His divisions are based on epistemologies, not ideologies. However, they inform certain ideologies.
- Objective--behaviorist, semanticist, and linguistic
- Subjective--Platonic idealism modified by Emerson and Thoreau
- Transactional--truth formed from rhetorical situation: classical, cognitive, epistemic (which Berlin favors)
"It is for this reason [school has primarily sought language fluency] that rhetoric, the production of spoken and written texts, and poetic, the interpretation of texts, have been the indispensable foundation of schooling, regardless or the age or intellectual level of the student" (1).
"I will thus be concerned with the way in which writing instruction has been shaped by instruction in literature, and...the ways in which approaches to literary interpretation have been affected by methods of teaching the production of rhetorical texts" (1).
Rhetorical instruction has long been an institution of the college classroom. Many early (mid-19th century) classrooms used texts produced by the Common Sense rhetoricians--Blair, Campbell. "Instruction in rhetoric was in now way considered remedial, designed only for those who should have mastered it in the lower schools. It was instead regarded as a necessary concern of the college curriculum (2).
"the term rhetoric refers to a diverse discipline that historically has included a variety of incompatible systems...Each major system is destined to be replaced eventually" (3). We should, then, talk about "rhetorics, seeing the field as providing a variety equal to that of poetic" (3).
Each system purports to be THE system, which is indicative of the epistemic relationship between rhetoric and "assumptions about the very nature of the known, the knower, and the discourse community involved in considering the known" (3).
Theories of Rhetoric
Provides historical overview of the development of rhetoric during the 20th century.
Objective theories
Based on positivistic epistemology: the real is in the material world--reality must be empirically verifiable. Writers transcribe reality through a language of symbols. Ex: Current-Traditional rhetoric. "Disagreement has always to do with faulty observation, faulty language, or both, and neer is due to the problematic and contingent nature of truth" (11).
- Current-traditional: Scottish Common Sense Realism; sensory perception/inductive reasoning can help perceive reality
- observers are to maintain objectivity
- truth exists in nature and language is a "distorting medium"
- audience is outside the meaning-making act
- truth--rational/logical discourse through writing; oration for passion and persuasion
- Invention isn't taught because the writer is a scientific observer
- Language is arbitrary; it should reproduce in the reader the observer's experience with energy and vivacity; should be correct in usage
- Behaviorist draws from behavioral psychology; Zoellner influenced by B.F. Skinner. Writing learning should be observable and conditioned with reinforcement
- Semanticist: "focuses on the distortions that are introduced in communication through the misuse of language." It doesn't seek truth and meaning through language. It sees language as a transparent means of communication
- Linguistic: "the empirical study of the structure of language would serve as a model for the empirical investigation that is at the heart of rhetoric
- truth located within the individual, distinct from empirically verifiable sensory world.
- influenced by Plato, Emerson, and Thoreau
- Influenced also by cognitive psychologists: Carl Rogers, Maslow
- Platonic rhetoric: truth exists in immutable ideals that cannot be communicated; therefore, through the dialectic, two speakers point out falsities in each argument as a way to prepare themselves to experience truth
- truth can be experienced by the individual but its transference to others is limited
- the role of the teacher is to provide an environment for the students' self-discovery of truth and writing
- observation within this paradigm is not a truth-telling or meaning-making exercise. It is, instead, a way for the observer to better understand how they construct meaning.
- truth from interaction of elements in the rhetorical situation (subject, object, audience, language)
- Classical, cognitivist, and epistemic
- Classical: truth located in social construction between interlocutor and audience; rhetorical truths are always open to debate; they are outside science; decisions made based on public discourse
- Cognitivist: writers go through stages of development; the individual arrives at truth "through engaging the surrounding material and social environment" (16)
- Epistemic: similar to rhetorical situation interaction in classical, but language is always seen as pervasive in the rhetorical situation; all experiences are grounded in language; rhetoric is thus a part of all human behavior; truth arises within discourse\
Berlin starts this chapter with a brief overview of how writing instruction in American universities gave birth to the English department, which created literary studies, which subsumed writing instruction. Essentially, literature studies, a once non-existent field, overtook English and writing instruction.
As college and universities expanded their role in society to provide education to swelling student bodies, departments had to justify their existence, and the English department sought to identify itself, not with the Classical Greek and Latin texts, but with English and the English language as the unifying factor of language education.
"The fall form grace of the college rhetoric course was thus the result of the convergence of a number of elements. The attempt to improve the status of English department members, the establishment of the study of English literature in the college curriculum, the shift in the language of learning in college, the new entrance exams in English, and even the establishment of the new public high school--all played a part in changing the nature of writing instruction in colleges" (24).
Rhetoric and poetic theory..."were at first thoroughly compatible...this relationship changed...as rhetoric became petrified in a positivistic configuration while poetic continued to develop and grow" 25). The two share a common epistemology.
Whereas literature in the English department quickly eschewed philological and historical approaches to their discipline, the rhetoric and writing discipline clung to positivistic, current-traditional theories.
"academic literary critics have divided discourse into two separate and unequal categories: the privileged poetic statement and the impoverished rhetorical statement, the one art and the other 'mere' science" (29). Rhetoric then is only language that is referential and logical, thus propelling the staying power of the current-traditional paradigm.
Chapter Three: The Growth of the Discipline
MLA est. 1883 solidified English studies within the university system
NCTE est 1911 reinforced commitment to students. Founded in opposition to the control college English curricula and requirements placed on high school students, of whom very few even went to college.
Between 1900-1920, there were 3 major approaches to teaching writing:
1. Current traditional--taught to help new professionals appear learned and scholarly in print (Harvard)
2. Rhetoric of liberal culture--writing instruction was exclusionary, aristocratic, and should only teach those who showed genius. The others should learn to write in high school. These school taught the beautiful letters (belletristic) (great literature). (Yale)
3. The rhetoric of public discourse--intended to help students engage in democratic process. (transactional)
The two major writing paradigms conflicted on the purpose of college instruction. Was it utility/pragmatics or was it edification?
The Ideas Approach
A transactional approach to writing, where "the student wrote essays about the traditional issues of rhetoric--legal, political, and social questions of a controversial nature--after reading essays that considered them...The ideas approach was an attempt to restore to rhetoric its concern with the probable, with arguing opposites in the realm of political action" (51).
The Efficiency Movement
1900-1920 education mimicked the scientific efficiency models of the business world. The studies looked into how overworked comp instructors were. They decided workloads should be measured by the # of students the teacher had. 35 max for college comp. The students should also be taught by the best teachers, not the newest.
Graduate Education in Rhetoric
Though universities jettisoned rhetoric as a course of study for undergraduates in composition, graduate education in rhetoric survived.
The Great War
"But the fervor for English studies would not have been nearly as intense had it not been for the national threat posed from abroad. English courses--from elementary school to university--were seen as central to the effort to make the world safe for democracy and America safe for Americans" (57).
Chapter Four: The Influence of Progressive Education: 1920-1940
College enrollments surged and a subjective rhetoric that celebrated the individual emerged. Prevailing economic models heavily influenced the teaching of writing.
Progressive education: influenced by progressive politics. Tried to apply science to education while seeing the students as individuals who would form their own conclusions based on experience. The progressive institution served society and tried to extend opportunities to all and maintain excellence.
Writing studies were empirically tested, and quantifiable mistakes were used to sort students based on perceived ability.
"progressivism contained within it two opposed conceptions of education--one psychological and individualistic and the other social and communal--which Dewey attempted to reconcile" (60).
"Taylor summarized the trends that he had identified in the survey. Placement tests were multiplying and ability sectioning was becoming widespread. At the same time, rhetoric textbooks were being abandoned while literature was increasingly being introduced into the course. Finally, English clinics were being established--places where students who had completed the freshman composition requirement could go for assistance with their college writing assignments" (64).
The Writing Program and Current-Traditional Rhetoric
"these current-traditional programs were including those features of progressive education that were compatible with their positivistic epistemology. Objective tests were strongly emphasized in placing students and in evaluating student performance. The use of ability grouping and of the student-teacher conference was, furthermore, a clear response to progressive education's concern for individual differences...all of these features were compatible with the scientistic orientation of the course offerings. These freshman composition classes remained focused on problems of arrangement and style, with the content of discourse relegated to activity outside the composing process" (70).
Liberal Culture
Elitist paradigm. Cultivated genius. Writing learned through the study of literature.
Expressionist Rhetoric
"The ideal of liberal culture indirectly encouraged the development of expressionistic rhetoric through its philosophical idealism and its emphasis on the cultivation of the self, both derived from its ties to a Brahminical romanticism" (73). Consists of the "notion that each individual has uniquely creative potentialities and that a school in which children are encouraged freely to develop their potentialities is the best guarantee of a larger society truly devoted to human worth and excellence" (73-74). Writing seen as part of the Freudian unconscious. This paradigm values creativity. Writing is art. It can be learned but not taught. Creative writing courses flourished.
Social Rhetoric
Exemplifies a return to communal responsibility and a rejection of individualism. Resulted in 1) only writing that was currently being used by adults 2) a rhetoric of public discourse. In this paradigm, teachers should be writers that recognize isolated "themes" in the comp course do not provide realistic rhetorical situations and are instead assessed for correctness rather than effectiveness.
Conclusion
The 1930s saw two calls for abolishing freshman comp. 1) Comp created an underclass of professors who couldn't do the real business of the dept: Literature. 2) Writing was poor because students didn't have anything to say. Writing should, instead, be taught within a curricular context.
Chapter Five: The Communication Emphasis
The period from 1940-1960 saw a boom in general education emphases. Colleges "tried to combine the breadth of liberal learning with professional specialization" to "safeguard the American way of life" (92). Most general education curricula had a communications course, which "combined writing instruction with lessons in speaking, in reading and sometimes even in listening" (93).
Heavily influenced by the General Semantics movement, which is positivistic.
This brought about courses that focused on skills rather than content (belles lettres).
The post WWII college boom led colleges to supply ill-prepared students with "clinics." The clinics were heavily influenced by Rogerian psychology. An inability to write wasn't a deficiency; it was a psychic issue to be treated with therapy. This, however, was the extreme case of writing clinics found at the University of Denver. The student-centered approach at the University of Denver didn't last long, but it had a lasting influence on the possibilities of writing instruction.
Communications courses didn't reach a critical mass during the 40s and 50s. "Their decline, moreover, was inevitable. Criticism of them began in the early fifties and continued throughout the decade...Their fatal shortcoming in the end was the threat they posed to departmental autonomy and academic specialization" (104).
The birth of CCCC in 1949 indicated a shift toward recognizing composition as more than literature studies light or a way for junior faculty to earn a spot.
Many English departments in post WWII believed writing instruction should center on literary instruction. The study of literature reflected Cold War feelings about the importance of the individual. In their view, literary studies helped preserve democracy and build citizens.
Structural linguistics also influenced composition studies in the post WWII era.
The fifties saw a resurgence of rhetorical instruction.
Chapter Six: The Renaissance of Rhetoric 1960-1975
The continuing surge in student enrollment and the space race brought about the need for professionalized composition instruction. "these teachers began to promote graduate training for their discipline. By 1975, graduate programs in rhetoric and composition were forming, and rhetoric was becoming a respectable academic discipline" (121).
Jerome Bruner, a psychologist, influenced the development of process centered composition pedagogies. His concern, like Piaget's, was that students learned at strict developmental/cognitive levels.
"This chapter has examined the historical events surrounding the emergence of rhetoric as a discipline in the English department and has simultaneously considered the complementary professionalization of writing instruction. I have repeatedly mentioned the calls in the sixties and early seventies for a 'new rhetoric'...no dominant body of rhetorical theory emerged then or has emerged since to satisfy this request" (137).
Chapter Seven: Major Rhetorical Approaches: 1960-1975
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