Moulthrop, "After the Last Generation..."

Our ENGL 885 class recently learned the mechanisms, work, and thought put into a Wikipedia article and the demands an article and its content must meet in order to remain active, live on the Internet. Guest lecture Trish Fancher prepared a wonderful presentation to our class—it was one I felt enjoyable even as a student who will not be teaching ENGL 103 next year. Intrigued and burning with desire to uncover more than available from this week’s short article, I opened my browser and navigated to Wikipedia in search for information on Stuart Moulthrop and his piece “After the Last Generation: Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play.”

The Wikipedia article on Moulthrop deems him “an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer” (“Stuart Moulthrop”)—a description I concur with after having read this week’s article. From the opening lines, I gathered Moulthrop as a futurist, one very ahead of his time, or is he? Is he talking about the way things will be or reflecting on the way they already are? I found the series of rhetorical questions scattered throughout the text a great way to incorporate readers, prompt us to rethink the concepts he addresses, and pose additional inquiry.

I enjoyed the inserted thoughts and quotations that Moulthrop includes from “linguist, literary theorist, and born-again video gamer” James Paul Gee. (208). Gee’s words triggered me to reflect on my own education both in and outside of classroom. For example, I must credit Treasure Mountain! for my superb mathematics skills that quickly advanced me to levels higher than my peers during my elementary years. The game, which Wikipedia cites as “an educational computer game published by The Learning Company in 1990” teaches children basic math and logic skills through an adventure taking in place Treasureland on a mountain called Treasure Island (“Treasure Mountain”). I became enthralled with this game at the young age of four. Users were greeted with various math problems upon completing tasks within the game (e.g., finding hidden treasures, capturing elves, etc.). Although Moulthrop would find this game and the interface dated, he might take fancy to this idea of computer games as educational and entertaining being witnessed by myself in the early 90s. Treasure Mountain! was the extent to my computer and/or video game playing days (with the exception of Mario Kart on Nintendo 64); however, even as a non-gamer, I cannot disagree with Moulthrop’s claims. I, too—although not to the same degree—see the trends he writes of and shares with readers; I see his concern for future academia if these trends are not taken into consideration.  

In the following lines, Gee makes a claim similar to those Jody Shipka defends in Toward A Composition Made Whole. Gee states: “…the theory of learning in good video games fits better with the modern, high-tech, global world today’s children and teenagers live in than do the theories (and practices) of learning that they see in school…” (Moulthrop, 208). Similarly, Shipka makes claims regarding composition and writing and what constitutes as a “paper.” Shipka handles the changing dynamic of incoming college students by modifying her assignments; she distributes them to her students with the intention of inviting creativity, personal touch, and additional reflection. Her work further credits what Moulthrop writes in his work—the idea of evolution, change, and creative modification is already taking place today. If this change continues to push forward (and according to both authors it will), are students and faculty to be left in the dust? Moulthrop foreshadows the demise of education, as we know it, and he delves into the future of academia with an idea of video gaming at its core.

Here are some questions I have: What are the differences between video and mind and/or computer games in terms of their implementation in academia? In my educational experiences, mind games (e.g., brain teasers, variations of IQ tests, etc.) have been encouraged and often implemented into course curricula. In many classes I have partaken in various online, interactive activities that could very well have been video games. If these games are accepted, embraced in academia, why the lack of incorporating video games in today’s modern classroom? Furthermore, if students can watch educational videos such as School House Rock, laugh at the teachings and corky lessons of Bill Nye the Science Guy, and play interactive computer games testing English and Language Arts skills, why can they not engage in a different medium, like video games? Some of my fondest memories of elementary, middle and high school education were the result of these interactive elements. I was excited about learning and engaged in the multiple facets of schoolwork; I retained more information and entered the realm of higher education with an appetite for learning in an advanced, “multimodal” environment.

Although I am not knowledgeable in the video game literacy that Moulthrop discusses, I do acknowledge, appreciate and agree with the claims it brings forth. As Moulthrop writes: “Separating play from culture, or games from writing, would create a situation reminiscent of that ‘dissociation of sensibility’” (211). This particular line takes me back to our class discussion of rhetoric vs. composition and the dissonance between the two apparently dissimilar fields. Moulthrop addresses this abruptly with a clear statement: “Writing is still writing, even with funkier friends” (211). Perhaps this is the lesson readers, critics and all those in current and future academia should remember. After all, “the end of the world is…just a language game, and the show must go on” (Moulthrop, 209).

Sirc “Box Logic” from Writing New Media

I think Geoffrey Sirc’s “Box Logic” from Writing New Media was an excellent follow up reading to Jody Shipka’s Toward A Composition Made Whole from last week. Sirc’s chapter, just as Shipka’s text, provides readers with an explanation for the need to move toward new media composition, and it supports that claim with example-based activities. Sirc informs readers of his vulnerability with the chapter’s content in a confession in the first line of text: “Let me confess: it has been a frustrating last several years for me in my writing courses” (111).  As a reader, I became immediately engaged with what would be an insightful chapter; the author provided me with a sense of his experience with the topic and, therefore, credibility in those first few words.

Sirc introduces the analogy of “text as box=author as collector.” With it he provides a great deal of background information on historical collections and authors of creativity and then arrives at his own primary goal: “to show my students how their compositional future is assured if they can take an art stance to the everyday, suffusing the materiality of daily life with an aesthetic” (117). As a student reading these words (much the same as when reading Shipka’s), I was thankful. Yes! I thought to myself, this is where we find not only a connection and appreciation for art—however we may define that—but also a passion that can be triggered in the classroom by outside factors. Sirc talks about the need for “lived texts of desire” and his words are relieving; just as Shipka, he sees the revamping that so desperately begs to take place in the classroom.

I wonder: what is the real issue? I know that is a vague question, so let me attempt to deconstruct it with some additional questions. Why is this debate (traditional vs. modern, old vs. new, written, linear vs. multimodal text) such a great issue? Why can’t we (the collective academia) move with the times? If multimodality, technology, and the Internet are dominating in industry as well as in other fields of academia, why should English be left behind? Change is good, right? After all, technical communication underwent something similar. Isn’t there a way to remember the past and incorporate those “traditional” teachings into today’s lectures and meetings, yet still provide the revamped structure that today’s world and its entering college students nearly demand? The answer is a clear yes, because we are, in some sense, making moves toward this new curriculum; it is seen in works such as those we have read and heard about in references. Thus, if Sirc and Shipka—and I assume many other authors, teachers of writing—can provide the field with connections, claims, and criticisms for a re-tweaking, restructuring of writing in classroom, then what larger force is preventing us from doing so? I understand it is a more complicated feat than my simple-minded questions posed here reflect, but it seems like we are already so close to making it happen. What’s the holdup?

Sirc discusses his curriculum structure in latter pages of the chapter: “So the two basic skills I focus my course around are practicing search strategies and annotating material…it’s turning the internet into a virtual arcade…” (122). Sirc is clearly bridging the oppositions mentioned above, providing students with the ultimate experience. As a student participating and being educated in this particular curriculum, I would find these skills to not only be ones of great interest, but also ones of the utmost value post-course completion and post-graduation. Research and note-taking skills are ones that can be transferable to other classrooms as well as the workplace. Sirc’s later activities provide examples of how he teaches these traditional, expected skills in combination with the new media approach he advocates.

In Activity 1, A Basic Box, Sirc outlines appropriate steps for allowing the student to become “a mixer or DJ, practicing the key compositional arts of selection, arrangement, and expression” (129). This “simple lesson in juxtaposition” is one I have partially experienced. In last semester’s ENGL 852: Rhetoric and Professional Communication course, I took a similar approach to the final multimodal project. I juxtaposed excerpts from past president’s speeches (e.g., Kennedy, Lincoln, Bush) with those of college football coaches. I compared the rhetorics of both—president vs. coach—by using various forms of media, including written transcriptions as well as audio and visual recordings. Juxtaposing these snippets allowed me to practice using electronic technology in combination with historical, traditional text.

I want to touch briefly on something Sirc mentions on page 127. He writes: “The ‘questions for further discussion’ those reader-textbooks ask about their permanent-collection articles are designed to make the work come alive for students, to make them learn to savor it the way we in academia (supposedly) do, to make the work’s discursive field viral, recombinant” (emphasis added). I argue that these questions actually fail to do this. I have yet to feel inspired or “alive” when working within the limits of the traditional print text; in my experience, rarely have these questions pushed me outside the confines of the text toward other media. I agree that we “have not learned from the work done,” but I question how we will learn. With this, I argue again for the incorporation of Lunsford et al.’s Everyone’s An Author for ENGL 103.

Jody Shipka, Toward A Composition Made Whole

Jody Shipka provides readers a refreshing text with her 2011 Toward A Composition Made Whole. I found myself incredibly engaged throughout the entire text, and I related to several of the concepts and student experiences she addressed. For this blog entry, I would like to move through the text, chapter by chapter, and discuss some of the elements I found particularly relevant to my own experiences as well as those I feel our class might take into consideration as we prepare to teach ENGL 103 in the upcoming academic year.

In the introduction (page 6), Shipka immediately greets readers with a question Yancy poses: “Don’t you wish that the energy and motivation that students bring to some of these other genres they would bring to our assignments?” (298) Upon readings these words, I felt they advocated for the incorporation of Lunsford’s et al. Everyone’s An Author into next year’s ENGL 103 curriculum. Together, Megan, Catherine and I highlighted the diversity—in academic fields as well as in personality, ethnicity, gender, etc.—of entering freshmen and how Lunsford’s text aims to face these differences in a welcoming light by providing materials across multiple genres. Rather than deter students from ENGL 103, the text will unite them under the umbrella of composition and illustrate how the composing process can (and is) applicable across all genres. Everyone’s An Author takes to its advantage students’ use of technology and “new media” and will, therefore, excite, motivate students, and provide them with the means and lessons for incorporating their preexisting knowledge and interest in these areas to those that exist within the classroom. Yancy’s posed question above works hand-in-hand with the aims of this particular text. Shipka’s entire introduction, and I might even argue entire book, should be taken into account when the ENGL 103 committee makes a decision regarding the new text.

I related to the concept Shipka addresses in chapter one pertaining to the communication approach vs. English approach to an introductory course. My freshman year at Virginia Tech, a great number of majors (e.g., business, mathematics, and some sciences) were given the option of enrolling in the traditional freshman English course (equivalent to Clemson’s ENGL 103) or taking the communication approach to this course, a course labeled “Communication Skills.” While I was a communication major and was not given the option, many of my fellow business-major classmates jumped for joy at the option and enrolled in Comm. Skills rather than the ENGL counter. The students cited the negative connotation and their fear for the freshman English course, and stated they would have done anything to avoid taking that course. Their experience in Comm. Skills was somewhat reflective of what Shipka discusses in this chapter: “A communications approach to freshman English, by contrast, grounded in social scientific theories of discourse, would underscore for students the connection between the social and personal dimensions of communicative practice… A communications approach to the first-year course would examine how writing relates to other modes and media of communication” (25-26). My fellow classmates completed Comm. Skills with a newfound appreciation for the composing process, as the structure of this course provided them with reason to believe in and of its values to infinite genres. Students learned how to “’appreciate language as a living, ever changing medium used by all kinds of people in all kinds of situation[s] and in all kinds of ways’” (26). My experience with the situation confirms the thoughts recorded in this chapter.

Chapter two introduces another familiar concept yet one we are not likely to pay too much attention to until it is mentioned: “Thus, as one cultural tool is phased out or replaced by another, we are more easily able to discern the limitations of what had been formerly in place” (47). Wertsch’s quote provides additional insight to this concept of reflection. We see this idea ever so often with technology. We can no longer count the number of editions there are with Apple products—MacBookPro, iPhone, and iPad—and there are improvements and new devices issued just months apart from one another. It is interesting to see this concept paralleled to the classroom and the composing process. I also connected with a final point in this chapter, that when Shipka discusses our reliance on technologies. She writes: “One way taken-for-granted technologies are rendered visible is through breakdowns or disruptions…we come to depend on things remaining invisible, remaining in pace, and working efficiently. That is, we count on things working in the specific ways we have become accustomed to” (55). This idea is reflective elsewhere as well. For example, during one stormy evening last summer, my older brother and I (both of whom I like to think have intelligence and common sense) were perplexed when the electricity went out in our home. We forgot how reliant we were on certain amenities: TV, Internet, and even our landline house phone. Although the electricity in itself was not a technology, it was a means through which provided us with the affordance to use technology. Once again, we can see how the concepts Shipka discusses in relation to the composing process and educating students in the classroom carries over to outside realms.

I reflected on a previous class assignment, the composing process paper, when reading through most of chapter three (my favorite chapter by far). Shipka provides fabulous examples ranging from a wide variety of topics. My younger sister, a ballerina, actually completed a similar assignment to that which Muffie did—I see a great deal of comparisons between the two projects (Muffie’s and my sister’s) as well as similarities in their thoughts of freshman English pre- and post- enrollment.

I could not agree more with the themes introduced in chapter four. Shipka writes of the importance of providing student writers with choices, options to pursue in their works, and she discusses the added responsibility that comes along with this option. Shipka writes: “Instead of providing students with opportunities to explore the communicative potentials of new (or older) media in a context where the instructor decides what the final product will be, the framework requires students to assume responsibility for determining the purposes, potentials, and contexts of their work” (88). I reflect on my own experiences during my undergraduate composition courses—while I too was often frustrated by the challenge and the lack of terms or boundaries on assignments, the end result and the gained skills made that frustration worthwhile. I currently witness what Shipka describes; as a part of my assistantship with the Pearce Center for Professional Communication, I work with an ENGL H 314 class. Students in the course were recently assigned project teams and given the task of proposing a new component to the Pearce Center web resources initiative. Student groups were given few instructions, but they were told their final deliverable must be multimodal. From Shipka’s text, we learn this word has multiple definitions in various settings and is determined by different audiences. The students in the course currently face the challenge of proposing a deliverable that falls within an endless array of options. In chapter four of the text, Shipka advocates this “decision-making situation” and discusses the student/writer role of 1) identifying, 2) defining, and 3) solving.

Chapter five prompted me to look ahead to the final portfolios MAPC students will create and defend. Shipka writes of the reflective process and states: “Proponents of reflective or process writings have argued that students who are required to reflect on and then justify the choices they have made and the rhetorical strategies they have employed in a piece of writing are likely to…” (115). The bulleted list that follows confirms MAPC students’ need to reflect when defending the portfolio; the thoughts communicated in this chapter support the final project curriculum and goals, and from this chapter I gain the value of this task in advance.

I enjoy that the conclusion rightfully includes sentences regarding what we need to continue to do, encourage both others and ourselves to do, etc. Shipka constantly reminds readers that she is not downgrading or dismissing the traditional, linear and largely alphabetic text, but is in fact providing us with ways in which it can and should be incorporated. Overall, I found Toward A Composition Made Whole a rather insightful, enjoyable read, and I look forward to classroom discussion and conversation with Shipka on Wednesday.

Johnson and Elbow commentary on Rhetoric vs. Literature

As a student immersed in both professional communication and English, I find both Johnson and Elbow’s articles to be fascinated reads. They moved me with hope for future collaboration of two fields— rhetoric and literature—which authors argue are not so foreign from one another. These articles have great importance for our particular classroom; as soon-to-be teachers of writing, my classmates and I can gain valuable insight from the concepts, ideas, and “wishes” Johnson and Elbow convey.

Johnson writes: “…as a rhetorician” I cannot be considered a scholar, nor can my work be regarded as a valid contribution to the humanistic enterprise of English departments, unless my colleagues in literary specialties can construe what I’m doing as having something to do with the concerns of literature and nothing to do with the teaching of writing or with a pedagogical theory in composition” (23). As true as this rings within the aforementioned disciplines and the University, this statement is unbelievably unfortunate. I find myself in complete agreeance with Johnson and Elbow when I ask: “How are these two fields not related?” If I have taken just one thing from Dr. Barnett’s ENGL 852 Rhetoric and Professional Communication, it is this: rhetoric is indeed prevalent across many disciplines today. The reason for the portrayed disconnect and the generated negativity; however, dates back to its Aristotelian conception. Rhetoric, in its evolution, has increased its representation as a bad rap; it is the “whore child” of literature or composition, the lesser between itself and philosophy. Johnson states that “the divorce between rhetoric and literary studies is a righteous separation founded on considerable incompatibilities in aims and substance; (22) however, if rhetoric is the counterpart to dialectic and the mediating force bringing groups in to dialogue, how is it so distant from literature, if literature is in many ways the documentation of dialogue? Are these aims not compatible?

I established another connection with a different MAPC course, ENGL 856: Workplace Communication, in Johnson’s commentary on the them-vs.-us creed. In Dr. William’s course, we have discussed how identification influences the dynamics and relationships within a workplace. Congregation, for example, is important as it implies an “us” perspective, whereas segregation implies one of “them.” George Cheney mentions this congregation vs. segregation in his article “The Rhetoric of Identification and The Study of Organizational Communication,” and he quotes a passage from Burke: “Only those voices from without are effective which can speak in the language of a voice within” (Burke). This quote speaks to the importance of congregation (we) and segregation (me), and it suggests that the voice within is the loudest; therefore, no other voice can convince the loudest without the loudest voice already having some predisposition of believe. This “Burkean identification,” as well as the concepts addressed in Cheney’s article, is evident in the divorce between rhetoric and literature.

Elbow also reiterates this distance and “mediate[s] for a moment on the two essential dimensions of language use that [he] has been implying” rhetoric and poetics. In one sense, language is rhetorical…” (471). If Elbow can identify the ways in which language classifies as rhetoric, how are these two fields still disconnected? Johnson touches on this question in using a theme of interrelatedness in conjunction with a pluralist definition of literacy. He writes: “A pluralist definition of literacy can develop from the identification of these kinds of correspondences—from the recognition that learning to write is a function of learning to interpret, that learning to interpret is a function of learning to write, and that both learning to compose and learning to assess meaning are functions of learning to read texts” (24). I think we, as students of professional communication and writing, can infer yet another connection and find resemblance of these teachings within another field—communication studies.

In the final note, Johnson credits Wayne Booth for his comment on the aims of rhetoric. Booth says: “What we say matters, and it matters how we say it” (Johnson, 25). This saying is quite similar to McCombs and Shaw’s classic communication theory of agenda setting that states while “the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, it is stunningly successful in telling readers what to think about” (McCombs and Shaw). Agenda setting theory is based on the notion that press decisions lead to a transfer of salience of issues to users. It seems that this same transfer is taking place between the divorced fields—rhetoric and literature. Johnson and Elbow both discuss the constant sway of importance and dominance of one field over another, and I cannot help but to wonder if this divorce is larger than it seems.

Faigley, "Judging Writing, Judging Selves"

In “Judging Writing, Judging Selves,” Lester Faigley invites discussion regarding the views teachers of writing take when approaching the works of their students. Faigley opens and writes: “While most teachers of writing still assign grades to papers at some point in the course of instruction, the emphasis has shifted from summative to formative evaluation, or, in the language of process advocates, from a teacher’s role as judge to one as coach” (395). Using diverse notions of the self, Faigley compares 1929 standardized essays to recent collections of student writing. The comparison illustrates Faigley’s claim that today’s teachers of writing are also considered with student’s consideration of the self as much, if not more, as they are student's consideration of the actual text.

I first connected with Faigley in the opening paragraph, specifically with the line quoted above, as it allowed me to reflect on an experience from my undergraduate years (ironically, an article focused on the importance of the self prompted me to do just this). During my senior year at Virginia Tech, I held a paid position in the CommLab, the university’s oral communication lab. The sister lab of the Writing Center, the CommLab assisted VT students, university-wide, with all phases of a speech—planning, organizing, brainstorming, outlining, and delivering. One goal of the CommLab was to provide adequate guidance to its clients and create a relationship outside of the teacher-student one within the classroom. A unique feature of this lab was the role its coaches played; we, as undergraduate peer mentors, were called “coaches” rather than “tutor,” “teacher,” or “mentor.” A research study in Spring 2012 revealed that 100% of clients preferred this title to any others. Clients stated that “coach” was a less intimating title and it reinforced the feeling of equality in the coach-client relationship. Students were more inclined to trust their coach, value the time spent working and return for follow-up sessions with the coach, simply because the lack of hierarchy in the CommLab workplace. I mention this experience because we, as coaches, fulfilled the teacher-as-coach role that Faigley describes in the opening paragraph. Rather than acting as judges or graders of the work of our clients, we coached them throughout their process.

As I read of the 92 examination books The Commission read and looked over the prompts provided in the text, another question came to mind: How much change have we actually witnessed in these standardized assessment prompts? Yes, we notice and describe the transformation that teachers have undergone in their “judgment” or reflection on student writing, but how much has the structure of the prompts changed? In reading the questions within Part One, I could not resist thinking about today’s standardized tests. How different are the questions written in 1929 from those written and provided on tests such as the SAT, GRE or MCAT today? Do we not still see the similarities? How can teachers undergo such a change in their readings and evaluations of student work, yet the prompts stay static? Going along with this idea, I reflected on the numerous study guides and detailed tutorials that provide intense preparation for these tests. These books, just as Faigley’s article, highlight samples essays students have written to previous prompts. Each prompt is following by a teacher’s evaluation of and commentary on it; typically, this discourse includes a grade based on the pre-determined scale. It is so interesting to ponder these materials (as well as the tests they represent) then to read an article like Faigley’s and compare.

I made more connections in later pages. On 404, Faigley writes: “Several teachers mention that while the particular example they discuss is flawed (spelling and mechanical errors are reproduced), the student achieves excellence because he or she is either ‘honest,’ writes in an ‘authentic voice,’ or possesses ‘integrity.’” This statement reminded me of the concept of storytelling as we have discussed this semester in ENGL 856: Workplace Communication. Having just read Stephen Denning’s Squirrel Inc., our class has learned some of the key components of what makes a good story. According to Denning, there are different needs for a story depending on the objective of the story. For example, if the objective is for the speaker to communicate who he/she is, then that story will need to: 1) reveal some strength or vulnerability from the past, 2) be true, or 3) be moving. Do these characteristics not parallel those put forth in the statement above? To some extent, we can apply the same principles to storytelling as we do when writing about the self.  

I had another question after reading what Roger Garrison declares about writing: “‘Good writing,’” he says, “‘is inevitably honest writing. Every writer, beginner or not, needs what Hemingway called ‘a built-in crap detector.’ All of us, like it or not, are daily immersed in tides of phony, posturing, pretentious, tired, imprecise, slovenly language, which both suffocate and corrupt the mind’” (Faigley 405). My question deals with truth in regard to creative or fiction writing. If honest writing is so highly valued, where and how do readers (or even teachers) find and evaluate the self in fiction writing? How do we justify these genres and credit student authors with their attention to self if their writing is falsified? Where do we find the balance?  

Berlin and Berthoff

James Berlin’s essay considers the four dominant composition theories—the Neo-Aristotelians or Classicists, the Positivists or Current-Traditionalists, the Neo-Platonists or Expressionists, and the New Rhetoricians—and the way writer, audience, reality, and language are constructed with the rules for communicating knowledge and truth. Completing the assigned chart greatly assisted in grasping the similarities and differences between the composition theories and making note of the overlaps as well as in understanding how each element plays a role in the scope of each theory.

I found Berlin’s statement regarding teachers’ methods toward writing when discussing/teaching it to their students most interesting. She writes: “The dismay students display about writing is, I am convinced, at least occasionally the result of teachers unconsciously offering contradictory advice about composing” (766). Reflecting on my own elementary education (from elementary through high school), I cannot help but to agree with Berlin. I recall hearing (or being preached to, rather) a platter of information and how-to tutorials regarding writing, including: the five paragraph essay, the “never start a sentence with ‘because,’” and the “show your intelligence with your choice in vocabulary” (aka, go to dictionary.com and find a convoluted synonym for a simplistic word). The rules changed grade after grade, year after year; finally, in college we were instructed to throw these “guidelines” out the window and compose in a different light. Perhaps teachers were, like Berlin suggests, “tacitly teaching a version of reality and the student’s place and mode of operation in it” based upon age group and class cohort. If teachers teach to the books and various standardized tests, they unconsciously offer information that will shortly become outdated or revised with new information, new criteria from a new teacher based on that particular grade and its curriculum. Berlin’s reasoning would explain my struggle to understand the norm for writing in my elementary years.

 Berlin discusses Francis Genung’s branches of discourses: fundamental, description, narrative, and oratory. These seem to parallel the four modes of discourse that James Kinneavy discusses in chapter one of his work Writing—Basic Modes of Organization. Kinneavy writes how the four modes of discourse—classification, description, narration, and evaluation—offer four different views of reality. He writes: “It follows the notion that any one mode gives only a partial account of reality, that each mode needs to be supplemented by the other modes to make any pretense to a full account” (Kinneavy 9). This parallels similar points Berlin makes about the realities of each of the four composition theories as well as the reality that is communicated and taught to students in the classroom. Berlin even mentions the implications of certain realities, and writes: “…college students are encouraged to embrace a view of reality based on a mechanistic physics and a naïve faculty psychology—and all in the name of a convenient pedagogy” (771).

It was slightly refreshing to revisit Kenneth Burke and some of his thoughts. Having taken an extensive look at Burke’s work in Dr. Barnett’s rhetoric course last semester, and now having retouched some of the themes within Berlin’s essay, I can now establish appropriate connections between the works and the ideas that Berlin incorporates as evidence of his claims. This same thought holds true for that of Plato and Aristotle and their works, as well. The classificatory and descriptive nature of Berlin’s work helps further develop my understanding of these rhetoricians’ works. Most importantly, however, was my witnessing the relationship of these works to teaching writing in the classroom and how the elements play vital roles in obtaining knowledge and communicating realities.   

I also enjoyed the connection Berlin makes to Ann Berthoff’s writing. In the passage Berlin quotes, Berthoff talks about “seeing relationships.” I connected the ideas described in this passage with a recent lecture in ENGL 856: Workplace Communication. In “Metaphors of Communication and Organization,” Putnam et al. introduce the seven metaphors within organizational communication: conduit, lens, voice, performance, symbol, linkage, and discourse. A metaphor is a linkage between something that is familiar versus something that is unfamiliar, and according to Berthoff, “the way we make sense of the world is to see something with respect to, in terms of, in relation to something else” (Berlin 775). We understand things and form realities based upon these metaphors, and this understanding is relevant in the classroom and in composition: “We are teaching a way of experiencing the world, a way or ordering and making sense of it…and even style are assumptions about the nature of reality” (Berlin 776). In her essay, “Is Teaching Still Possible? Writing, Meaning, and Higher Order Reasoning,” Berthoff furthers this idea of the metaphor in relationship to the movement in pedagogy. She provides an example: “A positivist conception of language as a ‘communication medium,’ as a set of muffin tins into which the batter of thought is poured, leads to question-begging representations and models of the composing process” (744). By using the familiar (e.g., the muffin tins and the batter) in combination with the unfamiliar (e.g., positivist conception of language), Berthoff successfully explains the idea within pedagogy.   

Richard Lanham, The “Q” Question

For my first blog response of the semester, I would simply like to move through the reading and discuss various portions of the text that flagged my attention. In his early paragraphs, Lanham introduces the construct he calls “the Weak Defense,” which “argues that there are two kinds of rhetoric, good and bad. The good kind is used in good causes, the bad in bad causes” (155). This construct caused me to immediately recall several readings discussed in Dr. Barnett’s fall 2012 course, Rhetoric and Professional Communication. As rhetoric students, we learned how good causes — when reflected through another lens, from a different perspective — might be seen as bad causes, and vise versa. As a result of these teachings, I question the validity of Lanham’s Weak Defense.

I wonder, however, how the Weak Defense and Strong Defense constructs, or these “two basic orchestrations of reality,” (166) will become visible in the writings or practices of those students enrolled in Freshmen Composition. Some students will take the position for a particular issue, while others may argue against. In this event, these students are likely to use the same rhetoric, but tailor it (i.e., use it as evidence of a good or bad cause) to support their individual claims. This practice would reinforce Lanham’s writing of “the Weak Defense.” “The Strong Defense” points out the shift from Peter Ramus’ two divisions of rhetoric. In his “modern times” definition, Ramus separates the larger umbrella of rhetoric into philosophy and rhetoric. He situates invention, argument and arrangement within philosophy, and places style and delivery with rhetoric. If freshmen composition students write according to these two categories, they will enact “the Strong Defense” and argument will be open-ended. Some students will separate rhetoric and philosophy (“the Weak Defense”), and others will argue new systems and assume that “truth…is man made” (“the Strong Defense”) (156).

The “Q” Question is double-barreled, and as a result, it brings forth an additional level of complexity. The question insists that action be taken in designing a curriculum that “situates and justifies the humanities” (156). Can we answer the first question (Does education in discourse lead to virtue more than vice?) without and/or before answering the second (Are good rhetors good people?), or vise versa? And furthermore, how are we to interpret these questions without operationalizing the terms (e.g., virtue, vice, good)? What does it mean to be virtuous? Lanham answers: “Train someone in it, and… you have trained that person to be virtuous. ‘Virtuosity is some evidence of virtue’” (170). While some of my questions, like this, were answered throughout my reading, a few continued to pose additional thought.

Lanham uses the idea of the law courts to communicate his message regarding the humanities. He writes: “…the “Q” question is coming after us these days. It presses on us in the university, for the university is like the law courts: it cannot dodge the “Q” question” (156). In the law courts, laws are defended and the truth sheds light; however, this truth is decided upon by which party presents the better case. Persuasion is present in the law room, just a much (if not more) than evidence of the sided claims. This is where the truth is formed. If neither institution — the law courts or the university — can dodge the “Q” question, what law-biding institution, if any, can?

   

I enjoyed the paragraphs pertaining to the table-of-contents curriculum. If rhetoric and thought are disconnected disciplines, it can be understood how this disconnect exists within education and the various disciplines taught within it. Elementary-aged students study the basics of social studies, science, Language Arts, and History; they are exposed to this “supermarket conception” of curriculum that is likely to continue throughout their years into middle and high school. Perhaps it is not until they reach higher education that these students begin to narrow their study focus and push their carts down only one aisle of the supermarket. What I find slightly confusing, however, is the claim that Lanham makes: “No part of the curriculum offers any moral education. That education takes place elsewhere — anywhere but in the curriculum” (173). This same thought is retouched in later pages: “Humanist inquiry, indeed the whole life of the mind, has nothing to do with the moral life” (180). To some extent, I believe this claim, but I still find myself asking how it can always be true.

 

Here is another question: If rhetoric and philosophy are separate as humanistic, moral thought is from the university, how can the university represent the “last best hope of humankind,” as Sidney Hook and Allan Bloom suggest? Does it all come down to how one views the conception of humanism? There is much at work in this chapter, and much of it surpasses me in the first few readings. I plan to revisit Lanham’s work throughout the week, and I will post again if something enlightens me in my additional readings.