Authoring A Discipline

Scholarly Journals and the Post-world War Ii Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition

Maureen Daly Goggin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781135658502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kommunikationswissenschaften

Authoring a Discipline traces the post-World War II emergence of rhetoric and composition as a discipline within departments of English in institutions of higher education in the United States. Goggin brings to light both the evolution of this discipline and many of the key individuals involved in its development. Drawing on archival and oral evidence, this history offers a comprehensive and systematic investigation of scholarly journals, the editors who directed them, and the authors who contributed to them, demonstrating the influence that publications and participants have had in the emergence of rhetoric and composition as an independent field of study. Goggin considers the complex struggles in which scholars and teachers engaged to stake ground and to construct a professional and disciplinary identity. She identifies major debates and controversies that ignited as the discipline emerged and analyzes how the editors and contributors to the major scholarly journals helped to shape, and in turn were shaped by, the field of rhetoric and composition. She also coins a new term--discipliniographer--to describe those who write the field through authoring and authorizing work, thus creating the social and political contexts in which the discipline emerged. The research presented here demonstrates clearly how disciplines are social products, born of political struggles for both intellectual and material spaces.

CHAPTER 1
THE TRANSMOGRIFICATION OF RHETORIC AND THE EMERGENCE OF COMPOSITION

[T]he grandeur of the sciences has been diminished by the distribution and separation of their parts. Do you imagine, that when the famous Hippocrates of Cos flourished, there were then some of the medical faculty who cured diseases, others wounds, and a third class the eyes ? Do you suppose that geometry under Euclid and Archimedes, that music under Damon and Aristoxenus, that grammar itself when Aristophanes and Callimachus treated of it, were so divided into parts, that no one comprehended the universal system of any of those sciences, but different persons selected different parts on which they meant to bestow their labor?

—Cicero, On Oratory and Orators (II xxxiii 229)

In outlining the characteristics of the ideal orator, Cicero’s Crassus lamented the transformation of knowledge communities into specialized branches, for he saw the compartmentalization of knowledge as diminishing the orator and even rhetoric itself. All knowledge, for Cicero, was at the center of rhetoric. In the ideal rhetor, “the acuteness of the logicians, the wisdom of the philosophers, the language almost of poetry, the memory of lawyers, the voice of tragedians, the gesture almost of the best actors, is required” (I xxviii 37). Cicero’s De Oratore is marked by a nostalgia for the days when it seemed more possible for the orator to be a well-rounded and learned individual as well as for a time when the political conditions of the Roman republic were more favorable for rhetoric and the rhetor.

Throughout the history of rhetoric, the tides of rhetorical systems have flowed and ebbed in response to social, political, economic, and cultural forces. In favorable times, rhetoric has been understood as a complex epistemic system; in less favorable times, it has been reduced to so much window dressing.¹ Rhetoric is paradoxically powerful and fragile. It is powerful precisely because it is at the center of all knowledge, and all knowledge is at its center. However, it is also fragile for precisely the same reasons. When knowledge is dissected into discrete parts—as it was in modernity—rhetoric, as a complex system, suffers. As Albert Kitzhaber pointed out:

In times when the estate of rhetoric has been low, invariably the communicative function has been lost sight of, and the discipline has become the art of ornamented language, or merely an academic exercise. The great years of rhetoric in Greece and Rome were periods when rhetoric was used to prepare men to take an active part in public life. The period of the second Sophistic in Rome saw rhetoric reduced to the level of a school exercise or a vehicle for social display, in which ornamentation was the chief goal. (Rhetoric 141)

The late 19th century was just such a period when the estate of rhetoric was again low, having been reduced to little more than a school exercise in U.S. higher education. Cicero’s lament is of special interest here because it may well be applied to the situation that occurred with the rise of the modern university when disciplines carved out specialized and discrete knowledge constituencies. The radical transformation of higher education some one hundred years ago yielded little space for rhetoric. It is a discontinuity worth noting because rhetoric had been central to education for well over two thousand years. Understanding the tides of rhetoric and some of the forces that control the ebb and flow can help us to understand the current situation in rhetoric and composition.

This book is concerned with the reemergence of rhetoric as a serious area of study within departments of English after World War II and with the concurrent rise of rhetoric and composition as a discipline and a profession. In particular, it examines one important piece of the puzzle of that reemergence, namely, academic journals and how those who directed them and those who contributed to them helped to shape, and were in turn shaped by, the field of rhetoric and composition. However, before we can examine the flow of rhetoric and composition, we need to stand back a bit and examine the ground as it was constructed nearly a century earlier. In other words, to understand the reemergence, we need first to understand the ebb of rhetoric in the 19th and early 20th century. This chapter traces some of the forces that contributed to the marginalization of rhetoric in the then newly formed departments of English. Of course, there is no one factor that accounts for the demise of rhetoric; the story is complex. However, in this chapter I examine what I believe to be some of the major explanatory factors that delayed the professionalization and disciplinization of rhetoric and composition for nearly 100 years. It is not the whole tale but an important part. Of course, the story of rhetoric itself is much older than that of professions and disciplines.

THE ROOTS OF RHETORICAL STUDY

Historians of rhetoric trace the formation of the study and practice of rhetoric to Sicily in early 5th century BCE, a time when various rhetorical systems were spread to Athens through Sicilian sophists such as Gorgias and Protagoras. During these formative years, the elements of rhetoric as a dynamic constellation of theory, practice, product, and pedagogy were forged. Central to the multiple rhetorics that then emerged were efforts to explore and understand the nature and function of discourse. Richard Erios’s examination of the sophistic rhetorics demonstrates a “range of perspectives exhibited by these foreign [non-Athenian] sophists, from the poetic embellishment of Gorgias to the agnostic relativism of Protagoras” (Greek Rhetoric 102). Nearly a century later in Greece, diverse rhetorical systems were also evident in the differences that distinguish Plato’s rhetoric in terms of theory, practice, rhetorical product and pedagogy from that of Isocrates (Goggin and Long), both of which differ from Aristotle’s rhetoric (Cahn). The study of rhetoric, in its various guises, became central to the ancient Greek concept of paideia (intellectual excellence), and thus, became central to the classical educational process of initiating young people into Greek culture. Although decidedly varied, the study of rhetoric had turned on the intersection of the relations among rhetorical theory, practice (both production and consumption), product, and pedagogy for centuries. In the Middle Ages, rhetoric secured a prominent place as one of the seven liberal arts. Although multiple rhetorical constellations competed throughout time, rhetoric as rhetorics remained central to education until the 19th century.²

Toward the end of the 19th century the study of rhetoric fell into minor importance in U.S. higher education. In many places, rhetoric dwindled in size in the newly formed departments of English to a single required course, first-year composition, and its scope narrowed to focus almost exclusively on student texts. The transformation of rhetoric from a vibrant, rich, intellectual enterprise into a truncated and impoverished one was the result of a complex confluence of epistemic, social, cultural, and economic changes that had a profound effect on how education in general and literate practices in particular were conceived.

THE DISPLACEMENT OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION

In response to dramatic social and economic changes—a shift from an agrarian society to an industrial one, a rising middle class, a concurrent shift in political and economic power bases, to name but a few—a radically new and different form of tertiary education emerged in the 19th century, displacing an educational system that had changed very little since medieval times (Rudolph, American, Curriculum; Veysey, Emergence). The classical college had offered a four-year prescribed common curriculum designed to build piety and strength of character. Although it served three main routes—the pulpit, the bar, and politics—its function was not to provide special training or credentials for those routes. One did not go to college to learn how to become a preacher, a lawyer or a politician. Rather, higher education catered to an upper class aristocratic population who already had access to these positions. At the time, most occupations depended not on education but on an apprenticeship system. However, when the power base shifted from an accident of birth to economics and accumulation of wealth, professionalization and credentialization via education emerged to replace apprenticeships.

The classical curriculum usually consisted of Greek, Latin, math, rhetoric, grammar, and moral philosophy. There were few lectures, no discussion groups, and no Socratic dialogues. The primary, and in most places only, teaching method was recitation. In recalling his days a t Yale in the 1860s, a former student provided a vivid picture of classical pedagogy:

In a Latin or Greek recitation one [student] may be asked to read or scan a short passage, another to translate it, a third to answer questions as to its construction, and so on; or all this and more may be required of the same individual. The reciter is. expected simply to answer the questions. which are put to him, but not to ask any of his. instructor, or dispute his assertions. If he has any inquiries to make, or controversy to carry on, it must be done informally, after the division has been dismissed. Sometimes, when a wrong translation is made or a wrong answer given, the instructor corrects it forthwith, but more frequently he makes no sign, though if failure be almost complete he may call upon another to go over the ground again. Perhaps after the lesspn has been recited the instructor may translate it, comment upon it, point out the mistakes which have been made and so on. The “advance” [lesson] of one day is always the review of the next, and a more perfect recitation is always expected on the second occasion;—a remark which is not confined to the languages but applies equally well to all the studies of the course. (qtd. in Veysey, Emergence 37)

As this description suggests, the goal of the classical college was not to create knowledge; that was not within the province of students or faculty. Rather the goal for faculty was to instill knowledge, moral values, and piety, and the goal for students was to demonstrate that they had attained these ends. In short, it served to construct a particular way of thinking and behaving.

Having been constructed by a single, common educational experience, the entire college, including trustees, the president, f aculty, and students, was virtually of one and the same mind. Indeed, those who were not of the same mind were generally asked to leave (Rudolph, American 6ff). Part of the homogeneity stemmed from each college serving a homogeneous social and religious sect (primarily upper class White Protestant males), and part from the employment practices of the time. Most of the tutors and professors were hired by their alma mater, which ensured that they would perpetuate the school values. The classical college then wa...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• FlGURES AND TABLES
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• CHAPTER 1 THE TRANSMOGRIFICATION OF RHETORIC AND THE EMERGENCE OF COMPOSITION
• CHAPTER 2 PREPARING THE GROUND, 1950–1965
• CHAPTER 3 SOWING THE SEEDS, 1965–1980
• CHAPTER 4 FRUITS OF THE GARDEN, 1980–1990
• CHAPTER 5 The Gardeners: Forty Years of Editors of and Contributors to the Journals
• CHAPTER 6 A Pot-Bound Garden: Some Thoughts on the Present State and Future Directions of Rhetoric and Composition
• APPENDIX A TABLES OF EDITORS AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS FOR EACH JOURNAL
• APPENDIX B CCCC CHAIRS, 1949–2000
• WORKS CITED
• AUTHOR INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX