Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Kenneth Burke--A Grammar of Motives

A Grammar of Motives, excerpted from The Rhetorical Tradition, 2nd ed.

Keywords
  • Dramatism
  • Casuistry:
    specious, deceptive, or oversubtle reasoning, especially in questions of morality; fallacious or dishonest application of general principles; sophistry;
    the application of general ethical principles to particular cases of conscience or conduct.
  • Pragmatism
  • Dialectical
  • Metaphysics
  • No Metaphysics-the unmasking; applying material terms to immaterial subjects. (reify?)
  • Motivational Theory- used to explain behavior, desires, needs; what causes a person to repeat behavior.
  • Hortatory: urging to some course of conduct or action; exhorting; encouraging:
  • Terministic Screens: by selecting or focusing on what part, something must be lost from another contingent part.

Introduction: The Five Key Terms of Dramatism

The Pentad can be used to construct arguments of our own in a more informed manner, or tear apart what is being perceived or argued as true.

Burke relies on a pentad to explain or understand people's motivation in doing things. Motives are linguistic actions. Actions are purposeful behaviors or basic forms of thought performed by humans. "Motives are the particular way people understand events and the recommendations for response inherent to the discourse that it presents for its audience"--underlined information borrowed from Cal State Fresno and can be found here).

J. Clarke Rountree, III argues in The American Communication Journal that Burke's pentad isn't entirely original since it borrows from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. He further notes that Burke borrows the terms heavily from the medieval questions "quis (agent), quid (act), ubi (scene defined as place), quibus auxiliis (agency), cur (purpose), quo modo (manner, 'attitude'), quando (scene defined temporarily). Burke argues that we can derive and terminate motives within our understanding of the pentad. How we privilege each part of the pentad or answer each question influences how we interpret other parts of the pentad. Essentially, Rountree states that the symbiosis of parts of the pentad means "our understanding of one term necessarily is tied to our understanding of all of the other terms."

  • Act-what took place in thought or deed
  • Scene-the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred
  • Agent-the person or kind of person that performed the act
  • Agency-the means or instruments the agent uses
  • Purpose-why
  • Act: What happened? What is the action? What is going on? What action; what thoughts?
  • Scene: Where is the act happening? What is the background situation?
  • Agent: Who is involved in the action? What are their roles?
  • Agency: How do the agents act? By what means do they act?
  • Purpose: Why do the agents act? What do they want?
"any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answers to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where was it done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency) and why (purpose)."

Burke explains that in making this book, they  "sought to formulate the basic stratagems which people employ, in endless variations, and consciously or unconsciously, for the outwitting or cajoling of one another."
  • Is Burke defining rhetoric as the "outwitting or cajoling" of others?
Because motives remain shrouded in mystery, we struggle to define what motives are. In struggling to define motives or understand them, the enigma "will manifest itself in inevitable ambiguities and inconsistencies."

Burke believes the pentad, when examined closely enough, will reveal itself to be related and will therefore merge into one term, rendering dialectical unnecessary. He likens the pentad to fingers whose "extremities are distinct from one another, but merge in the palm of the hand. If you would go from one finger to another without a leap, you need but trace the tendon down into the palm of the hand, and then trace a new course along another tendon."

Burke terms his method (the palm and fingers together?) "dramatism, since it invites one to consider the matter of motives in a perspective that...treats language and thought primarily as modes of action."

Burke also develops a system of ratios:

  • Scene-Act Ratio: "the scene is a fit 'container' for the act, expressing in fixed properties the same quality that the action expresses in terms of development." Essentially, actions are done in direct relation to their surroundings, which helps make sense of motives. As Burke explains, "men's behavior and development are explained in terms of environment...From a motivational point of view, there is implicit in the quality of a scene the quality of the action that is to take place within it. This would be another way of saying the act will be consistent with the scene. 
  • Scene-Agent Ratio: a connection between the scene and agent wherein the scene influences the agent.
  • "The principles of consistency binding scene, act, and agent also lead to reverse applications. That is, the scene-act ratio either calls for acts in keeping with scenes or scenes in keeping with acts--and similarly with the scene-agent ratio."
From changingminds.org: link
  • Language expert Kenneth Burke identified a method of analysing the semantic dimensions of language through a five-part 'dramatism pentad' that describes our living stories. Burke said that we choose words because of their dramatic potential, and that we each have preference for particular parts of the pentad. Burke also noted how you can understand a story or speech by identifying how pairs interrelate, such as the scene-act ratio of Hamlet.


  • Act

    • The act is a motivated and purposeful action. It may be a simple, single action, such as moving or speaking, or may be more complex and compound. The act is an important part of the meaning, thought it is not the whole meaning, even though it may sometimes be thought to be so. The other four parts of the pentad of course also contribute. The act should align with the scene. A dance in a church, for example is not appropriate, though a wedding is. In a persuasive sentence, the verb indicates the act.
  • Agent

    • The agent is the person or group of people who perform in the act. They are the characters in the story, the people who enact the meaning. Motives, such as hatred, envy and love can also act as agents as 'they' are the moving force that acts. Countries and organizations can also act as agents. People who focus here believe that you need strong individuals to make things happen.
  • Agency

    • Agency is the technique or method by which the agent achieve their goals. This may be a sequence of acts encompassed by an idea or principle. People who focus on agency tend to be pragmatic in life.
  • Purpose

    • The purpose is the reason that the agent acts, the outcome they are seeking from what they do. Sometimes it is obvious and in the open, at other times the agent's purpose may be covert and hidden. Purpose may be layered and distracting, for example where an apparent good purpose cloaks an underlying selfish motive.

Ubiquity of Ratios

Burke believes the pentad is universal and conceived of throughout history and in other disciplines in other ways.

His ontological framework seems illusive. He writes, "Let us not worry at this point what it may 'mean' to say that 'Reason' is at once the mover of history and the substance of which history is made. It is sufficient here to note that such terministic resources were utilized, and to detect the logic of the pentad behind them."

For Burke, the pentad subsumes other disciplines, and in philosophy (Hegelian) reason becomes synonymous with scene. However, he doesn't divulge or focus on how we can affirm the existence of reason and the epistemic implications saying reason becomes the setting, the container, for acts and agents. Instead he focuses on how the pentad informs the motives.

  • Does this imply that our interpretations of how the pentad works informs how we construct meaning and reality? If I privilege the scene as the creator of the agent and act, then is this indicative of how a create reality and meaning?

Diverging from the scene-agent & scene-act ratios, the agent-act ratio cannot be seen as position or related in way that one contains the other. Instead, Burke says that the agent-act relationship is temporal or sequential. He writes, "The agent is an author of his acts, which are descended from him, being good progeny if he is good, or bad progeny if he is bad, wise progeny if he is wise, silly progeny if he is silly. And conversely, his acts can make him or remake him in accordance with their nature." So, one does not contain the other, but they can both influence the "nature" of the other. 

  • I'm struggling to differentiate between the containership of the scene-agent-act and the agent-act relationship. If the scene predetermines the type of agent or act that will take place, how is this any different than the agent determining the quality of its progeny (the act)?
  • Does Burke view the pentad as a way to interpret motives or a way to understand the nature of reality? When he tries to explain how analyzing the difference between the scene-act and agent-act ratios in democracy in American, he seems to imply that comparing the truthfulness of each ratios output will help determine the reality. 
    • If democracy is borne of an inherent democratic people (agent-act), then democracy would flourish despite the scene in which it is set. However, if democracy is scene as a relationship between the static democracy of the state (scene-agent), then once the country stops behaving democratically, so will its people. By measuring the truthfulness of these two lenses of inspection, one could argue the agent-act ratio hold up to the most scrutiny, which could then lend it some ontological significance.
Burke hints at the non-ontological nature of the pentad, writing, "The ratios may often be interpreted as principles of selectivity rather than as thoroughly causal relationships...Thus, a given political situation may be said to change people in their essential character, but rather to favor or bring them to the fore...certain kinds of agents...rather than others." Therefore, the scene doesn't change the nature of the man, but it issues a call and exigency for a different type of man.

Burke argues the inter-relatedness of the pentad leads to the possibility of acts influencing agents influencing scenes so that one may "establish a state of unity between himself and his world," but the "Edenic" paradigm falls under the weight of our ability to only produce partial acts, "acts that but partially represent us and that produce but partial transformations."

  • Why? Why are we only capable of producing partial acts? Earlier, Burke likens the pentad to fingers unified by a palm. It seems that the palm is the "Edenic" space where we could, if we were able, merge all the ratios into "one unending 'moment.'" Burke doesn't really explain, however, why this isn't possible. Is he saying the flow between ratios encounters less resistance if it flows from scene to agent to act? If so, how does this shape his ontology?
  • He does recognize that the agent's ability to affect the scene is faulty, which is why "Only the scene-act and scene-agent ratios fit with complete comfort...on the relationship between container and contained."

Class Notes:

Agency: difference between humans and non-humans about who can act. 

Friday, September 25, 2015

Chris M. Anson; Matthew Davis; Domenica Vilhotti--"What Do We Want In This Paper?"

Chris M. Anson; Matthew Davis; Domenica Vilhotti--"What Do We Want In This Paper?"
Excerpted from Teaching with Student Texts. pp. 35-45

The essay attempts to "describe a method designed to help students articulate and internalize readers' expectations for their assigned writing." This is an issue because students often fail to understand and evaluate their revisions and their classmates revisions because the criteria are unclear.

Their idea is constructivist in that students develop criteria for the assignment based on their review of 'interestingly problematic' student drafts.

CREATING CRITERIA FROM SAMPLE STUDENT DRAFTS

We write based on socially constructed expectations for a piece of writing.
Students often have to infer and inductively guess what professors are looking for in a writing assignment.

Students bring in prior knowledge when writing, but whenever they get out of their comfort zone or area of knowledge/memory, "they often work in an experiential void."

The authors use drafts as a focus point for the class to constructively acknowledge and develop the criteria for the assignment.

The process looks something like this:
  • Instructor provides the writing assignment--They receive the formal instructions and pertinent information about genre, goals, content, use of sources, etc.
  • Instructor distributes "interestingly problematic" student drafts--They give students drafts of previous essays for the same assignment. The drafts aren't perfect or terrible, but present interesting problems for class discussion. The students read and analyze the essays beforehand. 
  • Students individually analyze drafts--students come to a conclusion about features that work or don't work.
  • Students collectively derive principles and criteria--
  • Instructor publishes final criteria for student use--The teacher formalizes the criteria (e.g. rubric) so the students can use it as a formative guide. 
Example 1: A Guided, Small-Group Approach to Student-Generated Rubrics
  • The teacher set up stations that look explicitly at certain portions of an "interestingly problematic" draft.
  • The students move from station to station in groups of three and take 10 minutes at each station.
  • The students are directed to focus on audience, structure, diction.
  •  Students mark good and awkward sections.
  • If they can't articulate what works or doesn't, they can refer to previous lessons and handouts about effective writing practices. 
  • The teacher collects the responses and builds the criteria for the assignment. 
Example 2: Deriving Principles from Sample Texts
  •  The professor is teaching new TAs who will be teaching composition for the first time.
  • The TAs review "interestingly problematic" assignment instructions.
  • The students analyze them and note what's problematic, what worked well, what stood out, etc.
  • The TAs then develop the criteria for what makes a good assignment and why.
Example 3: Creating Rubrics for Specific Genres
  • Students create, amend, and reorganize a rubric for a participant-observation study report.
  • The students read a draft, refer back to the assignment, and then craft a rubric, which has three evaluative categories that explains what performance fits in which category. 
  • Students take the rubric home and amend at least one category, making local and/or global changes.
  • He then collects the changes and forms it into a final rubric, which the class approves by a vote. 
The process:
  • "provides instructors with formative assessment that guides their decisions about the course's shape and content."
  • "can also result in students developing relatively nuanced and sophisticated insights completely on their own."
  • "students are actively engaged in negotiating the ways that generic conventions influence textual choices about data collection, presentation, and interpretation."
  • In creating rubrics, students "are learning skills and strategies useful in other discursive settings where texts, and their standards, may be unfamiliar to them."
A

Brian Martin--"Plagiarism: A Misplaced Practice"

Brian Martin--"Plagiarism: A Misplaced Practice"
Journal of Information Ethics, Fall 1994, Vol. 3, No. 2

Summary: Shift plagiary stigma from competitive plagiarism (academic/student) to institutional exploitative plagiarism (corporate/bureaucratic/ghost writing/academic) because it is the more harmful and egregious type of intellectual theft. We should view competitive plagiarism as proper manners and penalize those who commit improprieties in accordance with breaking etiquette.

Premise: Prevent plagiarism by:
  • properly designing assessment procedures (e.g. getting students to use their own experiences)
  • setting good examples--citing sources for lecture notes
  • introducing an honor system
Most student plagiarism goes undetected. Therefore, punishment is delivered to "only a minority of offenders."

There are many different types of pagiarism:
  • word-for-word plagiarism--"occurs when someone copies phrases or passages out of a published work without using quotation marks, without acknowledging the sources, or both.
  • paraphrasing plagiarism--"some of the words are changed, but not enough"
  • plagiarism of secondary sources--"when a person gives reference to original materials and perhaps quotes them, but never looks them up, having obtained both from a secondary source–which is not cited.
  • plagiarism of the form of a source--"cases in which the plagiarizer does look up the primary documents but does not acknowledge a systematic dependence on the citations of the secondary source."
  • plagiarism of ideas--"an original though from another is used but without any dependence on the words or form of the source."
  • plagiarism of authorship--putting ones name on someone's work
 Most student-generated plagiarism is word-for-word plagiarism. However, much of this is inadvertent, accidental.

Fear of plagiarism in academia leads to fear and compartmentalized, non-communicative environment.

Plagiarisms revisionists believe:
  • Much more common for students and academics, which means it often goes unpunished. 
  • It is serious and needs to be guarded against. (traditionalists and revisionists agree)
  • Caused mostly by accident and inexperience (traditionalists and revisionists agree)
  • Penalties should discourage plagiarism
INSTITUTIONALIZED PLAGIARISM

Some forms of plagiarism are socially acceptable:
  • ghostwriting
  • honorary authorship--choosing authors for market value, which doesn't always reflect the amount of work done. 
  • editors
  • political speechwriting; 
  • These types of plagiarism are "built into the structures and operations of bureaucracies and is hardly ever categorized as plagiary." 
  • This institutionalized plagiarism contrasts with competitive plagiarism--academic plagiarism. 
  • "Institutionalized plagiarism is a feature of systems of formal hierarchy , in which credit for intellectual work is more a consequence than a cause of unequal power and position." Essentially, worker produce the work of the bureaucracy, not individual scholarship. 
  • Retail plagiarism and wholesale plagiarism--an analogy borrowed from Chomsky and Herman.
  • Retail plagiarism--"exploits the intellectual labor of a few people at a time (competitive)
  • Wholesale plagiarism--"involves the systematic exploitation of large numbers of workers as a matter of standard procedure." (institutionalized) 
  • Most issues of plagiarism focus on retail rather than wholesale. We readily attack a politician who plagiarizes a specific speech, but we don't attack the institution of speech-writing as a whole. 
  • We probably focus on competitive plagiarism because "those who write about plagiary work in the competitive sector."
  • Example: college administrators can use ghost writers for speeches with impunity, but students and professors cannot commit the same types of plagiarism in their roles at the university. 
DOES IT MATTER?
  •  Academic guarding against plagiarism advances fairness and ownership, neither of which "show that plagiarism is a significant hindrance to the 'quest for truth.'"
  • Some argue it allows undeserving "second-rate" intellectuals to get ahead. 
  • The solution, according to Martin can be discovered by looking at institutionalized plagiarism.
    • It reinforces the power and position of elites. 
    • It "reduces the accountability of subordinates, who do not have to take formal blame for the inadequacies of their work."
  •  Other arguments against institutionalized plagiarism:
    • reduces innovation
    • causes alientation
    • represents inefficient use of worker talents
  • Institutionalized plagiarism may be morally acceptable if it serves the public good and doesn't exploit non-elites.
PLAGIARISM IN A SELF-MANAGED SOCIETY
  • Could plagiarism exist in a society that is self-managed, democratic, equally distributed in power, etc?
  • Institutionalized plagiarism would disappear with the loss of elitism.
    • Or credit for work and ideas would exist solely so the society could better allocate its resources for future needs.
  • Competitive plagiarism could still exist.
    • most people will still desire recognition for ideas
    • plagiarism would exist as a matter of etiquette. 
    • "Since credit for ideas would not be important for career advancement and because contributions to collective well-being would be considered highly, it is even possible that creative workers would decline to claim full credit for their work, allowing plagiarism to occur by default rather than by commission."
  •  Our concerns about plagiarism don't mesh with the reality of production. "No single person can make a contribution without relying extensively on the prior and ongoing work of others. Producing goods in a factory depends on systems of education and transport, prior inventions, markets, etc."
Martin argues for a reduced emphasis on competitive plagiarism so that the stigma and power of accusing people of plagiarism will disappear. Since we can't catch all plagiarism, since we acknowledge and tolerate institutionalized plagiarism, and since competitive plagiarism cannot exist independent of the intellectual properties of others, we should diminish our concerns over competitive plagiarism.

We should therefore treat plagiarism like etiquette instead of theft. Instead we should shift the stigma of competitive plagiarism to institutionalized plagiarism to challenge the system of exploitation.

"Concern about plagiarism has been diverted from the most serious and pervasive problems and channeled into excessive concern about less serious problems. This process is clearly one that serves the interests of the biggest intellectual exploiters. 
A

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Linda Flower and John R. Hayes--"A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing"

Linda Flower and John R. Hayes--"A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing"

College Composition and Communication, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), pp. 365-387

The authors open the article by acknowledging the composing process as "a series of decisions and choices." They wonder what guides a writer's choices as they write. 

They cite the rhetorical situation, and the elaborations of Bitzer's scheme, as possible contributions to the composing process.

"This paper will introduce a theory of cognitive processes involved in composing in an effort to lay groundwork for more detailed study of thinking processes in writing." They use protocol analysis data collected over five years. 


Our cognitive process theory rests on four key points, which this paper will develop:

  1. The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.
  2. These processes have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any given process can be embedded within any other.
  3. The act of composing itself is a goal-directed thinking process, guided by the writer's own growing network of goals.
  4. Writers create their own goals in two key ways: by generating both high-level goals and supporting sub-goals which embody the writer's developing sense of purpose, and then, at times, by changing major goals or even establishing entirely new ones based on what has been learned in the act of writing. 
Writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.  
  • This contrasts the stage process model, a linear series of stages, separated in time, and characterized by the gradual development of the written product. 
  • "The problem with stage descriptions of writing is that they model the growth of the written product, not the inner process of the person producing it...Because stage models take the final product as their reference point, they offer an inadequate account of the more intimate, moment-by-moment intellectual process of composing.

A Cognitive Process Model

  • Represents a major paradigm shift from the stage-process theory.
  • Psychologists and linguists build models of what they see to better understand the process. 
  • Thinking aloud protocols allow capture a detailed record of what is going on in the writer's mind during the act of composing itself. Essentially, they provide a rhetorical situation and get a writer to narrate their thoughts aloud to a tape-recorder while they write. The written transcript is called a protocol.
  •  The act for writing involves three major elements which are reflected in the three units of the model: 1) the task environment, 2)the writer's long-term memory, and 3) the writing processes.
  • Task environment--all things outside the writer's own skin.
The Rhetorical Problem
  • People only solve the process they define for themselves. Therefore, if the writing prompt or rhetorical situation isn't clearly defined, the student-writer could misinterpret the assignment. 

Long-Term Memory
  • Writers store topics and audience awareness, knowledge of writing plans and problem representations. 
  • The problem with long-term memory is access. Writers must wait on a cue to access it. 
  • Then the writer must adapt the tapped knowledge for the current situation.
Planning
  • "In the planning process writers form an internal representation of the knowledge that will be used in writing...this representation...will not necessarily be made in language, but could be held as a visual or perceptual code, e.g., as a fleeting image the writer must then capture in words."
  • This involves a number of sub-processes: generating ideas (accessing long-term memory); organization (identifies categories); goal-setting (I want to eventually do x).
  • The sub-categories operate in a recursive manner. 
  • The authors state that " the act of defining one's own rhetorical problem and setting goals is an important part of 'being creative' and can account for some important differences between good and poor writers.
Translating:
  • Putting ideas into visible language.
  • Similar to how planning can be non-verbal/non-coded; translating emphasizes the peculiar qualities of the task.
  • The task is demanding because the author must negotiate global and local writing issues. 
  • Since novice writers must focus on one issue, they can become frustrated and produce writing that exhibits poor planning and/or plentiful errors.
Reviewing:


The Monitor:
  • The authors had someone watch the students and keep track of noticeable movements between stages of the writing process.

The Written Text
  • Each word and sentence determines what can follow after.
  • The control composing can have on a text can vary.  If the text is incoherent, it didn't exert enough control of what followed.



2. The processes of writing are hierarchically organized, with component processes embedded within other components.
  • The authors see writing as a hierarchical system that is not linear. It contains one large process (composing) that subsumes other smaller acts (planning) that can contain even smaller component parts. It's like a picture within a picture...a dream within a dream 
  • Writers encounter problems during composing (translating) and perform a shortened version of this process--they review, plan, transcribe, review, etc. 
  • This type of writing process is powerful because it's flexible.
  • We don't need to define "revision" as a unique stage in composing, but something that a writer can do whenever they want to review what they've written. 
3. Writing is a goal-directed process. In the act of composing, writers create a hierarchical network of goals and these in turn guide the writing process.
  • Writing is both an act of discovery and purposeful. 
  • People forget their local goals, so writing protocols help recall things that retrospection cannot. 
  • Process Goals-the instruction people give themselves about how to carry out the process of writing.
  • Content Goals-specify the things the writer wants to say in the writing, which further grows in to a network of goals and sub-goals.
  • People create network goals as they compose. The goal-directed thinking takes many forms and is intimately connected with discover. 
  • The writer's self-made goals drive composing, but these goals can be inclusive and exploratory or narrow, sensitive to the audience or chained to the topic, based on rhetorical savvy or focused on producing correct prose. 
  • Writer's not only create a hierarchical network of guiding goals, but, as they compose, they continually return or "pop" back up to their higher-level goals, which give coherence and direction to their next move. 
  • Low-level writers usually produce low-level goals--finish a sentence; correctly spell a word. 
Goals, Topic, and Text
  • The authors acknowledge that goals might join in a writer's knowledge of a topic and memory to move the composing process. 
  • These outside forces can interrupt the process much the same way the writers recursively generate and evaluate during the transcribing process. 
  • "Behind the most free-wheeling act of 'discovery' is a writer who has recognized the heuristic value of free exploration or 'just writing it out' and has chosen to do so. 
  • "We think that the remarkable combination of purposefulness and openness which writing offers is based in part on a beautifully simple, but extremely powerful principle: In the act of writing, people regenerate or recreate their own goals in the light of what they learn. This principle then creates the fourth point of our cognitive process theory.
4. Writers create their own goals in two key ways: by generating goals and supporting sub-goals which embody a purpose; and, at times, by changing or regenerating their own top-level goals in light of what they have learned by writing.
  • Writers organize two basic processes--create sub-goals as they write and regenerate or change the goals which had been directing their writing and planing (creating sub-goals and regenerating goals)--in different ways.
  • They Explore and Consolidate; State and Develop; and Write and Regenerate
Explore and Consolidate
  • "The distinctive thing about good writers is their tendency to return to that higher-level goal and to review and consolidate what has just been learned through exploring. In the act of consolidating, the writer sets up a new goal which replaces the goal of explore and directs the subsequent episode in composing.
State and Develop
  • This accounts for much of the composing work. "In it the writer begins with a relatively general high-level goal which he then proceeds to develop or flesh out with sub-goals. As his goals become more fully specified, they form a bridge from his initial rather fuzzy intentions to actual text."
Write and Regenerate
  • Similar to the explore and consolidate pattern, but in it the writer is producing prose.
Conclusion:
  • "Writers and teachers of writing have long argued that one learns through the act of writing itself, but it has been difficult to support the claim in other ways. However, if one studies the process by which a writer uses a goal to generate new, more complex goals, one can see this learning process in action. Furthermore, one sees why the process of revising and clarifying goals has such a broad effect, since it is through setting these new goals that the fruits of discovery come back to inform the continuing process of writing."

***My thoughts: This 1981 study utilizes think-alouds to monitor the cognitive strategies of writers. What are we doing to further this understanding given the furthering of technology? Could it be as simple as recording--via screen capture--the student's composing process and noting how the text changes?

Young, Becker, Pike--Rhetoric, Discovery, and Change

Preface-
  • The authors lay out the reason why they wrote the book. Pike (a linguist) worked with Becker and Young (rhetoricians) to combine tagmemics with composition studies. 
  • The authors also assume that students have mastered grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc., so they don't cover those issues in this handbook.
  • The authors side with St. Augustine's belief that 
    the process of dis- covering knowledge must be yoked with the process of communicating it and that, of the two, the first demands greater attention. And we believe, as he did, that psychological change in the audience, rather than elegant prose, is the immediate and proper goal of the writer. 
     


  • "Rhetoric, we argued, is concerned primarily with a creative process that includes all the choices a writer makes from his earliest tentative explorations of a problem in what has been called the "prewriting" stage of the writing process, through choices in arrangement and strategy for a particular audience, to the final editing of the final draft" 



Chapter 1: Seeks to define Rhetoric
    • The authors contend that the act of saying or writing anything falls under the category of rhetoric (I say = eiro in Greek)
    • Greek theories of rhetoric: truth and wisdom vs. persuasion and deception
      • Plato-rhetoric is verbal cosmotology; the language of truth that appeals to man's rationality. 
      • He sees it as the "art of actual discourse rather than the art of eloquent expression."
      • Aristotle: "the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever." 
      •  Plato believed that eloquence was derived from truth and that spontaneity helped combat the b.s. of the Sophists. 
      • Aristotle saw it as morally neutral and capable of being used for good or evil. 
      • It is the lack of moral purpose that creates a Sophist.

    • Roman developments 
      • Cicero and Quintilian shaped the great tradition of Western rhetoric--building off of Aristotle.
      • Primarily spoken rather than written--used in law courts, political meetings, and ceremonies. 
      • It dealt with the probable instead of the clearly true. 
      • Five canons of rhetoric invented at this time: invention, arrangement, style , memory, and delivery
      • Invention-"elaborate checklist of mental acts." Discover of valid or seemingly valid arguments.
      • Arrangement: organizing discourse into stages and categories. For example: exordium, narrative, proposition, refutation, conclusion. The heart of the system is proposition and argument; the other parts made these two more effective. 
      • Style: framing effective sentences. Gives clarity, force, and beauty--metaphor, hyperbole, allegory, etc.
       
    • Decline of Classical Tradition
      • Roman developments lasted until 19th century.
      • The growth of science during the enlightenment led rhetoric to expository modes. 
      • The art of invention lost its purpose.
      • The rise of the middle class also led to a reduction in aristocratic rhetoric.
      • We "now" focus on language instead of content.
       
    • Rhetorical Strategies and Images of Man
      • Pavlovian Strategy- man as conditioned animal
      • Freudian Strategy- behaviors expressed via the unconscious mind and suppressed experiences and emotions. 
      • Rogerian Strategy-To change people's beliefs we must eliminate the sense of threat. Consensus building.
    •  
    • Rhetoric as Process

      • Rhetoric is a need in search of a discipline. 
      • The authors call for a new rhetoric that values the exchange of ideas and discussion instead of coercive discourse. 
      • They describe a process of creating discourse but don't say it's linear. It's recursive.
        
      Chapter 4: The Process of Inquiry-undulating and recursive
      • This chapter discusses "in detail what a person can do when he is confronted with problematic experiences."
      • Process of Inquiry--upon experiencing tension, writers seek "an explicit, conscious understanding of the problem and reconciliation of the uneasiness. It is the "movement from this feeling of uneasiness to some adequate solution."
      • Process can be divided into four "joints" (Platonic term) 

        Preparation
        : awareness of difficulty, formulation of difficulty as a problem, exploration of the problem. Language is used to communicate the problem, even with oneself.

        Incubation: A period of subconscious activity. Hard to define and discuss. Includes a subconscious intelligence beyond reason that can better deal with the complex and unfamiliar. Even after the person has shifted focus away from the issue, the subconscious continues to work it out.

        Illumination:
        Consists of an imaginative leap to a possible solution, a hypothesis. It is, however, still wrought by the working unconscious. (e.g. Newton theorizing gravity after watching an apple fall).

        Verification:
        A testing of the hypothesis. 

      • This process of inquiry shows human intellect is the dialogue between reason and intuition.
      • Without a willingness to make mistakes, "original inquiry is impossible." Mistakes increase in intelligence.

      Chapter 6: Preparation: Exploring the Problem (Heuristics)
      • Students of rhetoric face a challenging situation: they must move through the process of inquiry based on deadlines in addition to proposing original solutions to problems.
      • Therefore, he must have a time-efficient process with which to achieve these lofty goals. The authors "believe...that although methods cannot be developed that infallibly lead the writer through the process to an adequate solution, we can develop methods that will be helpful in his search."
      • Heuristic, heuretic, and invention--systematic inquiry that provided a mothod for gathering information about a problem and asking fruitful questions. 
      • Heuristics are NOT rule governed algorithms that if followed produce the desired output. 
      • A heuristic serves three functions:
        1) helps the investigator retrieve relevant information stored in his/her mind.
        2) draws attention to important info that can be obtained through direct observation, reading, experimentation, etc.
        3) It prepares the investigators mind for the intuition of an ordering principle, or hypothesis.
      • Ill-defined problems cannot be solved by rule-driven approaches. 
      • The human ability to use language and shift perspectives helps us explore the world.
      • In this system there are: the perceiver, the perceived, and the symbolic system that the perceiver uses to encode his perceptions. 
      • PARTICLE, WAVE, and FIELD
        • a unit of experience can be viewed through analogy/metaphor of a particle, wave, and field.
        • particle- static; wave- network of relationships; field- part of a larger network.
        • A particle view would: recognize is static nature; select from the dynamic whole a static part; pretend things aren't related or joined; isolate the unit as a chunk.
        • The wave view recognizes some dynamic feature of the unit, noting flow or movement in time, space, or a conceptual framework. It points out the nuclear component, or peak point, of the unit. It emphasizes the fustion, smear, or absence of distinct boundaries between the unit and some other unit or units. 
        • To take a field perspective it must: occupy a place in a system; be seen as a system itself--composed of interrelated subsystems; 
        • "Viewed as a particle a unit has appropriate or typical distributions in temporal and spatial patterns, in classes and systems of classes, each of which constitutes a higher- level unit; viewed as a wave, a unit interacts with other units in a larger context that can itself be considered a higher-level wave unit in a still larger dynamic context."

    Hierarchies Of Perspective
    • "We may choose to include reference to two or even three of the perspectives, while keeping one of them in greater prominence.

    Perspectives on Concepts
    • We can explore a particular thing by shifting our perspectives: a house instead of a mansion-definition through negation. 
    • "A concept thus can be seen as dynamic, as an evolving thing with a unique history."
    • Houses can be singular and definite-particle. 
    • "The perspectives can also be used profitably to study such a question as "When is civil disobedience justified?" The term civil disobedience can first be studied as an abstract, static state of af- fairs; next as a dynamic, changing social situation; then as the con- ceptual framework for discussing the interplay of personal, social, moral, religious, governmental, geographic, and economic dimen- sions in human affairs."

    The Heuristic Procedure
    • The authors combine particle, wave, and field with contrast, variation, and distribution in a table to exemplify how units (or experience) might be conceived of differently based on how the terms overlap.
    • The purpose of the chart is to "guide and stimulate intelligence, particularly intuition, which is able to deal with enormous complexity in an original way.
    •  
    •  

    Solving Problems Systematically
    • We do not often engage with exploration for the sake of exploration; normally we have a goal in mind. 
    • The authors give an example of how moving through the chart could help provide a method by which people could not only envision on write about a house or a tree, but also tackle issues of linguistic by moving from the particle to the field through contrast, variation, and distribution. 
    •  

    Chapter 11: Writer and Reader--Strategies for Change
    • This chapter focuses on "procedures that can aid in developing a discourse designed to change the reader's image: to reconstruct some feature of it, to add to it, or to alter its quality.  This chapter also deals with developing and organizing a discourse. 
    •  Reconstructing the reader's image: 
    • traditional argument
      • Western persuasion assumes that men are rational beings. They can be persuaded by reason. 
      • The authors break down logical arguments into inductive and deductive reasoning
      • Inductive, or empirical, proceeds from observations about particular things to a generalization about the things.
      • Deductive argument proceeds from generalizations, or premises, to valid inferences about particulars.
      • Categorical argument-of which syllogism belongs.
      • People often argue initially from general truths and then filter those down to specific cases...the particular cases are seen as members of the classes and therefore share the characteristics of the classes. 
      • These logical arguments can be used as models or templates for forming/shaping an argument. 
      • In syllogistic arguments, however, the author must be careful not to omit premises unless he/she is sure the reader shares that understanding/belief that the premise is obvious and true.

        Developing the message
      • a logical argument usually only forms a nucleus for the argument as a whole.
      • The authors provide this heuristic for developing an argument
      • 1) Introduction
        a) Direct the reader's attention to the subject or problem. b) Explain your experience with the subject, the reasons

        why you can write with authority.
        c) Establish bridges with the reader by pointing out shared

        beliefs, attitudes, and experiences.
        2) Background
        a) Explain the nature of the problem - its history and causes. b) Explain its relevance to the reader's problems, desires, and interests—the reasons why the problem is impor-
        tant to him. 
        3) Argument
        a) State the major premise. Include any information that is necessary for making it clear and acceptable.

        1. b)  State the minor premise. Include any information that is necessary for making it clear and acceptable. (It is usually the minor premise that needs the most substantial sup- port. Cite authoritative statements, facts, statistics, per- sonal experiences and experiences of others, and so on.)
        2. c)  State your conclusion.
        3. d)  Demonstrate the superiority of your position by pointing
          out defects in the premises or inferences of alternative positions. Explain why the alternatives cannot solve the problem; or if they can, why your solution solves it better.
        4) Conclusion
        a) Explain the implications of the argument, such as the

        benefits to the reader of accepting it and the undesirable consequences of rejecting it


        Expanding the reader's image:
        •  Stating and explaining the thesis
        • Reify the abstract.
        • Novice writers often fail to root their generalizations in the world of experience. 
        • The purpose in writing determines the way an author deals with the reader's image. Expository writing does not seek to replace the image of the reader but to clarify and and emphasize. 
        Developing the Message 
        • The thesis and explanation are embedded in a larger structure to increase their effectiveness.
        • The author's include this heuristic for an informative discourse
        • 1) Introduction a) Direct the reader's attention to the subject or problem.

          b) Explain your experience with it.


          2) Background
          a) Explain the nature of the problem-its history and causes. b) Explain why the problem is important to the reader.

          3) Thesis and explanation a) State the thesis.
          b) Develop it.

          4) Conclusion
          a) Explain the implications (social, philosophical, psycho-

          logical, and so on) of the information.
          b) Summarize your discussion: the problem (2a), your thesis

          (3a), and your explanation (3b).

          Changing the quality of the reader's image
          • Traditional argument often has the effect of either strengthening or weakening belief rather than revolutionizing it, and writing apparently designed to give new information often serves instead to clarify what is obscurely known.
           Increasing the reader's commitment
          • Readers sometimes have conflicting views.
          • To change the reader's mind from doubt to conviction to writer must diagnose the source of conflict in the reader's mind. Therefore, he must remove the obstacles that prevent conviction. 
          • To strengthen the readers commitment: 1) show him that the inconsistencies or conflicts, are only apparent and can be explained away, or 2) that the idea is consistent with beliefs that he holds strongly, or 3) that although there are inconsistencies, alternative positions are even more inconsistent and therefore even more open to objection.
          Clarifying the reader's image.
          • Must also diagnose the source of the reader's confusion.
          •  Two kinds of difficulty, one from obscure generalization and the other from inadequate development. 
          • When trying to clarify an abstraction, make sure the reader can assimilate it by citing several instances that are familiar to him. 

          Chapter 14: Editing--Plots in Discourse
          • The author's compare the development of thought in writing to plots in stories--they follow logically and link together smoothly. 
          • Language is unique to a person, but it is also largely socially constructed. 
          • Our use of language reflects the way we see the world. 
          • The effective writer takes into consideration the social demands of writing--the potential problems that his readers will face in trying to comprehend his message--and takes care that his discourse does not become incomprehensibly personal. (The curse of knowledge.)
          Editing paragraph structures
          • In Counter-statement fCen neth Burke puts it this way, "A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence"
          • Many paragraphs arouse anticipations that are never fulfilled. There are two causes 1) no topic sentence or 2) the sentences that follow the topic sentence don't develop the idea.