Valuing Voice in Writing Classrooms

How are speech and voice valued within the [writing] classroom? How do we design [writing] pedagogies and classroom environments that value students with both typical and atypical speech?

These are a couple of the questions we discussed in my Universal Design class this week after watching the video below: “Roger Ebert: Remaking My Voice.”

I really appreciated this video. It’s interesting to hear Ebert “talk” with Alex (and to hear Roger 2.0) and to hear Ebert’s story told through the voices of his wife and friends. Then, there’s the story itself: his jaw surgery, the multiple ruptures of his carotid artery, the switch from a famed movie critic to someone with whom “people don’t want to make eye contact.” Ebert says, “It is human nature to look away from illness. We don’t enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.” These are simple statements, yet they indicate how we construct physical disability as Other, how we make assumptions about people based on their physical appearances and their speech.

Ebert asks, “What value do we place on the sound of our own voice? How does that affect who you are as a person?” These questions have interesting applications for the classroom. We ask our students to find their voices through their writing, but what does this mean? Do we privilege particular students’ voices over others? Culturally, we privilege the norm: Standard American English (just like the way we privilege “normal” bodies).

Ebert, Disability Studies folks, and many Rhet/Compers would likely ask us to reconsider the ideal written standard.

Voice is personal, embodied. We want to take the time to find a voice that “fits” our particular writing styles. Because voice is so subjective, though, it can be difficult to teach. I often find that my students are overwhelmed when we talk about voice because they assume that I want them to write in a particular voice, but they don’t know what that voice sounds like or how it relates to their own embodied voices.

I think Ebert’s video offers a few starting points that could be useful for getting students to feel comfortable sharing their voices, to respect other people’s voices, and to think critically about how voices are manifested differently.

First, none of this is possible without a welcoming, respectful classroom environment. Ebert’s presentation is powerful in part because of the respect he has from his wife and friends. Learning to respect others’ voices—whether typical or atypical, standard or colloquial—is important for creating a “community of learners” where students feel comfortable experimenting with and developing their voices.

Second, Ebert’s presentation is also successful because of its strong content. He tells a story that is deeply personal, meaningful, both serious and funny. Yet it’s not standard. Ebert’s voice—his physical delivery—isn’t standard, yet it would be difficult to argue that his presentation isn’t good. Ebert has a strong voice, regardless of whether or not it matches our standardized ideals. I think it could be empowering for students to know that they can have atypical voices—whether spoken or written—and still be powerful, effective rhetors.

Third, there are different modes (and opportunities) of delivery. Ebert uses multiple voices and bodies to deliver his argument, and he could have used any number of modes—talking through Alex for the entire presentation, supplementing the talk with visuals, creating a video with captions. If we think of a multimodal writing pedagogy as one that encourages students to learn and compose using different modes and media, voice adds an interesting layer to the process of multimodal writing and how students represent their voices through different modes.

Opening up discussions of voice could be really valuable for shaping a writing environment that is more respectful and inclusive to the diverse range of voices (and bodies) that deviate from the standard.

 

#4c12 Part II: CCCC, SU Edition

[This is part 2 of my CCCC experience. Sorry for the lag—I have a post-conference head cold that is throwing me off schedule.]

I’ve been told that CCCC panels can be pretty hit or miss, but I think I lucked out with a pretty solid set of panels. Here’s the breakdown of sessions I attended:

• A.01—Performing the Archive: Practice, Stories, and Materiality
• B.11—Black and Brown Literacies: Gateways to Transformative Theories, Practices, and Meaningful Engagement(s)
• C.01—Gateways and Barriers: Disability Policy in the Writing Classroom, Program Administration, and Composition’s Disciplinary History
• D.31—Checking Up on Wired Writing Programs: Emerging Perspectives on Program-Wide Technology Integration
• E.19—Access Denied? Universal Design, Privacy, and Socio-economic Access
• F.22—Affect, Embodiment, and the Tensions of “Unruly” Rhetorical Writing Pedagogy
• G.02—Writing History in the Digital Age: New Gateways for Feminist Historiography
• I.04—Mixing and Revising: Writers and Texts
• J—Access: a Happening

I don’t want to go through all of the panels (you can check out my tweets of the separate sessions @ahhitt), but I do want to give a shout-out to my Syracuse peers. It was really great to listen to their research, and I had the opportunity to check out five of their presentations: B.11 and F.22. In B.11, Latoya (Scholar for the Dream!) examined the literacy practices of black girls in hip-hop culture and online spaces, specifically Nicki Minaj’s literacy practices through Twitter. Latoya argued that we need to continually reexamine what we lose by exclusively focusing on academic discourse, ensuring that we continue to create informal virtual writing spaces without surveillance (where people can explore and practice writing in ways that shape their identities). The session’s respondent, Valerie Kinloch, reminded us that this kind of research must move beyond words and toward action, which necessitates that we think about how to transfer critical pedagogical practices to communities.

Then, in F.22, more SU peers worked through how to critically and supportively engage with feminism, queerness, and race in the writing classroom. Kate extended Nancy Welch’s concept of rhetorical sidetaking to discuss how a white female graduate student can be a responsible ally with students and with feminist women of color. Anna discussed how to reclaim public voices in the classroom, noting that this reclamation must account for our students’ particular bodies (as ethos is embodied), acknowledging that particular student bodies receive more discrimination and, thus, are more at risk of reclaiming those public voices. Finally, Tim, much like Kate, explored how a white male can try to address radical rhetorical alliances, citing stronger rhetorical listening as one possibility.

Of course, there were other SU folks who represented at Cs whose sessions I couldn’t attend. I heard that Ben knocked it out of the park with his presentation on his community work in Syracuse and his new edited collection, I Witness: Perspectives on Policing in the Near Westside. And I heard a lot of good things about our faculty presentations.

Cs was a great opportunity to hear people’s research and to meet new folks with similar research interests—the Disability Studies SIG was particularly awesome for that. However, Cs was also a great opportunity to support my peers and the work that they do. I was so amazed with their research and how well they presented themselves, and the conference experience reminded me how grateful I am to be part of this community.

 

Now You See It: A Review

I just finished writing a review for Cathy Davidson’s new book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way we Live Work, and Learn. I want to share some of the key points because it’s honestly one of the most interesting and relevant books I’ve read in a while.

Davidson's Now You See It via The Daily Beast

In Now You See It, Davidson offers a counter-narrative to the argument that we are no longer able to pay attention because technology is negatively affecting how we think and act. Davidson frames her narrative around attention, claiming that the collaborative nature of new technologies can help us fill in the gaps of what we wouldn’t normally see or think.

I valued “Part Two: The Kids Are All Right” the most for its arguments about dismantling what we know and value about education. Exploring pedagogy, teaching, and assessment practices, Davidson seeks to answer the question, “What if instead of telling [students] what they should know, we asked them?” (62).

• Chapter Three, “Project Classroom Makeover,” is an argument for a decentralized, student-driven pedagogy, a new form of attention and learning, and a focus on crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the collaborative effort to solve a problem, and it values differences, unpredictable exploration, and direct collaboration with people who are affected by the issue being explored (65).

• Chapter Four, “How We Measure,” explores assessment and alternatives to standardized testing. Davidson argues that we need to imagine assessment in ways that will measure “practical, real-world skills” such as time management, communicating with others, making sound judgments, and determining credibility (127-8).

• Chapter Five, “The Epic Win,” explores the benefits of mirroring education on real-life applications and gaming principles. Davidson stresses game play as a mode of learning, citing improvements in attention, strategy, thinking interactively, visual judgment, motor skills, short-term memory, cooperation, and team-building skills.

• Throughout this section, and the rest of the book, we see an argument for unlearning conceptions about dis/ability and which students can (and cannot) succeed within the classroom. Davidson writes, “The assumption here is that kids are being ruined by technology. They are disabled, disordered—and disorderly” (152). She reacts strongly against this assumption, arguing that there is no measurable evidence that “digital-era kids” are worse than previous generations and that all students can succeed in the twenty-first-century classroom if the curriculum is adapted to meet students’ needs.

• Ultimately, Davidson argues for a reimagining of the education system that will better prepare students for a twenty-first-century culture and workforce.

Now You See It is a must-read for composition instructors. The humanities in general, and writing programs in particular, have been slow to adopt new technological practices and participate in projects that extend beyond individually-written academic texts. Davidson argues that we must promote collaborative student projects that encourage multiple perspectives, different mediums of expression, and inquiries that extend beyond the classroom.

In order to do this, we must reconceptualize our goals for composition: Is the goal of composition to teach students how to write? Or, do we want to teach students how to think critically, to incorporate different perspectives into their arguments, to learn and practice new literacies, and to contribute their strengths to particular rhetorical exigencies?

 

Davidson, Cathy N. Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. New York, NY: Viking, 2011.

 

Bringing World Englishes into the Comp Classroom

In “The Place of World Englishes in Composition,” Canagarajah asks, “What is the place of [World Englishes] in college writing?” (594), listing the many ways that World Englishes are seen as non-standard, informal, and otherwise unacceptable forms of English. He argues that should encourage students to use multiple Englishes both in process writing and in their final written products. Can, and should, we teach World Englishes in the composition classroom? What do these final products look like?

"World Standard Englishes" from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language via talkingpeople.net

Multimodality could be an interesting framework for including World Englishes in composition settings. Because multimodal frameworks encourage multiplicity in genres, modes, and media, they could also accommodate multiplicity in languages and dialects. Situating composition in a framework that supports multiliteracies and multimodal composing could move away from simply tolerating students’ different linguistic backgrounds and move toward a classroom that supports and engages with those differences.

Say, for example, that a student does a multimodal research project about a local community center. The student could do archival research about how long the center has existed and what services they have offered over the years. She could photograph different events that the center sponsors. She could interview people who frequent the center and include those voices in the project. If the center hosts technology workshops, open mic nights, or conversational language groups, any of those perspectives could be easily represented within a multimodal project. Such a project blends genres, written and oral narratives, and literacies into a cohesive rhetorical artifact that encourages multiple voices. Is this a way that multiple Englishes can be integrated into the classroom?

 

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. “The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued.” College Composition and Communication 57.4 (June 2006): 586-619.

 

The Accessible University: Applying UD and UDL to Writing Environments

For my dis/ability class, we were asked to create personal philosophy statements that incorporate concepts from the class readings with our ideas about inclusive education. Because I’m not a K-12 instructor like most of the people in the class, I decided to frame my response in terms of accessibility and thought I would share the highlights of that response here:

• When we talk about education, we must account for both classroom spaces and flexible pedagogical practices, denormalizing our ideas not only about students but also about teaching, learning, and composing practices.

• First-year composition curricula and writing centers would benefit from adopting principles of Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning to create the most accessible learning environments possible.

• Universal Design (UD) is a spatial theory that emphasizes the importance for all spaces to be as accessible for the widest range of people possible, regardless of bodily differences.

• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a way to apply equitable and flexible curricular principles to writing pedagogies. UDL’s principles—multiple means of representation, of actions and expression, of engagement—necessitate writing practices that provide students with more opportunities for learning.
  

  "Universal Design": http://ecobrooklyn.com/green-contracting-universal-design/

• Writing centers are historically spaces with flexible practices—e.g. a tutor and student can interact with texts by reading them aloud and discussing them, by drafting outlines or revision strategies by hand or on the computer, or by looking up resources in books and online. These multimodal practices are great for giving students multiple means to learn and compose, but they privilege highly individualized instruction.

• Applying UDL to writing center pedagogies asks tutors “not to think of how they might adapt their tutoring for students with disabilities” because “all students come to sessions with a variety of differences” (Kiedaisch & Dinitz 50).

• Because first-year composition courses and writing centers must potentially serve all students in the university, these spaces must as accessible to the widest range of students as possible.

• For instruction, this means providing information in multiple modes—through spoken word, handout, group work, and electronic presentations. We must also create flexible assignments that allow students to compose projects that are most useful for them; for example, I can create assignment goals—e.g. exploring a central thesis statement and integrating research—while being flexible about how students apply these concepts. A final project, for example, could be a research paper, website, extended blog or social media project, visual collage, or photographic essay. The key is to create a flexible curricular base that allows students to choose the medium that works best for them.

 

Digital Composition: DH and Computers & Writing

For me, digital composition involves the use of various technologies to approach composition within the classroom. This includes the way instructors teach, how students research, and how we all interact with texts—through creation, manipulation, production, dissemination, and even assessment. I think of digital composition as an umbrella term for many concepts, e.g. multimedia, multimodal composition, remix culture, multiliteracies, and the many forms and formats that digital writing encompasses.

Of course, there’s a lot of scholarship on multimodality, remix, and multiliteracy, but I’m not well read on digital writing as a broader category. I chose readings for this week’s Digital Humanities class, and I found some good information about digital writing—what it is, how it’s implemented, and why it’s important for the humanities.

First is “Why Teach Digital Writing?”, a webtext created by the WIDE Research Center Collective. The WIDE collective defines digital writing as “the art and practice of preparing documents primarily by computer and often for online delivery.” This is a nice, brief definition, but digital writing is slightly more complex both in terms of praxis and theory: “Digital writing often requires attention to the theories and practices of designing, planning, constructing, and maintaining dynamic and interactive texts—texts that may wind up fragmented and published within and across databases.”

This more thorough understanding of digital writing focuses on two interrelated aspects of digital writing: dynamism and interactivity. The push for digital writing is necessary for a new writing environment, which requires students to have the rhetorical skills to “produce documents appropriate to the global and dispersed reach of the web.” In a dynamic and dispersed digital medium, students and instructors must recognize that writing is more than written text on a page. Digital writing extends to different modes and media that “allow us to weave and orchestrate multiple sign technologies (e.g. images, voice and other sounds, music, video, print, graphics), layered together across space and time to produce artifacts that can be interactive, hyperlinked, and quite powerful.” In order to be part of a digital culture, students must learn the rhetorical skills to create powerful and effective texts.

The second article is “What is Humanistic about Computers and Writing? Historical Patterns and Contemporary Possibilities” by Michael Knievel. Knievel seeks to answer “what, precisely, is humanistic about computers and writing” (92). Tracing the three major phases of humanistic arguments in computers and writing’s history—fear and loathing (1975–1992), moving the social turn online (1990–2000), and digital literacy and action (2000–present)—Knievel makes a similar argument about the rhetorical importance of digital writing.

By helping to shift humanistic conversation and responsibility toward an active, technologized literacy, computers and writing participates in re-imagining the humanities and its “outcome” at this cultural moment: now, a fully equipped rhetor must be equally capable of analysis and production for multimediated participation in the academy, the workplace, and both personal and public spheres. 103

Here, Knievel stresses the importance of an active and productive humanities that acknowledges its students (and its scholars) as effective “citizen-rhetors” (104).

Lastly, I looked at Alex Reid’s blog post, “Composition, Humanities, and the ‘Digital Age.’” This post explores the idea that the “future of all humanities is digital.” This idea echoes the idea from the WIDE article that most of the writing that we do takes place in digital environments. Reid makes two important arguments here: 1) Though scholars don’t need to focus on technology as a research inquiry, it is necessary to develop pedagogies that account for technology; and 2) writing pedagogies have remained fairly static, even though writing spaces and technologies have changed significantly.

These articles articulate a few themes that are crucial for a digital writing pedagogy:

1. Pedagogies must be relevant. As our culture becomes more technologically advanced, so should our writing and rhetorical skills.
2. Writing can benefit from interactivity, which necessitates an understanding of the importance us using different modes and media to compose texts.
3. Digital composition is more than just writing: it involves consideration of theory, appropriate mediums for composition and production, an understanding of how technology can be used to make texts even more effective, and a new framework for assessment.

 

Skype Interview with Jonathan Alexander

This is a quick follow-up to the post about Alexander’s book and some highlights from our class Skype session with him.

“Our own subject position within the classroom has to be taken into consideration. … What does my own positioning allow me to see and allow me to reflect on that other people might find useful?”

We asked Alexander what considerations must be taken into account when different bodies try to implement a pedagogy of sex/ual literacy. For example, if he identifies as a queer male, how does that change the perceptions that his students have about this pedagogy? If a heterosexual female adopts this pedagogy, do perceptions change? Alexander suggested that marking our bodies, and accounting for how those bodies might be perceived, can lead to useful class discussions about sex/uality and identity.

“Being gay is not this monolithic thing where we all understand what that means.   Sexuality is often not that simplistic.”

In Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy, Alexander acknowledges that there is an assumption that he is interested in sexuality because he is a gay man. As he posits, though, issues of sex/uality are not static, easily understood issues. Everyone has different understandings of sex, sexuality, and sexual identification that they must come to critically.

“Issues of queerness are often wrapped up in normative bodies, what normative bodies do,and how they are represented as sexual bodies.”

This quotation is wrapped up in a few larger issues. First, Syracuse’s Writing 105 and 205 classes are based on particular inquiries (e.g. poverty, reimagining the normal, food politics). When we asked him what a sex/uality inquiry would look like, Alexander responded that he would not add it to the list; rather, he would recommend taking a preexisting inquiry and examining how sex/uality can augment it. Second, Alexander took disability as a site of inquiry and briefly applied sex/uality to that, which is where this quotation comes from. A major issue in disability studies is normative bodies; likewise, a major issue in queer and transgender theories is the normative body and how particular bodies are normalized. Lastly, Alexander emphasized the importance of blending various inquiries and issues, arguing that this blending creates richer ways to think about complex situations. He stated explicitly, “I’m wanting more intersectionality from our field.”

I find this last point particularly interesting because it seems like some people argue that while it is important to make connections, we can only focus on so much at once (re: Banks), whereas Alexander argued that intersectionality is key for getting a full understanding of a situation. So, which is better for the field? Does it depend on particular contexts or on which “issues” we’re blending (e.g. intersections between race and gender)? Or is this all just a matter of perspective?

 

Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory and Practice for Composition Studies

This week, we read Literacy, Sexuality, and Pedagogy: Theory and Practice for Composition Studies. I’ll be honest: I have a soft spot for Jonathan Alexander’s work, and I was really excited to read this book. It’s not a topic that I’m very familiar with—I’ve only heard sexuality discussed in terms of how the classroom is a space of sexual repression, so I was really into Alexander’s argument that we should focus on promoting sexual literacy.

Sexual literacy: “the knowledge complex that recognizes the significance of sexuality to self- and communal definition and that critically engages the stories we tell about sex and sexuality to probe them for controlling values and for ways to resist, when necessary, constraining norms” (5).

For me, the overarching question for this text is this: Why should we focus on sex and sexuality in the composition classroom? What does it add to writing?

Right off the bat, Alexander argues that “sex and sexuality are key components of how we conceive of ourselves personally, organize ourselves collectively, and figure ourselves politically” (1). He makes a case for the importance of discussions of sex/uality, but how does that affect literacy? Alexander writes, “How we talk about, define, and discuss the private versus the personal; how images and representations of sex and sexuality are constructed, written, and disseminated; how the state, the collective ‘we,’ defines sex and sexuality and controls information about it—all of these are literacy events that deserve attention and analysis” (4). These cultural and social issues are also matters of discourse—both written and spoken—that collectives take up and start defining and controlling. Alexander argues that our students need to take up these discussions in order to be better informed citizens-participants. 

Alexander makes it very clear that sexual literacy is something more than just being informed about sex/uality. He writes that “it should also be an intimate understanding of the ways in which sexuality is constructed in language and the ways in which our language and meaning-making systems are always already sexualized” (25). In order to facilitate that understanding, we must ask the following:

1. “How do students write sexuality?” (25)
2. “How do sexuality and literacy interconnect in complex ways?” (26)
3. “How can we create pedagogical environments to invite students—safely, productively, and insightfully—to compose about sex and sexuality?” (26)

In order to answer some of these questions, Alexander advocates for a critical pedagogy “that takes sexuality as a key and focal interest for the development of literate citizens. We need a strong, critical, disciplinary sense of sexual literacy as a central literacy need of our students” (64). Part of this critical pedagogy involves the inclusion of queer theory, which is “designed to provoke consideration of the construction of all sexualities in our culture as sites of identity, knowledge, and power” (14). Recognizing this construction of sexuality is key to Alexander’s argument. He wants students to recognize the social constructions of sex/uality and identity in order to gain a great understanding of how these constructions are normalized as good/bad ways of being. Because these constructions affect us all—whether we are part of these normative practices or reside in the margins—Alexander argues that students can benefit from disrupting and deconstructing these assumptions.

It is this idea of disrupting heternormative practices that also makes transgender theories important for critically understanding 1. gender as a social construct and 2. how we can expand and extend the narratives we have about gender (129). Alexander makes a connection between trans activists and feminists: “they seek an expansive notion of gender, a questioning of restrictive norms and categories, and an understanding of how gender is used a politically and personally normalizing category” (131).

To someone wary of bringing these different theories—critical, feminist, queer, and transgender—into the composition classroom, Alexander takes a stance against indoctrination. He writes, “While I believe that our classrooms should be free of indoctrination, I also firmly believe that a significant difference exists between indoctrination and critical examination” (184). Historically, the minute these more liberal theories are introduced into the classroom, we hear cries of indoctrination. The fact that Alexander keeps sex/uality a broad inquiry in the classroom (e.g. not limiting students to just sexual orientation or identification) maintains an open dialogue where students don’t have to necessarily think one way or the other.

“I believe all of us can—and should—consider the development of sexual literacy as a significant component of becoming literate in our society, and the only way to work with students on such sensitive material is to do so calmly, respectfully, openly, and honestly. Our students deserve nothing less” (209).

Alexander’s book is a strong argument for talking with students about sex/uality within the composition classroom. The purpose is not to indoctrinate or force students to be more tolerant; rather, it is to hook them with a topic that is always-already relevant to them (as all people are sexual beings) and to examine critically the ways that cultural discussions of sex/uality are constructed, normalized, and disseminated. What sex/ual literacy adds to the writing classroom, then, is attention to critical thinking, cultural and rhetorical awareness, and in-depth research on very relevant topics.

Alexander, Jonathan. Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory and Practice for Composition Studies. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2008. Print.

 

Interview with David Bartholomae

Last week was an exciting time for our CCR 632: Composition Pedagogy class. After reading some of Bartholomae’s texts for class (“Inventing the University” and Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts), he Skyped into our seminar to talk with us.

These are some of the highlights of that conversation:

• “I use books of poems [to incorporate models into the composition classroom]. It’s surprising; students don’t imagine that a comp course would begin with poems. I do it because it’s a way of paying attention to the sentence and rhythm and the shape of a line. I give them the book of poems because I tell them that it’s a composition textbook; it makes an argument about writing that is important to them.”

• “I would love to see more people take up student writing, because that is the subject of composition. Why don’t people do it more often? It’s hard; we don’t know how to do that. […] You tend to not do things that you’re not good at or are not prepared to do when forming your professional life. There are risks involved; you have to be willing to identify with the ordinary and be identified with the ordinary. You’re automatically a more important person if you’re an expert on Aristotle and Quintilian than an expert on student writing, of 18-year-olds. When student writing is written about, 2/3 of the time, it is the butt of a joke or an indicator of absence—’They can’t do this; they can’t do that. They can’t write this; they can’t write that.’”

• “I think the culture has changed dramatically in the sense that culture is also changing. I think to teach composition year after year, you have to look forward to reading students’ papers. One thing I can look forward to is getting the news […] that I wouldn’t get otherwise. [Students are] more prepared to take a writing course, but they aren’t necessarily better writers. They’re smart, interesting, lively—in my experience, always have been. They no longer write on a yellow notepad and take it to a typewriter, but I don’t either anymore.”

What I enjoyed most about this conversation was Bartholomae’s constant redirection back to the student writers. It is refreshing to hear someone speak so warmly about students and the work that they are capable of producing, particularly someone who has taught composition for many years.

Though he claimed to teach a very traditional, “old-fashioned course,” Bartholomae spoke to the advantages of bringing non-traditional pedagogies into the comp classroom. For example, using books of poetry to teach academic writing is certainly not a common trend. Similarly, Bartholomae praised bilingualism, saying that in a comp classroom, we should embrace students’ abilities to “occupy different voices” within their essays. In “Inventing the University,” he asserts that students need to learn academic discourse to become part of the university, but learning that discourse and being part of that community does not erase relationships to other discourse communities. His commentary about bilingualism reaffirmed this idea for me: It is important to learn a particular mode of argument and writing, yet it is just as important to retain (and use) our familiar discourses.

It was really interesting to “speak” with someone who has made such an impact on composition, and I’m looking forward to more. Next week: Ira Shor.

 

“Rhetoric and Ideology in the Classroom” Reading Notes

Berlin begins by identifying three rhetorics: cognitive psychology, expressionism, and social epistemic. He distinguishes them as such:

• “From the perspective offered here, the rhetoric of cognitive psychology refuses the ideological question altogether, claiming for itself the transcendent neutrality of science.”
• “Expressionistic rhetoric, on the other hand, has always openly admitted its ideological predilections, opposing itself in no uncertain terms to the scientism of current-traditional rhetoric and the ideology it encourages.”
• “Social-epistemic rhetoric is an alternative that is self-consciously aware of its ideological stand, making the very question of ideology the center of classroom activities, and in so doing providing itself a defense against preemption and a strategy for self-criticism and self-correction” (668).

Photo by lemusgro.

Berlin relies on the ideological definitions of Marxist sociologist Göran Therborn who argues that “Choices in the economic, social, political, and cultural are thus always based on discursive practices that are interpretations, not mere transcriptions of some external, verifiable certainty” (668). Berlin also uses Therborn’s ideas that power is something that can and should be identified and resisted, and that ideology is inextricably tied up in language practices (668).

Of the three rhetorics identified initially, Berlin wants to focus on the advantages of social-epistemic rhetoric. He believes that the other two don’t appropriately discuss the relationship between ideology and rhetoric. Cognitive psychology, in its attempts to deny ideology, is appropriated to “a stance consistent with the modern college’s commitment to preparing students for the world of corporate capitalism” (672). Expressionist rhetoric, however, denounces ideological pressures to conform to “corporate-sponsored thought, feeling, and behavior” (676), yet simultaneously reinforces capitalistic notions of the individual.

Berlin defines social-epistemic rhetoric as a “political act involving a dialectical interaction engaging the material, the social, and the individual writer, with language as the agency of mediation” (678). Because of this dialectic collaboration, these different elements–the material, the social, and the individual writer–are part of a reciprocal relationship with ideology; they at once produce and are products of ideology (679). With its focus on political action and agency, the social-epistemic classroom lends itself to liberatory pedagogy, wherein both teacher and students work to create the form and content of the classroom, co-creating what is studied. This style allows students to “become agents of social change rather than victims” (681).

The article concludes with Berlin’s final points that 1) teaching is not innocent and free from ideology and 2) that social-epistemic rhetoric is the best approach for directly addressing the relationship between rhetoric and ideology. He writes, “Social-epistemic rhetoric attempts to place the question of ideology at the center of the teaching of writing. It offers both a detailed analysis of dehumanizing social experience and a self-critical and overtly historicized alternative based on democratic practices in the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres” (682).

Berlin, James. “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 667-684.