Abstract

Since the mid 1960s, empirical approaches to scholarship in rhetoric and composition have emerged.' The use of empirical approaches can be seen in much of the work of scholars who study reading, writing, and literacy, their interconnections, and their relation to thinking and learning. Given the relative high profile of empirical approaches over the last three decades, most people in rhetoric and composition have some understanding of their nature. However, given the rise of recent challenges (Berlin; Irmscher; North), it seems important to begin a discussion about the assumptions that inform empirical inquiry. This paper is aimed at initiating such a discussion, and, in particular, it is concerned with characterizing theory building in empirical scholarship and research within the context of humanistic inquiry. In this way, I hope to show that empirical practices in rhetoric and composition can be important for provoking better rhetorics of inquiry (Nelson 430). Empirical scholarship and research in rhetoric and composition grow out of a tacit assumption that knowledge in our field is probabilistic and contextual. In its broadest sense, empirically based theory building is aimed at understanding and evaluating existing knowledge and at generating new knowledge about language-using in society. Empirical inquiry in rhetoric and composition is a humanistic activity that is built on the premise of the epistemic, dialectical, and generative nature of our knowledge. (See Scott's corpus for a sustained discussion of rhetoric as epistemic.) As with other kinds of knowledge-making, empirical knowledge is a product of a dialectic which takes place among a speaker, an interpretive community or social group in which the speaker is trying to contribute, and the historical, political, material, ideological, and situational context in which the speaker is working. For example, say that one is interested in exploring the role of sophistic rhetoric on Greek and Roman thinking through case histories of early