Re-envisioning Religious Discourses as Rhetorical Resources in Composition Teaching: A Pragmatic Response to the Challenge of Belief

College Composition and Communication Dec 2011

Re-envisioning Religious Discourses as Rhetorical Resources in Composition Teaching: A Pragmatic Response to the Challenge of Belief

Michael-John DePalma

Abstract

In this essay, I offer William James’s notion of pragmatic belief as a framework for re-envisioning religious discourses as rhetorical resources in composition teaching. Adopting a Jamesian pragmatic framework in composition teaching, I argue, entails two pragmatic adjustments to current approaches. The first adjustment concerns the way we think about the relationship between academic discourse and religious discourse. And the second adjustment relates to the stances we adopt when responding to religious students’ texts. Along with outlining these adjustments, I illustrate the ways James’s framework productively informed my response to a faith-based narrative that an evangelical student wrote in one of my first-year writing courses.

Journal: College Composition and Communication
Published: 2011-12-01
DOI: 10.58680/ccc201118390
Open Access: Closed
Topics: first-year composition

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (5)

Williams et al. (2026)

Rhetoric and Affect: The Role of Faith in Student Writers’ Wayfinding

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Ware (2022)

“God’s Absence During Trauma Took Its Toll”: Dialogic Tracing of Literate Activ…

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Thomson-Bunn (2017)

Student Perspectives on Faith in the Classroom

Pedagogy
Pavia (2015)

Taking Up Faith

Written Communication
Ringer (2013)

The Dogma of Inquiry: Composition and the Primacy of Faith

Rhetoric Review

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