College Composition and Communication

25 articles
Year: Topic: Clear
Export:
argument ×

June 2024

  1. Finding the Place of Silent Rhetoric for ESL Students in College Composition
    Abstract

    English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ silent expression in writing is often perceived as “indirect” or “inarticulate” in the views of Western rhetoric and academia. However, the meaning of silence and its rhetorical practice can differ from culture to culture, and this difference forms a cultural ethos that is unique and significant to the writer. In response to Anne Gere’s aesthetic, ethical, and political dimensions of silence, I explore cultural ethos as another dimension to recognize ESL students’ silent rhetoric and to expand the theoretical and pedagogical landscape of rhetoric and composition.

    doi:10.58680/ccc2024754704

December 2022

  1. Deep Rhetoricity as Methodological Grounds for Unsettling the Settled
    Abstract

    So often left unquestioned is the very place in and from which scholarly ethos and praxis are being proposed. The goal of this essay is to call for and work towards establishing a foundation to explore such questions vis-à-visdeep rhetoricity.Deep rhetoricityinvites and demands of us all returns, careful reckonings, and enduring tasks. We illustrate possibilities ofdeep rhetoricityacross these three epistemic principles. Ultimately, we argue fordeep rhetoricityboth as an intervention into rhetorical practices and as a praxis of invention.

    doi:10.58680/ccc202232274

February 2020

  1. Using Design Thinking to Teach Creative Problem Solving in Writing Courses
    Abstract

    Integrating design thinking methodology into writing courses can help students to develop creative approaches to problem definition and solution development. Tracing how students work with and through written genres common to design thinking reveals the possibilities and potential of learning new patterns of inquiry and argumentation. Developing these creative habits of mind empowers students to explore and invent solutions to complex, multidimensional problems across the broad range of their disciplinary, professional, and civic lives.

    doi:10.58680/ccc202030501

September 2018

  1. Making Composing Policy Audible: A Genealogy of the WPA Outcomes Statement 3.0
    Abstract

    This article offers a genealogy of the deliberative policymaking of the WPA Outcomes Statement 3.0 Revision Task Force. Interviews with Task Force members reveal that the revised statement presents composing, technology, and genre as “boundary objects,” in order to preserve the document’s kairos for as long as possible.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201829784

February 2016

  1. Do Academics Really Write This Way? A Corpus Investigation of Moves and Templates in “They Say / I Say”
    Abstract

    Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s writing textbook, “They Say / I Say,” has triggered important debates among writing professionals. Not included within these debates,however, is the empirical question of whether the textbook’s templates reflect patterns of language use in actual academic discourses. This article uses corpus-based discourse analysis to examine how two particular “moves” discussed in the textbook are realized in three large corpora of professional and student academic writing. The analysis reveals important differences between the textbook’s wordings and those preferred by student and professional writers. It also uncovers differences in use of “interpersonal”functions of language by experienced and less experienced writers. In offering this detailed analysis of academic prose, I aim to extend calls to recenter language in writing research and instruction. I conclude with implications for discussing academic argumentation with students.

    doi:10.58680/ccc201628067

September 2009

  1. Essjay’s Ethos: Rethinking Textual Origins and Intellectual Property
    Abstract

    Discussions of intellectual property are often the focus of rhetoric and composition research, and the question of textual origins grounds these discussions. Through an examination of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, this essay addresses disciplinary concerns about textual origins and intellectual property through a discussion of situated and constructed ethos.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098321
  2. The Bust in’ and Bitchin’ Ethe of Third-Wave Zines
    Abstract

    Our article seeks to integrate alternative voices into traditional rhetorical study by turning to Bitch and BUST, two mainstream zines that serve as dynamic examples of young women’s rhetoric in action. We believe these zines are shaping the present and future of women’s rhetoric. Their most significant contribution to the understanding of women’s rhetoric is located in the way they accommodate ethotic constructions that are at once contradictory and complementary. While these texts can seem abrasive and perhaps even outrageous, the ways in which the writers shape their ethe can teach rhetoricians and teachers of rhetoric and writing about the modes of argumentation practiced by this subculture of the current feminist movement, one which is firmly grounded in the larger public sphere.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098309
  3. Working Boundaries: From Student Resistance to Student Agency
    Abstract

    Based on an ethnographic study of a writing course taught by a talented instructor who integrated process and critical pedagogy approaches, I argue that many students actively engage with the concerns of critical pedagogy when the classroom ethos strongly supports their agency’ their ownership of their developing ideas and texts.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098304
  4. The Uses of Toulmin in Composition Studies
    Abstract

    This article examines the various uses to which Stephen Toulmin has been put in composition studies. It presents data on citations of Toulmin in nine journals, considers appeals to Toulmin in several strains of composition scholarship, and argues that composition scholars ought to attend more carefully to Toulmin’s later works.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20098310

September 2007

  1. The Ethics of Argument: Rereading Kairos and Making Sense in a Timely Fashion
    Abstract

    This study challenges the prevailing interpretations of the Greek rhetorical principle of kairos “saying the right thing at the right time” and attempts to draw on a more nuanced understanding of the term in order to provide generative re-readings of three Braddock Award–winning essays.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20076381

June 2006

  1. Re-Publish or Perish: A Reassessment of George Pierce Baker’s The Principles of Argumentation: Minimizing the Use of Formal Logic in Favor of Practical Approaches
    Abstract

    In preparing Suzanne Bordelon’s article for the February issue of CCC, the editorially unthinkable happened: An earlier version of her fine article replaced the final, wellrevised version as it went to the printer. In addition to my profuse apologies to Professor Bordelon, I have decided to publish the correct version of the article, delaying until September my publication of Janet Eldred’s review essay of several books on technology. The silver lining, in this instance, is a teachable moment, a rare glimpse for readers of CCC into an accountable but ultimately human (and I hope humane) editorial process: Bordelon’s article, quite good to begin with, was judged an “accept with revisions,” and she revised the article extensively and well, passing muster with a final read by one of the first reviewers and me.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20065066

February 2006

  1. George Pierce Baker’s Principles of Argumentation: “Completely Logical”?
    Abstract

    The article contends that previous scholars have misread George Pierce Baker’s efforts by focusing primarily on The Principles of Argumentation and the role of logic. Baker’s view of logic was more complex than scholars have claimed. He challenged traditional concepts of formal logic, highlighting only those aspects that would help students learn argument.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20065048

June 2005

  1. Summary & Critique: Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
    Abstract

    I argue that examining two collections of essays designed for the preparation of new writing teachers and published twenty years apart provides some important clues to what has occurred to composition studies in the interval. Building on the framework I established in two previous CCC articles, I argue that composition studies has become a less unified and more contentious discipline early in the twenty-first century than it had appeared to be around 1990. The present article specifically addresses the rise of what I call critical/cultural studies, the quiet expansion of expressive approaches to teaching writing, and the split of rhetorical approaches into three: argumentation, genre analysis, and preparation for “the” academic discourse community.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20054826

December 2004

  1. Review: Revisiting Racialized Voice: African American Ethos in Language and Literatures by David G. Holmes
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Review: Revisiting Racialized Voice: African American Ethos in Language and Literatures by David G. Holmes, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/56/2/collegecompositionandcommunication4048-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ccc20044048
  2. Revisiting Racialized Voice: African American Ethos in Language and Literatures
    doi:10.2307/4140654

September 2001

  1. Ethos and Error: How Business People React to Errors
    Abstract

    Errors seem to bother nonacademic readers as well as teachers. But what does it mean to be “bothered” by errors? Questions such as this help transform the study of error from mere textual issues to larger rhetorical matters of constructing meaning. Although this study of fourteen business people indicates a range of reactions to errors, the findings also reveal patterns of qualitative agreement—certain ways in which these readers constructed a negative ethos of the writer.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20011441

December 2000

  1. Response to “More Methodological Matters: Against Negative Argumentation”
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Response to "More Methodological Matters: Against Negative Argumentation", Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/52/2/collegecompositionandcommunication1421-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ccc20001421

February 2000

  1. More Methodological Matters: Against Negative Argumentation
    Abstract

    Negative argumentation about methodological approaches threatens to limit the field of composition: it exacerbates the tension concerning the place and value of empirical studies in research; it potentially limits the field’s ability to ask certain kinds of research questions; and it risks impoverishing the methodological education offered to new practitioners in the field.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20001385

December 1999

  1. Class Ethos and the Politics of Inquiry: What the Barroom Can Teach Us about the Classroom
    Abstract

    I want to suggest that an examination of rhetorical practices at the local bar is instructive for two reasons: (1) the barroom is predictably different from the university writing classroom; and (2) the barroom is surprisingly similar to the university writing classroom. A look at how neighborhood bars are qualitatively different from classrooms can teach us about our working-class students’ rhetorical motives, and a recognition of how they are functionally similar can teach us something about our own.

    doi:10.58680/ccc19991374

October 1997

  1. Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments
    doi:10.2307/358423

October 1995

  1. Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory
    Abstract

    Features 16 original essays by prominent rhetoricians, critical theorists, and composition specialists, many of which offer alternative histories as well as reinterpretations of classic texts, thus expanding the canon, and locating and analyzing competing cultural traditions of ethos and ethical arg

    doi:10.2307/358718

October 1979

  1. The Differences Between Speech and Writing: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
    doi:10.58680/ccc197916226

December 1978

  1. The Ethos of Academic Discourse
    doi:10.58680/ccc197816286

October 1978

  1. Teaching Argument: An Introduction to the Toulmin Model
    doi:10.58680/ccc197816301

February 1971

  1. The Rhetoric of Argumentation
    doi:10.2307/356536