Donald Stewart makes two things clear right away: he believes in the “importance of historical knowledge for modern composition teachers” and that he abhors the use of a formulaic or “current-traditional rhetoric” approach to composition instruction.
So, “what is important in writing?” Stewart asks. Clearly, he does not believe that usage or the formulaic process are important. This approach is criticized for the fear that students and teachers who follow this approach will become drones, unable to construct independent and critical thoughts. He uses some powerful diction, calling the five-paragraph essay a “verbal straightjacket” (137). And the quotation from John Genung’s 1886 book is quite compelling: “This is evidently an unconscious surrender to the tyranny of a mental habit” (137). What I’m taking away from this section is that our academic institutions somehow got locked into this restrictive way of thinking about composition a long time ago and we haven’t been able to emancipate ourselves from it. Who decided what academic writing should look like? Why wasn’t the decision made a long time ago that creativity and expression were the most important aspects of writing? Maybe if this were the case we would have more poets writing beautiful lyrics than cynics penning tedious criticisms.
The Platonic idea that discourse should be a “living creature” suggests that composition is inflexible, and therefore, not as effective as speech/rhetoric. The implication here is that students need to learn how to formulate an argument and then be able to not only defend it, but also to subtly modify the arguments for various audiences.
George Hempel’s three points on the misconceptions of the English language were insightful to me. Why does the written word have more currency in our society than the spoken word? Who has the authority to determine the “rules” of our language and to say what “good” English is versus “bad” English? Language is an organic creature continuously morphing meanings, directions, purposes. Language should not be locked in a box. The descriptive approach to language here, one of non-judgmental empiricism seems like a much more pacifying approach, though what do you do with the findings? Should the development of language be observed just for observations sake, or can this be applied to writing in order to improve style or some other area?
One of the most intriguing ideas presented in the article was on the last page when Stewart brings up technology. It is interesting to think that this speech was originally composed over 25 years ago. This debate has definitely continued and he was right in that technology now plays a major factor in how we think about writing. With the recent technological gains, pretty much anyone in the world can display their thoughts to a wide, diverse, and global audience. These people do not need to be published anymore, they just need internet access. And though blogging and other new communicative alternatives may not be academic scholarship, these new approaches to composition and rhetoric need to be studied very closely because these genres are beginning to have more currency and a larger audience in our society than much current scholarship.
Very interesting, Eric. I have been wondering who decided what was important, and who gets to say what is better than other stuff. In my own looking around at research, it seems that one can find support for nearly any point of view, if one looks hard enough. In Speech & Debate, students are taught to make a convincing argument for a proposition, then turn around and make an equally convincing argument against the same proposition. Is that our aim?
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