Nurturing the ability to argue is of great importance in science education, despite students often encountering cognitive and emotional barriers. The aim of this study was to examine the quality of argumentation and the issues raised by secondary school students when they are asked to respond to structured argumentation tasks. We chose topics from two different socio-scientific issues of varied perceived relevance to students’ daily lives: the sale of fast food in school canteens (Group 1) and the addition of antibiotics in animal feed (Group 2). The study involved 249 high school students aged 14–16, in Poland. A total of 139 participants took part in an intervention about fast food, and 110 in an intervention about the use of antibiotics. Data were collected in the form of written arguments developed by students as part of a structured teaching intervention. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to process and analyze the data. On average, students’ arguments scored higher on the topic of antibiotic use on animal feed. Qualitative content analysis of the students’ arguments identified four thematic groups: (1) personal aspects revealing personal meanings, values, and defence mechanisms; (2) scientific aspects revealing substantive knowledge; (3) socio-cultural aspects revealing economic, sociological or cultural aspects; (4) nonsensical or incoherent arguments. A topic related to students’ personal decisions and perceived to be closest to their lives and daily experience (eating fast food in the school canteen) more often prompted arguments indicating cognitive defence, by denying the harmfulness of fast food and emphasizing possible advantages or appealing to the right to choose. Based on this finding, we discuss the need for defence mechanisms to be considered in pedagogical designs for the teaching of argumentation.

This paper examines how contemporary theatre reflects and reconfigures the rhetorical condition of disenchantment through the analysis of Leila Buck’s American Dreams and Panayiotis Mentis’s Foreigners. Drawing upon Max Weber’s notion of the disenchantment of the world and Michael McGee’s theory of the ideograph, the study explores how the American Dream has shifted from an aspirational ideology to a disillusioned cultural residue. Both plays dramatize the erosion of persuasion as a form of social cohesion, revealing how national myths lose their force under the weight of contradiction and exclusion. Buck’s interactive satire transforms the process of naturalization into a participatory spectacle that implicates audiences in the mechanisms of granting citizenship as a prize in a live game show, while Mentis’s domestic tragedy stages the ethical aftermath of disillusionment within the Greek immigrant family after they had been granted citizenship in the United States. The analysis proposes that theatre serves as a rhetorical laboratory where the collapse of ideological enchantment is made visible and emotionally intelligible. Disenchantment, far from being the negation of meaning, emerges as a mode of critical awareness that enables new forms of ethical reflection.

ABSTRACT Learning to move slowly and attentively offers alternatives to how a fast-paced world induces us to act. The Feldenkrais Method’s® awareness-through-movement (ATM)® lessons encourage students to notice what they actually do and how, rather than cathecting on what they should accomplish and how well. Within the constraint of a lesson, one shifts focus from “movement” as noun to “moving” as verb. Students learn that options about how to move—slowly, quickly, lightly, jerkily, smoothly, delicately, precisely, roughly, loosely, energetically, lazily, and more—correspond to choices. Such freedom of choice entangles us in grand philosophical matters as well as in mundane grammatical rules. Insofar as freedom within constraints characterizes how we move and act, including how we write and speak, the seemingly adverbial choices we make reveal who we are: not only in what we do, but in the manner in which as subjects we relate to predicates.

Exploring the unspeakable and unthinkable language of academic crushes, scholarly kink, and cybersex(uality studies), we unpack our relationship as trans, neurodivergent queers and nascent scholars to each other and the critically queer, severely disabled digital spaces in which our relationship emerged.

Book Review| November 01 2022 Review: De la “agudeza” al “gusto.” Cicerón, entre el Barroco y la cultura ilustrada, by Javier Espino Martín Javier Espino Martín. De la “agudeza” al “gusto.” Cicerón, entre el Barroco y la cultura ilustrada. Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios Clásicos 62. Ciudad de México, MX: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, 2019. 305 pp. ISBN 978-607-30-2747-2 Genaro Valencia Constantino Genaro Valencia Constantino Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2022) 40 (4): 412–415. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2022.40.4.412 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Genaro Valencia Constantino; Review: De la “agudeza” al “gusto.” Cicerón, entre el Barroco y la cultura ilustrada, by Javier Espino Martín. Rhetorica 1 November 2022; 40 (4): 412–415. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2022.40.4.412 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 This content is only available via PDF. © 2022 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2022The International Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviewed by: De la “agudeza” al “gusto.” Cicerón, entre el Barroco y la cultura ilustrada by Javier Espino Martín Genaro Valencia Constantino Javier Espino Martín. De la “agudeza” al “gusto.” Cicerón, entre el Barroco y la cultura ilustrada. Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios Clásicos 62. Ciudad de México, MX: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, 2019. 305 pp. ISBN 978-607-30-2747-2. Este libro es un verdadero desafío conceptual y un profundo estudio sobre la retórica ciceroniana en diversos horizontes culturales y estéticos de la temprana Modernidad; valiéndose de la propuesta hermenéutica que ha desarrollado en los últimos años en torno a la “estética de la recepción”—con base principalmente en Jauss e Iser—, Javier Espino entrega una investigación muy bien documentada, razonada y original acerca de los mecanismos literarios que hicieron de Cicerón un multiforme estandarte para ideologías educativas y movimientos políticos y religiosos varios. Esta obra, ingeniosa y de buen gusto, requiere una lectura atenta debido a la complejidad de todo el engranaje textual que el autor despliega con el fin de trazar los rasgos que caracterizan el pensamiento retórico del arpíñate, apropiado y manipulado en la estética del Barroco y la Ilustración. El autor se propone explicar los tres grandes escenarios históricos y estéticos en que se entendía de una manera particular la retórica y el lenguaje de Cicerón: en primer lugar, “una retórica artificiosa, basada en un tipo de escritura abstrusa y compleja”, que sería la barroco-jesuítica; en segundo, “una retórica ordenadora y clarificadora de ideas”, que evolucionó gracias al racionalismo ilustrado; y por último, “una retórica como referente de un gusto estético tanto literario como artístico”, de matriz sensista, empirista y prerromántica (11). Para lograr tal cometido, Espino inicia el periplo de su investigación exponiendo detalladamente los conceptos ingenium y decorum acordes con la teoría retórica de Cicerón, por medio de un repaso sucinto desde la propia antigüedad griega con Gorgias, Platón y Aristóteles, entre otros más, para establecer algunos fundamentos retóricos y poéticos, hasta las teorías de los romanos Cicerón y Quintiliano en torno al par de conceptos que son clave en la recepción posterior, al ser adoptados más tarde por la tradición medieval escolástica y la renacentista. En este punto, se hace, para todo el estudio, una esencial distinción entre modus rhetoricus y modus philosophicus: el primero “se liga a una forma de entender el lenguaje y la expresión humana más creativos e imaginativos” y el segundo “se asocia a una forma más filosófica y lógica de entender el entramado lingüístico humano” (15). [End Page 412] Estas dos nociones son la base para concebir la articulación hermenéutica entre los textos y el hilo conductor del libro. Resulta indispensable, como marco teórico del cual proceder, el apartado consagrado a la polémica del ciceronianismo (33–41), pues constituye la discusión propiciada y propulsada por no pocos pensadores de diversas latitudes principalmente entre los siglos XV y XVI, sobre cómo plantear un lenguaje adecuado no sólo para transmitir el pensamiento antiguo, sino para influir a partir de él de una forma determinante en el escenario político, social y religioso europeo. Dos son las propuestas que se pueden destacar en el ciceronianismo.· una en la que Erasmo de Roterdam figura como el mayor exponente y que consiste en un eclecticismo retórico, sin implicar un menosprecio de Cicerón, sino un empleo razonado del arpíñate, a más de otros tantos autores posibles de la antigüedad clásica, tardía, cristiana y medieval, en vista de amoldarse con la doctrina cristiana antiprotestante y sin filtraciones de doctrinas paganizantes; la segunda es realzada por Julio César Escalígero, quien aconsejaba, además de un acertado eclecticismo, una apropiación, habilitada para sus propios tiempos y condiciones, de los ideales políticos, éticos y sociales de Cicer...

Black Technical and Professional Communication is defined as ”practices that are centered around Black community, culture, and rhetorical practices that are inherent in the Black lived experience. Black TPC is reflective of the cultural, economic, social, and political experiences of Black people across the Diaspora” (Black TPC Taskforce). This special issue emphasizes the importance of valuing Black TPC as fundamental to developing a comprehensive understanding of the technical and professional communication.

Book Review| November 01 2021 Review: Architectural Rhetoric and the Iconography of Authority in Colonial Mexico: The Casa de Montejo, by C. Cody Barteet C. Cody Barteet, Architectural Rhetoric and the Iconography of Authority in Colonial Mexico: The Casa de Montejo. New York: Routledge, 2019. 180 pp. ISBN: 9781138585652 Sarah J. Constant Sarah J. Constant University of Pittsburgh Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2021) 39 (4): 466–468. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2021.39.4.466 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Sarah J. Constant; Review: Architectural Rhetoric and the Iconography of Authority in Colonial Mexico: The Casa de Montejo, by C. Cody Barteet. Rhetorica 1 November 2021; 39 (4): 466–468. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2021.39.4.466 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2021 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2021The International Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviewed by: Architectural Rhetoric and the Iconography of Authority in Colonial Mexico: The Casa de Montejo by C. Cody Barteet Sarah J. Constant C. Cody Barteet, Architectural Rhetoric and the Iconography of Authority in Colonial Mexico: The Casa de Montejo. New York: Routledge, 2019. 180 pp. ISBN: 9781138585652 Architectural Rhetoric and the Iconography of Authority in Colonial Mexico: The Casa de Montejo is a tale of two cities—the Xui Maya city of Tihó and the Spanish colony of Mérida—ultimately united through a series of cultural campaigns that sought to exert Spanish authority in colonial Mexico. In this book, Barteet expands upon his previous dissertation research on Early Modern Latin American visual culture as well as past historical studies of the Casa de Montejo that “have mainly considered the façade as a reflection of European aesthetics with limited analysis of its iconography” (11). Lucid descriptions, original photographs, and dozens of archival artifacts evidence colonial anxieties in sixteenth-century Yucatán. Architectural Rhetoric strives to provide a bridge between two cognate disciplines: architectural history and rhetorical studies. Notably, Barteet understands the construction of the Casa de Montejo through Henri Lefebvre’s [End Page 466] “spatial triad” and describes how it may be used to explain the tensions that arose between the center and periphery of Mérida (18). Barteet explains how spatial practices (e.g., architectural styles), representations of space (e.g., the grid-planned city), and spaces of representation (e.g., real and imagined spaces) function as part of a causal loop. In this way, Barteet positions the Casa de Montejo as a social space for reading and understanding conflicts between Indigenous peoples, Spanish colonizers, and the Spanish monarchy. Architectural Rhetoric is divided into two main sections: the first “considers the significance of the building to a Hispanic audience,” and the second considers “how the façade and its urban location resonated among the Xiu Maya of Yucatán” (22). Barteet argues that Spanish conqueror Francisco de Montejo intentionally built the Casa de Montejo on the sacrosanct plaza mayor to symbolically diminish the influence of the Spanish monarchy in the New World and to exert his individual authority as governor over the Indigenous peoples. Barteet illustrates how the construction of the Casa de Montejo may be placed within Lefebvre’s imagination of the spatial triad in order to identify exactly how this building defied Spanish monarchical traditions and initiated a struggle for authority in the Yucatanean province. Barteet extends his analysis of the Casa de Montejo beyond the realm of architectural history and into the field of architectural rhetoric, revealing what different examples of iconography in the Casa de Montejo uncover about colonial tensions within and between Yucatán and the transatlantic world. For example, Barteet argues that Herculean imagery in the Plateresque façade exalts Montejo as the protagonist in the ongoing Yucatanean colonization narrative. Later, Barteet examines both the political and social contexts in which Montejo operated as Yucatán’s adelantado, or governor, through an analysis of “multivocal” iconography in the Plateresque façade (93). Barteet introduces a rhetorical text—the requerimiento—an official policy document concerned with the proper treatment of Indigenous peoples that encouraged the colonizers to “establish alliances through peace accords and gift-giving practices in order to foster a climate capable of hosting a successful colony” (92). Here, connections between the virtuous iconography discussed in earlier chapters and the requerimiento arise, strengthening Barteet’s case for an architectural rhetoric, or a connection between what is written in policy texts and what is therefore “declare[d] in stone” (93). In the second half of Architectural Rhetoric, Barteet examines Maya perceptions of the Plateresque façade and its place in the oft-contested city center. Barteet recalls that Mérida’s identity was “neither solely Spanish nor solely Maya” but existed somewhere in between, occupying a sort of “dual identity” (116). Barteet discusses the social and political importance of mapping practices, which may include the mapping of metaphorical or conceptual spaces such as books, art objects, and geographical locations where “two or more cultures engage one another” (116). In the penultimate chapter, a story of a power struggle often defined by dichotomous...

ABSTRACTIn the midst of the 2020 pandemic produced by an invisible virus, words bring the world near. Words come in from a threatening outside, even as their use turns those who are inside outward. Speech practices reconfigure work and non-work, while politics, like language, turns inside-out.

ABSTRACT The disregard of language and the breakdown of the distinction between reality and appearance that characterize the Trump era not only are symptomatic of a loss of language and of politics, but also reveal an extreme nihilism that is worthy of question and thought. No less a philosopher-rhetorician than Friedrich Nietzsche offers us a diagnosis of this condition, most pithily in the six-moment history of Western philosophy that he presents in Twilight of the Idols. For Nietzsche, after the end of the history of the error of reason comes a joyous overcoming of nihilism. Nietzsche's critics, however, are not so sure.

Almost by definition, resisting the insidious convenience of the mainstream food supply requires persistence. This is especially true for food projects requiring fermentation—projects that unfold over days or weeks and require day-to-day science in kitchens where variables can be hard to control and where some degree of periodic failure is almost inevitable. In this article, a team of writers—scholars and community members—dramatizes a joint inquiry from which emerged a composite portrait of what we have come to call mindful persistence—an existential yet collaborative engine that drives our food literacies. Dialogic text features highlight the situated insights of individual writers, indicating that while this team shares an interest in fermentation, this interest does not require or assume identical understandings of the science of fermentation or similar positions in the probiotic debate surrounding contemporary fermentation practices. Instead, what is shared is a mindful persistence that scaffolds reflective action in this dynamic problem space.

Technical writers and translators struggle with language consistency in emerging technologies. Corpus linguistics can track language structures in such quickly developing environments. An ad-hoc corpus may be the tool needed for technical communicators. Key concepts: Mega-corpora versus ad-hoc corpora: The term “mega-corpora” typically covers the existing national corpora, whereas ad-hoc corpora can be created quickly for technical communication. Variation versus consistency: variation covers the range of possible solutions compared to the need for consistency of terminology in given contexts. Representativeness versus adequacy: representativeness defines the possibility of variation within the scope of the field; in contrast , adequacy represents contextual suitability. Key lessons: To use ad-hoc corpora as a tool for keeping track of and understanding language variation in texts about emerging technology: (1) design and compile a small set of relevant descriptions regarding the emerging technology, (2) use the software corpus tool representation of corpora to evaluate whether the ad-hoc corpus is representative-meaning that adding new texts does not add new words or variations in terminology use, (3) use the software corpus tool AntConc to analyze the ad-hoc corpus finding concordance patterns and variation in terminology usage, and (4) use linguistic strategies for selecting terminology based on linguistic evidence rather than intuition. Implications for practice: The ad-hoc corpus method offers an evidence-based approach for determining patterns of terminology. This method can be applied to standardizing product documentation or tracking variations in language use and can help technical writers and translators keep track of evolving terminology for emerging technologies.

This special issue examines theories and practices of professional communication outside the US. In this editorial, we preview each article of this issue and place those articles in the context of current practices and theories in the field. We also outline crucial questions and directions for future research. These directions include the call for a more comprehensive view of international professional communication, which takes into account philosophies, approaches, and practices which are current in Finland and China.

The Multimodal approach offers technical communicators and science writers an analytical tool to synthesize the meaning made in the connections across communicative modes. This multimodal synthesis can help technical communicators better exploit the meaning-making potential of multimodal combinations and understand the needs of future generations shaped by their increasingly developed multimodal literacy.

The committee reviews important research works in the teaching of English that have been published in the last year. Committee members include Richard Beach, Peggy DeLapp, Deborah Dillon, Lee Galda, Timothy Lensmire, Lauren Liang, David O’Brien, and Constance Walker.

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Professional technical communication often takes place within a larger organizational structure, a structure defined and constrained by both external (national or disciplinary) and internal (organizational) cultures. Thus, theories that help technical communicators analyze and understand organizations can be of especial importance. This bibliography overviews theories of organization from the viewpoint of culture, using five themes of organizational research as a framework. Based on this framework, each section introduces specific theories of international, intercultural, or organizational communication, building upon them through a series of related articles, and showing how they can be applied in the field of technical communication.

Describes a writing assignment in which students study and imitate the language of a minority author. Discusses how the assignment helps negotiate conflicts when students resist multicultural literature, as their creative responses mediate between themselves and works they might otherwise find foreign and antagonistic.

One of the most difficult tasks for any professional communicator is identifying and negotiating the political shoals in an organization. In his essay "What is universal pragmatics?" Habermas (1979) describes a broad, universal concept of pragmatics (the study of language use in a specific situation), one that is useful for analyzing how power affects organizational communication. By exploiting the sociological aspect of Habermas' universal pragmatics, communicators can use his theory to understand how power affects communication in the workplace. I briefly describe Habermas' theory, modify his theory to relate more specifically to communication in an organization, and provide a brief example illustrating the theory's usefulness.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I would like to thank Kathleen Welch and Richard Leo Enos, RR peer revieweis for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay.

Amish-authored nature essays were introduced to the Amish by Samuel Miller, an Amish farmer with an interest in nature study developed at home and in school. Miller's nature essays published in the Amish periodical, Family Life, were the first examples of the nature essay genre that were widely circulated in Amish communities. The acceptance of this new genre was due to Miller's particular manner of appropriation that connected it to the Amish cultural value of closeness to nature and the soil by making the family farm and surrounding countryside the setting of his writing. Other key factors that facilitated the introduction of the genre included Miller's use of personalized knowledge of nature, expressed most clearly in personal narratives, as well as social change within Amish society brought about by the influence of an Amish publishing house. Miller's writing raises issues regarding the genre-mediated construction of identity and the effects of genre in reproducting and altering cultural values.

Scott Cosigny on protagoras and logos: A study in Greek philosophy and rhetoric. by Edward Schiappa. University of South Carolina press, 1991. Pp. xvii & 239.

Until recently, scholars have tended to credit two nineteenth-century thinkers, G. F. Hegel and George Grote, for initiating the modem rehabilitation of the sophists.2 But in the past several years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to draw inspiration from the writings of another nineteenth-century figure, Friedrich Nietzsche. Among those taking this Nietzschean turn, Mario Untersteiner utilizes Nietzsche's conception of the tragic in his account of Gorgias's epistemology (101-205), a reading Eric White supplements with Nietzsche's notion of the (38). Victor Vitanza, characterizing Nietzsche as a dionysian Sophist, draws from Nietzsche's tropological model of language to illuminate the sophists' own rhetoric (Sub/Versions 112; Notes 131); and David Roochnik contends that Nietzsche's critique of reason illuminates the sophists' own misology (Tragedy 50, 155, 162). In the sphere of ethics, E. R. Dodds maintains that Nietzsche's immoralism is similar to the egoism of Gorgias's student Callicles (387-91), and Daniel Shaw contends that Nietzsche's critique of morality iterates the sophists' notion that moral valuations remain matters of opinion (339). Concerning methodology, John Poulakos argues that Nietzsche's genealogical approach is most suited for interpreting the sophists (Interpreting 219-21); and Susan Jarratt credits Nietzsche's method as authorizing her own re-reading of the sophists (xix). But whereas they have drawn on a variety of Nietzsche's ideas and interpretive strategies to advance what Jacqueline dc Romilly characterizes as a Nietzschean interpretation of the sophists (Sophists xi), none of these scholars has systematically examined Nietzsche's own quite specific and extensive writings about the sophists. The untoward result is that we possess a variety of Nietzschean readings of the sophists that tend to silence Nietzsche's own distinctive voice. This tendency to overlook Nietzsche's own specific remarks about the sophists is quite understandable, for Nietzsche never wrote a systematic treatise on the sophists and instead discussed them in a rather fragmentary manner in a variety of texts over a period of almost two decades. Further, with the exception of three quite brief passages-in Human, All-Too-Human 221, Dawn 168, and the Ancients, Twilight of the Idols 2-Nietzsche did not publish any of his remarks about the sophists, confining his discussions to his 1872-1873 lecture notes in the history of Greek rhetoric (Description of Ancient Rhetoric and

An interpretive strategy used in several recent studies of Gorgias involves attending to his style as a means of understanding his substantive ideas. This hermeneutic approach is not confined to studies of Gorgias, of course, for critics have frequently explored the ways in which a philosopher's manner of writinghis or her use of the aphorism, meditation, dialogue, philosophical poem, or remark, for example-may elucidate the content of his or her thinking. But the strategy has proved especially inviting for interpreting Gorgias for two reasons. First, the substance of Gorgias's thought is particularly elusive, not only because much of his writing is lost and his few extant texts are frequently fragmentary and corrupt, but because he leaves many key terms undefined and ambiguous, and he appears to make contradictory assertions and claims. In this context, a strategy of reading that purports to clarify and render coherent his enigmatic thought is understandably appealing. Second, the hermeneutic strategy is particularly inviting because Gorgias himself seems to have attached enormous importance to his style, one often associated with such figures of speech as antithesis, anadiplosis (repetition of words), homoeoteleuton (likeness of sound in final syllables of successive words or clauses) and parisosis (arrangement of words in nearly equal periods). Given Gorgias's attention to matters of style, it is not unreasonable to presume that they may offer a clue to understanding his enigmatic In this essay, I will examine two prominent schools of critics who employ this hermeneutic strategy, and who arrive at conflicting interpretations of Gorgias's overall philosophy. I then argue that each of these readings misconstrues the nature of Gorgias's writing, and I present an alternative reading of his style. I conclude by suggesting that given his stylistic practice, Gorgias may possess a different conception of philosophy than that presumed by many of his interpreters. Before examining these two schools of interpretation, it is useful to place them in respect to what may be termed the traditional construal of Gorgias's style and its implications about his putative For traditionally, most critics have seen Gorgias's style as poetic, and have viewed his apparent preoccupation with style as an indication that he not a serious philosopher at all, but rather a mere stylist, an orator who deploys poetic devices to embellish his speeches. This view is first suggested by Plato, who describes Gorgias's style as an elegant feast designed to please an audience rather than explore philosophical issues (Gorgias 447a). Aristotle echoes this portrayal of Gorgias as a poetic stylist lacking serious ideas, asserting that:

This essay explores parallels between new paradigms in the sciences, particularly quantum physics, chemistry, and biology, and new paradigms in reading and literary theory, particularly a socio-psycholinguistic, semiotic, transactional view of reading and a transactional view of the literary experience. Among the major parallels emphasized are the following concepts: reality is fundamentally an organic process; there is no sharp separation between observer and observed, reader and text, reader/text and context; the whole (universe, sentence, text) is not merely the sum of parts which can be separately identified; meaning is determined through transactions between observer and observed, reader and text, reader/text and context, and among textual elements on and across various levels. When a friend first introduced me to Fritjov Capra's The Turning Point (1982), I was intrigued by what Capra describes as the paradigm emerging in fields as diverse as physics and economics, psychology and medicine. Clearly, I thought, there are direct parallels between the paradigm Capra describes and that emerging in my own field, reading theory. Seeking to better understand such parallels, I delved into other recent books that describe for the non-scientist the paradigm emerging in the sciences. First among these was Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979), a fascinating introduction to quantum physics. More recent books include Wolfs Taking the Quantum Leap (1981), Jones's Physics as Metaphor (1982), Campbell's Grammatical Man (1982), Prigogine and Stengers' Order Out of Chaos (1984), Comfort's Reality and Empathy (1984), and Briggs and Peat's Looking Glass Universe (1984). Each of these in some way contributes to an understanding of the paradigm emerging in the sciences. In the following essay, I draw from books such as these some key concepts that seem to be emerging, or rather re-emerging, from various scientific disciplines, and trace parallels between these and similar concepts that have been re-emerging in reading theory and in literary theory. This work was supported by a Fellowship from the Faculty Research and Creative Activities Fund, Western Michigan University. Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 19, No. 3, October 1985

Incoming freshmen are typically required to write essays which are then holistically rated to determine composition course placement. These placement essays vary not only in topic, but also in the way the topic is structured. Two topic structures are most commonly used: Open (students draw on their own knowledge) and Response (students read a given text and respond to it). It has been established that students perform differently on topic structure itself. To investigate this effect, one topic was used but presented as (1) an Open topic structure, (2) a Response topic structure with one reading passage, and (3) a Response topic structure with three reading passages. The essays, written by college freshmen, were holistically rated for quality and analyzed for fluency, total error, and error ratios. The results indicated that the structure of the topic made a difference in quality, fluency, and total error, but not in any error ratio. These results suggest that, for placement testing, one should first decide which types of students one wishes to identify because each topic structure distinguishes low, average, and high ability students differently.

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A. Lytton Sells, Winifred Lynskey, James S. Constantine, Paul Fussell, Jr., Nathan Comfort Starr, Marvin B. Perry, Jr., Stanley Weintraub, John Lydenberg, Charles Weis, Thomas W. Wilcox, William Frost, Edwin B. Benjamin, Wayne Shumaker, Jerome H. Buckley, J. L. B., Robert B. Martin, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Jacob Korg, James Benziger, Ralph Waterbury Condee, New Books, College English, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Nov., 1957), pp. 85-92