writing balances these four contexts, they do so in different measures. For example, the science-based article focused more on explicit citation and seemed to erase the context of the author and implied audience, while the humanities-based article used a more balanced approach to citation and implicit knowledge while making an argument to an audience. Thus, writing is not just a matter of “getting the words right.” Instead, one must adapt to each discipline’s communally developed linguistic resources and expectations. Bazerman also points out that these texts and genres are not just responding to disciplinary requirements; by perpetually reproducing them (or versions of them), they continue to create the same requirements over time.
Dillon
In Contending Rhetorics, George Dillon examines whether or not disciplinary language does what it claims to do. In general, disciplinary discourse is concerned with not only adding to the body of certified knowledge, but also with certifying those things that are offered. However, disciplinary discourse embodies practices and values that conflict, not only with other disciplines, but within them as well (Prior repeats this sentiment later as part of his rational for arguing for “disciplinarity”). Dillon notes that a rhetoric of objectivity is the dominant mode across all disciplines because it ostensibly shields discourse from personal bias. The text is meant to appear autonomously, without the predispositions of the authors, and it should not appeal to the audience or to authority. Dillon refers to this as a kind of “anti-rhetoric” that is supposed ignore author, audience, and kairos and does not respond to a specific rhetorical situation. But, as Dillon points out, humans are incapable of entirely erasing subjectivity; academics are “interested parties” whether they admit it or not and generally aspire to enhance authority and credibility. Dillon ultimately concludes that academic discourse differs from other discussion because it has means of reaching closure (though he does not reveal how, nor does he himself reach closure in his argument; he only gestures toward a solution via Habermas’s model of an argumentation that could produce agreement within the rhetorical constraints of particular disciplinary communities).
Prior
Prior’s Writing/Disciplinarity argues against the notion that disciplines are unified and authoritative and that “discourse community” is not a useful term for disciplinary analysis; even experts admit that they are not operating in predictable arenas of shared values and conventions. Because disciplines are so open historically, socially, and culturally, Prior finds the term “disciplinarity” more useful than “disciplinary” because it allows for multiple contexts whereas “discipline” suggests a unity that does not exist. Prior argues that writing and disciplinary enculturation are situated in specific and dynamic times and places, thus complicating the ability to create generalizations. He refers to writing and disciplinarity as “laminated,” which means they are not autonomous and every moment within them implicates multiple activities, weaves together multiple histories, and exists within the chronotopic networks of lifeworlds where boundaries of time and space are highly permeable. In other words, each person has their own “laminated” sets of objectives, identities, and contexts (thought, history, experiences, goals, dreams, fears, intentions, misperceptions, and detailed discussions) that resist generalization.
Prior also studies literacy within disciplines; he examines how graduate students journey toward gaining literacy in their fields. He also asks scholars to think beyond the notion of “discourse communities” because literacy within disciplines is more complicated, social, and multivariate than such a term allows. Writing in learning, then, are not initiation into discourse communities; instead, writing and disciplinarity are mediate activities within open and permeable networks of persons, artifacts, practices, institutions, and communities: they are functional systems of activity that intermingle person, interpersonal, and sociocultural histories. Prior argues that disciplinary enculturation is constantly ongoing through everyday mediations of activity and agency. Thus, writing in the academy is activity: it is locally situated, extensively mediated, deeply laminated, and highly heterogeneous. In other words, it is affected by contexts both inside and out of the academic situation.
How I would answer a question on this theme
I’ve really only got three people to talk about, so I’d just lay them out like I have here in order to make some sort of argument about them. For instance, all three imply that there is no such thing as a truly disciplinary form of writing; even within disciplines, scholars disagree about what makes good writing or what kind of writing can constitute new knowledge. Hence, Prior suggests a new word (disciplinarity) to describe the fact that there is no unitary way to write within any one discipline.
This has interesting implications for composition because it questions what useful knowledge we can really impart on students. Even their own fields can’t agree what good writing should be, so how are we supposed to teach students from multiple fields some sort of totalizing writing style? Devitt answers this question by suggesting that we teach genre awareness over a range of different genres. The more genres students understand and have in their repertoire of antecedent genres, the more potential ammunition they have in any new rhetorical situations.
Exam. Play. 