This article examines the sentence-based pedagogies that arose in composition during the 1960s and 1970s—the generative rhetoric of Francis Christensen, imitation exercises, and sentence-combining—and attempts to discern why these three pedagogies have been so completely elided within contemporary composition studies. The usefulness of these sentence-based rhetorics was never disproved, but a growing wave of anti-formalism, anti-behaviorism, and anti-empiricism within English-based composition studies after 1980 doomed them to a marginality under which they still exist today. The result of this erasure of sentence pedagogies is a culture of writing instruction that has very little to do with or to say about the sentence outside of a purely grammatical discourse.

At first glance, Assuming the Positions, which is subtitled Cultural Pedagogy and the Politics of Commonplace Writing, looks like a work of archival historical research. This book is not really, however, a work of history or historical research. The purpose of this book is emphatically not to describe the contents of these commonplace texts as they reflected external historical events or indicated large shifts in general lifeways. This book is, instead, a record of one brilliant mind reading historical materials that happen to fall within its gaze.

Describes the successful public lectures of Frances Wright, and looks more closely at her career as a rhetorician trying to determine why she remains less known today than any other major female figure of the 19th century. Concludes that Wright was remembered with derision by her enemies and with regret by those who would have been her friends.

(1999). The rhetoric of citation systems—Part II: Competing epistemic values in citation. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 219-245.

Preview this article: Memorial Tribute to Edward P. J. Corbett, 1919–1998, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/61/2/collegeenglish1114-1.gif

(1998). The rhetoric of citation systems—Part I: The development of annotation structures from the renaissance to 1900. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 6-48.

Preview this article: Comment & Response: Two Further Comments on "Teaching and Learning as a Man"Reading*, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/59/4/collegeenglish3634-1.gif

John C. Brereton. The Origin of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875–1925: A Documentary History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. xvii + 584 pages. $24.95 paper. Krista Ratcliffe. Anglo‐American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. 227 pages. Ulla Connor. Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross Cultural Aspects of Second‐Language Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xv + 201 pages. $44.95 hardcover, $17.95 paper. Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, eds. Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Madision: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. xii + 315 pages. $21.95 paper.

Preview this article: Teaching and Learning as a Man, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/58/2/collegeenglish9065-1.gif

Preview this article: Teachers' Rhetorical Comments on Student Papers, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/44/2/collegecompositioncommunication8835-1.gif

As far back as we can trace student papers, we can see the attempts of teachers to squeeze their reactions into a few pithy phrases, to roll all their strength and all their sweetness up into one ball for student delectation. Every teacher of composition has shared in this struggle to address students, and writing helpful comments is one of the skills most teachers wish to develop toward that end. Given that writing evaluative commentary is one of the great tasks we share, one might think it would have been one of the central areas of examination in composition studies. Indeed, a number of thoughtful examinations of written teacher commentaries exist, most of them measuring empirically the comments of a relatively small teacher and student population. No studies we could find, however, have ever looked at large numbers of papers commented on by large numbers of teachers. We do not have, in other words, any large-scale knowledge of the ways that North American teachers and students tend to interact through written assessments. There are clear logistical reasons for this lack of large-scale studies; the gathering and analysis of a large data base are daunting tasks, and evaluating rhetorical (as opposed to formal) commentary is a challenge. But we had the data base gathered from previous research, and in the great tradition of fools rushing in where wise number-crunchers fear to tread, we thought we'd take a look at this question of teacher commentary. As inveterate historical kibbitzers, we naturally started research by asking what sorts of comments teachers had made on student papers in the past. Have teacher comments become more or less prescriptive, longer or shorter, more positive or more negative? We headed for the stacks to try to find out. Rather to our amazement, we discovered that what we were proposing to look at-

Since the rise of college-level spelling instruction, pedagogies have been few, based primarily on “demon lists” of spelling words and injunctions to students about developing “informed doubt.” This study examines spelling instruction historically, then describes a large-scale analysis done in 1986 of the spelling errors found in 3,000 nationally gathered and stratified student essays. The result of this research is a new and somewhat unusual “demon list” indicating that the most commonly misspelled words are homophones, spellings based on pronunciation, and visual errors. The study then examines the changes wrought in student spelling by the advent of word processing with and without associated spell-checking, examining 100 word-processed essays with and 100 without spell-checking. This research indicates that word processing greatly increases the number of spelling errors unless spell-checking is used. The study concludes by exploring the question of what the future may hold for spelling pedagogies.

Abstract Nineteenth‐Century Rhetoric in North America by Nan Johnson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991. 313. Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric by Edward Schiappa. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. xvii + 239. Rhetoric and Irony, Western Literacy and Western Lies by C. Jan Swearingen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991; xiv + 323. Democracy and the Mass Media: A Collection of Essays ed. Judith Lichtenberg. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990; 410. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy by Albert O. Hirschman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. xi+197.

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.

(1989). Rhetorical history as a component of composition studies. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 230-240.

Preview this article: Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/39/4/collegecompositionandcommunication11144-1.gif

Preview this article: Personal Writing Assignments, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/38/2/collegecompositionandcommunication11203-1.gif

Rise B. Axelrod and Charles R. Cooper. The St. Martin's Guide to Writing. 687 pages. New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian S. Bridwell. Perspectives in Writing Research 1. The Guilford Press, 1984. 418 pages. The Process Reader. Ed. Richard Ray, Gary A. Olson, and James DeGeorge. Prentice‐Hall, 1985. 437 pages. Teaching College Students to Read Analytically. Jan Cooper, Rick Evans, and Elizabeth Robertson. NCTE, 1985. 58 pages.

Defining a rhetoric as a social invention arising out of a particular time, place, and set of circumstances, Berlin notes that no rhetoricnot Plato s or Aristotle s or Quintilian s or Perelman sis permanent. At any given time several rhetorics vie for supremacy, with each attracting adherents representing various views of reality expressed through a rhetoric.Traditionally rhetoric has been seen as based on four interacting elements: reality, writer or speaker, audience, and language. As emphasis shifts from one element to another, or as the interaction between elements changes, or as the definitions of the elements change, rhetoric changes. This alters prevailing views on such important questions as what is appearance, what is reality.In this interpretive study Berlin classifies the three 19th-century rhetorics as classical, psychological-epistemological, and romantic, a uniquely American development growing out of the transcendental movement. In each case studying the rhetoric provides insight into society and the beliefs of the people.

Preview this article: Textbooks and the Evolution of the Discipline, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/37/2/collegecompositionandcommunication11239-1.gif

Most rhetorical history has concerned itself with the theory of argumentation discourse as it developed from classical to modern times. This article traces a parallel but much less investigated strand of rhetorical history: the theory and practice of explanation. The slow growth of a body of knowledge about how information could best be communicated without necessary reference to overt persuasion is followed from Henry Day's Art of Rhetoric through contemporary explanatory rhetoric.

Most rhetorical history has concerned itself with the theory of argumentative discourse as it developed from classical to modern times. This essay traces a parallel but much less investigated strand of rhetorical history: the theory and practice of explanation. The slow growth of a body of knowledge about how information could best be communicated without necessary reference to overt persuasion is followed from Aristotle's Rhetoric through the beginnings of a theory of written discourse in the American nineteenth century. A later continuation of this essay will trace explanatory rhetoric into modern times.

This article traces the history of technical writing instruction in American colleges, concentrating on the major figures in technical writing instruction, the most important textbooks, the forces that shaped courses in technical writing during the period 1900–1980, and the refinements and improvements in teaching and materials that led to the current growth and success of technical writing courses.