Aristotle: The Rhetoric

1. Definition of rhetoric: faculty of observing (as speaker or audience) in any given case the "available means of persuasion" (ethos, pathos, logos). Pathos is manipulative; Use mostly logos; "Art of persuasion" needing craft and creativity

2. syllogism: 3-part deductive argument

    ex. All humans are mortal; Socrates is human; Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

3. enthymeme: syllogism in which part of the argument is missing, audience must fill it in

    ex. Socrates is mortal because he is human.

4. Consubstantiality: speaker one with the audience and can rely on audience to make leaps; audience actively engaged in constructing the argument

4. Divisions of oratory: political (urges (non)action), forensic (prosecution or defense), ceremonial

5. "Rhetorical moment", kairos

6. Maxims: statement about practical conduct; good for old men; others need logos

Plato: "The Phaedrus" (ca. 370)

1. Definition of rhetoric: art of enchanting minds with argument. Rhetoric brings the soul to Truth.

2. Socrates and Phaedrus: P had heard Lycias's speech on love, S wants to hear it

3. Lycias's speech: love with non-lover preferable = prudence,objectivity, freedom;    love with lover = gossip, jealousy, clouded mind

4. S sarcastically praises the speech

5. Good speeches: P: no truth, just skill; S: need both

6. S: start with thesis, then define terms; a speech like a "living creature", body, arms, etc. Start with dialectic, divisions, determine your argument (this is not rhetoric)

7. S: Organizing strategies are useless written instructions and cannot substitute for true understanding of rhetoric. Need dialectic (verbal discussion with a learned person) to gain robust, dynamic knowledge

8. S: Good rhetorician must know Truth and souls, and the good to persuade them towards. Written words are dangerous because aren't related to the soul of the reader, as speech is in dialogue

Quintillian: The Institutes of Oratory

1. Definition of rhetoric: A good man speaking well. The art of speaking well. - The best orator will have a duty to participate in civic life, use imitation for inspiration with original invention - Rhetoric is useful and a virtue: a pragmatic skill and moral exhortation

2. Educate boys on rhetoric early; correctness in reading and writing; Ideal teacher is moral, disciplined, well educated

1. Definition of rhetoric: speech designed to persuade ("designed" indicating artificial, intentional, opinion and not truth)

2. Consubstantiality: requires that speaker attempt to cause listeners to identify with him

3. Commonplaces and style "invite participation despite subject matter"

4. "You can only persuade a man who is free." Persuasion requires choice.

Burke: Language as Symbolic Action (1950s)

1. Literature and art are rhetoric (propaganda)

2. Let us analyze language (rather than “reality”); how ideology is inclusive/exclusive

3. Terministic screens: a lens that "directs our attention" to certain ways of thinking and acting in the world; selecting and deselecting; language is part of this construction

4. Dramatistic approach to language: symbolic-action; language and thought as basically modes of action, due to the necessarily suasive nature of all language; language pushes terministic screen into perception of reader/listener/thinker

5. Scientistic approach: naming of things; goal to convey information, no intent to affect action

1. Definition of rhetoric: How words work in discourse. "The study of misunderstanding and its remedies"

2. 

...

*Berlin: "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class" (1988)

1. Cognitive: Bad, absolutely interpellated into dominant ideology, university as meritocracy, students trained for pragmatic (capitalistic) ends, danger of labeling unsuccessful students as cognitively deficient, hierarchical

2. Expressive: Bad, idealized and romantic, "navel gazing", incorrectly posits that social power rests with the individual, resistance posited in the individual, assumes sameness at the core of people, ideology aligns with narratives of individualism = easily co-opted

3. Social-epistemic (i.e., social construction): Better, teach awareness of ideology as the center of classroom, "liberated consciousness," allow groups of students to participate in collective goals regarding the greater world

Bartholomae: "Inventing the University" (1985)

•   How students adopt a foreign academic discourse

•   Composition textbook discourse: a set form of proper expository writing, that also entails a set view of proper public life

•   "Better" (more successful) writers are considered those that go against commonplaces, because doing so helps establish authority in academic discourse

•   "Basic writers" held back by perceived error; "basic writers refused unrestrained access to the academic community"

•   Errors occur more when students push boundaries and attempt to work in new discourses

•   "Inventing the university": students inventing/imagining/imitating university discourse/discipline in their own writing and minds before they really have full knowledge of it

•   Student voice may be subsumed by academic discourse, but will be expressed as student gains skill with language

•   Writing is the process of entering into discourses and gaining authorial authority

•   Trying on discourses via mimicry

•   Commonplace (convention): culturally agreed upon concept

•   Basic writers often fall back on commonplaces as easy ways to establish authority before they are able to express ideas in the university language - and this is a normal part of the process

1.    Ch 1: Growth - 1966

A.    British model (Britton): student-centered, rethinking the field, teachers should teach, explore student responses to literature, use student dialect, artistic approach

B.    American model (Kitzhaber: English should be "an organized body of knowledge with an integrity of its own"): need to change students (not the field), education as a science-like field, establish legitimacy (to get funding), literature based, research-oriented, teachers are scholars, master craft approach

C.   Harris proposes breaking down of binary and contextualizing of proper approach

D.   Student language use needs to be the focus and integrated into teaching

2.  Interchapter: Help students imagine themselves as intellectuals by having them think about the many ways they already engage with a variety of texts in and out of school

3.  Ch 2: Voice

A.    Elbow's voice concerns diction and style, but also matters of selfhood; have students reflect on their feelings in reading and writing; external (university) discourse can impinge on their selfhood/voice

B.    Bartholomae: university discourse can impinge on selfhood at first, but then become integrated into voice and self

C.   Two classroom approaches: reading knowing the author and intentions (modernist) vs. the text itself (postmodern); Harris: use both approaches to help students identify voice in their reading and to understand how readers might interpret their voices/writing

D.   Students can work within and against discourse; teachers encourage students to find their own voices by mimicry

5. Ch 3: Process: writing happens in (observable) stages

A.    thought --> writing; internal --> external

B.    Value process but still focus on how to get ideal product

C.    Process also becomes formulaic and used to extract error, a false promise of a path to an ideal product

D.    Harris proposes more revision and conversation (going beyond the text), pretzel vs. linear

E.    Don't let process be at the center - student and student writing centered

6. Ch 4: Error

A.    Error is seen as "not linguistically clean," not socially acceptable, a flawed internal self; public just want error fixed in students

B.    Shaughnessy: grammar first to avoid error

C.   Smitherman: "forming something to say and working to say it well", students write in their own language

D.   Rose: (in between) correctness is important but students need to engage with learning

E.    Idea of classroom like a graduate seminar (Bartholomae). Harris likes this.

7. Ch 5: Community

A.    Community as a warm fuzzy word, but tends to create exclusion, us vs. them, assumes consensus

B.    Public a better way to think: belongs to us all, allows and is diversity and tolerance, conflict is admitted

C.   Contact zones (Pratt): clash of cultures

*Bizzell: "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty" (1993)

1. For composition specialists: (1) humans have language capacity, (2) language = thought patterns = organizes and interprets experience, (3) language is social and formed by social interaction, (4) conventions and discourse communities, (5) individual can belong to more than one disc. comm.

2. Conflict: Inner directed vs. Outer directed theorists

A.    ID: Language, writing process, is innate and universal (perceived differences being superficial); Therefore need a universal model to teach all; Paradoxically, American Standard English is superior standard

B.    OD: No universal because language always occurs as tied to social context; Need to explain differences between discourse communities (for ourselves and to teach better)

3. Need to take from both, synthesize; Can't blame error on cognitive deficiencies; Schools need to stop acting as agents of cultural hegemony and emphasize true community

*Reynolds: "Interrupting Our Way to Agency" (1998)

1. Interruption: theory of agency for women writers (and speakers); interruption to gain attention, agency, and inclusion; via writing, speaking, in grand narratives as well as everyday

2. Urges feminists to consider the explore interruption to assert themselves in their fields and avoid marginalization

2. Examples of female academics interrupting male centered discourses, Hall (feminists crapping and farting as breaking into cultural studies), bell hooks (value of off-center position), Berlin (& others, marginalize female writers)

3. Consider offering students ways to resist 

Freire: "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" Ch. 1-2 (1970)

Berthoff: "Is Teaching Still Possible?" (1984)

1. Basic argument lies on student's criticism of criticism

2. We need a pedagogy of knowing; mind of learner needs to be engaged

3. Need to see language as a means of making meaning and interpretation; students need to be conscious of controlling meaning, their minds in action, deliberate choice in writing

4. Emblem for a pedagogy of knowing: Symbol, Interpretant, Object

5. We start with meaning, not language; think abstractly, meaning makes further meanings

Berthoff: "A Curious Triangle and the Double-Entry Notebook"

1. Using criticism to develop composition in the classroom to help students see process; criticism helps “teach reading for meaning and writing as a way of making meaning”

2. Language as “instrument” giving insight into various interpretations

3. Triangle model: Word, Reference, Referent

4. Double-entry notebooks as “continuing audit of meaning” with text notes and commentaries; “dialogue” between pages, personalized record of critical thinking process

Rose: Lives on the Boundary (1989)

1. Underprivileged are marginalized in American education; meritocracy myth; “widening education gap”

2. “Remedial” label used without concern for individuals’ backgrounds; students internalize label

3. Barriers for “outsider” students

    A. Socioeconomic and cultural history

    B. Dissonance: between expectations and university classroom experience; causes refusal to enter fully into the discussion, or forsaking of personal perspective

    C. Academic discourse: unfamiliar language

    D. Error: focus on error inhibits “higher-level cognitive pursuits” like style and critical analysis, “robs writing of its job”, discourages writing; correctness over content and critical ability

    E. Critical analysis: student assumption of need for summary, rather than analysis and synthesis

4. We need to invite diverse participation in the classroom; break down class levels/barriers

5. Rose uses different modes of text to engage readers: narrative, argumentation, dialogue, song lyrics, allegorized imagery

6. Mentors (like Jack MacFarland) are key to helping students via individual attention; students will rise to the bar you set for them

Current-traditionalists

•   objective, exterior, universal Truth

•   product (over process)

•   writing is not invention

•   good/bad writing, error focus, variants are disruptive

•   unified self

•   teachers "pour" truth into students (receptacles for knowledge), authority holds the answers

•   rhetoric shapes ideology, not the other way around

•   methods come from "disinterested scientism"

•   interior truth becomes external in writing process, guides to Truth

•   process (over product)

•   good writing: spontaneity, integrity, originality

•   self-discovery

•   voice, authenticity

•   value questioning of dominant culture (potentially over "normal" beliefs- undermining)

•   teachers "guide" students into "I"

•   student centered

•   "no ideology" --> no truth

•   science and data based

•   process, goal-oriented, planning, translating, reviewing

•   value process and ability to reach goal

•   real is in the rational

•   analyzable features

•   fix obstacles with heuristic (self-learning)

•   (in)experienced

•   truths

•   awareness of ideology

•   social contexts

•   interdisciplinary

•   dialogue: teacher and student

•   peer learning

•   service learning

•   social goal

•   student directed

•   language is socially constructed; person <--> language <--> world

•   social/cultural triangle: text, audience, writer