“Language is a mode of action rather than a mode of knowledge.” Words said by Kenneth Burke on what impacts invention. Prior to reading these articles, I always knew rhetoric played a large role in composition. In fact, as a composition instructor myself, I have always emphasized the role rhetoric plays when creating writing. I have known rhetoric to traditionally involve five standard tenants: 1) the author 2) the purpose 3) the audience 4) context 5) topic. Upon reading Burke, I was fascinated to learn of the Pentad as a strategy for the interpretation of motivation for actions in text. Essentially, Burke emphasizes invention that includes dramatism (language as symbolic action). The five interpretive terms he uses are as follows: act, agency, agent, scene, purpose, and later adding attitude. Looking at invention from this perspective suddenly made sense to me. Rhetoric essentially is all around us as emphasized in all of the assigned articles. In the article Issues of the Nature, Purpose, and Epistemology of Rhetorical Invention in the Twentieth Century, we find a list of contributors to the art of rhetorical invention. What I gathered from the majority of the contributing scholars is that they all challenged the notion of logic and certainty. These theorists believed that rhetoric was vital because it focused on language as thought and a means to understand. They posited that the process of questioning is important in order to reach new meanings and new levels of knowledge. As McKeon points out, invention is “the art of discovering new arguments and uncovering new things by argument.” The more I read about the theory behind rhetoric, I found myself agreeing more and more with it in regards to writing. The articles point out that traditionally, there really wasn’t a place for rhetoric in the Freshman English class. Typically, rhetoric was to be found under the communications department. It isn’t to say that rhetoric did not belong in the communications classroom, but we must consider rhetoric as language and the psychology of language as whole whether it be verbal or written. As Corbett defines rhetoric “the art or discipline that deals with the use of discourse, either spoken or written, to inform or persuade or motivate an audience, whether that audience is made up of one person or a group of persons” If this is the case, why then did it take so long to incorporate it into the freshman composition classrooms? Why is it still not being utilized in freshman composition courses? What is it exactly do we want our students writing about? The article states the Mid-Twentieth Century found Freshman English to focus on the application of rhetoric and not the discipline itself. But I actually wonder how instructors can only focus on the application and not the discipline? What was actually being produced and actually measured?
According to the Lauer text, many of the freshman compositions focused on the structures/patterns of writing rather than on rhetoric (narration, cause-effect, etc). I suppose my question could be answered by referencing Rohman’s point “All we have done, in fact, is to give them (students) standards by which to judge the goodness or badness of their finished effort. We haven’t really taught them how to make that effort.” Rhetoric provides that opportunity for students to move beyond the finished effort and focus more on how they got there. As I teach my freshman composition course, I find many students battling with always having to perfect the final product and focusing on what the professor wants to see. I find myself frequently reminding the students to continue to question and establish a state of inquiry for their potential writings. As Lauer points out about the heuristic procedure: “a series of questions or operations to guide inquiry in order to retrieve relevant information, draw attention to missing information, and prepare for intuition. I feel, I often lose that battle. How and when will this change?
Campbell’s focus is that of persuasion within writing and speaking. On the other end of the bickering spectrum of rhetoric, we have George Campbell and his focus on the manipulation of language in order to meet a desired need. Campbell argues that “rhetoric that relies on induction for arriving at truth is not concerned with brining appropriate arguments to bear on the issue at hand.” He believes that rhetoric acts as a sort of road block when it comes to discovering truth. He believes to seek truth one must observe. He states that rhetoric is concerned with “shaping the message.” Although this may be the case, I would like to believe, and I certainly hope I am partially right, that observation does in fact play a role within rhetoric. We create questions through rhetoric and in order for a writer to answer them they must begin by being an observer. Would it be safe to say some of the best writers might in fact be the best observers?
To dove tail off of my previous point, or Campbell’s I should say, is the Corbett article; here we find the art of persuasion within rhetoric in advertising. I actually laughed a bit when I read this article because of my fascination with the advertising companies manipulating language in order to meet a desired need: to buy their product. I suppose I have an ambivalent perception about these advertising companies because on one end, I highly respect their ability to utilize rhetoric and manipulate language in a way that is almost artful. On the other end, I almost see it as being irresponsible with the power that language has. Nevertheless, rhetoric according to Corbett is definitely present and can be broken down line by line, including any images. Rhetoric is creation for whatever purpose or discipline. It is the way we communicate and in essence create a community of sorts. I believe as an instructor of freshman composition, it is my job to not only focus on the traditional methods of writing instruction, but to also include the discipline of rhetoric. How can we create without motivation?
2 comments:
Your post reminds me you are teaching firstyear composition. I wonder what text you are using (and what choice you have in its selection). You reflect on the articles in reverse chronological order, I suppose, going from more recent to earlier history. Hopefully, some of the earlier readings shed more light on some of the questions you raise about how writing is taught today--and about how you are teaching writing (which, as the sememster unfolds, I hope you'll gain greater awareness of...)
Having done some copywriting/advertising work in a previous life, I can certainly understand the feeling that, beyond the idea of rhetoric as persuasion, advertising often borders on the irresponsible. Taking Dr. Staggers's course on Visual Rhetoric last semester was really an eye-opening experience for me. One of the things that came up several times as a point of discussion was the Calvin Klein ads where the models have been airbrushed and otherwise so manipulated that they don't even look human anymore when you look closely at the ads they appear in. All to get "you" to buy a pair of jeans, or a shirt, or some such.
I'm not sure where I stand on the writing versus rhetoric divide (if I may term it as such) in the composition classroom. While the core ideas of rhetoric are still with us from the days of the Greeks and the Romans, there had to be a [good?] reason why rhetoric moved from the province of the English department to that of the Communications department. If we are teaching students how to write . . . and how to communicate with others in this world through writing . . . whether they are trying to persuade someone to hire them for a job, or inform their neighbors about a zoning law that would be detrimental to their subdivision, or anything else, it seems like focusing on the writing tasks they will do in the real world rather than forcing them to learn the minutiae of ancient rhetorical principles that may have no practical meaning for them in today's world might be a better way to go? Maybe?
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