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Up until the publication of Alexander Bain's English Composition and Rhetoric in 1866, most American college textbook rhetorics were organized around belletristic discourse classifications; that is, they divided up the subject of writing into established literary forms such as orations, history, romance, treatises, sermons, and the like. Bain's textbook brought about what we now, thanks to Thomas Kuhn, refer to as a paradigm shift, sweeping away these belletristic schemes and substituting five forms-Description, Narration, Exposition, Persuasion, and Poetry-that, with the exception of Poetry, have survived up to the present in Freshman Composition and are known in the trade as the Modes of Discourse. 1 In recent years, however, another paradigm shift has been taking place, and Bain is now often held responsible for the impoverishment of rhetoric in the late nineteenth century.2 Regrettably, in the campaign to undo the damage he did, little attention has been paid to his intellectual milieu or to the question of why he did what he did, with the result that the true historical importance of the modes has been obscured. The most noteworthy feature of Bain's English Composition and Rhetoric-and the reason perhaps for its popularity among his contemporaries-may be its reliance upon the scientific thought of the day. During the previous century in Bain's native Scotland, Adam Smith, George Campbell, Hugh Blair and Joseph Priestley had sought to redefine the basic aims of rhetoric, largely in an effort to accommodate the increasingly prestigious natural sciences. As Wilbur Samuel Howell has argued, the classical rhetorical systems offered little guidance to the scientist in presenting his discoveries to the learned community and to the public at large: they conceived of persuasion as an appeal to commonplaces rather than facts, they depended for methods of proof on the logic of deduction rather than induction, they encouraged the use of ornamental figurative devices rather than plain statements, and in general they were designed for popular exhortation rather than for disseminating fresh knowledge.3 In his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke points the way to-

'The whole of Western Philosophy, wrote Alfred North Whitehead, consists of nothing but footnotes to Plato. Plato, who is among the most brilliant and artistic writers of antiquity, had a unique theory of rhetoric. From his idea of rhetoric one can derive some of the most intellectually stimulating and most rewarding assignments in the composition or speech instructor's repertoire. Yet the potential of using Platonic theory as a basis of assignments in composition and speech has not been exploited because Plato's idea of rhetoric is either unknown, ignored, or misunderstood. For example, the conventional twentieth-century thought about Plato is that he condemned rhetoric. Why would anyone derive useful assignments from a theory that condemns the very discipline one is teaching and, even if one tried, how could one? But Plato did not condemn rhetoric. What he condemned was the

Ann E. Berthoff, Response to Richard Gebhardt, "Writing Processes, Revision, and Rhetorical Problems: A Note on Three Recent Articles", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), p. 95

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A tremendous amount of energy goes into the contracting, developing, marketing, and revising of composition textbooks. And a significant amount of energy goes into criticizing them.2 More than we critics would like to admit, editors-good editors anyway-try to respond to this criticism. Thus we are seeing a new generation of textbooks that incorporate current work in rhetoric, psychoand sociolinguistics, the composing process, and writing across the curriculum. But the surprising thing is that such innovation goes on in the absence of fundamental research into what happens when students read current or traditional textbooks. True, some authors conduct field tests, but, for reasons that I hope will become clear in this essay, field testing provides limited answers to basic questions. We need more basic research than we now have into the interaction of reader and text when the text is one intended to teach a complex process. Without such research, we will never know whether or not our improvements--our attempts to revise and revitalize textbooks-are really contributing to growth in composing. But is such research really necessary, or would it simply be a desirable but ultimately academic exercise? Won't textbooks continue to become more effective as our knowledge about composing increases? Not necessarily, for we have good reason to suspect that knowledge of any complex process-like knowledge about composing-cannot be adequately conveyed via static print. As soon as such knowledge hits the page of a text, its rich possibilities are narrowed and sometimes rigidified. While I certainly don't want to suggest that no student learns from composition textbooks, I do want to raise the possibility that students learn about the process of writing from a textbook less frequently and less effectively than many of us think. To argue the legitimacy of the foregoing assertion, I'll begin with general speculation on the value of textbook discussions of writing and move toward more specific consideration of problem-solving in the act of composing. Though I will state

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James L. Kinneavy's A Theory of Discourse: The Aims of Discourse (PrenticeHall, 1971) has contributed much to field of English. Evidence of its impact that it required reading for two NEH seminars-Edward P. J. Corbett's summer seminar at Ohio State and Dudley Bailey's year-long seminar at University of Nebraska. This evident concern and book's recent appearance in paperback (Norton, 1980) prompt a review of its strengths and limitations. Kinneavy clarifies need for order in English studies, but-to use his own term for characterizing field-his work preparadigmatic in that his categories are static and his approach too closely tied to literary criticism to be helpful in Though he intends to rescue from the present anarchy of discipline,' his theory unsatisfactory for many teach composition, largely because he fails to account adequately for rhetorical choices and composing processes. This review will focus on some of underlying reasons for limited success of Kinneavy's theory. Kinneavy seems aware of many of his presuppositions, including his assumption that he can side-step considering rhetorical processes. However, he does not always seem to be aware of implications of his methodological decisions. His decision to analyze the aim which embodied in text itself (49) based on a desire to concentrate on rather than composition. A theory of composition, he argues, would require attention to process of composing, a concern he concludes is not desirable for an analysis of aims (4). He prefers to deal with with the characteristics of text, with decoder, who primary element in any communication situation (49-50). Ironically, though he recognizes rhetorical significance of writer's audience, he fails to perceive that rhetoric, unlike discourse analysis, must deal with process by which texts come into existence. He thus sets out to establish the basic foundations of composition and to provide a framework of research for all areas of dis-

Preface 1. THE CONTEXTS OF TEACHING PERSPECTIVES Richard Fulkerson: Four Philosophies of Composition James Berlin: Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class Edward P.J. Corbett: Rhetoric, the Enabling Discipline Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner: The Problematic of Experience: Redefining Critical Work in Ethnography and Pedagogy TEACHERS Peter Elbow: Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process Donald M. Murray: The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference Lad Tobin: Reading Students, Reading Ourselves: Revising the Teacher's Role in the Writing Class Dan Morgan: Ethical Issues Raised by Students' Personal Writing STUDENTS Mina P. Shaughnessy: Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing Vivian Zamel: Strangers in Academia: The Experiences of Faculty and ESL Students Across the Curriculum Todd Taylor: The Persistence of Difference in Networked Classrooms: Non-Negotiable Difference and the African American Student Body LOCATIONS Hephzibah Roskelly: The Risky Business of Group Work Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe: The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class Muriel Harris: Talking in the Middle: Why Writers Need Writing Tutors APPROACHES Min-Zhan Lu: Redefining the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy: A Critique of the Politics of Linguistic Innocence Mariolina Salvatori: Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition Gary Tate: A Place for Literature in Freshman Composition Carolyn Matalene: Experience as Evidence: Teaching Students to Write Honestly and Knowledgeably about Public Issues 2. THE TEACHING OF WRITING ASSIGNING Mike Rose: Writing Courses: A Critique and a Proposal David Peck, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Mike Rose: A Comment and Response on Remedial Writing Courses Richard L. Larson: The Research Paper in the Writing Course: A Non-Form of Writing Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor: Teaching Argument: A Theory of Types Catherine E. Lamb: Beyond Argument in Feminist Composition RESPONDING AND ASSESSING Brooke K. Horvath: The Components of Written Response: A Practical Synthesis of Current Views David Bartholomae: The Study of Error Jerry Farber: Learning How to Teach: A Progress Report COMPOSING AND REVISING Nancy Sommers: Between the Drafts James A. Reither: Writing and Knowing: Toward Redefining the Writing Process David Bleich: Collaboration and the Pedagogy of Disclosure AUDIENCES Douglas B. Park: The Meanings of Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford: Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy Peter Elbow: Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience STYLES Robert J. Connors: Static Abstractions and Composition Winston Weathers: Teaching Style: A Possible Anatomy Elizabeth D. Rankin: Revitalizing Style: Toward a New Theory and Pedagogy Richard Ohmann: Use Definite, Specific, Concrete Language

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For many twentieth-century teachers of English, John Locke (1632-1704) is a peripheral, rather than a mainstream, figure in the literary history of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. With some of those teachers, he merits mention only as the friend and the physician of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, who served as the model for Achitophel in John Dryden's famous satire, and as the tutor for the third Earl of Shaftesbury, the author of the pre-Romantic manifesto Characteristics. Maybe in connection with an undergraduate course in political science or in a Great Books course in the Humanities division or in a course in Colonial American literature, some of them read Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government and learned that this document not only attempted to justify the Whig revolution of 1688 in England but also served our Founding Fathers as the rationale for our own Revolution and our own democratic form of government. Even if they had not read snippets from Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) in anthologies of eighteenth-century literature, they could not escape the many references to that work in the literary works of the period and in the literary histories of the period. If they were aware that the Essay was a philosophical work, they were not quite sure whether it could be classified primarily as a contribution to psychology or logic or metaphysics or epistemology. Virtually none of those twentieth-century teachers-including myself, until recently-were aware that Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding made a contribution to the development of rhetoric in the eighteenth century. For those of us who regarded John Locke as only a subsidiary figure in the literary life of the eighteenth century, the following statement by Kenneth MacLean in his bookJohn Locke and English Literature of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936) is an eye-opener: The book that had most influence in the Eighteenth Century, the Bible excepted, was

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That the English language is male-oriented can scarcely be denied. For centuries the human race has been called man, the individual he, everyone himself-with the constant reassurance that of course man, he, his, him, and himself are generic terms which include women as well as men. But do they? Although the sentence Every student should bring his book to class does not necessarily evoke mental picture of thirty uniformed boys, I believe that such sentences subtly reinforce the sex role stereotype that most students (writers, readers, professors, doctors, executives, individuals-persons worthy of note) are male. Such linguistic bias should be of particular concern to teachers of composition, whose job it is to emphasize the subtle rhetorical powers of language, the connotative complexities of the words we use. main concern in this paper is the way sexist language manifests itself in the college classroom, particularly in freshman composition courses. In 1976 H. Lee Gershuny conducted detailed investigation of dictionaries and textbooks to determine the extent to which they reinforce sexual stereotypes. Gershuny concluded that although sexist language was common in dictionaries and public school textbooks, it was not as prevalent in recent college composition manuals: My own informal examination of representative sample of college English handbooks and rhetoric texts published after 1972 indicated that English language texts are far ahead of other disciplines in 'de-sexing' illustrative sentences and prose passages.' Yet while praising number of these texts for specific achievements in reducing or eliminating sexist offenses, Gershuny also asserts that have way to go. Many texts fail to depict women in traditionally male roles and professions, and when they do, Gershuny suggests, a woman's work is often trivialized or described as dependent on that of others (p. 157). Also, Gershuny mentions only one work, Suzanne E. and Roderick A. Jacobs' The College Writer's Handbook, as alternating she and he each time in generic use; presumably most of the rely upon the more conventional generic he. In similar study, Candace Helgeson refuses to give authors of freshman composition texts as

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Several months ago, a colleague and I presented a proposal to the Ph.D. graduate committee at Arizona State University for a new concentration on the Ph.D. level in rhetoric, composition, and linguistics. Our proposal seemed reasonable enough. What we were proposing was that graduate students be given a series of options on the Ph.D. level, so that those whose primary interest was belles lettres could choose from among the traditional areas of English and American literature. However, those whose primary interest was language, or a broader conception of letters as exemplified by the bonae litterae of the Renaissance, could do half of their work in the traditional areas of literature and half of their work in rhetoric, composition, and linguistics. We argued that students seeking degrees in order to teach and to do research face a job market very different from the one that students encountered as recently as eight or nine years ago, and drastically different from what most teachers encountered when they began. We reminded the committee of the results of the MLA Job Information List, published in the February 1978 ADE Bulletin, which showed a preponderance of job opportunities for people in the areas of rhetoric, composition, and linguistics. For example, of the 405 jobs advertised in '76-'77 for people with Ph.D.'s in English, 56 of those jobs were in rhetoric and composition, 53 in linguistics, and 29 in creative writing. Then in descending order, there were 18 openings in American Literature, 18 in Black Studies, 17 for generalists, 15 each in Old and Middle English Literature, 19th Century British Literature, and American Studies, 13 in Renaissance Studies, 8 in 19th Century American Literature, 7 in Colonial Literature, and so forth. We emphasized that the opportunity for serious research and scholarship in rhetoric and composition has never been better. The professional membership in the Conference on College Composition and Communication has increased dramatically over the past few years. The MLA has recognized the

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Fred R. Pfister, Joanne F. Petrick, A Heuristic Model for Creating a Writer's Audience, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, No. 2, Recent Work in Rhetoric: Discourse Theory, Invention, Arrangement, Style, Audience (May, 1980), pp. 213-220

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