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Content A PHILOSOPHY OF RH ETO RIC by Dorothy Ann Augustine A D iss e rta tio n Presented to the FA C U L T Y OF TH E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L UNIVERSITY O F SO U T H E R N CALIFORNIA In P a r tia l F u lfillm en t of the Requirements fo r the Degree D O C T O R OF PHILOSOPHY (E nglish) June 1979 UMI Number: D P23064 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL U SERS The quality of this reproduction is d ep en d en t upon the quality of the copy subm itted: In the unlikely event that the author did not sen d a com plete m anuscript and th ere a re m issing p ag es, th e se will be noted. Also, if m aterial had to be rem oved, a note will indicate the deletion. Published by P roQ uest LLC (2014). Copyright in the D issertation held by the Author. Dissertation Publishing UMI D P23064 Microform Edition © P roQ uest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United S ta te s C ode P roQ uest LLC. 789 E ast E isenhow er Parkw ay P.O . Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 -1 3 4 6 UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA TH E GRADUATE SCH O O L UNIVERSITY PARK LOS A N G ELES. C A L IFO R N IA 9 0 0 0 7 'Ph.D. E A 1 3 This dissertation, written by / < & $ / 2 Dorothy Ann Augustine under the direction of hSI . . . . Dissertation C om mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of the degree of D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y Dean TABLE OF CONTENTS Section Page I . A N E W PHILOSOPHY FO R RHETORIC......................................................... 1 I I . INVENTION: COGNITIVE CHOICES .......................... 37 I I I . F O R M S O F M EA N IN G ...................................................................... 80 IV. O N TH E PRACTICALITY OF STYLE ......................................................... 101 V. PROGNOSIS................................................................................................... 116 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 120 APPENDIX. Report on P ro je c t L ite ra c y : A P ilo t Program . . . . 127 fo r the T estin g and Remediation of W riting S k ills ii I, A NEW PHILOSOPHY FOR RHETORIC 1 .1 Paradigms of language and p h ilosophies of r h e to ric With the a c c e le ra te d study o f language in the 1950’s came q uestions and c ris e s about th e a n a ly sis of d ata which could not be r e solved by referen ce to the e sta b lish e d paradigms of em piricism or behaviorism .* The discovery and gathering o f " fa c ts ” which those paradigms encouraged had been spearheaded by the advances in symbolic lo g ic and computers, but once the d ata was discovered and c o lle c te d , i t s a n a ly s is , a t le a s t by p hilosophers and lin g u is ts versed in lo g ic , was blunted by th e counter-exam ples which the new inform ation brought to bear on the old model of language as a c la s s if ic a to ry sc ien c e, a " s o rt of v erb al b o tany." Simply p u t, th e new evidence about language could not be c la s s if ie d by the form al mechanisms which had been con s tru c te d fo r th a t purpose during the previous two decades. The new d ata were seemingly in ch o ate, and the new pool of inform ation produced a m orass. The r e s u l t, seen in p e rsp e c tiv e , was in e v ita b ly a re o rie n ta tio n toward language i t s e l f . Amid the e s o te ric symbols o f the lo g ic ia n s and the computerized n o ta tio n s of th e lin g u is ts , stu d en ts of language came to look a t th e ir c o lle c tio n s of fa c ts not as su b je ct m atter, but as evidence fo r the laws o f the op eratio n of the mind. That rev o lu tio n in philosophy and lin g u is tic s has seism ic rep e r cussions fo r the theory and p ra c tic e o f rh e to ric . Since A r is to tle , 1 rh e to ric has been thought o f as the "fa c u lty of observing . . . th e a v a ila b le means o f persuasion" (R h e to ric , 1355b), and rh e to ric a l stu d ie s sin c e th a t pronouncement n e a rly 2500 years ago have concen tra te d on discovering and c la s s ify in g lo g ic a l, e th ic a l, and p a th e tic appeals to audiences. The r h e to r ic ia n 's U niverse of D iscourse was understood as composing a l l those fe a tu re s of v e rb a l communication which have as th e ir p r a c tic a l aim th e p re se n ta tio n of a th e s is by one 2 person to o th ers fo r th e ir a sse n t, and the product of r h e to ric a l research was defined as those mechanisms fo r g en eratin g , analyzing, and c r itic iz in g areas o f th e language which proved to have a ffe c tiv e value: the transposing of thought in to words, th e arrangem ent of id e a s, the le v e ls and fe a tu re s of s ty le . Now rh e to ric ia n s must s t i l l be in te re s te d in th e p ra c tic a l means and s o c ia l ends o f d isc o u rse. But th e ir b a sic prem ise, given the new paradigm fo r language, r e s ts not on th e observable " fa c ts " o f v erb al communication. I f they a re to make a v a ila b le to th e ir in v e s tig a tio n s of rh e to ric a l language the in s ig h ts provided by philosophers and lin g u is ts , th ey , to o , must sub s c rib e to the id ea th a t what people say when they ta lk to each o th er i s only a su rfa c e re p re se n ta tio n o f In te n tio n and response. What people do when they ta lk to each o th e r is to express t a c i t presupposi tio n s , and th a t re -o rle n ta tio n toward the function o f language must d ire c t a new philosophy fo r rh e to r ic . In proposing th a t rh e to ric take i t s b a sic prem ise from the s i s t e r d is c ip lin e s o f philosophy and l in g u is tic s , I am n o t making an innova tiv e in te rd is c ip lin a ry claim upon thought. H is to ric a lly , philosophy 2, and rh e to ric have enjoyed a p a rtn e rsh ip which p re -d a te s P la to , and th ere i s no reason to b e lie v e th a t rh e to ric a l th e o rie s w ill .re fe r any le s s to p h ilo so p h ic a l in q u iry today, e sp e c ia lly now when th a t in q u iry is i t s e l f guided by unprecedented d e sc rip tio n s of th e twin su b je c ts o f language and m in d ,3 on the fa c t o f i t , a favored purview o f rh e to ric . Nor can the younger d is c ip lin e , l in g u is tic s , have le s s an in flu en ce on rh e to r ic , e s p e c ia lly as i t has s h ifte d from the em p irical model to th e m e n ta lis tic paradigm introduced by C hom sky,4 a paradigm which, in the 1 9 7 0 's, has made "philosophy of language" and " lin g u is tic s " n early synonymous. According to John R. S e a rle , U n til f a i r l y re c e n tly i t seemed p o ssib le to draw a boundary, however vague, between lin g u is tic s and the philosophy of language: lin g u is tic s d e a lt w ith th e em p irical fa c ts of n a tu ra l human languages; the philosophy o f language d e a lt w ith th e conceptual tru th s th a t u n d erlie any p o ssib le language or system of communication. . . . L a te ly , however, a l l th is has changed. In the c u rre n t p erio d o f expansion, lin g u is tic s have sim ply moved in to la rg e t e r r i t o r i e s where p rev io u sly only philosophers worked, and the w ritin g s of such philosophers as A u stin , G rice, and o th ers have now been a ssim ila te d in to the working to o ls o f th e contemporary lin g u is t. The philosopher o f language can only welcome th is development, fo r the lin g u is t b rin g s to bear a knowledge o f the fa c ts of n a tu ra l human languages, to g eth er w ith techniques of s y n ta c tic a l a n a ly sis which, a t l e a s t in th e p a s t, have been absent from th e purely p h ilo so p h ic a l w ritin g s on language. And th is c o lla b o ra tio n can only be welcomed by th e rh e to ric ia n , who may now r e fe r to a ric h and coherent mass o f research on language fo r p re d ic tin g , g uiding, and confirm ing a theory o f rh e to ric . That the rh e to ric ia n has always taken h is cues from th e p re v a ilin g philosophy 1 o f language i s h ardly open to q u e stio n . What i s e sp e c ia lly in trig u in g about the Influence today, to paraphrase S e a rle , i s the unprecedented v a lid ity of research on language brought about by the checks and balances of philosophers who deal w ith s c ie n tif ic lin g u is tic fin d in g s and lin g u is ts who in co rp o rate p h ilo so p h ic al sp e cu la tio n in to th e ir theorem s. M y f i r s t purpose in th is d is s e r ta tio n , th en , i s to d isco v er and dem onstrate the re la tio n s h ip between to d ay 's lin g u is tic s (or philosophy o f language) and the tr a d itio n a l concerns of r h e to r ic , concerns which a re , u ltim a te ly , p r a c tic a l in th a t rh e to ric ia n s r e f e r to a paradigm fo r language in o rd er to co n stru ct th e mechanisms which w ill g e n erate , analyze, and c r i t i c i z e th a t fa c e t o f human behavior known as th e generating and understanding o f d isc o u rse . And a second purpose n a tu ra lly fo llo w s, th a t o f c o n stru ctin g not only a new p h ilo s ophy fo r r h e to r ic , but a new, p r a c tic a l model fo r both th e o re tic a l and ap p lied resea rch . A ccordingly, I s h a ll t r e a t f i r s t th in g s f i r s t and take as a given one of l in g u i s t i c s ' major assum ptions about language, th a t when we speak to each o th e r we "behave" in ways th a t are n o t em p iric a lly observable. That i s , we express and understand th e t a c i t presupposi tio n s which u n d e rlie what i s sa id or w ritte n . In th is f i r s t ch ap ter, I w ill attem pt to account fo r th a t d e fin itio n w ith the to o ls o f the lin g u is t, not fo r th e ir own sak e, but fo r the sake of knowing where our id eas of language come from so th a t we w ill be b e tte r ab le to con s tr u c t a philosophy fo r r h e to r ic , some th e o re tic a l im p lic a tio n s, and __________________________________________________________________________________________ A . the atten d in g p ra c tic a l a p p lic a tio n s of th eory. 1.2 Making th e new paradigm v is ib le In 1958, a Conference on S tyle was held a t Indiana U n iv ersity . Roman Jakobson d e liv ere d the concluding statem en t, "L in g u istic s and p o e tic s ," which has in trig u e d rh e to ric ia n s ev er sin c e because of the schem atlzation of language o ffe re d by Jakobson, a mechanism, as he s a id , fo r understanding the fa c to rs involved in v erb al communication."6 The e n tire statem ent may be read as a q u in te s s e n tia l treatm ent of rh e to ric a l in te r e s ts v ia the in s ig h ts of d e s c rip tiv e l in g u is tic s , and i t is fo r th is reason th a t I would lik e to a p p ro p ria te Jakobson's schema. By comparing what he has to say about the functions o f lan guage w ith what p resen t-d ay lin g u is ts b e lie v e , we b rin g in to our d isc u ssio n one o f the b e s t bases fo r d efin in g a new conception of r h e to ric . Moreover, in re fe rrin g to Jakobson, we im p lic itly r e f e r to the form er, em pirical paradigm fo r language which, I f e e l, must be tre a te d i f fo r no o th e r reason than the fa c t th a t i t e x iste d fo r so long as th e only paradigm and may be considered, th e re fo re , to have l e f t deep im pressions on any stu d en t o f language. Jakobson begins h is statem ent w ith a b r ie f d e fin itio n o f term s: An o u tlin e of [th e fu n ctio n s o f language] demands a concise su rv ey ,o f the c o n s titu tiv e fa c to rs in any speech ev en t, in any a c t of v erb al communication. The ADDRESSER sends a M ESSA G E to th e ADDRESSEE. To be o p e ra tiv e , the message re q u ire s a C O N T EX T re fe rre d to ( ’refe ren t* in an o th er, somewhat ambiguous nom enclature), se iz a b le by the addressee, and e ith e r v erb al or capable of being v e rb a l ize d ; a C O D E f u lly , o r a t le a s t p a r t i a l l y , common to the ad d resser and addressee (or in o th e r words to the encoder and decoder o f the m essage); and, f in a lly a CO NTACT, a p h y sic al channel and psychological connection between the ad d resser and the ad d ressee, enabling both o f them to e n te r and sta y in communication. A ll these fa c to rs in a lie n a b ly Involved in v erb al communication may be schem atized as fo llo w s: C O N T EX T M ESSA G E ADDRESSER ------------------------------------- ADDRESSEE C O N T A C T C O D E Each o f th ese s ix fa c to rs determ ines a d iff e r e n t fu nction o f lan g u a g e.' And th e audience has l i t t l e tro u b le , l a t e r in th e e ssay , re c o n c il ing those fa c to rs to th e ir purposive fu n ctio n v ia the r a tio s o f addresser-em otive, a d d re ssee -co n a tiv e , c o n te x t- re fe r e n tia l, message- p o e tic , c o n ta c t-p h a tic , code-m etalingual. That i s , any disco u rse may be analyzed and discussed in term s of what i t t e l l s us about (1) th e ad d resser - h is biography, h is ex p erien ce, h is p o in t o f view; (2) th e addressee - d e fin itio n s and d e sc rip tio n s of the audience; (3) the context - what i s ta lk ed about or re fe rre d to ; (4) the message - what i s sa id about the co n tex t o r re fe re n ts ; (5) the c o n tact - the form, s t y l e , language o f th e d isc o u rse; and (6) the code - the c ritic is m a tte n d in g on the above f a c to rs . And, o f course, th e v ario u s r a tio s o f fa c to rs (ad d re sser:ad d re ssee , e tc .) can continue to a c t as h e u r is tic s , o ffe rin g us an ex ten siv e and form idable vocabu la ry o f c ritic is m . Jakobson's schema, in o th e r words, w ith i t s 6 in c lu siv e and "in a lie n a b ly involved" fa c to rs o f communication, provides a n eat and provocative means of understanding disco u rse in terms o f i t s g e ttin g generated and g e ttin g understood. But Jakobson does n o t go f a r enough, though he has gone to the lim its th a t a previous paradigm can take him. With th e Chomsklan re v o lu tio n came the concept of deep s tr u c tu r e , making p o ssib le an a n a ly sis o f sentences which, by e x te n sio n , confers a dom inating seventh fu nction to Jakobson's schema, to be described s h o rtly . R eferring s p e c ific a lly to John Robert R oss's "On D e cla ra tiv e Sentences" (1968), we fin d " th a t d e c la ra tiv e sentences . . . must a lso be analyzed as being im p lic it p e rfo rm ativ es, and must be derived from deep s tru c tu re s Q containing an e x p lic itly rep resen ted perform ative main v e rb ." Or, rendered g ra p h ic a lly , we can dem onstrate th e " r e a lity " th a t "every d e c la ra tiv e sentence . . . w ill be derived from a deep s tru c tu re con ta in in g as an embedded clau se what ends up in th e su rface s tru c tu re as an independent c la u se . N T V N P N P ,V P \ I r a sse rt advise beg you you someone V X command dare enquire d rin k t w ater h e a r tily grant o ffe r propose req u ire say warn s.* * * The S’ , by ru le s o f su b -c a te g o riz a tio n , perform ative d e le tio n , su b je c t ra is in g , im perative d e le tio n , in s e r tio n s , and th e lik e , may transform to su rface s tru c tu re s such as "I dare you to drink,'* "Someone is drink ing so h e a rily th a t the w ell i s running d ry ," even "D rink!" But the p o in t to be made is th e primacy of "1" as the su b je c t noun in the main clause o f the deep s tr u c tu r e , a primacy o r dominance th a t Ross demon s t r a te s in an exhausive a n a ly sis o f d e c la ra tiv e sentences and th a t leads him to p o stu la te th a t "every deep s tru c tu re co n tain s one and only one perform ative sentence as i t s h ig h est main clau se."* ® ’ O r, to approach i t from another an g le, every sentence we speak or h e a r, w rite o r rea d , is "preceded" by an " I" to g eth er w ith a perform ative verb in the deep s tr u c tu r e , re g a rd le ss o f whether they fu n ctio n in the su rface u tte ra n c e . (The foregoing se n ten c e , • fo r example, appears as an embedded clause in the deep s tru c tu re dominated by "I a s s e r t th a t Ross claim s 8 th a t . . . " . ) Now compare what Jakobson has to say about one o f h is f a c to r s , the a d d ressee: O rie n ta tio n toward the ADDRESSEE, th e CO NA TIV E fu n c tio n , fin d s i t s p u re s t gram m atical expres sio n in th e v o cativ e and im p erativ e, which s y n ta c tic a lly , m orphologically, and o fte n even phonem ically d e v ia te from o th e r nominal and verb al c a te g o rie s . The im perative sentences c a rd in a lly d i f f e r from d e c la ra tiv e sen ten ces; the l a t t e r a re and the form er a re not lia b le to a tru th t e s t . When in O 'N e ill's play The F ountain, Nano, " (in a fie rc e tone of command), sa y s, 'D rin k !'" - the im perative cannot be challenged by th e q u estio n " is i t tru e o r not?" which may b e, however, p e rfe c tly w ell asked a f te r such sentences as "one dran k ," "one w ill d rin k ," "one would d rin k ." In c o n tra d is tin c tio n to the im perative sen ten ces, the d e c la ra tiv e sentences are c o n v e rtib le in to in te rro g a tiv e sen ten ces: "Did one d rin k ?" "w ill one drink?" "would one drink? Arguing fo r the p u rity of the im p erativ e, o r a t le a s t i t s c o n tra d is t i n c t i o n to the d e c la ra tiv e se n ten c e, Jakobson proceeds according to th e b e st in te llig e n c e o f h is tim e, one which d ire c ts him to look hard a t th e su rface correspondences o f an u tte ra n c e in o rd er to d e scrib e d if f e r e n tia e , b u t which cannot help him uncover a summum genus fo r h is exam ples, the perform ative main c la u se in th e ir deep s tru c tu re s : (I command th a t you) D rink! - (I propose th a t) one would d rin k . As dazzled as we may be by Jakobson's broad reading and th e profound an al y s is th a t reading makes p o ssib le o f every one o f h is f a c to r s , h is d iscu ssio n on d isco u rse in " L in g u istic s and P o etics" begins from another conceptual tru th about language, th a t i t i s somehow "independ e n t" o f th e speaker who uses i t o r th e w rite r who analyzes I t . "T ruth te s ts " a re , o f course, p a rt o f the a n a ly tic a l baggage o f the post-Chomskian re v o lu tio n , but ap p ro p riaten ess o f use in the deep s tru c tu re subsumes, in c u rre n t th eo ry , the su rface v a lid ity o f any " tr u th ." One very b r ie f example of ap p ro p riaten ess v s. tr u th : W e can claim as tru e o r not tru e or tu rn in to a q u e stio n , according to Jakobson's a n a ly s is , S w ift's "modest p ro p o sa l." But once we have determ ined the deep s tru c tu re o f h is th e s is , we "know" th a t Sw ift is " a p p ro p ria te ly " condemning economic cannibalism in h is iro n ic treatm ent o f the problem o f the poor in Ire la n d : " (I c r i t i c i z e the fa c t th a t) we should 'b re e d , f a tte n , and s la u g h te r' the poor fo r our own advantage. As fo r the seventh fa c to r which may now be appended to Jakobson's schema, given the concept o f deep s tru c tu re and the p ro je c tio n s i t a ffo rd s fo r " tru th " and "ap p ro p ria te n e ss," we must rec o n sid e r every one of th e o rig in a l s ix in terms of y e t another r a tio . Some perform ative verbs can be a r b i t r a r i l y chosen from the l i s t provided by Ross to f a c i l i t a t e the q u a lif ic a tio n of Jakonson's diagram. I h asten to add th a t th e q u a lif ic a tio n c a rrie s no th e o r e tic a l im portance, b u t, in terms of the schem atlzatlon below, stands sim ply as a v is u a l and conceptual a id : "I R EPO RT (C o n tex t-R efe ren tial) " I STATE" (M essage-Poetic) "I CONFESS" - (Addresser-Em otive) - - "I C O M M A N D " (A ddressee-Conative) " I REQUIRE" (C ontact-P hatic) " I CRITICIZE" (Code-M etalingual) 10 The seventh f a c to r , th en , may be reduced to the ubiquitous "I" which tr a n s la te s every o th e r fa c to r in to a p e rfo rm a tiv e 's embedded o r sub o rd in a te c lau se: I confess th a t 1 drank; I command th a t you d rin k ; I re p o rt th a t someone drank; I s ta te th a t th e w ater sin g s on i t s journey to th e se a; 1 re q u ire you to sip slow ly in o rd er to stop th a t hiccup- in g ; I c r i t i c i z e th e f a c t th a t only te e to ta le r s o r a lc o h o lic s undertake se rio u s d iscu ssio n s o f the b e n e fits of w ater. The dem onstrable " fa c ts " o f R oss's argument d ir e c t th a t Jakobson's fa c to r a n a ly sis o f d isco u rse be tra n s la te d in to a g e s ta lt of perform ative ap p ro p riaten ess w ith the fig u re o f a n a ly sis seen as the dominance of a f i r s t person sin g u la r g en eratin g even such "non-em otive" fa c to rs as code and c o n te x t.^ The term " tra n s la tio n " i s im portant h e re . W e have not put Jakobson's schema, sim ply, in to d if f e r e n t words, but in to another medium. W e have n o t m erely "completed" the o rig in a l schema w ith addi tio n a l vocabulary, but reformed i t according to a new conceptual tru th about language. For Jakobson's s ix fa c to rs of a n a ly s is , as powerful as they are in t h e ir o rig in a l c o n te x t, deal only w ith what may be sa id o f the te x t or the p h y sical u tte ra n c e , and th e ir " in c lu s iv ity " w ith in th a t context w ill n o t admit a su p e rio r node o f o p e ra tio n . I t i s t h is s h i f t o f c o n te x ts, from th e d isco u rse i t s e l f (th e " fa c ts " ) to th e g en eratin g o f d isco u rse (the underlying p rin c ip le s which re g u la te the " f a c ts " ) , which b e s t d escrib es th e s h i f t o f paradigms fo r th e contemporary p hilo so p h er of language. The suggestion can now be made th a t th a t new context o r paradigm im pels a re o rie n ta tio n toward the w r ite r o f d is course as the dominant fa c to r in a theory of rh e to ric and in any 11 p r a c tic a l a p p lic a tio n s to be derived from th a t th eo ry . Thus examined, R oss's th e s is fu rth e r a r tic u la te s and s p e c ifie s "under new o r more s trin g e n t co n d itio n s" Chomsky's paradigm atic d ire c tiv e of "discovering a m ental r e a l it y underlying a c tu a l b e h av io r." The im p lica tio n s o f such d isc o v e rie s d ire c t th a t we red e fin e language, not as the a rtic u la tin g to o l o f a system of thought, but as a system i t s e l f , a m ental p a tte rn o f g re a t re g u la rity and r ig o r , an in n a te competence which may w ell e ff e c t th e re g u la tin g p a tte rn s of o th e r system s, in clu d ing l o g i c . R h e t o r i c , th e re fo re , i s not a system th a t i s imposed upon language so much as a p a tte rn o f usage which must r e f e r to the conceptual tru th s underlyin g any speech ev en t. R hetoric must s t i l l be defined as th e study of a ff e c tiv e language, but the base of th a t study can no longer r e s t on th e te x t a lo n e , be i t spoken or w ritte n . So w ith th e aim o f d e fin in g r h e t o r i c 's base o f o p e ra tio n s , we m ust, f i r s t of a l l , provide o u rselv es w ith a d e fin itio n o f th e fu n ctio n o f language and Id e n tify the conceptual tru th s which guide th e in q u iry . 1 .3 Toward a d e fin itio n o f (language The d isc u ssio n o f th e fa c to rs involved in communication (1 .2 ), b r ie f as i t w as, can serv e as a p relim in ary excursion in to th e com plexities o f language, o r what i t i s to in te r a c t v ia language. To observe ju s t a few o f the in v o lu tio n s of fa c to rs th a t Jakobson holds to be d e sc rip tiv e of d isc o u rse , l e t us suppose th a t A g re e ts B w ith the e x p ressio n , "Q uixotic w eather we a re having, no?" B responds by asking A what he means by " q u ix o tic ," c le a rly making use o f a m e ta lin g u is tic " in te rp re ta tio n " o f A 's obviously p h a tic a d d re ss. At the same tim e, 12, A i s obviously the I n i ti a t i n g a d d re sse r, "expressing" o r "emoting" an in te n tio n to e s ta b lis h communication w ith B and to make th a t In te n tio n known to B. B recognizes th a t in te n tio n and re c ip ro c a te s by e x h ib itin g , in h is tu rn as a d d re sse r, a lik e In te n tio n to A. At the same tim e, h is address i s c le a rly a response to an in te n tio n . He t r i e s to prevent the breakdown o f communication by making, sim ultaneously, a conative and a p h a tlc appeal to A. And on the face of the tu rn -ta k in g s , the w eather i s not only re fe rre d to , b u t talk ed about, not fo r th e purpose of con veying inform ation about a s ta te of a f f a i r s , b u t w ith the in te n tio n , shared by both speakers once the response i s made, o f e s ta b lis h in g and m aintaining a channel o f communication. In those sen se s, th e n , the tra n s a c tio n , so long as i t continues along those l in e s , has a p h a tic - m etallngual prim ary fu n ctio n which o p e ra tes in a h iera rch y o f fu n c tio n s. And even above th a t i s a su p e rio r node o f (I say to you) L e t's t a l k . I f a l l th is seems p a ra d o x ica lly com plicated and t r u l s t i c , we should remember th a t we have ra th e r s u p e r f ic ia lly described one r a tio of fa c to rs in one ra th e r p e d e stria n lo c u tio n and response. At some fu tu re p o in t in the h y p o th e tic a l co n v ersatio n , a n a ly sis becomes more and more cumbersome as o th e r fa c to rs and r a tio s assume dominance in a mobile o f h ie ra rc h ie s , as language becomes le s s " ro u tin e ," and as m otives become more obscured o r more e x p lic it in th e exchange of r i t u a l and Inform ation. And th u s, Jakobson's schema, removed from the frozen te x t , i s pow erless to d escrib e the dynamic c r e a tiv ity o f language. In a l l fa irn e s s , we must admit th a t th e re i s no obviously c o rre c t and in c lu siv e d a s s i f l c a to r y scheme fo r d e scrib in g language, though _______________________________________________________________________13; some have more ad hoc value than o th ers because of th e i r eleg an ce, or th e ir relevancy to a c o n te x t, o r th e ir f a m ilia r ity , e tc . For the sake of ex p o sito ry convenience as w ell as v e r i f i a b i l i t y , we can re ly hence fo rth in th is se c tio n on the mechanism fo r d e scrib in g language proposed by H. P. G rice. The Gricean mechanism provides a c ris p (though not in d isso lu b le ) d e sc rip tio n o f how language works! A in ten d s to b rin g about a response on the p a rt o f B by g e ttin g B to recognize A 's in te n tio n ; B does recognize A’s in te n tio n to b rin g about th a t response, and i s thereby given some s o r t of reason to respond ju s t as A intended him t o . 15 no w the key words of th a t d e sc rip tio n —in te n tio n , respo nse, re c o g n itio n , reason—s a tis f y so w ell the p h ilo so p h ic al and rh e to ric a l q u a rre ls imbedded in such o th e r words as " tru th -v a lu e " o r "meaning" o r "a n a ly c ity " th a t G rice ’s d e s c rip tio n has >rom w ell in th e twenty y ears since he f i r s t o ffe re d i t fo r in s p e c tio n ,^ perhaps the b u s ie s t, most rev o lu tio n a ry p eriod in the h is to ry of our study o f language. The most productive course o f research extending from Grice began in 1962 when J . L. A ustin introduced the concept o f "sp eech -acts" in H ow to Do Things w ith Words, ^ c o in c id e n ta lly founding an i n te r d is c i p lin a ry school o f g en erativ e sem antics which, in tu rn , m odified and extended h is theory. B rie fly , A ustin began th is pragm atic surge o f research w ith the p ro p o sitio n th a t in te n tio n my be re a liz e d in e ith e r "c o n sta tiv e " o r "perform ative" u tte ra n c e s . (R oss’s a n a ly sis of p e r form ative v e rb s, discussed in 1 .2 , i s a b r i l l i a n t extension o f th e concept and perhaps i t s most im portant m odification fo r r h e to ric ia n s .) 14 The f i r s t , the c o n s ta tiv e , a re statem en ts; they denote a s ta te of a f f a i r s , a p ro ce ss, o r an e v en t. The second, by c o n tra s t, have no tr u th - v alu es; they are used as u tte ra n c e s ; they do som ething. The d is tin c tio n between the two, as A ustin i l l u s t r a t e s , i s drawn between the d ifferen c e in saying something and doing something by means o f language: " I t i s cold in here" v s. "I advise you to tu rn the h e at o n ." Yet th a t sharp d is tin c tio n between the c o n sta tiv e (or lo cu tio n ary a c t) and perform ative (or illo c u tio n a ry a c t) was s h o rt-liv e d . By 1972, S earle o ffe rs a d e sc rip tio n of how language works which, w hile i t probably owes i t s e x iste n ce to A u stin , re v e rts back to the Gricean mechanism in an ob vious way: Saying something and meaning i t is essen t i a l l y a m atter of saying i t w ith the in te n tio n to produce c e rta in e ffe c ts on the h e a re r. And th ese e f f e c ts are d e te r mined by the ru le s th a t a tta c h to the sentence th a t i s u tte re d . Thus, fo r example, the speaker who knows the meaning of the sentence "The flow er is red" knows th a t i t s u tte ra n c e c o n s ti tu te s the making of a statem en t. But making a statem ent to the e ffe c t th a t the flow er i s red c o n sists in perform ing an a c tio n w ith the in te n tio n of producing in th e h e a re r the b e lie f th a t the speaker i s committed to the e x iste n ce of a c e rta in s ta te of a f f a i r s . . . .1® So " in te n tio n " is back to a sin g le sp h ere, according to S e a rle , and in lin e w ith the o rig in a l (and e le g a n t) mechanism of G rice. W e may para phrase much of the work of twenty years of research follow ing G ric e 's d e sc rip tio n of language ( i . e . , how language works) by saying th a t speech-act theory f in a lly supports h is d e sc rip tiv e mechanism: Saying 15 (o r a s s e rtin g ) th a t something I s so i s i t s e l f a kind o f doing* ju s t as A u stin 's illo c u tio n a ry a c t "does" som ething, or Jakobson's "impera tiv e ." With th a t s a id , th en , th a t th e conceptual tr u th which u n d e rlie s language i s o r becomes m an ifest in a b eh av io r, we must now ask the q u e stio n , what e x a c tly i s done in any sp eech -act. I s i t th a t the production of a b e lie f in th e h e a re r i s e n ta ile d by any statem ent of fa c t or opinion? Is i t th a t any u tte ra n c e i s , by d e fin itio n o r co in cid en ce, a s o c ia l phenomenon, a "remark" qua language on the s o c ia l e ff e c ts o f speech-acts? As paraphrases of Jakobson's schema, a l l of the above e ff e c ts may be tru e sig n s of behavior in any sp eech -act. But they a re s u f f ic ie n t and n o t necessary conditions o f what i s done in any d isc o u rse. What seems to be necessary b efore a l l e ls e i s the a s s e rtio n , th e " I s a y ." ^ What i s done, even i f the in te n tio n i s ab o rted , is exp ressio n o f th e t r u th , the p o in t o f view , th e command, th e need to e s ta b lis h v e rb a l ra p p o rt, the c ritic is m , th e em otion. And i f any p h y sic al o r co n tex tu al v a ria b le s prevent the communicating of th a t b eh av io r, the "response" i s n o t "What i s i t th a t I (th e addressee) am to understand?" b u t "What did he (th e ad d resser) say ?" Seen as the necessary co n d itio n or the cause fo r any sp e ec h -ac t, expression must u n d e rlie the sp eech -act I t s e l f . I t i s the sin e qua non. L in g u ists more than philosophers (and w ithout appeal to th e q u asi rom antic th e o rie s of th e ro le of "I" in language which gathered a follow ing in the 1930's in Europe^®) have been d e lin e a tin g "th e domi nance of expression" fo r th e l a s t ten years a t l e a s t . R o ss's work i s 16 only one example where lin g u is tic d ata are brought to bear on the de b a ta b le tru th th a t language i s predom inantly conative o r r e f e r e n tia l. D escrip tiv e o r g en erativ e s e m a n tlc is ts , lik e F illm o re, 6. L akoff, R. L akoff, McCawley, e t a l . ,21 p o s it an underlying sem antic represen ta tio n d iffe rin g in content from the words th a t appear in the su rface s tr u c tu r e , and in doing so sometimes make very good cases fo r a domi n a tin g expressive or emotive mode. B rie f mention of two examples of research in a very a c tiv e and productive f ie ld may s u ffic e . In one ra th e r e a rly a r t i c l e , appearing in 1970, Paul and Carol Kiparsky dem onstrate the in te r - r e la tio n s h ip s between syntax and seman t i c s by showing the ro le played by the sp e a k e r's p resu p p o sitio n s in sentences th a t have complements. 22 i n th e ir paper, e n title d "F a c t," the Kiparskys analyze the s y n ta c tic behavior o f n o n factiv e and fa c tiv e p re d ic a te s and conclude th a t even where " r e f e r e n tia l" norms may o b tain in the su rfa c e s tru c tu re o f an u tte ra n c e , the e g o c e n tric presupposi tio n o f the speaker marks th e u tte ra n c e as "em otive." And emotive complements, they a s s e r t, c u t across the d is tin c tio n of f a c tiv ity in a very wide sw ath: The c la s s o f p re d ic a te s tak in g em otive complements in clu d es the verbs of emotion o f c la s s ic a l grammar, and K lim a's a ffe c tiv e p re d ic a te s (Klima, 1964), but is la rg e r than e ith e r and in clu d es in general a l l p re d ic a te s which express th e subjec tiv e value o f a p ro p o sitio n ra th e r than knowledge about i t o r i t s tr u th v a lu e .23 The K iparskys, furtherm ore, draw th e ir evidence fo r emotive deep s tru c tu re s from German as w ell as E nglish, a sy n th e tic as w ell as a n a ly tic language, and from a non-IE language as w e ll, H id atsa, .17. i n i t i a t i n g an acro ss-th e -b o ard a n a ly sis of em o tiv ity in language ra th e r than a language. But the re a l s ig n ific a n c e of such e a rly research in to the n a tu re o f " fa c t" and " s u b je c tiv ity " i s i t s s e ttin g up fo r fu tu re refe ren c e the se p a ra tio n between the l i n g u i s t 's and th e lo g ic ia n 's glo ss o f p ro p o s itio n s .24 Work on ro o t m odels, fo r example, by G. Lakoff (1972) and Huddleston (1974), p ro je c ts em o tiv ity beyond the K iparskys' "su b je c tiv e knowledge v s. fa c t" fin d in g s , and is cause fo r John Lyon's claim : Although i t might appear th a t a s ta te ment i s strengthened by p u ttin g th e prop o s itio n th a t i t expresses w ith in the scope o f th e o p e ra to r o f eplstem ic n e c e ssity [o b je c tiv e f a c t ] , th is i s n o t so , as f a r as the everyday use o f language i s concerned. . . . I f th ere i s no e x p lic it m ention of th e source o f our inform ation and no e x p lic it q u a lif i c atio n o f our commitment to i t s f a c tu a l! ty , i t w ill be assumed th a t we have f u l l epistem ic w arrant fo r what we s a y .25 7fi O r, in o th e r words, and as Lyons m entions elsew here, a l l the s t a t e ments we u t t e r are " fa c tu a l" re p re se n ta tio n s of knowledge, knowledge which transform s to behavior in sp e e c h -a c ts. What happens when people ta lk i s th a t they exchange p erso n al o r emotive expressions o f an "o b jec tiv e " w orld. And, as Lyons p o in ts o u t, a l l of us know i t . A second sh o rt example of research which touches on th e dominance o f expression begins w ith a s y n th e s is , namely a paper by C harles P y le, "P ragm atics." The paper was d e liv ere d in 1976, a summary and in te g ra tio n o f work done on the r e la tio n between sig n s and I n te r p r e te r s . P y le 's sources range from W ittg en stein to L alng, h is su b je c ts from tu rn -ta k in g to "fram es" o r c a te g o rie s th a t e x is t in language, but _ _ _ 18 th e re i s no doubt about th e c o n trib u tio n o f g en erativ e se m a n tlc ists to h is s o c io lin g u ls tic c o n c e rn s .^ Though the e n tir e paper may be taken as a statem ent on in te n tio n and p re su p p o sitio n , one se c tio n e x p lic itly comments on the m otivating and m anipulating fa c to rs o f ex p ressio n ; . . . [H]ow [do] people decide which frame to impose on an interaction]^? ] In o u tlin e the pro cess i s f a i r l y sim ple, though in d e ta il i t i s extrem ely complex. There a re th re e determ inants to the s e le c tio n p ro ce ss. F i r s t , th e s e le c tio n i s from among a lim ite d s e t o f game frames which people le a rn as p a r t o f le a rn in g language and how to use i t . The frame a person decides to assume fo r a p a r tic u la r a c tio n i s a fu n ctio n o f h is p a rtic u la r r e p e r to ir e . Second, the frame i s s e le c te d from h is re p e rto ire which i s c o n siste n t w ith th e behavior o f p a rtic ip a n ts and p h y sic al c o n te x t. The th ir d fa c to r i s fre q u e n tly over looked by lin g u is ts . I t i s th a t th e s e le c tio n of a frame i s to some e x te n t in flu en ced by p rio r in te r a c tio n w ith the p a r tic u la r in d iv id u a ls involved. People make assum ptions about what games o th e rs tend to engage i n , then in fu tu re encounters they impose game frames on the b a sis o f those assum ptions. In many in sta n c e s th e frame i s imposed so ra p id ly th a t i t i s c le a r th a t th e d e cisio n has l i t t l e to do w ith the a c tu a l behavior o f p a rtic ip a n ts in th e immediate s itu a tio n . In fa c t i t i s o fte n the case th a t frames th a t are se le c te d on th is b a sis are n o t m erely independent of immediate behavior of o th ers b u t a re in c o n s is te n t w ith th e ir immediate behavior. T his i s freq u e n tly th e source o f m isunderstanding and confusion in an in te r a c tio n , and when c a rrie d to extrem es i s considered p a th o lo g ic a l. F i r s t , i t needs to be p o in ted out th a t Pyle uses th e term "game" in much th e same way as W ittg en stein does, i . e . , as a t o t a l i t y of r e fe r ence which gives meaning to th in g s. Words are one of the "props" or tokens in the game of language, j u s t as a game o f chess gives meaning to b lack and red squares and fig u re s o f v ario u s design and dim ension. 19 But u n lik e a game of ch ess, Pyle p o in ts o u t, the game of language does not n e c e ssa rily involve conscious p a rtic ip a tio n n o r, o f course, compe t i t i o n , C ooperation Is the " r u le ." ( I t i s I n te re s tin g to n ote when the game of language does become conscious and co m p etitiv e, when the ru le s a re broken, as in punning, m etaphor, iro n y , e tc . One might th in k o f l it e r a r y c r i t i c s as judges or re fe re e s in th is se n se .) Now i f we concentrate on P y le 's second and th ird p o in ts , the pragm atics of in te n tio n and p re -su p p o sitio n become obvious. Responses, in e f f e c t, a re " s e t up" by choices th a t the speaker makes w ith re sp e c t to the "form" or frame o f h is ad d ress. Thus, the m anipulating of frames can be so unconsciously su c c e ssfu l th a t we can engage in s e l f - deception— ta lk in g to ourselves we can both l i e and be the v ictim of the l i e ; ^9 go ap p ro p riate th a t we are "of one mind" w ith the ad d ressee, th a t i s , we share one frame; so m iscalcu lated th a t a n atio n w ill laugh when the P re sid e n t sa y s, "I am not a cro o k ." In te n tio n s , in o th er words, a re them selves informed by our presupposing what knowledge is shared by our addressee and o u rse lv e s. "R esponses," "re c o g n itio n ," "re a so n s," a l l of G ric e 's fa c to rs are s e t on a tr a je c to ry o f under stan d in g o r m isunderstanding which i s "m anipulated" by the a d d re sser. And, of course, as each p a rtic ip a n t takes h is tu rn , the ste p s in P y le 's o u tlin e begin a l l over ag ain . So in lig h t of what lin g u is tic s has brought to b ear on our under stan d in g o f what i t i s th a t people do in ta lk in g to each o th e r, we can d efin e language as th e expression of t a c i t p re su p p o sitio n s. What people do when they ta lk i s p o s it an underlying system of knowledge, 20 form ulated o r "framed" by th e ad d resser In h is INTENTION; RESPONSES are i made In RECOGNITION of th a t knowledge being shared by the addressee; and the R EA SO N S fo r responding depend on th e e x te n t to which the addressee does share or wants to share the i n i t i a t i n g frame and th e e x te n t to which he wants to m odify, q u a lity , o r negate the frame. Thus, G ric e 's mechanism may be amended as follow s: (1) A presupposes th a t B does o r wants to share A 's knowledge ( I j say to you2) X (2) A intends to b rin g about a response to th a t p resu p p o sitio n on the p a rt of B by g e ttin g B to recognize th a t A in ten d s to b rin g about th a t response ( I j say to you2) ( ( ( ( ( ( I confess) (I re p o rt) (I claim ) (I re q u ire ) (I c r i t ic i z e ) (I command)))))) (3) B does recognize A 's in te n tio n ( I 2 say to youi) Y (A) B responds j u s t as A intended him to ( I 2 say to yo«x> ( ( ( ( ( ( I sym pathize) (I understand) (I a sse n t) (I cede) (1 concur) (I o b e y )))))) (I have taken some l i b e r t i e s w ith the c la s s ic a l d esig n atio n of perform a tiv e v e rb s, e s p e c ia lly in B’s "response p e rfo rm ativ es." But i f we can agree th a t "sym pathize" i s th e v e rb a l eq u iv alen t of a p a ra lin g u is tic 21 sig h o r " ts k ," and th a t "obey" or " I obey" i s a formal rendering o f th e response "Okay” when someone does respond p o s itiv e ly to a command such as "Turn th e h eat o n ," then the s p i r i t i f not the l e t t e r o f the law i s s a f e .) Now (3) i s h ard ly le s s than a p resu p p o sitio n i t s e l f , and (4) may be in te rp re te d as an a lte r - in te n tio n , a l l o f which means to say th a t the mechanism proposed above m irro rs a bundle o f egos, th a t no one engaged in language i s ev er th e p a ssiv e ad d ressee, a p o in t which Pyle makes b u t f a l l s sh o rt of dem onstrating. But th e mechanism I propose jabove to d escrib e what i s done in language n o t only o u tlin e s what happens in a su c c e ssfu l perform ance, i t can a lso account fo r the In ap p ro p ria te p resu p p o sitio n which a b o rts ste p s (3) and (4 ), thereby term inating d isc o u rse. A handy and r e la tiv e ly sim ple example can be drawn from N ixon's "1 am n o t a crook" u tte ra n c e and i t s underlying .presupposition of knowledge, th a t Nixon presupposed everyone thought he was, indeed, a crook. W e can s e t th e u tte ra n c e w ith in the fa c to rs o f d isco u rse discussed a lre a d y . N ixon's in te n tio n may w ell be id e n tifie d among the follow ing a lte rn a tiv e s : 4any people "responded" w ith la u g h te r a t N ixon's su rface u tte ra n c e , tfhat can th a t t e l l us about how language works; what p resu p p o sitio n s v e re in fo rce d ire c tin g the p a r tic ip a n ts ' exchange? F ir s t o f a l l , (I say to you) I confess (th e fe e lin g I re p o rt (th e fa c t I claim (th e tru th I re q u ire (th e image th a t) "I am n o t a crook" I c r i t i c i s e (th e d e n ia ls I command (you to th in k 22 che la u g h te r (the response) t e l l s us what some people recognized as Nixon’s in te n tio n . When the ru le s of the "language game" o b ta in (when no iro n y , fo r example, i s recognized as p a rt of the in te n tio n ) , i t makes no sense to laugh as a response to an u n fac tu al re p o rt, an u n tru th fu l claim , uninformed requirem ents o r c ritic is m . But la u g h te r a t i s in c o n tra d is tin c tio n to sympathy w ith . Some people, th e re fo re , may have recognized N ixon's in te n tio n as c o n fe ssio n a l, informed by the p resu p p o sitio n th a t they would want to share h is p riv a te knowledge. P riv a te knowledge was as in a p p ro p ria te in th a t context as co n jectu res are in a courtroom . N ixon's "confession" amounted to a le g a l non- s e q u ltu r. Or a second In te n tio n may have been recognized, th a t o f h is a s s e rtin g a u th o rity . The p resu p p o sitio n here is c le a rly what Pyle c a lls p a th o lo g ic a l. No one, n o t even th e most pow erful man in the h is to ry of the w orld, can command another how to th in k . The "presup p o sitio n " being absurd, the response w ill be la u g h te r d if fe r in g in kind from the o p p o site of sympathy, b u t la u g h te r n o n e th e le ss. The knowledge th a t th e P re sid e n t has power was not th e same "knowledge" fo r Nixon as i t was fo r most people. At any r a t e , most people "recog n izin g " N ixon's in te n tio n (s ) ru led out a l l fa c to rs b u t the emotive and th e c o n ativ e. The "response" was la u g h te r. What Nixon a c tu a lly intended i s not too d i f f i c u l t to a s s e s s , espe c ia lly in re tro s p e c t. W e can ru le out o f h is In te n tio n any p o s s ib ility o f being laughed a t , b u t th a t does n o t n e c e s s a rily mean th a t Nixon did n o t in ten d to curry sympathy o r to a s s e rt h is " a u th o rity ." Recal lin g from P y le 's paper the o b serv atio n th a t "the s e le c tio n o f a frame _______________________________________________________________________ 23. is in flu en ced . . . by p rio r in te r a c tio n w ith th e p a r tic u la r in d iv id u a ls in v o lv ed ," we remember the ''sym pathetic" response o f "most" people to th e Checkers Speech o f th e e a rly f i f t i e s and th e happy compliance o f "most" people tp th e p r e s id e n tia l f i a t to e s ta b lis h diplom atic rap p o rt w ith th e P e o p le 's Republic o f China in th e l a t e s i x t ie s —the apogees of N ixon's em otive and conative re p u ta tio n s —but h is d ecisio n to Impose one o r both o f those frames on the q u estio n o f h is ro le in W atergate was " In c o n siste n t" w ith the immediate s itu a tio n in 1974. Host people then wanted p resu p p o sitio n s o f f a c t and tru th inform ing any in te n tio n by Nixon to d ir e c t t h e ir response. N ixon's presupposing another kind o f knowledge in h is audience, a confusion perhaps in th in k in g th a t "most" always d e scrib e s the same p o p u latio n , re s u lte d in a five-w ord le itm o tif o f a tragedy played out wholly w ith in the confines of language, la n Hacking, the B ritis h p h ilo so p h er o f language, comments on the l in g u is tic id ealism o r "lin g u alism " of the Nixon a d m in istra tio n and thereby remarks on th e conceptual tr u th s which determ ined the course of th a t trag ed y . He says th a t the d o c trin e of lin g u alism i s " th a t only the sentence i s r e a l. Nixon preserved a l l the sentences u tte re d in h is presence because they were the r e a l it y compared to which a l l e ls e is p assin g show. . . . The P re sid e n t chose to end h is c a re e r ra th e r than burn h is ta p e s. He destroyed h im self ra th e r than d e stro y the r e a l it y , the s e n t e n c e . L i n g u a l i s m would seem to be determ ined by a conceptual tru th which d efin es th e u tte ra n c e , the symbol of ex p ressio n , as the th in g i t s e l f . In th a t se n se, Nixon could n o t "im agine" a competence ______________________________________________________________ 24 which informed h is perform ance, h is exp ressio n of meaning. The con c ep tu al tru th th a t only th e sentence is re a l is a veneering o f l i n g u is tic b eh av io r, perhaps the most im portant symptom in a "p ath o lo g ica l" confusion of appearance and r e a l i t y . The conceptual tru th argued fo r in th is essay , by c o n tra s t, is d u a lis tic but not sch izo p h ren ic. I t i s ju s t the o p p o site o f " lin g u a l ism ." The e x iste n ce o f a m ental o rg an iz atio n fo r encoding a "g en etic epistem ology," as E ric Lenneberg sa y s, an "I sa y ," i s p o site d as the g en erativ e force o f a l l d isc o u rse , the " re a lity " which gives a l l d is course i t s e f f i c ie n t, m a te ria l, and form al p ro p e rtie s . I t s f in a l p ro p erty , achieving communication, i s dependent upon another "I sa y ," th a t which com prises the response and c a ta p u lts language in to the s o c ia l sphere. And i t is e x a c tly h ere where rh e to r ic e n te rs w ith i t s d e sc rip tio n of language as s o c ia l as w ell as e x p re ssiv e . The domin ance of expression is a sim ple "apparent tr u th ." That i t s a r tic u la tio n has so fa r escaped remark in an in te g ra te d theory of rh e to ric may be because, to paraphrase W ittg en stein now, no one has ever doubted i t ; i t i s always b efo re—and behind—our eyes. 1.3 A canonical in te g ra tio n I f the generating of language i s seen then as having an ex p ressiv e o r perform ative se a t o f epistem ology and o p e ra tio n , and i f th e rh e to r ic i a n 's job can be describ ed as in v e s tig a tin g the in fin itu d e of expres siv e r e c ip r o c itie s (a t th is .stage in our understanding of language), the tr a d itio n a l se p a ra tio n of in v e n tio n , arrangem ent, and s ty le , the canons of r h e to r ic , would appear as a convenient though f a ls e design 25 fo r understanding and teaching the whole of d isc o u rse. The de ju re " s p littin g " of r h e to ric a l c o n sid era tio n s i s in f a c t, however, re in te g ra te d by both teach ers and stu d e n ts o f rh e to ric in th e p r a c tic a l o r real-w o rld realm . Evidence fo r th a t conclusion w ill c o n s titu te much of the d isc u ssio n in the follow ing th re e ch ap ters o f th is essay , but we may w ant, fo r the time b ein g , to e s ta b lis h a prolegomenon by way of a sh o rt example. W e can in v e s tig a te how one canon, in v e n tio n , is "described" by a s i s t e r canon, arrangem ent. Of the p a tte rn s o f arrangem ent prom ulgated by the th e o re tic ia n s and p ra c tic e d by stu d e n ts and teach ers sin ce a n cien t tim es, we can ra th e r conveniently choose from th e tr a d itio n the sim p lest of arrangem ent form ulae. In the R h e to ric , A ris to tle d iv id es a l l d isco u rse in to two p a r ts , the statem ent o f th e case and the proof (1414a). Such a sim ple o u tlin e of p a rts c a r rie s w ith i t an enormous cap acity fo r in v e n tio n . A d esig n atio n such as "proof" re q u ire s these questio n s to be asked o f any "statem ent of th e case": (a) am I advocating something which is u n iv e rs a lly acknowledged, i . e . , some p o in t o f understanding which does n o t need p ro o f; (b) are the terms in my statem ent of the case c le a r , i . e . , w ill p a r t o f my proof be concerned w ith d e fin itio n ; (c) w ill my statm ent of th e case generate only those proofs which are a v a ilb a le to me? And so on. And the f i r s t d iv is io n of A r i s t o t le 's form fo r d isc o u rse , the statem ent of the case, w ill re q u ire these q u estio n s to be asked of the p ro o f: (a) are the a v a ila b le proofs a p p ro p ria te and v a lid , i . e . , is the statem ent reason ably expressed; (b) are the proofs p e rtin e n t, i . e . , i s the statem ent 26 s u f f ic ie n tly narrow or wide in scope; (c) a re the proofs re le v a n t, i . e . , does my statem ent o f the case embrace an issu e which i s debatable and o f some im port? These a re not the only q u estio n s th a t may be asked given th e stim ulus fo r discovery im p lic it in A r i s t o t le 's two p a r t a r rangem ent, b u t they a re the more obvious ones, given th a t th e rh e to r understands the terms of the desideratum . The p o in t i s , even so b r i e f a model fo r arrangem ent as th is provides discovery procedures w ith in and because o f i t s dim ensions. While Kenneth Burke says th a t form i s sim ply the arousing and g ra tify in g o f d e s ir e s , we can v enture tlia t form i s th e s e ttin g up o f " s lo ts " which re q u ire content and which w ill pro vide d ire c tio n In any d isco u rse fo r a l l p a r tic ip a n ts . I t may be enough to say h e re th a t in v en tio n and arrangem ent have always supported and In flu en ced each o th e r. But the re la tio n s h ip of th e two has only la te ly come to be e x p lic itly remarked upon, p o ssib ly because o f th e in flu e n c e , e s p e c ia lly during th e 1960's , o f tagmemic l in g u i s t i c s , a re fin e d s l o t grammar. And such pronouncements as have been made alread y about th e inter-dynam ics o f th e th re e canons are su re ly in d ic a tiv e o f the new, cohering paradigm fo r language. 1.4 An in te g ra tio n ; th e whole o f i t and the whole in i t I t i s a commonplace o b serv atio n th a t we look a t what we know w ith the sp e c ta c le s our knowledge p ro v id es. Chomsky's paradigm fo r the study of language, b a re ly twenty y ears o ld , i s s t i l l new enough fo r language th e o r is ts to fe e l uncommonly th r il l e d and p a ra d o x ica lly in tim id a te d by th e v isio n i t affords* On th e one hand, the paradigm ____________________________________ 27 c l a r i f i e s fo r our in sp e c tio n th e q u estio n s which have always been asked about human knowledge and in te llig e n c e . On th e o th e r, th e d e ta il which th a t "c o rre c te d ” v isio n b rin g s in to focus o b v iates a sim ple or even an I n t e l li g i b l e re d u c tio n . One th in g seems c e r ta in , however. The gener a tin g o f language i s c re a tiv e ly unique and complexly communal. A ll o f us m aster a system fo r ta lk in g to each o th e r which none o f us is a b le , as y e t, to e x p la in . O r, as Courtney Cazden p u ts i t , When a person knows a language, what does he know? What in fo rm atio n does he have in h is head, somewhere in the neurophysiology of h is b rain ? A s e t of sentences from which he chooses the r ig h t one when he wants to say something? The meaning o f a s e t o f sentences from which he chooses th e r ig h t in te r p r e ta tio n fo r the sentences he hears? Even i f the s e ts o f sentences and in te r p r e ta tio n s were enormous, they would s t i l l be inadequate. O utside o f a sm all and unim portant l i s t of g re e tin g s lik e "Good m orning," c lic h e s lik e "My, i t ’s h o t to d a y ," and ro u tin lz e d s ta te ments lik e p ro v erb s, few sentences a re spoken o r heard more than once. Each spoken sentence must be c o n stru cted anew to express and com m unicate p a r tic u la r meanings to p a r tic u la r In d iv id u a ls—o n e se lf o r o th e rs . The h e a rt o f human language c a p a b ility i s c r e a tiv ity in ex p ressin g and understanding m eanings, " fre e from c o n tro l o f e x te rn a l s t i - m uli and a p p ro p ria te to new and ever changing s itu a tio n s " (N. Chomsky, n .d .) . I t can be ex p lain ed only i f what we know in common w ith o th e r members o f our language community i s a f i n i t e s e t o f ru £ es. These ru le s express the re la tio n s h ip s th a t hold between meaning and sound in our p a r tic u la r language, and they channel our c r e a tiv ity w ith in the lim its o f i n t e l l i g i b i l i t y and a p p ro p riaten ess fo r our speech community.34 ( I t a l i c s added.) So language i s n o t, according to a form er paradigm in philosophy and l in g u is tic s , a s e t of Is o la te d u tte ra n c e s to be analyzed in vacuo, 28 divorced from th e i r a p p ro p riaten ess in "new and ev er changing s itu a tio n s ." And n e ith e r can language be analyzed as th e product derived from an a lg o rith m ic o r o b je c tiv e s e t of d ire c tio n s and fa c ts which are c o n tro lle d by e x te rn a l s tim u li, according to a form er paradigm fo r rh e to ric . The new paradigm fo r language has brought th e fa c ts of l in g u is tic s , the p e rsp e c tiv e o f philosophy, and the concerns o f rh e to ric w ith in one conceptual sphere of tr u th : Language i s an e x p ressiv e be h av io r p ra c tic e d in a collegium o f "lan g u ag ers." Analyses o f th a t behavior must n e c e s s a rily follow and be in keeping w ith th a t tr u th . Having accepted the paradigm , th e p r a c tic a l rh e to ric ia n cannot do otherw ise than c o n stru c t " ru le s" which are in accord w ith i t s tr u th . Some im portant work has alread y begun. The concept o f general and p a rtic u la r au d ien ces, fo r example, as examined by Ferelm an, can be understood to be w ith in the domain o f the dominance of e x p ressio n . Rohman and Wlecke have shown us how a tte n tio n to the organic process in composing can r i d a w r i t e r ’s prose o f th e c u ltu r a l c lic h e and p re fa b ric a te d a b s tra c tio n , an approach which blends in v en tio n and s ty le . Jan et Emig has held b efo re us a stan d in g In v ita tio n o f more than ten years to explore th e v e rb a l unconscious of th e w r i t e r . ^5 in surveys o f lin g u is tic c o n trib u tio n s to r h e to r ic , sc h o la rs such as Wlnterowd have announced the most Im portant In flu en ce to be n o t in th e d e s c rip tio n of perform ance, b u t in the te a c h e r's a c tiv a tin g th e competence o f the s tu d e n t. And in a t l e a s t two re c e n t c o lle c tio n s of papers d ealin g w ith p r a c tic a l and th e o re tic a l concerns, the e d ito r s ' in tro d u c to ry remarks have emphasized th e fa c tu a l b a s is fo r what I c a l l th e dominance 29i of e x p re s s io n .^ But as y e t "th ere has been no change which Includes both a complete theory and an e x p lic it p r a c tic a l m ethod," as Young and Becker com- p l a i n . 38 T h eir own c h e f-d 'o e u v re , w ritte n in conjunction w ith Kenneth L. P ik e, i s a b r i l l i a n t and p r a c tic a l t r e a t i s e on in v en tio n . Arrangement i s given a p assin g nod, and s ty le i s h ard ly recognized, however. C onversely, th e "open-w riting" techniques o f Ken M acrorie, Stephen Judy, James M ille r, o r P e te r Elbow dem onstrably induce id io s y n c ra tic thought and s ty le in w ritte n e x p re ssio n , but s ile n tly bellow the sh o rt s h r i f t which i s p aid to arrangem ent. And when a tte n tio n is p aid to arrangem ent, two lack s im m ediately become conspicuous. D iscussion o f form i s e ith e r governed by a lle g ia n c e to a form er p ara digm (as in C orbett o r K inneavy), even though "new trap p in g s" may be brought to b ear on th e d isc u ssio n ; o r e ls e a p r a c tic a l a n a ly sis o f form i s commandeered to re fu te o ld b e lie f s (as in F o rt) o r to serve as an in tro d u c tio n to th e p o s s ib i l i ti e s of analyzing form through the medium of lin g u is tic s (as in W interowd). Thus, we have a p assin g p ic tu re o f rh e to r ic a l p rin c ip le and p ra c tic e which i s n e a rly as fragm ented as "old r h e to r ic ." P a rt o f th e ex p lan atio n fo r th is busy chaos must be found in the s t i l l incom plete re c o g n itio n o f a new paradigm fo r r h e to r ic . That is n o t to say th a t r h e to r ic ia n s , by and la rg e , have not recognized the new paradigm fo r language in the s i s t e r d is c ip lin e s of philosophy and lin g u is tic s . Indeed, they have mined th e research fo r gems of in s ig h t which p e rta in to th e ir problems and I n te r e s ts . B ut, in the _______________________________________________________________________ 30. n a tu re of the p r a c tic a l re se a rc h which follow s the in tro d u c tio n of any new paradigm , we have taken what seems to " f i t " tr a d itio n a l concepts, only to ta lk piecem eal, f i n a l ly , about the b ro ad est c o n sid e ra tio n s, the whole o f rh e to ric and th e whole in i t . T his e ssa y , th en , w ill be governed by the etymology o f i t s d esig n a tio n ; i t i s an attem pt to in te g ra te not only th e fin d in g s o f l i n g u is tic s and philosophy as they may r e f e r to r h e to r ic , b u t an attem p t, to o , to in te g ra te th e p lu ra lism o f r h e to r ic a l fin d in g s as they may r e la te back to the new paradigm . The follow ing th re e ch ap ters w ill co n cen trate on in v e n tio n , arrangem ent, and s t y l e , re s p e c tiv e ly . At l e a s t , only one o f those terms w ill be emphasized in th e t i t l e of each ch ap ter; as I have tr ie d to p o in t o u t a lre a d y , one cannot be discussed w ithout th e o v er-lap p in g o f the o th e r two. Chapter 5 w ill provide an overview and conclusion. A re p o rt on the p r a c tic a l a p p lic a tio n o f theory o u tlin e d in the essay w ill be included as an appendix and em p irical afterw o rd . 31 I. NOTES *Tn th is essay , the term "paradigm" i s defined not as a "conju- g a tio n a l" model, "p erm ittin g the r e p lic a tio n of examples any one of which could in p rin c ip le serve to rep la ce i t , " but " lik e an accepted ju d ic ia l d e c isio n in the common law , as an o b je c t fo r fu rth e r a r tic u la tio n and s p e c ific a tio n under new or more s trin g e n t c o n d itio n s." See Thomas S. Kuhn, The S tru c tu re o f S c ie n tific R ev o lu tio n s, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago P re ss , 1970), pp. v - ix , 23. ^See Ch. Perelman and L. O lb rech ts-T y teca, The New R h eto ric: A T re a tis e on A rgum entation, tra n s . John W ilkinson and P u rc e ll Weaver (Notre Dame: Univ. o f Notre Dame P re s s , 1969), e s p e c ia lly pp. 1-10. -*For a d isc u ssio n of the relevance of philosophy of language to contemporary problems in e th ic s , m etaphysics, e t c . , see W illiam P. A lston, "Language, Philosophy o f ," The Encyclopedia of P hilosophy, 1967. Ian Hacking, W hy Does Language M atter to Philosophy? (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. P re ss , 1975), provides a s c ie n tif ic a lly lin g u is tic ra th e r than a more tr a d itio n a l in te r p r e ta tio n of th e stan d ard q u estio n s in th e h is to ry o f philosophy. W . D. Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy (Garden C ity , N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday, 1970), d escrib es "moral d isc o u rse" in terms of modern lin g u is tic philosophy, e sp e c ia lly speech act th eo ry . On Noam Chomsky: C r itic a l E ssays, ed. G ilb e rt Harman (Garden C ity , N .Y .: Anchor-Doubleday, 1974), a c o lle c tio n o f six te e n a r t i c l e s and p ap ers, re fe rs to Chomskian theory and i t s relevance to tr a d itio n a l q u estio n s in philosophy. Except A lston, th e works c ite d here have ex ten siv e and h e lp fu l b ib lio g ra p h ie s. ^Chomsky's a r tic u la tio n of th e paradigm does not appear u n til 1965, e ig h t years a f te r S y n ta ctic S tru c tu re s : The problem fo r the lin g u is t . . . i s to determ ine from th e d ata of perform ance the underlying system of ru le s th a t has been m astered by the sp e ak er-h earer and th a t he p u ts to use in a c tu a l perform ance. Hence, in the te c h n ic a l se n se, lin g u is tic theory i s m e n ta lis tlc , sin ce i t i s concerned w ith disco v erin g a m ental r e a l it y underlying a c tu a l b eh av io r. (A spects o f a Theory of Syntax [Cambridge, M ass.: MIT P re ss, 1965], p. 4 .) 32 Kuhn can help us to account fo r the e ig h t year lag : "A cq u isitio n of a paradigm and of th e more e s o te r ic type of research i t perm its is a sign of m atu rity in the development of any given s c ie n tif ic f ie ld " (p. 11), A spects i s g en erally tre a te d as the c la s s ic statem ent of Chomsky's mature th eo ry , and c u rre n t c o n tro v e rsies take th is book as th e ir s ta r tin g p o in t. ^"Speech Acts and Recent L in g u is tic s ," Unpubl. MS., B erkeley, [1975], p . 1; but c f. John Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. P re ss, 1977), I , pp. 183-85.> ^ "L in g u istic s and P o e tic s ," in The S tr u c tu r a lis ts : From Marx to L e v i-S tra u ss, ed Richard and Fernande DeGeorge (Garden C ity , N.Y.: Doubleday-Anchor, 1972), p. 89; a lso in S ty le in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge, M ass.: MIT P re ss, 1960). 7Ib id . ®"0n D e cla ra tiv e S entences," in Readings in T ransform ational Grammar, ed. R. A. Jacobs and P. S. Rosenbaum (Waltham, M ass.: Ginn and C o., 1970), p. 222. R o ss's argument i s generated by J . L. A u s tin 's assig n in g a perform ative value to verbs such as "prom ise," "se n ten c e," " c h ris te n ," or "pronounce," which have, in ste a d of tr u th v a lu e s, v ario u s co n d itio n s p e rta in in g to ap p ro p riaten ess?o f use*;] see J . L.^ A u stin , How to Do Things w ith Words (Cambridge, M ass.: Harvard Univ. P re s s , 1962). I am aware of the counter-argum ents on R o ss's paper. They deal not w ith the v a lid ity of h is th e s is , I su g g est, b u t w ith the "elegance" of h is fin d in g s . A ll remarks on the s u b je c t, in o th e r w ords, proceed from the same "conceptual tr u th s " about language, and the arguments involve only the form al re p re se n ta tio n of those tr u th s . 9l b id . . p. 224. I Q lbid. . p. 261. H " L in g u is tic s and P o e tic s ," p. 91. l^The example of the deep s tru c tu re of S w ift's " th e s is " i s drawn from a case grammar dem onstration of perform atives in W . Ross Winterowd, "The R hetoric of B eneficence, A u th o rity , E th ic a l Committment, and the N egative," Philosophy and R h e to ric , 9 , No. 2 (1976), 65-83. *% hat I w ill s h o rtly term "th e dominance o f expression" is sim ply the complement to the "dominance of the rec ep to r" theory which has re v o lu tio n iz e d the understanding and teaching of read in g . See Frank Smith, e d ., P sy ch o lin g u istic s and Reading (New York: H o lt, R in eh a rt, 1973). No corresponding theory of th e w rite r has y e t been form alized, b ut see D. Gordon Rohman and A lb ert 0. Wlecke, P re-W ritin g : The C onstruction and A pplication of Models fo r Concept-Formation in W riting (E ast L ansing, M ich.: Michigan S ta te U niv., U.S. O ffice o f Education .33J C ooperative Research P ro je c t No. 2174), 1964; a v a ila b le through ERIC: Ed 001273. The prem ises of r h e to r ic a l theory and classroom a p p lic a tio n rep o rte d in Rohman and Wlecke are taken from ex p ressiv e a e s th e tic s and C oleridgian m etaphor; concerned p rim a rily w ith in v e n tio n , the authors a ssig n to the g en erato r of d isco u rse a c re a tiv e fa c u lty and d e scrib e w ritin g as "the dom ination of experience through the medium of la n guage." The in flu e n c e o f the re p o rt i s tr e a te d by Richard Young, "In v en tio n : A Topographical Survey," in Teaching Composition: 10 B ib lio g ra p h ic a l E ssay s, ed. Gary T ate (F o rt Worth, T ex.: Texas C h ristia n Univ. P re s s , 1976), e s p e c ia lly pp. 16-21. ^ E s p e c ia lly u se fu l as a survey of lo g ic a l c a lc u li and t h e i r re la tio n s h ip to n a tu ra l languages I s John Lyons, Sem antics, v o l. 1, pp. 138-73. Lyons s ta te s th a t "the lo g ic a l c a lc u li c o n stru cted by m athem aticians and lo g ic ia n s have been stro n g ly in flu en ced by the gram m atical s tru c tu re of p a r tic u la r languages and cannot th e re fo re be regarded as independent id e a l system s by refe ren c e to which language can be judged and found to be d e fic ie n t" (p. 139). 15in "M eaning," P h ilo so p h ica l Review, 66 (1957), 377-88. J o h n r . S earle d iscu sses th e mechanism w ith much v ig o r in Speech A cts: An Essay in th e Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. P re s s , 1969), pp. 42-50. 2 ^Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. P re s s , 1962* i 3®John R. S e a rle , "Chomsky's R evolution in L in g u is tic s ," in On Noam Chomsky, p . 29. ^ L y o n s, pp. 50-56, very n e a rly commits h im self to the "e x p re ssiv e - f i r s t " a ttitu d e ; Hudson comes much c lo s e r in Modern Moral P hilosophy, e s p e c ia lly in h is d isc u ssio n o f S e a rle 's "o u g h t/is" re d u c tio n , pp. 282-90. ^ S e m a n tic s, p . 51. 2 *-See C harles J . F illm ore and D. Terence Langendoen, e d s ., S tudies in L in g u is tic Semantics (New York: H o lt, R inehard, 1971) fo r re p re s e n ta tiv e works by the persons mentioned in the te x t. This c o lle c tio n i s e s p e c ia lly u se fu l fo r an understanding o f "P resupposition" in deep s tr u c tu r e . 2 2 "F act," in Readings in the Theory of Grammar, ed. Diane D. B o rastein (Cambridge, M ass.: Winthrop P u b lish e rs, 1976), pp. 299-330. 23I b id . . p. 321. 24see n . 21. I d efin e "p resu p p o sitio n " according to Edward L. Keenan's Inform al d e sig n a tio n : " . . . th e p resu p p o sitio n s of a 34 sentence a re those co n d itio n s th a t the world must meet in o rd er fo r the sentence to make l i t e r a l sense . . . i f some such co ndition i s not m et, fo r some sentence S, then e ith e r S makes no sense a t a l l o r e ls e i t is understood in some n o n - lite r a l way, fo r example as a joke o r m etaphor.^ (L in g u istic Sem antics, p . 4 5 .) ^ S e m a n tic s, v o l. 2, p. 809. 26I b i d . , v o l. 1, p. 56. 2?unpubl. MS., Ann Arbor (1975)- 2® " P ra g m a tic s p p . 31-32. 29The m ystery of se lf-d e c e p tio n i s in trig u in g to p h ilo so p h ers; u n fo rtu n a te ly only those who have no in te r e s t in g e n erativ e sem antics have explored the s u b je c t. See, e . g . , Jean-P aul S a rtre , Being and N othingness. tra n s . Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square P re ss, 1975), pp. 27-125, o r H erbert F in g a re tte , Self-D eception (New York: Humanities P re ss, 1969). 30"T urn-taking" and " p o lite n e ss phenomena" are only two su b je c ts o f research which evolve from th e theory of language games. See Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, "U niversals in Language Usage: P o lite n e ss Phenomena," forthcom ing. ^ S e e Hacking, pp. 182-83. H erbert H. C lark and Eve V. C lark o ff e r a reading of N ixon's statem ent based on th e ir theory of th e fu n ctio n o f d e n ia ls . T heir reading i s more ele g an t than m ine, but they f a i l to acknowledge the co n tex t o f the statem ent and the h is to ry of N ixon's frames o f communication. See Psychology and Language (New York: H arcourt, 1977), pp. 99-100. 32I b i d . , p. 183. 330ne comment from the p r a c tic a l sphere may s u f fic e : "The d ep art ments of rh e to r ic are not se p ara te and d is c r e te . From one p o in t of view, a l l s e ts of to p ic s belong to in v e n tio n , but from another p o in t of view, many of them belong e ith e r to s ty le o r to form. C onversely, any theory o f form i s , ipso f a c to , a theory o f in v e n tio n ." (W . Ross Winterowd, "In tro d u c tio n to 'The Grammar of C o h eren ce'," in Contemporary R hetoric: A Conceptual Background w ith R eadings, ed. W . Ross Winterowd (New York: H arcourt, 1975), p . 225. C hild, Language, and Education (New York: H o lt, R in eh a rt, 1972), p. 6. 35"The Uses o f the Unconscious in Composing," College Composition and Communication. 15 (1964), 6-11. 35 3% . Ross Winterowd, "L in g u istic s and C om position,” in Teaching Com position, pp. 197-222. 3?Richard L. G raves, "P re fac e," R hetoric and Com position: A Sourcebook fo r Teachers (R ochelle P ark , N .J .: Hayden Book C o., 1976), and Winterowd, "General In tro d u c tio n ," Contemporary R h e to ric . 3®Richard E. Young and A lton L. B ecker, "Toward a Modern Theory o f R h eto ric: A Tagmemic C o n trib u tio n ," in Contemporary R h e to ric , p. 129. ^ R ic h a rd E. Young, A lton L. Becker, and Kenneth L. P ik e, R h e to ric : Discovery and Change (New York: H arcourt, 1970); Ren M acrorie, T e llin g W riting (New York: Hayden Book C o., 1970); Stephen Judy, |"The Search fo r S tru c tu re s in th e Teaching of Com position," E nglish 'Jo u rn a l, 59 (1970), 213-18; James E. M ille r, Word, S e lf, R e a lity : iThe R hetoric o f Im agination (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972); P e te r Elbow, W riting W ithout Teachers (New York: Oxford Univ. P re s s , 1974); Edward P. J . C o rb e tt, C la s sic a l R h eto ric fo r th e Modern S tu d en t, 2nd ed. |(New York: Oxford Univ. P re s s , 1971); James L. Kinneavy, Theory of iDiscourse (Englewood C l i f f s , N .J .: P re n tic e -H a ll, 1971); W . Ross Winterowd, "The Grammar o f Coherence," in Contemporary R h e to ric , pp. 225-32; K eith F o rt, "Form, A u th o rity , and th e C r itic a l E ssay," in Contemporary R h e to ric , pp. 171-82. .361 IX. INVENTION: COGNITIVE CHOICES 2.1 The dominance of ex p ressio n and the dominance o f invention Invention i s the f i r s t of th e r h e to ric a l a r ts because form w ithout substance i s abhorrent to our n o tio n s o f what r h e to ric should be; rh e to ric becomes "mere rh e to ric " when the form and s ty le of d iscourse assume in a p p ro p ria te emphasis—u su a lly a t the expense o f the a n a ly sis o f su b je c t m atter. But does the "an a ly sis o f su b je c t m atter" alone y ie ld the "substance" o f d isco u rse? Are methods and procedures fo r d isco v erin g is s u e s , lin e s o f agreem ent, or problem s, fo r a sse ssin g p ro p o sitio n s , to p ic s , o r v alu es synonymous w ith th e a r t of invention?* S in ce, as I p o site d in th e f i r s t c h a p te r, o n e 's use of language is not pre-em inently r e f e r e n t i a l , then o n e 's in v e n tio n a l processes must have le s s to do w ith th e discovery and a n a ly sis of su b je c t m atter than the c o n stru c tio n —v ia thought and language—of o n e 's s u b je c t. E xpression, as we defined i t in Chapter 1, i s , a f te r a l l , a lin g u is tic b lu e p rin t o f r e a l it y form ulated from a number of c o n sid era tio n s perceived by the a d d re sser. Given the dominance of e x p re ssio n , o n e 's "su b je c t" tu rn s out to be o n e 's s e l f as much as o n e 's p ro p o s itio n s , to p ic s , v alu es: In v e n tio n , th en , the ru lin g canon in a theory of r h e to r ic , i s s t i l l dominant but only i f we re -d e fin e "su b je ct m atter" so th a t i t in clu d es the open-ended process of "g en eratin g and reg e n era tin g o n e 's s e l f , o n e 's b e lie f s , and o n e 's a c tio n a l sta n c e s." ^ The canon o f in v en tio n , 37 in s h o rt, must be d escrib ed as th e in te ra c tio n between thought and lan guage, and th a t d e sc rip tio n i s th e purpose o f th is c h a p te r. In making such a claim , I am im plying a t le a s t two o th e r things* S t r i c t l y w ith in th e tr a d itio n of rh e to r ic a l s c h o la rsh ip , I have f o l lowed convention in a ssig n in g the two rem aining canons o r departm ents— form and s ty le — to su b sid ia ry ro le s in the dynamics o f communication. But fa r from tr e a tin g a l l th re e canons as se p a ra te and d i s t i n c t , I mean to dem onstrate here and a t g re a te r len g th in the follow ing chap t e r s how our views on form and s ty le depend upon a theory of in v e n tio n .^ The second im p lic a tio n has two p a rts and devolves from th e p h rase, "th e in te ra c tio n between thought and language," as a p relim in ary d e f in itio n o f in v e n tio n . So d e fin e d , any d isc u ssio n o f th e su b je ct must r e f e r to our re c e n t r e - d e f ln itio n o f reading o r , a c tu a lly , the reading p ro c e ss, which Kenneth Goodinan d e sc rib e s as th e in te ra c tio n between thought and language a ls o . For th e moment, 1 must say t h i t reading and w ritin g ( i f we can th in k o f r h e to ric as such) are not sim ply obverse and converse sid e s of th e same p sy c h o lln g u istic co in , though, of course, th ere i s a re la tio n s h ip between the two. What is lik e and u n lik e in the two processes w ill n o t be d i f f i c u l t to p o in t o u t, the comparison and c o n tra s t, fu rtherm ore, e lu c id a tin g each process th e b e tte r . The r e a l challenge in d e sc rib in g the in te ra c tio n between thought and language is t h a t , so d e fin e d , any d isc u ssio n o f in v en tio n must tak e us to the lim its of our understanding o f "m ind," "th e b ra in ," "co n scio u sn ess," " in te llig e n c e ," o r w hatever term w ill serve to d esig n ate th a t fa c u lty which c o n stru c ts our m ental and l in g u is tic _______________________________________________________________________ 3.8. analogs of th e w orld, and which may then t r e a t those analogs—o n e 's own and o th ers* —as su b je c ts of in q u iry and a n a ly s is . T ru ly , we "in v en t" th e world when we express our In te n tio n s about i t . A th eo ry o f in v en tio n and i t s p r a c tic a l a p p lic a tio n s i s nothing more o r le s s than a t e s t and a te s tin g ground fo r the work th a t is perform ed and i s being perform ed by the more than four b i l l i o n "in v en to rs" in th e world today. F i r s t , th e n , a look a t th e re se a rc h in p sy c h o lin g u istic s and the reading process can help c la r if y th e problems in d e scrib in g the compos in g pro cess (which s h a ll be defined as th e p r a c tic a l asp ect of rh e to ric fo r the d u ratio n of th is e ss a y ). W e can then a p p re c ia te th e need fo r a model o f th e composing p ro c e ss, which I o ff e r in se c tio n 2 .3 . But v a lid a tio n o f the model, even of a p relim in ary k in d , must come from sources which a re d is in te r e s te d in rh e to ric o r lit e r a c y , p e r s e , even language. In o rd er to In su re a g a in st ta u to lo g ic a l c ir c le s , th e re fo re — v a lid a tin g p sy c h o lin g u istic claim s w ith p sy c h o lin g u istic theory—I w ill r e f e r in 2.4 to some research in neurophysiology in o rd er to help ju s t if y th e major p o in ts on in v en tio n in th e composing model which th e research in p sy c h o lin g u istic s has suggested to me. In 2 .5 , I p o in t o u t some techniques and methods of In v en tio n alread y in th e p u b lic domain which c o rre la te w ith the th eo ry . F in a lly , the d e s c rip tio n of in v en tio n which I w ill o f fe r in th is ch ap ter w ill need s u b s ta n tia tio n by rh e to ric ia n s them selves. Though I s h a ll proceed throughout from a more o r le s s " s c ie n tif ic " o r ie n ta tio n , I b e lie v e m y conclusions on in v en tio n w ill be consonant w ith those who proceed from a more tr a d i tio n a l base: in the conclusion 1 hope to p o in t out th a t we a re humane ______________________________________________________________________ 39 and hum anists a l l in our e f f o r t to re in v ig o ra te rh e to ric by re c o n s ti tu tin g i t s dominant canon, in v e n tio n . 2.2 Toward a model o f the composing process Thus f a r , resea rch in p sy c h o lin g u istic s which has been ap p lied to problems in th e p r a c tic a l sphere of lite r a c y has been alm ost to ta lly concerned w ith the conceptual puzzle we c a ll the read in g p ro ce ss.^ Indeed, the th e o rie s and models o f such re se a rc h e rs as George M ille r, Frank Smith, Kenneth Goodman, to name j u s t a few, have endowed our understanding of reading w ith a ric h fund o f concepts and w ith v a li dated procedures fo r implementing those concepts in the classroom which have re c o lu tio n iz e d the teaching o f read in g . So fo r the moment, and p r in c ip a lly because both reading and w ritin g are p ro cesses which have to do w ith the in te ra c tio n between thought and language, we can r e f e r to some in s ig h ts gained from reading theory which may help us to fo r m ulate a model o f the composing p ro cess. W e understand now th a t th e re a d e r 's job cannot be d escrib ed in h is id e n tify in g l e t t e r by l e t t e r and word by word the h a lf-in c h e s of te x t which appear a t the end of h is nose in a se q u e n tia l scanning o f th e lin e of p r i n t. A read er sim ply cannot decode o r comprehend meaning a t the ra te o f even 200 words per m inute by such a procedure: h is s h o rt term memory could not s to re a l l the fe a tu re s o f th e graphic medium and, a t the same tim e, allow him to make 'fsense" o f what he is seeing.® R ather, says Goodman, the read er "picks up graphic cues, guided by c o n s tra in ts s e t up through p rio r ch o ices, h is language knowledge, h is c o g n itiv e s ty le s , and s tr a te g ie s he has learned."® He then p re d ic ts _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 40 what th e te x t w ill sa y , t e s ts the p re d ic tio n by m atching h is choices jwith th e graphic cu es, and confirm s h is p re d ic tio n by accep tin g th e ^semantic match o f h is "choice" and the graphic cues (or disconfirm s because o f a non-match and begins a l l over a g a in ).^ Reading, as Goodman p u ts i t , i s a p sy c h o lin g u istic guessing game, and a good deal of the guessing involves th e re a d e r's discovery o f the w r i t e r ’s In te n tio n , fram e, p e rs p e c tiv e , and thus h is meaning. A re a d e r, fo r example, can comprehend the e n tir e message o f a s y n ta c tic u n it before he has read every word, dem onstrating th a t reading "behavior" i s jhardly a p a ssiv e e x e rc is e . T his can be i l l u s t r a t e d w ith a sim ple t e s t . The follow ing se n te n c e s, He winds h is watch w hile th e c h ild re n read . I read y esterd ay th a t th e winds would be blowing, must be comprehended in th e ir e n tir e ty b efo re the rea d er has decoded every word in a l e f t to r ig h t sequence. O therw ise, "winds" and "read" in each sentence might have been mispronounced i f spoken, given another sem antic value i f read s i l e n t l y , m isunderstood in both c a se s. The re a d e r, in o th e r w ords, must be c re d ite d w ith forming p resu p p o sitio n s about the w orld o f th e w rite r which th e process o f reading both stim u la te s and s a t i s f i e s . He and th e w r ite r , i f th e d isco u rse and the reading of i t a re s u c c e s s fu l, meet in the deep s tru c tu re of in te n tio n and response: The a c tiv ity we c a l l reading (and w ritin g ) i s a v a ria tio n of the game of language. And th e mechanism fo r d e sc rib in g what i s done by th e p a rtic ip a n ts must e s s e n tia lly be th e same as th a t described in Chapter 1. 41 I t Is im p o rtan t, however, to mark th e d iffe re n c e in " ru le s" i f we a re to a p p re c ia te the ro le s of rea d er and w rite r in the game o f lan guage. The re a d e r, lik e the addressee in the language game in Chapter 1, cannot be thought of as a p assiv e medium through which the "thoughts" of the w r ite r are decoded in a lin e a r and se q u e n tia l ven trilo q u ism . R ath er, In the theory of the reading process which i s ev o lv in g , reading I s seen as inform ation p ro ce ssin g . The re a d e r, a u se r o f language, in te r a c ts w ith th e graphic in p u t as he seeks to re c o n s tru c t a message encoded by th e w r ite r . He co n cen trates h is t o t a l p r io r ex p erien ce and le a rn in g on the ta s k , drawing on h is experience and the concepts he has a tta in e d as w ell as th e language competence h§ has achieved. ? Or, having j u s t read th a t sta te m e n t, our comprehension o f i t i s in s u b tle r a tio to our p r io r experience and le a rn in g , concepts, and competence as speakers of E n g lish . No more and no l e s s . As one rh e to ric ia n -lin g u i8 t has p u t i t , " I f I d o n 't understand w h a t's going on in a physics textbook, does th a t mean I need to le a rn how to read? O bviously, th e read er i s a competent speaker o f the language, but th e language game which i s in fo rce in a physics textbook i s one in which he cannot p a r tic ip a te . He cannot respond to the in te n tio n of th e w r ite r , o r what i s more to the p o in t th a t I am lead in g up to , the w rite r o r the te x t d id hot take in to c o n sid e ra tio n the ex p erien ce, co n cep ts, and language competence o f th is p a r tic u la r read er as he sought to re c o n stru c t the message. He was p lay in g th e language game w ith some o th e r ad d ressee. The competent w r ite r , obvio u sly , cannot be thought o f as sim ply ________________________ 42 engaged in tran sp o sin g some in v io la b le thought in to language v ia th e w ritte n medium. Language i s more than the a r tic u la tio n of id ea s v ia syntax and lex ico n . He must a ls o presuppose an addressee who w ill have a context ready fo r the su b je c t m a tte r. In encoding a message which i s e v e n tu a lly re c o n stru c te d by a re a d e r, he must make some hypotheses about th e conceptual to o ls used in th a t re c o n stru c tio n . And he w ill do th a t by p o s itin g th e a d d re ss e e 's responses o r a lte r - in te n tio n s to th e statem en ts of epistem ic f a c t which he o f f e r s . The w r ite r w i l l , in e f f e c t , engage in a v a ria tio n of th e language game which we c a ll rh e to ric by " sta n d in g -in " fo r th e a d d re ssee , by com pleting by proxy the mechanism o f in te n tio n -re s p o n s e . Thus, by and la r g e , th e methods and techniques fo r d isco v erin g s u b je c t m a tte r, th e whole a r t o f In v e n tio n , may be seen as a form alized and o b je c tiv e re c o g n itio n o f a lte r - in te n tio n s in th e game of language we c a ll r h e to r ic . I f I , fo r in s ta n c e , having heard S o lz sh e n ltsy n 's Harvard Commencement A ddress, f e e l th e need to w rite a review of th e speech, I have alread y formed an in te n tio n which w ill i n i t i a t e a s e rie s of " tu rn -ta k in g s" in the fin ish e d d isc o u rse . L et us suppose th a t my " th e s is " tu rn s out to be "S o lz sh e n itsy n 's speech was an emo tio n a lly e ff e c tiv e b u t e s s e n tia lly i l l o g i c a l appeal to the need fo r c e rta in ty in human a f f a i r s ." Of co u rse, I in te n d th a t my read er jo in w ith me in c r i t ic i z i n g th e sp e a k e r's p resu p p o sitio n s about th e w orld. But th a t in te n tio n must be framed in th e responses which I hypothe s iz e in o rd e r fo r my communication to be e f f e c tiv e . In th is l i g h t , A r i s t o t le 's to p ic s may be seen as a n o ta tio n a l system fo r p o ssib le A3 responses by probable audiences. A b r i e f sketch o f c o rre la tio n s can help us h e re . Responses o r A lte r-in te n tio n s Topic Genera "What do you mean by 'n e e d ' (or 'c e rta in ty * or 'i l l o g i c a l ' o r 'X ')? " "Maybe. But t h a t 's h is p itc h as a n o v e lis t to o . W hy should he be any d iff e r e n t In a speech?" "What caused such a speech? (Or) how did your re a c tio n come about? What are the consequences o f the speech and i t s re a c tio n s? " " Is i t p o ss ib le th a t he (you) w ill be believed? Does experience in human a f f a ir s su p p o rt h is (your) id eas?" "Why should I b e lie v e you in ste a d o f him (m yself)? Can you back up your ex p ressio n o f b e li e f w ith precedents o r s t a t i s t i c s ? " On a more p a r tic u la r le v e l, every one of th e tw en ty -eig h t to p ic s l i s t e d in Book I I o f The R hetoric may be considered a b s tra c tio n s , n o t o f th e way people "th in k " w ith in a system o f lo g ic , b u t of how they "co o p erate" in a h y p o th e tic a l d ialo g u e, r h e to r ic . Such in v e n tio n a l procedures as to p ic s , th en , a re n o t so much an aid in d isco v erin g "su b je c t m atter" as i t is co n v en tio n ally understood, as they a re a to o l D e fin itio n Comparison R elatio n sh ip Circum stance Testimony 44 fo r expressing the s e lv e s , the b e li e f s , and th e a ttitu d e s o f th e p a rtic ip a n ts in th e h y p o th e tic a l d ialo g u e.^ Like rea d in g , th en , w ritin g i s a p sy c h o lin g u istic guessing game. Like th e re a d e r, one who i s engaged in the composing process "concen t r a t e s h is t o ta l p r io r experience and le a rn in g on th e ta s k , drawing on h is experience and th e concepts he has a tta in e d as w e ll as th e language competence he has ach iev ed ." "As a u se r of language," he c o n stru c ts a grame which w ill support and deploy h is in te n tio n s and presupposi tio n s , w ith th is im portant q u a lif ic a tio n : in w ritin g , as opposed to speaking, he must decide on a frame which i s " c o n s iste n t w ith the behavior o f th e p a r tic ip a n ts ," as Pyle o b serv es, b u t in th e absence o f immediate cues which may d efin e th a t b eh av io r. The competent w r ite r in v en ts the re a d e r. Or to put i t an o th er way, he in v en ts h is su b je c t m atter—he analyzes what he knows and a sse sse s what he needs to know— on th e b a s is o f what he knows o r th in k s he knows about a probably, e x is te n tia l exchange o f in te n tio n s by h im self and some o th e r " s e l f ." L ite ra ry c r i t i c s lik e N orthrop Frye view p o etry as a c o n stru c tio n of p o s s ib le w o r l d s . F r o m my p o in t o f view , th e w orld of r h e to ric i s a probable one. U nlike th e w r ite r of p o e try , the w rite r o f non f ic tio n can express no o th e r s e l f , b e li e f s , o r a ttitu d e s but h is own, o r those he wants a scrib e d to him. And th a t i s p re c is e ly why am biguity in rh e to ric has a n e g ativ e v a lu e . One o f th e ru le s fo r w ritin g and read in g p o etry i s th a t both w rite r and re a d e r a re fre e to adopt o r abandon v a rio u s "se lv es" in th e ir c o o p erativ e e f f o r t of transcendin g what they know o r b e lie v e in th e " re a l" w o rld .** Those engaged in the 45 rh e to r ic a l a c t have no such lic e n s e to bend the ru le s o f language. They must re -c re a te what they know of each o th e r, a t a d is ta n c e , and thus p ro je c t the ru le s of co nversation onto an o th er medium. The w rite r and re a d e r of p oetry can abhor sin n e rs and m urderers a t the same time th e ir personae sym pathize w ith th e ’'hero*1 o f P arad ise L ost or Crime and Punishm ent. As a re a d e r, i t is p o ssib le fo r me to do both (or more) (or one o r the o th e r) given th e s e l f I have e le c te d to c o lla b o ra te w ith the persona I p ro je c t speaking fo r the w r ite r , t h i s i s th e " fre e dream" th a t S a rtre c a lls read in g : th e reading o f l i t e r a tu r e . In r h e to r ic , however, " I" am always I ; as a w rite r o r read er I c o n stru c t and re c o n stru c t probable in te n tio n s , resp o n ses, and p re su p p o sitio n s on the evidence fo r behavior I take from n o n -im ag in ativ e, 1 ^ co n v en tio n ally " r e s tr ic te d " encounters in language. So th e beginning of the r h e to r ic a l speech a c t i s th e in te n tio n to communicate w ith a probable audience, n o t th e in tro d u c tio n of th e f i r s t phoneme, grapheme, o r word. And my in te n tio n must be framed w ith in my concepts and experience as a u se r of language. That i s the s u b je c t and substance o f in v e n tio n . 2.3 A model o f th e composing process A w r i t e r 's jo b , th e n , i s to compose the t a c i t p resu p p o sitio n s which he and the rea d er b rin g to expression and response. In th e a c t of w ritin g , th e a d d re sser p u ts to g e th e r in a unique com bination th e g en eral and p a r tic u la r fe a tu re s o f a su b je c t as they are known o r become known to him ,; guided and co n strain ed by th e ru le s o f language. 46 This view o f com position d e scrib e s a new r h e to r ic , the view th a t the w rite r has g en eralized th e ru le s of spoken language (c o n v e rsa tio n , to be e x ac t) so th a t the dynamics o f in te n tio n and response o b ta in in w ritte n language (o r rh e to ric ) to o . Thus, as I s h a ll use the term s, Invention and composing are lik e a c t i v i t i e s , fo r in v en tin g and compos ing a re always a ffe c tin g th e o th e r so long as the ad d resser i s choosing, r e je c tin g , comparing, m atching, and a d ju stin g the "m a te ria ls" of p re su p p o sitio n , su b je c t m a tte r, in te n tio n , and response. He may know what he wants to sa y , fo r exam ple, b u t even th a t seem ingly fix ed elem ent of th e whole may change shape as h is a tte n tio n focuses on one b i t o r another o f h is m a te ria ls , to say nothing o f th e change in p e rsp ec tiv e which tak es p lac e — toward th e whole—as one b i t o f m a te ria l a f t e r another assumes prominance in th e h iera rch y o f what i s re c a lle d a t any one moment from both long- and sh o rt-te rm memory banks. At th is p o in t, we need a model of th e composing p ro c e ss, a mechan ism of "what happens" when someone addresses a su b je c t to be composed. I o ffe r the model b earin g in mind th a t w ritin g i s one o f th e most com p le x games th a t human beings have d ev ised , and th a t any model attem pt ing to reduce th a t com plexity to manageable form must d e le te the most in te r e s tin g p a r ts , the in tu i t iv e leaps th a t happen in any c re a tiv e a c t. N e v erth ele ss, fo r the sake of tid in e s s and convenience, h ere are what I judge to be the " ste p s" in the composing p ro cess which have some re fe re n c e in the re se a rc h in lin g u is tic s and philosophy. (" S te p s," o f co u rse, i s a s p a tia l and se q u e n tia l m etaphor; the e v i dence which re fu te s such a n alo g ie s w ill be taken up in 2 .A.) The ATj model i s advanced as a s e t o f hypotheses th a t in p rin c ip le may be te s te d through case s tu d ie s and o th e r e m p iric a l methods of in v e s tig a tio n . I have given i t a “t r i a l run" a g a in st my own and o th e r s ’ in tu itio n s , the f i r s t h u rd le th a t any l in g u is tic model must p a ss, and have found i t to be a v a lid instrum ent fo r p r a c tic a l re se a rc h . A schem atization of the model appears on page 51. 1. The w r ite r addresses a s u b je c t, X, to be composed. 2. He forms a te n ta tiv e p e rsp e c tiv e toward X by re c a llin g what he knows about X from h is long-term memory and by "judging" h is experience w ith X and w ith th e ta sk o f w ritin g in g e n e ra l. 3. He forms P resu p p o sitio n 1: the meaning o f X to th e a d d re sse r. 4. He p ro je c ts a te n ta tiv e p e rsp e c tiv e toward X by the addressee by re c o n stru c tin g images o r n o tio n s of general and p a r tic u la r c o n tex ts (fram es, o r p la c e s , in te l le c t u a l schem ata, works o f a r t , e tc .) in which X o r something a sso c ia te d w ith X was d iscu ssed . 5. He forms P resu p p o sitio n 2: th e "meaning" o f X to the ad d ressee. 6. He chooses a "perform ative s ta n c e ," thereby choosing a general o r p a r tic u la r mode o r form fo r h is d isco u rse which he p u ts in h is medium-term memory, to be a d ju s te d , abandoned, o r adopted as he proceeds. ^ 7. He a d ju s ts the re la tio n s h ip s of the two p resu p p o sitio n s and th e perform ative sta n c e . I f th e re i s l i t t l e "matching" (o r n o n e), he begins a l l over ag ain . I f th ere i s a p o ssib le 48 match of meanings and form, he w ill then adopt a s ty le o r code of p re se n ta tio n in o rd er to e ff e c t and a f f e c t the com bination of meanings and form. 8. Now he fix e s h is in te n tio n . Out of a l l the p o ssib le "p erfo rm ativ es," he judges one to be the most a p p ro p ria te to h is com position of m a te ria ls thus fa r ("I a s s e r t. . . or "I a d v ise . . . ," etc.). He scans h is long-term memory for inform ation on X and h is medium-term memory fo r h is choice of form and s ty le to q u a lify h is in te n tio n . 9. He then fix e s a frame fo r h is in te n tio n about the meaning of X so th a t i t may conform to the a d d re sse e 's meaning. He com pares in te n tio n , fram e, and response fo r a match or super im position and proceeds i f th e re is enough o f an o v e rla p . I f n o t, he begins the process over again a t the beginning o r a t some in term ed iate and ap p ro p riate s te p . 10. I f the p o ssib le match between in te n tio n and frame seems work a b le , he scans h is medium-term memory fo r h is q u a lifie d choices of s ty le and form and a d ju sts in te n tio n o r frame or both fo r coherency. 11. He encodes, f in a lly , not j u s t data o r su b je c t m a tte r, but the r h e to ric a l "m a te ria ls" of d isc o u rse: what is known and pro je c te d about the p e rsp e c tiv e s o f a d d re sser and addressee along w ith the adjustm ents and m anipulations o f what he knows about language games in th e absence of immediate cues. 12. He judges the a p p ro p ria te n ess of the com position of m a te ria ls : ______________________________________________________________49 s u b je c t, m eanings, In te n tio n , re s p o n s e (s ), form, and s ty le . I f the p o te n tia l d isco u rse f a i l s th e t e s t of a p p ro p ria te n e ss, he begins again a t ste p 1 or another le v e l judged to be f a r back enough in the process to c o rre c t the problem. I f th e re i s a p o ss ib le match of a l l choices in the process thus f a r , he proceeds to the ta sk o f w ritin g . Of co u rse, th e ad d resser may begin to encode o r to engage in the p h y sic a l a c t o f w ritin g a t any sta g e in the process which i s describ ed above. N e v erth ele ss, u n t i l he a rriv e s a t th e c o g n itiv e judgments in ste p 12 which admit a p p ro p ria te n e ss, he is engaged in in v en tio n of th e f i r s t o rd e r. I should p o in t out two th in g s which i f I had included in the model would have made i t even more unw ieldy. The f i r s t i s th a t a t any le v e l the w r ite r w ill be sw itching back and fo rth from long- to medium- to sh o rt-te rm memory, making ad hoc d e cisio n s about h is progress through the whole of th e process as w e ll as where he m ight be a t any s te p . The second p o in t i s th a t the w rite r w ill alm ost always make c o g n itiv e ad ju stm en ts in th e "w ritin g " o r " re -w ritin g " sta g e s o f composing th a t w ill put him back in some ste p o f a d ju s tin g and choosing h is m a te ria ls . Invention i s an on-going e x ercise u n t i l the com position passes from the hands o f the w r ite r . H ere, th en , i s a sch em atlzatlo n of th e model. 50J -> SUBJECT (X) to be Q s s a a s s & s L m m — — n I Communication u n in te llig ib le PRESUPPOSITION ] P erspective of Addresser to X (Meaning of Xj) PRESUPPOSITION J Perspective of Addressee to X (Meaning of X 2) 3E C H O O S E Perform ative Stance: |advise I ^ rep o rt (to '"joke" A D JU ST R elationships of meaning^, meaning2 , and perform ative stance no [match long-term memory of X addressee s image of addresser possible match medium-term memory C H O O S E Form or M ode £ long-term memory of p a rtic u la r and general audiences self-im age of addresser long-term memory of X FIX INTENTION e s t Appro- rla te n e ss of e latio n sh ip s * medium-term memory C H O O S E sty le or code * C O M P A R E no match E N C O D E ((I a s s e rt) (I advise)) e tc . no match FIX F R A M E Recall meaning^ and meaning? medium-term memory match most , choices & communication u n in te llig ib le POSSIBLE M A T C H of adjust sty le communication of chiches; old news N aenta-*/ yf \and FrameL v: medium-term memory C O M M U N IC A T IO N O F N E W S adjust <- New Meaning for X -fprm ,,,, 2.4 The p a rts and whole o f in v en tio n The resea rch on the b ra in which has th e most relevance fo r rh e to r ic ia n s and those who are in te r e s te d in th e composing pro cess and l i t eracy in g en eral c e n te rs on hem isphericity.*-* The concept o f hemi s p h e ric ity recognizes th a t each h a lf of th e b ra in —the l e f t hem isphere (LH) and the r ig h t hem isphere (RH)— fu n ctio n s as a d is c re te b u t com plenentary c o g n itiv e u n it. W e have a long h is to ry of sp e c u la tio n about th e dual n a tu re of man: th e A pollonlan-D ionyslan or c la s s ic a l- rom antic o r lo g ic a l- in tu itiv e dichotom ies are w e ll-e s ta b lis h e d in philosophy and l i t e r a r y c ritic is m . Modern b ra in research would seem to s u b s ta n tia te th ese dichotomous la b e ls and, fu rtherm ore, may enable us to go beyond sp e c u la tio n —or a t l e a s t base our sp e c u la tio n s on sc ie n t i f i c fin d in g s—when we attem pt to ex p lain a sp ec ts of human behavior such as language. The p o in t I want to make in th is s e c tio n , of course, i s th a t my "sp e c u la tiv e " model o f the composing process i s an analog of what hap pens in the b ra in o f a w r ite r who addresses a su b je c t to be tre a te d in what we c a ll e x p o sito ry p ro se , a s e q u e n tia l, lo g ic a l " d e sc rip tio n " of an id e a , w hich, by d e fin itio n , i s atem poral. That pro cess i s a w h o lls tic a f f a i r , a tra d e -o ff between hem ispheres, I w ill arg u e. But f i r s t of a l l , we must be c le a r about what i s w h o lls tic o r " g lo b a l," and th a t can be understood the b e tt e r once we have d escrib ed the cogni tiv e fu n ctio n s o f each hem isphere. I w ill adopt th e term "g lo b al" ra th e r than "w h o listic " to d e sc rib e th e tra d e -o ff fo r reasons which w ill be c le a r very s h o rtly . ________ 52 F i r s t , th e n , a general d ls c r ip tio n of b ra in geography and fu n c tio n . As we know, each h a lf of the b ra in c o n tro ls re c e p tio n of s tim u li and production o f responses fo r the o p p o site sid e o f the body. A r ig h t- handed person has probably e s ta b lis h e d l a t e r a l i t y in the l e f t hemi sp h ere, and th e re i s evidence th a t some le ft-h a n d e d persons have a "dominant" r ig h t hem isphere. ^ But th is cro ss-o v e r is a b i t more com plicated once we take in to c o n sid era tio n the asym m etrical fu n ctio n s o f LH and RH. For example, in experim ents o f d lc h o tic lis te n in g (where a su b je c t h ears sim ultaneous b u t d if f e r e n t d ig its o r words in both e a r s ) , one In v a ria b ly id e n tif ie s more a c c u ra te ly th e stim ulus p resen ted to the rig h t e a r ra th e r than than p resen ted to the l e f t . The ex p lan atio n fo r such p referen ce on th e p a r t o f th e l is te n e r l i e s in the fa c t th a t th e language c e n te rs of th e b ra in are lo c a te d in the LH and th e stim ulus p resen ted to th e r ig h t e a r i s receiv ed d ir e c tly by th a t h a lf o f the b ra in resp o n sib le not only fo r decoding (rec eiv in g ) i t b u t producing (recoding) th e proper experim ental response, id e n ti fying i t by name. By c o n tra s t, th e stim ulus p resen te d to th e l e f t e a r i s receiv ed by th e R H atid and must then be "tran sm itte d " to the LH v ia the corpus collosum (th e bundle o f nerve f ib e r s connecting th e two halves of the b ra in ) in o rd er to be decoded and recoded in th e la n guage c e n te rs . The time gap of j u s t a few m illisec o n d s between the d ir e c t and in d ir e c t re c e p tio n o f v e rb a l d a ta causes th e su b je c t to id e n tify more a c c u ra te ly , and thus " p re fe r," th e word o r d i g it th a t he hears in h is rig h t e a r, But ju s t th e o p p o site happens when a melody o r tone i s involved. S ubjects w ill id e n tify "m usical" s tim u li p resen ted 53 to th e l e f t e a r (RH) much more re a d ily and a c c u ra te ly than th a t p re sented to the rig h t (LH). The follow ing diagrams ( a f te r Krashen) can help c la r if y what goes on in d ic h o tic lis te n in g . V erbal S tim uli Tonal s tim u li a re id e n tifie d by RH, but a p p ro p ria te responses such as v e rb a liz in g the id e n tif ic a tio n can be c a rrie d out only by LH, the s e a t o f language. Thus, music th a t is p resen ted to th e l e f t e a r must be processed in R H and then id e n tif ie d in LH "language." I f i t i s p re sen ted to the rig h t e a r , i t i s "processed" as "music" in LH, tra n s m itted to R H fo r co g n itiv e id e n tif ic a tio n , and then re -tra n s m itte d back to LH fo r v e rb a l id e n tif ic a tio n . The l a t t e r process involves th ree c ro s s-o v e rs, tak in g more time in experim ental s itu a tio n s (and r e a l- l i f e ) , causing "p re fe re n c e ” by the l e f t e a r fo r id e n tif ic a tio n s o f to n e, p itc h , melody, e tc . Such an example is meant to dem onstrate not only how LH and R H fu n ctio n in regard to th e ir s p e c ia ltie s , but how they cooperate in tra n s m ittin g inform ation back and fo rth in c o g n itiv e and v erb al ta s k s. Perhaps no o th e r experim ents w ith the b r a in 's fu n ctio n s a re so e le g an tly sim ple as d ic h o tic lis te n in g and so convincing in th e i r fin d in g s. L eft Ear L eft Hemisphere (Language Area) Right Hemisphere R ight Ear Tonal S tim uli L e ft Ear.* L eft Hemisphere > R ight Hemisphere ("Music Area") R ight Ear 54 Taking th e example as a base of hem ispheric s p e c ia lty (and g lo b al co o p e ra tio n ) now, we can o f f e r a l i s t of c o g n itiv e ta le n ts based on o th er experim ents and fin d in g s . ^ LH R H language music lo g ic in tu itio n deduction in d u ctio n a n a ly sis g e s ta lt red u ctio n com position l in e a r ity n o n -lin e a rity (h is to ry ) (a ll-a t-o n c e n e s s ) a b s tra c tio n concreteness i n t e l l e c t u a l i t y im agination J . E. Bogen has c o llap sed the c o n s te lla tio n s o f ta le n ts d isp lay ed by both hem ispheres in to two convenient term s: p r o p o s itio n a lity (LH) and a p p o s itlo n a lity (RH), Though perhaps no normal person (one who has n o t su ffe re d trauma to e ith e r hem isphere) i s e ith e r w holly p ro p o si- tio n a l o r a p p o s itio n a l, most o f us do d isp la y a "c o g n itiv e l a t e r a l i t y , " a "p re fe rre d " way o f d e a lin g w ith and d e fin in g the world th a t marks some o f us as lo g ic a l, s c i e n t i f i c , o r " v e rb a l," and o th e rs as i n tu i t iv e , a r t i s t i c , v is u a lly and s p a tia lly o rie n te d . More s p e c if ic a lly now, we can a ssig n c o g n itiv e and conceptual task s to each hem isphere. P ro p o s itio n a lity d e fin e s th e LH ta le n t fo r so lv in g o r su g g estin g problems in m athem atics, sy n ta x , o r se q u e n tia l reaso n in g . A p p o sitlo n a lity d e fin e s th e R H ta le n t fo r d istin g u is h in g w h o lls tic p a tte r n s , p a r t to whole re la tio n s h ip s , or im a g istic thought. Note th a t the f i r s t i s concerned w ith tim e in i t s e x p re ssio n , one a c tiv ity o r " b it" follow ing an other in a programmed o rd e r, and th a t the second i s atem poral, in te g r a l, sum m ational. When we w rite in an 55 e x p o sito ry "mode," th e a p p o sitio n a l " id e a ,” "d isc o v e ry ,” o r knowledge of an "im m ediate1 * kind must tak e shape as p ro p o sitio n a l ex p ressio n — appearing as one " b it" follow ing an o th er (from th e le v e l of syntax to th a t o f " lo g ic a l" p ro g ressio n ) in a sequence of w ords, s y n ta c tic u n its , sen ten ces; d e f in itio n s , causes and e f f e c t s , comparisons and c o n tra s ts , p o s s i b i l i t i e s , p ro o fs; and h ie ra rc h ic o rg a n iz a tio n . That th is must be so follow s from a study of s p e c if ic and general fe a tu re s of s ty le in p o p u latio n s as d iv erse as sc h izo p h re n ic s, a p h a sic s, and stu d e n ts e n ro lle d in a c o lle g e -le v e l w ritin g c la s s . Aphasics and th e ir forms o f language d istu rb a n c e were stu d ie d by Roman Jakobson fo r th e purpose of p ro v id in g , as he sa y s, illu m in a tio n fo r the lin g u i s t . Here a re h is co n clu sio n s: The v a r ie tie s o f ap h asia are numerous and d iv e rs e , b u t a l l o f them o s c i ll a t e between the two p o la r types [the m etaphoric and metonymic]. Every form o f ap h asic d is turbance c o n sists in some impairment . . . e it h e r o f th e fa c u lty fo r s e le c tio n and s u b s titu tio n [LH o r p ro p o s itio n a l] o r fo r com bination and co n tex tu re [RH o r a p p o s itio n a l]. . . . The r e la tio n o f s im ila r ity i s suppressed in the form er, the r e la tio n o f c o n tig u ity in the l a t t e r type o f ap h asia . Metaphor i s a lie n to th e s im ila r ity d is o rd e r, and metonymy to the c o n tig u ity d iso rd e r. And he co n tin u es, The development of a d isco u rse may take p lac e along two d if f e r e n t sem antic lin e s : one to p ic may lead to an o th er e ith e r through t h e ir s im ila r ity o r t h e i r c o n tig u ity . The m etaphoric way would be th e most a p p ro p ria te term fo r the f i r s t case and th e metonymic way fo r th e second, sin c e they fin d t h e i r most condensed ex p ressio n in m etaphor and metonymy re s p e c tiv e ly . . . . In normal v e rb a l behavior 56 both p ro cesses a re c o n tin u a lly o p e ra tiv e , but c a re fu l o b serv atio n w ill re v e a l th a t under the in flu e n c e of a c u ltu r a l p a tte r n , p e rs o n a lity , and v e rb a l s t y l e , p referen ce i s given to one o f the two p ro cesses over th e o th e r .17 Recent re se a rc h e rs would tend to uphold Jak o b so n 's o b se rv atio n th a t " in normal v e rb a l behavior*' both LH and R H or m etaphoric and metonymic "processes a re c o n tin u a lly o p e ra tiv e ," and even th a t p refe ren c e may be given to one of th e two in normal d isc o u rse . But "v erb al s ty le " does n o t cause cooperation between the two p ro cesses or cause a w rite r to p r e fe r one o f th e two. R ather s ty le i s an e f f e c t o f what I c a l l cog n itiv e l a t e r a l i t y o r p re fe re n c e , a dominant LH o r RH re a liz e d in d is course as a m etaphoric o r metonymic expression o f r e a l i t y . Of co u rse, a c u ltu r a l p a tte r n o r " p e rs o n a lity " may c u ltiv a te o n e 's co g n itiv e s tr u c tu r e s , b u t "v erb al s ty le " i s u ltim a te ly an e f f e c t o f a number o f v a ria b le s which c o n trib u te to c o g n itiv e l a t e r a l i t y . In h is e ssa y , "B rain, R h e to ric , and S ty le ," Winterowd comes much c lo s e r to d e scrib in g the o v e r- a ll e ff e c t on d isc o u rse o f th e two p o la r i t i e s o f c o g n itiv e p a tte rn s and ex p ressiv e b eh av io r. Using th e w r it ings o f p a tie n ts s u ffe rin g from sch izo p h ren ia (whom we may d e fin e as those who have impairment in one or the o th e r c o g n itiv e mode, o r those who have no "choice" in a p p o rtio n in g c o g n itiv e ta sk s to p ro p o sitio n a l o r a p p o sitio n a l hem ispheres) and from w ritin g stu d e n ts whose " s ty le s " a re d is tin c tly m etaphoric o r metonymic, Winterowd a b stra c te d the rh e to r ic a l fe a tu re s o f th ese w r ite r s , dem onstrating th a t c o g n itiv e ly , s t y l i s t i c a l l y , and v e rb a lly , t r a i t s tend to c lu s te r around e ith e r p ro p o s itio n a l o r a p p o sitio n a l expression:*® _________________ 57 P ro p o sitio n a l A p positional S ta te d to p ic Im plied to p ic O rganization r ig id O rganization fle x ib le G eneral exam ples, i f any S p e c ific examples Backgrounded s ty le Foregrounded s ty le L i t t l e presence G reat presence (Backgrounded s ty le i s taken from A uerbach's concept. A convenient synonym in the co n tex t of th is d isc u ssio n would be o b ie c tiv e o r s c i e n t i f i c . I t s o p p o site , foregrounded s t y l e , i s su b je c tiv e or p e rs o n a l. Presence i s discu ssed by Chaim Perelman as a p sy ch o lo g ical appeal to audiences by means of co n crete and im a g istlc language.) Here are examples o f the two kinds of ex p ressio n —extrem es to be su re — which seem to in d ic a te the two p o les o f c o g n itiv e s ty le . They were w ritte n by stu d e n ts of Winterowd. P ro p o sitio n a l Before a person cay say w hether the b e s t th in g s in l i f e a re f r e e , he must f i r s t d e te r mine what in h is opinion the b e s t th in g s a re . N a tu ra lly every person has h is own ideas con cerning th e o b je c ts o r th in g s th a t a re im port a n t. I b e lie v e th a t frie n d s h ip , h e a lth , and beauty a re th re e of th e most Im portant th in g s a person can enjoy. When I say "beauty" I mean having th in g s around you th a t you lik e o r being p la c e s th a t make you f e e l good. When I say th a t frie n d sh ip i s n o t fu n , I d o n 't mean th a t you can go o u t and buy fiv e d o lla rs w orth of i t when you need a frie n d . In ste a d of using money, you use y o u rs e lf. Your id e a ls and a ttitu d e s to buy frie n d s . To 58 f i t in to a group you must drop some and maybe most o f your a ttitu d e s b e fo re you w ill be considered normal in th e group. I f you d o n 't, you w ill be considered re b e llio u s o r o ff b e a t and become an o u tc a st from th a t group. T h erefo re, to have frie n d s i s to pay by changing y o u rse lf fo r th e ir b e n e fit. Good h e a lth i s very im portant to me be cause w ith o u t i t I can n o t enjoy m yself. To m aintain a h e a lty p h y sic a l c o n d itio n , one must And so on. By c o n tra s t, then: APPOSITIONAL Are Motion P ic tu re s Too Real? ’’Film" Scene i s 'Too R e a l'" Sao P au lo , B ra z il (R eu ters)—An a s s is ta n t movie d ir e c to r sh ooting a B ra z ilia n s ty le w estern , f e l l dying w ith a r i f l e b u lle t in h is back during a gunfight scen e, M eridional News Agency rep o rte d h e re Wednesday. P o lic e h a lte d film -m aking w hile they tr ie d to fin d out who f ir e d th e f a t a l shot a t M artino M artin i as film e x tra s blazed o f f blank ammuni tio n . So f a r th e re has been no ex p lan atio n of how th e re came to be a liv e b u lle t among th e b lan k s. M artin i was a ta le n te d young member o f th e "new wave" of B r a z il's film in d u s try . The film , "Obliged to K i l l," was to be completed in 10 d ay s' tim e." Senta of Vienna "B runette Senta B erger o f Vienna has long been a glowing face in n o n d escrip t German m ovies. L ast y e ar fame took a leap a cro ss Europe and th e w orld a f te r she played the lu sc io u s ly blonde German g i r l frie n d of a Russian s o ld ie r in the American-produced The V ic to rs ." I (Senta) was the ag g ressiv e g i r l in the film scenes. I stood out because 59 when you’re a g g re ssiv e , audiences watch y o u .” Senta a lso stood o u t, as m ail from men everywhere proclaim ed, because she i s f u l l - faced , full-bosom ed, fu ll-h ip p e d —a fran k ly f u l l fem ale.” "The 'Love Goddess’ who never found lo v e ." —M arilyn Monroe "Her (Miss Monroe) fans saw h e r p ic tu re s as r e fle c tio n s of h er b e au ty , fame, fo rtu n e , and sex. . . . And so on. I t i s c le a r where the p ro p o s itio n a l w rite r i s going. Though we a re bored, we a re not m y stifie d about h is in te n tio n . The a p p o sitio n a l w rite r w ill make h is p o in t sooner o r l a t e r , b u t the le s s than d u ty - bound read er w ill probably give up the chase a f te r meaning as he is inundated by examples o f some "id e a ” which has n o t y e t been named. N eedless to sa y , the p ro p o s itio n a l w rite r is to le ra te d in a r ig h t- handed, LH, te c h n o lo g ic a l c u ltu re and i t s e d u ca tio n al i n s t it u t io n s . The a p p o sitio n a l w rite r i s c la s s if ie d as in co h eren t o r , a t b e s t, an "unorganized” th in k e r. M y purpose i s n o t to make a p o l i t i c a l p o in t h e re , but to make a case fo r understanding what happens in the composing p ro cess by understand ing hem ispheric fu n ctio n s and " p re fe re n c e s ." Yet I cannot help re marking on the a tte n tio n given by neuro-surgeons, b io -c h e m ists, psy c h o lo g is ts , n e u ro lin g u is ts , and o th e rs resp o n sib le fo r b ra in re se a rc h , to the academic (and s o c ia l) im p lica tio n s o f our LH c u ltu re . To co n tin u e, then. A good w r ite r , as Winterowd comments, i s a hem isphere-hopper. He i s ab le to draw upon the ta le n ts and fu n ctio n s o f both LH and R H as he proceeds in th e ta s k of w ritin g . The fin ish e d 60 d isco u rse w ill be a happy m arriage o f LH lo g ic a l sequence and R H spec-* i f i c i t y and p erso n ab len ess, a product of g lo b al s y n th e s is . What has been e s ta b lis h e d , in o th e r w ords, i s a n e u ro lo g ic a l "cause” fo r a balanced s ty le of w ritin g . How th a t r e la te s to in v en tio n o r the composing p ro c e ss, now, can be examined. A ddressing a s u b je c t to be composed, th e w r ite r p erceiv es a c o g n itiv e w hole, more than lik e ly an R H s p e c ia lty . What must happen as a f i r s t ste p in com position i s th a t the s u b je c t, the meaning o f X, must be de-composed by LH s p e c ia ltie s of a n a ly sis and p ro p o s itio n a lity in o rd er fo r the meaning to be "decoded” and p o te n tia lly "recoded." R e ca llin g S o lsz h e n itsy n 's speech fo r th e moment, i t was heard as a sequence of lin g u is tic and rh e to r ic a l d e t a i l s , but the whole of i t i s sto re d as a "m eaning," perhaps in terms o f S o lszh e n itsy n ’s in te n tio n p a r a lle l w ith the h e a re r ’s a lte r - in te n tio n or response. The p a rts o f th e speech and i t s re c e p tio n —a l l the elem ents o f th e lan guage game— are telesco p ed to form an "image" o f what the speaker sa id and what th e lis te n e r h e ard . Now th e re la tio n s h ip of p a r t( s ) to whole i s a s p e c ia lty o f RH, and we can go beyond the "image" metaphor o f th a t s p e c ia lty having been advised th a t p ro cessin g meaning i s a s p e c ia lty o f RH, to o . " I t i s the s y n th e s is t in d e alin g w ith Inform ation in p u t," as the resea rch in d ic a te s to Krashen. And he co n tin u es, " . . . what i s e s s e n tia lly involved in language pro d u ctio n i s th e programming [LH] o f an id ea [RH], i t s e l f c o n tain in g no i n t r i n s i c teiqporal o rd e r, in to a sequence o f l in g u i s t i c u n its , which a re a ls o i n t r i n s i c a l ly u n o rd ered ."19 The speech, reduced to meaning, i s re trie v e d as a sem antic bundle once 61 i t i s d esignated as X. But s t i l l an ’’idea" w ith "no i n t r i n s i c tem poral o rd e r," X must r e f e r i t s e l f to LH fo r decoding in to language (on the su rfa c e o f speech or te x t , a tem poral phenomenon), fo r a n a ly sis of m eaning, fo r i t s programming in to lin g u is tic u n its and r h e to r ic a l components. I t i s a t th is p o in t in g lo b al cooperation where in v en tio n o f a c re a tiv e o rd er ra th e r than a sim ple disco v ery of fa c ts b eg in s. L et me r e f e r to A r i s t o t le 's to p ic s once more, th is tim e to dem onstrate th e ir v a lid ity in term s of LH s p e c ia lty : D e fin itio n : p ro p o sitio n s ; Comparison and C o n tra s t: m etaphor; R elatio n sh ip (Cause and E f f e c t) : lo g ic a l sequence; C ircum stance: sequence of e v en ts; Testim ony: d a ta a n a ly sis and s t a t i s t i c s . But thought cannot begin and end w ith an a n a ly sis o f meaning, no m atter how thorough th a t a n a ly s is . One can sp e c u la te th a t th e pro cess o f in v en tio n i s only begun by LH s p e c ia l t i e s of a n a ly s is . RH, the s y n th e s iz e r, can b rin g i t s s p e c ia lty to b e ar on the fu n ctio n s of LH ju s t as we have seen the re v e rse to be tr u e . R H probably "g e ts in to the a c t" follow ing every program m atic and a n a ly tic a l process o f LH by m atching up, in metonymic fa sh io n , th e ap p ro p riaten ess of the p a r t to th e w hole, the component o f meaning to th e whole of "m eaning." I fin d th a t as I tr y to e x p la in R H "in v en t iv en ess" h e re , I re v e rt to th e "image" m etaphor; sensing th e "w holeness" of d isco u rse i s a fu n ctio n o f RH. So c la s s ic a l o r conventional methods o f In v e n tio n , in o th e r w ords, are LH methods fo r a n aly zin g , o rg an iz in g , a r tic u la tin g the meanings which have been assigned to r e a l it y by RH, but they . 62 In co rp o ra te no mechanism fo r judging the re la tio n s h ip of th e a n a ly tic a l p a r t to th e whole of the meaning. That s y n th e siz in g , judgm ental s p e c ia lty must belong to RH. Knowing th at* and knowing th a t any suc c e ss fu l d isco u rse i s s y n th e tic as w ell as a n a ly tic , we a re o b lig ed to in c o rp o ra te in to any theory of in v en tio n the g lo b al co o rd in a te s of sy n th e sis and a n a ly s is . In a model o f the composing p ro c e ss, th e re fo re , the a c tiv ity of m atching o r sy n th e siz in g (judging the re la tio n s h ip o f p a r t to whole) i s as worthy o f m ention as th e a c tiv ity of a n a ly sis (reducing meaning to p ro p o s itio n s , perform ative sta n c e s , p o ssib le h ie r a r c h ie s , to p ic a l In v e s tig a tio n s ) which seems to be mandated by th e s p e c ia l fu n ctio n s of LH. Now th e f r u s tr a tin g ta s k o f a r tic u la tin g (LH) th e a c tiv ity o f s y n th e tic judgment (RH) i s ev id en t in the h is to ry o f In te n tio n ; A r is to tle , fo r example a g a in , had no d if f ic u lty in p u ttin g in to words (an LH s p e c ia lty ) h is to p ic s fo r a n a ly sis (an o th er LH s p e c ia lty ) ; when i t came to ta lk in g about im a g istic th ought, examples as opposed to enthymemes o r c o n tig u ity as opposed to s im ila r ity , he is u n ty p ic a lly r e tic e n t. And by and la r g e , th e th e o r is ts follow ing A r is to tle , from Q u in tilia n to Ramus to R ichard L. L arson, have im p lic itly dem onstrated th e LH ta le n t fo r ta lk in g about another o f i t s ta l e n t s —sequencing, lo g ic , h ie ra rc h ic a l o rd e r. Now we have no more to work w ith , n e u ro lo g ic a lly , than the 4th century rh e to r ic ia n , though we know what we are working w ith nowadays. W e a re o b lig e d , in o th e r w ords, to recognize th e c o n trib u tio n s of R H to the composing pro cess a t the same tim e we are a ls o o b lig ed to recognize our LH, v e rb a l In c a p a c ity to d eal 63 w ith R H fu n c tio n s. W e sim ply have g re a t d if f ic u lty d e scrib in g and I d e fin in g the w h o llstic a c t i v i t i e s we c a ll in tu itio n , a p p re c ia tin g a r t , | o r sy n th e sizin g the components of meaning. I N e v erth ele ss, we can and should begin to th in k about in v en tio n as I I the cooperative venture in glo b al a c tiv ity th a t i t must be. As a !p relim in ary excursion beyond the co g n itiv e s p e c ia ltie s o f LH, d is cussions of which have been synonymous w ith th e o rie s of in v e n tio n , we can draw up one more l i s t of LH and R H fu n c tio n s, th is time in term s of complementary and cooperative p rin c ip le s o f in v en tio n : L H p ro p o s itio n a liz in g of p resu p p o sitio n s "S teps" in Composing Model 1-5 analyzing meaning in to l in g u is tic u n its and rh e to r ic a l components org an izin g and sequencing o f u n its and components 6-8 9-10 e s ta b lis h in g h iera rch y o f components 11-12 R H "imaging" o f presup p o s itio n s o f the w orld, o f "meanings" (hoth a d d re s s e r's and addressee *s) re la tin g components to the whole and judging re la tio n s h ip s s e le c tin g "fram es" of meaning (probably in te n tio n s and r e s ponses) to match sequences (form and s ty le ) judging r h e to r ic a l de sig n and a p p ro p ria te ness o f in te n tio n to the whole of meaning The "m atter" of in v e n tio n , th en , is more than discovery of su b je c t m a tte r. Research on the b ra in t e l l s us th a t c o g n itiv e s p e c ia ltie s cause o r a t le a s t d ire c t " s ty le s " o f knowing and communicating what we 64 know, th a t we in v en t environm ents fo r meaning which then a ff e c t meaning as w ell as e f f e c t i t . A ll communication, and th a t in clu d es w ritin g , is "im aginative" (RH) and "in fo rm ativ e" (LH) in s o fa r as the a d d re sse r i s able to draw upon h is knowledge of language, from th e le v e l o f syntax to the g e s ta lte n o f th e language game, and the in te g ra te d s p e c ia ltie s o f each hem isphere, thought. The model o f th e composing p ro cess which I o f fe r i s ad m itted ly a r b itr a r y in i t s d esig n , b u t n o t in i t s con cep tu al m a te ria ls , th e blocks o f language and philosophy and th e m ortar of s c i e n t i f i c fin d in g s. 2.5 A sy n th e sis of in v e n tiv e tech n iq u es: two models o f in v en tio n As i t stan d s now, resea rch in r h e to r ic a l In v en tio n is choked w ith th e o rie s and methods which emphasize the human ta le n t fo r o rd e rin g , a b s tr a c tin g , deducing, an aly zin g , m etaphor!zing. In a b ib lio g ra p h ic a l essay o f more than fo rty -tw o pages on c u rre n t resea rch in in v e n tio n , R ichard Young devotes le s s than e ig h t to work th a t i s based on c y c lic a l ra th e r than lin e a r conceptions of th e composing p ro cess fo r th e obvious reason: when in v en tio n and "thought" become the focus of a r e s e a rc h e r's a tte n tio n , th e product of re se a rc h i s alm ost always a mechanism fo r inducing LH b eh av io r, a v a ria tio n on themes and "p referen ces" which give sh o rt s h r i f t to the sy n th e siz in g , i n t u i t i v e , im a g in ativ e , and im a g lstic ta le n ts of th e " so -c a lle d minor hem isphere." B ut, to be f a i r , and to borrow a p h ra se , few th e o r is ts are so " h a lf-b ra in e d " them selves th a t they do n o t m ention, a t l e a s t in token fa sh io n , the kind o f thought in a su c c e ssfu l p iec e o f w ritin g which cannot be accounted fo r by e s ta b lis h in g to p o i. When we are w itn ess to th a t kind o f w ritin g , says 65 Young, we u su a lly say th a t th e w rite r "has a knack fo r d e alin g w ith Ideas and e x p e rie n c e ," th a t "th e p sy ch o lo g ical p ro cesses Involved In In v en tio n a re too u n p re d ic ta b le to be c o n tro lle d by rule-govered p ro ce d u res," th a t what a re needed in complete th e o rie s o f in v en tio n a re h e u r is tic s which "can coach im agination and memory" and n o u rish and encourage th e in tu i t iv e act.^® S t i l l , however, when we come to teach in v en tio n o r to search fo r stim u la n ts fo r thought which a re tea ch a b le , we tend to re ly on mechanisms which w ill more o r le s s p re d ic t th e behavior o f th e w r ite r so th a t i t , to o , can be s u b je c t to a n a ly s is , comment, grading. The ap p aren t in e f f e c tu a lity o f such methods has n o t gone u n n o ticed , b u t i t has in la rg e p a rt gone u n co rrected even though some re se a rc h e rs have made problem atic our assum ptions th a t a n a ly sis of su b je c t m atter alone i s s u f f ic ie n t to a theory and method of inven tion.^^- I t seems f u t i l e and i t would c e r ta in ly be redundant fo r me to c arry on the debate h ere between the "a n a ly sts" and those who have c a lle d in to q u estio n the axioms o f a n a ly tic a l thought a p p lied to w ritin g . The most th a t I could do would be to d ress out th e concep tu a l p o les o f th e argument in new term inology. R ath er, I would lik e to take as givens in a p r a c tic a l course in in v en tio n th e need to emphasize R H as w ell as LH ta le n ts and the n e c e ssity of recognizing th e in v en tiv e p ro cesses in w ritin g as a v a ria tio n of th e language game. And w ith those givens in mind, we can reduce the research on in v e n tiv e techniques to two paradigm atic methods fo r stim u la tin g w ritin g which a re n o t r e p lic a tio n s of the to p o i o r in s tru c tio n s from 66 an i n e r t page to a p a ssiv e read er on how to th in k . The f i r s t method—jo u rn a l w ritin g —does not negate to p ic a l inven tio n o r the w r i t e r 's need to organize and p ro p o s ltio n a liz e what he knows. Keeping a jo u rn a l is sim ply an a id to discovery of a d if f e r e n t o rd e r. I t i s a h e u r is tic in th a t i t s " r e s u lts a re p ro v isio n a l" b e- 22 cause i t is " n e ith e r p u rely conscious nor m echanical." The second method employs an " a c tiv e " ra th e r than a p a ssiv e technique fo r pro c essin g in fo rm a tio n , sim u latin g the dialogue o f language r a th e r than a b s tra c tin g from the a c tiv e frame o f events in th e language game "to p ic s fo r in v e s tig a tio n " and s e ttin g them w ith in a h ie ra rc h ic a l o rd er which i s predeterm ined and a b so lu te . I am re fe rr in g to computer- a s s is te d - in s tr u c tio n (CAI) in h e u r is tic thought. L et me explore the im p lic a tio n s o f CAI In the f i e l d o f r h e to r ic a l in v e n tio n , and then re tu rn to jo u rn a l-w ritin g l a t e r in t h is s e c tio n , th e l a t t e r method, o f co u rse, being more conventional in i t s p ra c tic e among w rite rs i f n o t in i t s form al relevance to the dominance of e x p ressio n . Programmed h e u r is tic s a re a lre ad y w idely used as a id s to thought and discovery in the d is c ip lin e s of the sc ie n c e s. Grade school c h ild re n can "converse" w ith a computer in o rd er to gain in s tr u c tio n in m e tric a l conversion or s t a t i s t i c a l a n a ly s is ; co lleg e stu d e n ts can process and re tr ie v e d a ta —t h e ir "own" and the "com puter's"—in com binations and w ith r e s u lts which can be re fe rre d to as " in s ta n t c r e a t i v i ty ," in d is c ip lin e s as d iv erse as economics and astronomy. So f a r , however, we have made sm all and in s ig n if ic a n t gains in teach in g th e computer to a s s i s t us in c re a tiv e thought when c r e a tiv ity i s defined 67 in terms of using a n a tu ra l language. That may be changed in th e very n ear fu tu re as people come to own and use p erso n al com puters; fo r p erso n al computers to be e f f e c tiv e , they must be capable of being 2 ^ programmed by people who are not tra in e d in computer languages. In a d d itio n , the computer of the fu tu r e , i t i s now recognized, must be able to process d ata in p a r a lle l modes, something lik e the hiiman b ra in , in o rd er to a s s i s t i t s programmer in going beyond mere r e t r i e v a l and sequencing of d a ta . There a re , n e v e rth e le s s , programmed h e u ris tic s fo r com position stu d e n ts in co lleg e courses which are now "workable" and which demon s t r a te to me th e ir value as analogs of language games. Let me i l l u s tr a t e what happens in a CAI dialogue and then comment on i t s relevance to in v en tio n as the in te ra c tio n between thought and language. Here i s a h y p o th e tic a l program: 1. CO M PU TER: H ello. How are you today. 2. STUDENT: Fine. 3. C . 4. S, 5. C. 6 . S. 7. C. 8. S. 9. C. 10. S. 11. c. What can I do fo r you? I need to w rite ((a re p o rt) (a pap er)) (on X) What c la ss is th is req u ire d for? (E nglish 103) (H istory 324) (. . . .) W ill your teach er l e t you choose a c e rta in to p ic of X to co n cen trate on? Yes. What do you have in mind? The main c h a ra c te rs . 1 . No. C. Then what was assigned' S, The major b a tt l e s . Can you id e n tify th e (main c h a ra c te rs) (major b a ttle s ) ? 6 8 12. 13. 14. 2 0. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. S: C; S: 17. 18. 19. C: S: C: S: S: S: C: C: E liza b e th and Darcy. j J5: G ettysburg; and S hiloh. Name th re e a d je c tiv e s which d e sc rib e (E lizab eth ) (G ettysburg), P re ju d ic e d , i n t e l l i g e n t , poor. S _ : T raum atic, d e c is iv e , bloody. 15. C: 16. S: What evidence do you have th a t (E liza b eth was p reju d ice d ) (G ettysburg was trau m atic)? [The rem aining sequence w ill focus on one X] Her c h a ra c te riz a tio n in th e n o v el, what she did and s a id and what o th e r people sa id about h e r. Can you ex p lain th a t? I'm n o t su re what you mean. t i 11 • a • • Okay, t h a t 's a good s t a r t on the f i r s t main c h a ra c te r. Have you co n su lted any sources fo r your id eas and evidence b esid es your n o tes and the te x t? No. Do you th in k you need to? P robably. C: Why? To check up on my evidence, to back up my o p in io n s. j>: Yes. C: What a re they? S _ : A couple o f e ssa y s, one by Brower. C: I s th is enough to back up your evidence so far? IS : Probably n o t. Do you have some o th e r sources in mind? No. Do you know about the indexes in th e lib r a r y th a t you can r e f e r to fo r work on X ? 28. S: No, S : Yes. 69 29. £ : The re fe re n c e lib r a r ia n , Mr. F l i n t , can. . . . C : Okay. I f you g et stu c k , the re fe re n c e lib r a r ia n , Mr. F l i n t , can. . . . Now in a d d itio n to being p re ju d ic e d , you sa id th a t E liza b e th was a lso I n t e l li g e n t. How a re th ese two t r a i t s , being p re ju d ic e d and I n t e l li g e n t, re la te d ? 30. £ : I t ’s an unusual com bination. 31. C t W hy do you say th a t? W hy do you say th a t being p reju d ice d and i n te llig e n t is an unusual com bination? 32. j>: They d o n 't u su a lly go to g e th e r in one person. 33. C: W hy not? What makes you th in k so? 34. £ : Because someone who i s i n te l li g e n t i s curious and someone who i s p reju d ice d has a closed mind. People a r e n 't u su a lly both a t the same tim e. 35. C: What does th a t t e l l you about the main c h a ra c te r o f E lizabeth? Can you ’’d e fin e " E liza b e th in terms o f th e f i r s t two a d je c tiv e s you chose to d escrib e her? Try s ta r tin g your d e fin itio n lik e th is : E liza b e th was both p reju d ice d and i n te l li g e n t because she (look up 34). 36. S: " . . . 37. £ : Now can you r e f e r to passages in the te x t o r p laces in your c la s s n o te s . . . . A dm ittedly, our com puter-student h y p o th e tic a l dialogue i s ra th e r sim ple-m inded: th e q u estio n s a re p rim itiv e and the answers show alm ost a p rim o rd ial understanding o f the su b je c t of In v e s tig a tio n . Yet th a t i s e x a c tly the v ir tu e of any CAI program , i t s "p atien ce" in d e alin g w ith 70 th e fundam entals of m ediate and immediate knowledge and i t s " p e r s is t ence1 1 in e l i c i t i n g from the stu d en t (a t le a s t in th e dialogue above) th e p a r t to whole and whole to p a rt re la tio n s h ip s o f X, c le a rly the in te g ra te d , g lo b al thought needed by a w r ite r to "compose” any s u b je c t. Then, In a CAI programmed h e u r i s ti c , we have an analog o f the language game in an a c tiv e medium—the exchange between computer and stu d e n t—ra th e r than th e lo g arith m ic " in s tru c tio n s " to th in k on th e page o f a r h e to r ic te x t. I f th a t statem en t sounds too f u t u r i s t i c fo r some of u s , we can console o u rselv es by looking a t th e h y p o th e tic a l dialogue again and n o tic in g how clo se i t comes to S o c ra tlc method; indeed, in form at, i t i s a S o c ra tlc d ia lo g u e , w ith th e advantage th a t th e s tu d e n t's thought i s guided r a th e r than channeled by a tea ch e r w ith some predeterm ined end id e a in mind. E llen Nold o f S tanford U n iv ersity has developed a programmed h e u r is tic (som ething lik e the h y p o th e tic a l one above) which g en erates hundreds of lin e s of q u e stio n s , in - p u t, and feed-back fo r su b je c ts which are in v e s tig a te d by stu d e n ts a t any le v e l in many d is c ip lin e s . The r e s u l ts , speaking s t r i c t l y in term s o f tr a d itio n a l e x p ec ta tio n s o f In v en tiv e techniques—d e fin itio n s of term s, i l l u s t r a t i o n s and exam ples, tra c in g causes and e f f e c t s , e t c . —a re encouraging. Student essays n o t only in d ic a te what I would c a ll a tra d e -o ff between hemi sp h e re s, they a ls o show more o r ig in a lity and a r t i c u l a t e n e s s .^ The cau se, u ltim a te ly , must be a ttr ib u te d to th e com puter's (or the program m er's) responses o r " a lte r - in te n tio n s ” in th e sim u lated language game of CAI h e u r is tic s , to search fo r th e s tu d e n t's meaning of X 71 (the w r i t e r ’s R H s p e c ia lty ) and then to understand th a t meaning in a search fo r i t s components (th e w r i t e r 's LH s p e c ia lty ) , b u t w ith in an a c tiv e and g e n erativ e mode. The second h e u r is tic I want to examine—jo u rn a l-w ritin g —i s much more fa m ilia r but a ls o le s s su b je c t to a n a ly sis in i t s causing more personable and o rig in a l stu d e n t w ritin g . W e do know th a t jo u rn a l- w ritin g has undergone " f i e l d - te s t i n g ” by se rio u s w r ite rs o f every s tr ip e and temper—from Boswell to Kerouac, from Woolf to Angelou—and th a t i t has proven to be a v a lid in stru m en t fo r prom oting fluency and g en eratin g thought. I t belongs to th a t genre o f in v e n tiv e methods which i s n o t r e a lly "m ethodical" a t a l l : "the co n ten t of d isco u rse emerges from im m ediately a v a ila b le knowledge in the w r i t e r 's mind and u n a n tic ip a te d d isc o v e rie s prompted by th e a c tiv ity of p u ttin g words on p a p e r . P e r h a p s what is involved i s th e need (whatever th e source of th e need, i n tr i n s i c fo r s e rio u s , p ro fe s sio n a l w rite rs or e x tr in s ic in the form of an assignm ent fo r the stu d e n t w rite r) to address a su b je c t and to explore i t s p o s s ib i l i ti e s fo r meaning. This f i t s very w ell w ith C harles M u scatin e's o b serv atio n th a t "w ritin g about o n e s e lf," a prim ary "X" of jo u r n a l-w r ite rs , can a lso be seen as "a m atter of choosing p e rs p e c tiv e ," o r , in the terras of th is d isc u ssio n , a m atter 07 o f making co g n itiv e ch o ices. ' But th e causes can be understood i f n o t analyzed. By looking a t th e e ff e c ts of jo u rn a l-w ritin g on th e more form al essays th a t a stu d e n t is req u ire d to w rite , we can, in general term s, see what is a t work. The follow ing "p ay -o ffs" occur in th e course of a sem ester _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 72 i_ when s tu d e n t-w rite rs a re asked to keep a d a ily jo u rn a l; 1. They w ill show fre s h p e rsp e c tiv e v ia new idioins and s p e c if ic ity in th e ir w ritin g . They w ill have ’’escaped from c a te g o rie s ." 2. Meaning w ill be an a c tiv e choice o f the w r ite r . The s u b je c t w ill have meaning in terms of th e person ra th e r than v ic e -v e rs a . 3. W riters w ill dem onstrate some "form-making" p o te n tia l even w ith o u t form al in s tr u c tio n . A nalogies of experience and p e rc ep tio n w ill n o g enerate a "m etaphoric co n scio u sn ess." C le a rly , th ese b e n e fits — fre sh p e rs p e c tiv e , p e rso n a lly m eaningful sub j e c t , the p o te n tia l to arrange the components o f meaning—a re in d ic a tiv e o f the g lo b al cooperation d iscu ssed in the previous s e c tio n . They d e scrib e an "I say th a t . . . " a t t i t u d e , a concern to make th in g s happen in language, and not m erely to l e t them happen.^9 H ere, fo r exam ple, i s a reco rd o f a discovery which began w ith th e c u ltu r a l c lic h e o f "baby" as a pink and blue bundle o f innocence, and ended w ith fre s h meaning and p e rs p e c tiv e . The w rite r i s a form er stu d e n t o f mine. One l i t t l e hand folded over the border o f th e b la n k e t. I n o tic e d how i n f in i t e l y sm all th e n a il on the l i t t l e fin g e r was* And then i t exploded in my b ra in —J e s u s , th is i s a p e rso n 1 What was a lump o f protoplasm a m inute b e fo re had a fu tu re som ething lik e my h is to ry . There was a tin y , brand-new h e a rt in the m iddle o f th a t bundle th a t would b e at 72 tim es a m inute fo r the next seventy o r so y e a rs . The lu n g s, p u re , uncontam inated by smog o r n ic o tin e , would keep tim e. The __________________________________________________________________ 73 c ra z ie s t p ic tu re o f baby anatomy— rig h t down to the pancreas and the two t i b i a — got assem bled on th e sp o t. I k ep t saying "Jesu s" over and over to m yself. The m in ia tu riz e d x -ray p ic tu re o f "baby anatom y," the " fu tu re som ething lik e m y h is to r y ," th e "brand-new h e a rt" record a moment's thought in the a v a ila b le forms of a language, m etaphor and metonymy. And the record o f th a t in te r a c tio n in th e form o f a jo u rn a l page o b je c tif ie s fo r the w rite r h is p o te n tia l to "in v en t" the w orld. Now no one tau g h t the w r ite r to th in k in th e ways he reco rd ed . In e f f e c t , he rep o rte d on a n a tu ra l occurence, h is o b serv atio n s and p e rc e p tio n s. And what is more, no one w ill have to teach him how to tr a n s f e r h is ta le n t fo r p ro p o s itlo n a liz ln g and "imaging" what he knows from th e medium of p e rso n al w ritin g to the p u b lic e ssa y . In e f f e c t , he has "discovered" th a t ta le n t to o , though he has n o t v e rb a liz e d i t nor does he need to . D iscovery begets discovery; some have to do w ith su b je c t m atter and some have to do w ith th e forms of communicating su b je c t m a tte r; some a re a rtic u la te d v ia words and sy n tax and some by a la r g e r design o f m eaning.30 The p o in t i s , though, th a t the stu d e n t who i s "req u ired " to make th e kind o f d isc o v e rie s lik e the baby one above does indeed tr a n s fe r from th e jo u rn a l page to h is more form al w ritin g requirem ents h is "new-found" ta le n t fo r ex p ressio n o f meaning, th e f i r s t and perhaps only requirem ent fo r su c c e ssfu l w ritin g o f any k ind. Jo u rn a l-w ritin g and CAI h e u r is tic programs a re only two techniques o f In v en tio n which remark on the search fo r meaning, a w r i t e r 's p ar tic ip a tin g in th e forms of language as w e ll as th o u g h t, the dominance of e x p re ssio n . There are o th e r m ethods, to be s u re , but I chose th ese two e s p e c ia lly because a t f i r s t glance they seem so u n re la te d . As "paradigm atic1 1 o f o ld and new schools of in v e n tiv e pedagogy, both techniques can be seen as both old and new approaches to in v e n tio n , o ld in the sense th a t nothing i s new (n e ith e r S o c ra tic methods nor jo u rn a l-w ritin g ), and new in the sense th a t we a re fo rev e r tra n s la tin g th e o ld in o rd er to remark on c u rre n t concepts of what i s v a lid and tru e . In s h o r t, both a re fa m ilia r and in n o v ativ e and can serve as conceptual m odels, in th e ir r e la tio n to the dominance o f e x p re ssio n , fo r re d e fin in g in v en tio n in p r a c tic a l term s. And b o th , given a new appre c ia tio n o f th e b r a in 's g lo b al fu n ctio n o f in te g ra tin g i t s a n a ly tic and w h o lis tic s p e c i a lt i e s , can serve as h i s t o r ic a l evidence fo r th a t very ta l e n t . F or, a f t e r a l l , S o c ra tic dialogue and jo u rn al-k eep in g have been around a long tim e, th e i r lo n g ev ity su g g estin g th e ir e ffe c tiv e n e s s in h elp in g us e l i c i t and ex press su b je c t m a tte r. Only our l a t e under stan d in g of h e m isp h e ric ity accounts fo r th a t e ffe c tiv e n e s s , and sho u ld , i f the fin d in g s are tr u e , mandate th e use of h e u r is tic s such as th ese in any w ritin g c la s s . 2.6 The whole o f in v en tio n and the whole of rh e to r ic W ithout r e fe rr in g to a new paradigm fo r r h e to r ic , indeed some tim es bemoaning the lac k o f one, rh e to ric ia n s have n e v e rth e le ss p o in ted toward a need fo r re -a s s e s s ih g t h e i r d is c ip lin e . They have done so because r h e t o r i c 's d e fin itiv e canon, in v e n tio n , and the " fa c ts " about modern d isc o u rse which i t s tr a d itio n a l and m odified p rin c ip le s have helped us to d isco v er and c la s s if y , have ra is e d more q u estio n s about th e way people th in k than s e t tl e d any argum ents, 75 conventional arguments about c la s s ic a l v s. rom antic modes or new ones such as problem -solving or in fo rm atio n p ro ce ssin g . K arl W allace, fo r one, has la te ly d iscu ssed the need fo r designing a system of in v en tio n "which em phasizes the c o n te n t and substance of d isco u rse r a th e r than s tru c tu re s and techniques. Perelman's "new rh e to ric " and h is e n tir e to p ic a l system n o t only puts in q u estio n the value o f form al lo g ic in " r e a l - l i f e " communication, i t d e n ig ra te s and re fu te s the u t i l i t y o f re ly in g on a n a ly sis alone in o rd in ary d isc o u rse . B urke's A Grammar o f M otives can be read as a n e o -A ris to te lia n a n a ly sis o f the "causes" fo r human communication, but ju s t as c le a rly h is p en ta d ic method i s a lso a search fo r In te n tio n s and responses in th e game of language. And perhaps I . A. R ichards began our 20th century d is s a t is f a c tio n w ith in v e n tiv e techniques and s tru c tu re s alone when he d escrib ed rh e to r ic as th e study of m isunderstanding and i t s rem edies and co n cen trated on examining meaning in d isc o u rse . S t i l l , however, and as W allace com plains, we do not have an in te g ra te d theory o f in v en tio n o r rh e to ric from which w h o lis tic system s can be form ulated and te s te d . As I mentioned in C hapter 1, the reason is n o t d i f f i c u l t to tr a c e . The lack o f a paradigm which would make coherent a l l the d is p a ra te f a c ts and in tu itio n s of our in v e s tig a tio n s r e s u lts in fragm ented, "em p irical" responses to the problem . Like the lin g u is ts o f th e f i f t i e s , r h e to ric ia n s o f th e se v e n tie s m ight begin to look a t th e i r c o lle c tio n s of d a ta on human language as evidence fo r the o p e ra tio n o f the m ind, and a d o p t, to put i t p la in ly , a concept of language which w ill e x p lain the fa c ts ra th e r than try in g to shore up _____________________________________________________________________________ _,Z 6_ receiv ed wisdom w ith new -fangled " id e a s ." A ll to g e th e r, my remarks on in v en tio n in th is ch ap ter d e scrib e th e process o f g en eratin g and composing th e m a te ria ls of a su b je c t as " c re a tiv e ly u n iq u e," the product as "complexly communal," th e d e sig n atio n given in Chapter 1 to what happens in any language game. To engage in rh e to r ic i s to tr a n s la te the ru le s o f language in to y e t another game; to engage in the r h e to r ic a l a r t o f In v en tio n i s to compose in another medium th e in te n tio n s and responses of the p a r t i c i p an ts in d isc o u rse . 77 II. NOTES See Robert L. S co tt e t a l . , "Report of the Committee on the Nature of R h e to ric a l In v e n tio n ," The P rospect of R h e to ric , ed. Lloyd F. B itz e r and Edwin Black (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: P re n tic e - H a ll, 1971), e s p e c ia lly pp. 235-36, where eleven recommendations are o ffe re d fo r r e - c o n s titu tin g in v e n tio n . 2I b id . , p. 231. ^Ratios o f emphasis have always e x iste d between the th ree canons. When in v en tio n has been given p r io r ity in th e o re tic a l and p r a c tic a l sp h eres, form and s ty le have played secondary r o le s , and v ic e -v e rs a . R esearchers have m erely commented on the phenomenon; I mean to e s ta b lis h wny p r i o r i t i e s have p re v a ile d , e s p e c ia lly in favor of in v en tio n . ^See Norman Macrae, "How to Improve W riting S k i l l s ," in The Teaching of E xpository W riting: An Exchange of Views, An O ccasional Paper from the A lfred P . Sloan Foundation, ed . James D. Koerner (New York: A lfred P. Sloan Foundation {1977]), p. 34. ^See Kenneth Goodman, "A nalysis o f O ral Reading M iscues," in P sy c h o lin g u istic s and R eading, ed . Frank Smith (New York: H olt, R in e h a rt, 1973), p. 162. ^"Reading: A P s y c h o lin g u istic Guessing Game," in C urrent Topics in Language, ed. Nancy Ainsworth Johnson (Cambridge, M ass.: W inthrop, 1976), p. 381. ^"A nalysis of O ral Reading M iscues," p. 162. 8 P ersonal communication w ith W . Ross Winterowd. Q ’ A paraphrase of one of the recommendations o f the Committee on the N ature o f R h e to ric a l In v en tio n ; see note 1. ^ ■ ® A s Sidney has s a id , the poet does not lie , fo r he a s s e r ts nothing (what the poet sa y s, in our term s, has no "perform ative" v a lu e ). Frye picks th is up in Fables o f I d e n tity (New York: H arco u rt, 1963), e s p e c ia lly in the e ssa y s, "Myth, F ic tio n , and D isplacem ent" and "New D irec tio n s from O ld." In the f i r s t e ssa y , h is d isc u ssio n of myth and d ian o la come very clo se to the concepts of deep s tr u c tu r e and meaning; in the second, he claim s th a t the poet has no e x te rn a l model fo r h is 78 im ita tio n and th e re fo re cannot be judged by the tru th o r falsehood o f what he sa y s. The e n tir e volume i s v alu ab le fo r the c o rr e la r ie s th a t can be drawn between rea d in g -th e o ry and read in g l i t e r a t u r e . l^-See Jean-P aul S a r tr e , "Why W rite?" in C r itic a l Theory Since P la to , ed. Hazard Adams (New York: H arco u rt, 1971), pp. 1058-68. ^ P e re lm a n 's d isc u ssio n of g en eral and p a r tic u la r audiences adapts very w ell to the experience in language games 1 claim fo r the w rite r o f d isc o u rse . He sa y s, "In no o th e r p e rio d has th e re been such amazement a t the fa c t th a t a person can communicate to an o th er some th in g which h a s, fo r the h e a re r, a fo resee ab le m eaning." (The New R h e to ric , p . 123.) 13 I am borrowing and ad ap tin g th e convenient term " r h e to r ic a l stan ce" from Wayne Booth: "a sta n ce which depends on d iscovering and m aintaining in any w ritin g s itu a tio n a proper balance among the th re e elem ents th a t are a t work in any communicative effort: th e a v a ila b le arguments about th e su b je c t i t s e l f , the in te r e s ts and p e c u lia r itie s o f the audien ce, and the v o ic e , the im plied c h a ra c te r, o f the sp e a k e r." See "The R h e to rica l S ta n ce ," in Contemporary R h e to ric , p. 74. 14 W . Ross W interowd, "B rain, R h e to ric , and S ty le ," in Language and S ty le , forthcom ing. ■^See Stephen D. Krashen, "The Left Hem isphere," in M . C. W ittrock e t a l . , The Human B rain (Englewood C liffs, N.J.: P re n tic e -H a ll, 1977), pp. 107-130; and Robert D. Nebes, "Man's S o -c alled Minor Hem isphere," pp. 97-106, in the same volume. *®See J . E. Bogen, "Some E ducational Im p lica tio n s of Hem ispheric S p e c ia liz a tio n ," in The Human B ra in , pp. 133-52, fo r a su c c in c t over view o f re se a rc h . Bogen sy n th e siz e s the fin d in g s w ith a two-column l i s t o f hem ispheric s p e c ia ltie s . ^ Roman Jakobson, "The M etaphoric and Metonymic P o le s ," in C r i ti c a l Theory Since P la to , pp. 1113-14. *®"Brain, R h e to ric, and S ty le ," p. 52. ■^"The L eft Hem isphere," pp. 116-17. 20 R ichard Young, "In v en tio n : A Topographical Survey," in Teaching Com position: 10 B ib lio g ra p h ic a l E ssays, pp. 1, 2. 21 See, fo r example, Rohman and Wlecke, P re -W ritin g , pp. 1-7. 2 2 " In v e n tio n ," p . 2. 79 23()r, In o th e r w ords, computers must be designed so th a t they can be programmed v ia n a tu ra l languages. A computer language c lo se to "E nglish" i s SM ALLTALK, developed fo r use by c h ild re n (and n o n -flu en t a d u lts) w ith p ro to ty p e p erso n al com puters. See Alan C. Kay, "M icro electro n ics and the P ersonal Computer," S c ie n tif ic American. 237 (1977), 231-44. 2* Ib id . . p . 236, ^ P e rs o n a l communication w ith E llen Nold. 26"In v e n tio n ," p. 35. ^ C h a rle s M uscatine and M arlene G r if f in , ed., " In tro d u c tio n ," F ir s t Person S in g u lar (New York: A lfred A. Knopf, 1973), p . xv. 2^See Rohman and W lecke, P re -w ritin g , pp. 24-26; Ken M acrorie, T e llin g W ritin g , C hapter 1; James E. M ille r, J r . , Word, S e lf , R e a lity : The R hetoric o f Im ag in atio n , pp. 109-46. 2 9 Rohman and W lecke, P re -w ritin g , p . 21. 30see W . Ross Winterowd, " 'T o p ic s ' and Levels in th e Composing P ro c e ss," C ollege E n g lish , 34 (F e b ., 1973), 701-9; a ls o Frank J . D'Angelo, A Conceptual Theory of R hetoric (Cambridge, M ass.: W inthrop, 1975), p . 35. The " p a tte rn s of experience" a re d iscu ssed by both as in v e n tiv e and o rd erin g p rin c ip le s of com position." 31"Topoi and the Problem o f In ven tion ," in Contemporary R h eto ric, p . 113. III. FORMS OF MEANING 3.1 The meaning of form in discourse Form, arrangement, dispositio, mode— we have a bevy of terms to describe, really, one concept, how the parts of discourse fit together so that the whole is a coherent structure. We recognize form when we see it. And we impose form, or coherence, upon the disparate parts of what we conceive to be a whole: a landscape; a series of tones; a cluster of gestures, of stars, of atoms, of sentences. Indeed, the concept of paradigm, discussed in Chapter 1, or the theory of reading discussed in Chapter 2 suggests that we recognize the whole prior to admitting significance for any of its parts. The conceptual whole, in other words, channels our perception of what is there and what is 1 possible. It may be meaningless to talk about a. form unless we know what we are working from, a conceptual matrix, a "point" in the genera ting and comprehending of discourse where subject matter transforms to subject, infusing the writer's intention and the reader's response with coherence and synchrony. We can refer to that matrix as a performative stance, where, in the composing process, the writer judges one performative verb to be the most appropriate to his composition of the materials of a particu lar discourse— "I assert. . . ,";or "I advise. . . ," etc. Of course, such "expression" can be wholly intuitive, unconscious, at the most 8 1 ^ abstract level of language games, just as the production of every one of our sentences involves a mastery of grammatical processes which eludes our most masterful descriptions. A performative stance, in short, is a convenient fiction, like deep structure or the double helix. We cannot see it; we only know its effects. But through a study of effects, we can posit the reality of an antecedent force or mechanism. Now, we know an effect can become a cause, as George Orwell reminds us in his essay, "Politics and the English Language," where he defends original, that is, meaningful, prose against the hacks who allow their phrases to arrive ready-made from the assembly line of mass thought. And form in discourse, an effect of "meaning," can also be come a cause for our assigning meaning to a subject when we confuse convention with reality; it can work like any cultural idiom to pre dispose thought. What began, for example, as a logical arrangement for propositions to be debated by political adversaries— first state your case, then prove it— degenerated to the only form available to many of us, locking writers (and readers) and their perceptions in the vise of a presumed, received authority over subject matter. In the case of the writer, he automatically assumes the role of "thesis hunter" if his subject matter is automatically assumed to be the "source of 2 thesis." Such assumptions follow when and if the only performative stance made available to a writer because of a conventional or insti tutionalized form is an "I assert." There may be as many forms for conveying information as there are performative stances or, more pre cisely, performative verbs which can represent a writer's attitude 82 toward the materials of his discourse. Of course, the two- or five- or eight-part arrangements of classical rhetoric have served very well our pro-con formats of debating an issue. But "format" is not the same thing as "form," and even though terms like "mode" or "genre" may be introduced to denote patterns of meaning which are "part of a complex of changing con- 3 ventions," the terms are still less than susceptible to precise semantic differentiation. The concepts of form are less than distinct, in other words* and the terms which are used to designate the concepts 4 cloud every discussion of the second department of rhetoric. It is easy enough to say, for example, that a convention like in medias res supports the dictum of chronological order for the narrative mode; but there is no "explanation" most of the time for the successful exposition of an atemporal idea or description of something that happens in space. Most of what we write about in non-fiction prose reflects no order which is intrinsic to itself or its subject matter. Now add to all that the proposition that in our discussing the genesis of form within the composing process, we essentially refer to a mentalistic process, and we must agree with Chaim Perelman that "The 5 limits for the play of [all] the elements are imprecise on all sides." I propose, however, to make a start toward a new understanding of form by asking some "why" questions rather than "how" questions. Again, I believe, we can adapt a hypothesis from reading theory in order to examine one more aspect of the composing process. As Paul Kolers says: . . . An accurate representation of any complex skill must account for the various levels at 8 3 which it can be executed and for the conditions that determine any level of performance. This task cannot be performed inductively, by studying the most primitive aspects of the reader's be havior and working up, because there is no principle to guide the induction. The more primitive behavior can be understood only as a part of the more sophisticated behavior.® We begin, then, not by looking at and classifying the "more primitive behavior," realized in the arrangement, form, genre, or mode of finished discourse. We may begin by asking why we recognize the many forms or structures in finished discourse. What wholistic concept generates the "facts" of form? The second part of this chapter will be concerned with outlining the principles of language which are realized as coherent structures in discourse. 3.2 Form as a function of intention In Chapter 2, I offered a preliminary description of form in dis course as a "flattened-out" representation of the rhythms and contours of spoken dialogue. Suggestive but tentative work in proxemics and kinesics— the study of "personal space" and gestures; in effect, the study of non-articulated intentions— would seem to bear out my analogy. Edward Hall has reported on an extended experiment meant to explore why any two conversants were seen to move in close physical synchrony when they were studied on slow motion film: . . . [finally] two people in conversation were wired to electroencephalographs to see if there was any comparability in brain waves. Two cameras were set up so that one focused on the speakers, the other on the EEG recording pens. When the two people talked, the recording pens moved as though driven by a single brain. When one of the individuals was called out of the conversation by 8 4 a third person, the pens no longer moved together. . . . The only thing that destroyed synchrony was?. if one of the people was called out of the con versation by a third party. Synchrony stopped, and a new chain was set up with the new inter locutor. 7 If we think of rhetoric's final cause as communication rather than argument or persuasion, successful form in discourse might be viewed as representing a synchrony of egos, a writer's attempt to make "coherent" or to "compose" intention and alter-intention (or response) in the absence of immediate cues to the "interlocutor's" behavior. It is tempting to think of form as second-generation synchrony of the kind Hall describes above, just as the x^rritten word itself is the daughter of spoken language. Be that as it may, w e can, given the dominance of expression, presume a synchrony of egos in discourse: the analysis of performative verbs in deep structure semantics directs that x*e may account for form in any stretch of discourse by positing a deep structure, abstract performative stance entailed by the intentions and responses present in any language game. For example, if a writer adopts a performative stance in an essay represented by an I assert (to you) that P [x], we can take for granted that he has projected an alter-intention on the part of the reader which can be roughly represented by the "per formative response," I require (of you) proof that P [x]. The resulting "form" of the discourse will respect that response or alter- intention in its logical presentation of proof and evidence, infor mation and demonstration. A writer, in other words, will compose more than subject mattet; he will attempt to bring together or reconcile 8 5 the differing presuppositions toward the materials of the discourse and establish a new base for understanding the subject. If he is success ful, he will have established a new^meaning for X; he will have com municated "news." Now the conveying of news can and does involve other formats than logical presentation of proof and evidence. In Aristotle’s terms, we may have arrived at a new interpretation of logos, given the previous discussion of performativeness as a generator of form. But what of ethos and pathos? Can present day linguistic study support the triadic whole of classical intuitions about the forms or "types" of rhetoric? I believe it can, and in doing so, rejuvenate a wholistic concept of form in discourse. First, I would like to recall and modify some ideas on speech act theory, what people do by means of performative environments when they talk to each other. Ordinary language philosophers, from Alston and Searle to Austin and Grice, have identified the differences between the locutioriary act and the illocutionary act, and linguists, especially those working in the semantics of deep structure like Ross, have made fine distinctions between the physical act of saying or writing some thing and the presuppositions which are preparatory to the act and the intention which is realized in the act. As I summed up the evidence in Chapter 1, it came to this: Saying something (the locutionary act) is itself a form of behavior, a kind of doing (the illocutionary act). And, it should be remembered, all our utterances (except, perhaps, rituals of greeting and the like) have intentional or illocutionary force. That notion, really, does away with deep structure distinctions §6. between performative verbs like "pronounce” and "assert," distinctions which appear to be quite profound in the surface structure. Take the sentence, I pronounce you man and wife as opposed to the sentence, I assert that this is true. Broad interpreters of ordinary language (Alston, for one) would agree that the only difference in interpretation of the two rests on the source of authority implicit in either utterance. In the first, the source of authority is civil or social; in the second, it is epistemic, but no less "authoritative" for that. Provided that the 8 preparatory rules of felicity and cooperation are satisfied, both locutions carry the same intentional or illocutionary weight: I say to you that a certain state of affairs exists. And yet we know that, provided that all preparatory conditions are met on the part of the addresser, both utterances may entail entirely different perlocutionary acts on the part of the addressee. And that is where my notion of "performative response" enters the discussion again. Perlocutionary acts, according to Searle, are part and parcel of speech act theory: Correlated with the notion of illocutionary acts is the notion of the consequence or effects such acts have on the actions, thoughts, or beliefs, etc., of hearers. For example, by arguing I may persuade or convince someone, by warning him I may scare or alarm him, by making a request I may get him to do something, by informing him I may convince him (enlighten, edify, inspire him, get him to realize). The italicized expressions above denote perlocutionary acts.9 87 But S e a rle and o th e r p h ilo so p h ers o f language do not ex p lo re speech a c ts beyond the "lo g ic " o r sem antics o f two sentence language games. T heir a tte n tio n has focused p rim a rily on p lo ttin g the co n d itio n s which must p re v a il in our comprehending each o th e r 's in te n tio n s as evidenced by th e responses which those in te n tio n s evoke. Of co u rse, th e i r resea rch has been most v alu ab le fo r the rh e to r ic ia n , but a g re a t deal o f work must s t i l l be done i f we a re to understand the conditons which are p re p a ra to ry to d is c o u rs e , which i s , p a ra d o x ic a lly , a " re a l w orld" but "h y p o th e tic a l" s e rie s of in te n tio n s and resp o n ses, as I s a id b e fo re , a " fla tte n e d -o u t" co n v ersatio n . As a s t a r t toward th a t u n d erstan d in g , the whole n o tio n o f p e r- form ativeness needs to be unpacked and reassem bled, i t seems to me. W e can begin by ren d erin g two examples o r s e ts o f ty p ic a l in te n tio n - response " u tte ra n c e s " : (1) (a) I pronounce you man and w ife (b) I g ran t th a t I am m arried (2) (a) I a s s e r t th a t th is i s tru e (b) I (do n o t) g ran t your epistem ic w arrant (I [do n o t) agree th a t th is i s tru e ) Each s e t i s composed o f illo c u tio n and p e rlo c u tio n , or in te n tio n and resp o n se. But the verbs in u tte ra n c e s (a) e n ta il e n tir e ly d if f e r e n t c a te g o rie s of response. "Pronounce" and verbs lik e i t ( c h r is te n , se n te n c e , excommunicate, c o n g ra tu la te , d e c re e , e t c .) e n ta il no n e g ativ e o p tio n in the response (a g a in , once the p re p a ra to ry c o n d itio n s are s a t i s f i e d ) . But verbs o f the " a s s e rt" c la s s , even though th e condi tio n s fo r f e l i c i t y , s in c e r ity , e t c . , a re m et, may evoke a n eg ativ e in the next "tu rn " o f the mechanism. I may understand, fo r example, th a t 88 those who assert or claim or declare that the earth is flat are sincere in their assertion or claim or declaration, that they believe the propositional content of their utterance and that they have evidence for the truth of it or reasons for the validity of it, just as I understand the presiding official at a marriage believes in the propositional content of his utterance and the validity of it. Yet I may doubt the assertion (or claim or declaration); I do not doubt the pronouncement (or decree or sentence). A simple test now may demonstrate how performatives may be sub-classed according to their 10 perlocutionary effects: (3) (a) I christen this ship "Liberty Belle" (b) I grant this ship shall be called "Liberty Belle" (c) *1 do not grant that this ship be called "Liberty Belle" (This ship shall be called "Steamboat 40") (a) I congratulate you (b) I grant that you are pleased with me or my actions (c) *1 do not grant that you are pleased. . . . (Your expression denotes displeasure) (a) I promise to arrive by 5 o’clock (b) I grant that you will arrive by 5 o'clock (c) *1 do not grant that you will arrive by 5 o’clock (You will arrive by 4:30) (4) (a) I claim that the universe started with a big bang (b) I (do not) understand your proposition "claim" (c) I (do not) agree with the big bang theory (d) I (do not) grant your authority to make such a claim (a) I advise you to marry (b) I (do not) understand your proposition "advise" (c) I (do not) agree that my marrying is beneficial (d) I (do not) grant your authority to advise me in this matter (a) I request that you do not smoke in this room (b) I (do not) understand your proposition "request" (c) I (do not) agree that my smoking is detrimental (d) I (do not) grant your authority to make this request 8 9 The initiating performatives in (3) (a) entail "consummation" of a complete speech act (illocution + perlocution) of one "turn" each. That may or may not be true of the initiating verbs in (4) (a). Provided that a negative obtains in the perlocutions in (4), the response will transform to an alter-intention which will expand the two-sentence mechanism into a series of illocutions and perlocutions, or intentions/alter-intentions/responses which are more dialectical than serial: Reminiscent of Kenneth Burke’s discussion of the negative, we may claim here that discourse begins and rhetoric prevails with the capacity to say "No," And it is the potential actualizing of that capacity which teases a concept of form from our otherwise various and far- later, but first we need to return to the discussion of performatives and the categories which attend to their perlocutionary force or effect. According to the admittedly brief sketch of perlocutionary entailments noted above, I believe we can separate the whole class of performative verbs into those we can attribute a rhetorical effect to, and those which we can not. The latter are distinguished by there being no optional negative in the response or perlocutionary effect, and we can designate them as carrying the distinctive feature [-rhetorical I, including pronounce, sentence, decree, christen, intention ' alter-intention response • • 11 flung universes of discourse. That I shall take up in some detail 90 excommunicate, and the like. Performative verbs carrying the feature [+rhetoricall admit an optional negative in the response, and recog nition of that by the participants in any exchange will transform the intention-response mechanism of two "turns" into a potential "form" or a conceptual construct for a series of tum-takings, with addresser and addressee engaged in exchanging intentions and alter- intentions rather than, simply, intention and response. The perlo cutionary effect of performatives such as assert, claim, declare, enquire, deny, require, urge, warn, etc., carries the option of nega tivity in the response or, at the least, doubt or a request for qualification of any one of the constituents of the illocution. Thus, a performative stance implies that the verb in the intention be t+rhetorical], and that distinction implies the option of negativity or what I have termed a performative response. The performative response functions in the hypothetical dialogue of discourse as an alter-intention. Now the question remaining is, what are the consti tuents of any performative stance. In identifying them, it may be that we can give theoretical substantiation to the psychological reality of ethos, pathos, and logos, to pick up on a previous point. We can now attempt to "flesh-out" Aristotle's powerful intuition about the efficient proofs of rhetoric, which, by the way, may demonstrate the validity of the composing process as a psycholinguistic guessing game more than it confirms the truth of classical canons. The first constituent or deep structure node of any performative stance recognized by the reader must be the verb, I say "must" 91- because the proposition represented by the verb has to be understood by the reading audience before "coherent" responses of alter- intentions can be made regarding the authority of the addresser or the truth or validity of what is predicated about the subject matter. Recalling Swift's "Modest Proposal" again, the pathetic argument is consummated once the reader understands that the underlying perfor mative is criticize rather than propose. Indeed, the doubts or denials of the naive reader concerning the ethics of the addresser or the logic of the subject matter in "Modest Proposal" stem from misunderstanding the proposition. Pathos. then, or the pathetic argument, is a given in successful "form." If the reader does not understand that the writer is "claiming," "requesting," "urging," "warning," etc., then, quite simply, there is no established basis for coherence, synchrony, form, communication. Nottf this does not mean that the addressee cannot argue against the proposition, or negate it. He may, for example, understand the proposition "claim" in (4) as requiring him to believe in the truth of the predication "that the universe started with a big bang." But the logical proofs which were offered for predicating such in the discourse itself may have been insufficient to warrant a verb like claim. Propose, perhaps, or suggest may have been more appropriate given the nature and quantity of logical appeals. Or, conversely, the ethical force of the "I" may be so overwhelming— if science had "prophets and believers" this would hold true— the force of claim would be inappropriate; a verb like state would do. But note: the 92 audience must Understand the deep semantic distinctions of the verb in the writer's performative stance before it can adequately judge the ratios of pathos-logos or pathos-ethos. Once the audience does understand what is "meant" in the discourse, once the pathetic argument is a given for any particular discourse, the denials, doubts, qualifications, if there are any, will center on logos and/or ethos. Thus the constituents or nodes of any performative stance may be diagrammed as follows: Performative Stance ethos I speaker I I f t M pathos I audience I verb [+rhetorical] logos subject matter I predication And any performative response may be represented thus: Performative Response (negative) ethos "I i ■ ' ■ I I • pathos "I logos "i grant i grant your authority" your proposition' your predication" It should be clear that a performative response can be a "mix" of negative and affirmative, even a mix of degrees of negative and affirmative. An audience may grant authority to the speaker but not agree or have some doubts about the predication attached to the sub ject matter. The combinations may be infinite; the successful dis course resulting from an appropriate performative stance, which is 93 itself a result of a writer's projecting a performative response and then accomodating to it, is perhaps the best "evidence" we have for the synchrony of egos at work in any piece of writing. It may also be clear now that factoring out each and every choice a writer must make in the composing process is well-nigh impossible. We can, however, continue with an analysis of some very basic prin ciples which attach now to the notion of form. The next constituent, logos. centers on the real world truth or validity of the subject matter, or to be more precise, the proofs which are offered to validate the predication. It is represented in the performative stance by the predication (or deep structure subor dinate clause) following the verb: I assert that this is true; I' advise that you do this; I require that you give me something; etc. The failure of the logical argument— that this could be true; that you could do this, etc.— may rest in the subject matter: The proofs are unconvincing. But, as I noted above, it may also rest in the semantic weight of the performative that is realized in the presentation of the subject matter. To understand the quality or force of logic inherent in the proofs, then, is to understand the proposition realized in the underlying verb, and so is the converse true. To illustrate by once more referring to "A Modest Proposal," Swift's logic is packed with artistic and inartistic logical proofs, statistics and testimony, and were he "sincere" about his subject matter, the logic of his argument would brook neither "modesty" nor "proposal" in either its articulation or implementation. But once we recognize the logos of subject matter 94; as supporting criticize rather than propose (or a timid ethos), it begins to spitefully comment on itself as representative of our knowing everything and understanding nothing. Satirical complications aside, however, we must understand the pathetic value of the proposi tion before we can judge the logic of the subject matter, or even its relevance to the "argument" at hand. Any breakdown of ethos results in the credentials of the addresser vis-a-vis the proposition or the subject matter (or both) being questioned. One recent and much-publicized example of a failure in ethical proofs: The "I" referred to as "Linus Pauling" preceeding the proposition "claim" and predicating the benefits of megadoses of Vitamin C, was enough to convince many otherwise intelligent and informed people to agree with the predication once they understood the proposition. Other otherwise and informed people, even after having read Pauling's "logical" discussion of the subject matter, were left unconvinced. At least some of the latter may have agreed or given credence to the proofs of the predication and yet withheld granting Pauling the authority to speak completely or with complete knowledge about nutrition. The logical proofs were sabotaged by a fifth column in the discourse, Pauling's ethos or credibility as a physicist rather than as a nutritionist. And, indeed it may be safe to say that some other otherwise and intelligent and informed people did not even consider the subject matter or logos once they decided that the authority or ethos was beyond redeeming vis-a-vis the entire intention. The constituents of the performative stance, then, may be seen to .95 align rather elegantly with traditional notions of ethos. pathos, and logos. For the "whole" of the performative stance will accommodate what I have called the performative response, and together they will generate the proofs and ultimately the form of a particular discourse. If the writer fails to adopt a stance in the first place, his dis course will be formless. And if he fails to project the response(s) which will complement his underlying intention, his discourse will fail in making coherent the constituents of that intention. And, of course, if he is successful, the intentions and alter-intentions implir-. cit in the discourse will be in synchrony and make for the "whole" of communication. Now if the foregoing makes intuitive and rational sense, a rather strong link has been forged between the canons of form and invention. Given the notion of performativeness in discourse, we may even say that while subject matter may be found or discovered, the subject is constituted by reference to a dynamic blueprint which I called the "dominance of expression" in the previous chapters. One thing seems certain, however, that at least two distinct canons of rhetoric, in the classical view, are continuously "playing off against each other" in the composing process. Invention and form in discourse as separate entities for study and practice are convenient pedagogical fictions but untenable practical truths. The classical working hypothesis of the departments of rhetoric is commonly abstracted so: ____ 96' R h eto ric In v en tio n S ty le Form Ethos Pathos Logos Deduction In d u ctio n As sub-departm ents o f in v e n tio n , -e th o s , p a th o s, and logos are by d e fin itio n f a c u ltie s fo r p ro v id in g argum ents.. Form and s t y l e , th en , accomodate to the p rin c ip le mode o f p e rsu asio n . But the im port of th is ch ap ter (and C hapter 2) su g g ests an o th er conceptual framework, one in which rh e to r ic i s seen as a p a r t of th e whole o f p erfo rm ativ e- n e ss. Here i s a te n ta tiv e sch em atizatio n o f th a t new framework: initiating utterance + intention speech acts performativeness [-rhetorical1 two-sentence games* . . r rhetorical rules rhetorical constituents performative stance potential performative response focus of writer's invention ^ and "form" of discourse initiating utterance - intention rituals of greeting, etc* * * * performativeness [+rhetorical] discourse games pathos logos ethos 'verb subject denies denies authority of appropri- speaker ateness of verb addresser addressee (expressive) (persuasive) matter" denies relevance or complete ness of proof I subject matter (scientific) (The visual aid above is meant to be interpreted as just that and not a denaturing of a fully worked out theory. The thrust of this chapter is* after all* exploratory rather than one of definition or the claiming of intellectual territory. Yet, having said that, I am still;,, dissatisfied with some parts of the rendering. In a persuasive "form" of discourse, how does one talk about "proofs" except as they address a mix of perlocutionary effects assigned to the addressee? Persuasive forms or modes, much more so than expressive or scientific, seem to me to be an admixture of emphases of all the constituents in a per formative stance. To render that "mix" in an elegant— that is, tidy and truthful— formula, however, is beyond my powers.) When all is said and therefore done in discourse, we discover, as I suggested before, that the writer has constituted a subject rather than merely discovered subject matter. Form and content both stem from the same efficient cause, the potential negative response toward any or all of the constituents of the performative stance. The proofs which are generated in respect to that response will mark the form of the discourse as representative of the extended ego- sharing that is involved in discourse games. If subject matter transforms to subject, that is exactly what is involved. 99 > III. NOTES 1 See Robert E. Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness, 2nd. ed. (New York: Harcourt, 1977), pp. 1-15. 2 The political, social, and educational hobbles attached to institutionalized forms of expression are provocatively surveyed in Keith Fort, "Form, Authority, and the Critical Essay." Fort has tried to do for form what Orwell did for style in English prose, to help us to see how convention and imitation in discourse may save us time but deny choice and repress originality and meaning, and therefore "expression" in the profound sense. 3 See Richard L Larson, "Structure and Form in Non-Fiction Prose," and Frank D’Angelo, "Modes of Discourse," in Teaching Composition: 10 Bibliographic Essays. Both rhetoricians complain of the lack of adequate definitions for their subjects. 4 "Modes of Discourse," p. 111. 5......... The New Rhetoric, p. 460. 6 "Three Stages of Reading," in Psycholinguistics and Reading, P. 49. 7 Beyond Culture (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Books, 1977), p. 73. 8 See Herbert H. Clark and Eve V. Clark, Psychology and Language (New York: Harcourt, 1977) for succinct explications of the "rules" and principles of conversation, especially pp. 72-73, 122-26. 9 Speech Acts, p. 25, 10 I believe the sets will adhere to Searle’s "types of rules" discussed in Speech Acts and outlined on pp. 66-67 in that volume. Searle’s subsequent analyses of speech acts continue to focus on the 100: illocutionary act: See "A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Language. K. Gunderson, ed. (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1975), pp. 344-69; and "Indirect Speech Acts," Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (New York: Seminar Press, 1975), pp. 59-82. 11 E. D. Hirsch demonstrates that in our interpretation of litera ture, we assign a "verbal intention" to the author, the object of complex "intentional acts" which we perceive in the text. He argues that in the reading of literature, we "reconstruct" the author’s meaning, that the reader "’intends* with some degree of probability the same ’intentional objects* as the author." In adopting a per formative stance in non-fiction discourse, the writer, I maintain, has already gauged the reconstruction of Hirsch*s reader (of litera ture) , and that his "projection" marks the difference between "fact" and "fiction" in discourse. Or, to put it another way, the reader of non-fiction prose reconstructs the writer's intentions on the basis of his responses to the perceived intention(s). Such a notion may formally clarify why "audience" has always been such a major factor in the writing of non-fiction prose. See "Objective Criticism," in Critical TheorySincePlato. pp. 1177-94. 101 IV. ON THE PRACTICALITY OF STYLE In the model of the composing process which I offered in Chapter 2, style was seen as an integral choice in a writer's composing the materials of discourse: In order to make his subject matter intelli gible and coherent, the writer must discover and implement intentions and responses; and he must also discover a relationship between the presuppositions that are brought to the potential discourse in order to select and then fix a "code of presentation" that will both effect and affect meaning. Thus, the genesis of style. In the finished discourse, hopefully, the writer will be able to say, like James Baldwin, that he has made beautiful sentences do hard work. But between the "inventing" of a style and the evaluating of it, the writer works in a nether land of unconscious and intuitive accomoda tions to audience, subject matter, his own predilections, the conven tions of his time, the demands of his self-image, and so on. Indeed, no one can say what happens or how it happens when the same writer will address the same subject matter and the same kind of audience on two separate occasions, and produce two very different pieces of 1 rhetoric. As F. L. Lucas has said, the problems of style are really problems of personality, of practical psychology. And, I might add, the problems of describing a style are those of personality also. To 102-1 misquote Lucas now, critics, like authors, sell their books, but they 2 give themselves away. Since, in effect, I have already "given myself away" (since, perhaps, any exercise here in practical criticism offered as demon strative proof of the theory which informs it would be highly circular), I would like to proceed on the basis of one more "given," I would like to deal here with the practical matter of teaching style to student writers which, in terms of modern linguistics, amounts to activating and augmenting the competence in language games that the student already possesses. More particularly, the teaching of style at the level of the sentence, I would argue, ideally puts at the disposal of the student writer a repertoire of performative stances, so that his finished discourse is truly the result of choice and adaptation. I believe I can clarify that last statement by describing some "performative implications" in the spoken dialect of one minority group in the United States. Now any dialect is distinguished because of its characteristic lexicon, syntax, and the semantic intentions which may be realized in the characteristic words and sentence patterns of its speakers. The dialect that I have in mind is distinguished and identified by its vocabulary, to be sure, and that special lexicon marks its speakers as a social, political, and/or economic group separated from the "mainstream." We can say that the speakers’ diction is a stylistic giveaway to their identity. But even more telling than the vocabulary that a speaker of this dialect is 103 " d if f e r e n t” are the sentence p a tte rn s used, th e "o b lig a to ry " a d v erb ial tran sfo rm atio n s w hich, according to some re se a rc h e rs are re q u ire d fo r the members of the group by a t- la r g e p re ssu re s fo r them to dem onstrate, l in g u i s t i c a l ly , th a t they are p o l i t e , d e f e r e n tia l, un assum ing. Compare the follow ing s e ts of u tte ra n c e s , fo r example, as to th e ir q u a lity of ex p re ssiv e n ess: (1) (a) This ch ap ter w ill be s h o rt. (b) This ch ap ter w ill be kind of s h o rt. (2) (a) R hetoric is a fa s c in a tin g s u b je c t. (b) R hetoric i s a fa s c in a tin g s u b je c t, i s n ’t i t ? (3) (a) P lease f in is h your re se a rc h . (b) I wonder i f you'd mind fin is h in g your re se a rc h . The hedges ("kind o f ," "I wonder i f " ) and the tag ( " i s n 't it? " ) in (b) id e n tify the syntax im m ediately as in d ic a tiv e o f women's language. 3 Robin L akoff, in Language and Woman s P la c e , d e scrib e s such p a tte rn s .j as s ig n ify in g behavior which i s lin g u is tic a lly p a th o lo g ic a l when the p a tte rn s become c a te g o ric a lly d i a l e c t ic a l . And we can understand the h arsh n ess of h e r charge when we p o s it an underlying p erform ative fo r each of the u tte ra n c e s in (a) and ( b ) . There i s no problem w ith ( b ) ; each su rfa c e u tte ra n c e i s dominated by an "I suggest" or some o th e r perform ative as se m an tic a lly tenuous or te n ta tiv e in th e deep s tr u c tu r e . With ( a ) , however, th e re are some a lte r n a tiv e s : X ri'(l), "I claim " o r " I p r e d ic t," e t c . ; in (2 ), "I a s s e rt" o r "I g ra n t," e t c . ; in (3 ), "I advise" or "I command," e tc . Depending on the frame o r c o n te x t, in o th e r w ords, we can assig n a 104 performative stance to the speaker of utterances in (a) ad hoc. But the utterances, or the syntax prescribed for the utterances, in (b) prescribe the frame or context of communication. The hedges and the tag, and they are representative of women’s speech, mark the speakers as performatively disenfranchised participants in language games. And if we can take such a short example of syntactic possibilities open and available to women, then, to indicate a delimiting of illocu tionary expression to the speakers of one dialect, we can trace that back immediately to the paucity of performative stances made avail able to them in the socially conventionalized frames for their "expressive" behavior. Women are not expected to be "assertive," 4 "objective," or even "advisory" in their intentions. Thus, a limited access to "style" at the level of the sentence can be shown formally to be as detrimental to expression as a limited access to form, discussed in the previous chapter. The fewer options that a writer has available to him at the level of the sentence, the less "expressive" his discourse will be. Presuppositions about the world will be "canned" or predictable; the writer's bargain with reality, in Alfred Kazin's words, will have scant purchase in the real world of language. Now all of us are speakers of dialects— social, professional, regional, of a generation, economic class, or sex. And most of us are bi-dialectical; that is, in addition to speaking a native dialect, most academicians, at least, have acquired the dialect of literacy. But student writers, most of them at any rate, are in the process of acquiring (or learning) the dialect of literacy. I believe that most _________________ 105. of them will show command of that dialect at the level of the sentence once acquisition has been achieved. Simply put, to be fluent in any dialect or language means to be syntactically fluent. I may have memorized the entire lexicon of French as published by Larousse, for instance, but that will hardly provide for my writing or comprehending French. The acquiring as well as the describing of any language 5 begins with what the linguists formally designate as "S". So the rationale for teaching style at the level of the sentence seems justified when we think in terms of the student's dialectically limited access to performative stances and his needs, linguistically speaking, in gaining or acquiring fluency in a non-native dialect. Our intuitions about this fact of literate life have been put to work in the classroom since ancient times, and we can think of exercises in imitatio, for example, as facilitating fluency and thereby en hancing the range of performative stances once the student would begin to compose on his own. The modern-day emphasis on syntactic fluency no doubt owes part of its thesis to the modern-day, formal emphasis on the sentence as the one, formal given in linguistic theory. But even without announcing such a framework of theory, researchers in syntactic fluency have demonstrably proven the stylistic and rhetorical virtue to be gained by students when they practice and acquire the transformations peculiar to written discourse. It must be admitted, however, that the narratives which accompany the delineations of method to improve syntactic fluency in students stress the end result of "maturity" in written expression or the hidden agenda of one more inventive technique (one must, after all, 1 0 6 fill those newly acquired syntactic structures with "ideas") or the 6 intellectual morality of polishing a style for its own sake. Of course, these are all acceptable reasons for encouraging students to become syntactically fluent, and the interrelationship of invention and style noted in at least one of the methods remarks implicitly on the organic process of composing. Yet, behind these rationales, it seems to me, is recognition of the time-honored axiom of rhetorical pedagogy— The writer's first duty is not to bore the reader— rather than a corollary to a philosophical theorem. With a philosophy such as the one espoused in this essay, and in particular with the theorem extending from that philosophy, that all the surface features of a discourse can be traced back to a deep structure performative stance, we can justify the axiom and test the corollary. A writer's ability to choose a performative stance which will best represent in the deep structure of any discourse the materials relevant to that discourse— the composing of presuppositions toward the subject matter— will result in initiating the intention- response contours which mark language games in any medium. A per formative stance entails a performative response, and a reader is gratified by, that is, interested in any discourse which includes his participation. (The written medium connotes for the reader a language game with its attending rules; in that sense, we can appreciate even more Kenneth Burke's description of "form" in discourse, the largest consideration of style, as an arousing and fulfilling of desires.) Thus, it is only tangent to the writer's first duty that he not bore the reader. Properly stated, his first duty is to secure the 1 0 7 mentalistic environment of performativeness which will nurture the communicating of news. Now, again intuitively, we have known this all along. The stress on teaching style in the last fifteen years, whether the method promised to invigorate a ’ ’ point of view" in the student writer, as in Rohman and Wlecke, or to liberate "expression," 7 as in the transformationalists, has been for all intents and pur poses a stress on discovering that environment of performativeness. And, to re-inforce a former point, each method concentrates primarily or exclusively on teaching style at the level of the sentence. It only remains to examine how a syntactically fluent student writer is better equipped to compose the materials of discourse, now that we have examined the "why." In order to do that, I will come full circle and refer once more to the work of H. P. Grice, this time 8 to what he calls the "cooperative principle." According to Grice, the participants adhere to the cooperative principle in conversation when they try to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear. It is important to note that these are.not con ditions for ethical processing and communicating of information, but absolute preconditions in discourse for preventing a breakdown in communication between any interlocutors. Clark and Clark give the best summary of Grice’s cooperative principle in terms of maxims and their corresponding precepts to speakers as to how they "should" 9 contribute to a conversation. They are four: (1) Maxim of Quantity. Make your contribution as informa tive as required, but not more informative than is required. (2) Maxim of Quality. Make your contribution one that is ;1 0 8 true. That is, do not say anything you believe to be false or lack adequate evidence for. (3) Maxim of Relation. Make your contribution relevant to the aims of the ongoing conversation. (4) Maxim of Manner. Be Clear, Try to avoid obscurity, ambiguity, wordiness, and disorderliness in your use of language. Clark and Clark comment: "It is easy to see how communication can break down when speakers do not adhere to these maxims. Take a vio lation of the maxim of quantity: Steven: Wilfred is meeting a woman for dinner tonight• Susan: Does his wife know about it? Steven: Of course she does. The woman he is meeting is his wife. When Steven described the woman as "a woman" instead of "his wife," he was not being as informative as he could have been, and Susan took him to mean that the woman was not Wilfred's wife. By violating the maxim of quantity, Steven misled Susan. Or take the maxim of quality. Information could hardly be exchanged accura tely if listeners could not tell which state ments were true and which were not. As for the maxim of relation, communication would also break down if listeners could not tell which utterances were relevant and which were not. Conversations would only progress toward their goals very slowly without the maxim of relation. And the maxim of manner is just as important. Ambiguous, obscure, disorderly, and wordy sentences can have just as deleterious effect on communication as the violation of any other maxim.10 It may be safe to say, even though I equivocate a bit on the principal term, that participants in any language game hold as their first pre supposition toward reality that its interpreters satisfy the four maxims of the cooperative principle. 1 0 9 At any rate, any one who has ever served as editor of non-poetic discourse will recognize the maxims immediately, as criteria for goodness which are constantly referred to in the process of reading. Or, put another way, the intention-response mechanism is likely to abort when an addresser in rhetorical discourse violates the cooper ative principle. Satire, irony, hyperbole, all the tropes of language as I noted in Chapter 1, bend or break the rules of language, and ambiguity, as I noted in Chapter 2, breaks the rules of rhetoric, in the terms at hand by straining one or another of the maxims of the cooperative principle. Except in special conceptual environments such as poetry, clarity, truth, relevance, and perspicuity must obtain in rhetorical discourse. How this may relate to syntactic fluency may be obvious. As for clarity or the maxim of quantity, here is what Francis Christensen had to say about one effect of producing a cumulative sentence (one measure of syntactic fluency): marking the levels of generality and abstraction (note woman:wife in the Clarks' discussion above): The main or base clause is likely to be stated in general or abstract or plural terms. With the main clause stated, the forward movement of the sentence stops, the writer shifts down to a lower level of generality or to singular terms, and goes back over the same ground at this lower level.11 Thus, a syntactically fluent writer has a better command of the maxim of quantity. And Christensen, moreover, exemplifies all four maxims as he demonstrates what happens in a cumulative sentence. Here is "information," "truth," "relevance," and "perspicuity" in one fell swoop: 1 1 0 The main clause, which may or may not have a sentence modifier before it, advances the dis cussion; but the additions move backward, as in this clause, to modify the statement of the main clause or more often to explicate it or exemplify it, so that the sentence has a flowing and ebbing movement, advancing to a new position and then pausing to consolidate it. leaping and lingering as a popular ballad d o e s , 12 A sentence like that may not appeal, aesthetically, to every-'reader, but any reader will grant that it is prima facie evidence of the writer's having composed the materials of discourse, abstracted so: Addresser: Performative Stance. I claim that the producing of cumulative sentences will generate thought and enhance style in the rhetorical act. Addressee: Performative Response. I require proof or demonstration of the validity of your claim. And such a demonstration in that one sentence may be regarded as 13 representative of the majority in Christensen's essay. Needless to say, Christensen's style in the essay at the level of the sentence is indicative of the performative stance and response noted above. Other researchers in the field of syntactic fluency do not state their theses or report their findings with such performative and cooperative economy as Christensen does. Perhaps, unlike Christensen's, their theories do not explicitly incorporate the general-specific "pay-off" or the interrelation between grammatical structures and semantic integrity (Maxim 1), but at any rate, their rationales for improving student writing stay at a high level of abstraction: It is assumed in the sentence-combining theories of Mellon and O'Hare, to name just two researchers, that improvement in combining sentences is good for its own sake. No one will quarrel with that, provided that 1 1 1 everyone agrees about what "improvement" is at the level of the sentence. And Grice's principle can help us here too. Simply put, there seems to be a consensus of subjective reaction regarding the stylistic effects of sentence-combining exercises in post-test student compositions. O'Hare, whose work on sentence- combining supercedes previous research, reports that readers judged the compositions written by students who had practiced his routines to be "significantly better in over-all quality than the control 14 group's compositions." With a brief description of pre- and post test (hypothetical) sentences written by a student in O'Hare1s exper iment, I would like to offer an explanation as to why the compositions of the experimental group were "better in over-all quality." For convenience, xire can extrapolate one exercise from O'Hare's program x^hich will illustrate his method. The following example is used by Winterowd in his bibliographical essay, "Linguistics and Composition:" Some really effective sentences can be con structed by changing a word to its -ing form. . . .Notice how the (ING) instruction works: A. Joe burst through the line. (ING) Joe forced the quarterback to eat the ball on the fourth doxra. B. Bursting through the line, Joe forced the quarterback to eat the ball on the fourth down. The (ING) instruction causes burst to become bursting, and the italics are a reminder to get rid of the Joe in that sentence. Now try one of your own: A. The angry crowd fell on the assassin. (ING) 1 1 2 The angry crowd tore him limb from limb. If we can assume now that students writing the post-test compositions demonstrated their ability to embed proposition within proposition because of practice in the (ING) routine and others like it, then we can credit them with a firmer adherence to the cooperative principle. In reference to the above exercise alone, we can understand the over all quality of their compositions to be significantly better because they learned to manipulate the language and by doing so to practice these cooperative maxims more efficiently: Quantity: by deleting one occurence of NP-^ in the surface structure (Joe), the student avoids redundancy. Relation: the relevance of two propositions to each other is stated in structural terms (S^ becomes a modifier of S2). Manner: not only is wordiness avoided, but possible ambiguities, such as are present in pronoun sub stitution, are avoided (one occurence of Joe is deleted rather than substituted with "he"). Any of the post-test compositions might have been assessed and evaluated, in other words, with the Gricean principle in mind. But the "impressionism" residing in such evaluations as "significantly better" can at least be given some sort of objective credibility when we describe what was "done" by the student writers and why it was (intuitively) appreciated by the readers. We have looked at the experiment and the findings through the lens of "languaging," in other words, rather than from the standpoint of style for style's sake. 113 In sum, then, a student's proficiency in writing "cumulative" sentences or in "combining" sentences is profitable and productive if we understand that instruction in syntactic fluency "makes a difference in the student's understanding and manipulation of 15 language" in the most profound sense. To be syntactically fluent makes possible the writer's search for and discovery of a perfor mative environment for his discourse. And once that is secured, he is the better equipped to cooperate with his reader in the beha vior which marks a true composition of materials. Developing "style" at the level of the sentence will augment the competence any of us bring, as languagers, to the task of writing. 114 IV. NOTES 1 See Wallace L. Chafe, "Creativity in Verbalization and Its Implications for the Nature of Stored Knowledge," In Discourse Production and Comprehension, I, ed. Roy 0. Freedle (Norwood, N. J.: Ablex, 1977), pp. 41-56. 2 The research addressed to this point is still less than volu minous, but I may be forgiven if I cite only two (and those the most obvious, perhaps) of the subjective critics: Stanley-Fish, "What Is Stylistics and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It?" in Approaches to Stylistics, ed. Seymour Chatman (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 109-52; and David Bleich, Subjective Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978). 3 Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. 4 A short example of the necessary "cause" of syntax: The language of Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is decidedly "un-feminine" in its expletives. But Tennessee Williams protrays her, ultimately, as performstively "spineless" as one after another of her speeches are peppered with hedges and tags. A kind of linguistic internal direction characterizes her as sex object dominated by the economic objects (the men) in her life, even though her lexicon alone would designate her speech as assertive or "male." I would like to thank Laurence Minne for suggesting this insight. 5 To pick up on a point made in the last chapter, and to re inforce the concept of "wholeness" here, Jean Piaget insists that "The line of development of language, as of perception, is from the whole to the part, from syncretism to analysis, and not vice-versa." Language and Thought of the Child (New York: Humanities Press, 1951), p. 4. 6 See Francis Christensen, "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence," in Contemporary Rhetoric, pp. 339-42; John C. Mellon, 115, Transformational Sentence-Combining (Urbana, 111.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1969), -pp. 15-30; Frank O’Hare, Sentence Combining: Improving Student Writing without Formal Grammar Instruction (Urbana, 111.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1973). 7 One of the best statements promulgating this view in post hoc, critical terms is Richard Ohmann, "Generative Grammars and the Concept of Literary Style." Word, 20 (1964), esp. pp. 423-25. In Winterowd's estimation, Ohmann's subsequent research in this area (in particular, one essay reprinted in Contemporary Rhetoric. "Literature as Sentences") "demonstrates clearly. . .that the meaning of a sentence is a great deal more than the sum of the meanings of its words. From the strictly practical viewpoint, [Ohmann] shows how syntactic fluency can work to carry meaning." (Contemporary Rhetoric, P. 296). 8 "Logic and Conversation," in Syntax and Semantics, pp. 41-58. 9 Psychology and Language, p. 122. 10 Ibid., pp. 122-23. 11 "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence," p. 342. 12 Ibid,, p. 341. 13 Christensen is barely three paragraphs into his essay when he, himself, begins an analysis of his own style, the analysis in keeping with the reader's "show me" attitude. 14 Quoted in Winterowd, "Linguistics and Composition," in Teaching Composition: 10 Bibliographical Essays, p. 207. 15 "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence," p. 339. 116 V. PROGNOSIS Thanks to the new paradigm for language, we are not surprised anymore to discover rules that we have been observing all along. As one psycholinguist phrases it, we may not know the rules of language, but when we speak we act as though we do. We give voice to abstrac tions which may not be noted or explicated in any book of grammar and which, in any case, are not formally learned by any native, expert speaker. Reminiscent of what Robert Frost had to say about poetry, discovering the rules of language reminds us of something we didn't know we knew. But besides affording us the "vision" of intellectual or scholarly deja-vu, of providing sound philosophical reasons for what was formerly only intuitively admissable, the new paradigm for language can also help in informing and explaining a new paradigm for rhetoric. That one is needed is hardly open to question. For to continue with considerations of "text" alone may be rhetoric's undoing if, in the words of John Searle, we do not begin to distinguish between the "brute facts" of written discourse and the institutional or "constitutive facts" of language. To take over his metaphor, the particulars of invention, form, and style are as meaningless as men running around a field in different colored shirts unless and until the rules of the game— of language or football— are understood and 117 applied to the activity before us. As a force for coherence, then, the paradigm can be tested by how well the brute facts of practical rhetorical study fit into the institution of language* The foregoing chapters attempted to do just that in relying on some familiar facts and some which were suggested by the new paradigm for language. Beginning with the dominance of expression and the idea of language as a creative and communal series of "expres sive" tum-takings by extraordinarily competent participants, the composing process then had to be re-defined as an adaptation of "live" language games. And so rhetoric’s principal determinant, what is traditionally called the canon of 'invention, had to be described in aspects both broader and deeper than those previously addressed, broader because the writer "invents" form and style as well as subject matter, deeper because all inventive choices occur at the intersection between thought and language. The model of the composing process which I introduced in Chapter 2, the chapter on invention, attests to the dominance of that canon. And yet, in elucidating the model in that chapter and those that followed on form and style, the composing of the materials of discourse was seen to reside in the form-making or construction of subject and the "referents" for style as much as in the "discovery" of presuppositions toward subject matter. A model of the composing process, I argued, could be practical only if it validated most of the disparate intuitions we hold about writing as an organic process. Through such paradigmatic corollaries as intention-response, performativeness, cooperative rules, and, of course, deep structure, a new philosophy for rhetoric was seen as >118 both intuitively sound and theoretically substantial."/' And "vision" can be described by a thoroughly practical applica- ; tion of intuition and theory, even though the theory is not yet ex pounded fully enough to account for all the intuitions. After all, the practical research which followed Syntactic Structures is still, twenty years after its publication, testing and refining, re-writing and elaborating on the original dicta. In the rhetorical sphere, I . could, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, refer to many methods and tech niques which support the new paradigm for language but which do not, by themselves, offer a coherent and integrated theoretical framework or refer to any institution except the tradition or to empirical or practical research in rhetoric and related disciplines. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, I remarked on techniques both innovative and familiar, and tried to show how and why they worked once they were seen in reference to a "whole." And in that sense, too, I hoped to redress the lack of a paradigm for rhetoric. The practical techniques that were mentioned and others con sonant with the new paradigm were implemented in one rhetoric program designed as a pilot project for improving the writing skills of ninth graders at a large high school district in Southern California. As co-director of the project, one of my responsibilities was to write a report on the findings of the year-long research, and I offer the report as an appendix to this essay because it will, I hope, stand as the first empirical evidence for its truth* I only need to say here that in the course of the project, student writers were informed of and encouraged to make the kinds of choices I describe as 119- indicative of "composing" in this essay, and that the post-test results of their instruction are indeed encouraging. With a start in both spheres, theoretical and practical, toward the integration of effort that a philosophy demands, rhetoric can not only regain its former prestige as the most important humanistic discipline, it can once again legitimize its ultimate sanction of defining the human domain of inter-communication and inter-influence. 1 2 0 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Hazard, ed. Critical Theory Since Plato. New York: Harcourt, 1971. Alston, William P. "Language, Philosophy of." 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New York: Harcourt, 1970, 1 2 7 APPENDIX REPORT O N PROJECT LITERACY A PILOT PR O G R A M FOR THE TESTING A N D REMEDIATION OF WRITING SKILLS PREPARED FO R THE TRUSTEES A N D ADMINISTRATION OF H U N TIN G TO N B EA C H UNION HIGH SC H O O L DISTRICT B Y W . ROSS W IN T E R O W D D O R O T H Y AUGUSTINE PROJECT DIRECTORS SEPTEM BER 1 , 1977 I. INTRODUCTION This re p o rt focuses on th e p hilosophy, im plem entation, and r e s u lts o f a p ro je c t designed to improve th e w ritin g s k i l l s o f n in th g rad e rs. I t i s w ritte n from th e p o in t of view of the p ro je c t d ir e c to r s and i s e s s e n tia lly a d e s c rip tiv e account of th e p r o je c t, p resen te d as a n a rra tiv e frame fo r th e s t a t i s t i c s and "hard" docum entation which th e p ro je c t w ill in e v ita b ly produce and su p p o rt. I t s u se fu ln e ss i s b e s t re a liz e d , we th in k , as one fa c to r in the a n a ly sis o f th e p r o je c t; i t may be viewed as a re fe re n c e a g a in st which to d efin e o th e r, more q u a n tita tiv e r e p o rts . Though we do d eal w ith s t a t i s t i c s in one p a rt o f th is r e p o r t, we p r e fe r th a t t h e i r I n te r p r e ta tio n be o f an in tr a - p r o je c t n a tu re . A ccordingly, d i f f e r e n tia ls in stu d e n t p re - and p o s t- te s t sco res a re n o t in te rp re te d h ere in terms o f d is tr ic t-w id e v s. p ro je c t c la s s f ig u re s . Comparisons are made from te a c h e r to te a c h e r, school to sc h o o l, w ith an eye to sc o re d if f e r e n t i a l s confirm ing or disco n firm in g th e v a lid ity o f m ethods, m a te ria ls , a tt i tu d e s , e t c . , as they were chosen by the s t a f f and p u t to work in the classroom and workshop. Thus we hope n o t only to e lim in a te redundancies o f com parison, b u t in a d e lim ited scope such as we have e le c te d , to re p o rt on th e n a tu re o f th e p r o je c t, i t s e l f , and the fin d in g s of th e experim ent as they prove to be u se fu l to fu r th e r re s e a rc h , im plem entation, and te s tin g by the d i s t r i c t . 129 II. BACKGROUND 2.1 Statem ent o f Need The need fo r a w ritin g program such as P ro je c t L ite ra c y a t the high school le v e l has a sh o rt but involved h is to r y . B a sic a lly , the le v e l of w ritin g p ro fic ie n c y in graduates of American secondary schools has been questioned by a d m in istra to rs and te a c h e rs, employers and co lleg e adm ittance com m ittees, p a re n ts and stu d e n ts fo r over a decade now. Q u a lita tiv e ly , a l l concerned a t t e s t to a d e clin e in th e a b il i ty o f the average young a d u lt to communicate by way o f th e w ritte n word. Q u a n tita tiv e ly , n a tio n a l scores re le a se d in 1976 show over the p a s t twenty y e ars a marked and steady eroding o f com position s k i l l s of e n te rin g c o lleg e freshm en. For a t le a s t the p a st ten y e a rs , the problem o f competency has been addressed in e ith e r one of two ways: id e n tif ic a tio n of the cause, o r c o rre c tio n o f th e symptoms a t a p o st secondary le v e l of in s tr u c tio n . Thus, we now have ample ra tio n a le s fo r the s itu a tio n : co lleg e open-adm ission program s; in c re a sin g r a tio s of ESL stu d e n ts in the high school p o p u latio n ; the p o st-S p u th ik emphasis on scien ce co n ten t c u rric u la ; the degrees in l i t e r a t u r e , r a th e r than in r h e to r ic , as the only p re p a ra tio n fo r com position te a c h e rs , e le c tiv e courses s tre s s in g "experience" ra th e r than rig o ro u s a n a ly tic thought, to name ju s t th e more obvious. W e have found, to o , th a t c o rre c tiv e programs in a p o st-secondary s e ttin g —such as o n -th e-jo b tra in in g or 130 n o -e re d it rem edial w ritin g courses in c o lle g e —are c o s tly fo r th e in s t i t u t i o n o r d e b ilita tin g fo r the young a d u lt, sometimes b o th . F u rth e r, they are " c o rre c tiv e ," and lik e th e ra tio n a le s do not provide p r a c tic a l h elp fo r d e a lin g w ith th e problem on i t s home ground, the high school com position c la s s . The S ta te o f C a lifo rn ia has re c e n tly mandated a competency-based curriculum fo r i t s p u b lic sch o o ls. R eflected in th a t mandate i s the b e lie f th a t s o c ie ty expects th e education of our young fo r a l i t e r a t e l i f e to be m an ifest by the time o f high school g rad u a tio n , w hether o r n o t they proceed to c o lle g e o r to a jo b re q u irin g w ritin g s k i l l s . The problem , th e re fo re , i s ev id en t and e v id e n tly th e r e s p o n s ib ility o f a l l concerned w ith high school ed u catio n . In term s o f th is p r o je c t, the problem was d efined as a fo u r-p a rt q u e stio n : what are we doing wrong in p rep arin g th e stu d e n t fo r a " l i t e r a t e lif e " ? How do we recognize and id e n tify what we a re doing rig h t? H ow do we re p a ir our in s tru c tio n ? How do we t e s t and re fin e a program in com position? Those im m ediately concerned w ith ex p lo rin g some answers were members o f th e H untington Beach Union High School D i s tr ic t a d m in istra tio n —D r. Jake A bbott, S u p erin ten d en t; Dr. Jack Gyves, A s s is ta n t S uperintendent - I n s tru c tio n ; Dr. K eith H artw ig, D ire c to r, Research & E v alu atio n —eig h teen teach ers o f com position, th e ir n in th grade s tu d e n ts , and the p ro je c t d ir e c to r s — Dr. W . Ross Winterowd, U .S .C ., and P ro fe sso r Dorothy A ugustine, Chapman C ollege. 2.2 Statem ent o f Philosophy The th e o r e tic a l base of any program in language a r t s , in w ritin g 131 as w ell as in rea d in g , we b e lie v e , must be s tu d e n t-c e n te re d . I t must generate from the re c o g n itio n of the stu d e n t as an a lre ad y p r o f ic ie n t m anipulator o f spoken language who i s being asked, in e f f e c t , to le a rn a new d ia le c t, Standard E dited E n g lish . I t must proceed in the p rac t i c a l sense by re a ffirm in g in th e classroom th e te a c h e r’s c a p a c ity to guide as w e ll as i n s t r u c t , to diagnose as w e ll as grade. Taken p o in t by p o in t, th a t th e o r e tic a l base may be describ ed as fo llo w s. An a d o lescen t in our c u ltu re i s recognized by re se a rc h e rs in lin g u is tic s as a competent communicator (Labov). He o r she can make needs known, can judge p a st and fu tu re s itu a tio n s and e v e n ts, can re p o rt on su b je c tiv e and o b je c tiv e le v e ls , can n a rra te f e e lin g s , can a d ju s t to audiences. In f a c t , most ad o lescen ts have a r e p e r to ire of speech a c ts w hich, when s tu d ie d , a t t r ib u t e to them a l in g u i s t i c s o p h is tic a tio n f a r above the c a su a l, and u su a lly n e g a tiv e , e v alu atio n s given to them by most a d u lts . When the sw itch i s made, however, to decoding (read in g ) graphemes o r encoding (w r itin g ), wide d isc re p a n c ie s between competence and perform ance appear. O bviously, th e d isc re p an cies e n ta il som ething o th e r than lack o f gram m atical e x p e rtis e on the p a rt of the stu d e n t. He o r she understands words and sentences in spoken language which may never have been heard b e fo re , o fte n in d ia le c ts which the stu d e n t does n o t h ear a t home o r among p e e rs. By the same token, i t i s w ell known th a t every speaker o f a n a tu ra l language i s c o n sta n tly c re a tin g sentences which he o r she has never b efo re u tte re d . (According to George M ille r [Sm ith, 1973], every speaker o f E nglish has th e p o te n tia l to g en erate 10^0 gram m atical 1 3 2 E nglish sentences o f 20 words in le n g th . W e are reminded o f th e n e a r in f in ity o f th a t number when he e stim ate s th a t i t would take longer than the age of the e a rth m erely to r e c ite 10^® se n te n c e s .) W hy i s i t , th en , th a t "languaging” i s alm ost always so f a c i le , success in "language a r ts " alm ost always so d if f ic u lt? An im portant p a rt o f the answer l i e s in th e evidence o f re se a rc h e rs in p s y c h o lin g u is tic s , a branch o f c o g n itiv e psychology which s tu d ie s human behavior through the medium o f language and i t s fu n c tio n . In d e sc rib in g the phenomenon o f re a d in g , fo r exam ple, p sy c h o lin g u ists such as Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman have provided v alu ab le in s ig h ts fo r re se a rc h e rs in com position. One such in s ig h t has to do w ith th e re a d e r's search fo r meaning (Sm ith, 1973). The stu d e n t who i s asked to read th ese two se n te n c e s, "He winds h is watch w hile the c h ild re n re a d ," and " I read y esterd ay th a t th e winds would be blow ing," has understood th e meaning o f th e sentence b e fo re id e n tify in g every word. O therw ise, the words "winds" and "read " would be pronounced d if f e r e n tly . And th e stu d e n t who re a d s, "The boy a i n 't got no candy," when "The boy d o e s n 't have any candy" i s th e sentence in th e t e x t , a ls o under stan d s what lin g u is ts c a l l th e deep s tr u c tu r e , th e meaning. He o r she may not read every word p e r f e c tly , b u t comprehension i s tak in g p la c e . In f a c t , i f a rea d er co n ce n tra te s only on read in g every word p e rf e c tly , much o f th e meaning w ill be m issed. In o th e r w ords, we need to know what a sentence means b e fo re we can read i t c o rre c tly (Sm ith, 1973). Our gram m atical "know-how" i s e s s e n tia l to our reading su c ce ss. Ho one can read su c c e s s fu lly w ithout th a t e x p e rt base inform ing th e ta s k . 133 A given, th en , In language a r t s in s tr u c tio n i s th e re s p e c t ren dered to every stu d e n t as a "walking grammar." In com position c la s s e s , th a t re s p e c t becomes e v id en t in th e teach er* s a tte n tio n to th e meaning o f what th e stu d e n t has to w rite . I f a tte n tio n is p a id f i r s t to the s tu d e n t's c o rre c t w ord-for-w ord re p re s e n ta tio n o f th o u g h t, th e w r ite r w ill develop a " s c rib a l s t u t t e r " j u s t as su re ly as the re a d e r develops a non-comprehending o r a l stammer when he o r she i s expected to read a te x t word p e rfe c tly . The stu d e n t le a rn s n o t to take r is k s and thereby f a i l s to le a rn . (Sm ith, 1975). W riting i s n o t the same as e d itin g . S tudents need to p ra c tic e b o th , b u t to le a rn both a t th e same tim e, to be expected to produce both sim ultaneously i s c o u n ter-p ro d u ctiv e fo r th e beginning w r ite r . The ta s k of e d itin g , th e re fo re , must be made d i s t in c t from th e c r a f t of composing. E d itin g i s , in f a c t , a le a rn in g task th a t has much in com mon w ith fo reig n language o r d ia le c t study and should be m astered in much the same way—by d r i l l and p ra c tic e (K rashen, 1976). In s tr u c tio n i s n ecessary in o rd e r to improve e d itin g s k i l l s . W riting i s what the stu d e n t a lre ad y h a s. I t should be prom ted, guided, a p p re c ia te d . The su c c e ssfu l te a c h e r o f com position w ill th e re fo re d is tin g u is h between what the stu d e n t a lre ad y knows and what needs to be le a rn e d . The teach in g of w ritin g evolves from a conceptual base which se p a ra te s encoding, o r communicating id e a s , from e d itin g , communicating id eas in an accepted way. I t needs to be s tre s s e d th a t such a conceptual framework i s not a n t i t h e t i c a l to th e teach in g o f " b a s ic s ," of what we c a ll Standard E dited E n g lish . Such a base sim ply, and profoundly, 1 3 4 recognizes th a t a s tu d e n t's p o te n tia l to a cq u ire the w ritte n d ia le c t o f E nglish cannot be confused w ith h is p o te n tia l to encode meaning. The teaching of grammar i s n o t the same th in g as the teach in g o f composi tio n . I t i s a p a rt o f a w ritin g program , n o t to be confused w ith the whole. 1 3 5 ■ III. IMPLEMENTATION A fte r extended p relim in ary co n v ersatio n s between Dr. A bbott and Dr. Winterowd concerning th e e ffic a c y o f a philosophy such as th e one describ ed above, a p ro p o sal fo r the te s tin g and rem ediation o f w ritin g s k i l l s in th e d i s t r i c t was drawn up by Dr. Winterowd and P ro f. Augustine and p resen ted to Dr. Gyves fo r approval by the a d m in istra tio n and tr u s te e s . Following a m eeting on August 10, 1976, Dr. Gyves, Dr. H artw ig, D r. Winterowd and P ro f, A ugustine a tte n d in g , th e proposal was accepted by th e d i s t r i c t o f f ic e r s and the p i l o t program began w ith the f i r s t sem inar m eeting o f p ro je c t te a c h e rs and p ro je c t d ire c to rs on October 5 , 1976. 3.1 Seminar The o b je c tiv e s o f the sem inar were (1) to in tro d u ce te a c h e rs o f com position to the l a t e s t r h e to r ic a l th e o rie s v a lid a te d by research and p r a c tic a l methods in th e classroom and to acq u ain t them w ith an inventory of to o ls , methods, and procedures which took th e ir peda gogical design from th a t conceptual b a se , and (2) by having accom p lis h e d t h a t , to provide the d i s t r i c t w ith a core o f inform ed p ro fe s sio n a ls who could r e p lic a te th e p i l o t sem inar in d is tr ic t-w id e workshops fo r th e i r c o llea g u es. Seminar p a rtic ip a n ts met fo r fo u rtee n form al s e s s io n s , i n t e r sp ersed by fiv e inform al m eetings demanded by the volume and com plexity ______________________________________________________________________136; - o f the readings and d isc u ssio n s. In a d d itio n , fiv e Friday afternoon m eetings were c a lle d in o rd er to deal w ith the lo g is ti c s o f s e ttin g up w ritin g labs on the s ix campuses o f th e d i s t r i c t . The p a rtic ip a n ts agreed a t th e term in a tio n o f the sem inar, m oreover, to meet as a continu ing colloquium on a f a i r l y re g u la r b a s is throughout the rem ain der of the school y e ar (see 5.2 below ). The read in g re q u ire d o f th e te a c h e rs provided an e s s e n tia l th eo re t i c a l b a se , e s s e n tia l because r a th e r than m ethodologies which presume no p h ilo so p h ic a l underpinnings o r which take th e ir pedagogical ta c tic s from v ario u s and sometimes c o n flic tin g p h ilo so p h ic a l s t r a te g ie s , a thorough exam ination of theory w i l l , o b v io u sly , g en erate p r a c tic a l methods and to o ls in the classroom which are c o h eren t, u n ifie d , and m eaningful f o r the te a c h e r and stu d e n t a lik e . D iscussion of th e readings in v a ria b ly produced a t l e a s t te n ta tiv e answers to th e fo u r- p a r t q u estio n s (see 2.1 above) which d efin ed our ta s k . Some of th e te a c h e rs ' o b se rv a tio n s, l i f t e d from th e sem inar d isc u ssio n s and p a p ers, a re re le v a n t: I was always to ld in c o lle g e th a t w ritin g c o u ld n 't be " ta u g h t," th a t you e ith e r had i t o r you d i d n 't , a kind o f rom antic lea v es-o n - a -tr e e syndrome. A ll I know how to teach i s the " b a s ic s ." You've got c o n te n t in grammar. I t ' s some th in g you can t e s t and be accountable f o r. Maybe a l l o f us have had th e experience [when we were s tu d e n ts ] o f our own w ritin g tak in g on a b ig improvement because of a teach er who got re a lly involved in reading and understanding what we had to say . _______________________ 137 M y stu d e n ts a re people f i r s t . When I f i r s t understood th a t in my g u t, I found I loved te a c h in g . And when they got th e m essage, they began to love to le a rn . W hy h a s n 't anyone to ld me th is befo re? I f e e l I 'v e been cheated. M y stu d e n ts have been cheated. What I 'v e been doing rig h t has been sh eer i n s t in c t . I was an E nglish m ajor and by d e fin itio n w ritin g came easy . M o one looked a t th e p ro cess i f th e end product was okay. And i f i t w asn 't? Tough, th a t was your problem . "H e u ris tic s" w a sn 't even in th e d ic tio n a ry as f a r as I knew. I 'v e always known th a t r e a l w ritin g w a sn 't determ ined by a s tu d e n t’s a b i l i t y to name the p a rts of a se n ten c e. Now I 'v e got an e x p e rt to back me up. I f you have a good w r ite r in your c la s s , chances a re h e 'l l be a good re a d e r, and v ic e -v e rs a . What "decoding" and "encoding" r e a lly means i s th a t a k id has learn ed the d ia le c t o f l ite r a c y . With what we know now, I can see why i t [Head S ta r t] was no b ig su c ce ss. L in g u is tic s scared me to d e a th , i t s t i l l does, b u t i t answers a l o t of q u e stio n s about do-gboder p ro je c ts and why even the b e s t o f in te n tio n s go wrong in the classroom . Most te a c h e rs take t h e ir cues from the p u b lish in g re p s . I don’t even co n sid er a book u n less i t ' s been f ie ld - te s te d . "T ea ch e r-te sted " means i t worked fo r the guy who w rote i t . Big d e a l. What my stu d e n ts need i s not based on [one] p e rs o n a lity doing h is th in g . Even my own high m o tiv atio n w on't help them u n less 1 can come up w ith th e goods. Everyone equates [knowledge o f] grammar and the b a sic s w ith [p ro fic ie n c y in ] com position. How do we get the news to p a re n ts and Sacramento th a t th e y 'r e n o t th e same thing? T estin g w ritin g th e way you [th e d ire c to rs ] th in g i t has to be done s t i l l d o e s n 't allow fo r th e kid w ho's doing g re a t a l l sem ester and then suddenly 1 3 8 on the t e s t day is "o u t of i t . " W riting f in a lly depends on the whole p e rso n , not j u s t on what he can feed back. One way to t e s t improvement i s to look a t the s tu d e n t's grades in o th e r c la s s e s . . . . That would only work i f th e o th e r teach ers stopped g iving m u ltip le -c h o ic e t e s t s . . « W ell, I was th in k in g o f read in g sco res e s p e c ia lly . . . . W e d o n 't know fo r su re th a t i t works th a t way. . . . W hy d o e sn 't somebody do some resea rch on th a t, fin d out i f b e tt e r w ritin g makes fo r b e tte r reading? The lab and workshop id ea i s good i f fo r no o th e r reason than i t h elp s me to se p a ra te id eas from e x p re ssio n . Sometimes a k id w ill clean up h is w ritin g and d is fig u r e h is id e a s . Yeah b u t then in th e e d itin g p a rt you can see the o p p o site sometimes. A stu d e n t may be able to see how s i l l y and u n re la te d two id ea s may be once h e 's s y n ta c tic a lly f lu e n t. I t should be noted th a t th ese o b se rv atio n s were made du rin g th e course o f the sem inar, and in d ic a te th e s h i f t toward a conceptual base which was to d ir e c t the te a c h e rs ' e f f o r ts in th e w ritin g classroom . 3.2 W riting Courses S ixteen of th e o rig in a l eig h teen tea ch e rs completed the sem inar (w ith th re e s u b s titu tio n s ) and, follow ing th e d is tric t-w id e te s tin g of n in th g ra d e rs' com position s k i l l s on December 15, 1976, f if te e n of the s ix te e n chose to implement th e sem inar m a te ria ls in t h e i r w ritin g c la s s e s . The o b je c tiv e s o f th e w ritin g course were e s s e n tia lly the same as those o u tlin e d in the p ro p o sal fo r th e p i l o t program. 3 .2 .1 T arget P opulation N inth g raders who scored below "5" on a s c a le of "12" in the p r e - te s t w ere, in the m ain, assigned to the p ro je c t w ritin g c la s s e s . 139 But each p ro je c t c la s s had a lib e r a l sp rin k lin g of h ig h -s c o re rs , to o . The c la ss e s were to have no more than f if te e n s tu d e n ts . From one to fiv e se c tio n s of the course were assigned to each of the p ro je c t te a c h e rs . 3 .2 .2 Course Design The approach to in s tru c tio n of com position as o u tlin e d in the o rig in a l proposal was adopted by f if te e n p ro je c t te a c h e rs. Conse q u e n tly , the ty p ic a l p ro je c t c la s s divided i t s w ritin g assignm ents in terms o f workshop and lab o b je c tiv e s . Workshops were conducted in the classroom by every te a c h e r on a re g u la r schedule fo r every week o f th e term . M ainly, they became a forum o f s tu d e n ts ’ reading o r "p u b lish in g " on d i tt o th e ir com positions and re c e iv in g comment from t h e ir p eers and a s s is ta n c e from the teach er in th e a r tic u la tio n of th e ir id e a s. Since to p ic s o r d ire c tio n s fo r any w ritin g assignm ent were shared by the whole c la s s , th is procedure assured a mixed and c r i t i c a l audience, helped to promote a v a lid and s in c e re p o in t of view in th e w r i t e r , and made fo r c r e d i b il i ty and I n te r e s t in the com position. The stu d e n t paper re p rin te d below , fo r example, d itto e d and d is tr ib u te d to the workshop p a r tic ip a n ts , could have produced the d isc u ssio n which fo llo w s. One day my frie n d - Susan - and I were in my house and we were having a p illo w f ig h t. By a cc id e n t Susan threw the p illo w too h a rd , so I ducked and th e p illo w went fly in g in to a c ry s ta l vase from Germany and i t broke in to l i t t l e p ie c e s . Susan sa id she was s o rry , and I knew she d id n 't mean i t , b u t what was I going to do? I q u ick ly cleaned _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ "1 4 0 i t up, and hoped th a t my m om w o u ld n 't n o tic e i t but she d id . She was mad a t f i r s t but when I to ld h er i t was an a cc id e n t she sa id i t was o .k ., but not to have p illo w fig h ts in the house anymore. T eacher: A ll r ig h t. You a l l were to d escrib e an experience you shared w ith a frie n d and t e l l what the frie n d did to make the experience what i t was. So w h a t's going on here? Did Deb w rite to the assignment? Student A: Yeah, th a t was some experience a l l r ig h t. Student B: Some frie n d . Student C: T h a t's kind of a n e a t m other. M y m om woulda h i t the c e ilin g . Teacher: How do we know th a t D eb's m om d id n 't? Student D: She got mad, d id n 't she? Student B: How mad? Teacher: R ight. How mad? What does "mad" mean? Do you see "mad"? C lass: Mixed y e s 's and n o 's . Teacher: What happens when "mad" happens? Deb? W riter: Well my m om y e lle d a l o t . And whenever she g e ts mad her eyes g et b ig . T eacher: Maybe you needed to put th a t p iece of d e sc rip tio n in your theme. Student B: Yeah, and th a t h e r te e th got p o in tie r and h er n a ils got lo n g er. T eacher: R eally . Okay, c la s s , where e ls e can th e meaning be made c le a re r here? And so on. In such a d isc u ssio n comments by the stu d e n ts and d ire c tio n by the tea ch e r have cen tered on the problem of a b s tra c tn e s s . The 141 H d isc u ssio n might have been follow ed by a b r ie f in - c la s s w ritin g a ssig n ment in which every stu d e n t was asked to d escrib e a person who was angry: what was s a id ; what g e stu re s were used; which f a c i a l fe a tu re s were most a ffe c te d ; e tc . The p o in t i s , though, in such a d isc u ssio n , stu d e n ts share th e r e s p o n s ib ility of c ritic is m . They are expected to read c r i t i c a l l y , to analyze a n o th e r’s w ritin g , and, by e x te n sio n , to c r i t i c a l l y a sse ss t h e ir own. W riting lab assignm ents were in d iv id u a lly p re sc rib e d fo r each stu d en t according to th e evidence o f need in t h e ir workshop composi tio n s . A ttached to th e paper above, when i t was re tu rn e d to the s tu d e n t, fo r example, would be the n o ta tio n s : "Run-on," " s p e llin g ," "Blue-book, p. n .," among o th e rs . The stu d e n t, under the guidance of the lab te a c h e r, would s e le c t th e m a te ria ls a p p ro p ria te to the e d itin g e rro r or weakness and com plete the lab assignm ent. Depending on the p h y sic a l f a c i l i t i e s a t a campus, lab s were e ith e r lo c a te d in a room se p a ra te from the workshop o r conducted in th e same room as th e workshop. At Huntington Beach High School, fo r example, the lab m a te ria ls were c e n tra liz e d in one classroom m odified fo r use as a resource f a c i l i t y . A tea ch e r was assigned to s t a f f the lab on a re g u la r sch ed u le, to rec eiv e and in s tr u c t stu d e n ts who were re fe rre d by workshop te a c h e rs. At Fountain V alley , on th e o th e r hand, space p ro h ib ite d such an arrangem ent. P ro je c t te a c h e rs c o n stru cted a flo a tin g lab w ith m a te ria ls housed in p o rta b le f i l e s , ro ta tin g work shop and la b se ssio n s in the same classroom . Thus, workshops might be h eld on Mondays, Wednesdays, and F rid ay s; la b s on Tuesdays and _____________________________________________________________________ 142 ' T hursdays, in th e same room and w ith the same te a c h e r in s tr u c tin g . Such a tandem approach to th e teaching o f com position c le a rly id e n tif ie s fo r th e stu d e n t th e double n a tu re of h is o r h e r w ritin g ta sk : to convey meaning in the pro cess of composing and to produce th a t meaning in a form which i s c o rre c t. Thus, ex p ressio n i s n o t in h ib ite d by f e a r o f f a ilin g the stan d ard s of w ritte n E n g lish , but a tte n tio n i s p a id to the acq u irin g o f those sta n d a rd s. Every stu d e n t id e n tif ie s h im self—as w r ite r and c r i t i c —as p o te n tia lly a r tic u la te and, f u r th e r , as one who i s expected to m aster th e d ia le c t o f w ritte n E n g lish . 143. IV. MATERIALS As s ta te d in the p ro p o sa l, th e im plem entation o f th e p ro je c t re q u ire d no v a st in v en to ry of hardw are: "The r e a l n e c e s s itie s a re a m otivated tea ch e r who i s tra in e d in re le v a n t th e o rie s and tech n iq u es, some programmed m a te ria ls in p rin te d form, and p e n c ils and p a p e r.” In f a c t , the philosophy of com position such as we have o u tlin e d above would fin d co u n ter-p ro d u ctiv e those le a rn in g environm ents which s tr e s s m achine-teaching and lo c k -s te p , program m atic le a rn in g . 4.1 Lab M a te ria ls Two sources were a v a ila b le fo r th e p ro je c t te a c h e rs in th e ir s e le c tio n and design of programmed m a te ria ls in p rin te d form: com m e rc ia lly p ublished programs fo r th e improvement of b a s ic s k i l l s and "in -h o u se" m a te ria ls w ritte n by th e te a c h e rs them selves. The f i r s t source involved a thorough search through a v a ila b le p u b lis h e rs ' c a ta logs and te x ts in o rd e r to s e le c t th o se programs o r p a rts o f programs amenable to th e philosophy o f the p r o je c t. Such programs as the Cambridge S e rie s , a lre ad y in use on one campus, proved a c c e p ta b le , in a d d itio n to o th e r n a tio n a lly d is tr ib u te d p u b lic a tio n s . A program in s y n ta c tic fluency was f ie ld - te s te d in the p ro je c t c la s s e s , made a v a il able by a m ajor p u b lish in g house, and observed in the f ie ld by i t s D ire c to r of T estin g and V e r if ia b ility . 144' The p ro je c t te a c h e rs made a v a ila b le to th e d i s t r i c t th e "Pink Book," a g lo ssary of e d itin g n o ta tio n s , exam ples, and c o rre c tio n s of usage. E s s e n tia lly a handbook, t h is refe ren c e was com piled, e d ite d , and m odified as a lab and teaching to o l in the w ritin g co u rse. I t was designed fo r th e s tu d e n t, pro v id in g him or h er w ith self-rem edying access and c o n tro l of m ajor e d itin g problem s. S ectio n s of th e "Pink Book" were assig n ed to in d iv id u a l stu d e n ts according to th e te a c h e r’s in d iv id u a l d iag n o sis of w ritin g weaknesses in a workshop p ap er. The stu d e n t p ra c tic e d th e se c tio n u n t il the weakness was c o rre c te d , e v i dence fo r th a t being a "clean " workshop p ap er. The "Blue Book," f i e l d study m a te ria ls from the forthcom ing The S k ills of Language and Composition by W . Ross Winterowd and P a tr ic ia Murray, was made a v a ila b le to the p ro je c t s t a f f by H arcourt Brace Jovanovich. As a program in sentence-com bining, th is to o l proved in v alu ab le both in term s o f i t s prim ary o b je c tiv e (in cre asin g s y n ta c tic fluency) as w ell as in an e d itin g dividend gained by stu d e n ts as a whole and I d e n tifie d by the m ajo rity o f p ro je c t te a c h e rs. With d is c ip lin e d and re g u la r assignm ents in the "Blue Book," th e average n in th g rader in the p ro je c t n o t only became more s y n ta c tic a lly flu e n t by p ra c tic in g sentence-com bining, he o r she a lso overcame problems of e d itin g such as p u n c tu a tio n , sentence fragm ents, re fe re n c e , and the l ik e . 4.2 Workshop M a te ria ls Most p ro je c t te a c h e rs used a com bination o f what they had been "doing rig h t" in th e ir c la s s e s previous to p a rtic ip a tin g in the sem inar, 1 4 5 . and v a rio u s s tr a te g ie s and ta c ti c s gleaned from th e sem inar read in g s. The com bination proved, fo r th e most p a r t , a cohesive package of p r a c tic a l to o ls fo r improving s tu d e n ts ' in v e n tio n , arrangem ent, and s t y l e . For exam ple, a t Ocean View High School, a module on stu d e n t jo u rn al-k eep in g had been prepared previous to the sem inar. With concepts provided by th e read in g (Winterowd, A ugustine), jo u rn a l- keeping was seen as a means o f encouraging in v en tio n and arrangem ent as w ell as s t y l i s t i c e x p re ssio n , and, consequently, the module was shared by th e Ocean View te a c h e rs w ith t h e i r co lleag u es fo r use in the p ro je c t course. Jo u rn al-k eep in g encouraged a m u ltitu d e o f com positional s tre n g th s in the s tu d e n t, and i t proved to be one o f the more "econom ical" to o ls . O th ers, more or le s s focusing on one w ritin g s k i l l , were v ario u s h e u r is tic p a tte rn s (Winterowd and Young, Becker, and P ik e ), m etaphor and analogy e x e rc is e s (A ugustine), sentence-com bining (Winterowd and M urray, O 'H are), and p u b lish in g and e d itin g (Augustine e t a l ) . 4 .3 A ttitu d e Though a ttitu d e on the p a rt of te a c h e rs and stu d e n ts a lik e i s more d i f f i c u l t to measure and a sse ss than p rin te d m a te ria ls and the hardware o f any co u rse, i t s In flu en ce i s n e v e rth e le ss an e m p iric a l m a tte r— observable and u ltim a te ly c o -e f f ic ie n t w ith what i s tr a d itio n a lly termed "course m a te ria ls ." By and la rg e , and through th e th e o r e tic a l e x p e rtis e affo rd ed by the sem inar readings and d isc u ssio n s, most p ro je c t tea ch e rs brought to t h e i r charges a secu re p ro fessio n alism which re in fo rc e d and enhanced t h e ir re sp o n sib le m o tiv atio n . The r e s u lt 1 4 6 was th a t stu d e n ts were more lik e ly to "tune in " to I n s tru c tio n th a t was co n cep tu ally Inform ed, coherent In p r a c tic e , and r e s u lts - o r ie n te d . At Fountain V alley High School, fo r example, the th re e p ro je c t tea ch e rs a c tiv e ly re c ru ite d stu d e n ts fo r t h e i r c la ss e s w ith the prom ise of "a w ritin g e x p e rie n c e ." They ex p lain ed to stu d e n ts th a t the ta sk of w ritin g —i t s process as w e ll as th e product—would be c le a rly id e n ti fie d as f a r as methods and to o ls were concerned. No one would be "w ritin g in the d a rk ," w ith success o r f a ilu r e a "chancy" or unexplain able phenomenon. In a d d itio n , a g en eral m eeting w ith p a re n ts was held to e x p la in the o b je c tiv e s and means o f the co u rse, follow ed by w ritte n communications and in d iv id u a l p a re n t co nferences. The b e n e fits a tte n d in g such ra p p o rt a re obvious. The i n i t i a t i n g of th a t ra p p o rt la y in th e te a c h e rs ' dem onstrable and accountable knowledge of th e ir s u b je c t. I t should be n o ted , to o , th a t as the p ro je c t course continued throughout the w in te r and sp rin g term s, e x tra -p ro je c t te a c h e rs on p r a c tic a lly every campus showed i n te r e s t in the s tr a te g ie s and to o ls used in the p ro je c t course,. At H untington Beach High School, fo r exam ple, a t l e a s t four tea ch e rs adopted the sentence-com bining tech niques in th e ir w ritin g c la s s e s . On a more general le v e l, p r a c tic a lly every p o st-sem in ar colloquium had e x tra -p ro je c t tea ch e rs in a tten d an ce. 147 V. FINDINGS The o rig in a l proposal termed t h is program a " p ilo t p r o je c t." One d e f in itio n o f such a p ro je c t i s im p lic it in i t s r e p l i c a b i li t y , i t s c o n tro l, and i t s dem onstrable proof of gains in the w ritin g s k i l l s o f stu d e n ts in the p ro je c t course. The r e p l i c a b i li t y of th e p r o je c t, th e d ire c to rs f e e l, i s beyond q u e stio n . The c o n tro ls in such a p ro je c t must be d i f f i c u l t to a sse ss sim ply because th e hum anistic n a tu re o f such a study p ro h ib its a w hite co at la b o ra to ry environm ent. Indeed, w ith such a resea rch s u b je c t as stu d e n t w ritin g , tr a d i tio n a l and r ig id la b o ra to ry c o n tro ls a p p lied to e ith e r stu d e n ts or tea ch e rs are ir r e le v a n t o r s ig n if ic a n tly d e trim e n ta l to v a lid a tin g gains in language p ro fic ie n c ie s (Labov). The p r o je c t's c o n tro ls , th e re fo re , cen tered on two c r i t e r i a : (1) would p ro je c t stu d e n ts show a s ig n if ic a n t in c re a se in h o l l s t i c a l l y graded w ritin g s k i l l s in com p a riso n to th e ir p eers in co n v en tio n ally tau g h t w ritin g courses ( tr a d itio n a l re se a rc h e rs would term these two groups, re s p e c tiv e ly , "experim ental" and " c o n tr o l" ) ; and (2) would stu d e n t gain d if f e r e n t i a l s s ig n if ic a n tly vary from te a c h e r to tea ch e r depending on access to or im plem entation o f the course m a te ria ls considered e s s e n tia l to the classroom p ra c tic e o f com positional th eo ry . A d d itio n a lly , th ese two c r i t e r i a need to be in te rp re te d in l ig h t o f th e p ro je c t se c tio n s having stu d e n ts whose p r e - t e s t sco res were above "5 ." "P ro je c t 148 s e c tio n s ,” in o th e r w ords, i s n o t synonymous w ith " ta rg e t p o p u la tio n ." 5.1 P re /P o st-T e st R esu lts The follow ing ta b le shows a com putation of p r e /p o s t- te s t gains by school: P re /P o st-T e st Mean Gain By School T o tal *9th Grade T arget Group P ro je c t S ections School N Gain N Gain N Gain H B H S 612 0.33 119 1.57 35 0.63 W H S 788 1.41 225 2.91 226 1.65 M H S 794 0.24 171 1.19 165 0.18 FV H S 764 0.28 105 2.36 187 2.42 EH S 768 0.68 156 2.20 161 0.71 O V H S 596 -0 .1 0 118 1.58 133 0.05 D is tr ic t 4322 0.51 894 2.04 907 1.27 P ro je c t se c tio n gains were computed according to these s t a t i s t i c a l c r i t e r i a : (a) R eports o f p r e /p o s t- te s t sco res were taken only from "reg u la r" n in th grade w ritin g se c tio n s of tea ch e rs who had p a r tic ip a te d in th e sem inar. (Mo sco res of P o in t I stu d e n ts , e . g . , a re in c lu d e d .) (b) M u ltip le sco res were not computed. (Some stu d e n ts took two o r more p re - and p o s t - t e s t s .) (c) S ections were tre a te d h o l i s t i c a l l y . (Every s e c tio n had some stu d e n ts whose p r e - te s t sco res were above " 5 ." ) (d) T estin g and sc o rin g procedures were th e same as d escrib ed by ______________________________________________________________________ 149, Dr. K eith H artw ig, 1976-77 N inth Grade W riting Program, Research and E valuation Report No. 1: S e rie s 1977-78 (Ju ly 1 , 1977), pp. 1, 2, (e) Mean Gains a re a c tu a l com putations. No adjustm ent was made to accommodate a r e l i a b i l i t y sam ple. Though th e w ritin g c la ss e s ta u g h t by a l l th e p ro je c t teach ers (p ro je c t s e c tio n s ) show more than tw ice the a c tu a l mean gain of th e d i s t r i c t as a w hole, the wide d isc re p a n c ie s in mean gain from school to school in the ta b le above i s th e proper concern of th is re p o rt. In te rp re ta tio n of raw fig u re s in a p ro je c t which in v o lv es so many human v a ria b le s i s an im possible ta s k . Some f a c to r s , however, which may e x p la in the low est gains are th e se : re lo c a tio n of an e n tir e s tu dent body to a new p h y sic a l p la n t; p r i o r it y of departm ent o b je c tiv e s over p ro je c t means and ends; In s u f f ic ie n t sam pling; In c o m p a tib ility of a te a c h e r's and the p r o j e c t's philosophy. In the case where d e p a rt ment o b je c tiv e s were form ulated and secured b e fo re th e sem inar was announced, the p ro je c t tea ch e rs were accountable f i r s t to t h e i r de partm ent c o o rd in a to r. Before they could implement many o f th e m a te ria ls from the sem inar, they had to com plete a program o f in s tr u c tio n drawn up by a committee o f the departm ent. C onsequently, le s s than h a lf the term was devoted to p ro je c t o b je c tiv e s , and th e b ifu rc a tio n o f p h ilo s ophies in h ib ite d th e coherence o f e ff e c tiv e teach in g once the p ro je c t course began. Then, one te a c h e r a t another school decided n o t to opt fo r the " p ro je c t package." He used none of the m a te ria ls , he s a id , and, presum ably, he did n o t sup p o rt the m a te ria ls he d id use w ith the _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ '1 5 0 p r o j e c t's philosophy. I t must be n o ted , however, th a t mean gains were lower a t M arina High School where lack of coherence ab o rted p ro je c t o b je c tiv e s than a t Edison High School w here, again presum ably, a tea ch e r chose to "go i t alone" ra th e r than confuse h is stu d e n ts w ith two p h ilo so p h ic a l approaches. Accounting fo r th e r e la tiv e success o f p ro je c t se c tio n s a t W estm inster High School and Fountain V alley High School demands a tte n tio n to another s e t o f f a c to r s . C oncentrating on Fountain V alley High School, fo r the moment, perhaps an id e n tif ic a tio n o f fa c to rs as they c o rre la te w ith su c c e ss, i . e . , as they a re not shared in f u l l by any o th e r p ro je c t teach er team a t any o th e r sc h o o l, may prove in s tr u c tiv e . 1. The th re e te a c h e rs a t Fountain V alley High School were h ire d and appointed e x p lic itly to teach com position. In f a c t, they tau g h t fiv e com position c la s s e s each during th e w in ter and sp rin g term s. T heir teaching of com position was thus in te rp re te d as t h e i r p r in c ip a l (indeed, t h e ir only) d u ty , n o t as th e ir share of the " d irty work" o f th e departm ent, d iv e rtin g a tte n tio n and p re p a ra tio n away from the "plum" courses - l i t e r a t u r e and th e e le c tiv e s . 2. T heir assignm ent fo r the f a l l term was to immerse them selves in the readings and in s tru c tio n a tte n d a n t on the sem inar and, follow ing each sem inar m eeting, to conduct theory workshops w ith th e ir colleagues a t Fountain V alley High School. In th e ir f i r s t sem ester, the te a c h e rs were thus expected to re se a rc h and plan fo r th e ir subsequent teach in g . O bviously, th is time spent in p re p a ra tio n paid o f f . 3. As noted in 3 .2 .2 , above, the p h y sic a l f a c i l i t i e s a t Fountain V alley High School p ro h ib ite d the a llo c a tin g o f a se p a ra te lab environm ent. Formal lab re q u ire ments were m et, b u t w ith in th e environm ental context o f the workshop. 151 The tandem approach to w ritin g was p h y sic a lly re in fo rc e d by a o n e -te a c h e r, one-room approach to the whole of th e process and product of composing. 4. A "p u b lic r e la tio n s " program involving stu d e n ts and th e ir p a re n ts was i n i t i a t e d by th e te a c h e rs and th e ir su p e rv iso rs b efo re the course began. P aren ts were in v ite d to sh are in th e concepts and planning o f th e ir c h ild re n s ' in s tr u c tio n , j u s t as the stu d e n ts them selves were in v ite d to jo in the p r o je c t co u rse. The tea ch e rs were thus ab le to draw upon a wide base o f understanding and co o p eratio n . S tudents and p a re n ts were tre a te d as i n te l li g e n t p a rtn e rs in the q u est fo r l ite r a c y . 5. F in a lly , the tea ch e rs were stim u la te d and re in fo rc e d in th e ir e f f o r ts by a su p p o rtiv e p rin c ip a l and departm ent c o o rd in a to r. While W estm inster High School p ro je c t se c tio n s b e n e fltte d from many of th e fa c to rs above, they did not share them a l l , p r in c ip a lly #1 and 92. 5.2 T eachers’ E valuations Four o f the p ro je c t tea ch e rs responded to a re q u e st fo r n a rra tiv e e v a lu a tio n s of the p r o je c ts . In fo rm a lly , n e arly a l l of th e p ro je c t te a c h e rs, a t one tim e or another during th e course o f th e p r o je c t, voiced the same p ro ’s and con’s as those in th e w ritte n e v a lu a tio n s. S ig n ific a n t, to o , is a remark made to one of th e d ir e c to r s by an e x tra - p ro je c t tea ch e r (a departm ent c o o rd in a to r) during th e summer follow ing the p o s t- te s tin g : " I want you to know I'm so rry about the fla k we gave you l a s t y e a r. W e're abandoning our lab id e a and doing i t 'your way’ now." T his te a c h e r was then p a r tic ip a tin g in a summer Area W riting Workshop, the concepts and philosophy o f which he assured the d ir e c to r was com patible w ith and proof of th e p r o j e c t's e ffic a c y . 152 VI. CONCLUSIONS AND PROJECTIONS Terming th e p ro je c t a success n a tu ra lly evolves from th e p ro je c t c la s s gains showing a s ig n if ic a n t d if f e r e n t i a l from the c o n tro l group, the n in th grade " a t la rg e " p o p u latio n . C le a rly , th e p ro je c t stu d e n ts w rote b e tt e r by the p o s t- te s t s c o re s , and t h e ir in c re a se s were la rg e r than th e ir p e e r s ’ in n o n -p ro je c t c la s s e s . P ro je c t te a c h e rs, th u s, were teaching b e t t e r , informed by theory and m otivated by th e p ro fe s sio n a l s e c u rity which th a t conceptual base a ffo rd s . Based o n 'th e r e la tiv e ly o u tstan d in g success of p ro je c t se c tio n s a t Fountain V alley High School, our recommendation fo r fu tu re programs and im plem entation must r e la te to th e fiv e fa c to rs o u tlin e d in 5 .1 . 1. P re p a ra tio n by tea ch e rs in theory and p ra c tic e i s a m ust. P ro fe ssio n a l "g ra n ts" awarded to tea ch e rs in th e form of re le a s e d tim e an d /o r su b sid ized course work may be one way to assu re the enhancing o f what in d iv id u a l tea ch e rs may be doing r i g h t, along w ith the e lim in a tin g of non-productive a ttitu d e s and procedures. 2. Assignments in teach in g com position should be accompanied by th e b e n e fits o f p r e s tig e . A d i s t r i c t , a p r in c ip a l, a departm ent c o o rd in a to r can by m erit awards and example show th a t te a c h e rs o f com position are doing v i t a l and in te r e s tin g work. 3. Students and th e ir p a re n ts need to sh a re in the confidence th a t informed p ro fessio n alism en jo y s. Too o fte n , stu d e n ts and p a re n ts are "kept in the dark" because, sim ply, no one knows what to t e l l them about th e pro cess of ed u catio n . 4. As su c c e ssfu l te a c h e rs become id e n tif ie d , d ir e c t o b serv atio n of th e ir methods and s tr a te g ie s by t h e i r co lleag u es should be 153 encouraged. The teach in g p ro c e ss, sim ply, needs more a tte n tio n , and u n t il we a re ab le to catalo g a l l the q u a litie s o f a su c c e ssfu l tea ch e r fo r em ulation by o th e rs , our n ext b e s t o p tio n i s to w itn ess good teach in g . 5. Thus, a continuing and evolving e d u ca tio n al program , s ta b iliz e d by theory and re in fo rc e d by p o lic y and Involvem ent, i s necessary fo r any long-term "p ay -o ff" o f P ro je c t L ite ra c y . 6. To sum up, then: a recommendation must be made th a t fu tu re programs to improve the w ritin g of stu d e n ts be based p r i m arily on p rep arin g and encouraging the tea ch e rs o f com p o s itio n . M a terials a re secondary in such an approach. They become ad hoc p ro p o sitio n s to the human environm ent, to the minds and sym pathies which must preceed them. One l a s t n o te on the "p ro fessio n alism " which i s spoken o f so fre q u e n tly in th is re p o rt. P a rt of th e proof of i t s perv asiv e in flu e n ce as a r e s u lt of the p ro je c t are th ese p la n s , some of which are alread y fin a liz e d : 1. Two of the p ro je c t te a c h e rs w ill lead a sem inar in the F a ll of 1977 in o rd er to acquaint th e ir co lleag u es in the d i s t r i c t w ith the philosophy and m a te ria ls of th e p i l o t p ro je c t. 2. A re p o rt on the p ro je c t w ill be d e liv e re d by th re e p ro je c t teach ers a t the annual N O TE conference th is November in New York. 3. Dr. Winterowd and one o f th e p ro je c t tea ch e rs are p rep arin g an a r t i c l e on the theory and im plem entation o f the p ro je c t. A. Four p ro je c t te a c h e rs a re involved in research on hem ispher i c i t y and pathology in w ritin g . 5. A propo sal fo r a reading s e r ie s e d ite d by W . Ross Winterowd and two p ro je c t te a c h e rs , to c o rre la te reading and sentence combining, has been p resen ted to a m ajor p u b lish in g firm . The response has been fa v o ra b le . 154, VII. [PROJECT PROPOSAL] To: Dr. John Gyves Huntington Beach Union High School D i s tr ic t From: W . Ross Winterowd Dorothy A ugustine P i l o t Program: T estin g and Rem ediation in W riting S k ills General O bjectives (1) To c re a te a re p lic a b le program th a t w ill b rin g about a s ig n if ic a n t improvement in the w ritin g (com position) s k i l l s of stu d e n ts in H untington Beach Union High School D i s t r i c t . (2) To give d i s t r i c t tea ch e rs in -s e rv ic e tra in in g in the th e o rie s and pedagogical methods n ecessary to re a liz e the above o b je c tiv e . S p e c ific O bjectives The program w ill be designed to give stu d e n ts c le a rly defined com petencies. In each c a se , in c re a se s in these com petencies w i l l be m easurable through t e s t s . (1) E d itin g S k i l l s . Students who go through the p i lo t program w ill make dem onstrably fewer e d itin g e rr o rs in th e ir w ritin g . W e d efin e " e d itin g s k i l ls " as punctuation* s p e llin g , verb agreem ent, pronoun re fe re n c e and agreem ent, p a ra lle lis m , and o th e r su rfa c e fe a tu re s o f th e w ritte n te x t. In o th e r w ords, stu d e n ts w ill 155 s ig n if ic a n tly reduce the number o f m echanical and gram m atical e rro rs th a t appear in th e ir w ritin g . (2) S y n ta c tic Fluency. Students w ill in c re a se t h e ir s y n ta c tic fluency in a s t a t i s t i c a l l y m eaningful way. The concept o f s y n ta c tic fluency is b a s ic , and i t needs j u s t a b i t of e x p la n atio n . To r e s o r t b r ie f ly to l in g u is tic ja rg o n , i t i s the a b il i ty to embed p ro p o sitio n s w ith in one an o th e r. The stu d e n t who does n o t have th is a b i l i t y i s hampered by what amounts to a " s c r ib a l s t u t te r" which must be overcome b efo re he o r she can m aster o th e r s k i l l s of com position. In th is se n se , s y n ta c tic fluency i s the foundation fo r o th e r s k i l l s . For example, the follow ing passage i s not s y n ta c tic a lly flu e n t; I know a g i r l . She lik e s to r o lle r s k a te . She r o lle rs k a te s down our s t r e e t . Her p i g ta i ls fly behind h e r. The follow ing i s a s y n ta c tic a lly flu e n t v e rsio n of th e passage: I know a g i r l who lik e s to ro lle r s k a te down our s t r e e t , h er p i g ta i ls fly in g behind h e r. W e must s tr e s s : overwhelming evidence in d ic a te s th a t stu d e n ts who are n o t r e la tiv e ly flu e n t s y n ta c tic a lly can make l i t t l e pro g ress in w ritte n com position. For th is re a so n , i t i s c ru c ia l th a t d isa b le d w rite rs develop the a b i l i t y to embed as the f i r s t ste p toward compe ten ce. C u rre n tly , extrem ely e ff e c tiv e softw are i s a v a ila b le to give v i r tu a ll y every stu d e n t adequate s y n ta c tic fluency. (3) Coherence. Coherence i s to the paragraph as s y n ta c tic fluency i s to the sen ten ce. As judged by m ature re a d e rs , th e coherence 156 o f s tu d e n ts ’ w ritin g w ill in cre ase m esaurably. (4) Development o f Id e a s . As judged by m ature re a d e rs , s tu d e n ts ' id eas w ill be b e tt e r developed. W ritings w ill be more s p e c if ic , w ill co n tain more d e t a i l , w ill employ metaphor and o th e r fig u ra tiv e language necessary fo r the adequate ex p lan atio n of id e a s. (5) P o in t o f view . Students w ill be b e tte r ab le to a d ju s t th e ir w ritin g s to given audiences fo r given purposes. C rite rio n referen ced te s ts w ill dem onstrate th is group of s k i l l s . (6) Mastery o f B asic Forms. S tudents w ill In cre ase t h e i r a b il i ty to w rite in given modes and form s. Mature rea d ers w ill judge th e ir n a rr a tiv e s , d e s c rip tio n s , and e x p lan atio n s more s a tis f a c to r y . Students w ill a ls o m aster b a s ic w ritin g forms such as the b u sin ess l e t t e r and the form al re p o rt. D iagnostic T estin g M achine-graded, m u ltip le -c h o ic e t e s ts w ill n o t y ie ld th e in fo r m ation th a t we need to diagnose com positional problem s and p re sc rib e rem ediation. T h erefo re, we suggest essay exam inations judged by tra in e d re a d e rs. In th is document, we w ill not attem pt to e x p la in th e d e ta ils of th e te s tin g procedure. However, our experience shows th a t r e lia b le judging of the essays w ill take about 125 re a d e r hours p e r one thou sand exam inations. Every exam ination i s read by a t le a s t two re a d e rs. Where the f i r s t two rea d ers do n o t a g re e , a th ir d read er judges the exam ination. 157 The B asic S k ills Program On th e b a s is of t e s t r e s u l ts , stu d e n ts who need to a cq u ire b a sic com position s k i l l s w ill be id e n tifie d and w ill be assigned to a f le x ib le program of t u t o r i a l s , workshops, and programmed in s tr u c tio n . The teaching a c t i v i t i e s w ill take p lace in two kinds o f environm ents. (1) The Language S k ills L aboratory. Since c u rre n t re se a rc h (as w ell as common sense) dem onstrates th e c lo se c o rre la tio n between read in g and w ritin g , the language s k i l l s la b o ra to ry id e a lly w ill pro vide in s tru c tio n in both s k i l l s . W e must s tr e s s a t t h is p o in t: we are not h ere ta lk in g about a g re a t d eal o f hardw are, b u t ra th e r underscore the need fo r in te n s iv e teach er tr a in in g in theory and pedagogical methodology. The r e a l n e c e s s itie s are a m otivated tea ch e r who i s tra in e d in th e re le v a n t th e o rie s and tec h n iq u e s, some programmed.m a te ria ls in p rin te d form, and p e n c ils and p ap er. In the language la b o ra to ry , the d isa b le d stu d e n t w i l l, under th e te a c h e r’s guidance, engage in c a re fu lly designed e x e rc ise s in th e b a s ic s k i l l s o f s y n ta c tic fluency and e d itin g . Furtherm ore, the teach er (and, i f p o s s ib le , p a ra p ro fe ssio n a ls) w ill give in d iv id u a l t u to r i a l help in such m atters as making th e ta lk in g -to -w ritin g t r a n s f e r , fin d ing id eas fo r w r itin g , and developing those id e a s. In s tru c tio n in the language la b o ra to ry w ill be com pletely in d i v id u a liz e d , based on each s tu d e n t's p a r tic u la r needs. (2) The W riting Workshop. In o rder to e x p lain the w ritin g work shop, we w ill give a g en eral d e s c rip tio n o f th e s o r ts o f a c t i v i t i e s 158 th a t go on in i t . (a) ’’P u b lic a tio n ” is th e prim ary "m ethod." S tudents w ill exchange and d iscu ss w ritin g s . Students w ill read w ritin g s aloud to the c la s s . W ritings w ill be d itto e d . The c la s s w ill e d it an a n th o l ogy o f the members1 w ritin g s . (b) S tudents w ill be asked to generate to p ic s fo r w ritin g assignm ents, some of which w ill be done in c la s s and some o f which w ill be completed as o u t-o f-c la s s p ro je c ts . (c) The te a c h e r w ill p a r tic ip a te more than d ir e c t. Students w ill be p rim a rily re sp o n sib le as w rite rs and c r i t i c s . The teach er w ill be a " c irc u la tin g " resource person who w ill help stu d e n ts solve immediate w ritin g problems and who w ill re fe re e d isc u ssio n se ss io n s . The teach er w ill a ls o be a d ia g n o stic ia n who w ill p re s c rib e s p e c ific le a rn in g experiences to in d iv id u a l stu d e n ts who need to acq u ire b a sic s k i l l s . (3) In te ra c tio n of Language L aboratory and W riting Workshop. S tudents w ill a lte r n a te between the la b o ra to ry and the workshop, de pending on th e ir needs a t any given time in th e program. The w ritin g workshop w i l l , of co u rse, be "home base" fo r a l l o f the stu d e n ts . In o rd er to m aintain c o n tin u ity , the workshop tea ch e r and th e lab te a c h e r w ill a lte r n a te assignm ents p e rio d ic a lly , perhaps as o fte n as every week. In -S e rv ic e Model W e urge th a t our comprehensive in -s e rv ic e tra in in g model become a p a rt of the p i l o t program in i t s second y e a r. A copy of our p roposal fo r in -s e rv ic e tra in in g i s in D is tr ic t f i l e s . 159 C osts At this early point, costs are d iffic u lt to estim ate. However, items th at must be covered are the following. (1) Salaries for program directors (Winterowd and Augustine), 16 weeks, approximately $5,000. (2) Testing costs: 125 hours of readers' time; duplication and c le ric a l work; consultant's fee (Dr. Edward White, C alifornia State University and Colleges Chancellor's O ffice): W e have no way of estim ating th is sum. Reader time is obviously the major item, but since readers w ill be teachers, the D istric t must determine compensation. (3) M aterials: $2,000. 160 VIII. [SEMINAR SYLLABUS] Workshop-Seminar in Composition Huntington Beach Union High School D is tr ic t P ro je c t D ire c to r: W. Ross Winterowd, U n iv e rsity o f Southern C a lifo rn ia P ro je c t C oordinator: Dorothy A ugustine, U n iv e rsity o f Soutem C a lifo rn ia and Chapman C ollege Texts Dorothy A ugustine, The Thought o f W riting R ichard L. G raves, R hetoric and Com position: A Sourcebook fo r Teachers Nancy Ainsworth Johnson, C urrent Topics in Language: In tro d u cto ry Readings W illiam Labov, The Study of Nonstandard E nglish Frank O 'H are, Sentence Combining; Improving Student W riting W ithout Formal Grammar In s tru c tio n Richard P ir s ig , Zen and the A rt o f M otorcycle M aintenance Gary Tate ( e d .) , Teaching Composition: Ten B ib lio g rap h ic Essays fo r Teachers W . Ross Winterowd ( e d .) , Contemporary R hetoric: A Conceptual Background w ith Readings 161 W . Ross Winterowd, The Contemporary W riter: A P r a c tic a l R hetoric Assignments of req u ire d readings appear on th e sy lla b u s below. I t i s suggested, however, th a t p a rtic ip a n ts in th e seminar-workshop c a re fu lly read everything in a l l of th e books. Term P ro je c t Every p a rtic ip a n t in th e sem inar w ill complete a s e t o f in s tr u c tio n a l m a te ria ls , based on the th e o rie s and techniques covered in the c la s s . D e ta ils o f th is p ro je c t w ill be explained a t one of th e meet in g s. Schedule O ct. 5 L e c tu re : The n a tu re and uses o f grammar Assignment of paper on the composing process D iscu ssio n : P e rsp e ctiv es on the c o rre la tio n s between grammar and com position Assignm ent: Read "The Slow P a c ific S w ell," by Yvor W inters; make notes on the p ro cesses you use in read in g and on your in te r p r e ta tio n of the poem. Oct. 12 L e c tu re : Reading and w ritin g D iscu ssio n : W riting assignm ents based on rea d in g s; w ritin g assignm ents in g e n eral. C lass A c tiv ity : Reading and d isc u ssin g "The Slow P a c ific Sw ell"; making a w ritin g assignm ent on the b a s is o f th is poem. 162 Assignment: If books have arrived, begin reading. Oct. 19 Lecture: Essential lin g u istic concepts—socio- and psycholin guistics Discussion: Assigned readings Readings Due: C W , Ch. 10 Lyons, p. 303, in Current Topics Malmstrom and Weaver, p. 344, in Current Topics Shuy, p. 129, in Current Topics Labov, p. 139, in Current Topics Oct. 26 Discussion: Assigned readings Class A ctivity: Sentence combining Readings Due: John Mellon, in C R O'Hare, Sentence Combining Francis Christensen, in C R C W , Chapter 11 Nov. 2 Class A ctivity: Sentence combining and s ty lis tic analysis (practical grammar) Discussion: Assigned readings Readings Due: The conqplete section on Style in C R Ch. 12, "Words," and Ch. 13, "Figurative Language," in C W C O M P O S IN G P R O C E SS P A PE R S D U E Nov. 9 Class A ctivity: Russian roulette concerning syntactic fluency (brief presentations by seminar participants) Discussion: Assigned readings Readings Due: Graves, Part I I I , "The Sentence" (Com p and Rhet) 163 Nov. 16 Preview and Review Nov. 23 L ecture I P rew ritin g and c re a tiv ity D isc u ssio n : Assigned readings Readings Due: McCrimmon, in G raves, Comp and Rhet A ugustine, The Thought o f W riting Comp and R het, P a rt I I Nov. 30 L e c tu re : Developing Id e a s : H e u ris tic s and C re a tiv ity D iscu ssio n : Assigned readings Readings Due: CW , Ch. 2 C W , Ch. 3 Dec. 7 D iscu ssio n : Assigned readings C lass A c tiv ity : Using h e u r is tic s Readings Due: CR, S ection on Invention Comp and R het, P a rt 6 , ’’ The Uses o f C la s s ic a l R h e to ric" Weaver, in Comp and Rhet ^' Dec. 14 C lass A c tiv ity : S ynectics Jan . 4 D iscu ssio n : Assigned readings Panel Review: S ty le Readings Due: S ection on Form in C R Graves, P a rt IV, "The Paragraph and Beyond" (Comp and Rhet) Coe, "R hetoric 2001" W eathers, "Grammars o f S ty le" .164 Jan 11 L e c tu re ; Philosophy of Good Reasons Panel/R eview ; Invention Jan 18 Panel/Review : Form D iscu ssio n : P irs ig Reading Due: P ir s ig To be arranged V is it to the reading and w ritin g lab o ra to ry a t USC. 165

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