Executive Summary 3

From James A. Berlin's Rhetoric and Reality. Chapter 5, "The Communication Emphasis: 1940-1960."

Berlin begins this chapter highlighting the spread of general education between 1940 and 1960 leading into his argument that composition studies are indebted to the communication course and return of rhetoric from years past. Concerns of preserving American culture abound, and Berlin seems to assert that the composition course is an effective instrument for teaching action in social discourse.

It becomes evident soon that Berlin favors the holistic approach of communication instruction. Building from semantic theorists of the 1930s, Berlin lays out an educational approach that places writing and speech acts in a social context. As the communication course grows out of necessity for educating a wider public, colleges approach this challenge differently, with Iowa as Berlin’s example of a current-traditional model and Denver as an example of a left-of-center model. Communication’s integrative model of education seems like the forerunner of the future composition course.

Berlin tactfully couples the origin of the CCCC along with changes in English studies. It seems that the CCCC rises to defend the “little guy” composition teacher and build legitimacy for studying composition on its own merits. Berlin mentions advocates of literature arguing for the liberal culturist return to writing about literature as a means of moral and civic cultivation. However, this practice seems more distant from social reality as linguistics and rhetoric represent methods for approaching writing education invested in transferable skills and social immediacy.

Berlin suggests that literature is an out-dated mode of writing education while composition, rhetoric, and communication studies are structured from progressive ideas that teach writing as a social activity.

Quotes

“The push for general education requirements again emerged just before World War II in response to the Depression and the threats to democracy posed by fascism abroad. After the war, these programs increased dramatically, colleges again trying to combine the breadth of liberal learning with professional specialization. There motivation was to safeguard the American way of life—the social stability provoked by the democratic method” (92).

“The semanticists derived from cultural anthoropologists […] a notion of language as a mode of social behavior and, more important still, an awareness of the ways in which language structures and defines reality” (95).

Regarding communication course: “The important common element in these variations was the commitment to teaching writing, speaking, reading, and often listening as a unified set of activities” (96).

Writing based on Rogerian psychology / writing teacher as sort of therapist: “The clinician was supposed to go even further, however, in discovering the psychological blocks to learning how to communicate, being required ‘to collect and assemble as much biographical data as possible concering the student to find his needs and his hopes and fears’” (101).

“And with the establishment of the CCCC and its journal, College Composition and Communication, teachers of freshman composition took a giant step toward qualifying for full membership in the English department, with the attendand privileges—tenure, promotion, higher salaries, leaves—even though these were not widespread until much later” (106).

On Composition and Literature: “Literature is necessary to preserve democracy” (109).

“The child learns the system and ways of using [the language system] more effectively in a social setting. As a result, the composition teacher should duplicate the social process in the classroom so that the student can learn to manipulate the resources of the system” (113).

“Significantly, [rhetoric scholars] emphasized the primacy of invention over logic because it alone would ‘assist in the process of creation’” (115).

“Thus, [W. Nelson Francis] saw rhetoric as being concerned with the discussion of virtually all discursive prose” (118).

“[Barriss Mills of Purdue] wanted to base the writing course on a process of composing that emphasized a rhetorical prupose, a rhetorical context, writing, and revision” (119).

Reading Response 2

This week, our class read through the first half of James A. Berlin's Rhetoric and Reality, and Berlin tracks and contextualizes changes in English studies through the 20th century. What motivates past debates about education remains, in a manner of speaking, the same motivation for our debate on our legitimacy and pedagogy as a scholarly discipline today: an urgent sense of crisis. When students can't write, our culture--more likely our profession--is going to end and end catastrophically.

Fortunately, the English department has survived by responding to changes in our culture. Berlin, for instance, explains that rhetoric in English studies slowly diminished in value, taken over by literature. The crisis then was displacement of rhetoric, and students still couldn't write.

Today, I see an inversion to this past crisis. Composition and rhetoric studies are challenging the eminence of literary studies. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to ask a trusted advisor or friend in which field is it easier to find a job. Comp/rhet. and literary studies seem like rival siblings that, while coming from the same home, simply can't--or don't want to--get along.

In this moment, where jobs are scarce and schools are driven by consumers' wants, it seems that the study of composition and rhetoric appeals to a practical and positivistic mindset present in our culture. The general appeal of comp/rhet., while still deeply theoretical and complex, responds to a narrative in which practical skills are valuable and get results. The theories wars of the 1980s and 1990s, by extension, don't settle well when we're pinching pennies and looking for alternatives to the mess that is postmodernism.

However, we can't altogether discount postmodernist theory. Without it, would we insist on multiple literacies as opposed to just one definition of literacy? Would we be as sensitive to discursive power over knowledge as we are? Would we look so closely at subcultures and smal communities? So, to extend my silly analogy further, comp/rhet. and literary studies are more like rival siblings--they fight, but they can't get entirely away from each other.

With Berlin's historical account in mind, this struggle is good for our discipline. Without the competition, we would not have invention and integration that makes what we do useful and, yes, even fun. So, our current crisis for intellectual legitimacy isn't really a crisis at all--it wasn't really a crisis then--but rather a familiar, ongoing process for change.