Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking

"visual perception is visual thinking."  Vision is selective.  Need and opportunities to select a target.

"Most noteworthy is the awesome complexity of the cognitive processes that must be performed in order to make adequate perception possible."

"To see an object in space means to see it in context."  "the sense of vision establishes the size, shape, location, color, brightness, and movement of an object.  To see the object means to tell its own properties from those imposed upon it by its setting and by the observer."

"If a visual item is extricated from its context it becomes a different object.  Similarly, complex situations arise in other areas of perception whenever "two and two" are put together, that is, when several items are seen as a unitary pattern."

Understand what it is by resemblance and contrasts.  (Reminiscent of Burke here.)  Resemblance and contrast never so simple as theories of association would make them seem.  "Perception shifts from similarity to distinction."

"To lift something out of its context means to neglect an important aspect of its nature."

"perception cannot be confined to what the eyes record of the outer world.  A perceptual act is never isolated:  it is only the most recent phase of a stream of innumerable similar acts, performed in the past and surviving in memory."  Part of dialogism.

influence of memory is powerful. "Distinguishing characteristics will also be preserved and exaggerated when they arouse reactions of awe, wonder, contempt, amusement, admiration."

2 important points for the psychology of recognition: 1. "what is recognized in daily life is not necessarily accepted in pictorial representation."  2. One must distinguish b/t a "percept that can be merely understoodseen as such."  Difference here b/t understanding what is shown and what is seen in reality.  Based on memory.

Memory contributes to mental imagery.

"many processes [...] are now known to occur below the threshold of awareness." "Sensory experience [...] is not necessarily conscious. Most certainly it is not consciously remembered."

Mental images not complete replicas.

posted by: rgregory at 22:31 | link | comments |

Kenneth Burke's A Grammar of Motives

"grammar"--system for understanding how humans use motive and are motivated by motives to act

Dramatism

• Act--What was done?
• Scene--Where and when was it done?
• Agent--Who did it?
• Agency--How was it done?
• Purpose--Why was it done?

Intersection of these elements--"Human Barnyard."  All of these overlap and intersect.  Emphasis on pragmatism. 

Dramatism:  A key metaphor as an account for motives such that language and thought are treated as modes of action. 

• Communication actions are motivated.
  
• Motives are the factors which give meaning to motion--actions arise from motives. 
  
• Systems of motives serve as terministic screens: they are linguistic products which provide patterns for interpreting life's activities.
• Why? Because of the logologic of man's symbolic resources
  • If order, then guilt; if guilt, then the need for redemption; but any such 'payment' is victimage, feeding back into the cycle.
  • If action, then drama, then conflict; if conflict then victimage, and feeding back.

• Why?  Because of the definition of man

Definition of human:  symbol using (making, misusing) animal who invented the negative (morals) and is separated from the natural condition by instrument of own making.  Humans are goaded by the spirit of order and hierarchy and are rotten w/ perfection.

(Bulleted list and definition of human from "Introduction to Kenneth Burke")

Intrinsic/extrinsic--know what something is by knowing what it is not.  Know what is something is intrinsically within (substance, core of it) by knowing what is extrinsically outside of it.  Burke refers to Locke's "substances" as an example (know the substance of ideas by knowing their outside, external features).  Intrinsic/Extrinsic contained w/in context.  Define or determine boundaries thru contextual reference.

Also, know what it is through "familial" "unambiguity." 

"All gods are 'substances,' and as such are names for motives or combinations of motives."

"The ambiguity of substance affords, as one might expect, a major resource of rhetoric."  (Reminded here of Richard's definition of rhetoric as the study of misunderstandings and their remedies.)

"Men seek for vocabularies that will be faithful reflections of reality.  To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality.  And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality."

Reduction of the world into words.

Intersubjectivity replaces subjectivity and objectivity.

symbolic construction of social reality.

Booth might agree w/ this statement:  "At a time when the liars, the stupid, and the greedy seem too greatly in control of a society's policies, philosophies of materialistic reduction may bring us much solace in reminding us that the very nature of the materials out of which a civilization is constructed, or in which it is grounded, will not permit such perfection of lies, stupidity, and greed to prevail as some men might cause to prevail if they could have their way."

Universe is structure of ideas--interrelated by reason of their common grounding in the mind of God.

Money as substitute for God.  Money--not a mere agency.  But, motivation for act.

Dialectic of the Scapegoat.

Humanism--able to understand and cognition therefore have knowledge of universe however our knowledge is limited to the capacity of human understanding.

A Rhetoric of Motives

book centers on identification and persuasion. 

Burke--persuasion based on Identification.  More broad than rhetoric as just persuasion.  Audience centered. 

Identification and "Consubstantiality"

"A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified w/ B."

"Identification is [...] to confront the implications of division."  "Disease of cooperation:  war."

"Identification is compensatory to division."  "Pure identification there would be no strife."  "body of identifications."  Identification relies on the symbolic.  "Belonging" is rhetorical.

"autonomy of science" --similar to Vico's theories on perceived dominance of science.   Science to justify suffering.  Technology neutral-- however, humans deem it good or bad based on pragmatics and productivity--which in turn is used to justify morality.  cunning identification (politician).

Rhetoric as socializing and moralizing. rhetorical language is inducement to action. induce action in people. function of $ and religion--to move the masses.

Def of rhetoric:  "rhetoric is rooted in the essential function of language itself [...]:  the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."

Rhetoric based on pragmatics and function. identification contributes to social cohesion.

2 main aspects of rhetoric:  "use of identification and its nature as addressed.  Since identification implies division, we found rhetoric involving us in matters of socialization and faction."

Use of rhetoric to gain advantage.  Q. rhetoric useful and a virtue.  Rhetoric pragmatic and moral.

Similar to Bakhtin's chronotope:  "an act of persuasion is affected by the character of the scene in which it takes place and of the agents to whom it is addressed."

"'persuasion' in turn involves communication by the signs of consubstantiality, the appeal of identification."

brings together ideology and identification. identification through symbolic (film as ultimate in symbolic imagery).

Beginning of human.  Economics make distinctions b/t classes. rhetoric serves to affirm identifications and divisions. back to economics again.  Symbolic (literature, art, film) means of reinforcing divisions and identification.

Mythic ground and context of situation:  "order to which images transcend sensory images." "mythic images would in turn transcend ideas." "moral and intellectual development" [similar to Vico's stages of human civilization and development]

posted by: rgregory at 16:21 | link | comments |

Genre Theory

• Bakhtin, "Speech Genres."  Genre as response to situation.  "utterance," "addressivity."
• Carolyn Miller, "Genre as Social Action"
• Anne Freadman, "Anyone for Tennis?"
• Aviva Freedman, "Situating 'Genre' and Situated Genres:  Understanding Student Writing from a Genre Perspective"
• Anis Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer
• Clark  "Genre" in Concepts in Composition

Post-Process/Dialogic

• Plato, The Phaedrus
• Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination
• Lee-Ann Breuch, "Post-Process 'Pedagogy'"

posted by: rgregory at 23:45 | link | comments (3) |

From the 4C's CFP:

Representing Identities: The first emerging trend is the consideration of electronic media, the way they enhance, hinder, or silence a writer's identities and accomplishments.  The second trend is one of equity: who has (had) access to public space, public discourse, educational and workplace opportunities--and why...  What do we (teachers and students) do? Why do we do it? Why is it important?

I would probably have to examine these statements from the position of "accessibility"--in the sense of constraints based on economic, social, and political factors that can enhance, hinder, and silence writer's identities and accomplishments.  Considering experiences teaching for UB during the summer and my observations in working w/ lower income students and their writing abilities coming from places where accessibility is an issue. 

• Begin w/ Ong and discussion on from Orality and Literacy on using technology in the classroom w/out completely understanding the intended pedagogical purposes.

• David Bartholomae's "Inventing the University":  Member of university discourse community through appropriating discourse of that community.  Writer has to locate him or herself within an unfamiliar discourse community(ies).  Part of locating onself in that community in an electronic media is through discourse--inaccessibility to electronic technologies as means of writing and communication.  Difficulties in that area can lead to difficulties expressing self and establishing persona or ethos in regard to own writing.

• Ellen Barton's article "Interpreting the Discourses of Technology" in Cynthia Selfe and Susan Hilligoss's Literacy and Computers. dominant/anti-dominant discourses.

• Ann Hill Duin and Craig Hansen's article "Reading and Writing on Computer Networks as Social Construction and Social Interaction" in Cynthia Selfe and Susan Hilligoss's Computers and Literacy. social construction (concern for the community of writers and readers) and social interaction (concern for the individual interaction).  Social construction--build meaning thru ongoing process of communication, interpretation, and negotiation in larger context.  Dialogic nature of social construction. Readings reflect social constructive nature of reality.  Social interaction--exchange of ideas and interaction of individual w/ others for specific purpose. Communication is active, deliberate, ongoing, dialogic. Shapes larger social constructions.  Concerns raised in regard to distribution of power and accessibility.   LAN's promoted interaction and collaboration.  Students still recognized instructor as possessing power w/in the class.  Preserves social and political status quo.  Networks encouraged students to exchange ideas and collaborate.   Not quite as successful for Basic Writing students.

• Janis Forman's article "Literacy, Collaboration, and Technology:  New Connections and Challenges" in Cynthia Selfe and Susan Hilligoss's book notes the social, political, and economic differences amongst students that shaped their experiences w/ technology in the classroom.

How do I reconcile issues concerning accessibility and enable students to reflect their identities in the classroom?

• I try to avoid approaching composition instruction from a belletristic position, where "good," effective writing is something one can't "formally" teach and that only learn through reading "good" writing.   Such approaches seem to hinder personal identity by encouraging a style of writing that is typically representative of those of privilege and by assuming that those who "don't get it," never will.  Identity is pluralistic; therefore, I try to be dialogic in my instruction by applying different styles and approach to writing and instruction to meet the needs of individual students.
  

• Genre theory helps meet the goals of the first objective and post-process theory, the goals of the second.
  

• Incorporate technology into the classroom as a means of encouraging those disenfranchised students from further disenfrachisement.  Different writing styles necessary for asynchronous and synchronous discussion boards.  Also means not limiting students to only electronic media.  Variety of learning media available that allows students to work in media that fits w/ their needs.
  

posted by: rgregory at 22:24 | link | comments |

Renaissance and Enlightenment Scholars

Major influence w/ Renaissance and Enlightenment Rhetorical theory--Scientific Revolution

Scientific Revolution--Challenges to Aristotle's theory of the Earth as the center of the universe beginning, in theory, around 1536 when rumors of Copernicus' heliocentric model of the universe spread around Europe and 1543 with the first publication of Copernicus' theory.  Also during this time:

1536--Copernicus' theories began spreading around Europe
1543--Copernicus' theories published
1549--Ramus publishes Arguments in Rhetoric Against Quintilian
1605--Bacon publishes The Advancement of Learning
1610--Galileo publishes theory on astronomical observations on Jupiter and Venus
1620--Bacon publishes Novum Organum
1637--Descartes publishes Discourse on Method
1671-1707--Newton publishes works on optics, gravity, and physics
1689--Locke publishes An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

*Deductive reasoning--to which Aristotle was associated w/--considered to flawed means for knowledge.  Instead, need new system to learn about the universe--inductive reasoning.  Previous theories passed down were wrong and people accepted as truth.  Need new theories to find "real" truth.  Truths that can only be observed by human senses are only trustworthy as legitimate.  Complete rejection of Aristotle in every possible way--astronomical, mathematical, physiological, logical, rhetorical.

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Ramus--Arguments in Rhetoric Against Quintilian (1549).  Attacked Scholasticism.  Attacked classical scholars.  Advocated study in vernacular.  Removed invention, arrangement, and memory from Rhetoric and designated as within the realm of dialectic or logic.  Invention addressing probable knowledge within any sphere of knowledge.  Testing received wisdoms also.  Arrangement should follow format of syllogism. General to specific. Organize by structured division.  Tree diagrams.  Ramus method--simplifies information into smaller, teachable bits of information.  Universalities can then apply to any situation. Rhetoric reduced to simply style and delivery (and delivery wasn't that important since most texts were written).  Reduced trope to four--synecdoche, metonymy, irony, and metaphor. Decontexutalization of knowledge--dire consequences for rhetoric.

Quintilian's discussions on invention and arrangement were useless. Morality irrespective of rhetorical ability. Virtue belonged to dialectic, not rhetoric. Aristotle and Cicero make similar mistakes but Quintilian compiles all of their errors into single work. Q. claiming too much for rhetoric.  Rhetoric own art--not spread among many arts. Virtue can be apart of art, but art is not a moral virtue. Rhetoric loses epistemic function.

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Bacon--The Advancement of Learning (1605).  Novum Organum (1620).  Rejection of classical "truths" handed down in response to Scientific Revolution. Rejected Scholasticism. should use scientific method and logic for knowledge.  Rejected deductive reasoning and syllogism for inductive reasoning applying observation, experimentation, and classification to advance learning.  Does not subscribe to Ramist method based on syllogism or division of rhetoric from dialectic.  Warned against narrow empiricism--positivism.

Faculties of mind to base rhetorical theory:  reason, memory, imagination.  separate: appetite and will. reason--philosophy. memory--history. imagination--poesy. Skeptical of sense perceptions. Subjective--hence discussion of idols in Novum Organum. "Idols of Tribe"--humanity's perceptual limitations. man cannot be the measure of all things, contrary to Protagoras' claim. "Idols of Cave"--individual human's faulty perceptions. "Idols of Marketplace"--faulty perceptions of other's words and perceptions. "Idols of Theatre"--faulty perceptions of commonly-held knowledge.  Keen awareness of limitations of human knowledge. Rejection of syllogism. Advocate of perpiscuity. Apply reason to the imagination to move the will.

The Advancement of Learning. Invention--apply knowledge of what already known to situation at hand. How:  Common places of knowledge: 1. Colors of Good and Evil. 2. de augmentis (stock arguments, debate briefs). 3. formulae (stock phrases). 4. pointed speeches. Observe, converse, study.  In regard to rhetoric, rejected syllogism and inductive reasoning in favor of axioms.  Should use logic and sense perceptions but not necessarily "trust" them as "reality."

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Locke--An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. addresses the notion of language as a signifier of ideas. Specifically in Book III, Chapter IX of Locke’s essay, he argues that language is the means by which people “communicat[e] thoughts to others” (355). Locke also explores the role of language as a tool for “communicating by words either for civil or philosophical purposes” and the complexity and inadequacy of signifying abstract, intangible ideas through language (355).

According to Locke’s essay, “ideas” are “some immediate object of the mind, which it perceives and has before it […] thus determined, i.e. which the mind has in itself, and knows, and sees there, be determined without any change to that name, and that name determined to that precise idea” (Locke 13). In other words, ideas are the mental representations as acquired from the senses of entities (i.e. horses, milk) and notions (i.e. murder, sacrilege). Furthermore, language is only useful as long as it is mutually intelligible. Locke continues by exploring how, as an insufficient tool, language will often give-way to misunderstandings (703), and to circumvent these problems, it is the responsibility of individuals to speak and write as clearly as possible (355).

Ideas were separate from language; however, language was the means by which primary and secondary ideas were conveyed. Primary--general.  Secondary--culture bound. Ideas--identical.  Words--ambigious.  Rhetoric increases ambiguity.  Emphasis on perpescuity to remedy that.  Understanding and will.

Theory of Ideas--
Sensory Experience--> Reflection on that experience--> produces ideas--> mind holds together and makes connections and traces relationships b/t ideas--> Ideas united together by laws of association and by reason.  --> add pathetic appeals and you get *action.*

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Vico--On the Study Methods of Our Time. 1709. Rejection of Descartes’ “True Knowledge”: Descartes argues for “true knowledge” there can be no doubt—Human reason is capable of critiquing received wisdom but received wisdom should also be challenged by newly discovered universals and absolutes. However, because of this focus on universal and absolute truths, culture-bound knowledge was not considered significant or relevant. In other words, the only knowledge of use to human beings is that which can be proven absolutely through observation or experimentation.  Rhetoric better suited for human knowledge. knowledge cannot be separated from language. knowledge bound in human reason. humans limited to historical circumstances.  Concern for ethos. "Common Sense." matters of probability and belief. Imagination.

Vico’s Rejection of Cartesian Philosophy. Vico opposes in Opere this method of inquiry because there is no subject that is not grounded in some doubt. Specifically, human beings only assume that the foundations of mathematics and geometry are scientifically proven because they have been told to believe so; however, only God, as the creator of the universe, knows for certain the laws that govern it. Vico’s first axiom in The New Science reiterates this claim: “Because of the indefinite nature of the human mind, wherever it is lost in ignorance, man makes himself the measure of all things” (54) because “[w]hen men are ignorant of the natural causes producing things, and cannot even explain them by analogy with similar things, they attribute their own nature to them. The vulgar, for example, say the magnet loves the iron” (63).

Epistemic Importance of Imagination and Common Sense. Vico again privileges invention and imagination over scientific investigation in On the Study Methods of Our Time when he argues that “the invention of arguments is by nature prior to the judgment of their validity, so that, in teaching, that invention should be given priority over philosophical criticism” (14). Vico reiterates the importance of imagination and invention in The New Science when he writes, “Imagination is more robust in proportion as reasoning power is weak” (66).

Importance of Human Affairs and Subjects Concerned with Human Affairs. Vico also challenges Cartesian disregard for subjects such as ethics, politics, logic, history, and medicine, which are not considered subjects worthy of study they are matters of human affairs with multiple circumstances and relative casualty (Bizzell and Herzberg 711). From this, Vico’s asserts in The New Science that since all knowledge is based on an understanding of human epistemology, rhetoric and philosophy can provide the universal truths that empiricists seek: “To be useful to the human race, philosophy must raise and direct weak and fallen man, not rend his nature or abandon him in his corruption” (55) since “[p]hilosophy contemplates reason, whence comes knowledge of the true; philology observes the authority of human choice, whence comes consciousness of the certain” (56).

Pedagogical Implications of Cartesian Theory. Vico argues in On the Study Methods of Our Time that “the greatest drawback of our educational methods is that we pay an excessive amount of attention to the natural sciences and not enough to ethics” (33). Vico continues, “Our chief fault is that we disregard that part of ethics which treats of human character, of its dispositions, its passions, and of the manner of adjusting these factors to public life and eloquence” (On the Study Methods of Our Time 33). Vico argues that subjects such as ethics, rhetoric, and language are more useful to scholars: “Abstract, or general truths are eternal; concrete or specific ones change momentarily from truths to untruths” (On the Study Methods of Our Time 34-5).

Balance in Education. Vico recommends that studies should reflect a balance. Students should study both human affairs and scientific truths since understanding one helps students to understand the other. In other words, language has an epistemic function that facilitates a complexity of human understanding of concepts; such complexities of understanding lead to complexities in the social order.

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Campbell--Philosophy of Rhetoric. 1776. Psychological rhetoric. Ground rhetoric in human nature. Different faculties used for understanding different experiences. Involve the faculties in discourse. Forms of discourse. Emphasizes induction—use of faculties for direct observation. Invention no longer w/in realm of rhetoric. Instead, methodology and genius were necessary. Adapting message to audience’s faculties.

New rhetoric as counterpart of new logic. Scottish Common Sense Realism, communication grounded in philosophy consciously opposed to Scholasticism. Reality is not a rational construct revealed through syllogistic logic. Deductive logic can never discover the truth in science and ethics. Induction could. Allowed individuals to communicate w/ language to act on the audiences’ faculties, attempting to reproduce original experience. Knowledge—extralinguistic. Rhetoric becomes elaboration of what was already observed or discovered. Invention not about discovery but about managing discoveries already uncovered. Importance of eloquence. Managing discoveries requires knowing how to “enlighten,” “please,” “move,” and “influence.” Psychological effects of rhetoric. Rhetoric becomes study of how discourse achieves its effects. Rhetoric primarily concerned w/ emotion. No motives are possible w/out emotion. Sensation. Memory. Imagination. Book 2 concerned w/ usage. Reputable, national, present usage. (Context). Campbell’s concern w/ usage becomes central to American textbooks at the end of the 19th century. Book 2, chapter 5 also concerned w/ style—perspicuity, vivacity, elegance, animation, music. Shift from Aristotle’s concern for “truth” to concern w/ effects.

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Blair--Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres. 1783. Belle-tristic rhetoric. Emphasizes style. Reading inevitably leads to good writing. Metaphor important. Rhetoric study of all discourses. Deals only w/ stylistic principles—see literary works. Invention no longer part of rhetoric. Arrangement not really considered at all. Emphasis on written rather than oral discourse. 18th century rhetoric paradigm for 20th century composition studies. Persuasive discourses—appeals to emotions and will, as well—delegated to oral discourses. Writing courses concerned w/ reason and understanding, with little emotional content. Positivist in spirit and method.

While Campbell had the treatise on rhetoric, Blair provided the treatment of rhetoric until after the Civil War. Blair intended work to be practical guide, not theoretical text. Focuses on literary taste. Literary analysis. Effective writing learned through reading examples of effective writing. Rhetoric almost exclusively stylistic. Emphasis on written rather than oral. Important b/c he provided a model for using literature to teach writing. Effects of art on audience. Source of invention: genius. Importance of the sublime for discovering meaning. Poet does not create forms of reality—copies them.

Genius is key to invention. Rules and instruction cannot “inspire genius” but can direct and assist it.

“taste” “manners” “grace” “slovenly and incorrect” “of polishing style” “than of storing it with thought” “manly beauties of good writing” “distinguishing false ornament from true” “good sense and refined taste” “grandeur” “eloquence” “fancy”

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Whately--Elements of Rhetoric. 1828. Not necessarily compatible w/ Campbell and Blair. Attempt to return to Aristotelian deductive model in rhetoric. Wed an “adumbrated deductive logic” with an empirical epistemology (Berlin 29). New scheme of invention to suit the new psychological rhetoric. Foremost contribution is practical nature of work. Intended to be a guide for students at Oxford. Offers a two-part scheme for replacing inventio of discovery (removed from rhetoric by Campbell) w/ inventio of management of material appropriated elsewhere. Description of how composing process should be taught is most pervasive feature of his scheme in later writing textbooks. Assist students to find topic or subject for a theme. Should be engaging to the student and should focus on something student already knows about. Selected from students’ studies, from stimulating conversations w/ elders, or from everyday occurrences of interest. Discovery isn’t domain of instructor—style and correctness is and should be emphasized. Encourages revision of student work by student following feedback from instructor.

posted by: rgregory at 01:01 | link | comments |

Outline to a response on technology in comp classroom:

Of course, need to define "technology," first.  In Selfe and Hilligoss's Literacy and Computers, Ellen Barton discusses how technology is an instrument that enables writers to commence writing, such as pen, paper, book, pencil, computer program, keyboard, voice-recognition software...  Important distinction I believe b/c we typically only think of technology and composition as it relates to computers.  But...

Discussions of technology venture into accessibility--some Barton discusses in Literacy and Computers.  Dominant (popular media typically most vocal advocates), anti-dominant discourses (Rose and Lundsford to name two scholars interested in.)

In Irene Clark's book, electronic technology is very broad.  Word processing, invention software (like those Burns worked on), grammar tutorials, grammar and spell checkers (what so many often think of in regard to technology in the composition classroom), OWL's, hypertext, hypermedia, LAN (local area network) systems, WWW, course-management software (BB), student webpages, MOO's, and plagiarism detection websites and software.

Chris Anson points out and is noted in Clark's book that composition instructors often feel pressured to incorporate technology into their pedagogy without knowing why or how because of university pressures. 

What do I do:
Discussion Board and chat on BB--

Discussion board as a "brainstorming" or "pre-writing" on the subject of the papers.  Don't evaluate the writing--more for the experience of writing on topic than for writing academic prose. 

Chat--to discuss the readings once or twice a paper cycle (sometimes 2 or 3 times a semester) w/ everyone together in room.  Clark notes how synchronous learning environments like chat can take the focus off of the teacher to give the "right" answer and can encourage students to speak up.  Also, students seem more engaged b/c it's more "fun" it seems. 

Emig discussing in "Writing as a Mode of Learning" the difference b/t talking and writing and I think chat helps to bridge those gaps.  learning to communicate effectively and productively in a mode that might not be as familiar w/ students as academic "writing" but can...

posted by: rgregory at 17:18 | link | comments (2) |

Outline to a response on grammar pedagogical approach:

How do I approach grammar instruction in my class?  Considering the differing opinions on grammar instruction...  Hartwell's article, "Grammar, Grammars, and Teaching Grammar" addresses some of these different viewpoints.  Particular interest:  teaching grammar doesn't necessarily mean students' writing is more effective or doesn't have those very grammar issues in them.

So, I need to define "grammar," first, I suppose. Hartwell id's three "grammars":  formal patterns arranged that conveys meaning. formalization of those patterns.  linguistic etiquette. 

Irene Clark defines "grammar" in Concepts in Composition as the internalized systems of representation that correspond to language. and pedagogical grammar--appropriating that system that corresponds with language usage conventions. 

Most often, concerns are for students learning "rules" of grammar etiquette or pedagogical grammar.

Concerns are that teaching grammar takes away from "higher order" rhetorical abilities, like invention and arrangement.  Micciche "A Case for Rhetorical Grammar" addresses these concerns in her article.  Other concerns:  setting students up to "fail" b/c so much of "good" writing is determined by "good grammar."  Shaughnessy addresses this concern in Errors and Expectations.  Can't learn the "rules" for the game if instructors aren't willing to teach students them.

And, there's the concern I have for "style" being appropriated w/ grammar instruction.  Lundsford and Ede address this concern for style as connected to grammar and audience in their article, "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked."  Style connected w/ grammar so often in books like Strunk and White's Elements of Style.  Arguing for grammar rules account for "style."  Connecting style w/ grammar seems unethical in Lundsford and Ede's article b/c assuming singular appropriate or likeminded audience.  not the case.  audiences, style, and grammars change w/ rhetorical situation.

I approach grammar from a descriptive perspective.  Micciche argues that grammar should be taught as part of rhetorical situation or context.  I agree w/ that, especially considering my interests in genre-theory and social construction/transaction theories.  Meaningful writing instruction has to happen in a meaningful writing environment, the same applies to grammar writing instruction.  Can't teach, as Anne Freadman notes in "Anyone for Tennis?" rhetorical genres and rhetorical moves absent of rhetorical situations.  Same applies to grammar instruction.  Drill-and-kill just doesn't seem to work.

So, I let the students write their papers will little interference in regard to grammar and usage (influence of post-process here, too).  Then, in evaluating their papers--sometimes in the margin, sometimes in the terminal comments, I encourage them to look more carefully at subject/verb agreement.  Fragment sentences.  Run-ons in their papers and look at the discussions in the handbook.  I, then, encourage the students to work on these issues (in addition to the others noted) for their resubmissions.  Sometimes, I'll identify a possessive noun by noting "possessive."  Other times, I'll edit it for the student, "Tom's."  Depends on the student and paper.  But, I don't mark every single instance and if the problem is a significant one, I note in the terminal comments.

Hartwell encourages to have students read papers aloud to each other or to *just* make notes in the margin.  I tend to agree w/ Shaughnessy in the regard that students need instruction in the grammar and mechanics usage sometimes.  They don't always know the usage so find them on their own.  Have students read aloud first, catching as many as they can on their own.  Then help them to understand the rule if they still need that additional instruction.  Typically do this more one-on-one in conferences or office hours.  Here's where it gets descriptive.  Trying to describe "why" the "linguistic etiquette" exists rather than just saying it does.  Knowing when and why and how to apply the rule makes it easier to remember and appropriate into own discourse.  Also, goes back to rhetorical situation.  Not all rules apply to all situations.  Again, back to ethical approach to grammar.   See such controversies w/ AAVE and Spanglish.  One appropriate grammar.  One appropriate linguistic system.

posted by: rgregory at 17:16 | link | comments (1) |

Comp Theory 1860's--1980's
(part of discussion from James J. Murphy's A Short History of Writing Instruction, particularly Catherine Hobbs' and James Berlin's chapter "A Century of Writing Instruction in School and College English.")

• 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act.
• 1860's-1900's--everything organized and professionalized. Elective courses. Specialized.
  
• Science incorporated into many disciplines.
• Vocational training.
• 19th cent. emphasis on "American":  new courses, new subjects.
• Belle Lettres--but concern for American writing (Emerson).  Not interpretation but appreciation.
• Introduction of women into classroom.
• Writing primary means of evaluation over declamatio.
• Harvard's "English A"--comp moved from 2nd year to 1st.  Writing separated from other disciplines.
• New comprehensive university modeled after German universities.

Old University                                 New University
Classics                                           Land Grant Universities
Tutorial System                                 Lectures
Teachers taught every course             Specialization
Recitation                                         Writing Assignments
Public Speaking                                Specific Composition Courses. 
Declamatio                                       Other courses do not have to "teach" writing.
Male, Literary Fraternity                     Women in courses

Movements in American Comp Teaching

• Liberal Culture.  Literature based.  Write good writing leads to being able to write well.  reacting against scientific approach to comp and lit.  Teaching connected w/ morality.  little to do w/ kairos, public discourse, invention.  Concerned w/ lit crit. self-development. spiritual quality. Yale.  Connections to the "Sublime" and Blair.  Literary text expression of human potential. Literature--truth, goodness, and beauty.  C-R--too democratic.  Sublime writing cannot be taught. Literature connected to culture.  Aristocratic. 
  


• Alternative Social Rhetoric. Scott. Buck.continuation of some classical--kairos, Cicero. public discourse for public good. paragraph writing. important but not very influential at time.  invention.  originality. discourse for specific purposes.  Neither completely sensory or subjective. Both private and public setting. Rhetoric of public service.  Rhetoric of public good. Writing as social act of complex interaction between writer, audience, subject, and language.
  

• Current Traditional Rhetoric. skills emphasis. mechanics. product over process. modes of discourse. non-heuristic. non-kairos. conflict w/ l-c b/c c-t writing is a teachable skill.  l-c writing for self. Began at Harvard in response to report.  Based on scientific method. Reliable knowledge is sense impression. Use inductive methods to derive data. Language stands in for experience. Mind is a set of faculties.  Faculties correspond to expression and discourse.  Modes of discourse. Exposition and argumentation--reason.  Description and Persuasion--emotion and will.  Knowledge exists prior to discourse. Emphasis on arrangement and style (correctness).  Objective, mechanical, disinterested rhetoric. Scientific pedagogy.
  

Major Figures
    A. S. Hill. Harvard.  English A.  Why Johnny Can't Write.
    F. N. Scott. taught at Michigan.  Founded MLA. developed own program apart from lit.
    Gertrude Buck. 1st woman w/ PhD in Rhetoric.
    Edwin Hopkins.

Movements of 20's and 30's--

• "Efficiency." WWI. productivity and efficiency. schools take business model.  more students to fewer teachers.  Psychological development for planning pedagogy.
  

• Expressionism. Opposite of efficiency.  extreme l-c. more democratic.  influenced by Freud.  marginalized groups find expressionism appealing. cultural implications other than discourse. Concern for unique individual.  Creative potential of student (coming out of optimism for education following WWI).  Dehumanizing effects of industrialized capitalism. Process beginning.
  

• Current Traditional Rhetoric.  Connected w/ Behaviorism and concern for measurement through testing.
  

40's and 50's--development of 4C's in '49 (Revival of interest in composition)

• "Comp Lit." humanist.  literature-based. quality of writing and thinking primary focus.
  

• Social Rhetoric. similar to transactional theory.
  

• Communication Skills. part of general education. remedial. reaction to influx of G.I. Bill Veterans w/ limited educational background.  combined speech and composition. ultimately failed b/c conflict b/t faculty. logistical problems. became communication courses.
• Current Traditional Rhetoric.
  

60's and 70's--

• Neo-Classicism. Corbitt, Classical Rhetoric for Modern Student.  Course in content. more about logic. argumentation. little interaction w/ current discourse. 
• Linguistics (Structuralism, structural grammar). language as a science. words' function.
  

• Neo-expressionism. K. Macrorie, P. Elbow. Vietnam changed pedagogy.  Themes writing. Journalistic writing about self to learn "voice." free writing. writing for self-development rather than part of social discourse.  anti-product. anti c-r. composing process. some backlash b/c no concern for product.
  

• Current Traditional Rhetoric.

late 70's and 80's--

• Cognitivism. Flower, J. Emig, Mike Rose. cognitive process of writing. students wrote while talking about writing choices. composing process became part of writing programs' pedagogy. Rose--interest in Writer's Block.  Most stuck in c-t model. stuck on grammar. encouraged free writing.
  

• Current Traditional Rhetoric.

• Linguistics (sentence combining). Christianson. sentence types as methods of construction. generative rhetoric of sentence. no kairos. no context. no theme/ rhyme. Kellogg-Hunt model.  T-units.  Kernel sentences. improve syntactic maturity. school of education. classes on combining sentences. no reading. no contexts. no invention.  anti-process pedagogy. no theoretical background.
  

• Open admissions: two year colleges.

• "Basic Writing." culturally marginized.  problems w/ print code conventions and syntax.     problems w/ discourse features--pragmatic and semantic. Cognitivism. Linguistic perspective. error analysis. dialect interference.  (Shaughnessy and Bolin). Culturalism. "membership"      model. discourse and acculturaltion. worldview clashes (Bizzell). marginalization. rejection of acculturation (hooks).

• ESL.

1980's and after--

• Social Constructionism. Zhan-Lu. discourse deeply involved w/ culture. anti-skill approach. cultural studies. feminism. political mvmt.
  

• Post Modernism. meaning is entirely contextual. cannot pin down language.    

• Abolition Movements.combined w/ lit-comp theories and efficiency models at many two year colleges.

• E-Comp. Selfe.

posted by: rgregory at 16:09 | link | comments |

John Swales, Genre Analysis

Culture --> Situation --> Communicative Purpose --> Genres

taxonomies by communicative purpose

commitment to community--part of discourse community
no internal communication--not a discourse community

Shared communicative purpose

posted by: rgregory at 20:01 | link | comments |

James Kinneavy, A Theory of Discourse

Discourse and the Field of English
Difference b/t Greek and Romans:  Romans insisted on the more practical, whereas the Greek moved sometimes to the rhetoric that practicing sophists sarcastically called poetry.

Isocrates won over Plato.

Aims of discourse during Antiquity:  literary, persuasive (dialectical), and pursuit of truth (rhetorical)

---- during the Middle Ages:  literary, rhetorical, dialectical--Trivium of seven liberal arts.
shifted from Isocrates to Plato.  Concern for divine "truth."  Dialectical debate. 

Big jump from Renaissance to 19th century.  Emphasis on grammar, progymnasmata, and ars...

19th century:  important--clear classification system, Bain's modes of discourse:  narration, exposition, description, argumentation, persuasion.  Coincided w/ narrowing of English studies to literature.

The Aims of Discourse


Reference Discourse
    Scientific
    Informative
    Exploratory

Persuasive Discourse
    Ethical argument
    Pathetic argument
    Logical argument
  
Literary Discourse
    Mimetic
    Expressive
    Pragmatic
   
Expressive Discourse
   

posted by: rgregory at 19:37 | link | comments |

Quotes to keep in mind...

"From Plato to Levi-Strauss, the spoken word has held a privileged position in the Western worldview, being regarded as intimately involved in our sense of self and constituting a sign of truth and authenticity" (Chandler 51).

"Symbols resist individualistic interpretation because they are overdetermined by customary usage, embedded so frequently in conventional discourse that they rarely take on a reflective, individual meaning" (Hill and Helmers 4).

"The positive outcome of this interdisciplinarity is that 'visual culture ... is a site of convergence and conversation across disciplinary lines'" (qtd in Hill and Helmers 18).

"Pictorial Turn"--"a growing recognition of the ubiquity of images and of their importance in the dissemination and reception of information, ideas, and opinions--processes that lie at the heart of all rhetorical practices, social movements, and cultural institutions" (Hill and Helmers 19).

The image came to be used to "prompt an immediate, visceral response, to develop cognitive (though largely unconscious) connections over a sustained period of time, or to prompt conscious analytical thought" (Hill 37).

posted by: rgregory at 01:45 | link | comments |

Alright, in regard to my first question, I was thinking about over the holiday the bigger, "So what?" of visual rhetoric.  I've touched upon this before in my blog, but after reading the different "rhetorics" presented by Kennedy, Booth, and Berlin in the past couple days, I wondered where visual rhetoric "fit" into the discussion.  So, just to blog some different ideas I had on the topic...

While Foss defines rhetoric in Rhetorical Criticism as "the action humans perform when they use symbols for the purpose of communicating with one another" based on "action," "symbolic action," and "human action" for the purposes of "enabling communication" and does not specifically limit her definition to print or oral discourses, it seems throughout the rhetorical tradition that the distinction is there.  Quintilian defines rhetoric as the "science of speaking well."  Augustine defines it as the "art of expressing clearly, ornately, persuasively, and fully the truths in which thought has discovered acutely."  George Campbell defines rhetoric as the "art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end."  Kenneth Burke defines rhetoric as "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation," and Lloyd Bitzer defines rhetoric as "a mode of altering reality [...] through the creation of discourse which changes reality."  Andrea Lundsford defines rhetoric as "the study, art, and practice of all human communication."  These definitions emphasize language and discourse and do not mention specifically other means of "inducing cooperation."

So, where does visual rhetoric "fit" within the rhetorical tradition?  I argued in a posting online in a Visual Rhetoric class that printed, textual discourses rely on visual rhetoric in the sense that letters are graphemes strung together and interpreted as meaning something.  Semiotics, as the study of signs, relies on the interpretation of images--visual images being just one of them.

I was also thinking about the previous definitions of rhetoric I mentioned as something one uses and something one studies.  Visual rhetoric seems to fit here in that we use images to convey messages that might be more persuasive than texts.  Perhaps, one needs to 'transport' his or her audience into the scene and the limitations of ekphrasis (visualizing a scene through words) just doesn't cut it. 

Of course, I would also need to set up my response chronologically of sorts.  Connect visual rhetoric to rhetorical tradition.  I need to review an article I have on that...  Move from Classical through Middle Ages (church window, for instance) to contemporary concerns.  Semiotics (Richards, Peirce, Saussure).  [Post]Structuralism (Barthes).  Visual design.  Visual grammar (Kress).  Visual literacy.

Of course, any discussion on future research and scholarship in visual rhetoric would have to include a discussion on new media and electronic and interactive literature.  And, a discussion on availability of images (perhaps, going back to visual literacy) on internet and television (Welch's book would work well here on "electric rhetoric").

I could even "connect" visual rhetoric throughout the rhetorical tradition through the canon of arrangement, delivery, and memory...  [thinking]  Modern concerns for visual rhetoric address arrangement in the placement of images and texts on the page (a relationship referred to as paragonal, fyi) for comprehension, especially as it relates to marketing, advertising, and web design.  Ooooh, that might be for an "original" approach to a discussion on visual rhetoric.

Interestingly, on the CCCC's website blog, several researchers from Kent State are examining the form and function of instant messaging as literate practice.  I could see this taking visual rhetoric in new areas since instant messaging "changes" the text as a sign for the needs of the user.  Instant messaging relies on the "visualization" of the word so that users have to acquire almost another kind of literacy to understand shortened words, phrases, and emoticons. 

---

Okay, so to outline a possible response:

• Definitions of rhetoric typically privilege spoken and printed texts.  (Q., Augustine, Campbell, Burke, Bizter--need to work on memorizing those definitions for good measure)
• Visual rhetoric connected to "rhetorical tradition" though b/c images persuade like texts--just differently, according to Donis A. Dondis
• Chronological discussion of visual rhetoric from Classical to contemporary times.
  
• Contemporary visual rhetorical theory connected to rhetorical tradition in the canon of arrangement, delivery, and memory.
• Future of visual rhetorical scholarship...  "electronic citizenry"...  every aspect of culture determined and mitigated by images.  Images of Katrina still haunted voters this past November.  Images of 9/11 towers so powerful prompted America to go to war in Iraq.

Maybe I would just need to focus on one aspect to carry the discussion through?  Visual rhetoric as relates to canon of delivery and memory throughout rhetorical tradition?  That might work better...

posted by: rgregory at 01:35 | link | comments |

Dr. T wanted me to write two questions for my third area, so here is what I submitted:

1.In the J. Anthony Blair’s essay, “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments,” Blair argues, “Arguments in the traditional sense consists of supplying grounds for beliefs, attitudes or actions, and […] that pictures can equally be the medium for such communication. Argument, in the traditional sense, can readily be visual” (Hill and Helmers 59). However, as Blair notes, “The concept of rhetoric as essentially about speech has remained with us to this day” and rhetorical criticism has largely been concerned with oral and print discourses.

Therefore, considering the persuasive appeal and pervasiveness of visual images in our culture, where does visual rhetoric fit within the rhetorical tradition? In other words, how does the study of images and symbols fit within a tradition that has overwhelmingly privileged spoken or written discourses? What similarities does visual rhetoric share with other “rhetorics”?

2. In his book A Primer for Visual Literacy, Donis A. Dondis states, “Most of what we know and learn, what we buy and believe, what we recognize and desire, is determined by the domination of the human psyche by the photograph. And it will be more so in the future” (6-7). While images, like photographs, will continue to play an important role in communication in our 21st century society, Dondis is concerned with the “mindless, custodial-playtime function the visual arts serve in the curriculum and the similar state that exists in the use of the media, cameras, film, and television” (11). Dondis advocates “visual literacy” so that individuals can understand the ways that images persuade and manipulate.

Why should 21st century scholars be concerned with visual literacy? Besides, “where” and “how” might one go about teaching visual literacy? What place does visual literacy have in an English or Rhetoric program? Should and can visual literacy be taught in the first-year composition classroom?

Now to answer them myself...

posted by: rgregory at 00:12 | link | comments |

If you'd like to know when I hit my wall... What it's like to live in my house for just a moment... What it's like to raise an autistic child while studying for the most important exams of my life...

I take my comps Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I have 1 week to go. I'm exhausted from studying 6-7 hours a day for the past 2 weeks. And, several hours a day since July. I can't see the floor in the living room, and I've been wearing the same clothes all week. I have piles and piles of clothes that need to be folded and put away. I think I have friends, but I haven't seen or spoken to them in weeks. I feel like a hermit.

So, today, in the midst of studying visual rhetoric (after running to Kroger to buy Day-Quil for my cold), Tobey decided to help me out and "clean" my bathroom. The only reason he was in my room to begin with is that I put a movie on in my room so that he'd stay in there and I could study in the living room. Back to Tobey: Tobey got some Spongebob Squarepants bath "paint" for Christmas yesterday. Three good-sized bottles of red, blue, and yellow dishwashing soap, primarily. And, to which he poured the entire contents of all over my bathroom floor and sink. Tobey, then, decided to slid around on his hands and knees and stomach and back to make sure the bathroom was completely "clean."

So, Tobey (with blue and red paint all over him) came to tell me "don't fall in the bathroom, Momma." "Don't fall, Momma." "Don't fall, Momma." So, in "autism-speak" or "Tobey-speak" means, "I poured something all over the floor in the bathroom, so don't go in there. And, if you do, don't fall." And, what did I do: walked into the bathroom to see what was going on and fell on my ass on the marble floor. Hard. Right on my ass. And, what did I do: I just sat on the floor, in the middle of blue and red soap/paint, in all of my ridiculousness, and cried my eyes out.

And, if you've ever tired to "mop up" dishwashing soap, it's like trying to mop up Vaseline. Because the more you try, the messier it gets. My house is a trainwreck and I'm tired. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of saying I'm tired.

Back to the bathroom...

posted by: rgregory at 19:02 | link | comments (3) |

Literacy and Computers, Eds. Cynthia Selfe and Susan Hilligoss

Definition of literacy is laden w/ political, economic, and educational agendas.

Literacy education--learn from looking, listening, talking, and taking part in authentic tasks we understand [like this blog, hopefully]

Sharing what we know helps bring the group to higher performance than private reflections do.

To make computer-based education work: understand the model of literacy used and apply a critical perspective of technology and its theoretical implications for classroom use.

"Walter Ong, in Orality and Literacy, calls the 'noetic economy' of the culture, educational discussions of technology's impact have too often ignored these larger issues [of policy, influence, politics], addressing instead more pragmatic pedagogical concerns."

2 prevailing discourses on technology:
1. "a dominant discourse characterized by an optimistic interpretation of technology's progress in American culture and by traditional views of the relations between technology, literacy, and education"
2. "an antidominant discourse characterized by a skeptical interpretation of technology's integration in contemporary culture and education." [I can see such criticisms w/ the students at UB and their limited access to education.--work into response?]

Dominant discourse:  optimistic interpretation one found in popular media and culture.  optimistic interpretation based on 2 assumptions: 1. technology here to stay and 2. technology benefits most everyone (boon to productivity for instance)

American educational system will produce technologically literate (and productive) workforce.  Connections made b/t technology, literacy, and education.  To enable this--add computer courses.  Add computers to all the classrooms.

technology connected w/ productivity and progress throughout industrial revolution to digital revolution--dynamic and cumulative process w/ economic benefits and continuous student achievement and educational improvement.  Technology connected to social values.  While may help community as a whole, may not help individuals.

technology and automation lead to more profit for employers and better psychological well-being of employees.

"rhetoric of enthusiasm" appears w/ describing benefits of integrating technology into the writing classroom. antidominant discourse typically refers to integration into English studies.  beneficial relation b/t technology and education assumed.

Going back to Porter and Sullivan's criticisms of composition methodologies, Barton's discussion on dominant discourses illustrates how the motivations of the researcher can bias the findings of the research.  As Barton notes, the dominant discourses typically favor technological innovation in the classroom irrespective of socio-economic and pedagogical concerns.  It seems like the positives inherently out-weigh the negatives without any serious considerations of those negatives.

(Jane Zeni responds to similar concerns in her essay "Literacy, Technology, and Teacher Education" arguing that scholars should engage in "action research" employing feminist research methods that encourage open relationships b/t researcher and researched, knowledge drawn from human reflection, not objectivism.)

in the classroom, technology can shift the existing social structures and visions. anonymity can allow for more interaction b/t students and instructor.  competition based, not on personality, but on ideas.  (Ellen Barton, still)

Antidominant discourse:  less desirable consequences.  Revenue will remain w/ small and powerful caste that is linguistically and ethnically unified.  Critics--Terry Eagleton, Mike Rose, James Berlin, Patricia Bizzell

oppressive nature and safeguard the status quo.  maintenance of unequal relations of power and authority.  unequal distribution of technology.  benefits of technology not extended equally amongst wealthier and poorer school districts. 

computer networks based on social construction theory that "groups of people, bound by shared experiences or interests, build meaning through an ongoing process of communication, interpretation, and negotiation" (from Ann Hill Duin and Craig Hansen's "Reading and Writing on Computer Networks")

dialogic nature of social construction.  Bakhtin "articulated a theory of dialogue grounded in a social context.  A speaker gives voice to a thought, an utterance."

social interaction--mechanism by which social construction takes place.

Bakhtin's theory as it is useful for literacy (based on theories of social construction and social interaction) "communication is active, deliberative process, where listeners and readers are fully engaged in meaning as are speakers and writers and where ongoing dialogue shapes and reshapes the larger social context" (Duin and Hansen).

grounded in interaction among students and instructors and discourse community and larger community (Swales here).

Social interaction and social construction in regard to technology: 

• students have chance to participate in meaning making, in the development of situated literacy(ies).
  
• change relationship amongst instructors and students
• form interactive discourse communities that can ease cultural tensions and situate literacy in a specific social context.

Janis Forman in "Literacy, Collaboration, and Technology: New Connections and Challenges" argues that broad cultural, political, and socioeconomic forces influence the way students learn to read and write and what constitutes learning."

Collaborative learning classroom--complex and problematic, especially when combined w/ technological concerns.

"Computer-Supported Literacy"--"consists of a complex set of competencies--the ability to work in groups effectively, to learn collaboratively, to create a high quality written product, and to make intelligent choices and uses of technology that assist in collaborative composing."

Access becomes issue of enfranchisement.  But, political, social, and economic forces are constantly at play.  inefficiencies and unproductive conflict.

Questions to consider for future research:

• "Effects of broad societal forces, school cultures, group functions and processes, and individual preferences on such literacy practices?"
• "Technology introduced and diffused w/in a community?"
• "Instructors' and institutions' definitions of literacy influence the ways that technology is introduced and used?"

"Writing the Technology that Writes Us:  Research on Literacy and the Shape of Technology," Chistina Haas and Christine M. Neuwirth

literacy technologies are not value-neutral, straightforward, or unproblematic.  Views on computers and on literacy are value-laden.  Such views influence "the construction of our individual and collective selves in relation to technology."

Assumptions regarding technology: 

• "transparent."--ignore how processes and products influenced by various media.  See as transparent then ignore the effects of technology.
  
• "all-powerful"--studies become justification for computers rather than about them.
• "not our job"--produce division of labor

posted by: rgregory at 03:22 | link | comments (3) |

Erika Lindemann's A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers

book discusses how writing teachers can teach writing.  offers a theoretical framework. 

Why teach writing?

• economic power
• social necessity
• way of knowing and solve problems

What is writing?

• process of communication
• a conventional graphic system
• something that conveys a message

Addresser
Addressee.  Audience addressed v. audience invoked. 
Context.
Message.
Contact.  Pen. Paper. Computer.
Code.

What does process involve?  Not always sequential. 

Prewriting.  Karen Burke LeFevre notes in Invention as a Social Act that there are 4 perspectives on invention:
1. Platonic (invention is a private act of an individual writer drawing upon inner resources),
2. Internal dialogic (writer involved in dialog w/ other "self"),
3. Collaborative (actual people interact w/ us to create a constructive environment for prewriting),
4. Collective (invention constrained and encouraged by social collectives reflected in institutions, societal prohibitions, and cultural expectations).

1. helps develop the discourse based on what we already know and 2. helps assess our feelings about the message.

Writing.
Hayes and Flowers--translating.
"knowledge problem"--"language problem"--"rhetorical problem"

Rewriting.
Emig--reformulation
Revising. Editing. Reviewing.
External and internal revision.

Writing as Social Act.  "Ecological model for writing" by Marilyn Cooper:  ideas, purposes, interpersonal interactions, cultural norms, textual forms.

• Know about rhetoric.

• Know about linguistics.   Grammar and usage.  assumptions about what language should and shouldn't be reflect personal and cultural values.  Arbitrary rules.  Not good or bad.  Simply exist. 

• Know about cognition.

Grammar--"a capacity for language."  Traditional grammar. Structural grammar. Generative-transformational grammar.

Usage--"linguistic etiquette, socially sanctioned styles of language appropriate to given situations and audiences."

Grammar is a knowledge about language.   18th century rules to correct, improve, and fix English language.

Traditional grammar--Prescriptive.
Structural--Descriptive.  (Identifies what changes have occurred, not whether right or wrong.)

George Campbell--advanced the theory that contemporary usage must determine what's appropriate or standard in English. 

Generative-Transformational--Constructive (how sentences are constructed in language usage)

Cognition.  Creativity. Perception.  Conception.  teachers should be aware that they employ different strategies for thinking than their students do. learning depends on relationships w/ others. respect each other's cognitive spaces. intellectual growth occurs b/c of appropriate "higher-level" stimuli.

Prewriting Techniques.  

• Brainstorming and clustering.
• Freewriting.  
• Journaling.  
• Heuristics (topoi--or questions prompted based on definition, comparison, relationship, circumstance, testimony--dramatism--analyzing, interpreting, evaluating).
• Models (although Lindemann discourages--but I disagree)

Must teach prewriting b/c Lindemann believes that students start drafting too early.

posted by: rgregory at 01:11 | link | comments (7) |

A beginning to a practice question on my personal compositional pedagogical approach...

My personal pedagogical philosophy is based on social construction and process-orientated theories on composition. Therefore, just as Bakhtin discusses, I believe that students should be aware of how their writing is dialogically connected to that which they have read and to those who will read their works. To show this intersection between their experiences, their writing, and their audience, I incorporate rhetorical analyses of various media sources into my composition courses. Specifically, I feel that students should be able to understand how our various experiences (discursive experiences one of them) influence the construction of texts, images, music, television, films, and so forth. As Mike Rose, Mina Shaughnessey, and Maxine Hairston discuss in their respected works, this awareness also enables students to see how language and discourse can be a source of empowerment. This empowerment comes from being able to understand the ways that language and discourse function in society.

Since I believe that an awareness of the function of discourse can empower students, I also approach the class from the perspective of genre theory. Carolyn Miller and Aviva Freedman discuss how our discourses are shaped by the expectations of our audience; therefore, I believe that students should be aware of the expectations that their audience will have when reading their discourses. Students should be aware of the various issues related to genre and should be able to express oneself while acknowledging audiences’ expectations.

I also try to instill the idea of empowerment through language and discourse by having students write for audiences other than their instructors and for a purpose other than a grade. To achieve this purpose, my pedagogical focus in my freshman composition courses is on social-transactional learning to show how discourse functions in settings other than in the composition classroom.

posted by: rgregory at 22:25 | link | comments |

I put this together last year for one of Dr. Reynold's classes on genre theory...

Genre Theory and Its Applications in the Composition Classroom

Genre theory looks at academic writing from a pragmatic perspective that describes and theorizes “patterns of regularities in discourse from a social perspective” (Freedman and Medway 3).

Therefore, genre theory is concerned with identifying similarities among discourses and understanding how those features function in social contexts. These similarities, in turn, influence readers’ expectations and writers’ ultimate successes. The influence of audience expectations and genre expectation is noted in the construction of the discourse (effective writers keep audience expectations in mind when drafting their texts) and in the effectiveness of the discourses (audiences have genre expectations in mind when listening/reading discourses).

For example, the genre of the presidential epideictic speech has several important or key features: notably, it should either praise or blame someone. Oftentimes, successful epideictic speeches utilize those features, and deviations from those features conflict with audiences’ expectations of the genre and ultimately the success of the speeches.

Likewise, Bill Clinton’s August 17, 1998 public apology regarding his grand jury testimony regarding his affair with Monica Lewinsky was consider an overwhelming failure by audiences because Clinton failed to meet his audiences’ expectations for the genre of the public apology—simply put, Clinton never really apologized in the speech. Instead of accepting responsibility for his actions and presenting himself as remorseful and repentant, something his audience expected, Clinton “flipped the script” and blamed the investigators for their invasion of his and his family’s privacy.

Audience and Genre Expectations can, therefore, be applied in the composition classroom by identifying the features of academic discourses.

For instance, the genre of the theoretical academic paper (ex: Paper 1 and 2) often features a global organizational structure, with such features as “Introductions” that open up the conversation and state the purpose or “thesis” of the paper, “Discussion Sections” that utilize topic sentences that state the point of the section and then develop those points with material from outside sources, and “Conclusions” that offer a summary of the paper’s contents, a justification for further research, and/or a broad cultural perspective in which the discussion might be situated.

Likewise, the genre of the in-class writing exam (ex: Paper 3) also has common features that influence the construction of the discourse. For instance, audiences (typically college instructors) expect in-class writing exams to “show off” what the student knows in regard to the readings and class discussions. However, the social constraints influence the construction of the discourse; for example, students are often writing under time constraints, so audiences typically expect the discourses to have short, brief introductions and ample support for claims from the readings and class discussions. Also, surface-level “errors” are often overlooked since audiences typically expect students to produce their documents with little revision and editing.

Genre theory often attempts to identify and theorize what features often appear in particular genres, why they appear, and what function they serve. As such, often genre theory relies on the explicit teaching of discourse features. However, there are challenges to the explicit teaching of writing genres. As such, genre theorists often discuss:
• Is explicit teaching possible?
• Is explicit teaching necessary?
• If so, can it be useful?
• If so, when, at what stage in the evolution of a writer? And at what stage in the evolution of the writing? And by whom, i.e., what knowledge is necessary for the would-be intervener?
• Can explicit teaching be harmful?
• If so, when, and by whom? (Freadman 191)

While discussions on the features of academic papers aren’t reserved for just genre theory, genre theory is also concerned with teaching the audience expectations and genre expectations for the “privileged discourses” or “discourses of power.” For instance, Mike Rose discusses in Lives on the Boundary how underprivileged students often lack experience with those discourses often privileged in college writing classrooms, like the academic paper. In other words, effective writing is learned intuitively through active and frequent exposure to various texts and rhetorical features. Oftentimes, students understand how to integrate source materials, like quotes, into their own discourses because they have read newspapers and magazine articles that often utilize such features. However, students who have not had exposure to such rhetorical features might not understand or effectively integrate source materials into their own writing.

Therefore, Rose argues in his book that courses like developmental writing ought to instruct students explicitly on the features of the academic paper—the genre they will be expected to produce throughout their academic career—in order to insure they meet their audiences’ expectations of the genre.

Another criticism of genre theory is that it teaching writing as a “formula” and it strips writing of its expressionistic quality. However, Aviva Freedman’s now well-known retort is: “Recipes are genres. Genres are recipes.” Genre theory actually “opens up” the writings’ enormous possibilities because it is also concerned with writing as a social construction, writing as a social act. Likewise, each discourse belongs to a specific situation, each different and each with different communicative needs.

Likewise, while students understand the features of academic discourse, each discourse is a response to a specific social context. Bakhtin refers to this as “addressivity”—the means by which previous contexts (with discourses) influence the construction of present and future discourses. Audiences must take into consideration the demands of the situation and their own “speech wills” in the construction of their texts.

For example, students often learn they cannot use first-person in their academic writing. Or, not to refer to their paper in their paper. However, there is nothing inherently wrong with using “I” in a paper. And, referring to one’s own discourse is referred to a metadiscourse—a commonly-used feature of academic writing. What is important that students’ understand is that in some contexts, like an empirical paper in which audiences expect objectivity and a detached persona, first-person is not appropriate. Or, that typically literary-response papers do not utilize the features of metadiscourse.

In other words, each discourse is a social response to a specific situation—a situation with audience and genre expectations. In this regard, genre theory actually opens up the gamut of rhetorical possibilities. Nothing is “off-limits”; simply put, some rhetorical moves are more appropriate and effective than others.

posted by: rgregory at 21:49 | link | comments |

Opening Spaces:  Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices, Patricia Sullivan and James E. Porter

Complexity of positionality in methodology.  Focuses too often are on empirical research in comp and the limited studies in wide-area network interaction, of cross-class interaction, or network interaction within the corporation.  Critical methodological reflexiveness.  Criticize the lack of broad studies in the field of computers and composition. claim that researchers limited by accessibility, convenience.    Rhetorical methodology.  Rhetorical situatedness.  As such, advocate acknowledging the "place" or "space" occupied by the researcher in the research.  Self-reflectiveness.  Cannot be objective.  No such thing b/t "hard" and "soft" sciences. 

Purpose of book:
1. to "examine (and critique) the ideologies informing how theorists and researchers currently study and talk about electronic writing.
2. to "propose a 'rhetorical methodology' [not an empirical methodology] based on viewing computer writing as a situated practice.  The study of electronic writing as a situated practice requires a particular and pragmatic sensitivity to the particulars of the writing context"... the kairos of the writing situation.

Methodology as a heuristic or "pragmatic know-how."

Sullivan and Porter "see an important disciplinary distinction between research that views the computer as a writing technology and research that views the computer as a communication medium"(32).  [Something we use and something that uses us.]

They believe that "we live electronic lives that are porous to enormous amounts of digital information (both verbal and graphic), which forever need (re)arranging... [and] that these new electronic lives are encouraging new forums and conventions for communication, (a) they are not erasing print culture, and (b) they are providing these emerging forums almost exclusively for those who can pay for them"(33).  In regard to the questions, what struck me as interesting in Sullivan and Porter's discussion was their definition of writing as "verbal, graphic, static, dynamic" as produced in print and electronic mediums (34). Because if that is the case, then our conceptions about writing as a quasi-subject-predicate construction no longer ring true.

"Rhetorical situatedness"--rhetorical act subject to kairos. 

"object of analysis for those in computers and composition is not only the composed text but the writer-in-the-act-of-composing, the audience, and also the computer as aid or as environment."

Interesting point:  New rhetoric revived interesting in "situational ground of discourse."  Kinneavy, Bitzer, Booth make situation as foundation for rhetorical theory.  Problem:  "to what extent situations are 'rhetorically constructed' or 'located reality.'"  "possibility of using context or situation as a trustworthy foundation for discursive relations."

"Writing technologies."  Participant as researcher and researched.  Changing definitions of writing. 

Technology--styluses, storage, production environment, production/delivery

Computers and writing:  "technology of a site impacts on the events that researchers observe." "interaction in cyberspace is computer-mediated as well as filtered through traditional screens of researcher, participants, observation tools." "Researchers bring theory to their studies of computers and writing, but they also bring their experiences as users of technology and their experiences as teachers."  "methodology is built into the participation site."

"The knowledge of and interests of the community impinge on what is studied and how it is addressed."

Methodology is not invisible.  As such, Patricia Sullivan and James Porter recommend:  admitting that methodologies are socially constructed.  "Articulate the ways in which technological processes clash with research processes in order to complicate the understanding of the research site."  Place the researchers in all studies--going to be there anyways.  "Map the history of the assumptions, the interpretations, and the critique that inhabit a particular study."

*I could see the book being relevant to discussion on WPA and research in that it forces scholars to examine 1. the role technology (all technologies) play in research methodologies.  2. the inherent implications that these technologies bring w/ them. 3. the role of the researcher in the research.*

posted by: rgregory at 21:48 | link | comments |

Ed White's Teaching and Assessing Writing: Recent Advances in Understanding, Evaluating, and Improving Student Performance

Part One: Assessment
Chapter 1: Assessment as Threat and Promise
Assessment as threat—when insensitive to the students, learning, teaching, and discipline. When done cheap and results are misused. Behavioral Objectives throughout 70’s was the fad—measure achievement. Testing threatens liberal education. “Assessment forces teachers to use bad or inappropriate tests that demean everyone involved and trivialize learning.”

Assessment as promise. Improve teaching. Make job rewarding. Demonstrate value of what writing teachers do. Revision is necessitated on writer seeing what needs to be done. Students don’t know how to evaluate own work.

Developing Assessment procedures. Writing as socializing (enter discourse community) and individualizing discipline (critical thinking of relationship between self and text). For White, individualizing is most important for writing teachers. English instructors bring political and social issues into classrooms. To ignore that fact would be to bring more such issues into classroom b/c assumes that own beliefs are separate or neutral—and, they’re not.

"English teachers delude themselves when they argue, as many do, that they are not bringing political and social issues into their classrooms. Such a delusion actually makes one more, not less, political. A teacher insensitive to the social and political role of dialect is likely to tell or suggest to a student that her many 'mistakes in English' are the result of ignorance, derived from an uneducated home" (16).

Need reliable assessment procedures that evaluate what they say they are going to evaluate.

Developing Reliable Assessment Procedures. Unclear evaluation criteria. Unclear scoring available. Three stages of assessment: Awareness of consistent grading. Sharing assessment criteria w/ students. Students apply assessment to each other’s papers.

Chapter 2: Assessment and the Design of Writing Assignments
Elements of classroom instruction. Examine assignments (from Lindemann: What do I want students to do? For whom are students writing? When are students going to write? How are students going to do the assignment? What will I do w/ the assignment when they’re done?). Planning assignments for discovery and revision. Distributing assignments in written form. Discussing assignments in class. Prewriting.

Assignments designed to meet specific goals. (Encourages personal, reflective assignments at beginning of semester.) A descriptive writing assignment. Writing assignments that combine description and analysis. An expository writing assignment. Responses to revised assignments. Give students clear topics to write about—structured topics.

Chapter 3: Using Essay Tests
Designing essay test topics. Invalid topics in writing class (“Place of women in society”). Difference b/t topics for testing and topics for teaching. Structured topics rather than open topics. Give all students same question. Not too binding.

A model of topic development. Characteristics of good writing topics: clarity, validity, reliability, and interest. Pretesting. Classroom implications—be concerned w/ assessment of exams and pay attention to test development. Topic types—expressive assignments work best.

Helping students do well on essay test. Help students to understand the question. Help students to understand essay directions. Read questions aloud. (Help students learn to read question carefully and write in different modes for exams.) Respond to unclear questions (can do this w/ practice exams—which help instructor come up w/ clearer prompts and give students opportunities to practice writing on similar prompt). Understand the role of memory.

Working w/in time constraints. Different time-length essays—give enough time to write detailed response.

Craftsmanship of Essay test writing. Encourage freewriting to help students learn to read, writing, and respond to readings and topics. Help students come up w/ organization. Editing and Revising.

Chapter 4: How Theories of Reading Affect Responses to Writing
The Formalistic Theory of Reading. (Form of writing reflecting meaning.) Connections back to New Criticism. Forced teachers to look more carefully at text rather than student’s race, socio-economic background, appearance, gender, or moral predisposition. Argued that language and thought are the same things. Pendulum swung too far other way w/ “writing is a process, not a product.” White argues that it’s both. Poststructural theories of reading. (Writing is a creative interaction b/t reader and text.) Connections to Derrida, Fish, Corbett (emphasis on invention—Emig, too). Meaning of texts cannot be divorced from context and reader’s responses. Opponents (like White) find hard to believe that all meaning has somehow escaped both the text and the writer. New responsibility on reader to create meaning. For writing instructors—allows instructors to presume more is in students’ works than there might be. Encourages instructors to raise questions when responding to students’ writing rather than make statements—gets students back into thinking about the “textuality” of their papers.

Holistic Scoring and Interpretative Community. Reading students papers in light of poststructualism has encouraged instructors to engage students more in their texts by asking questions, engaging them in creative invention. Holistic grading—sum of work is greater than its parts. Intended audience—“interpretative communities” (collective interpretation of work).

“[I]t is a nice irony that reading theories developed among theoretical literary critics” and that there should be a “strong objective correlative among practical writing teachers trying to assess writing. The concept of the interpretative community allows us to integrate poststructural reading theory into our teaching and assessment practice. The principal [sic] benefit accrues to the students of writing teachers who understand that reading, no less than writing, is a process of the creative imagination, not a mere product to be analyzed” (102).

Chapter 5: Responding to Student Writing
Purposes and effects of Responding. 1) Responding allows students to know what works and what needs to be revising in a student’s draft. Don’t overload w/ comments. 2) Can function as gatekeeper (particularly grades) that keeps certain students (i.e., privileged students) in and others (disenfranchised students) out. Grades on papers encourage writing as a product mentality.

Responding to Drafts. Clear directions make responding easier for instructor and student. Focus on conception of topic and organization when responding to drafts.

Authority, Responsibility and Control. Instructor has authority to construct syllabus, writing assignments, and evaluate students’ assignments. Instructor offers experience and skill when reading and responding. Instructors also have to share responsibility in course with students—they can’t be passive learners. Effective instruction requires students to be active in their invention, drafting, and revising of discourses. Students have to also be authorities on their discourses. Teachers also cannot accept full responsibility for the work students’ produce. Convey in comments that ownership lies with the student. Teachers are not editors. Be kind and polite. Don’t comment too much and overwhelm students. Find something to praise. Suggest options or alternatives. Questions are more effective than assertions. Awareness that the text is negotiated, culture-bound, located in social structures.

Collaborative Writing. All writing is collaborative—need audience, conversation, reading, responding. Brainstorming groups. Collaborative writing activities.

Using Student Response Groups. Teacher not the only audience. The Presentation Copy. Don’t always have to be near-perfect.

Chapter 6: Using Portfolios
The teacher-graded Class Portfolio. Students own their portfolios. Reading and responding can be a massive undertaking. Uncontrolled content of portfolios—how much outside help did students receive. The contexts of the assignments. Encourage students to see writing as a process. Encourages students to write for themselves. Encourage students to take pride in work. Discourages plagiarism. Offer “revision process” evaluation on a couple of papers. Zero draft. Recovery draft. Final draft. Presentation draft. Don’t need to include every paper written for course. Can select most effective. Don’t have to read every word in a portfolio, especially since instructor has, in theory, seen the work in progress all semester.

The Team-graded Class Portfolio. Content of the portfolio. Treatment of Grades and Comments. Scoring Procedures. Criteria for Scoring Reliability. Appeals Procedures.Portfolios for Barrier Assessment. Portfolios in the Future.

Part Two: Writing Assessment beyond the Classroom
Chapter 7: Language and Reality in Assessment
Reality and Language: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Belief that our words strongly affect or even determine what our world, that our language may determine what we see and what we understand. We can affect people’s perceptions by changing their language and that the world itself is a social construction made by language out of the random flux of experience. Truth and “True Score.” Values and “Value-Free” Assessment. Living w/ Language Worlds in Conflict.

Chapter 8: Assessing Writing Proficiency
Purposes of Proficiency Assessment at the University Level. Types of Proficiency Assessment in Use. Multicampus Testing. Campus Testing Programs. Course Certification. Writing-Intensive Courses. Test w/ Course Option. Portfolio Assessment. Effective Certification through General Faculty Involvement.

Chapter 9: Selecting Appropriate Writing Measures
Multiple-Choice Versus Essay Testing of Writing. Multiple-Choice Tests don’t test actual writing. Results are erroneous. Bias in Writing Tests: The CSU Study. Testing students over material many minority students didn’t have access to. Overview of the Study. Minority students tended to score lower on multiple-choice test. Not typically the same problem for minority students on holistically graded essay test. Political and social issues behind placement. Financial. Diversity of students. Course and Assessment specifications. Benefits of Local Development of Writing Assessment.

Chapter 10: Organizing and Managing Holistic Essay or Portfolio Readings. Planning the Scoring Session.
Facilities. Personnel. Address scoring issues w/ personnel throughout the day. Materials. Arrangement of Test Materials for Scoring. Preparation of Scoring Guides and Sample Papers. The system for concealing scores. Recording scores.
Conduct of reading. Interpretative communities. Need for collegiality. Participation and Professional respect.

Chapter 11: Avoiding Pitfalls in Writing Assessment*

Chapter 12: Evaluating Writing Programs*

Chapter 13: The Politics of Assessment: Past and Future
Holistic scoring began 1970’s. Some personal background. Criticisms of White’s 1984 in CCC’s “Holisticism”: not specific enough. Putting an –ism after something not fully defined already. Or, something instructors are already really doing. Combat in the 1970’s.

“In the early 1980’s, a survey of English departments conducted by a committee of [CCCC’s] showed an amazing change: Not only did almost 90 percent of responding English departments state that they used holistic scoring, but nowhere did either the committee chair or the responding parties feel the need to define the term by more than a parenthetical reminder. In one decade, in a notoriously conservative and slow-moving profession, a new concept in testing and (hence) in teaching writing became accepted while no one was watching.”

Holistic scoring, rise to popularity in 1970’s:
• awareness of social and economic bases of privileged language and “correctness”
• development of poststructural theories of reading and process theories of writing
• emergence of writing research as a field of inquiry
• appearance of a vocal proletariat of regular as well as part-time writing faculty for whom writing was a serious business, not merely a path to literature seminars
Holistic Scoring: The Triumph of the Human. Holistic scoring and reading requires “community” as Paolo Freire defined it: “a community whose work is made meaningful by a joint social purpose. The acceptance and implementation of essay exams that are evaluated holistically on the state and national level indicate the importance and legitimacy of this “revolution.” Even done in medical school admissions and examinations now.
Problems with Holistic Scoring. Validity—testing what the exam claims to test and what it in fact measures. Essay exams are only writing in a particular “reality,” a reality of first and only drafts, pressured, externally motivated, topic-determined realities. Reliability—theoretical and practical question unique to essay exams and student evaluations.
Teaching and Assessing Writing in the Future. Essay Tests. Teaching and writing move beyond the classroom. Ten steps forward, away from decontextualized, passive multiple-choice tests, five steps back, toward essay tests devised—not by writing instructors for specific contexts and courses—but by testing corporations with graders who don’t make up an “interpretative community” with criteria determined to fit the needs of the assignment but, instead, read efficiently and consistently, without discussion or anything other than standardized scoring guides. Portfolios. Concern w/ fairness AND validity (contrary to Elbow’s claims to be incompatible).  Assessment and Power.

“[T]he brightest future, as I suggested earlier, likes with portfolio assessment. The excitement, energy, and (most encouraging) funding that recently have gone into portfolio assessment suggest that educational values still have a strong constituency, even among those most concerned with institutional evaluation. In a sense, portfolios represent an attempt to restore essay evaluation to its original purpose, under fuller and more vital definitions of writing. If portfolios can be shown to be reliable, valid, and cost-effective measures of student performance, they could lead to a basic transformation of the measures, and hence the goals, of American education itself. Portfolios promise to bring into institutional use and governmental policy the education values of writing teachers.

posted by: rgregory at 20:52 | link | comments |

Kathleen Welch's Electronic Rhetoric, Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy

Welch connects new media (electronic rhetoric) to classical rhetoric (Isocrates) as a way to give “voice” to disenfranchised, erased, and dismissed discourse communities.

Welch connects contemporary “Next Rhetoric” to the canon of memory—a canon often dismissed or overshadowed by invention and arrangement.

First ½ of book:
“applies a newly theorized classical rhetoric (Isocratic Sophism that is raced and gendered) to explain literate oralism/auralism as the consciousness of the pre-Aristotelian period (specifically, in the generation before Aristotle)” (7).

Second ½ of book:
“adapts these Isocratic Sophistic theories to the literate, visual, electronic oralism/auralism that inhabits us now” (7).

“The problem of the book centers on three of the many issues that constitute relationships among writer-subjects, reader-subjects, cultures/ideologies, and the material texts that circulate in these three:
• Literacy issues arise from the fact that forms of communication technology condition how people articulate within and around their ideas, their culture, and themselves, including their subject positions.
• Any current definition of literacy must account for changes in consciousness […] brought about by electronic forms of communication and their inherent mingling with writing.
• Literacy depends on social constructions that give value to some writing and speaking activities and that devalue others. Versions of oralism/auralism exist in all historical periods, mingle w/ different technologies, and partly determine who is allowed to speak, who is listening, and how subjectivity is constructed” (7-8).

“These three issues coalesce around the thesis that literacy in the United States in the twenty-first century must account not only for the new configuration of intersubjectivies brought about by the merger of consciousness/mentalitie and electronic articulation but must also account for the social constructions in which writing takes place” (8).

“Electric Rhetoric attempts to argue persistently against the still powerful idea that knowledge is a retrievable reality ‘out there in the world,’ to be owned and stored as necessary, and that literacy is a skill in the sense of an external toll that one can own and apply as necessary” (8).

“This book defines literacy as an activity of minds/bodies/intersubjectivities that are conditioned within specific culture/ideologies, all of which have oral/ aural features of discourse such as reliance on repetition, spoken ritual, and first-language acquisition that are, in turn merged with other features, almost all of which are embedded in writing as a way of knowing” (8).

???: “The United States at the turn of the millennium is thoroughly immersed in the written word, even though many of our citizens have been damaged by an absence of training in functional literacy. In our time there is no speaking without writing” (8).

“The ‘traditional,’ historicized U. S. rhetoric that has been in place since the nineteenth-century does not work anymore” (30).

Electronic forms of communication have reshaped literacy (30).

“In this chapter, I will present Isocrates as a Sophist whose writing and teaching life offers us a vision of Sophism that we can adapt to our scholarly and teaching lives” (31).

Isocrates privileged writing (31).

“For Isocrates, the production of discourse, not just the passive consumption of it by a hearer/reader/interpreter, remains central to his concept of philosophia” (31).

Interaction is the key to Welch’s theory on Isocrates.
English studies have been “tacitly committed to the pseudo-Romantic idea of artistic genius, an ideology that severs students from their writing and other kinds of encoding and from ‘geniuses’ who are seen as having special powers not available to students and other writers” (32).

“the clichés of an important intellectual movement prevent students and other writers from participating fully in literacy as consciousness” (32).

“For Isocrates, rhetoric consists of language as it constitutes part of thought and language as it constitutes one’s negotiations with the world” (34).

“The Isocrates portrayed in standard twentieth-century rhetorical histories for the most part has been appropriated in one of two ways: 1) he has been erased […], or 2) he has been presented as the quaint “father” of a reputed liberal-arts tradition” (40).

“In Antidosis and elsewhere, Iscorates rejects the idea that language is a container that holds meaning” (41).

“The positivist attitude that language is a thing out there, retrievable, tangible, and determinant, plagues not only our own scholarly endeavors”—can be seen throughout classical rhetoric in the form of handbooks, rote learning, static models (42).

Isocrates illustrates that language is a “weaving articulation and thought”—“emphasis on the production of discourse” (42).

Language is not a container that simply holds thoughts (42).—New rhetorical methods illustrate this fluidity of language and discourse, in general.

For Isocrates, aptitude is a social construction. The canons of rhetoric derived by Aristotle are also social constructions based on ideological preferences and the privileging of logic. Such traditions that emphasize the canons and logos over other rhetorical practices minimize or erase the contributions of the Sophists and women rhetoricians such as Sappho, Diotima, and Aspasia. “Recognition that all canons are human constructs that reflect ideology, including ideology toward such issues as gender politics and Cartesian dualism…” (52).

“The Next Rhetoric”

“‘New Rhetorics’ have proliferated at various moments in the 2,400 year construction of traditional Western rhetorical history. We appear to be at another crucial historical moment for a ‘revival’ of rhetoric, so I have chosen the phrase ‘Next Rhetoric’ to indicate that the current wave is the latest; it doesn’t necessarily supplant the old ones or suggest that it is the one and only rhetoric” (55).

“Two kinds of dominant orality make up Ong’s thesis, not one, as is so frequently thought” (57):
• Primary orality—“a dominant kind of consciousness and is characterized by an emphasis on speaking not only for instrumentalist communication but for the transmission of cultural values, norms, and behaviors through shared consciousness” (57).
• Secondary orality—an electrified orality in which orality is “present-day high-technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print” (qtd in Welch from Ong, Orality and Literacy, 11).

“The current reception of Isocrates’ writing—how his writings are read in particular scholarly-discourse communities—offer powerful ways out of the Cartesian ideology that knowledge and writing are things out there in the world and that reality is a self-evident and self-explained issue” (69).

“Isocrates’ development of general education depends on the continual interaction of the student (who inevitably interacts within discourse communities and within particular scenes) and on challenges to mind and sensibility through the study of philosophia” (69).

“Isocrates’ general education also offers an alternative to the pseudoromantic writer who believes that an organic meaning is locked within a discrete individual and can be unlocked, discovered or even released through artistic endeavor” (69).

posted by: rgregory at 20:47 | link | comments |

Concepts in Composition:  Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing, Irene L. Clark

Process
Invention
Revision
Audience
Assessing Writing
Genre
Voice
Grammar and Usage
Non-Native Speakers of English
Language and Diversity
Electronic Writing Spaces

posted by: rgregory at 20:45 | link | comments |

Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, Victor Villanueva

"Teach Writing as a Process, Not a Product," Donald M. Murray--published in November 1972
Murray argues that the emphasis in the composition classroom should be on teaching writing as a process (prewriting, writing, rewriting) rather than focusing on the product produced by the student.  By focusing on writing as a process, "the text of the writing course is the student's own writing," "the student finds his [or her] own subject," "the student uses his [or her] own language."  Drafting as part of invention and discovery.  Creative and functional writing is the same.  "Mechanics come last."  "Time for writing process to take place and to end." Papers are evaluated to determine other choices for the writer. Students must be able to explore and discover their own writing processes.  Writing is experimental since what works one time might not work the same another.

"Writing as a Mode of Learning," Janet Emig--published 1977

"Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked:  The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy," Lisa Ede and Andrea Lundsford--published

"Post-Process 'Pedagogy'": A Philosophical Exercise--published

"The Basic Aims of Discourse," James Kinneavy--published

"Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar," Patrick Hartwell--published in

"Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories," James A. Murphy

"A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing," Linda Flower and John R. Hayes--published in

"Cognitive Development and the Basic Writer," Andrea A. Lundsford

"Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing," Mina Shaughnessy

"Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind,'" Kenneth A. Bruffee

"Professing Multiculturalism:  The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone," Min-Zhan Lu

"The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University," Mike Rose

"Inventing the University," David Bartholomae--published

"Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing," Maxine Hairston

"On the Rhetoric and Precendents of Racism," Victor Villanueva

posted by: rgregory at 20:39 | link | comments |

James J. Murphy's A Short History of Writing Instruction
have to survey composition's past to know its future.

"Ancient Greek Writing Instruction," Richard Enos

Invention of a formal alphabet key to literacy development in Greece.    Became means for expressing thoughts that were limited by oral expression.  Writing as a heuristic for creating discourse and refining patters of thinking.   Classical writing to the service of orality.  (Greeks read written prose aloud for instance.  oral and written connected.)

While literacy today is judged by one's competence w/ written discourse--intellectual elite, the faculty of writing was not always the possession of the intellectual elite in Greece.  Oral discourse was primary for "showing off."  Written discourse much more practical in application of mundane duties like record keeping.  However, with increase in literacy, written discourse become more often associated w/ prose.  The standardization of the alphabet was "a monumental achievement" that set into motion a series of events that "led to the systemized writing instruction" which, in turn, led to the emergence of a literate community in Athens.  Led to process of letteraturizzazione.  Ability to write well enables scholars like Isocrates and Aristotle to wrestle w/ abstract metaphysical concepts.

"The Key Role of Habit in Roman Writing Instruction," James J. Murphy

Murphy argues that the Roman educational system had rhetorical efficiency as its primary goal.  Coordinated program of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  boys from six through 18.  about public improvisation--concern for kairos.  concern for appropriate discourse for appropriate situation--therefore, no "art of letter writing" or art of "histographies" in Roman antiquity.  Expected to adjust oral and written discourse to exigency of situation.  Q--facilitas--ability to produce appropriate discourse for any given situation.  Instruction in grammar.  imitation.  concern for morality and "good man" in rhetorical instruction.  "the student learns political science, history, morals, and literature by a kind of intelligent osmosis.  His attention is focused on the style and structure of the particular text, but he cannot escape an awareness of historical circumstances or ethical problems as he moves through the various steps."

education:  home training, military service, apprenticeship w/ orator.

Rhetorica ad Herrennium--first complete Latin rhetoric.  Progymnasmata.  Declamation.  Sequencing from "easier" to more challenging" of assignments. 

"Writing Instruction from Late Antiquity to the Twelfth Century," Carol Dana Lanham
Instruction fused classical and Christian texts, particularly poetry.  Prose more difficult to use, but Augustine helped remedy that.  "Functional Literacy."  Quintilian enormously influential. 

Learned from school textbooks:

• Latin grammar texts. 
  
• Verse composition (read and studied Latin poetry). 
  
• Progymnasmata. 
  
• Rhetoric (de Invention, ad Herrennium)

Auxiliary Instructional Materials and Reference Works:

• Glossaries
• Differentiae (similar to a dictionary)
• Scholia and Commentaries.

learn about educational practices through biographies and narratives.  Learned thru congruous figures (learn other disciplines through study of texts--note Quintilian).  Study and memorize great authors.  Roman education style continued throughout the middle ages.  Imatacio.  Prose composition.  Taught structure.  arrangment.  "The Teaching of Poetic Composition in the Later Middle Ages," Marjorie Curry Woods

"Rhetoric and Writing in the Renaissance," Don Paul Abbott

"Writing Instruction in Great Britain:  The 18th and 19th Centuries," Linda Ferreira-Buckley and Winifred Bryan Horner

"From Rhetoric to Composition:  The Teaching of Writing in America to 1900," Elizabethada A. Wright and S. Michael Halloran

"A Century of Writing Instruction in School and College English," Catherine L. Hobbs and James A. Berlin

posted by: rgregory at 20:23 | link | comments |

An article I read in Self magazine while working out this afternoon (weird deja vu):

"Stay Cool Under Pressure:  How to give your all when the stakes are high"

1. View your nerves as proof you're prepped.  If you're too calm, you might not try as hard as you should. [...]  Tell yourself that your sweaty palms mean you've trained well and you'll use that revved-up energy for good.

2.  Ditch the game plan.  Instead of mapping out exactly what you'll say or do when you're giving a presentation or trying out for a team, focus on your key aims.

3.  Give 'em the benefit of the doubt.  Remind yourself that your audience, whoever it is, wants to see you succeed:  The interviewer is hoping you'll be the hire; the blind date secretly wishes you'll be the woman of his dreams; the crowd on the sidelines is rooting for you to finish.  When you believe you'll succeed, odds are, you will.

posted by: rgregory at 03:57 | link | comments (4) |

Alright, so I'm thinking about Dr. Marsh's practice question.  So, here goes...

In the "Introduction" to Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Umberto Eco defines semiotics as the study of signs and distinguishes between general semiotics and specific semiotics.   In short, Eco argues, "A specific semiotics is, or aims at being, the 'grammar' of a particular sign system, and proves to be successful insofar as it describes a given field of communicative phenomena as ruled by a system of signification. Sometimes a specific semiotics only focuses on a particular subsystem [...] that works within a more complex system of systems."  For instance, Eco identifies the different "grammars" of American Sign Language or even traffic signals.  While the grammar of "traffic signals" might be more simplistic than the more "complex" grammar of American Sign Language, each represent specific semiotics that are ruled by signification.  

However, as Eco demonstrates throughout his work, semiotics is not a  "science" of signs as like physics or chemistry.  Instead, Eco distinguishes between two kinds of signs: those based on equivalence and those on inference.  Based on Eco's discussion, I would argue that a specific semiotics based on signs of equivalence would be indexical signs, like a driver's license photograph (much like Roland Barthes' non-coded iconic message in "The Rhetoric of the Image"); conversely, Eco argues that most languages are specific semiotics based on signs of inference.  As Eco notes in the Introduction, signs do not have a 1:1 representation with their signifieds.  Instead, signs of inference operate like "metaphors" that are connected to each other through "abduction."  Eco rejects the idea that signification is linear and, instead, proposes that signification is more like  a tree diagram or mesh net.  In other words, whereas deductive reasoning relies on the rule to explain the case and inductive reasoning relies on the case to explain the rule, "abductive" reasoning is much more cyclical.  The rule explains the case, which in turn creates an entire new rule for an entire new case.  However, the process is not linear and the rules and cases shape and transform each other, repeating perpetually.  As Eco notes, "lexical problems are in a continuous process of transformation."  Just as soon as semioticians attempt to "pin down" or affix meaning to a sign, the sign is changed by the attempt to "pin it down."  As the title of Eco's book illustrates, semiotics is a philosophy of language in every sense, and as a philosophy, semiotics requires the use of language to describe and explain language.  Therefore, "by studying the human signifying activity it influences its course.  A general semiotics transforms, for the very fact of its theoretical claim, its own object."

Since signs are in continuous states of transformation, they have "general epistemological problems" that "the researcher must be aware of." Signs are not fixed scientific principles or mathematical equations, like theories of relativity or inverse equations.  Rather, the meaning of signs change perpetually depending on social situations and particular contexts.  For instance, Henry Louis Gates explains in "The Signifying Monkey" how African Americans have used the power of signification to thwart oppressive economic, social, and political systems through language.  Specifically, communities of power have historically fixed meaning to "correct" or stabilize words and their usage. I am reminded here of creation and distribution of Daniel Webster's Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary as specific attempts to affix meaning to particular words because such signs were changing with colloquial use.  African American Vernacular English is another example of signs transforming in attempt to thwart those communities of power (in this case, "The Man") that have attempted to affix meaning to signs. 

However, Eco notes that any study of specific semiotics must acknowledge and account for the "underlying philosophical assumptions that influence its choice and its criteria for relevance."  In other words, the study of sign systems, like the signs studied themselves, is based on signs.  Scholars use signs to study signs, and, as such, the signs used to study signs are transformed and shaped by other signs.   Because the study of signs cannot preclude the use of signs, "general epistomological problems" emerge.  

Namely, in my own research, "philosophical assumptions" exist regarding autism as a biomedical, social, economic, and rhetorical construct, and within these specific semiotic spheres, signs construct how autism is studied, explained, reported, and treated.  For instance, Majia Nadesa discusses in her book Constructing Autism how the medical community has constructed autism based on normative criteria of brain functioning, communication, language usage, and human sociability.  Particularly relevant to this conversation, within this "specific semiotics" of medicine and autism, a child's inability to interact through the use of signs (in this case, a child's inability to understand semiotics) is a significant criterion for "autism" or other "pervasive developmental disorders."  Other "specific semiotic" groups that relate to autism might include social and activist groups such Cure Autism Now and Autism Speaks.  These "specific semiotic" groups often rely on signs based on "cure," "combat," "defect," and "captivity."  For instance, Cure Autism Now recently concluded the "Combat Autism" fundraiser in which several NFL football players raised money for autism research.  Autism advocates (like blogger Kassaine) argued that military metaphors of combat and war were inappropriate considering the fact that Cure Autism Now typically advocates on behalf of autistic children.  It seemed highly inappropriate for this "specific semiotic" group to use signs based on signifiers of aggression and hostility for the "general semiotic" group, one that consists children.  As Kassaine notes on her blog, Cure Autism Now wants to go to war with autistic children.

Such "general epistemological problems" are only magnified (and are especially appropriate for this conversation) because autism deals with one's (in)ability to use signs to convey meaning.   However, a study of semiotics and sign system seems to place value on certain modes of communication.  In reading Eco's discussion on signs and sentences or signs and language, one could conclude that Eco focuses much of his philosophy of semiotics on inferential signs and signs based on language.    And, Eco is not alone; scholars overwhelmingly focus on print or spoken discourses--discourses that are based on a specific syntax or generally "familiar" sign system.  The epistemological problem, then, is how much scholars do value only particular sign systems--those based on language--over other sign systems that are too "specific."  In other words, the assumption is that many non-verbal autistic children are not able to communicate with others because they do not use commonly understood sign system.  However, parents of non-verbal autistic children have noted that these children do communicate with the world around them.  Contrary to the metaphor of autistic children as "prisoners" of their own minds, autistic children have "specific semiotic" systems that are perhaps just too specific.  In this case, only a select few (mothers, fathers, teachers) understand these "specific semiotic" sign systems.  Just as Eco noted, the process is abductive:  the "cases" are those non-autistic children who use "specific semiotics."  Because these "special semiotics" are misunderstood by the "general" group, the "rule" is made that non-verbal children do not communicate.  And, the "result" is that sign systems based on combat, war, and prison continue to signify autism.

posted by: rgregory at 02:18 | link | comments (11) |

Dr. Marsh's practice questions for my third area:

1.  Umberto Eco asserts that "A specific semiotics is, or aims at being, the 'grammar' of a particular sign system, and proves to be successful insofar as it describes a given field of communicative phenomena as ruled by a system of signification. Sometimes a specific semiotics only focuses on a particular subsystem [...] that works within a more complex system of systems." He adds that "Every specific semiotics [...] is concerned with general epistemological problems [...] and the researcher must be aware of the underlying philosophical assumptions that influence its choice and its criteria for relevance." Discuss the "philosophical assumptions" that have inspired/govern your own research, the sign system(s)/subsystem(s) to which your work is relevant, and any "general epistomological problems" which your scholarly work addresses.

2. In addition to what he has to say about a specific semiotics, Eco states that a general semiotics concerns itself with "three different questions," two of them being "(a) Can one approach many, and apparently different, phenomena as if they were all phenomena of signification and/or of communication? (b) Is there a unified approach able to account for all these semiotic phenomena as if they were based on the same system of rules?" He adds that a general semiotics "in order to answer the quesions above. . .is obliged to reconsider, from a general. . . point of view, classical issues such as meaning, reference, truth, context, communicational acts. . .as well as many logical problems as analytic vs. synthetic, necessity, implication, entailment, inference, hypothesis, and so on." Consider and demonstrate how your own scholarly work enters into this discussion, and accomplishes two or more of the tasks listed above.

Hmmm....

posted by: rgregory at 01:15 | link | comments |

Umberto Eco's Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

Introduction
Object of semiotics--sign (or sign-function) and semiosis
"The concept of sign must be disentangled from its trivial identification with the idea of coded equivalence and identity" (1).  Can't look at the relationship b/t the sign and the "sign-function" as a resolvable action "between pairs."  Rather, semiotics is a relationship of "inference" rather than "equivalence."  In other words, language is based on a system of metaphors that users agree upon.

However, this does not mean that "extreme x stand those who assume that every text [...] can be interpreted in one, and only one, way, according to the intention of its author."  Likewise, one can't assume than any and all interpretations are valid.  Rather, semiotics provides a "theoretical toll for identifying, according to different semiosic processes, a continuum of intermediate positions" (3). 

Semiotics offers an "indefinite series of alternative or complementary interpretations" (3).

Language exists and functions on an x/y axis.  Like an encyclopedia rather than dictionary.  Language reflects a "social storage of world knowledge."  As such, "any interpretation can be both implemented and legitimated"--legitimated being the key word here.

Semiotics is nothing but a philosophy of language.  Semiotics concerned w/ pragmatics.  Concerned w/ epistemological problems.  "Uncertainty principle."  *In a continuous process of transformation.*  (Again, back to pragmatics)  Still, some grammars more "fixed" than others.

Semiotics (and the signs studied within the discipline) can be "descriptive" and "normative."

Semiotics is not a science in the sense of physics and electronics.  ("science" like Aristotle's "science" based on probability).

Have to account for the general point of view, "classical issues such as meaning, reference, truth, context, communication acts (be they vocal or else), as well as many logical problems as analytic vs. synthetic, necessity, implication, entailment, inference, hypothesis, and so on."

[Interesting that too often postmodern theory, like Derrida, argues that meanings cannot be "pinned down."  No sooner are meanings grounded or fixed that they change dramatically or radically to fit an ever-changing social exigency.  For instance, I'm thinking here of Henry Louis Gates' discussion on signification and how particular discourse communities "play" on fixed meaning as a rejection or response to that very "fixed" meaning.  After all, "somebody" had to do the fixing, and most often, they are the communities who hold the "power" over language to fix meaning.  Signification, however, allows individuals to challenge those fixed meanings and give them new ones.  Ones that simultaneously accept and reject those meanings (after all, we have to accept an idea before we can reject against it).

Back to Eco...  while so many theorists have claimed that language usage and meaning cannot be pinned down, they don't really offer a theory of explaining how that works.  What I think is interesting about Eco is that he offers in his book and discussion of x/y axis a way of theorizing and visualizing how meanings shift or change.  However, I would argue that the only problem w/ Eco's x/y axis theory is that something would have to be 0,0 on the axis.  And, perhaps, the postmodernist, social constructionist in me cannot accept that there's a standard by which all other interpretations are deviants of that 0,0 point.  So, I would argue that we'd have to remove the 0,0 on the axis.  It needs a big whole in the middle, I suppose.  Anyways...]

General theories of semiotics are influenced by specific instances of semiotics.  [deductive reasoning]

"essence" of signs--realm of existence [a la Plato's forms]

"semiotic endeavors is to explain why something looks intuitive, in order to discover under the felicity of the so-called intuition a complex cognitive process" [a la Barry]

Eco--in order to understand semiotic meaning, need to look back instead of forward.

Interesting point:  "Signs are not empirical objects.  Empirical objects become signs [...] only from the point of view of a philosophical decision."

"a philosophy has a practical power: it contributes to the changing of the world."  "Since a philosophy has this practical power, it cannot have a predictive power."  "philosophies can say everything about the world they design and very little about the world they help to construct."

I like this statement:  "A general semiotics is philosophical in this very sense.  [...] A general semiotics studies the whole of the human signifying activity--language--and languages are what constitutes human beings.  [...] It studies and describes languages through languages.  By studying the human signifying activity it influences its course.  A general semiotics transforms, for the very fact of its theoretical claim, its own object."  Very much like the Matrix. 

Still, this is why Eco's theories can belong in a rhetoric program, because in some ways, Eco's concerned with the rhetorical situation.  He's looking at it from a different point-of-view, more concerned w/ the parts as they contribute to the whole; whereas, Bitzer seems concerned w/ the whole as it contributes to the parts.  (Yea, that's good way of stating it.)

Chapter 1: Signs
Eco defines the nature of the "sign" in response to other semioticians like Peirce and Saussure. based on equivalence--logical signs, like in physics and chemistry--and inference--arbitrary signs.  based on common usage.  intension and extension.  "Every sign is a symbol but not every symbol is a sign."

Sign vs. figura.  Not a 1:1 correspondence. 

Semantics shifts semiotics from a process of signification to a process of communication.  Complementary.  [Important to note that Eco distinguishes b/t signification and communication (meaning).  We may attempt to signify; however, that does not mean meaning is conveyed.]

Chain of signifiers.  Interpretation of "corresponding signified."  Every signifier leads into another signifier.

Signs vs. Texts.  Texts generate multiple readings.  Sign= expression + content.  Text is not an apparatus.  It renews and destroys signifying systems.  Something is at same time something else. 

Representation--similar to myth of cave.

Kristeva:  Sign is resemblance.  Discrepancies and differences.  Peirce:  sign instruction for interpretation.

Signs vs. Words.  Analyzed contextually.  Revealing yet concealing.  "name" deemed to be true but not actually.   "The name establishes a pseudoequivalence with reality, and in doing so it conceals it."

Sign--element of uncertainty

inference is derived not from the physical event, but "the proposition which expresses it."

Process of "Abduction"--Rule, case, and result--which in turn influences the rule, case, and result.

continuum b/t substance and form.  Form and substance which balance each other out.

Chapter 2: Dictionary vs. Encyclopedia
Language functions more like an encyclopedia rather than a dictionary b/c dictionaries are finite and don't say what words mean.  A definition is not a demonstration.  [again, back to pragmatics, performative nature of language and semiotics.]

tree diagram.

Dictionaries define.  Encyclopedias give content.  ***Meaning based on clusters.***

Encyclopedia as labyrinth.  Important point--meaning is NOT linear.  More like a maze or rhizome with everything connected to each other.  Visualize a net with each rope connected to another at simultaneously. 

"the encyclopedia is a semantic concept and the dictionary is a pragmatic device."

Chapter 3: Metaphor
"The most luminous and therefore the most necessary and frequent" of all tropes, the metaphor, defies every encyclopedic entry."

both synecdoche and metonymy

Chapter in a nutshell:   "language is by nature, and originally, metaphorical, and the mechanism of metaphor establishes linguistic activity, every rule or convention arising thereafter in order to discipline, to reduce (and impoverish) the metaphorizing potential that defines man as a symbol animal."  "language (and every other semiotic system) is a rule-governed mechanism, a predictive machine that says which phrases can be generated and which not, and which from those able to be generated are 'good' or 'correct,' or endowed w/ sense; a machine with regard to which the metaphor constitutes a breakdown, a malfunction, an unacceptable outcome, but at the same time the drive toward linguistic renewal." 

Metaphor--social cultural creation that enables language to work.

***"the truth is that the metaphor is the tool that permits us to understand the encyclopedia better."***

Chapter 4: Symbol
...
Chapter 5: Code
...
Chapter 6: Isotopy
...
Chapter 7: Mirrors
...

posted by: rgregory at 01:04 | link | comments |

Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination and "The Problem of Speech Genres"

The Dialogic Imagination

Architectonics--cannot understand anything until we understand how it moves us.  All knowledge is provisional. Work to understand centrifugal force (pull together work) and how new information pulls apart--centripital forces.   Against systems b/c systems ignore individual circumstances.  Look at the relationship of the parts on the whole.  Centers of value--pulling some ideas, beliefs, knowledge toward one, pushing others away.

The individual consciousness is shaped by internal and external forces. Within every discourse, then, one can examine these centripetal forces that continuously push “things” apart and the centrifugal ones pulling “things” together (Holoquist xviii). “Epic and Novel”—“Every specific situation is historical.” All knowledge is provisional, so while centripetal forces function to keep our ideals or beliefs pulled together, new information pulls apart at these ideas. In other words, while one might have a theory of one’s own faith “nailed down,” a new book or theory, like Darwin’s theory of evolution originally published in 1859, forces some theories apart.

New information introduces new challenges, new theories, and new observations on the universe. This new information creates metaphysical and metaphorical “holes” in one’s architectonic understanding of the universe. Genre of novel—Bakhtin was primarily concerned with the representation of architectonics in novels since novels offered more opportunities for dialogic moments for conflicting forces to be seen in the text. As discussed in “Epic and Novel” because of “literary zones of contact.” Discussed primarily in “Discourse in the Novel” published posthumously. Genre of novel always changing—can’t pin it down b/c it has to change with the times in which it is created.

Chronotope--relationship b/t time and space in work.  Can't separate the two.  space--tangible.  time--construction.  similar to utterance.  creates effect. 

“connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.” From “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Toward a Historical Poetics.” Bakhtin sees it as “a formally constitutive category of literature” (84). Note his nod towards Kant on page 85 (in the footnote): “Kant defines space and time as indispensable forms of any cognition”—space and time lead to transcendental moment. Bakhtin says drop the transcendental b/c w/out space and time there is no moment. “Chronotopes can become condensed in fundamental organizing metaphors like the chronotope of the road, by which basic conceptions of time and space get translated into narrative terms.” Road—space and time.

Three Novelistic Chronotopes in Ancient Times: "adventure novel of ordeal” or Adventure Time—Extraordinary in scope: or “Greek” or “Sophist” novels written between the second and sixth centuries A.D. It uses adventure time. Broad and varied geographical background. Life controlled by chance. Key metaphor: the road (see page 98). Interchangeability in space (this has political consequences). “adventure novel of everyday life” or Adventure Time of Extraordinary People: The Lives of saints. Crisis. Rebirth. Metamorphosis. Identity. Displays only exceptional moments that shape the individual. Ancient Biography and Autobiography. Platonic. Rhetorical. Metaphor: the public square. “A literary work’s artistic unity in relationship to an actual reality is defined by its chronotope” (243). shapes narrative (250). All meaning must “enter our experience (which is a social experience)” in the form of “a sign that is audible and visible…Without such temporal-spatial expression, even abstract thought is impossible. Reality created in Tess—one of industrialization. Changing times. “Rape” of the land by new rising class of merchants and industrialists. Old way—Milkmaids and farmers no longer safe. Metaphors describe a chronotope but aren’t a chronotope

Dialogism--similar to kairos or rhetorical situation.  Novel as a genre closed to "molten lava" of actual utterance.  Aware of situations and changes utterance in response to those exigencies.  Utterance that exists b/t rhetor and society.  One voice takes another voice into consideration b/f speaking.

Bakhtin notes that in novels, “This interaction, this dialogic tension between two languages and two belief systems, permits authorial intentions to be realized in such a way that we can acutely sense their presence at every point in the work.” From “Discourse in the Novel.” One voice takes into consideration another voice before speaking—very contingent on time and space (chronotope)… similar to concept of addressivity in Bakhtin’s essay on Speech Genres. Inherent in the rhetorical situation because, if a work is fully dialogized, it takes into consideration the purpose, audience, and occasion. Intrinsically linked with heteroglossia b/c dialogism is the awareness and alteration of one’s discourse to fit a rhetorical situation.

Heteroglossia is the conflicting ideologies inherent within that situation. Occurs all the time in every chronotopic situation. Can be related to controversial topics or in the day-to-day. For instance, in Tess when Angel keeps proposing to Tess and she keeps refusing. When attempts to finally tell him her secret, she tells him she isn’t a Durbeyfield but a D’Urbervilles—not that she has a child before who died. Tess started to tell Angel about the baby but changed her mind at the last minute when Angel was holding her tightly because her “instinct was stronger than her preservation of candor.”

Heteroglossia--multiple voices.  clash of different "kinds" of "languages."  clash of different relationships, genres, situations.   language used carries ideological positions.  many different ideological perspectives interacting at same time.

Clashing of different ideologies and beliefs in a situation, different ideas clashing, multiple voices, convergence of these multiple voices in a text. “…this movement of the theme through different languages and speech types, its dispersion into the rivulets and droplets of social heteroglossia, its dialogization—this is the basic distinguishing feature of the stylistics of the novel” (263). “The boundary lines between some else’s speech and one’s own speech were flexible, ambiguous, often deliberately distorted and confused. Certain types of texts were constructed like mosaics out of the texts of others.” “one a centralizing (unifying) tendency, the other a decentralizing tendency (that is, one that stratifies languages).

The novel senses itself on the border between the completed, dominant literary language and the extra literary languages that know heteroglossia.” (67) The word in language is half someone else's. It becomes "one's own" only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language . . . but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one's own . . . . Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker's intentions; it is populated -- overpopulated with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one's own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process. (294)

Polyphony--heteroglossia in certain novels where characters live independently of author. Novel most able to illustrate polyphony and architectonics of situation b/c not bound by conventions, like epic poem for instance.

Carnival--oppressing system.  cent. force of authoritarian regime.  failure to understand this, failure to understand reality.

Double Voiced--all language is double-voiced.

"The Problem of Speech Genres"
 
Speech Genres--Speech genres are inexhaustible b/c of different contexts for different utterances and various possibilities (reminded of Dr. T's "cellular change" comment in VR).  Historical genre distinctions too narrow for scope of human interactions.  Rhetoricians have studied judicial, deliberative genres.  (Again, Bakhtin against systems.) Semiotics, behavioralists, structuralists have studied the individual speech in isolation.  Still haven't gotten to the complex nature of the utterance by not looking at chronotope--from Dialogic Imagination.  Primary--simple genres, speech
Secondary--complex, novels, dramas, scientific research, commentaries

Utterance--"Language is realized in the form of individual concrete utterances by participants in the various areas of human activity."  Thematic content, style, and compositional structure--linked to the whole of the utterance (seems to combine three of the canons into one whole contextualized.  "To ignore the nature of the utterance or to fail to consider the peculiarities of generic subcategories of speech in any area of linguistic study leads to perfunctoriness and excessive abstractness."  "After all, language enters life through concrete utterances." "Any utterance is a link in a very complexly organized chain of other utterances." Real unit of speech communication:  utterance. "Speech is always cast in the form of an utterance belonging to a particular speaking subject--outside of utterance, speech does not exist. real unit of utterance when speaker relinquishes the floor to another speaker--back and forth.  utterance).  rejoinders.  pause--dixi.  Point in naming rejoinders and dixi--to show that there is more to human communication than simply words and sentences.  words, sentences, phrases are just language units.  understanding the utterance is understanding the whole.  real life dialogue is the utterance.  back and forth.  similar to Plato in many ways.  exchange is in the moment.  back and forth. finalized utterance--semantic exhaustiveness, speaker's plan or will, generic forms of finalization. speak in utterances--not individual words and sentences. ideas about speech change during process.  whole utterance determines our genre and sentence choices.

Addressivity--knowing how to respond during utterance--addressivity--an "indefinite, unconcretized other".  influence of genre constraints on addressivity.  influence of addressees.  influence of other outside factors.  (reminiscent of chronotope again here.)  addressivity inherent not in unit of language but in utterance.  utterances acquire addressivity only in the whole of the concrete utterance.

One of my favorite quotes:  "He is not, after all, the first speaker, the one who disturbs the eternal silence of the universe he is using, but also the existence of the language system he is using, but also the existence of preceding utterances--his own and others'--with which his given utterance enters into one kind of relation or another."  see connections to the "myth of the cave" here.  Not necessarily a reference to any "ideal" for Bakhtin because an "ideal" can't exist in a system so completely relative.  Still, an understanding that forms exist before the moment that people are reacting or acting to.

"Every utterance must be regarded primarily as a response to preceding utterances of the given sphere.  [...] Each utterance refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into account."

posted by: rgregory at 04:04 | link | comments |

Booth's Rhetoric of Rhetoric

Part I: Rhetoric’s Status: Up, Down, and –Up?
Explores the confused history of rival definitions of rhetoric and a brief dramatization of rhetoric’s disasters and triumphs. Addresses the complex evaluation problems that have led so many critics to see all rhetoric as contemptible. Celebrates those who’ve revived serious rhetorical inquiry from the assassination attempts by positivists—who’ve reduced rhetoric to simply emotion (pathos) and ethics—or lack thereof—(ethos).

Chapter 1: How Many “Rhetorics”?

Aristotle in The Art of Rhetoric: rhetoric has no specific territory or subject matter of its own since it is everywhere. Rhetoric involves all forms of communication short of physical violence, including gestures. Most dangerous of human tools. Provides various historical definitions of rhetoric that move from rhetoric as queen over every other discipline to one that focuses on ornamental style and delivery techniques (Enlightenment). Rhetoric no longer genuine pursuit of Truth. Rhetoric separated from dialectic by Aristotle continues throughout rhetorical tradition and is reinforced as the view that rhetoric is simply style.

Booth—rhetoric is not reducible to style but can be a mode of genuine inquiry. Rhetoric important for removing misunderstandings and creating misunderstandings—borrowed from Richards. Booth distinguishes between the art of rhetoric and the study of that art.

Defines key terms:

• Rhetoric: The whole range of arts not only of persuasion but also of producing or reducing misunderstanding.

• Listening-rhetoric (LR): communicative act that attempts to alleviate misunderstandings by listening and seriously considering opposing viewpoints.

• Rhetrickery: the whole range of shoddy, dishonest communicative arts producing misunderstanding—along with other harmful results. The art of making the worse seem the better.

• Rhetorology: the deepest form of LR—the systematic probing for “common ground.”

• Rhetor: the communicator, the persuader or understander

• Rhetorician: the student of such communication

• Rhetorologist: the rhetorician who practices rhetorology, pursuing common ground on assumption—often disappointed—that disputants can be led into mutual understanding.
  

How do different rhetorics not only reflect realities but make them, whether ethically or unethically? Offers three different realities:

1. Permanent, Unchangeable, Non-Contingent Truth—a permanent truth that has been “there” from the “beginning,” awaiting our discovery and will be there whether we find it or not. Unconditional truths. Torturing a child. Wrong. Always will be wrong. The make-up of the atom. Will be there whether we know about its existence or not. Rhetoric did make the reality of our discovery but did not make the ethical truth itself.
2. Realities changeable but still not created by rhetoric--the history of how nature moves from contingency to contingency. Can call a horse “toad.” It’s still a horse.
3. Contingent Realities about Our lives: Created realities that are then subject to further change. Rhetorical changes of reality—Hitler’s rhetoric created Holocaust. Kennedy’s rhetoric changed reality of Cuban Missile Crisis. Rhetoric makes realities, however temporary.
   

How rhetoric relates to three sub-kinds of rhetoric-made realities. Deliberative. Forensic. Epideictic.
Distinction of domains. Scene. Context. Discourse community. Hazy distinction b/t domains.

Chapter 2: A Condensed History of Rhetorical Studies

Resurging interest in rhetorical studies since mid-twentieth century, as seen in books w/ “Rhetoric” in the title and journals focusing on “Rhetoric.” Position of rhetoric in academia diminished from Cicero and Quintilian to St. Augustine (who was troubled by rhetoric’s reduction of everything to contingency and faith’s unquestioned truths) to Aquinas, in which rhetoric is reduced to one of seven liberal arts. While initially part of “trivium,” rhetoric is eventually reduced to a study below grammar and dialectic. Enlightenment continued trend w/ emphasis on verifiable truths and absolute certainties. Scholars, like Vico, continued to study rhetoric w/out applying its terminology.
Scientism. Reductive positivists who argued than an observable reality existed beyond our perceptions of it.

Secularist Humanism. Religion used to prove what science could not.
Reductionism. Principle of simplification that reduced truth from generalities or universals to particularities: facts and data.
Logicism. Proof is reduced simply to logic or logos.
Individualism. Rousseau—interested only in the self. Disregard of communicative communities.

Going to fail to communicate effectively, might as well focus on personal truths, instead. Romantics took up this notion.
Historical Determinism. Rhetoric changes course of history. Booth—temporary histories.
Rhetoric—daily communication dominates every aspect of our lives. And, is observable in all fields.

Chapter 3: Judging Rhetoric

Rhetoric judged often by its ethical intentions. Unable to look at rhetorical constructs without examining the content or effects of those arguments. “This neutralist argument is by no means stupid, if we mistakenly think of rhetoric not as a path to truth but as mere decorator of truth or lies.” When judging rhetoric, “we can never fully escape our own deepest convictions.” We cannot ignore our own beliefs about what is ethical when examining rhetoric.

Three kinds of rhetoric determined by skill and intention—“effective listeners [and rhetors] know how to protect themselves from skillful but unethical rhetrickery”:

“Win-Rhetoric”—eristic rhetoric that is concerned w/ winning at all costs

1. The honest-kind: My goal is to win because I know that my cause, my case, my convictions are […] right, my opponent’s cause absolutely wrong, and my methods will be totally sincere and honest. (judged favorably)
2. Since my cause is absolutely justified I will win at all costs, including the cost of integrity, if necessary. (judgments are then made regarding the skill and the ethics—depends on situation)
3. I know that my cause is unjust, but winning will be profitable to me, and I’m so skillful that nobody will realize my deceptions: I will employ rhetrickery that appears to be honest. (tobacco ads—both cause and methods are indefensible, even when techniques are clever) (judged poorly)
   

“Bargain-Rhetoric”—intent is for diplomacy, mediate, and find a truce.

1. I want to avoid violence by achieving productive compromise. Win-win strategies (judged most favorably)
2. I will compromise even if I know the result is evil. I won’t stand up to the enemy. (Judged poorly when opponent wins)
3. I want to bargain but I don’t know how to do it; I’ll simply say yes, while concealing my actual hopes. (Passive aggressive)
   

“Listener-Rhetoric”—Not just seeking a truce, want to see the truth behind differences.

1. I have reason to hope that my opponent here will respond to my invitation for both of us to engage in genuine listening. Think about opposing arguments w/ full intention of understand position.
2. Though I am quite sure that my opponent is determined to ignore my case, I will listen to his, hoping to discover some way to engage him in genuine dialogue.
3. I know that only by listening closely to my opponent can I hope to outsmart her—and thus gain what I want, not matter what it costs her.
4. Unless I give in, and pretend to have been persuaded, I will suffer this or that bad consequence, loss of job, of money, of even of life.
5. I’ll be so committed to my listening dogma that I will insist on it even when I can see that the results will be disastrous, both for me and for others.
   

Self-Censorship vs. “Accommodation to Audience.” Awareness of audience’s needs, viewpoints and beliefs. The self-censorship that goes on to convince an audience that I understand their beliefs but I still want to make my case. Hard to draw the line b/t waffling and acknowledging audience and new circumstances. Unethical accommodations can be a problem if audience becomes aware of it.

Chapter 4: Some Major Rescuers

Positive relativists eliminate rhetoric as means of inquiry into truth. Hume and Kants efforts to bring “sense-data” back into the construction of genuine knowledge. Michael Polanyi, philosopher on science, argues that scientific research is only acceptable as “truth” because of discipline’s “ethos”—undemonstrable but justified reliance on authorities. Faith of ethos. (Back to Vico here.)

Richards was “persistently wrestling with how our language changes the world—both how bad rhetoric, including bad poetry, and careless reading, produces misunderstandings, and how good rhetoric can reduce it” (69). Need close reading. (introduce New Criticism). Richards’ work also celebrated the metaphor as the supreme communication device. Aristotle: “The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor.” (Connections here to semiotics)

Rhetoric rescued today by business analysts (effective management—listen and then seek to be heard) and economists.

Rescued by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric. Can’t look for certainty in only that which can be proven with observation. Rejection of Cartesian theory of logic. Can’t prove reason.
These rescuers were able to “acknowledge the inescapable multiplicity of truth domains.” The positivists were wrong from in “dismissing all other methods as yielding nothing but falsehood” (75).

Pluralists: Kenneth Burke—perhaps most influential among rescuers who explicitly employed rhetorical language. Never could be pinned down into a corner b/c for Burke, no corner existed. Burke created a system that respected many systems. Range of interests in a range of disciplines. Used rhetorical terms. Contribution: concept of identification from A Rhetoric of Motives (similar to Richards “understanding” and Booth’s LR). Truth does not operate antithetically with rhetoric.
“You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways w/ his. […] True, the rhetorician may have to change an audience’s opinion in one respect; but he can succeed only insofar as he yields to that audience’s opinions in other respects” (Burke 54-6).

Booth found Rhetoric of Religion most important b/c introduces concept of logology—a study of the hierarchies that lead to identifying linguistic capstones confirming or supporting those hierarchies. Pursuit of perfection. And, identifying those qualities which are not perfect or improved.

Jacques Derrida. Deconstructionist. Passion for rhetorical inquiry. Read as one who rejected any and all certain truths. However, not the case. Derrida’s position was that “truths are multiple, and most truths are uncovered only by methods available when we give up the quest for absolute certainty” (79). Searching for core of human values. “The possibility of speech acts […] depends on conditions and conventions which are not simply verbal […] political situations, economical situations, the libidinal situation” (Derrida). And, those situations are so diverse that diverse thought modes are required for dealing w/ them.

Richard McKeon. Neglected rhetorician who argued, not that no truth existed, but that multiple truths existed—called an “architectonic rhetorician.” Even though truths might seem inescapably multiple, and seemingly contradictory. “Truths are real, but they are multiple, and their pursuers too often hope for one single truth, as they practice complex forms of win-rhetoric—without listening.”

Part II: The Need for Rhetorical Studies Today
Could examine areas of need beyond 3 addressed in this section: education, politics, and media.

Chapter 5: The Fate of Rhetoric in Education
Democracy depends on rhetorical education.

What should everybody learn? Not inert memorized knowledge torn out of the human context of issued discussed with others. Crushes educational motive. Critical thinking. In contexts.

Miseducation Outside the Classroom. Media. Internet.
Back to the Classroom and the Threat of Standard Testing. “democracy depends on the ability to manage conflict constructively. Learning how to deal w/ conflict in a civil manner is one of the great lessons that schools in a democracy must teach.” Teach ethos or character. Teach conflict resolution.

How to teach the remedies. Don’t pontificate—rely on strong rival opinions. When two opponents don’t seem to be listening to each other, intercede and ask them to each state the other’s position. Divide up the groups and have each present their cases.
Teaching Research.
Political Cures.

Chapter 6: The Threats of Political Rhetrickery
Political rhetoric (P-Rhet) involves three problems: 1) the banality both of subject itself and of the most dramatic examples of both the good and bad kind. 2) the bias of any critic who pronounces P-Rhet “defensible” and “indefensible.” 3) the fantastic complexity of problems, motives, and audiences faced by every sincere political rhetor.

The Good and the Bad of it. Standard of success is used to judge P-Rhet, not the technical skill or intrinsic motivations.

Two Modern Revolutions.

1. The media have by now produced an inescapable expansion and multiplicity of audiences. Accommodating specific audiences is much more difficult than it used to be.
2. As a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and thus the threat of mutual annihilation, war is no longer merely local, promising a clear victory to one ‘side’ or the other. Awareness of worldwide audience.
   

Why many judgments against “dishonest” P-Rhet are unfair?

Chapter 7: Media Rhetrickery

Chapter 8: Can Rhetorology Yield More Than a Mere Truce, in Any of our “Wars”?

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