Some of the Intellectual/Scholarly Traditions That have Formed Composition & Retoric in US Colleges and Universities
This list is roughly chronological, as told by Hobbs & Berlin, but these traditions continue to exist in various forms. See the Textbooks page for some current examples.
- > Current-Traditional Rhetoric (1890s) – “knowledge is always prior to the act of writing, to be discovered through the appropriate inductive method of one’s scientific area of expertise. As a result, invention as the discovery of the available means of persuasion is excluded from rhetoric, and attention is shifted to arrangement – the modes of discourse – and style, now primarily conceived as correctness” (Hobbs & Berlin 253)
- > The Liberal Culture Ideal (1890s) – “The proponents of liberal culture argued that the literary text was the expression of the highest potential of human nature, representing the perfect fusion of truth, goodness, and beauty. From this perspective, the claims of current-traditional rhetoric were altogether too democratic,, arguing mistakenly that writing, like engineering or farming or pharmacy, could be taught” (Hobbs & Berlin 254)
- > Social Efficiency (1900-1917) – “…meant that schools were to provide curricula that met ‘the future social needs of the student, ‘ taught ‘cooperation as preparation for future social activities,’ and provided for ‘t he future social destination of the student’ Students were not to be prepared for work – primarily for life in the large-scale organizations where cooperation (as well as conformity) was valued over competition” (Hobbs & Berlin 256)
- > Fred Newton Scott’s Alternative Rhetoric (1900-1917) – “…was intent on providing for public discourse in a democratic and heterogeneous society….Scott thus proposes a rhetoric of public service, a commitment to using discourse for public good” (Hobbs & Berlin 258)
- > Expressionist Rhetoric (1920s-1940s) – In the years between the world wars, the emphasis shifted to expression and artistry. “For expressionist rhetoric writing – all writing – is accordingly art. This means that it can be learned, and learned by all, but not taught. The work of the teacher is to provide an environment in which students can learn what cannot be directly imparted in instruction” (Hobbs & Berlin 261).
- > Behaviorism (1920s-1940s)– Quantification and testing resulted from this tradition: “teaching objectives were stated in measurable terms and the learning then measured through the appropriate testing device” (Hobbs & Berlin 262).
- > Social Rhetorics (1920s-1940s) – “While the expressionists looked to the individual to address the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s, the sponsors of social reform looked to collective solutions, beginning with a critique of the excesses of the free enterprise system” (Hobbs & Berlin 263).
- > Communication & Composition (1930s-1940s) – In the 1930s and 1940s, communications courses combined reading, writing and speaking. “most of these courses, however, were conservative, offering a current-traditional approach that presented communications in the service of the democratic ideals recently challenged from abroad” (Hobbs & Berlin 265).
- > Literature & Composition (1950s) – In the 1950s, “college professors were in large numbers insisting that the best way to teach composition is through reading literature and writing about it. This was, in large part, a result of a sense of professional identity achieved by teachers of literature following the war” (Hobbs & Berlin 266).
- > Linguistics & Composition (1950s) – “Structural linguistics during the 1950s seemed for many to offer a panacea for the difficulties of learning to write. It was hoped that learning about the structure of language would enable students to learn about the structure of discourse, not to mention mastering grammar,, making them better writers” (Hobbs & Berlin 267).
- > Historical Rhetoric (1950s-1960s) – The “recovery of historical rhetorics reminded English teachers of the central place that text production had occupied in the educational institutions of the past, serving in many ages as the organizing element of the entire curriculum.” (Hobbs & Berlin 269). This move to recapture insights from classical rhetorical traditions spurred the creation of Composition & Rhetoric as a discipline.
- > Cognitive Process & Expressive Process Movements (1960s-1970s) – “Student should engage in the process of composing, not in the study of someone else’s process of composing. Teachers may supply information about writing or direct students in its structural stages, but their main job is to create an environment win which students can learn for themselves the behavior appropriate to successful writing.” (Hobbs & Berlin 271). “[T]he difference between the cognitivist process of Bruner and the expressionist process of the Dartmouth Conference can be stated in a number of clear-cut oppositions: cognitive learning and intellectual development against affective response; a process of knowing ‘a body of material in a “spiraling” fashion’ against a ‘process of personal development’; communication for practical purposes against symbolic expression for self fulfillment; discovery through induction against creation through intuition” (Hobbs & Berlin 273).
- > Social Epistemic Theories (1970s) – “…the writer, the audience, the larger community, and the subject addressed are all at least partly constructed by their verbal formulations. From this perspective, we never know things in themselves, but only linguistic mediations which refract as much as they reflect” (Hobbs & Berlin 275).
- > Composition becomes a Discipline (1975-1980s) – “By the end of the 1980s, three major paradigms or problematics competed for attention in college rhetoric and composition programs….[Cognitive rhetoric] argued for the primacy of cognitive structures in composing, arguing that any study of the process must begin with and analysis of these structures….Expressionists…continued to emphasize the private an personal nature of writing….social constructionist or social epistemic [rhetorics]…started with the social as the foundation of subject formation and so tended to call on neopragmatist, Marxist, or poststructuralist formulations in presenting their case” (Hobbs & Berlin 280-1).
- > Cultural Studies & Composition (1990s) – “While mass culture was a disease to be inoculated against and resisted in some pedagogies, in much composition, and subsequently in cultural studies, it became the portal to student learning and even to be celebrated in its own right” (Hobbs & Berlin 284).
- > Language Issues (1980s-1990s) – Dialect awareness became a national topic in the mid-1980s, with the Oakland “Ebonics” controversy. This awareness led to statements about students’ rights to their own (home) language(s).
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Catherine L. Hobbs and James Berlin, "A Century of Writing Instruction in School and College English." In James Murphy, ed. A Short History of Writing Instruction, 2nd Ed. Hermagoras Press, 2001. 247-289.
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