what is rhetoric? what is the history and theory of rhetoric? What do you want to do with the content from this course?
I have always understood rhetoric to be the art of persuasion, and this seems to me to be a definition that encompasses nearly every speech or piece of writing. Rhetoric is delivering a message to an audience, and part of this definition includes why and how the message is being delivered. We tend to think of rhetoric as a formal exercise, or even as a pejorative term that dismisses the message or messenger as being manipulative, but the definition is much broader than that. When we introduce rhetoric to students, we teach them how to build an argument, and how to clarify a message, and maybe this exercise of teaching better helps us to understand just what we mean when we use the term.
When I think of the history of rhetoric, I think of its classical origins, and its formal explanation by Aristotle, and it's been my experience that most students have a vague understanding of this history. Certainly, many of them are familiar with the terms ethos, pathos, and logos, and those who are not pick them up with ease. There is something fundamental and instinctive about the art of persuasion, and we take to its parts well, and in particular, we grasp pathos and logos almost without second thought.
Our readings this week on the history of rhetoric have been fascinating, however. I had no idea of the relatively young age of the English department, and to discover that Oxford and Cambridge were two of the last universities in the English-speaking world to hire an English professor shocks me. I do think of 19th century historical fiction that I read when I was much younger (books like the Little House series and the Anne of Green Gables series), and I remember the role of oration in a 19th century education, even in remote areas, at least insofar as these tales can be trusted to represent a true snapshot of society. (Also, as a parent with children of school age, I've been interested in elementary curricula lately, and have found books like the McGuffey Readers and other primers that were reportedly used by many students who may or may not have had access to formal education. These readers reveal a pretty rigorous expectation of basic elementary reading and writing, but I'm not sure how widespread their use was.) All of this is to say that reading, writing, and the study of literature seem quite naturally to me to go together, and I'm surprised that this was not always seen to be the case. Parker presents some convincing arguments that I think this only because this is the way I have always known it.
One final note on the history of rhetoric and where exactly it belongs in the academy, and that's that one of the reasons rhetoric seems so clearly linked to composition to me is that the study of each one is a refinement of thinking and then this refinement of thinking is therefore translated to a refinement of expression. In creative writing workshops, I've often heard it said that a story or an essay does not have a writing problem, but a thinking problem. With this said, I can understand how composition might easily fit under another academic banner -- one such as logic, perhaps -- but that means that as an English teacher, I have to bring that logic to my field.
When I think of what I want to do with this course, I keep this point in mind. I've heard we learn language mostly through osmosis, through absorbing what we read and write, and I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. We don't, however, learn this art of persuasion, and many of our best readers and writers have not been taught a formal rhetorical logic but have a great grasp of conventions. (I remember when I went to a pre-quarter training to teach a similar course at OSU and the director asked how many people were teaching the course who had themselves never taken it because they'd tested out; nearly every hand went up. We knew how to write and were managing to write researched papers, but we were just fumbling towards them without this crucial training. It seems that most people don't inherently know how to write a researched persuasive paper.) Other writers don't have the same reading background, and as teachers, we need to help them bridge this gap and teach the conventions of writing. When I think about what I want to take from this course, it's an understanding of how to further these two distinct goals as a teacher. That is, I'd like to be able to help my students become better writers, but also better thinkers.
I really appreciate your point about picking up rhetorical conventions informally. I never took an FYC course, so working with 1301 this semester has already been an eye-opening experience. It makes me wonder just how I could effectively teach concepts I never formally learned, as well as those I never learned at all but didn't know I needed! I suppose this links to your later connecton between writing and thinking. At some point, we as teachers have to decide how to teach rhetorical concepts: through a new pattern of thought or through a writing exercise.That is also a new idea for me, but one I find deeply appealing. Thanks for the interesting perspective!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Bailey, the last paragraph here raises an idea I never really thought that much of: the way that we humans retain informal concepts of rhetoric through reading and writing. Even though we have no real idea whatsoever of what the formal ideas of logos, ethos, and pathos are, we still gain awareness of how what we read or say can shape the emotions, ethics, and logic of ourselves. Any presidential candidacy like Donald Trump's now infamous run for office can gain strong responses from people that regard what they believe or how they think or how they feel about, say, Trump calling Mexican immigrants rapists during his campaign announcement speech. Since there's that inkling of rhetorical theory inside our heads shaped by the opinions swayed by books and media and the persuasion we occasionally use on others during speeches or plain small talk, there is some necessity to gain at least formal awareness of the rhetorical practices that we English majors use in our lives. When I learned about formal rhetoric theory during my time taking English 1301, I feel like I got better at managing my writing and research than I ever did in when doing timed writings at high school. I had a better idea of how to use topic sentences, paragraph transitions, and how to incorporate my thesis without having it be the first or last thing in the introduction. So yes, Nancy, our skills in writing compositions does improve when learning rhetoric and its myriad theories. Without officially knowing rhetoric's ins and outs, research papers just seem to ramble and eventually founder.
ReplyDeleteNancy! I’m glad you pointed out students’ relative familiarity with the Ancient Greek thinkers and with ethos, pathos, and logos. I was actually quite taken with how many students could discuss these appeals with some authority. This, to me, indicates that the aptitude is there, and the interest. I’m actually glad to teach persuasion as perhaps their first serious college English course, because it offers them a way to think about writing that is not merely informational. I very much agree that we are working not only to make better writers, but better thinkers and readers.
ReplyDeleteAs a fiction writer, will you be using mostly fiction for your students when it comes to in-class activities? Fiction can be so sneaky with its persuasiveness. Books are banned for a reason - their immense power. How will you transfer this idea to your students? As a first-time teacher, I’m very interested in this, in how to help my students rip the seal of surface-level reading, and what texts might help me do this.
Excellent definitions of audience and rhetoric here, and good connections to popular culture. Nice comments, reflecting on your post. Krashen and other linguistics often talk about how we learn to write through reading, and reading a lot. How might that play with composition instruction? What reading and writing background do our students have?
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