Modern Rhetorical Theory

I thought that "The Basic Aims of Discourse" was a good place to start for this week's reading. The article was simple, to the point and informative without getting into too many details about who thought what in what way compared to someone else's thoughts. The author defines discourse as "the full text" because a sentence or paragraph by itself in "another context may have a very different aim" (129). The aim of discourse is "the effect that the discourse is oriented to achieve. Therefore, we have the text and its intentions. The author expands discourse to also mean the relationships between writer (encoder), reader (decoder), text (signal) and the thing to which the text refers (reality). Depending on which of these things is emphasized in any given discourse, the author further breaks things down. If the decoder, for example, is emphasized in the discourse, we call it persuasive. If it is aimed at conveying the thoughts of the of the encoder, it is expressive. If the text is generated for its own sake, the discourse becomes literary. The author also does a good job of condensing the history and movements of discourse theory. He plots the trajectory of the major schools of thought on a table. The interesting thing is that, with a few minor exceptions, they all pretty much have the same ideas, just use different names. Using Aristotle's original terms, any instance of discourse can be plotted on a scale ranging from the Poetic--personal, expressive, internal, emotive, suggestive--to the Scientific--representative, certain, informative, external. I feel drawn to the ancient modes. The aims of discourse haven't changed in the last two-thousand years, we have not evolved new modes of communication independent of language (besides images, but I feel that is something else altogether), so the purpose of language is not different either. It seems to me that all these great minds have a fondness for complicating a simple matter out of boredom and the selfish allure of invention.

"The Rise and Fall of the Modes of Discourse" was the last article I read. I felt I must have learned something about discourse because the article seemed like review by the time I got to it. I was excited to read it as the article pretended to be of practical use in the first paragraph. It quoted a line from Butler: "all a rhetorician's rules/ Teach  nothing but to name his tools" implying that this article would be different. It wasn't. Not only did it merely name tools, but proceeded to deny and diminish the usefulness of the tools while offering no alternative. The article starts with the traditional classifications of rhetoric--Description, Narration, Exposition, Argumentation--and moves to the rise and fall of single-mode text books and thesis texts. It also goes into painful detail of all the "important" text book writers and the minor differences in terminology and modes stressed throughout the period. By the end of the article, the author graces us with nuggets of his intellect and valuable opinions. "The only teachers still making real classroom use of the modes are those out of touch with current theory" as if the only good teacher is the one who blindly subscribes to every new theory (instead of focusing on actual teaching). He then mocks modal discourse: "the modes were only powerful so long as they were not examined for evidence of usefulness" while offering nothing that is (453). Finally, he ends his masterpiece with this final sentence: "The real lesson of the modes is that we need always to be on guard against systems that seem convenient to teachers but that ignore the way writing is actually done" (455). Is he trying to be ironic?

"Current-Traditional Rhetoric" goes into greater detail on the changes in theory around the turn of the last century. Although this author doesn't like it either, he at least explains why. It started when the committee members of the Harvard Reports, "knowing nothing about writing instruction...gave support to the view that has haunted writing classes ever since: learning to write is learning matters of superficial correctness" (61). The author calls this the Scientistic Approach. He calls it "mechanical" but "comprehensive, primarily because it attempts to into account all features of human behavior--the sensory and rational, the ethical, and the aesthetic." Persuasion was considered to be "the apotheosis of human art...because it addressed itself to the total person: the emotions and the will, as well as the understanding, the reason, and the imagination" (62). I am greatly confused by this. It would seem that this would be the most ideal form of writing; the best writing achieves these things. But the author calls it "mechanically conceived." What is organic writing then? If it's aims are not rational, ethical or aesthetic, and it does not address itself to the total person, then what does it do? I disagree that such writing is necessarily mechanical. The author goes on to give us a survey of the trends in different aspects of current-traditional rhetoric. The "managerial view of invention," treatment of description, narration, exposition and argument by various texts, rules on paragraphs and principles of arrangement, views on style with no clear definitions besides "the matching of sign to nonverbal reality" (71). He faults the mechanical model for asking the student to "select the subject, narrow it to a thesis, make an outline of the essay, write the essay, and edit for correctness" (74). The author is a genius if he wrote the article without doing any of those things. Finally, he laments the entrenchment of current-traditional rhetoric in the college curriculum.

Corbett's "Introduction" was the most useful and entertaining article offering both contemporary and ancient examples of rhetoric and how they exemplify the its basic principles. The discussion on the techniques employed in the HP advertisement was very informative. He starts with what has by now become familiar to me: the "communications triangle." It is made up of subject-matter, speaker/writer, listener/reader and the text itself. He then explains almost step-by-step how each aspect of the advertisement appeals to the different points on the triangle. The next example of from the a scene in The Illiad in which Odysseus pleads with Achilles. Here the author again presents an example of great rhetoric, then goes into great detail about how and why it works and how it embodies rhetorical ideals. He classifies this particular example as deliberative discourse, concerned with future time, using exhortation and dissuasion with focus on the advantageous and the injurious. It is a model of "the well-organized oration," containing an "exordium, narration, proof and peroration." As Odysseus proceeds through each of these, the author stops at each turn to explain what exactly Odysseus is doing and how well he adheres to these basic tenets. Having given us sufficient examples of real rhetoric in practice, the author goes on to give us a little history on the ideas of rhetoric. He defines the Five Canons of Rhetoric--Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria, and Pronuntiatio. Then moves on the the Three Kinds of Persuasive Discourse--deliberative, forensic, and epideictic. Finally, he ends with the relevance and importance of rhetoric for our times. His finally view seems to be more optimistic and positive about rhetoric as he ends on this little gem from Quintilian: "Therefore let us seek wholeheartedly that true majesty of expression, the fairest gift of God to man, without which all things are struck dumb and robbed both of present glory and the immortal acclaim of posterity; and let us press on to whatever is best, because, if we do this, we shall either reach the summit or at least see many others far beneath us" (26).

Composition Studies Origins

I began this week's reading assignments--my first exposure to the wide world of Composition Theory--with excitement. The feeling quickly wore off as I finished the first few sentences of The Domain of Composition, a work which I didn't understand at first. I think I could understand it now, having gotten into the mindset of reading such work in much the same way I imagine a prisoner resigning himself to the fact that the walls of his cell will never be painted any other color but gray. Have I missed anything important in this article? As one of my literature professors has recently commented something to the effect of, "I could live a happy life knowing I've never read a paragraph of that stuff [composition theory]." Well, that's good for him, but I need this class to graduate. I began to pay closer attention as I realized, whilst reading The Origins of Composition Studies, that the history of the field may actually be a little interesting, but then again, anything can be made interesting when told in story form. It all started after the Civil War, when American colleges began to experience growth based on the German model and certain changes as the emphasis shifted from orality/rhetoric to literacy/composition , eventually blossoming into the university as we know it today. Certain major historical events occurred that forever solidified the status of compositional studies as we know it today, namely the efforts of Harvard to correct student ineptness in writing. I find it interesting that nearly 100 years later, students still don't find first-year compositional particularly helpful and that no other mention is made of composition until first-year graduate school when we are expected to already know everything without ever being taught it.

The issue of mal-education, as I call it, is addressed in 4C, Freshman English, and the Future (and to some degree, in all of the readings). Here, Kitzhaber presents two ground-breaking ideas in how to improve college writing. First, by helping "the high schools do a better job of teaching composition." Second, he proposes "we would have to make Freshman English a much better course than it has been" (132). The way to do this, he claims, is for the field to answer a list of questions taking up half a page. All these decades later, Freshman English has not improved. The authors of Writing Into the 21st Century suggest that this finding "might also provide a point of departure for graduate students and early-career researches, who are wondering where--in the vast landscape of possible research--they should seek to contribute to the field(s)" (472). I agree that out of the thousands of research papers they examined, none of them have had a significant impact on student education and results, therefor, many more thousands must be written. Surely the best way to fix something is by writing about it then studying, ad infinitum, what others have written, then writing about that. Reading this paper, I felt compelled to further the scope of enjoyment for beach-goers by collecting and organizing grains of sand according to size and shape and reporting my findings in hopes of broadening our appreciation and understanding of the sandy shores. Perhaps we can improve the work of artists by subjecting them to a rigorous study on the chemical history of color pigments in paint, documenting trends in the average number of bristles in a paint brush, or finding correlations between the tools used to cut the wood which keeps a canvas stretched and the prevailing artistic styles of the period. Particularly interesting is the study's finding that technology was the least writ about subject in the six year period from 1999-2004 (try as I might, I could not find that sixth year) and the fact that, in my opinion, Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key, is the most engaging and pertinent piece of the week.

I found it interesting that Yancey recognized that most of the writing in today's society is going on outside of the classroom and without teachers; that writers are finding new styles of writing which are tailored to the countless mediums in which it is now possible to write; that average citizens, navigating through the digital age are doing more to further the scope of writing in increasingly more innovative ways than educators; that to become competent in this new period is to engage readers on a social scale (not some minuscule sphere of study which has no influence/relevance to anything outside of it). In "Quartet Three," Yancey details specific ways in which to tailor teaching and curriculum to the changing needs of the 21st century.

I found Where Did Composition Studies Come From? to be the most interesting and informative article. I enjoyed reading about the different trends and modes of thought in criticism and the study of language. I also found the definitions of the various -isms particularly helpful. However, I did not finish the article in time to write anything truly substantial about it.

I look forward to learning more about this vast new field of study which has been opened before my eyes like a treasure box of joys. So far, I am especially interested in further studying the relationship between composition and the emerging technologies, for I believe that to reach the most number of people, one must engage them on their terms and by mastering whatever tools/media/methods/styles/etc they value most.