(1994). Constructing a doctoral program in rhetoric and composition. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 392-397.

(1994). Doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition: A catalog of the profession. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 240-389.

(1993). The war between reading and writing— and how to end it. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 5-24.

Jacqueline de Romilly. The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Oxford University Press, 1992. 260 pages. $75.00. Ira Shor. Empowering Education. University of Chicago Press, 1992.286 + vii pages. Lester Faigley. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1992. 285 pages. Crowley, Sharon. The Methodical Memory: Invention in Current‐Traditional Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. xviii + 207 pages. Horner, Winifred Bryan. Nineteenth‐Century Scottish Rhetoric: The American Connection. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993. x + 211 pages. Johnson, Nan. Nineteenth‐Century Rhetoric in North America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.313 pages. Rewriting the nineteenth century Chris M. Anson, Joan Graham, David A. Jolliffe, Nancy S. Shapiro, Carolyn H. Smith. Scenarios for Teaching Writing: Contexts for Discussion and Reflective Practice. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. xiii + 160 pages. Mark Backman, Sophistication: Rhetoric and the Rise of Self‐Consciousness. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1991. Douglas Walton. The Place of Emotion in Argument. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. 294 pages. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

These notes are my recollections of a trip to see Kenneth Burke on February 19, 1993, in Andover, New Jersey, where Burke has lived for more than 70 years. The visitors were Jack Selzer, who is studying Burke's early work; Charles Mann, a longtime friend of Burke and curator of the Rare Books Room at Penn State's Pattee Library, where a substantial collection of Burke papers is housed; and Rosa Eberly, a graduate student in rhetoric at Penn State. The visitees: Burke and his friend and housekeeper, Ginnie.

Ethos is generally associated with individual rhetors.1 Certainly that's association Aristotle had in mind when he recorded most influential usage of term (Rhetoric 1356a). But there is ample warrant for moving to a broader level-the level adopted in this paper, a case study of outrageous of a group of generative linguists on cusp of sixties and seventies. There is ample warrant for identifying not simply with specific individuals in specific orations but also with identifiable communities. In ordinary language, for instance, has always been far more communal than individual: Ethos.... [ 1.] The characteristic spirit, prevalent tone of sentiment, of a people or community; 'genius' of an institution or system (OED, 1933 reissue) . And it has a similar sense among our academic neighbors-in literary criticism, where books have titles like The Ethos of Restoration Comedy (Schneider); in sociology, where books have titles like The Ethos of Hong Kong Chinese (Siu-Kai), or, more famously, in Merton's discussion of general ethos of science (268). Coming closer to home, consider Augustine's notion of a Christian ethos, which presupposes that rhetor stands for group values (De Doctrina 4.27-29). Consider similarly presupposing admonition of George Campbell about influence of party-spirit (97). Consider Black's above-epigramitized talk of patterned commitments and stylistic proclivities, which, as Halloran tells us, is essentially projection of to communal level (Black 85; Halloran, Molecular Biology 71). Elsewhere, Halloran tells us more: the word has both an individual and a collective meaning. It makes sense to speak of of this or that person, but it makes equally good sense to speak of of a particular

Being bodies that learn language / thereby becoming wordlings-thus begins Kenneth Burke's revised definition of human beings.' Here I will suggest teachers of writing and literacy can use Burke to revise our discussion of words and thereby better empower the wordlings we teach. Traditionally, what have we taught our students about words? Probably the first place to look for the answer to this question is the site where our assertions about diction have most power: in the margins of their papers. What my students report about their revision processes matches what composition researchers report. Their primary concern (re: diction) is changing words to avoid such comments as WW, Abst, Amb, especially WW. That is the most potent lesson they have learned from their previous teachers about diction. I. A. Richards was right when he asserted that the best and most effective way to teach writing is to help students understand how words work in (8). The New Rhetoric reframes what we know about words work. It directs attention to the crucial importance of word-ing in both the psychological process of invention and the social process of discourse community.2 It can help us teach writing humanely, critically, and effectively both in the humanities and across the curriculum/'in the disciplines. Most composition textbooks use Burke, if at all, only by mentioning his Pentad. But this presentation of the Pentad is a red herring, an obeisance that allows us to deflect the rest of Burke, to put him under erasure.3 More important than any particular like the Pentad is what Burke can help us understand about language in general, rhetorical processes in particular. We should take into our classrooms Burke's insights into words work, into abstractions move minds, into contexts (especially of that rhetorically most important context called, perhaps misleadingly, audience [cf. Park]), into contradiction and into process-in short, into writing as a psycholinguistic, sociocultural process. In writing classes our discussion of words is all too often based in reductively narrow, dichotomized conceptions of style and diction. We will do well to let Burke remind us words are more important than that, to remind us wording can constitute knowledge and power. We should demonstrate to our students-while

(1993). Mirroring ourselves? The pedagogy of early grammar texts. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 418-435.

(1993). I conclude not: Toward a pragmatic account of metadiscourse. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 265-289.

M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer. Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992. xi + 312 pages. John Frederick Reynolds, David C. Mair, Pamela C. Fischer. Writing and Reading Mental Health Records: Issues and Analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992. 109 pages. Nathaniel Teich, ed. Rogerian Perspectives: Collaborative Rhetoric for Oral and Written Communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1992. 303 pages. $24.50. Gerald McNiece. The Knowledge That Endures: Coleridge, German Philosophy and the Logic of Romantic Thought. London: Macmillan, 1992. 226 pages.

(1993). The epideictic character of rhetorical criticism. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 339-349.

The uses of postmodern theory in rhetoric and composition studies have been the object of considerable abuse of late. Figures of some repute in the field-the likes of Maxine Hairston and Peter Elbow-as well as anonymous voices from the Burkean Parlor section of Rhetoric Review-most recently, TS, graduate student, and KF, voice speaking for a general English teacher audience (192)-have joined the chorus of protest. The charges have included willful obscurity, selfindulgence, elitism, pomposity, intellectual impoverishment, and host of related offenses. Although my name usually appears among the accused, I am sympathetic with those undergoing the difficulties of the first encounter with this discussion. (I exclude Professor Hairston in her irresponsible charge that its recent contributors in College English are low-risk Marxists who write very badly [695] and who should be banned from NCTE publications.) I experienced the same frustration when I first encountered the different but closely related language of rhetoric and composition studies some fifteen years ago. I wondered, for example, if I would ever grasp the complexities of Aristotle or Quintilian or Kenneth Burke or I. A. Richards, not to mention the new language of the writing process. A bit later I was introduced to French poststructuralism, and once again I found myself wandering in strange seas, and this time alone. In reading rhetoric, after all, I had the benefit of numerous commentators to help me along-the work of Kinneavy and Lauer and Corbett and Emig, for example. In reading Foucault and Derrida in the late seventies, on the other hand, I was largely on my own since the commentaries were as difficult as the originals, and those few that were readable were often (as even I could see) wrong. Nonetheless, with the help of informal reading groups made up of colleagues and students, I persisted in my efforts to come to terms with this difficult body of thought. I was then, as now, convinced that both rhetorical studies and postmodern speculation offered strikingly convergent and remarkably compelling visions for conducting my life as teacher and citizen. It is clear to me that rhetoric and composition studies has arrived as serious field of study because it has taken into account the best that has been thought and said about its concerns from the past and the present, and I have found that postmodern work in historical and contemporary rhetorical theory has done much to further this effort.

(1992). Disassembling Plato's critique of rhetoric in the Gorgias (447a‐466a) Rhetoric Review: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 205-216.

George A. Kennedy, trans. Aristotle: On Rhetoric (subtitled A Theory of Civic Discourse). Oxford University Press, 1991. 335 + xiii pages. The Importance of George A. Kennedy's Aristotle: On Rhetoric Kennedy's Aristotle: On Rhetoric as a Pedagogical Tool Kennedy's Rhetoric as a Contribution to Rhetorical Theory Kennedy's Aristotle: on Rhetoric as a Work of Translation∗ James J. Murphy, ed. A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to Twentieth‐Century America. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1990. 241 + v pages. Teaching the History of Writing Instruction Thomas Miller. The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon. Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 318 + viii pages. Patricia Harkin and John Schilb, eds. Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in the Postmodern Age. New York: Modern Language Association, 1991. iv + 242 pages. Sandra Stotsky, ed. Connecting Civic Education and Language Education: The Contemporary Challenge. New York: Teachers College Press of Columbia University, 1991. Janis Forman, ed. New Visions of Collaborative Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1992. 200 pages. $23.50.

complex of social formations. In the field of composition and rhetoric, such systems have been described as communities. The term is useful in the theory and analysis of writing because it embraces the rhetorical concern with social interchange (discourse) and with situation or context (community). But the term can lead the analyst astray by prompting an uncritical acceptance of as a natural element or transcendental category. Because community, like discourse itself, is socially constructed-by the analyst as well as by the people who claim membership-the act of identifying communities is never innocent, never free of ideological influences. As both Lester Faigley and Joseph Harris have noted, the word community is almost always used positively, and herein lies its danger to rhetorical analysis. If the community is always good, who but the perverse could question or rebel against practices that sustain the community? However, to accept this irresistible goodness as somehow prior to discourse (above question) would amount to abandoning a key premise of rhetorical criticism-the idea of the rhetorical situation (Bitzer), which demands that the analyst acknowledge the possibility of transformation among the elements and aims of discourse, including location. In addition to changing language and changing minds, the enterprise of rhetoric suggests that speakers and writers have the power to transform the site of discourse, the community itself. In this essay I argue that as a defense against an uncritical adoption of the community concept rhetorical theory needs to keep alive competing concepts of discourse communities, so that alternatives exist in the description and analysis of discourse practices. Recent definitions of discourse communities have established a rather too-narrow foundation upon a communitarian ethic. At the present time, when liberalism's stock is down, communitarianism appears to be a strong alternative for understanding the relation of people to government and culture (Lasch). In liberalism, social organization depends upon two strong formations-the individual, who may enjoy a wide range of rights and freedoms at the possible cost of

In his 1925 article Literary Criticism of Oratory, Herbert Wichelns, a scholar of rhetoric at Cornell, observed that, with respect to literary study, oratory had become either an outcast or a poor (181). Oratory's falling out of favor indicated to Wichelns that perceptions of discourse had been radically transformed. Intimating what the change might consist of, he wrote, [i]nvolved in it is some shift in the conception of oratory or of literature, or of both; nor can these conceptions have changed except in response to the of which oratory, as well as literature, is part (181). Scholars writing after Wichelns have frequently reported on the ill fate of oratory-and, more broadly, of rhetoric as the practice and study of some kinds of written as well as oral discourse-in American colleges. How had colleges by 1925 come to demote rhetoric to a position beneath literary critical study and literary works of fiction, drama, and poetry? As Wichelns suggested, rhetoric and literature shared some life, and our elaboration of their common history and context can help us account for rhetoric's condition. Some scholars have argued that the study and status of rhetoric in the college curriculum diminished as a strong interest in literature emerged (e.g., Stewart 119-21; Connors, Ede, and Lunsford 5-7; Halloran 176). Exploring the role of the belletristic tradition in rhetoric and of representative individuals such as C. S. Baldwin and the men who held the position of Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard, the work of these scholars offers insight into the interrelations among rhetoric and literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historians neither of English nor of speech as academic disciplines, however, have traced the relation between rhetoric and literature as it was construed by scholars who were active during this time. The concomitant rise of literary study and fall of rhetoric suggest that historical perceptions of the relation between literary and rhetorical discourse figure in the story of rhetoric's demise. Part of what we might call the life of rhetoric and of literature is the relation that members of the profession perceived between them. As with contemporary discussions on the issue in such texts as Jane Tompkins' Reader in History and Steven Mailloux's Rhetorical Power, we might guess that turn-of-the-century scholars posited rela-

(1992). The four master tropes: Analogues of development. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 91-107.

The essay has three parts, with the first two introductory to the third. The first part explores the ideas of several modem philosophers about imagery and imagination and their relationship to language and communication. The second part reviews contemporary theories of mental imagery and verbal processes as derived from empirical studies in cognitive psychology. The final section synthesizes the ideas of the philosophers and psychologists and relates them to the rhetorical concept of persona, with examples. The examples I will use in the final section will deal with imagery in composing exposition, specifically argument and persuasion. The processes of imagery and imagination involved in depicting character and action or composing vivid description, while interesting in their own right, are more obvious. Donald Murray cites numerous poets and fiction writers who testify that imagery is not only the motivation but the vehicle of their composing (Write 59-60). To show that imagination is basic to all composing, I will avoid the narrative and poetic and steer into realms where demonstration is more subtle.

(1992). Robert Zoellner's “talk‐write pedagogy”: Instrumental concept for composition today. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 239-243.

I suspect that many people who buy sentimental greeting card verse have the same preconceived ideas about such verse that I had before I began a serious study of it a few years ago. To my mind, greeting card verse was a trite and trivial form of poetry, filled with flowery language, poetic diction, and figures of speech, appealing to emotions in excess of the occasion-artificial, affected, and insincere. To my surprise, however, I discovered that greeting card verse, although often written in meter and rhyme, is not poetry, nor is it intended to be, but a rhetorical composition, a message transmitted from one person to another. Although its rhymes and meters are frequently trite (this may account for its wholesale condemnation), the sentiments it expresses, although commonplace, are seldom trivial. It uses few figures of speech, little or no poetic diction, and almost no flowery language. Nor are its emotions in excess of the occasion. The sentiments and emotions it expresses are no different than those that you and I might express at a wedding, a graduation, an anniversary, or a birthday, or at Christmas, New Year's, or Easter-good luck, congratulations, I love you, I'm thinking of you, have a joyous holiday, and so forth. Finally, greeting card verse is neither artificial, affected, nor insincere, but straightforward, genuine, and sincere. In fact, it exemplifies beautifully an important kind of ceremonial discourse, and I can think of no better way of introducing writers to the ancient art of epideictic discourse than through a careful analysis and understanding of the rhetorical strategies used by writers of greeting card verse. Paradoxically, greeting card verse is both universal and particular. The message of greeting card verse must be general enough to fit representative rhetorical situations (Quinn 22), yet particular enough to fit immediate occasions. Like proverbs, maxims, quotations, and anecdotes, when they are decontextualized and put into collections, greeting card verse is decontextualized when it is put on racks of cards in card shops, drug stores, and supermarkets. Under appropnate circumstances, however, the person who buys greeting card verse recontextualizes it, appropriates it to his or her own intention, and sends it to someone else as a personal message. As a result, there is a dialogic relationship set up between the writer's intention and the sender's intention, between the writer's words and the sender's words. But as Mikhail Bakhtin has pointed out, do not all of the

(1992). Reviving the rodential model for composition: Robert Zoellner's alternative to flower and Hayes. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 244-249.

(1992). Owning a virus: The rhetoric of scientific discovery accounts. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 321-336.

My purpose today is to frame, quite briefly, the somewhat different critical assumptions found in literacy and communication studies and then to illustrate the latter perspective with a discussion of rhetoric and the media. Before doing so, however, I want to express my deep appreciation for having been asked to address you today. We are cousins, you and I, for we share a common ancestry. A bit under eighty years ago, seventeen stalwart professors of public speaking walked out of the third annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (which was itself formed in reaction to the MLA) and fashioned what would later become the main professional organization in Communication Studies in the United States. They did so because they felt that rhetoric done orally had a unique character, that that character manifested itself in distinctive conceptual and behavioral ways, and that it took a special pedagogy to tease spoken eloquence out of college sophomores. I mention these historical matters not in the spirit of academic chauvinism but because these facts made a difference in the professional options available to me. Nevertheless, I confess a certain ambivalence when realizing that this intrepid band of dissidents, aided and abetted by the rise of the electronic media, can now claim great-grandparentage to some 200,000 Communication majors in US college and universities today. These students dwarf by a factor of two the current number of English majors, a fact that might dismay some of you but a fact that has gladdened the hearts of both linebackers and Miss Virginia contestants for decades. Being neither a linebacker nor a raving beauty as an undergraduate, I studied English. I did so until I became a college senior, at which time I faced decisions about graduate study. I was not as wise as many twenty-year-olds, but I was wise enough to know that studying English had become an affaire de coeur with me.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes First, we owe much to Gesa Kirsch and Patricia Sullivan for motivating us to write this paper. They may never fully realize how much they did. Second, we are grateful for the assistance of all the people—both living and dead—whom we list in the references. Third, we owe much to Jim Corder, who helped us to see that academic papers and personal essays are more alike than we know. Fourth, we thank all of the colleagues who have collaborated with us on books and articles: Gene L. Piche, Mike Graves, Wayne Slater, Ann Duin, Donna Johnson, Maureen Roen (two children, their journals, and a literary map), Patricia Hazeltine, Nicholas Karolides, Deborah Grunloh, Stuart Brown, Bob Mittan, Margaret Fleming, R. J. Willey, Kate Mangelsdorf, Vicki Taylor, Zita Ingham, Mike Rogers, Gesa Kirsch, Diane Clymer, Jan Swearingen, Marvin Diogenes, Clyde Moneyhun, Vicki Small, and Jim Nesci. Finally, we thank Theresa Enos and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Richard Leo Enos, ed. Oral and Written Communication: Historical Approaches. "Written Communication Annual, An International Survey of Research and Theory,” vol. 4. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1990. 264 pages. Susan C. Jarratt. Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. 181 pp., $22.50. Brandt, Deborah. Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers, and Texts. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 151 pages. Jeanette Harris. Expressive Discourse. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1990. 206 pages.

(1991). What's at stake in the conflict between “theory”; and “practice”; in composition? Rhetoric Review: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 91-97.

Andrea A. Lunsford, Helene Moglen, and James Slevin, eds., The Future of Doctoral Studies in English. New York: Modern Language Association, 1989. xii + 179 pages. Patrick Brantlinger, Crusoe's Footprints: Cultural Studies in Britain and America. New York: Routledge, 1990. xi + 212 pages. Bernard Bergonzi, Exploding English: Criticism, Theory, Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. viii + 240 pages. Reed Way Dasenbrock, ed. Redrawing the Lines: Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction, and Literary Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. 263 pages. John D. Schaeffer, Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990. 181 pages. $25.75. Donald A. Daiker and Max Morenberg, eds. The Writing Teacher as Researcher: Essays in the Theory and Practice of Class‐Based Research. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1990. xi + 357 pages. $19.50. Alice Glarden Brand, The Psychology of Writing: The Affective Experience. Foreword by Peter Elbow. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. 259 pages.

(1991). Abstracting the bodies of/in academic discourse. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 52-69.

Except for the essay and the research paper, perhaps no component of the college composition course is as prevalent as the personal journal, and in recent years the journal has become a principal export in the Writing-Across-the-Curriculum movement. Most composition textbooks contain a section on journal-keeping, and several, such as Christopher C. Burnham's Writingfrom the Inside Out, place the journal at the heart of the writing course. The journal is often associated with what James Berlin has called the Subjective approach to composition instruction, which assumes that insights arising from within the writer are of paramount importance, that reality is a personal and private construct (145). But the journal has proven versatile enough to fit almost any pedagogical model. Textbooks and instructor's guides commonly list a number of functions for the journal: creative stimulant, idea repository, experimental forum, and learning tool. The multidisciplinary essays in Toby Fulwiler's The Journal Book show its protean manifestations, including dialogue journal, learning log, team journal, math record, and office log. Theoretically, we place considerable faith in the journal and what it represents for our students-an opportunity to take control of their writing and to engage in independent inquiry. Yet many instructors who initially sense the potential of this genre give up on it when it leads to disappointing results.

A large number of philosophers, critics, and rhetoricians continue to attack idea of foundationalism,* notion that our perceptions, our language, our very knowledge are grounded in an external reality. For example, Jacques Derrida has argued that there is no necessary connection between signifiers of our language and signifieds of an external reality, that signs must always be determined by a trace of what they be, what they signify (10-14, 70-73). And Richard Rorty has asserted that our understanding of language is based on an inappropriate metaphor of a mirror reflecting reality. Without that mirror reflection, Rorty argues, we must rely on how whole of a culture, practice, or language works before we understand its parts, that understanding is more like getting acquainted with a person than like following a demonstration (319). The major problem facing these theorists is need to account for our shared experience-how we seem to perceive in similar ways, how we learn and use a common language, and how we build a common culture. Without an external world as a common point of reference, they have often substituted idea of an interpretive community (Fish), social convention (Bruffee), or conversation about alternative standards of justification rather than the relation between human beings and object of their inquiry (Rorty 389-90) as basis for how we perceive, how we learn and use language, and how we know. But now conventionalism itself is under attack. Gerald Graff has pointed out that idea of an interpretive community does not sufficiently distinguish among kinds of strategies or conventions that individual members of a community may use in reading or in any act of understanding (112). And Kathleen McCormick has noted that notion of an interpretive community cannot explain how these strategies are acquired in first place, how a reader decides to join a particular community, or how she decides that time is right to develop a new (71). Thus concept of an interpretive community, idea of a group that shares a set of conventions, seems too broad to account for individual acts of interpretation and understanding. The philosopher Donald Davidson goes one step farther and argues that convention account for language use because there is no regularity in way we understand whether sentences are assertions or not, to say nothing about whether they are true or false; there is no regularity in way we understand

(1991). On composing ethnographically: Strategies for enacting authority in writing. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 131-142.

(1991). “Revision/re‐vision”: A feminist writing class. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 258-273.

Patricia P. Matsen, Philip Rollinson, Marion Sousa, eds. Readings from Classical Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. viii + 382 pages. Roderick P. Hart. Modern Rhetorical Criticism. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown, 1990. iv + 542 pages. Susan Miller. Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition. Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 267 pages. Bruce Lincoln. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 238 pages. Gregory Clark. Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation: A Social Perspective on the Function of Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. xix + 93 pages. Lawrence J. Prelli. A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. xi + 320 pages. Kathleen E. Welch. The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appropriations of Ancient Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990. 186 pages.

Many theorists have found it helpful to examine the presuppositions of current rhetorical theories in an effort to discover, in critical fashion, our roots, the tacit tradition, and lay claim to the discipline's intellectual heritage. To unearth the intellectual ancestors of modem rhetoric is certainly a prolegomenon to any future claim the field of composition might make to being a discipline, but for now this effort is beset with difficulties.

(1991). Women's work: The feminizing of composition. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 201-229.

sharply and clearly than I had been able the pedagogical problem I want to explore here. He or she noted, with an undisguised exasperation I understood all too well, God knows, the seniors in my personal essay class still seem to want to read even the best of essays as if the essays belong to [a] 'monological regime of silence and facticity' (citing one of the phrases that appears below). This comment was

Rhetoric as a college-level discipline entered the nineteenth century as one of the most respected fields in higher education. The teacher of rhetoric at that time was an honored and respected figure, often occupying a chaired position like Edinburgh's Regius Professorship or Harvard's Boylston Chair. When, however, we look at the teacher of rhetoric a mere century later, what a sad change we find. Rhetoric has changed in a hundred years from an academic desideratum to a grim apprenticeship, to be escaped as soon as practicable. Instead of being an esteemed intellectual figure in community and campus, the rhetoric teacher of 1900 is increasingly marginalized, overworked, and ill-paid. Instead of being a senior professor, he, or she, is an instructor or a graduate student. Instead of being sought by students, rhetoric courses are despised and sneered at, and their teachers have fallen from the empyrean of named chairs to the status of permanent underclass teachers: oppressed, badly paid, ill-used, and secretly despised. In this essay I want to examine some of the issues of labor and status that have surrounded the composition underclass, which is with us today in forms that would be all too familiar to the writing teachers of 1900. The creation of the composition underclass cannot be understood without examining an essential change that took place in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was the shift from oral to written discourse within rhetorical training, with its result an incredible rise in the amount of individual academic work that each teacher of rhetoric must do. This overwork, along with the increasing bureaucratization of the universities, allowed the formation of permanent low-status jobs in composition which were not filled by upwardly mobile scholars, who increasingly gravitated to literary work, which was easier, offered a lighter load, and was given more respect.

(1990). What is an English major? Some afterthoughts. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 128-131.