In “The Corrido,” Mark Noe’s main point seems to be that, as educators, we tend to compartmentalize students, especially, in Noe’s view, Latinos. Certainly, we expect our students to try on the clothes of academia, as Bartholomae posits. Inevitably, the clothes may not fit initially, but generally speaking, we find that they come to fit us in time. Noe holds that such mimicking leads to assimilation, and implies this is a bad thing, at least for Latinos. While many in mainstream America might feel that assimilation is one of the ideals of a melting pot like America, Noe maintains that what’s needed is to treat students as neither mainstream nor minority, allowing a non-biased assessment of them and their writing. “The best that I can do,” he writes, “is to fashion an invitation that refigures that classroom as a border rather than a boundary” ( 603), that is, an environment where student work is appreciated independent of Western attitudes, such as individualism.
Having lived and taught ESL in Los Angeles more than twenty years, an area where border people, in Noe’s terms, outnumber the Anglos, my own experience tells me Noe’s well-intended thoughts are potentially damaging to those he’s hoping to help. Specifically, I disagree with Noe’s simplistic depiction of Latinos and his assumption that he has the ready remedy.
Key to his philosophy is that people of the border resist assimilation, so he personifies them with the corrido of Gregorio Cortez, an almost mythic figure who stands for those who refuse to be categorized. My experience, though, is that Latinos are not so easily categorized. True, many choose to take what suits them from gringo culture, maintaining pretty traditional values, including speaking Spanish in the home. Indeed, some Latinos in border areas are true nomads, spending three months north of the border, another three south, and so on, so they have little allegiance to the US.
By and large, though, the more non-assimilating Latinos I’ve known are first generation arrivals or visitors. Their children are increasingly assimilating, embracing Anglo traditions, including Ivy League education and the materialistic, corporate life it engenders. In the middle we find a real mix of the two extremes -- for example, young people in community college or at nursing schools who speak “Spanglish”, middle-age housewives proud of their American suburbs who help their kids with homework in spite of a language gap, teenagers who eat tons of junk food, like most American teens, and who are as likely to twerk as to cumbia. Personally, I find that every time I try to typify Latinos in a single adjective or using a single metaphor as Noe does with the rhetoric of the corrido, my inexactitude classifies millions of people inappropriately and offends plenty. Identifying Latinos with Gregorio Cortez is like identifying all Anglos with George Washington’s chopping down the cherry tree. Most Latinos I know wouldn’t care to be described so reductively, especially by a rinche.
Noe says we need to relax the “borders” within the classroom to accommodate Latino writing. He reasons that Latinos “bring an exemplary discourse into the classroom,” calling them “established strategies of discursive resistance” born at the “intersection of Spanish conquest and Ameridian resistance” (603). Here Noe goes beyond his Gregorio Cortez stereotype to portray Latinos as having a natural “resistance” that lends itself nicely to critical thinking in the composition classroom, but how does he know all Latinos possess such talent? According to the above, he seems to believe that such inherent communicative capacity is the result of American Indian culture colliding with Spanish Conquistadors: it’s all due to the reverberations of history. Using this indicator, today’s German youth have a strong propensity to commit atrocities, yet we’ve seen no evidence of this. Rather, this sort of reasoning has the potential, like Noe’s inadvertent stereotyping of Latinos in the person of Gregorio Cortez, to do more harm than good for our Latino students. Even if what he says is true for a portion of the people, it’s just wrong for so many more.
But let’s assume for a moment that Noe’s notions hold water. The real question is whether these students and their families would opt for an adjusted assessment program for composition. My feeling is that some might prefer his plan in the short run, since it’s liable to reduce assessment strictures, maybe boost some GPAs and possibly even promote understanding between the cultures. On the other hand, just as the STROL movement has at times been hotly protested by the very groups it’s sought to assist, so too, there’s the real possibility that Noe’s tack will find angry Latino parents condemning the “dumbing down” of our curriculum for robbing their children of opportunities to be educated and evaluated on the same terms as other students.
It seems to me that there’s a fine line between helping students with an open-minded assessment and encouraging them to retain certain behaviors which could be limiting to them in their college careers and beyond. In the worst case scenario, Latino students under Noe’s curriculum might well find themselves shocked in time when other professors castigate them for work deemed flatly unacceptable -- work that teachers like Noe legitimized and encouraged. Perhaps worst of all, that same student may run into real trouble in the real world when she’s unable to step back objectively and write a business letter that appeals to Anglo recipients on Anglo terms. In this case, would it be fair to lay the responsibility on Noe for his good intentions? Some would say yes. As we saw in the Killingsworth book, when a representative from the dominant ethnic group seeks to speak on behalf of an oppressed minority, the rhetoric can come off pretentious and wrong-headed, even when it’s well intentioned.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Blog on Blog, a Reflection
Blogging for this course is a useful tool that forces me to come to terms with the material I’ve read, to try to integrate it into some sort of practical application. Blogging has the benefit of feeling like a fun interactive game, even if I’m playing solitaire. At the same time, it’s more interesting than simply scribbling a journal of notes on current authors, if only because scribbling makes my hand cramp. Of course, I could tap it out in a Word doc that I keep to myself.
Ostensibly, though, blogging’s benefit is that it builds a community of writers/readers/thinkers. Theoretically, I’m reading all my classmates’ blogs and they’re reading mine. Then again, I don’t read as many as I intend to, thus far, so I wouldn’t be shocked if others paid me the same regard.
Still, this doesn’t mean we’re not building a community, even if we don’t engage with each other in an optimum sense. At the very least, I feel I’m part of a discourse community because Nelson’s references to various blogs confirms that we’re all in this together -- reading, digesting, synthesizing and blogging.
Of course, my primary benefit from blogging is that it helps me imagine how I’ll use blogs in the classroom. We know how popular social networking is, especially for younger people (even if Paul claims blogging’s only for “old people” -- really? -- hoho). It only follows that my students would enjoy reading and sharing their writing with kids in their class, sharing the “buzz” of the hive, rather than working alone in the shadows. Unless, of course, their lack of confidence in their writing had the potential to paralyze them from blogging. But that’s the whole point -- it’s not formal writing. For people who are unsure of themselves as writers, blogging is perfect. It’s one step up from a tweet.
Week 5: Rhetorical Techniques for the Classroom
This week’s articles -- Miller’s “Genre as Social Action,” Hyland’s “Stance and Engagement” and “Research Article Introductions” by Swales and Najjar -- serve to brew up thoughts about the upcoming project as well as to make me reconsider the relationship of the teacher to the students she teaches. Tonight, it’s mostly the latter.
OK, I lied. “Genre as Social Action” didn’t move me in the same way as the other articles. Miller’s piece, from what I make of it, attempts to do for genre what Bitzer’s piece did for rhetoric as a whole, namely, to redefine the taxonomical boundaries. While I see the significance of both articles (I think), I’m afraid I lack passion for them.
Hyland, Swales and Najjar discuss rhetorical devices and moves that academic writers employ to persuade readers, and I can’t help wondering why so few college professors use these same techniques in their classrooms; certainly, I plan to. Of course, this might just be my highly subjective take on the college experience, but I doubt it. I’ve taught adult ed and substituted K-12, so I know the formal approach those teachers typically take toward lesson planning, not just for its own sake, either, but to “hook” students to ensure they “get it.” In college, by contrast, the unspoken assumption seems to be that that sort of appeal equals treating college students like children. Another assumption is that college students connect as well as K-12 students or better to the curriculum, in spite of the paucity of persuasive techniques in lesson planning. Yet dropout rates at American campuses might indicate a gap that needs to be filled, to borrow a bit of research paper terminology. I’m not talking about luring students in with cupcakes and stickers. I’m just suggesting that so many of the techniques scholars use to appeal to their academic peers in their writing might be apropos to the college classroom; it might improve lessons and the learning experience. In fact, as expensive as college is these days, it’s rather ironic that treat strangers better than their own pupils.
Hyland notes that writers consciously work to engage their audience through 1) “acknowledgment of the need to . . . meet readers’ expectations” and 2) rhetorically pulling the readers “into the discourse at critical points” (182). All too often in my college experience, class opens with the teacher saying something like, “So . . . we were in Chapter 5. By today you’ve read up to Chapter 10. (sigh) Let’s begin.” With just a bit more effort, a real sense of continuity could be established, connecting not just the chapters, but the ideas and spirit within them.
In a similar way, the Swales-Najjar article reminds us how the introduction lays out a problem or “gap” and points to a solution. This is the academic equivalent of a Sherlock Holmes story, in a sense, a mystery that the whole audience wants to solve. Of course, not every class can be presented in such an attractive, all-inclusive manner. But, when possible, students might have the immediate benefit of applying what they’re learning, which, especially college lectures I’ve had, can hardly pretend to do. To the credit of SFSU English courses I’ve had and the professors who teach them, a practical, hands-on atmosphere is created by giving students plenty of opportunities to work it out for themselves in small group discussions.
Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition of reading these materials while I’m taking English 726 and TAing for a CMS class that’s pushing me to re-think how we appeal to students rhetorically. TAing is a surprisingly powerful experience, I’m finding. I taught for a number of years and learned a great deal. Now I’m an observer-reporter-participant, and it’s forcing me to examine so many of my habits that I couldn’t really see when I was busy teaching -- some that need to stay, some that need to change.
OK, I lied. “Genre as Social Action” didn’t move me in the same way as the other articles. Miller’s piece, from what I make of it, attempts to do for genre what Bitzer’s piece did for rhetoric as a whole, namely, to redefine the taxonomical boundaries. While I see the significance of both articles (I think), I’m afraid I lack passion for them.
Hyland, Swales and Najjar discuss rhetorical devices and moves that academic writers employ to persuade readers, and I can’t help wondering why so few college professors use these same techniques in their classrooms; certainly, I plan to. Of course, this might just be my highly subjective take on the college experience, but I doubt it. I’ve taught adult ed and substituted K-12, so I know the formal approach those teachers typically take toward lesson planning, not just for its own sake, either, but to “hook” students to ensure they “get it.” In college, by contrast, the unspoken assumption seems to be that that sort of appeal equals treating college students like children. Another assumption is that college students connect as well as K-12 students or better to the curriculum, in spite of the paucity of persuasive techniques in lesson planning. Yet dropout rates at American campuses might indicate a gap that needs to be filled, to borrow a bit of research paper terminology. I’m not talking about luring students in with cupcakes and stickers. I’m just suggesting that so many of the techniques scholars use to appeal to their academic peers in their writing might be apropos to the college classroom; it might improve lessons and the learning experience. In fact, as expensive as college is these days, it’s rather ironic that treat strangers better than their own pupils.
Hyland notes that writers consciously work to engage their audience through 1) “acknowledgment of the need to . . . meet readers’ expectations” and 2) rhetorically pulling the readers “into the discourse at critical points” (182). All too often in my college experience, class opens with the teacher saying something like, “So . . . we were in Chapter 5. By today you’ve read up to Chapter 10. (sigh) Let’s begin.” With just a bit more effort, a real sense of continuity could be established, connecting not just the chapters, but the ideas and spirit within them.
In a similar way, the Swales-Najjar article reminds us how the introduction lays out a problem or “gap” and points to a solution. This is the academic equivalent of a Sherlock Holmes story, in a sense, a mystery that the whole audience wants to solve. Of course, not every class can be presented in such an attractive, all-inclusive manner. But, when possible, students might have the immediate benefit of applying what they’re learning, which, especially college lectures I’ve had, can hardly pretend to do. To the credit of SFSU English courses I’ve had and the professors who teach them, a practical, hands-on atmosphere is created by giving students plenty of opportunities to work it out for themselves in small group discussions.
Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition of reading these materials while I’m taking English 726 and TAing for a CMS class that’s pushing me to re-think how we appeal to students rhetorically. TAing is a surprisingly powerful experience, I’m finding. I taught for a number of years and learned a great deal. Now I’m an observer-reporter-participant, and it’s forcing me to examine so many of my habits that I couldn’t really see when I was busy teaching -- some that need to stay, some that need to change.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Week 4: Phaedrus
In Appeals in Modern Rhetoric, M. Jimmie Killingsworth cites one of the most powerful of all rhetorical techniques -- appeals to the body. Perhaps nothing is so valued or sacred as one’s own body, since, from birth, it is, for most, the ultimate expression of the individual identity. At the same time, few things are so loathed and plundered as our own bodies. The human body, then, presents a fascinating dichotomy for a unit (or more) in a Composition course.
But there’s a world of difference between Whitman’s saying,“. . . each tag and part of me is a miracle . . .” and so much advertising using appeals to the body. Of course, many such appeals simply target the feeling of hunger (physcial or sexual) and the idealization of images -- what we call “beauty.” But a great number of ads aim at fabricating fear and self-loathing in order to sell products that promise to make us less fat, less bald, less wrinkly, less ugly, the implication being that such self-hatred leads to improved appearance, which leads to happiness. The success of this sort of advertising depends largely on the ability to fill us with disgust for our own bodies.
Not that these negative ploys are new. No doubt, hucksters employed them in Whitman’s time, too. On the other side, there’s a booming industry pumping up the positive appeals to the body these days, too, from Oprah telling us that fat is a myth, to the health club industry and all the muscle-building products that they promote. But I find it interesting the divergent uses for appeals to the body. Almost always, they’re extremely positive or quite negative; rarely do we find rhetoric that simply speaks in neutral or mundane tones about the body.
Of course, Whitman was “talking revolution” in the 1800s when he went beyond simply loving sensuality to actually treasuring the bodies of slaves on the auction block, recognizing in them the future of America and the future of the planet, seeing, "In him the start of populous states and rich republics . . .” Here Whitman seems to cherish the flesh and bones of these people as much as he values their minds and souls.
By contrast to such reverence for the human form, many modern appeals to the body are downright destructive. Though cigarette and alcohol commercials are almost non-existent these days, plenty of TV shows and movies represent the body as something that its owners treat with little reverence. If Hollywood is far less self-destructive than in decades like the 80s, it still promotes indiscriminate sex, booze and drugs as the epitome of fun and adventure, as is evident in a relatively benign film like “The Hangover.” Ironically, though we say we love our bodies, the media is full of images that show we loathe them or the media uses appeals to the body to make us loathe them.
According to Killingsworth, Whitman’s hate-free rhetoric about the body arose from the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “breaking down old hierarchies of race and class . . .” Today, taking a survey of American culture, I wonder where we can find that Whitmanesque appeal to the body and mind. On one hand, we have the “devil may care” sensuality of a show like “Sex in the City” or a myriad other Hollywood movies. But again, accompanying that sensuality, so often, we find, at the least, a veiled undercurrent that tells us that, unless we look as sexy as these stars, we don’t deserve sex, love or happiness.
I suspect somewhere between “Leaves of Grass” and “The Hangover” stands modern man, on one hand loving himself, his neighbors and his planet, on the other hand, trashing himself in wild parties in an attempt to cling to an extended adolescence. Killingsworth cites Plato’s fable of Phaedrus as an apt metaphor for this tug-of-war of the human condition, a chariot-driver struggling with two horses: one -- the soul -- trying to pull the chariot toward heaven, the other -- the body and emotions -- determined to pull the chariot to earth. If this “house divided” approach implies a degree of disharmony, even an inner civil war, I believe we can apply the metaphor specifically to our love-hate view of the human body. Then again, perhaps the the two horses of Phaedrus provide a healthy balance, a synthesis of the noble and carnal.
Killingsworth calls views of "the failings of rhetoric and democracy" elitist. Do you agree? If so, why? If not, why not?
Killingsworth points out that advertising -- McLuhan calls it the “science of man embracing woman” -- depends to a large part on appeals to the body; any modern TV viewer knows this without much thought. The author notes that this is nothing new, nor is it lacking nobility; after all, even Walt Whitman used appeals to the body. In “Leaves of Grass” he writes boldly about copulation and says, “I believe in the flesh and the appetites . . .”
But there’s a world of difference between Whitman’s saying,“. . . each tag and part of me is a miracle . . .” and so much advertising using appeals to the body. Of course, many such appeals simply target the feeling of hunger (physcial or sexual) and the idealization of images -- what we call “beauty.” But a great number of ads aim at fabricating fear and self-loathing in order to sell products that promise to make us less fat, less bald, less wrinkly, less ugly, the implication being that such self-hatred leads to improved appearance, which leads to happiness. The success of this sort of advertising depends largely on the ability to fill us with disgust for our own bodies.
Not that these negative ploys are new. No doubt, hucksters employed them in Whitman’s time, too. On the other side, there’s a booming industry pumping up the positive appeals to the body these days, too, from Oprah telling us that fat is a myth, to the health club industry and all the muscle-building products that they promote. But I find it interesting the divergent uses for appeals to the body. Almost always, they’re extremely positive or quite negative; rarely do we find rhetoric that simply speaks in neutral or mundane tones about the body.
Of course, Whitman was “talking revolution” in the 1800s when he went beyond simply loving sensuality to actually treasuring the bodies of slaves on the auction block, recognizing in them the future of America and the future of the planet, seeing, "In him the start of populous states and rich republics . . .” Here Whitman seems to cherish the flesh and bones of these people as much as he values their minds and souls.
By contrast to such reverence for the human form, many modern appeals to the body are downright destructive. Though cigarette and alcohol commercials are almost non-existent these days, plenty of TV shows and movies represent the body as something that its owners treat with little reverence. If Hollywood is far less self-destructive than in decades like the 80s, it still promotes indiscriminate sex, booze and drugs as the epitome of fun and adventure, as is evident in a relatively benign film like “The Hangover.” Ironically, though we say we love our bodies, the media is full of images that show we loathe them or the media uses appeals to the body to make us loathe them.
According to Killingsworth, Whitman’s hate-free rhetoric about the body arose from the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “breaking down old hierarchies of race and class . . .” Today, taking a survey of American culture, I wonder where we can find that Whitmanesque appeal to the body and mind. On one hand, we have the “devil may care” sensuality of a show like “Sex in the City” or a myriad other Hollywood movies. But again, accompanying that sensuality, so often, we find, at the least, a veiled undercurrent that tells us that, unless we look as sexy as these stars, we don’t deserve sex, love or happiness.
I suspect somewhere between “Leaves of Grass” and “The Hangover” stands modern man, on one hand loving himself, his neighbors and his planet, on the other hand, trashing himself in wild parties in an attempt to cling to an extended adolescence. Killingsworth cites Plato’s fable of Phaedrus as an apt metaphor for this tug-of-war of the human condition, a chariot-driver struggling with two horses: one -- the soul -- trying to pull the chariot toward heaven, the other -- the body and emotions -- determined to pull the chariot to earth. If this “house divided” approach implies a degree of disharmony, even an inner civil war, I believe we can apply the metaphor specifically to our love-hate view of the human body. Then again, perhaps the the two horses of Phaedrus provide a healthy balance, a synthesis of the noble and carnal.
Killingsworth calls views of "the failings of rhetoric and democracy" elitist. Do you agree? If so, why? If not, why not?
Monday, September 8, 2014
Week 3: Killingsworth
At first glance, M. Jimmie Killingsworth's Appeals in Modern Rhetoric looks like a typical college textbook, but it's not. After following the author for four chapters of a rather conventional survey of rhetorical forms, the reader would not be blamed for her confusion when, in Chapter 5, the author makes a calculated detour in "Appeals to Place." Before you know it, what was a fine college rhetoric text has morphed into a subtle environmentalist tract, juxtaposing Western culture to Native American culture to highlight the lessons the former could stand to learn from the latter. It might be argued that, as a rhetoric textbook, this is hardly the appropriate place, regardless of the sound philosophies espoused. Yet, Killingsworth, a master rhetor, pulls if off. How does he do it?
In Chapter 1 he notes the two meanings of "appeal" -- to plead and to please -- both of which are fundamental to the art of Killingsworth's success. First he teaches us how to "plead" through appeals; at the same time, he's boosting the reader's confidence, that is, "pleasing" us by essentially giving us what we expect, and then some. This echoes the author's own citation of Cicero, paraphrased as saying we must "please the members of our audience in order to teach or move them. Rhetoric," Killingsworth adds, is all about bringing these three purposes...together." (viii) Because he's a pleasing writer and a credible teacher, by the end of Chapter 5, we've allowed ourselves to be moved philosophically.
Yet, while his means are clever, he's laying out his own techniques of persuasion chapter by chapter, before the left turn. Using a '70s Ultra-Brite commercial to remind us how advertisers use sex to sell something as mundane (or unsavory) as tooth paste, Killingsworth notes that appeals "always involve direction and usually indirection...Don't think about the dentist; think about your sex life." (10) In this way, Killingsworth, too, is about to play a kind of shell game with us.
In Chapter 2 he shows us the advantages and disadvantages of arguing from an outsider position, and the need (and potential downfall as a result), in modern rhetoric, of "marshalling" an argument with numbers. We're reminded in Chapter 3 of the dual roles both author and audience play (author as a writing person and as a constructed persona, audience as reader and "second persona"). Key to a rhetor's success, she must "push the counterarguments into the background, and encourage the audience members to play along for a while even if they do no adopt the mask that the author has crafted for them." (36) This is how I felt after Chapter 5, fully aware of the "double audience/double author" roles, initially resistant, yet increasingly agreeing with the spiritual-environmentalist notions presented.
Through Chapter 4's accounts of Wendell Berry and Albert Hirschman, Killingsworth brings up writers who posit that "Modern life isn't as good as it appears to be." (41) These are not new perspectives on Western decline. It's simply that sequencing Chapter 5 as he does after discussions on the "futility" of our own culture in Chapter 4, explains why, even though Chapter 5 addresses rhetoric less and Native American philosophy more, he succeeds.
Killingsworth's techniques, alluded to above -- direction and indirection; pushing the counterarguments to the back; encourage the audience to play along -- are essential to his style. But these tools alone might make him seem blatantly manipulative. Actually, he's more clever and subtle than this. After introducing Kenneth Burke's A Grammar of Motives, in which Burke "devised an approach to the analysis of everything from single sentences to complex literary texts and life philosophies," this provides author the ideal justification for morphing a rhetoric textbook, and rhetoric in general, into anything that he likes. (52)
Finally, we're treated to a rich brocade of poetry and philosophy in the fifth chapter, "Appeals to Place." We're told that, where Native Americans have a deep identification with the land and a deep understanding in their rhetoric for place, white man's only identification to place is to conquer the world with globalization.
If the parts of this chapter (per the above) allude to Native American rhetoric, for the most part, Chapter 5 largely steers clear of discussions on rhetoric per se, in favor of celebrating environmentalist poetry. In place of conventional rhetoric, we're treated to nearly fifteen pages of citations from Native Americans like Vine Deloria and Leslie Silko, as well as European-American environmental-spiritual writers like Gary Snyder and Janisse Ray. Admittedly, much of it powerful and moving. After the dismal reports on Western culture in Chapter 4, and the lovely poetry in Chapter 5, I felt like joining the Lakota like that guy in "Dances With Wolves."
Q: Is a rhetoric text book the appropriate place to nudge us toward environmentalism?
Q: If it's true we're "under the spell" of the rhetor, just like the audience watching "The Matrix," like Nero, is it really possible for rhetoric to "wake us up," since it's constantly seducing us or putting us under its spell?
In Chapter 1 he notes the two meanings of "appeal" -- to plead and to please -- both of which are fundamental to the art of Killingsworth's success. First he teaches us how to "plead" through appeals; at the same time, he's boosting the reader's confidence, that is, "pleasing" us by essentially giving us what we expect, and then some. This echoes the author's own citation of Cicero, paraphrased as saying we must "please the members of our audience in order to teach or move them. Rhetoric," Killingsworth adds, is all about bringing these three purposes...together." (viii) Because he's a pleasing writer and a credible teacher, by the end of Chapter 5, we've allowed ourselves to be moved philosophically.
Yet, while his means are clever, he's laying out his own techniques of persuasion chapter by chapter, before the left turn. Using a '70s Ultra-Brite commercial to remind us how advertisers use sex to sell something as mundane (or unsavory) as tooth paste, Killingsworth notes that appeals "always involve direction and usually indirection...Don't think about the dentist; think about your sex life." (10) In this way, Killingsworth, too, is about to play a kind of shell game with us.
In Chapter 2 he shows us the advantages and disadvantages of arguing from an outsider position, and the need (and potential downfall as a result), in modern rhetoric, of "marshalling" an argument with numbers. We're reminded in Chapter 3 of the dual roles both author and audience play (author as a writing person and as a constructed persona, audience as reader and "second persona"). Key to a rhetor's success, she must "push the counterarguments into the background, and encourage the audience members to play along for a while even if they do no adopt the mask that the author has crafted for them." (36) This is how I felt after Chapter 5, fully aware of the "double audience/double author" roles, initially resistant, yet increasingly agreeing with the spiritual-environmentalist notions presented.
Through Chapter 4's accounts of Wendell Berry and Albert Hirschman, Killingsworth brings up writers who posit that "Modern life isn't as good as it appears to be." (41) These are not new perspectives on Western decline. It's simply that sequencing Chapter 5 as he does after discussions on the "futility" of our own culture in Chapter 4, explains why, even though Chapter 5 addresses rhetoric less and Native American philosophy more, he succeeds.
Killingsworth's techniques, alluded to above -- direction and indirection; pushing the counterarguments to the back; encourage the audience to play along -- are essential to his style. But these tools alone might make him seem blatantly manipulative. Actually, he's more clever and subtle than this. After introducing Kenneth Burke's A Grammar of Motives, in which Burke "devised an approach to the analysis of everything from single sentences to complex literary texts and life philosophies," this provides author the ideal justification for morphing a rhetoric textbook, and rhetoric in general, into anything that he likes. (52)
Finally, we're treated to a rich brocade of poetry and philosophy in the fifth chapter, "Appeals to Place." We're told that, where Native Americans have a deep identification with the land and a deep understanding in their rhetoric for place, white man's only identification to place is to conquer the world with globalization.
If the parts of this chapter (per the above) allude to Native American rhetoric, for the most part, Chapter 5 largely steers clear of discussions on rhetoric per se, in favor of celebrating environmentalist poetry. In place of conventional rhetoric, we're treated to nearly fifteen pages of citations from Native Americans like Vine Deloria and Leslie Silko, as well as European-American environmental-spiritual writers like Gary Snyder and Janisse Ray. Admittedly, much of it powerful and moving. After the dismal reports on Western culture in Chapter 4, and the lovely poetry in Chapter 5, I felt like joining the Lakota like that guy in "Dances With Wolves."
Q: Is a rhetoric text book the appropriate place to nudge us toward environmentalism?
Q: If it's true we're "under the spell" of the rhetor, just like the audience watching "The Matrix," like Nero, is it really possible for rhetoric to "wake us up," since it's constantly seducing us or putting us under its spell?
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Week 2: Rhetoric Wrap-Up
As a future community college composition teacher, I’ve found myself leaning increasingly toward planning curricula rooted in topics that would potentially matter (I hope) to my students. For me, this means helping them to develop mental habits of critical thinking. These articles on rhetoric got me thinking more about the usefulness of tackling rhetoric from the student point of view. Lindemann’s “What Do Teachers Need to Know About Rhetoric?” is a handy historical survey of rhetoric from the Greeks to today. Bazerman’s “Analyzing the Author’s Purpose and Technique,” a chapter from a textbook cautioning students to about media manipulation, could be ideal for a critical thinking course. The Bitzer piece, “The Rhetorical Situation,” is a unique, if a bit dry, contribution that posits that rhetoric is always a response to a situation that compels someone to speak out -- a sound analysis, though not so interesting to me.
In my opinion, the three most stimulating topics covered in these articles are 1) the philosophical battle between content and style, 2) thoughts on critical thinking and 3) “old” rhetoric vs. “new” rhetoric. Where Aristotle saw rhetoric as neither inherently good or bad (its moral impact depends on a speaker’s application), Lindemann depicts Plato as “castigating” rhetoric as an “ignoble deceit, an attempt to flatter” the listener (43). I was trying to apply this view to our fine civil servants like Mr. Obama, who, in my opinion, has broken more campaign promises than any other president in my lifetime, yet, even when I can no longer believe his words, even when he knows (see the polls) most people think he’s a massive sell-out, nonetheless, he exudes confidence and, sometimes, that sweet charm that hooked us in the first place. Is that “flattery,” as Plato put it, or just a talent to charm the pants off of you? In terms of rhetorical skills, later scholars praised such “delivery,” so Obama would get high points in this regard.
Plato wasn’t alone, though. Burke, Addison and Weaver were among scholars who kept in mind, not just the orator and the art of his persuasion, but the potential harm much rhetoric has on certain readers/listeners who cannot tell an angel from a demon in angel’s britches. We think of Hitler’s brilliant magnetism that led Germany to ruin, but there were undoubtedly Greek and Roman leaders who were clever and corrupt as well. The Bazerman piece provides a pragmatic guide for students unfamiliar with media analysis, noting key rhetorical techniques like flag waving, scapegoating and cardstacking. There are empowering suggestions for students to judge for themselves the ethos of a writer by investigating the reputation of the publication and the author. Readers are encouraged to consider how transparent an orator is by scrutinizing the evidence, the level of precision and the quality and frequency of the references. As I’ve become more active in studying up on the Washington power structure, and the local and global effects of that power, I, too, find myself looking up information on speakers -- their backgrounds, their connections, the consistency of their actions and their words. For me, these habits have helped to open my eyes; I hope my students benefit the same way.
Kenneth Burke is said to have made the most contributions to the “new” rhetoric, in part because he synthesized thought from diverse disciplines like psychology and anthropology, as opposed to the rhetoricians of the past who focused on the rhetoric alone. Burke said the “key term” of “new” rhetoric is “identification,” as when a speaker seeks to identify himself with his listener (53). I immediately think of Bush the Junior as someone who employs this technique superbly. Identification is the answer to the $10,000 question: “How could Joe Voter elect Bush president, not once, but two times?” How many times have we heard, “He might not measure up as the leader of the free world, but, heck, he’s the kinda guy you’d want to invite over for a barbecue?” In the end, voters seem to choose style over content nearly every time. This makes things a lot easier for folks. Why go to the internet to research something like 9/11? That’s hard work. On the other hand, if I’ve already made up my mind that I trust my leaders, and they never lie, heck, I’ll follow ‘em anywhere they lead...Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, name it. Identification equals trust.
I’m still left with a couple questions. Lindemann holds that rhetoric, by definition, implies the listener has choices (40). This is easy to see when I’m selling Bibles door to door; you can simply buy or shut the door. But in a multinational community where the media is either state owned (BBC) or increasingly “playing it safe” (ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, etc) because conservative corporations own and control them, where’s the choice? By Lindemann’s definition, does that mean that, with waning choice, rhetoric isn’t really rhetoric? Does it cease to persuade? Germans under Hitler had precious few choices. Was Hitler not a rhetorician?
A final question. Bazerman walks a fine line, encouraging students toward critical thinking, yet propping up a rosy view of the world: “Fortunately, only a small fraction of writing is deliberately manipulative” (109). Bazerman goes on to reason that most novels and magazines shoot straight from the hip, so there’s little need to be careful. What about a world where hardly anyone reads novels or magazines or newspapers anymore and, anyway, like the electronic media, print media are owned by big corporations, as well? How careful do our students need to be when the majority of their information comes in sound bites from TV or their smartphone?
In my opinion, the three most stimulating topics covered in these articles are 1) the philosophical battle between content and style, 2) thoughts on critical thinking and 3) “old” rhetoric vs. “new” rhetoric. Where Aristotle saw rhetoric as neither inherently good or bad (its moral impact depends on a speaker’s application), Lindemann depicts Plato as “castigating” rhetoric as an “ignoble deceit, an attempt to flatter” the listener (43). I was trying to apply this view to our fine civil servants like Mr. Obama, who, in my opinion, has broken more campaign promises than any other president in my lifetime, yet, even when I can no longer believe his words, even when he knows (see the polls) most people think he’s a massive sell-out, nonetheless, he exudes confidence and, sometimes, that sweet charm that hooked us in the first place. Is that “flattery,” as Plato put it, or just a talent to charm the pants off of you? In terms of rhetorical skills, later scholars praised such “delivery,” so Obama would get high points in this regard.
Plato wasn’t alone, though. Burke, Addison and Weaver were among scholars who kept in mind, not just the orator and the art of his persuasion, but the potential harm much rhetoric has on certain readers/listeners who cannot tell an angel from a demon in angel’s britches. We think of Hitler’s brilliant magnetism that led Germany to ruin, but there were undoubtedly Greek and Roman leaders who were clever and corrupt as well. The Bazerman piece provides a pragmatic guide for students unfamiliar with media analysis, noting key rhetorical techniques like flag waving, scapegoating and cardstacking. There are empowering suggestions for students to judge for themselves the ethos of a writer by investigating the reputation of the publication and the author. Readers are encouraged to consider how transparent an orator is by scrutinizing the evidence, the level of precision and the quality and frequency of the references. As I’ve become more active in studying up on the Washington power structure, and the local and global effects of that power, I, too, find myself looking up information on speakers -- their backgrounds, their connections, the consistency of their actions and their words. For me, these habits have helped to open my eyes; I hope my students benefit the same way.
Kenneth Burke is said to have made the most contributions to the “new” rhetoric, in part because he synthesized thought from diverse disciplines like psychology and anthropology, as opposed to the rhetoricians of the past who focused on the rhetoric alone. Burke said the “key term” of “new” rhetoric is “identification,” as when a speaker seeks to identify himself with his listener (53). I immediately think of Bush the Junior as someone who employs this technique superbly. Identification is the answer to the $10,000 question: “How could Joe Voter elect Bush president, not once, but two times?” How many times have we heard, “He might not measure up as the leader of the free world, but, heck, he’s the kinda guy you’d want to invite over for a barbecue?” In the end, voters seem to choose style over content nearly every time. This makes things a lot easier for folks. Why go to the internet to research something like 9/11? That’s hard work. On the other hand, if I’ve already made up my mind that I trust my leaders, and they never lie, heck, I’ll follow ‘em anywhere they lead...Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, name it. Identification equals trust.
I’m still left with a couple questions. Lindemann holds that rhetoric, by definition, implies the listener has choices (40). This is easy to see when I’m selling Bibles door to door; you can simply buy or shut the door. But in a multinational community where the media is either state owned (BBC) or increasingly “playing it safe” (ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, etc) because conservative corporations own and control them, where’s the choice? By Lindemann’s definition, does that mean that, with waning choice, rhetoric isn’t really rhetoric? Does it cease to persuade? Germans under Hitler had precious few choices. Was Hitler not a rhetorician?
A final question. Bazerman walks a fine line, encouraging students toward critical thinking, yet propping up a rosy view of the world: “Fortunately, only a small fraction of writing is deliberately manipulative” (109). Bazerman goes on to reason that most novels and magazines shoot straight from the hip, so there’s little need to be careful. What about a world where hardly anyone reads novels or magazines or newspapers anymore and, anyway, like the electronic media, print media are owned by big corporations, as well? How careful do our students need to be when the majority of their information comes in sound bites from TV or their smartphone?
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