As I’m rereading my notes, I’m noticing so many typos that previously escaped my notice. My apologies to anyone who finds them difficult to understand because they appear to be written by a kindergartner.
Composition in Rhetorical Theory
Composition in Rhetorical Theory
Since I’m also sitting for a special field exam in Composition Studies, I probably won’t get a question on this, but it’s best to be prepared. In all reality, unless I am asked to address any of these specific authors, I will likely draw from the Comp Studies reading list for an answer on composition.
Berlin, Blair, Pratt, Winterowd
Blair
Blair’s ideas were rooted in the belletristic tradition, which argued that rhetoric and “polite arts” should be categorized as “rhetoric and belles lettres.” He was interested in notions of taste, style, criticism, and sublimity. He largely discounted the canon of invention and instead believed that genius is the key motivator and enabler to coming up with a topic; this genius cannot be affected by the rules of rhetoric and so cannot be taught. Blair is also concerned with taste, which he defines as “the power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and of art.” There are two facets of good taste: delicacy (feeling well and accurately) and correctness (a standard of good sense). He points out that everyone has taste to some degree, but some are more refined than others due to finer organs and internal powers. However, it is possible to develop taste through exposure to art and literature that those with a more refined taste have deemed “good.” Because of his notions about genius and taste, Blair argues that good writers are developed through acquainting themselves with the best authors. At first, these aspiring-to-be-good writers must recreate the writing of the best authors from memory; however, he does not want them to imitate it, but to adapt their own style to the subject and its hearers/readers. Such pedagogy shows that learning writers do not yet have the genius to devise their own topics and so much take them from others, and it seeks to develop the learner’s taste through exposure to the best works.
It should be noted that though many (most?) composition theorists and practitioners find the belletristic notion Blair propagates to be outdated and not terribly useful for our students, many composition teachers still continue to use this pedagogy in their classrooms. These teachers teach FYC using literary texts and ask students to write papers on them, which limits the number of genres they learn and thus rhetorical situations to which they are prepared to respond. Some scholars (Hairston, for example) think that such practices are the result of FYC being house in English departments where literature scholars hold most of the sway; thus, many of the grad students who teach FYC are aspiring lit scholars who do not want to teach writing and so teach lit instead. But that is a discussion for another question.
Winterowd
Winterowd questions the sanity of requiring FYC, arguing that the justification that details its inherent usefulness is not a good enough reason. He argues that Comp’s real effectiveness comes when we shift from context and content to addresser orientation, what he calls “self-expressive writing”; in other words, he calls for the writer to take the center of their compositions in order to express themselves through writing. He argues against Current-Traditional Rhetoric when he states that there is no such thing as good or bad language, except in relation to a purpose; in other words, there are no “right” or “wrong” words as long as they accomplish their rhetorical goal. Such expressive writing will give students a chance to write toward these goals while also feeling motivated to master the aspects of written English because their writing is centered on them. The role of the instructor in this scenario is to lead students to analyze various texts and to provide feedback. The instructor should also focus on process and much as product. Interestingly, Winterowd’s book is divided into three parts: invention, form, and style, and organizational plan that belies what he believes are the three most important aspects of writing.
Pratt
Pratt exhorts us to use our classrooms as contact zones (social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other) when teaching students. Such pedagogy would resists the hegemonic relationships of power in the academy in order to allow students of various cultures and backgrounds the opportunities to learn about each other and question dominant power structures. Pratt’s argument comes a few years ahead of its time: by the end of the decade in which she wrote, many composition scholars were calling for (and some were arguing against) a critical cultural approach that would perform many of the pedagogical moves Pratt describes. For instance, feminist scholars argued for a more negotiative and irenic rhetoric to be taught (instead of the traditional male, agonistic rhetoric), and digital scholars call into question issues of technological access and how it affects the teaching of underprivileged students.
Berlin
In Rhetoric and Reality, Berlin lists several kinds of rhetoric that have influenced compositin pedagogy. First is objective rhetoric, which led to CTR and behaviorist pedagogies that assumed that teachers do not know how good writers write and whose goal was to make the student self-sufficient and responsible for their work rather than relying on teacher approval; some of its proponents were Lynn and Martin Bloom and Zoellner. Second is subjective rhetoric, which is an expressionist approach that relies on solitary activities and considers group activity to be dangerous. Some proponents of this approach were Macrorie, Murray, and Elbow. Third is transactional rhetoric, which led to Aristotelian pedagogy that studied all elements of the rhetorical situation as involved in the rhetorical act and thus considered rhetorical. Two of its proponents are McDowell and Corbett, who argue respectively that comp courses should include persuasive/expository writing and take social problem as subject matter and that they should include moral and aesthetic issues such as arrangement, style, and the awareness of audience in shaping a discourse. Fourth is the rhetoric of cognitive psychology, which seeks to determine how social and psychological structures influence writing process. For example, in 1971 Janet Emig suggested a longitudinal study of students to learn the developmental dimensions of their writing processes. And finally, epistemic rhetoric argues that writing involves the transmission and generation of knowledge; knowledge is dialectical and thus rhetorical construct. Proponents of this kind of pedagogy are Bruffee and Berthoff.
How I’d answer a question on this theme
I’d probably draw from my Comp Studies list for any question on Comp. Many of these resources (except for Pratt) are outdated and largely out of fashion in Comp Studies. Berlin’s book is still important, but he’s also written other more recent(ish) things since then that are more pertinent. Frankly, most of the Comp stuff on the Rhetoric list is just boring and I don’t want to talk about it in an answer unless I have to (and I have a hunch I won’t have to).
Ideas about Sophistry
Ideas about Sophistry
Plato, Gorgias, Isocrates, Glenn, Kennedy, Burke, Vitanza
Plato
Plato is famously anti-sophistical. In the Gorgias, his Socrates takes on the famous sophist and his followers through a dialogue meant to discount sophistry as a valid rhetorical practice. Plato’s biggest problem with sophistry is that it is concerned with possibility and can only persuade people to belief; he prefers a rhetorical dialectic in which two people converse in order to eliminate error and establish knowledge. In other words, Plato fears a sophistic orator may mislead his/her hearers and occlude the truth for which everyone should be searching. Truth is the ultimate goal, and it can only be found through an internal realization brought about by a dialogue with someone who has already discovered the truth.
Gorgias
An example of the kind of sophistry against which Plato argued is Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen, in which he defends Helen of Troy’s decision to go with Paris and instigate the Trojan War. He brings up several possibilities for why she may have left with him: perhaps she had no choice, perhaps she thoughtfully considered her actions and thought them the best option. Gorgias offers no solutions, but only a string of potential motives for Helen. Thus, he uses language to manipulate his listeners who had previously thought ill of Helen for betraying her people. This is the kind of sophistry against which Plato argues because it does not help its listeners discover truth; instead, it leaves them only with a belief that Helen may be innocent, and they may be content only knowing that possibility and cease to pursue the truth.
Burke
Though he does not define himself as such, Burke appears to be a more modern version of a sophist; like Gorgias, Burke is concerned with possibility. This similarity is most apparent in his discussion of identification. When a speaker engages in identification, s/he works to make the audience believe that s/he is just like them. S/he finds or fabricates some similarity (in beliefs, values, or background) s/he shares with the audience and points it out to them so that they identify with him/her. Burke argues that this is an effective method of maximizing persuasion; the identification does not need to be sincere, but it may be. Here, Burke shows that he is concerned with the possibilities of persuasion and how one may use identification to achieve it more successfully. He does not caution against using identification to mislead; he offers it as a method of potential manipulation.
Glenn
Cheryl Glenn’s brief study of the Sophists in Rhetoric Retold appears to contradict Plato’s negative view of sophistry. She points out that they enacted a humanist philosophy that supported the notions of individual responsibility and political and social action. They taught that the gods were not responsible for human actions; instead, individuals were responsible for their own behaviors and dispositions, and were therefore responsible for the actions of the state.
Isocrates
Isocrates enacted the kind of sophistry to which Glenn refers. In his Against the Sophists, Isocrates argues that language is a tool for solving problems; thus, his sophistry was active instead of contemplative. He was interested not only in working toward the common good, but also in creating civic leaders to do so. Isocrates disparaged sophists who used language to mislead people (such as, presumably, Gorgias) and sought to avoid such trickery in his own teachings. He is considered a sophist because he followed the sophist tenet that all knowledge is inherently flawed because it is limited by our human perception. Thus, it is impossible to learn a universal truth, but he Isocrates believed that people should still study a wide range of subject in order to make the best possible decision in a given situation.
Kennedy
In Comparative Rhetoric, George Kennedy defines the conditions needed for successful sophistry: literacy; political, social, and moral changes; conflicting philosophical schools; and the existence of individual teachers who are not part of a state bureaucracy and offer advice to rulers. Kennedy point out that all of these factors were in place when sophism arose in ancient Greece. He also argues that the skepticism and deliberation of possibilities in which the sophists engaged are partially responsible for the advancement of knowledge and understanding in Western culture. The aim of sophistry was often to argue from the weaker side as if it were the stronger (to bask in the possibility), and most social causes (abolition of slavery, women’s rights, for example) initially were perceived as the weaker sides; someone had to earnestly and successfully defend them as if they were the stronger case in order to for human rights to progress.
Vitanza
Vitanza is a self-proclaimed Neo-Sophist. One key aspect of sophism upon which Vitanza draws for his theory echoes the sophist notion of arguing from the weaker side as though it were the stronger; by “weaker” side, I mean that side that is most often disparaged or perhaps thought to occupy an untrue or incorrect position. Vitanza argues that the Third Sophistic of which he is a part must redefine the History of Rhetoric in order to include denegate some of the negated people; in other words, he argues for an inclusive history of rhetoric that makes space for some of the voices that have heretofore been excluded. Vitanza explains that these voices, such as many of the Sophists, have been floating in limbo, in the “middle” or the “in-between,” and deconstructing binaries; he posits that we need to bring them to the center of rhetorical study. Hearkening back to Gorgias, Vitanza offers Helen of Troy as an example of this denegated subjectivity: she rejects the active/passive binary by instead reaching for a middle voice that brings her a sovereign, sublime subjectivity. In working to denegate the negated, Vitanza reveals the systems of power at work throughout the History (and historiography) of Rhetoric as a History of Oppression. Thus, the Third Sophistic redefines notions of power and how it is dispersed.
How I would answer a question on this theme
Plato and Gorgias play nice together (so to speak), and Burke is a kind of modern Gorgias who Plato would have argued against. Glenn and Isocrates also play well together to present a different angle on sophistry. Kennedy can lead into Vitanza by way of explaining sophistry’s tendency to argue the weaker side; and Vitanza represents Neo-Sophistry. Taken together, this can be a snapshot of three different kinds of sophistry: 1) Sophistry concerned with possibility, 2) Sophistry concerned with creating the best world possible, 3) Neo-Sophistry/Third Sophistic concerned with denegating the negated.
Issues of Marginalization in Rhetoric
Issues of Marginalization in Rhetoric
Butler, Gates, Glenn, Pratt, Vitanza
Mary Louise Pratt
In “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Pratt explains that the contact zone is where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of asymmetrical relations of power (colonialism, slavery, and/or their aftermaths). She argues that texts produced in the contact zone have disruptive power: if marginalized group of people produces a text from this area of conflict and inserts it into the dominant print culture, they can interrupt the hegemony of the dominant culture. These texts are often parodic in nature (and thus, intertextual), subversively imitating and poking fun at the dominant culture; they are addressed to both the dominant culture and their own community. The distribution of these texts allows them to take some control of how they consume the texts of the dominant culture: they may not be able to control what the dominant culture emanates, but they can decide what they absorb and how they use it. It can also be a way for underprivileged people’s to let off steam and suppress urges for potentially violent outbursts in response to their subjugation.
Henry Louis Gates
A product of a contact zone is the Signifyin’ Monkey. Gates explains that the Signifyin’ Monkey is a way for oppressed Black cultures to safely poke fun at the dominant White culture. Signifyin’ is based on the chaos of “associative relations” that appear as playful puns and figurative (often humorous) substitutions that name a person or situation in a telling manner; it delights in the free play of associated rhetorical and semantic relations. In many ways, Signifyin’ (capital S to distinguish it from “signifying,” which excludes the unconscious associations of a word in which Signifyin’ basks) is like Bakhtin’s double-voicedness because the person who Signifies says two things at once: the literal meaning of the word(s) and its/their figurative, implied meaning(s). Thus, in the Signifyin’ Monkey narratives, Monkey (representing a Black person) can fool Lion (representing a White person) into getting into trouble with Elephant. Monkey Signifies on Lion, and the multiple meanings of Monkey’s words trick the Lion into looking like a fool. These narratives are chiasmatic daydream fantasies of power reversal, and they are only possible because of the double (or triple, or quadruple) meanings of the words Monkey says: slaves could tell these stories to each other right in front of their owners and the White men would take them literally and have no or little idea that they were being made fun of. Thus, these contact zone stories provided (and still can provide) an entire subjugated culture with a way to let off some steam by making fun of their oppressors right in front of them.
Judith Butler
Butler argues that words are also agency; by virtue of thinking something hurtful or threatening, your body physically reacts and prepares to enact that threat. In other words, the body takes on the posture or state of the action it threatens and begins to enact the threat. However, the statement itself is not capable of enacting the threat, and so the threat may never come to fruition if the power dynamic and circumstance behind the performative act are not right. In other words, the situation (encompassing the speaker, the spoken-to, and all their contexts of power relations, cultural backgrounds, etc) must be just perfect for the threat to be enacted. For example, the Signifyin’ Monkey is, at the end of the day, an empty threat when performed by slaves. They can tell threatening stories in which a figurative Black man tricks a figurative White man, making him look like a fool, but the situation prevents the Black slaves from literally tricking the White men in the same manner as Monkey tricks Lion.
Butler also points out that the implication behind the phrase “words wound” is that words are capable of inflicting pain or injury in a physical capacity. She also points out that these words place the listener (the one toward whom the injurious words are aimed) in a subordinate social position, which can result in social trauma if the listener is called by injurious word repeatedly. Bulter questions why such words (such a racial slurs or insults aimed at a person’s sexuality) have such power to inflict pain and marginalization. Legal and political discourse tries to tie the words’ power to contexts, but as Butler points out, efforts to censor such language divorces it from context; in making a document describing why a certain word should not be used, one uses the word in a new context divorced from its offensive nature. Thus, the link between speech act and injury is loosened, which opens up the possibility for a kind of talking back or reclaiming of the injurious word. In other words, this loosened link provides the opportunity for the marginalized groups to reclaim the words that marginalize them.
Butler also examines a tension between regulating injurious language and letting it be used freely: on the one hand, regulation of this language destroys some fundamental aspect of language and subject constitution through language; on the other hand, our dependency on constituting our subjecthood via the ways we are addressed implies that there is a need for some regulations. In other words, we are brought into social position and time through being named, so care should be taken in how we name others; however, regulating how people can be named denies language’s basic function: being an expression of thought.
Finally, Butler notes that speech and conduct are conflated in matters pertaining to sexuality, but not racism. In other words, often a declaration of homosexuality (especially in the military) is taken to mean that the person intends to enact homosexual acts; however, in racist threats, the threat is not taken to mean that the person intends to enact them. Butler argues that homosexual desire should not be conflated with the desire of which it speaks since they are not the same thing; one can be homosexual, she implies, without acting upon that homosexuality, just as one can make a racist threat without enacting it.
Victor Vitanza
Vitanza’s work comes after Glenn’s, but also calls for a broader definition of rhetoric that could recognize more previously marginalized voices as being rhetorically important. He imagines an alternative space where the exiled, silenced, and rejected voices dwell and are given a place from which to speak (perhaps Pratt’s contact zone?). He calls this space the “middle” and argues that it denegates the negated by giving them a voice. Vitanza argues that even though these voices have been systematically silenced and negated (and perhaps, by now, even lost altogether), they can still be profitably read in the History of Rhetoric. Where traditional rhetoricians have attempted to define, obtain, and keep power, these voices (the Third Sophistic) have rethought power altogether by placing it in perpetual displacement.
Cheryl Glenn
Glenn discusses how women have traditionally been excluded from the rhetorical canon, which has replicated the politics of gender that places women subordinately to men. She argues that what we constitute as “rhetoric” should be redefined to include women; such redefinition recognizes that the traditional agonistic patterns were inscribed by males, and recognizes a broader conception of rhetoric as using language in such a way as to make an impression upon a reader/hearer. One aspect of this new constitution involves seeing Aspasia in the same way traditional rhetoric has seen Socrates. No writing remains of Socrates, and we know most of what we know about him through secondary works, notably Plato, yet we do not doubt that there was a Socrates. Aspasia has suffered a similar fate (we have none of her writings and only hear about her through secondary sources), yet her existence is constantly questioned. Under a new conception of rhetoric, Glenn argues, we have to stop doubting Aspsia’s existence and accept her influence on rhetorical theory, just as we do Socrates.
Glenn studies medieval rhetoricians Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe to show how their rhetoric of religious devotion should be included in the expanded conception of rhetoric. Such proclamations were acceptable because they dealt with the only uncontested (at the time) realm of truth: Christian piety. They exploited this as the only commendable road to feminine wisdom and used it to preach through visionary and mystical writings. Remarkably, both women also spoke in the vernacular, analyzed and responded to their audiences, and used experiential knowledge to fuel their teachings to improve the spiritual lives of both men and women. Glen also calls for the redefined rhetoric to pay attention to intentional silence, as in the case of Anne Askew. Askew was prolific in writing and speaking against the Protestant reformation, but when she was arrested and her inquisitor asked her questions, she refused to answer any of them and instead called for him to present his evidence. Such rhetorical silence was powerful in its denial of power to the inquisitor. Her response also shows that Askew was aware of her audience and exigence and knew that she could not use language to change their attitudes, so she denied them any language at all.
Glenn studies several female rhetorical figures from the Renaissance and earlier, but she leaves the investigation open for other scholars to pick up. Under her more broadly defined rhetoric, many subjugated voices, not just women but also perhaps people of other marginalized cultures and ethnicities, can be recognized for their rhetorical contributions, both in the past and present.
How I would answer a question on this theme
I’d start with defining Pratt’s contact zone, then use Gates as an example of how slaves operated in the contact zone in order to through relations of power into question, even if only very slightly. Then, I’d use Butler for an extended conversation of how the contact zone can be a place where marginalized peoples use the language that oppresses them to fight back. She is also fruitful for a discussion of why words hurt the way that they do and what should be done about it. Finally, Vitanza’s Third Sophistic and voices from the “middle” are a useful way to lead into Glenn’s broadening of rhetoric to include more voices that have previously been silenced or ignored.
Metaphor in Rhetorical Theory
Metaphor in Rhetorical Theory
Lakoff and Johnson, Richards, Aristotle, Perelman
Aristotle
Aristotle says that mastering metaphor shows genius because it cannot be learned; it implies an eye for resemblance. He contends that the metaphor “gives style, clearness, charm, and distinction as nothing else can” makes meaning. The clarifying and meaning-making potential of metaphors also makes them a key component of discovering truth. One of the reasons for metaphors seeming usefulness, Aristotle argues, is that they are the only kinds of words that everyone uses; all people use metaphors in order to carry on coherent conversations. He also points out that metaphors are conducive to learning because they produce easy learning by creating a connection between two unlike things (the example Aristotle gives is Homer’s developing a connection between “stubble” and “old age”) and construct understanding and knowledge. In rhetorical oratory, Aristotle says that metaphor can affect the audience. If you wish to make something or someone look good, you can use a metaphor that compares them to something better; if you wish to denigrate them, compare them to something lesser.
Aristotle seems to have conflicting views on metaphor. He says that it takes a genius to master it, but everyone uses them all the time. Perhaps he means that everyone uses them, but not necessarily well, and only a few use them really well?
I.A. Richards
Richards invented the terminology for describing metaphors that many people still use: the tenor is the implied object of the metaphor, and the vehicle is the object used for comparison. In The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Richards takes on three of Aristotle’s assumptions about metaphor: first, Aristotle argues that some people have an eye for resemblances, but not others, to which Richards replies that everyone speaks and lives through resemblances; second, Aristotle says that metaphor cannot be taught, to which Richards replies that metaphors are an inherent part of the language we learn; finally, he says Aristotle thinks metaphors are special and exceptional, but Richards says that they are part of everyday language. Richards goes even further to argue that not only is metaphor an inherent aspect of our language, but it is also inherent to the nature of our thought. Our mind is built to make connections between things, which causes tension; metaphors alleviate the tension and restore order to our thought processes by making sense of an otherwise illogical connection. For example, in Aristotle’s example of Homer making a metaphor that used “stubble” to refer to “old age,” the connection seems illogical until the metaphoric meaning becomes clear: as Aristotle explains, both have lost their luster. Richards finishes by arguing that metaphor is important to rhetoric because the goal of rhetoric is to learn as much about words as is possible so that they will tell us how our minds work.
Chaim Perelman
Perelman defines metaphors as condensed analogies. An analogy is a way to define reality and establish the real by establishing connections between two terms by noting their similarity to each other. The examples Perelman gives is that “truth is to Socrates what gold is to a miser”; since a metaphor is a condensed analogy, this analogy could be condensed to something like “truth is gold to Socrates.” In creating this metaphor, the connection between “truth” and “gold” in relation to Socrates is less explicit than in the analogy. Perelman argues that philosophical thought and rhetoric seek to develop an argumentation that aims to have certain analogies and metaphors accepted as central elements in a worldview.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Lakoff and Johson follow Aristotle and Richards in asserting that metaphor is an inherent part of thought and language; since our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical, our perceptions and relations (both of which are influenced by our concepts structure) are the result of the metaphors we live by. The famous example Lakoff and Johnson use is the metaphor “argument is war.” This metaphor implies a verbal contest similar to a physical battle; as such, our terminology (and consequently our conceptual system) is structured through words like “counterattack” and “defense.” Lakoff and Johnson point out that our conceptual system would look very different if our culture conceived of argument metaphorically not as war, but as a dance. This leads to another key point: since metaphors change from culture to culture, a culture’s most fundamental values will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of their most fundamental concepts. For instance, in the US, such metaphors as “labor is a resource” and “time is a resource” are culturally grounded in our experiences with material resources; importantly, such metaphors do not exist in cultures that do not share our views on work, quantification, and purposeful ends. Part of this cultural dependence on metaphor is that people in power get to impose their metaphors on a culture.
Lakoff and Johnson also discuss the nature of truth: philosophers say metaphor cannot express truth, but Lakoff and Johnson argue that truth is a function of our conceptual system, and, since our concepts our metaphorical in nature, metaphors can be true or false. Truth, then, becomes subjective and relative to our conceptual system, which is both grounded in and tested by our daily experiences and interactions with other people and environments. Thus, there is no Truth, but the possibility of many truths.
How I would answer a question on this theme
[This could also answer an Aristotle’s Time Machine question]
I’d move semi-chronologically to follow the development of conceptions of metaphor to show how Aristotle laid the foundations for modern conceptions of metaphor. For Aristotle, metaphor makes and clarifies meaning, and everyone uses it. This is a sentiment echoed in Lakoff and Johnson, who take Aristotle’s notion a step further in arguing that metaphor constructs our conceptual systems, thus influencing how we perceive the world. And, since metaphor is inherent in our thought, it is also inherent in our language and used by everyone. Perelman also argues that metaphors are one way that we create and define reality. Richards challenges Aristotle’s assumptions that metaphor only some people can master metaphor, that it can’t be taught, and that metaphors are exceptional by arguing that metaphors are a part of daily life and experience; however, it seems that Aristotle agrees that everyone uses them, but only a few geniuses can master the art of metaphor.
Influence on my Composition Pedagogy
How these readings have influenced my approach to composition pedagogy
McComiskey, Bruffee, Berlin, Shor, general self-awareness (via Hillocks)
I will undoubtedly be asked a question about how all this reading has influenced how I approach pedagogy. I will bring up McComiskey, Bruffee, Berlin, and Shor, as well as discussing the general self-awareness I have gained (via Hillocks perhaps).
McComiskey, Bruffee, Berlin: writing as social epistemic and social process
While doing these readings I was struck by something so obvious that I have always been aware of but have not really put much consideration into: writing is social. I have been doing assignments with my students for a few years where such an assumption was the basis of the project, but had never thought through just how important those assignment are or could be to helping students realize that writing is not just about coming up with what to say, but also saying to others and spreading knowledge.
McComiskey argues that we should teach writing as a social process of cultural production (the creation of social values), contextual distribution (the contexts of cultural values), and critical consumption (the social uses to which readers put their interpretations of produced and distributed cultural values). The example he gives of how this process plays out in the composition classroom involves college viewbooks (brochure-like booklets that promote universities and colleges). Each viewbook propagates its own cultural production of specific values: diversity, educational standards, campus appearance, etc. Then, contextual distribution refers to where the cultural values are presented to audiences: this can be socio-economic class, education level, gender, etc. Finally, critical consumption refers to how the audience interprets the values manifest in the viewbook, such as that the college as a beautiful campus with diverse students and faculty bodies as well as top-notch educational programs. McComiskey has students analyze these viewbooks, looking for both what they show and what they leave out: what cultural values are encoded in these viewbooks and how are they manifested? But what I find most interesting about McComiskey’s argument is that he does not end any of his projects with analysis. Such critique leaves students with the helpless feeling that their world is less than perfect and that there is no way to change it. So he adds an additional step. For the viewbook assignment, he has students make their own viewbooks and comment on how and why they represent what they do the way they do. In another assignment, students analyze a problem on campus then write a letter to campus personnel suggesting how that problem can be solved. I have my students analyze various cultural artifacts, but I have never had them produce their own artifacts or written letters suggesting solutions. It is a useful exercise because it shows students the importance of their writing and how it can impact the world in which they live; it shows them that they can make a difference while teaching them how to address a broader range of audiences. Importantly, it also gives them a sense of closure by allowing them to voice their opinions in the public sphere.
My approach has also been influenced by Bruffee and Berlin, both of whom argue a social constructionist/epistemic approach. Bruffee argues for a social construction pedagogy that recognizes that thought is internalized conversation and, since writing is externalized thought, writing is re-externalized conversation; thus, students must work collaboratively in order to both refine thought and practice conversation, therefore leading to better writing. Most importantly, collaborative learning also challenges authority by revealing that is a social artifact; in other words, it shows students that knowledge is negotiable: it can be challenged and changed through conversation with others. This plays right into Berlin’s social epistemic approach. He argues that knowledge and truth are constructed socially via dialectic, and that such conversations determine reality and knowledge.
The notions of McComiskey, Bruffee, and Berlin have inspired a new project my students will work on next semester in ENGL 104. In the last five or so weeks of the semester, students will work collaboratively together to use expertise from their major field to solve a problem on campus. In groups of 3-4, they will identify and analyze a problem or shortcoming they find here on campus, perform research on it, and suggest how to solve it. The example I’ll give them is that an engineering major, business major, physics major, and environmental sciences major could work together to argue that the Huskie buses should be replaced by more efficient biodiesel or hybrid buses, drawing on each other’s expertise to show the cost benefit, environmental benefit, and other benefits their field’s knowledge can bring them. In the process of this project, they will present their research at the Showcase of Student Writing. The final product will be a research proposal in which they will target someone on campus to whom they can appeal with their solution to the problem or shortcoming. Thus, they will gain a greater understanding of how their writing is part of a social process and that their knowledge is socially constructed.
Ira Shor
Another resource that has influenced my pedagogy is Ira Shor’s notion of making the classroom more democratic. He worked with the students in his class to negotiate course policies in an effort to get them more invested in the class and to alleviate the Siberian Syndrome (the name he gives to some students’ penchant for sitting in the far reaches of class in an effort to, in some small way, challenge the authority of the teacher). Shor also implemented an After Class Group (ACG) to meet after each class session to discuss how it went and how he can do better. I’m really interested in this idea of giving students more power in the classroom in order to help them become more civically and democratically engaged citizens beyond the classroom, but I’m not yet ready to give up as much power as Shor did. After reading this book (near the end of the semester), I altered my approach to preparing students to write their semester reflections. I engaged them in a discussion (with some light reading) on what reflection is, how it benefits them, and what kind of rhetorical moves a good one should make. Then, as a class, they came up with a list of 10 questions an effective reflection should be able to answer. Then, they negotiated the criteria on which I would grade them. The result was some of the most interesting reflections I have ever read; the students were clearly invested in the assignment because the guidelines were more transparent, and they had a hand in determining every aspect of it. As Shor cautioned, not every student was on board and invested, but more students put more effort into a usually hastily completed assignment than I had previously experienced; I’m excited to see next semester if this was just a one-time fluke or if it is a consistent pedagogical success.
General Self-Awareness (via Hillocks)
The most important influence on my pedagogy is a general increase in my self-awareness as a teacher. It was genuinely fun to read these works and discover how the assignments I’ve been doing (many of which have been inherited from ENGL 600) fit into the map of pedagogical approaches out there. For instance, ENGL 103’s arch from personal to public draws on elements of Expressionism’s writing to express oneself and Social Constructivism’s/Epistemic’s notion that knowledge is produced socially and that writing needs to be adapted to various audiences. Assignments like the visual analysis draw on a Cultural Criticism approach, while the blog project draws on aspects of digital composition and new media. I obviously knew that these assignments were valuable to students, but now I know why they are useful and have resources on which I can draw in order to perform the kind of critical reflection Hillocks calls for teachers to do. Hillocks says that we must reflect on our teaching constantly (both in the classroom while teaching and out of it) in order to assess how we are helping our students and how we can do it better. I’ve already started making changes to my course curriculums based on the readings from my list and will undoubtedly make more as I reflect on my teaching and adapt it to help my students as much as possible.
Purposes/Conceptions of Rhetoric
Purposes/Conceptions of Rhetoric
Plato: Rhetoric is “the art of winning the soul by discourse.” Although technically, Plato is referring to dialectic (the Socratic dialogue), not rhetoric. In fact, Plato distrusts rhetoric because he thinks it misleads the soul. Instead, two people should engage in a dialogue and work together to correct error and discover truth.
Aristotle: Rhetoric is “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.” As such, his Rhetoric outlines many of those “available means” in order to help the orator train.
Quintilian: “Oratory is the art of speaking well.” It’s also being a good person (“good man speaking well”). He also believes that rhetoric and grammar should be united because they complement each other. The good orator invents on the spot, but has many examples and precedents memorized for instant recall.
Cicero: Rhetoric is “speech designed to persuade.” He also talks about legal oratory leads to advancement in Rome. Cicero also unites the study of rhetoric and philosophy; both need each other in order to be useful and effective. True skill in oratory comes from the combination of natural talent and learned skill. Eloquence is the most important aspect of oratory? There are three purposes of rhetoric: pleasing, teaching, moving to action. Three levels of style: plain, middle, grand.
Augustine: Rhetoric is preaching God’s word to a congregation. Clearness is more important than eloquence. There are three purposes (taken from Cicero) and three levels of style (inspired by Cicero): subdued, temperate, and grand. Also, there are only three subjects of oratory: justice, holiness, and a good life. Like Cicero and Quintilian, Augustine also believes that the orator must be virtuous.
George Campbell: Rhetoric is “that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.
I.A. Richards: Rhetoric is the study of misunderstanding and its remedies; the goal of rhetoric is to learn so much about words that they will tell us how our minds work. He calls for us to renounce the view that words are only their meaning and that discourse is only the composition of those meanings. Most words change meanings in different contexts; thus, no word can be judged good/bad or correct/incorrect in isolation (interinanimation of words).
Kenneth Burke: “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.” Rhetoric is winning an argument at (nearly) all costs. Anything written for a purpose with an audience in mind. Identification is a way of enacting persuasion, not just gaining audience assent.
Wayne Booth: Rhetoric “includes all forms of communication short of physical violence, even such gestures as raising an eyebrow or giving the finger.” He specifically discusses the rhetoric of assent, which he defines as coming into an argument prepared to accept any good reasons, rather than coming in with a neutral or antagonistic attitude.
James Crosswhite: A rhetoric of reason has the task of explaining how reasoning can have effect/force, while forgoing violence and furthering respect.
George Kennedy: Rhetoric is the art of effective expression: it is mental and emotional energy. To Kennedy, rhetoric is almost equivalent to communication; all communication is rhetorical. Even animals can engage in rhetoric.
Visual Rhetoric in Composition
Visual Rhetoric in Composition
George, Kress, Yancey
Diana George
George calls for us to go beyond a basic call for attention to visual literacy; we need to realize that despite the fact that students are raised in an aggressively visual culture, visual communication is still complicated and sophisticated to them. Thus, reading and using visual information is part of learning multicultural literacy. George argues that visuals are important, but that they are no substitute for the complexity of language. Thus, though one can make sophisticated and relevant arguments through visuals, alphabetic language is equally as important (if not more so), particularly because, though real-world writing has been digitized and visualized, academic writing is still largely alphabetic.
Gunther Kress
Kress argues that writing is being displaced by image in many instances of communication where it previously held sway. The traditional page only has one entry point and sets a strict reading path; there is only one way to read a text, so access to power and authorship were strictly governed. However, webpages has multiple entry points, multiple reading paths. Thus, it can appeal to a wider range of readers/viewers who are able to construct the text as they work their way through it. Importantly, Kress argues that words are empty of meaning and need to be filled with the hearer’s/reader’s meaning, but images are full of always-specific meaning. [I tend to disagree: Kress seems to imply that images are less obscure than speech or writing, but I think they are just as susceptible to misinterpretation and, unlike alphabetic language (particularly immediate speech) cannot defend its meaning as easily. But I still support the use of visuals in most cases.] Thus, images are more efficient at conveying meaning than words. Kress believes that the printed page will continue to exist, despite the image’s increase in popularity. Kress’s notions have implications for comp studies because students must consider how to compose in an image-saturated world where images are in fact viable options for conveying meaning. His work implies that we need to teach our students more multimodal and visual composition techniques, skills, and knowledges so that they can succeed beyond our classroom.
Kathleen Blake Yancey
During her chair’s address to the CCCC, Yancey told us that “we have a moment.” In this moment, she argues that we need to embrace digital literacies and technology in the classroom. Among these literacies, she implies, is visual literacy. She asserts that, since writing is social, we need to teach our students how to write to broader audiences beyond the teacher-student relationship while helping them become a thoughtful, well-informed, tech-savvy public. Students need to understand that texts circulate across space and through time. In order to do this, they need to compose in digital modes; in order to compose in digital modes, they need to understand how to compose multimodal texts that involve not only alphabetic characters but also visuals, video, and audio.
How I would approach a question on this theme
Well, I’ve only got three authors here and will probably need a minimum of three. To kick things off, I’d probably establish the importance of technology in the composition classroom by bringing in Selfe’s and Yancey’s call for technological literacy. Then I’d move into the discussion of George’s hesitance to put full credence in visual communication, contrast it with Kress’s notion that visual communication is important and valuable (perhaps more so than alphabetic), then end with Yancey’s call for us to seize our moment and help students create multimodal texts that are capable of reaching wider audiences.
It would really help if I could remember which resource I read that argued that today’s webpages navigation and general digital writing could not exist without images. I suppose I can make a general argument from accepted knowledge that visual design is absolutely key to a successful webtext or digital artifact.
Technology and Composition
Technology and Composition
Selfe, Bolter and Grusin, Johnson-Eilola, Yancey, Moran, Landow
Cynthia Selfe
In Technology and Literacy in the 21st Century, Selfe argues that we must teach students how to write with technology in order for them to survive in today’s fast-paced high-tech work environment. In fact, those high-tech jobs are often the highest paying, so in refusing to teach writing with technology, we are denying our students the opportunity to earn those jobs. This leads to the issue of access. Many lower class, non-white students do not have access to these technologies, and so are left behind; thus, the technology initiative leaves them even further behind and increases the inequality gap in America. Therefore, we must be aware of these differences and work with all students to help them gain what Selfe refers to as “technological literacy” while having discussions amongst ourselves about the complex relationships between technology, literacy, education, power, economic conditions, and political goals.
One important issue Selfe discusses is the definition of technological literacy. She urges that it should not be understood as simply as a functional understanding of what computers are and how they are used; instead, it should be a complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically in the context of electronic environments. In other words, not only do students need to understand how to use computers, but they also need to be critically aware of the issues generated by technology use.
[It is important to note that while Selfe’s notions may have received push-back in the early 21st century, most theorists appear to agree with her now.]
Charles Moran
Moran specifically addresses the issue of access. He points out that we spend a lot of time chasing after the newest technologies and finding ways to implement them into our classes, but this excludes many lower-class and underprivileged students who do not have access to these technologies. It also excludes teachers whose schools do not have sufficient funding to support such technological demands. Moran insists that we should also pay attention to and study how to use low-tech, inexpensive technologies that can teach the same skills and knowledge as their more expensive, high-tech counterparts.
Kathleen Blake Yancey
In “Composition in a New Key,” Yancey insists that we absolutely need to help our students develop what she terms “the third literacy”: technological literacy. Her motivations are slightly different from Selfe’s (who argues that such knowledge will help them have access to better jobs): she argues that students and general non-academicians are writing online frequently now, but without our impetus. In other words, they don’t have to do this writing for class or for a grade; they are simply doing it for some intrinsic value by posting to blogs, Facebook, etc. Working with our students to write in digital and multimodal platforms will also help to create “writing publics”: fostering civically engaged, informed, and literate citizens who vote and are committed to humanity through their ability to write and think for purposes that are unconstrained and audiences that are nearly unlimited.
Johndan Johnson-Eilola
Johnson-Eilola talks about hypertext and how it encourages both writers and readers to confrtong and work consciously with deconstruction, intertextuality, the decentering of the author, and the reader’s complicity with the construction of the text. Specifically, he argues that composition pedagogy can take advantage of hypertext by encouraging conceptions of writing and reading that are simultaneously product- and process-oriented instead of primarily one or the other. In other words, hypertext can help students understand that writing is both process and product, and that you cannot have one without the other.
George P. Landow
The most important chunk of information to take from Landow is his notion of hypertext as a rhizomatic structure that allows the reader to create the text for themselves as they move through it. Ideally, a rhizome is a text that has an infinite number entrances, exits, and paths through it; hypertext is currently the closest thing to this kind of text since readers can enter it in many locations and work their way through it according to their own volition while exiting whenever and wherever they choose to. This decenters the author by making the reader into a sort of author as well.
David Bolter and Richard Grusin
Remediation has some interesting implications for technology in composition. Bolter and Grusin argue that many texts are remediations (literally mediated again) of previous media (ie: videogames have remediated photographs, paintings, television, and film). These remediated texts are both homages and rivalries: they draw on the remediated elements in order to claim that they are more useful or superior. This has implications for composition studies because now that many teachers are engaging students in digital and multimodal texts, those students are also engaging remediation. This increases the exigency of audience and motivates students to consider broader audiences than their classmates and teacher; they must understand that writing and composition do not happen in isolated vacuums, but in the larger world of human interaction.
How I would answer a question on this theme
I could have added more to this list of authors (Reid, Ridolfo and DeVoss, Urbanski, Kress), but these six seem to adequately represent the considerations to make when discussion technology and composition. I’ve also discussed the issue of delivery in new media elsewhere, and elements from that could be useful in this discussion as well. The key things to hit here are Selfe’s challenge for us to start teaching technological literacy and not just functionality but also critical cultural awareness of its social implications; Yancey backing up that challenge less than five years later from the perspective that our students are writing without us so we must keep up to stay relevant; Moran and Selfe bringing up issues of access to technology and how that impacts teachers and students; and Johnson-Eilola and Landow discussing hypertext as a kind of digital texts from which our students could benefit because it decenters the author and teaches product and process simultaneously.
Basic Writing Theories
Basic Writing Theories
Bartholomae, Sommers, Perl, Soliday, Shor, Smitherman
Sondra Perl and Nancy Sommers
Perl’s study looks at unskilled college writers to see what their revision process looks like. She used compose-aloud protocols in order to determine how unskilled writers write and if their writing process can be analyzed systematically. She found that many of her test subject could speak full, proper sentences but wrote partial, misspelled ones; part of the reasoning for this is when the subjects read the sentences back, they automatically corrected them. Perl found that the student’s writing processes were consistent (pre-, writing, and editing) and occurred in recognizable, sequential patterns. This suggests that the process was internalized. Some of the key implications Perl found were that teachers’ focus on fixing surface errors takes away the excitement of writing; as such, teachers instead need to find which aspects of each student’s process facilitate or inhibit writing and work to enhance or rehabilitate them.
Sommers’ study follows a year after Perl’s, and also looks at revision strategies. The student writers focused on rewording, which suggests that they believe the meaning is inherent in their writing and all they need to find is the “right” word. Also, students only recognize lexical repetition, not conceptual. They also believe that if their writing comes easily (if they are “inspired”), then they don’t need to revise; if they know what they want to say, there’s no need to change anything. Lastly, students lack strategies for global revision: they can handle local, but are often stumped on the larger picture. However, experienced adult writers see revising as finding the form/shape of their argument. For them, writing is a constant process of writing and rewriting. They can also view their work from the perspective of a reader and make changes accordingly. Finally, the adults tried to create/discover meaning through revision.
These two studies have implications for basic writing because they show how unskilled and inexperienced writers see both writing and revising. Both studies imply that we need to focus less on minute details of grammar and mechanics and instead treat larger global and conceptual issues first. Once the students have their thoughts organized, we can focus on the small stuff.
Geneva Smitherman
Smitherman explains the 1974 Students’ Right to their Own Language document. Its goal is to heighten awareness of language attitudes, promote the value of linguistic diversity, and to convey information about language variation that would help teach nontraditional students more effectively. This document has implications for basic writing because it makes it clear that students’ home dialects are allowed to be used in the FYC classroom; in other words, we as teachers need to be more open to language variation in our students’ writing. We need to respect (and even celebrate) their language differences.
Ira Shor
Shor’s book (When Students Have Power) is a personal story about when happened when students shared authority in his classroom. He emphasizes the individuality of each student and that we need to recognize that their backgrounds may not match ours. One of the most interesting points of Shor’s book deals with the “Siberian Syndrome,” which is the tendency for certain students to consistently sit as far away from the teacher as they can and disengage from the class as much as possible; this represents their subordinated and alienated position, as well as one of the few instances they have of exhibiting agency. They are defensive about the unequal power relations in the classroom (the teacher and the curriculum in which they have little say). As such, Shor wanted to distribute authority in the classroom. Beginning on the first day, he allowed them to negotiate the syllabus and course requirements (he later admits that he should have allowed them to negotiate the texts they read as well), then he expected them to talk a lot and produce a variety of texts in order to educate the teacher about their interests, levels of development, idiomatic diversity, cultural backgrounds, and thematic preferences. Short also created the After Class Group (ACG), a smaller group of students from the course who met after each class to discuss how it went and how Shor could better serve the students. In doing so, Shor created a democracy in his classroom because he consulted the students about policy and process, thus allowing them to develop as independent citizens. This means that Shor listened as much as (if not more than) he talked, and did not ignore, silence, or punish unhappy students.
Shor’s notions have implications for basic writing because often basic writers are misunderstood and underprivileged; they are used to being told they are not good enough and probably enacting the Siberian Syndrome. A democratic, power-sharing approach like Shor’s is a way to get them engaged in their education because they have a hand in creating the curriculum and standards to which the teacher will hold them. Such engagement would address a lot of inequality issues through the reinvention of power.
Mina Shaughnessy
In Errors and Expectations, she emphasized that students must be acculturated to academic writing. She urged teachers not to see basic writers as somehow deficient, but as beginners who are just beginning to understand how to engage in academic discourse.
Mary Soliday
Soliday points out that college students’ literacy was not a point of conflict until the mid-70s when Newsweek started the fake literacy crisis; remediation at the college level was not widely recognized until the mid-80s. The shift in attitude about remedial English are in part a result of the increasing middle-class need for the institutions to be exclusive: a college education is the defining feature of its social class identity.
One of the Soliday’s key points involves her questioning the ways in which students’ need for remedial writing instruction has become widely associated with the need to acculturate minorities to the university. She works to disentangle politics from remediation, thus challenging the assumption that a politics of language use is equivalent to the politics of access to institutions. She also challenges identity politics: she points out that those who think basic writers are simply refusing to assimilate are mistaken; often the writers want to assimilate, but we don’t know or understand how to help them to do so. Soliday urges basic writing teachers to explore pedagogies of translation, wherein students engage in rhetorically aware code switching. This allows student writers to act and think as intellectuals who discuss issues significant to each other and to their families as well as to the teacher. This could lead to students and teachers using negotiation to create new knowledges and identities, possibly even to fuse different cultures. In fact, Soliday argues, when students can present their private literacies to a readership in a broader public framework, they are more likely become politically active, which will also lead them to be more open to critical thinking and a critical consciousness about different discourses. Soliday’s core argument is that the politics of language should remain central to classroom work.
David Bartholomae
Like Shaughnessy, Bartholomae believes listening to basic writers requires close reading. One of the key ways to help students develop their writing skills is for us to understand why they make the mistakes they do. He asserts that basic writers’ mistakes are intentional and catalyzed by a deficient understanding of (and inability to identify) how academic language sounds. Therefore, in a move that hearkens back to classical and nineteenth century rhetorical theory, Bartholomae claims that one way to help basic writers develop is for them to imitate the styles and voices of other writers.
Basic writers are often seen as pre-academic or pre-textual (like Ong’s orality), but they are really distinguished because they work outside the conceptual structures in which literate students work. He points out that since basic writers write sentences (however unconventional or incorrect), they are capable of thought; we do not need to “give” them sentences or thought, but only to help them understand how to translate or transform them so that they are more in sync with conventional expectations. Bartholomae’s call to action is that either the university needs to make its expectations clear for a univocal, common tongue, or it needs to accept that it is omnivocal and allow everyone to speak and write as they choose to. Most importantly, he asserts that writing needs to be taught as writing, not as sentence or paragraph practice. This methods allows them to realize that writing involves making choices, and they have control over which choices are made; thus, they begin to see the possibility for other decisions and options.
Interestingly, in contrast to Shor (who argues against all tests), Bartholomae suggests that an end of term 2-hour essay exam may be necessary for basic writers since a passing grade implies that they are ready for university-level writing. In order to pass, the writing must be reasonably error-free, coherent, and well-developed.
How I would answer a question on this theme
Only Soliday and Bartholomae actually talk about basic writing (the small bit of info on Shaughnessy came from either Soliday’s or Bartholomae’s book), so I would focus the most on them, despite the fact that their discussions of basic writing are so differently focused. Soliday looks at identity politics involved in basic writing, concluding that those who assume basic writers are refusing to assimilate are mistaken. She points out that often the want to, but do not know how to. Bartholomae studies the mistakes basic writers make, which could connect him to Sommers and Perl. All three have found that there is a systematicity to the writing of unskilled writers; they are not somehow deficient or pretextual, but are in the early stages of developing into more experienced writers: they need more practice and critical tools. Both Bartholomae and Soliday argue for basic writing to be taught as translation (code switching). This allows them to maintain their own voices, as per Smitherman’s explanation of the 1974 “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” document that is supposed make it safe for students to speak and/or writing in their own dialects while still being respected. One interesting comparison to bring up as well is between Bartholomae and Shor: Bartholomae gives his basic writers 2-hour exams at the end of the semester to determine if they will pass, but Shor argues that such tests are useless and punitive because they do not allow room for reflection.
Exam. Play. 