Responsible writing doesn't exist for the hell of it, so don't teach it that way.

Winsor’s essay made me pause and reconsider the nature of writing. In school, writing is often compartmentalized from other subjects, i.e. writing takes place in a different period than math, which takes place in a different period than science. This implies that each subject has nothing to do with the other subjects. While some subjects may have less in common with others, language ties them all together.
Students entering college for the first time don’t understand that language and rhetoric are the very elements that construct all their knowledge.

Winsor demonstrates that writing is often not the end process. Students are conditioned to think of turning in copy as the final step. I think good, responsible writing aims for impact, not to exist in and of itself. People spread all the great works of literature, all the great inventions, and all the great medicines through language.

When it comes to reaching a large audience with any type of information, language is indispensable. It’s really the only means we have. The symbols we use to generate meaning become the meaning. Science, mathematics, finance, business, and football all use symbols to generate meaning. Language and rhetoric will forever be inevitable, regardless of the subject a student is going to major in.

If a course were designed to teach students that, and to help them apply it in a practical context, then maybe they might understand better the importance of communicating well. Students have this idea that they’re writing a paper with the simple goal of writing a paper. Then the paper receives a grade, and that’s the end of it. It all happens in a vacuum, separate from everything else in students’ lives. This isn’t how writing should happen, so why does writing instruction happen this way? Instructors need to help students understand writing in a broader context.

Transmitting Underlife

I loved Brooke’s essay on underlife this week. Perhaps some of the things we discourage students from doing in the classroom are the very things that make them good writers. Having one’s own sense of identity and independent thought is a crucial aspect of becoming a competent writer. Once a student’s sense of identity is established through writing, teaching the mechanics of the language should not be as difficult.

Of course, students cannot just have one identity in all their work. They have to shape that identity to the writing’s audience. I’m sure underlife pops up in their writing, too. It did in mine. For my amusement, I liked to hide bizarre phrases or innuendoes in my work as an undergrad. It made me feel empowered, like I had won something. I wrote the paper, but I couldn’t be entirely controlled.

Even now, in meetings or “serious” professional situations, I find myself performing unexpected actions for the role I’m supposed to fill. But then I realize that ironically, other people are performing alternative actions too. The underlife becomes an expected phenomenon within a role someone performs.

I think this is distinctly an American/Western phenomenon. We need to perform roles, but we feel it necessary to perform them with our own sense of style. We want to stand out and be noticed above the others.

It’s really amazing how people behave when they know they’re being watched, and when they’re expected to fulfill a particular role. They both confirm to the role while rejecting the role. It’s a complicated communication process, much more complicated than writing a paper (at least a freshman-comp-level rhetorical analysis). It’s funny how students carefully construct their identity in the classroom but bomb the assignments.

Berlin's Three Categories of Rhetoric

Reading James Berlin’s essay, I wondered why Berlin ordered the categories of rhetoric they way he did. Why is cognitive first, expressionistic second, and social-epistemic third? I think his essay mirrors the evolution of composition philosophy, moving from the early idea to the modern idea. I agree with his basic reasoning, but I think the terms he defines are less clear-cut than he posits, and that an effective writing instructor can blend all three.

Perhaps I’m misinterpreting our readings for this class, but isn’t cognitive rhetoric another form of formalism? After all, it stresses linear, logical progressions, hierarchy, and an adherence to form. Cognitive rhetoric reinforces some of the dated ways of teaching composition. While cognition and adherence to form is a part of writing, it isn’t the whole thing.

Berlin names expressionistic rhetoric second. Expressionism happened further along in the development of teaching composition, but it too is inadequate to explain the whole of writing. I think Berlin named expressionistic rhetoric second to serve as a bridge between cognitive and social/epistemic rhetoric.

Social/epistemic rhetoric serves as a kind of next-level hybridization of the two previously discussed forms of rhetoric. It incorporates logic and cognition with the writer’s self to make a third other, a social environment, which includes self, others, and a logical/material foundation.

Berlin argues that social/epistemic is the most responsible route to take when teaching (okay, so I’m oversimplifying him a bit), but I feel like each rhetorical form has its place, and that they don’t need to be necessarily separate. A skilled writing instructor will use the correct type of rhetoric for the correct teaching occasion.

Instructor Commentary as Discourse

This week’s readings made me reevaluate some of my commentary on freshman work. Both Bruffee and Hartwell made excellent points about how students learn writing. After reading Bruffee, I began to take a much less authoritative stance in my commentary. Instead of handing out absolute truths from my ivory tower, I began to ask questions and frame comments, aiming to be more conversational than prescriptive. For example, I’d ask the a student “can you convince the reader that ‘specific examples’ is a rhetorical device?” Before I would write something like “your words choice is too vague to write a meaningful rhetorical analysis.” I wonder which approach is more effective. I think that leading a student to her or his own conclusions is a much gentler and more helpful way of meaning making.

However, since I can’t see students' reactions to my comments, it’s difficult to know exactly what kind of impact my comments have. I worry that students don’t care enough to ponder my questions, and that they look at my commentary and become frustrated, thinking, “you’re supposed to tell me what to do.” If this is the case, then the students’ whole mental map of education is flawed. Education is ultimately about having intelligent conversations, but it isn’t modeled that way, especially throughout elementary, middle, and high school. In those models, students are supposed to shut up and listen to the teacher. This sets up a flawed power structure where students necessarily feel inferior when they might have fresh and new perspectives on things.

As a grader, I feel powerless to combat the years of faulty institutional training students may have received. I feel damned no matter what course of action I take.

Truth vs. Praxis

As I read Maxine’s article, I wondered why her winds of change haven’t blown across freshman composition classes yet. Perhaps some of the resistance to her “revolution” is rooted in larger perceptions about the role of the university in society. I read an article for foundations of technical communication this week that illuminates a possible reason why freshman writing courses have been so bastardized within the English department and within academia.

According to a book by Merrill Whitburn called “Rhetorical Scope and Performance,” the ancient Greeks conceived of a university as an institution that pursued Higher Truth. Results and utility were the concerns of the peasants, and these concepts hindered the search for Truth. Teaching something “practical” was considered lowbrow and outside the responsibility of the university. People learned practical skills by working in apprenticeships or out of sheer necessity.

This divide still exists today. Universities still require students to fulfill a certain number of general education classes so that students can graduate with some sense of Truth. If a university does not have general education requirements, then it’s a trade school, and trade schools don’t have the ethos of a university.

Within the humanities, the attitudes fostered by Platonic and Aristotelian models of the university still softly exist. Teaching freshman composition forces teachers to abandon their quest for Truth. Perhaps this is one of the reasons nobody wants to teach it, and why writing instruction has remained so stagnant over the years, and why poor, poor Maxine never saw the winds of change ruffle her crisp sails. I liked the cut of that woman’s jib, I really did.