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2403 articlesJanuary 1994
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Abstract
Kenneth Burke's New Rhetoric (1951) was meant to describe language as the basis of the interaction of individuals, objects, and courses of events in the human communication process. However, his theory can also be a useful rhetorical model to explain hypertext as a language event that relies on nested dialogues of visible text and invisible scripting. Moreover, Burke's belief that the purpose of discourse is to share knowledge with others provides a striking parallel to Vannevar Bush's original theory about hypertext. Even Burke's metaphor of a drama fits the purpose and process of hypertext.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>
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Facing Multiple Audiences in Engineering and R&D Writing: The Social Contexts of a Technical Report ↗
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The customary approach to classifying multiple audiences for written discourse is to recognize primary, secondary, and immediate audiences, and, in some cases, gatekeeping audiences. Based on findings from an ethnographic case study of engineering authors in an R&D setting, this article suggests that authors should also attend to watchdog audiences as they write. A watchdog audience pays close attention to the written transaction between the author and the primary audience. Authors must direct their discourse toward the primary audience, but they must also keep the motives and purposes of the watchdog audience in mind as they write and revise. The watchdog audience in my case study, while it had no direct leverage or other organizational power over the authors, still influenced the authors extensively as they revised their text. Evidence indicates that, beyond the apparent and traditional sources of power, there are more contextual, hidden, socially mediated power relationships equally capable of shaping written discourse.
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Abstract
This essay develops a conception of science as a complex series of cultural practices mediated in and through discourse. This conception requires attention to discourses typically considered non‐scientific, such as those resulting in funding decisions. A case study of the cold fusion controversy demonstrates that internal scientific practices cannot explain adequately the eventual closure of the debate, and that we must look to the rhetorical practices of Congressional committees and government agencies for those explanations.
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A masterpiece in a new genre: The rhetorical negotiation of two audiences in schrödinger's “what is life?” ↗
Abstract
Critics may fail to appreciate the rhetorical significance of scientific texts that do not fit within the dominant genre of truth‐forming argument. Only by identifying Schrödinger's text as inspirational community‐forming discourse do we come to recognize the rhetorical artistry of his negotiation between two audiences, a negotiation that includes a subtle building of common ground, the application of productive ambiguity at a key point of collision, and a skillful _ reversal of language expectations to relocate audience loyalties.
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Abstract
This longitudinal study examines the reading processes and practices of one college student, Eliza, through eight semesters of undergraduate postsecondary education. Specifically, the study traces the development of this student's beliefs about literate activity—focusing not only on changes in her reading and writing activities per se, but also on her views about those activities, her representations of the nature of texts, and her understanding of the relationship between knowledge and written discourse within her disciplinary field of biology. Multiple data sources—including extended interviews, reading/writing logs, observations and field notes, texts, and read-and-think-aloud protocols—were used to explore Eliza's rhetorical development over her 4 college years. Results of various analyses together suggest that Eliza's conceptions of the function of texts and the role of authors—both as authors and as scientists—grew in complexity. A number of possibly interrelated factors may account for Eliza's expanding notions of authors and of texts: increased subject matter knowledge, instructional support, “natural” development, and mentoring in an internship situation.
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Abstract
he generally prevailing concept of the enthymeme, or the one most frequent in the world of rhetoric and composition studies, tends to define it either as a of elliptical, informal based on probable rather than certain premises and on tacit assumptions shared by audience and rhetor, or as a of Toulmin argument, or as a general mode of intuitive reasoning representable in syllogistic or Toulminian terms, or, most simply, as the juxtaposition of any idea with another that is offered as a reason for believing it. All such thinking starts from Aristotle's famous dicta that the enthymeme is a kind of syllogism or rhetorical syllogism, and that rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic (Rhetoric 1.1 [1355a]; 1.2 [1356b]; 1.1 [1354a]).' This prevailing definition, however, has recently been put in question (see in particular Conley, Enthymeme; Gage, Theory). And, as we will see, it is inadequate. In what follows, we will first reexamine the primary (and not exclusively Aristotelian) ancient sources from which a more adequate concept of the enthymeme can be derived. Then, we will consider the relevance of that concept to the analysis of modern discourse-specifically, to the analysis of Roland Barthes' The World of Wrestling and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, both of which appear in popular anthologies used in composition courses, and both of which provide good examples of modern-but unrecognized-enthymeming.
December 1993
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Abstract
An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom, Eleanor Kutz and Hephzibah Roskelly Social Issues in the English Classroom, C. Mark Hurlbert and Samuel Totten Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change, Ira Shor, Robert Brooke Sophistication: Rhetoric and the Rise of Self-Consciousness, Mark Backman, Timothy W. Crusius The Context of Human Discourse: A Configurational Criticism of Rhetoric, Eugene E. White, Timothy W. Crusius Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Knowledge, Edward Barrett, Gary Heba
October 1993
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Abstract
Now let me remind you that the conference on which this book is based was organized to consider educational research, but this discourse, like our current discussions of values, is stranded in abstraction. Only in Popkewitz's chapter do we hear anything anything that has to do with schools, with children, with curriculum, with learning, with teaching. What ever happened to show-and-tell? I want to pass around my things, my pens, my frequent flier coupons. I want to empty my purse on the podium and let lipsticks, old change, keys, and stale pieces of Carefree gum and fuzzy aspirins contaminate the academic altar. I want to be obscene. What that means is that I want to show what goes on behind this scene, (p. 334)
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Abstract
Interdisciplinary research is often described as the recasting of disciplinary boundaries, suggesting that interdisciplinary writing might require a “boundary rhetoric”—one that negotiates the borders between the various disciplinary rhetorics involved. An example of such a boundary rhetoric can be found in the work of S. E. Jelliffe, a prominent physician-writer who proposed an innovative and controversial theory of psychosomatic medicine that offers to unite neurology and Freudian psychoanalysis. Jelliffe's work—in both its successes and failures—suggests some of the textual and conventional ways in which a boundary rhetoric can operate. At its most successful, Jelliffe's boundary rhetoric blurs the generic conventions and expectations of his constituent fields and “translates” the values and principles of one discipline into the language and discourse forms of the other. Given the increasing interdisciplinary character of much modern scholarship, Jelliffe's case is important in helping to illuminate potential problems and possibilities inherent in boundary rhetorics.
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Abstract
This article argues for an activity-based theory of genre knowledge. Drawing on empirical findings from case study research emphasizing “insider knowledge” and on structuration theory, activity theory, and rhetorical studies, the authors propose five general principles for genre theory: (a) Genres are dynamic forms that mediate between the unique features of individual contexts and the features that recur across contexts; (b) genre knowledge is embedded in communicative activities of daily and professional life and is thus a form of “situated cognition”; (c) genre knowledge embraces both form and content, including a sense of rhetorical appropriateness; (d) the use of genres simultaneously constitutes and reproduces social structures; and (e) genre conventions signal a discourse community's norms, epistemology, ideology, and social ontology.
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Abstract
Preview this article: Assigning Places: The Function of Introductory Composition as a Cultural Discourse, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/55/6/collegeenglish9281-1.gif
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Teaching Discourse and Reproducing Culture: A Critique of Research and Pedagogy in Professional and Non-Academic Writing ↗
Abstract
Preview this article: Teaching Discourse and Reproducing Culture: A Critique of Research and Pedagogy in Professional and Non-Academic Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/44/3/collegecompositioncommunication8826-1.gif
September 1993
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Abstract
A Rhetoric of Doing: Essays on Written Discourse in Honor of James L. Kinneavy. Ed. Stephen P. Witte, Neil Nakadate, and Roger D. Cherry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992. 376 pp. Professional Communication: The Social Perspective. Ed. Nancy Roundy Blyler and Charlotte Thralls. Newbury Park: Sage, 1993. 292 pp. Business & Managerial Communication: New Perspectives. Linda Driskill, with June Ferrill and Marda Steffey. Fort Worth: Dryden, 1992. 810 pp. Business and Administrative Communication. 2nd ed. Kitty O. Locker. Homewood: Irwin, 1992. 775 pp. Contemporary Business Communication: From Thought to Expression. Joan Vesper and Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. 565 pp. Impact: A Guide to Business Communication. Ann Fischer and Margot Northey. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice‐Hall, 1993. 247 pp. Teaching Technical Writing: A Pragmatic Approach. Rev. ed. John S. Harris, St. Paul: ATTW Anthology Series, 1992. 191 pp.
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Abstract
In 1976 Mina Shaughnessy invoked the phrase converting the natives (235) describe an undesirable attitude for a teacher of composition. In her article Diving In: An Introduction Basic Writing, she outlines four stages of development for composition teachers, of which converting the natives is the second. The tendency of teachers at this stage is see themselves as missionaries who initiate the unenlightened into the true path of correct writing. At this stage the teacher's goal is to carry the technology of advanced literacy the inhabitants of an underdeveloped country (235). Joseph Harris also mentions the term conversion in his 1989 critique of the use of discourse communities in the composition classroom (16). We have, Harris suggests, pictured various discourse communities as fundamentally different, in fact, so fundamentally different that we are at a loss explain how students make the break with former communities in order enter new communities. Harris describes the way we have tended think of students
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Abstract
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
August 1993
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A Distinction No Longer of Use: Evolutionary Discourse and the Disappearance of the Trope/Figure Binarism ↗
Abstract
Abstract: The concem with progress and utility is shared by nineteenth-century scientists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, leading to significant correspondences among their discourses. This concern is manifest, for example, in the way in which several rhetorical treatises of the nineteenth century regard the distinction between a figure and a trope, which had been a common part of rhetorical theory since the time of Quintilian, as useless and anachronistic. By examining three nineteenth-century articulations of the justifications for erasing the trope/figure distinction from the cultural repertoire, this essay reveals structural and semantic parallels between these rhetorical treatises and the discourses of evolution and utilitarianism. Thus, the essay locates the source of the synonymity which the terms “trope” and “figure” have acquired in contemporary critical metalanguage in Victorian ideologies of progress and of the unprofitability and consequent discardability of the ancient.
July 1993
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Medical Text and Historical Context: Research Issues and Methods in History and Technical Communication ↗
Abstract
Identifying problems in recent technical communication studies of historical medical text, this article suggests ways for researchers to overcome them. Its approach uses five steps for conducting sound historical research: establishing originality for historical textual analysis; adopting an authoritative text for analysis; understanding the genre or form of a historical text; understanding the intellectual or social context for a historical text; and understanding the publishing and readership context of a historical text. These steps are discussed within the context of related fields of inquiry, namely history of medicine, history of the book, literary criticism and historical linguistics, and analytical bibliography. The article concludes by exploring new directions for research in technical communication and history of medicine.
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Abstract
Despite the fact that letters and memos are the most prevalent forms of written discourse in the business community, there has been little theoretical study of professional correspondence as a distinct rhetorical genre. A theory of correspondence as a form of dialogue can, however, be constructed with the help of two very different scholars, Erasmus and Bakhtin. Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist, offers a pragmatic guide to the practice of dialogue in correspondence, and Bakhtin, the twentieth-century Russian philosopher of language, provides theoretical concepts that define the nature of dialogical communication. The present article combines the ideas of both scholars into a unified theory of business correspondence and then presents both a set of guidelines and a model for the practice of dialogical correspondence.
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Abstract
Although the research has clearly established that reading comprehension improves when the writer forecasts the discussion in an introductory or transitional passage, technical writing textbooks offer little guidance on how to construct effective forecasts. The most common pattern, in which the items to be discussed are listed, is boring and can leave unanswered some critical questions that can prevent the reader from paying full attention. This article describes techniques, based on four of the journalistic prompts (what, where, why, and how), that can help writers create contexts for their readers, thereby improving readers' comprehension and enlisting them in the creation of the discourse.
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Wearing a Pith Helmet at a Sly Angle:or, Can Writing Researchers Do Ethnography in a Postmodern Era? ↗
Abstract
The entry of ethnography and ethnographic methods into writing research, particularly during the 1980s, has been highly productive. However, this research continues to ignore many of the doubts concerning ethnography that anthropologists themselves have been raising for a number of years. This article (a) outlines more than a decade of civil war among anthropologists, (b) considers the relevance of that debate to writing researchers working ethnographically, (c) argues for more experimental ethnographic texts in contrast to the entrenched models that currently rule the field and despite the institutional resistance that experimental texts are bound to generate, and (d) suggests in cursory fashion the fate of “postmodernist” discourse in the context of the more normative discourse of institutional life. Along the way, the article analyzes some of the rhetoric of the ethnographic work of writing researchers, including Heath's Ways With Words.
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Abstract
Composition Studies emerged as a scholarly research discipline during the 1970s as (a) empirical methods became available to investigate the problem of meaning in discourse and, concomitantly, (b) the work of an international writing research community became institutionalized in the form of new journals and graduate programs. Distinguishing their efforts from prior histories of the field, the authors argue that the development of composition studies needs to be understood as part of a broader intellectual history affecting linguistics and literary studies, as well as composition. Reviewing basic tenets of formalism, structuralism (including both constructivism and social constructionism), and dialogism as root epistemologies organizing the recent histories of these disciplines, the authors conclude with a discussion of the dominant and often parallel themes that have characterized evolving conceptions of language, text, and meaning in composition, literature, and linguistics since the 1950s.
June 1993
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Abstract
Existing research on lecture comprehension and note-taking, and a course designed to teach nonnative English-speaking college students lecture comprehension strategies and note-taking techniques, are discussed. Nine listening strategies and eight note-taking techniques, focusing on both macro- and micromarkers in lecture discourse, are introduced. The strategies and techniques are taught progressively and are accompanied by specially designed listening tasks. Improved student performance is shown by a t-test comparing the pre-test and the post-test scores. Suggestions are made to native English speaking lecturers on how they may adapt their lecturing styles and methods of presentation to help non-native audiences cope with lectures successfully.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>
May 1993
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Abstract
Abstract: Gregorio Mayans y Siscar's Rhetórica (Valenda, 1757)must be regarded as a pivotal work in the evolution of eighteenthcentury Spanish rhetorical theory. Since Mayans' ideas did not appear without precedent in the Rhetórica, this article begins by tracing the development of his principles through his earlier writings about the state of discourse in Spain. A detailed analysis of the Rhetóricaitself is followed by a demonstration of how Mayans modified classical rhetoric into a rhetoricized poetics whose history became integrated into the history of Spanish literature. Thus Mayans' transformation of classical rhetoric takes its place in the development of Spanish cultural history, in which rhetoric increasingly came to be regarded as a part of the larger study of the national literature.
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Abstract
In original essays, fourteen nationally known scholars examine the practical, philosophical, and epistemological implications of a variety of research traditions. Included are discussions of historical, theoretical, and feminist scholarship; case-study and ethnographic research; text and conversation analysis; and cognitive, experimental, and descriptive research. Issues that cross methodological boundaries, such as the nature of collaborative research and writing, methodological pluralism, the classification and coding of research data, and the politics of composition research, are also examined. Contributors reflect on their own research practices, and so reflect the current state of composition research itself.
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"So What Do We Do Now?" Necessary Directionality as the Writing Teacher's Response to Racist, Sexist, Homophobic Papers ↗
Abstract
So ends Arthur Clarke's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, and, as David Bowman contemplates with some dismay his seeming mastery of the universe, his unstated question is one the contemporary writing or literature teacher might well appropriate for his or her own contemporary pedagogical dilemma: So what do I do now with my students? It is the question a high-school English teacher once asked me as she read some Derrida and Nietzsche as part of a required Contemporary Theory and Pedagogy class I was teaching. Her pedagogical quandary was not an isolated one. I answered her with another question: What if a student in your freshman writing class submits to you a rough draft of a paper which you consider to be racist-very racist? Would you, or should you, with that paper-or perhaps one that asserts that it is the duty of Christians to ferret out every gay and 'beat some sense into him'-mark it as any other paper? She seemed to squirm in her seat. She had, in fact, once gotten a racist paper, and her response had been unequivocal: she did not allow the paper and sat the student down and set him right. Whatever truth there is to Foucault's assertion that each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth-i.e., the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true (Truth 131), and whatever personal power agendas are working subtly at the heart of any particular discourse, still, to that teacher that morning, there were some things you could be certain about. In the case of a racist paper, some seemingly universal principle far beyond political correctness, beyond situational truths, was at issue. Still, as she struggled through some of the assigned readings for the course, it was clear she was having some difficulty reconciling her own moral fervor
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Abstract
This book is a unique, long-needed comprehensive study of whole-discourse form going beyond traditional prescriptions. Ancient and contemporary innovations are combined with a new theory and practical application. The author rescues the organization of persuasive/explanatory prose from long neglect and unimaginative traditional formulas. She demonstrates a new theory of form fluency in analyses of student texts and applies it in new 'form heuristics' that go beyond outlining. The main audience for this book will be professors and graduate students in the growing discipline of rhetoric/composition, or any teacher or writer interested in new ideas about organizing discourse.
April 1993
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Abstract
Current treatment of teaching transitions relies on an approach which presents students with lists of transitions to insert at unspecified places in the text. In addition, some textbooks and composition handbooks advise students to be “subtle” and warn against explicitly stating their purpose. This advice exists in spite of the fact that many professional writers are often explicit about the effect they intend in writing their transitions. Since handbook authors have failed to offer a general theory of how to write effective transitions, I propose that speech act theory can explain the function of transitions in terms of the illocutionary and perlocutionary effect of explicit performatives. An analysis of various samples shows that published writers regularly use explicit performatives in scientific, business, technical and academic writing. This analysis offers specific implications for improving handbook explanations and for instructing student writers in writing effective transitions by determining the illocutionary force of the specific speech act underlying each transitional device.
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Theory and Curriculum: Reexamining the Curricular Separation of Business and Technical Communication ↗
Abstract
Business and technical communication have conventionally been separated in academe—a separation that formalist rhetorical theory has supported. Epistemic rhetorical theory, however, suggests that this separation does not reflect the profession's current understanding of workplace discourse. This article demonstrates that the labels business and technical communication are not helpful in understanding two workplace documents: a memorandum and a report. The article then explores the increased explanatory power in two epistemic theoretical approaches, social construction and paralogic hermeneutics, after which the article discusses the radical implications of these approaches for a curricular dialogue concerning workplace writing. Finally, the article describes interests inside and outside academe that preserve the status quo and thus mitigate against curricular change, positing that such change would be difficult, but not impossible, to achieve.
March 1993
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Biological explanation, political ideology, and “blurred genres”;: A Bakhtinian reading of the science essays of J. B. S. Haldane ↗
Abstract
J. B. S. Haldane, in attempting to show connections between Marxist political theory and Darwinian evolutionary theory, blurs the generic characteristics of political and scientific discourse. Read from the perspective of Bakhtin, this blurring of genres is also a blurring of ideologies. Haldane's essays thus contribute to our understanding of the cultural dimensions of scientific activities and accordingly help re‐define concepts of genre in scientific writing.
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Abstract
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
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The rhetoric of belles lettres: The political context of the eighteenth‐century transition from classical to modern cultural studies ↗
Abstract
Classical practitioners of the art of rhetoric such as Demosthenes have long been a familiar part of the rhetorical tradition, but subsequent periods have generally been confined to the history of rhetorical theory, with little attention paid to political rhetoric or public discourse. We need to develop a more rhetorical perspective on the history of rhetoric to encompass rhetoric's dual nature as an intellectual discipline and a practical political art. Such a perspective would focus on the domain between the learned culture and the public experience, the domain where rhetorical theories are applied to discursive practices to formalize who can speak, how controversial issues are to be argued, and what political purposes such arguments serve. The eighteenth century is a dynamic period in the history of rhetoric precisely because the domain between the educated world and the public sphere was transformed by the expansion of the reading public.' Rhetoricians such as Hugh Blair were the first professors to lecture on modern culture because they taught students who came from the provinces of the English reading public.2 General histories of college English studies tend to ignore eighteenth-century rhetoricians in the assumption that the study of English is more or less synonymous with the study of literature (see Baldick, Graff, McMurty, and Palmer).3 We need more rhetorically oriented histories of modem cultural studies, not just because literature specialists have tacitly accepted the erasure of rhetoric from such studies, but also because the formation of disciplinary knowledge is a rhetorical process, and the domain of rhetoric is where disciplines set themselves off from related discourses and public audiences. Rhetoricians first introduced English into the university curriculum in the middle of the eighteenth century in Scotland, America, and elsewhere in the cultural provinces. All of the figures whom Howell has categorized as New rhetoricians came from outside the centers of English education, while Oxford and Cambridge
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Abstract
Coleridge criticism has a stormy quality about it, as if what we know about Coleridge is something we see only by flashes of lightning over some dark landscape. In Experience Into Thought, Kathleen Coburn says that Coleridge is irritating to certain tempers, perhaps especially to the curriculum-making academic mind(67). Her statement is ironic. Coleridge was always working on curriculum. His rage for a system that included the irrational and lucky graces forced him into whole courses about thinking and language, whole encyclopedias of knowledge. Still, the plan in most academic circles seems to have been to place Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the canon as a fragment of history and forget him. After long years of reading criticism about Samuel Taylor Coleridge rather than reading his works, it is time to see if there is a Coleridge worth claiming for rhetoric and composition. One problem in validating a Coleridge for our time is reading him. It seems that we have lost the habit of reading his kind of discourse. Perhaps because of his translations and readings of the German Transcendentalists, Coleridge's prose wanders and speculates, opposes its central premises, comments on itself incessantly. Composition scholars see him as an antithesis of the kind of style recommended in our classrooms and in our journals. Also, as composition studies attempt to establish territory in departmental turf wars, Coleridge becomes an easy target for those who would use him to demonstrate how literary concerns should not be included in composition pedagogy. As much as some might want Coleridge to go away, he will not. Linda Flower argues that Coleridge's inspirational model for composition is a threat to the teaching of composition (Problem-Solving). Ross Winterowd asserts that Coleridge is a primary reason for the devaluation of the literature of fact because his theory of composition or rhetoric lacks purpose (64). In both cases, eminent scholars and researchers in the field of composition are reacting to a stereotypical view of Coleridge and his works, as if the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan represent Coleridge's philosophy and theory of composition. But there is more to Coleridge's philosophy of composition than his poems, his theory of imagination in Biographia Literaria, or his criticism suggest. Kenneth
February 1993
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Abstract
On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, Aristotle, translated, with introduction, notes, and appendixes by George A. Kennedy Janet M. Atwill Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies, C. Jan Swearingen Beth Daniell Composition and Resistance, C. Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz Alice Calderonello Written Language Disorders: Theory into Practice, Ann M. Bain, Laura Lyons Bailet, and Louisa Cook Moates Patricia J. McAlexander Faking It: A Look into the Mind of a Creative Learner, Christopher M. Lee and Rosemary F. Jackson Patricia J. McAlexander Reading and Writing the Self Autobiography in Education and the Curriculum, Robert J. Graham Lynn Z. Bloom Textbooks In Focus: Advanced Writing Rethinking Writing, Peshe C. Kuriloff Evelyn Ashton-Jones About Writing: A Rhetoric for Advanced Writers, Kristin R. Woolever Evelyn Ashton-Jones Process, Form, and Substance: A Rhetoric for Advanced Writers, Richard M. Coe Evelyn Ashton-Jones Beginning Writing Groups Daniel Sheridan
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Abstract
Based on careful study of the Greek text and informed by the best modern scholarship, the second edition of this highly acclaimed translation offers the most faithful English version ever published of On Rhetoric. Updated in light of recent scholarship, the new edition features a revised introduction-with two new sections-and revised appendices that provide new and additional supplementary texts (relevant ancient works).
January 1993
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Abstract
Do university writing experiences prepare students for future job-related writing tasks? If not, how can we create a smoother transition from the academy to the workplace? The author analyzes the differing discourse communities of academic writing and technical communication which may limit the transfer of skills from one arena to the next. The discussion considers the ways process, collaborative learning, writing across the curriculum, and language theories can form the foundation for constructive communication among disciplines. As the focus of academic writing moves from an emphasis on the individual to social context and wider audiences, it bridges the gap between disciplines and can ease the movement from the classroom to real-world settings.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>
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Contesting the objectivist paradigm: gender issues in the technical and professional communication curriculum ↗
Abstract
The inclusion of a course in gender issues in a technical communication curriculum affords students the opportunity to confront objectivist and rationalist paradigms still found in the discourse of technical communication. The theoretical and practical foundations of a course that examines feminist inquiry into the production and dissemination of knowledge, as well as the language practices associated with professional writing and communication, are discussed. Issues of gender roles within organizational collaborative work groups, as well as issues related to gendered assumptions in science and technology, are also integral parts of the course design. A description of objectives, assignments, and tests for the course, as well as a full syllabus, are included.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>
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Sense and Sensibility in Technical Documentation: How Feminist Interpretation Strategies can Save Lives in the Nation's Mines ↗
Abstract
This article analyzes postaccident investigation reports from a feminist perspective to show (a) how the conventions of public discourse privilege the rational (male) objective voice and silence human suffering, (b) how the notion of expertise excludes women's experiential knowledge, (c) how the conventions of public discourse sanction the exclusion of alternative voices and thus perpetuate salient and silent power structures, and (d) how interpretation strategies that fail to consider unstated assumptions about gender, power, authority, and expertise seriously compromise the health, safety, and lives of miners—and in a broader sense—all of those who are dependent on technology for their personal safety.
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Abstract
The authors explore the parallels to be found by comparing descriptions of the technical communicator with differing views of the communication process—the transmission, translation, and articulation views of communication. In each of these views, the place of the technical communicator and of technical discourse shifts with respect to the production of meaning and relations of power. The authors argue from the standpoint of the articulation view for a new conception of the technical communicator as author and of technical communication as a discourse that produces an author.
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Aristotle's Rhetoric, Hitler's Program, and the Ideological Problem of Praxis, Power, and Professional Discourse ↗
Abstract
Technical-professional communication as praxis, or social action, is extended beyond skill or amoral art into the realm of phronesis, concerned with reasoning about ends rather than means. However, praxis and phronesis are sociologically constructed and, like social-epistemic rhetoric, ideologically defined in the political context by the ethic of expediency enabling deliberative rhetoric. Hitler's use of propaganda to construct praxis and define phronesis in Nazi Germany is examined in terms of the rational but open-ended nature of Aristotle's political-ethical thought, and the implications for our understanding of Aristotelian praxis is discussed. Finally, the failure of professional discourse surrounding the siting of a low-level nuclear waste facility to create a persuasive reality and yet ideologically construct praxis is examined, raising questions concerning the possibility of a deliberative technical rhetoric in U.S. democracy.
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Abstract
By now there seems widespread consensus among scholars on rhetoric that Protagoras and Gorgias, the leading sophists of the fifth century B.C.E., made significant progress in building a theory of discourse that excluded any absolute standard for the judgment of truth. These ancient sophists thus anticipated today's prevailing school of rhetoricians, who hold that absolute standard for the judgment of truth can never be found ... because the individual mind can never transcend personal emotions, social circumstances, and historical conditions.1 This position prevented the two sophists from adopting, as it now impels us to set aside, the terms knowledge and truth in their classic objective sense since neither consciousness nor discourse can be supposed accurately to represent an absolute and non-contingent external reality. Robert Scott's famous 1967 article On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic, from which we often date the current renaissance of anti-foundationalism in rhetoric, repeatedly acknowledged Protagoras and Gorgias as pioneers. And the resonance has been repeatedly acknowledged since (Jarratt &9, Crowley 332, Meiland 51, Newman 47). Patricia Bizzell has pointed out, however, that something is missing from today's anti-foundationalist rhetoric:
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Abstract
Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness by Patricia Bizzell. Pittsburgh, U of Pittsburg P, 1992; pp. 295.
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Abstract
The style of discourse underlying writing instruction in this country, which has been termed essayist literacy by Scollon and Scollon and others, is grounded historically and culturally in the development of Western civilization. This style of discourse is the register of English used in academic situations, and it also has been found to be characteristic of some educated (especially male) mainstream speakers in other contexts. Because this register often differs from the naturally acquired discourse styles of students from nonmainstream groups, many such students face difficulties in writing instruction that mainstream students do not face. Given the importance of the essayist literacy register in this society, it is important (a) to make the characteristics of this discourse style explicit in order to increase the likelihood that writing instruction will be clear and available to all students, and (b) to learn about other discourse styles that are already known and used by students from a range of communities. A conceptual framework from the ethnography of communication is presented for studying verbal performances in different cultural contexts, and two examples of persuasive oral performances from ongoing research among Mexican immigrants are analyzed within this framework.
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Metadiscourse in Persuasive Writing: A Study of Texts Written by American and Finnish University Students ↗
Abstract
Metadiscourse refers to writers' discourse about their discourse—their directions for how readers should read, react to, and evaluate what they have written about the subject matter. In this study the authors divided metadiscourse into textual metadiscourse (text markers and interpretive markers) and interpersonal metadiscourse (hedges, certainty markers, attributors, attitude markers, and commentary). The purpose was to investigate cultural and gender variations in the use of metadiscourse in the United States and Finland by asking whether U.S. and Finnish writers use the same amounts and types and whether gender makes any difference. The analyses revealed that students in both countries used all categories and subcategories, but that there were some cultural and gender differences in the amounts and types used. Finnish students and male students used more metadiscourse than U.S. students and female students. Students in both countries used much more interpersonal than textual metadiscourse with Finnish males using the most and U.S. males the least. The study provides partial evidence for the universality of metadiscourse and suggests the need for more cross-cultural studies of its use and/or more attention to it in teaching composition.
1993
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Abstract
People who work in writing centers often fall prey to professional insecurity. We feel misunderstood and unappreciated in our own departments (if we even have department) and in the larger academy. Our marginal status makes us feel exploited by those with more institutional power and vulnerable in times of retrenchment. Our insecurity has led, as Thomas Hemmeter observes, to ongoing attempts at self-definition. Since no one else recognizes or understands us, we feel the need to continually announce and invent ourselves. And we do so, says Hemmeter, through "a discourse articulated in dualities," the fundamental one being a "contrast of writing center instruction to classroom instruction" (37). To give ourselves a distinctive identity, we oppose ourselves to something with which everyone is familiar: the classroom.
December 1992
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Abstract
Response to Vara Neverow-Turk, “Researching the Minimum Wage” John Ruszkiewicz Reply Vara Neverow-Turk Response to Thomas Kent, ”On the Very Idea of a Discourse Community” Edward Schiappa Reply Thomas Kent Response to Janice M. Wolff, ”Writing Passionately” B. J. Bowman Reply Janice M. Wolff Responses to Thomas E. Recchio, ”A Bakhtinian Reading of Student Writing” Sanford Tweedie and Lynn Kramer Reply Thomas E. Recchio
November 1992
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Abstract
Research Article| November 01 1992 The Limits of Narrative: Truth Aspiring Discourse in the Bible Allen Scult Allen Scult Dept. of Speech Communication, Drake University, 206 Medbury Hall, Des Moines, lowa 50311-4505. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1992) 10 (4): 345–365. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.4.345 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Allen Scult; The Limits of Narrative: Truth Aspiring Discourse in the Bible. Rhetorica 1 November 1992; 10 (4): 345–365. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.4.345 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search Copyright 1992, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1992 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.