Negotiated Meaning: Kairos, Audience, and Dialectic in the Contemporary Classroom

This week’s readings dealt with the concept of Kairos or kairotic moments. In class, we developed a definition of the concept, outlining it as a concept that “through examination of contexts to create a message for an audience that is appropriate to constraints of time/place/etc., a rhetor can find truth in the ethical, rhetorical, and epistemological implications of the intersection of the dichotomies surrounding discourse” (Enos, ed. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, Silva Rhetoricae). For the exploratory, we utilized John T. Gage’s “An Adequate Epistemology for Composition: Classical and Modern Perspectives” and James L Kinneavy’s “Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric.” We set them up in conversation with each other, taking where there was agreement and creating a schematic that illustrates that composition, when steeped in kairos, can build up to an epistemology that is help up through understanding and successful utilization of what we illustrated as the four pillars of Kairos (as defined through the Gage and Kinneavy texts). Because Kinneavy’s work was so steeped in classroom application (and Gage’s too, although not to the same extent), we opted to create a tool that students could use to help them understand the concepts. We utilized Gage’s ideas about enthymeme, dialectic and stasis to organize the columns that were made using Kinneavy’s ideas about ethical, rhetorical, civic, and aesthetic (utilizing his notions about epistemology to serve as the capstone of these texts).

Gage situates his claims in historical traditions, particularly sophist traditions of relativism; he asserts that there was a subsequent branching off of rhetoric as epistemology that divided on the basis of whether rhetoric was more for presentation and persuasion or a means to generate and create knowledge (153). Most of his essay is steeped in audience, knowing who they are and how to interact with them; Kinneavy, too, focuses in on audience, stating that “there is no more immediate application of kairos than that of establishing a real audience apart from the classroom situation” (103). In particular, Gage sees dialectic as an exchange between audience and rhetor to create truth, a negotiation of sorts, and this requires an active audience rather than passive receptacles for knowledge to be input. This idea of negotiation, of discourse creating knowledge, is part of the definition of Kairos that we created; Gage asserts that “dialectic implies knowledge can be created in the activity of discourse…as it emerges in the interaction of conflicting ideas” (156), which echoes our definition in the idea of the “epistemological implications of the intersection of the dichotomies surrounding discourse.” In other words, Kairos plays a big role in the creation of knowledge through discourse/dialectic because rhetor and audience work together and discuss and play with ideas and illuminate differences through the activity of presenting information to one another. Based on Kinneavy’s discussion on the epistemological dimension of Kairos, he seems to be in agreement that Kairos “brings timeless ideas down to the human situations…[and] thus imposes value on the ideas and forces humans to make decisions about these values,” (88) which shows that the dialectic/discourse elements of Kairos, the way that it forces dichotomies to the forefront and make humans have to collectively decide what they mean, is a vital aspect of kairotic meaning-making.

Both Kinneavy and Gage make arguments to include Kairos more prominently in current composition work and classrooms, utilizing ancient rhetorics/rhetoricians to argue for its necessity (which, I just realized, is a way for them to literally be kairotic in their approaches…they brought up these past ideas, gave context to them for a modern audience, and argued for how they fit in today’s contexts and why they are still important ideas that should be included as part of the knowledge we teach). Gage discusses how enthymeme, dialectic, and stasis were used in classical times as ways of understanding and investigation, ways to produce knowledge, and that in contemporary times they have been either ignored or reduced to “technical formulae functioning alongside other devices as options” (159). Kinneavy argues that “a Kairos program is a liberal arts program in the historic sense of the word” (105), and that students will benefit from creating real-world situations that help them to see and practice the ideas of proper timing and measure. Kinneavy also makes arguments that Kairos is vital even outside of English/Composition contexts, asserting things like “at least some geologists, some pharmacists, [etc]… should engage in the impassioned and simple prose that affects the multitudes” because when they are trained only in disciplinary (in these cases expository) writing “is training them to ignore their political and ethical responsibilities” (102). This wholistic approach to composition education helps to create writers and learners who can engage more fully with all of the aspects of his outline (rhetorical, ethical, aesthetic, etc) and thus who are more able to engage kairotically and see a big picture and situate themselves within it.

-CH

Kairos, Ideology, and The Classroom: Considering Form and Structure

In a Burkean sense, our schema is a deflection of various interpretations of the text in addition to it being a reflection of our own interpretation. What gets crossed out in our construction of kairos-as-tree? What outside texts contributed to our reading of the source material? In terms of what texts guided our reading of this exploratory, which in turn guided our schema, I will emphasize Maxine Hairston’s “Ideology in the Classroom” Michael Quigley’s “Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Ideology in Freshman English,” Stephen Toulmin’s “The Layout of Arguments” and Charles Kneupper’s “Argument: A Social Constructivist Perspective.” The articles that we read for our coursework last week played a tremendous role in our construction of this week’s texts, demonstrating the ways that the kairotic context, specifically timing and order, affect reading comprehension.

Maxine Hairston argues in “Ideology in the Classroom” that the Composition classroom is changing, and that “The new model envisions required writing courses as vehicles for social reform rather than as student-centered workshops designed to build students’ confidence and competence as writers” (180). She accuses composition theorists of “feeling the need to belong and be approved by the power structure” of the English department, and thus we are implementing “currently fashionable critical theories” in the classroom (184). Hairston, then, represented for us a current-traditional ideology and skills-based epistemology of rhetoric similar to that which John Gage criticizes as “a view of language use as independent of the means by which knowledge is generated and validated” and thus rhetoric is “a technical application of linguistic forms with necessary regard for whatever may or may not make the ideas expressed knowable” (“An Adequate Epistemology” 153). Hairston, then, in advocating for building “competence as writers,” adheres to an epistemology that does not consider how “knowledge is generated” or how ideas are knowable. In arguing against ideology in the classroom, Hairston demonstrates an ideology that is against confronting the ideologies attached to language forms in the classroom in favor of tending to form on its own. 

Michael Quigley makes the excellent point that it is not that Quigley and others who confront ideologies in the classroom are against teaching form—or even that they neglect it—but that they are against using it in ways that “limit the rhetorical and civic potential of this activity” (“Rhetoric, Dialectic, & Ideology” 24). To teach forms of rhetoric without paying attention to their rhetorical and civic dimensions is limited; language doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so why teach it in such a way? Quigley advocates teaching form in order to teach students how to test both the available means of making knowledge and the idea of knowledge systems more generally (24). This aligns with what Gage advocates for: “a view of rhetoric itself as a means of discovering and validating knowledge” (153). We can practice using language not as a skill, but as a means to discovering new knowledge; Gage’s separation of two epistemologies of rhetoric align with a similar separation between Current-Traditional pedagogies and Social-Constructivist pedagogies. This is the connection to last week’s readings that I have felt developing but have not been able to articulate. 

I call what Gage and Quigley—and by extension Kinneavy—Social-Constructivist pedagogies because of our readings by Stephen Toulmin and Charles Kneupper. Kneupper suggests that we construct knowledge through practicing argument forms, and thus no argument is constructed independently: “Argument structures are not mere individual creations” (184). If this is so, then why would we teach argument structures without paying attention to the social periphery that surrounds them? In paying attention to the social periphery of argument structures, we can look towards time, change, creation, conflict, fate, and individuality as it pertains to writing and the written text—all of which are values that James Kinneavy emphasizes as kairotic (Kinneavy 89-90). In analyzing language structures as “social products tested and maintained or discarded in social practice,” students can pay attention to the ways in which ideologies shape their own ways of knowing. This is precisely why kairos makes sense for the College Composition classroom—they are in a kairotic moment where their financial, religious, philosophical, emotional, educational, and political values and beliefs are being challenged (Kinneavy 94). So, why not help them challenge these systems of knowing for themselves, so they can come to their own beliefs and values rather than following systems of knowing that are limited and, thus, potentially limiting.

-JB

The Kairotic Time for Composing: Bringing Kairos and Classical Rhetoric Back into the University

The task was to use two readings to analyze how they defined “kairos” and what they communicate when put together in conversation. What was their message, how did they go about relaying it, who did they turn to for help in relaying said message? To take the task one step further, the connection was to be visually represented through a schema. In structuring this task, the two readings that were used as the focal point were John T. Gage’s “An Adequate Epistemology for Composition: Classical and Modern Perspectives” and James L Kinneavy’s “Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric.” Just by examining the titles of the two essays, it’s clear that both authors are invested in classical rhetoric, and for Kinneavy, specifically kairos. For the schema and for this essay, the readings were used as tools to redefine or re-envision the way that classical rhetoric can be brought into the 21^st century classroom and curriculum.

Before moving forward, it’s necessary that “kairos” be defined. At the end of the class a working definition was formulated, one that is by no means exact or perfect, but should give the reader a better sense of what kairos is: “Through examination of contexts to create a message for an audience that is appropriate to constraints of time/place/etc., a ‘rhetor can find truth in the ethical, rhetorical, and epistemological implications’ of the intersection of the dichotomies surrounding discourse” (Enos, ed. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, Silva Rhetoricae).

            The first reading, Gage’s “An Adequate Epistemology” focuses on three major concepts: dialectic, enthymeme, and stasis as they work in classical rhetoric. To quickly unpack these terms, dialectic “implies that knowledge can be created in the activity of discourse,” which means that through communicating and sharing information knowledge is generated (Gage 156). An enthymeme exists through what the audience contributes, so they are the audience’s previous knowledge or assumptions that they then bring into the rhetor’s speech to interpret it (Gage 157). Stasis also deals with the dialectical intentions, but it is more focused on the cause of the investigation—why does the rhetor see it necessary to communicate this message and how does this shape the meaning? (Gage 158). Gage argued that in order to successfully bring classical rhetoric back into the classroom that these terms need to be identified as tools in which to make that happen. And to make this happen, it’s essential that a shift be made from the way the composition is viewed—from a formalist view to one where knowledge is put first (Gage 161).

            Kinneavy has a more centralized focus as he gears in on “kairos.” He uses five dimensions: ethical, epistemological, rhetorical, aesthetic, and civic education by which to frame his argument that kairos should be brought back into college composition, but also that college composition should go beyond just writing for the English class. Kinneavy’s argument was framed with the dimensions to highlight how kairos operates in these dimensions and through the dimensions into the classroom. Kinneavy makes excellent use in building his view of kairos off of other scholars in order to give the reader a well-rounded understanding and a historiographic view. In making the schema, my partner and I made the mistake of not acknowledging and analyzing the scholars that Kinneavy relied on. The scholars that contributed to his argument were Plato (he uses kairos as the base for his theory on virtue), Gorgias (he used kairos as “the cornerstone of his entire epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and rhetoric) (Kinneavy 81). Kinneavy also mentions Aristotle, German theologian Paul Tillich, Cicero, and many other scholars.

            My hope is that by supplying a brief summarization of the readings highlights some connections between the two scholars, which will then help in seeing how my partner and I saw the two contributing in a mutual conversation on rhetoric and composition in college. Kinneavy said it himself that “students’ decisions during college involve the values that will dictate the rest of their lives (Kinenavy 94). If this is to be true, then isn’t it imperative that instructors help students learn tools that they can take with them after they leave the classroom and with a view on knowledge that encourages them to continue to actively seek it out? For Gage and Kinenavy, this starts in the composition classroom and in order to achieve a richer composition instructors need to bring classical rhetoric back into the classroom and acknowledge/teach kairos as it applies to the student. This begins with switching the way that we as instructors, and consequently the students, view composition—from a formal western view, to a more process-based holistic view.

            Kairos is about being able to see the bigger picture before the rhetor even begins his/her composition. Michael Quigley’s “Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Ideology in Freshman English” addresses this issue through addressing a fellow scholar’s source of contention with the way that teaching composition is executed. Quigley’s essay is in response to Maxine Hairston’s outcry that composition has lost sight of the goal and that students should have to “master the forms” (Quigley 23). What Hairston means by “forms” is the western concept of a correct and proper English grammar and structure in writing. This obviously disregards the needs and creativity of a great many other races outside of the white male dialogue. Quigley attempts to bring light to this situation by saying that the purpose of composing an essay is not to only create a complete piece of work but “as a means to [sharpen] student’s thinking” (Quigley 23). Here is the shift, it’s not exactly a process versus product essay, it goes beyond that. It’s about using this time to change the way that students think and view knowledge; it’s about encouraging them to think critically about everything, not just composition.

            Kinneavy makes a point to specify that while he is championing for kairos and classical rhetoric to be brought back into the curriculum, he sees it as something that applies to the student’s interests and career field outside of the classroom (Kinneavy 96). Not even that, but he believes that other departments can benefit from learning more about the persuasiveness of rhetoric—the way to achieve this is to realign rhetoric with the university as a whole (Kinneavy 86). If Kinneavy’s outline for how to incorporate kairos into the classroom is combined with Gage’s broader view on classical rhetoric as dialectic in nature, then there can be a possibility of this richer composition mentioned above.

            Just as Kinneavy did at the end of his essay, I believe it is necessary to highlight faults in my theory and acknowledge failures that I’ve already encountered. This is a work in progress, something that has to be honed and shared and communicated to the rhetoric community if it is ever to hold any value. When constructing the schema with my partner, we wanted to represent knowledge as something that can grow if Kinneavy’s dimensions were utilized to help implement composition programs that make that switch from the western formal view to one that values knowledge and critical thinking. However, where we went wrong is that our schema wasn’t static, so as the viewer moved from one level to the next, they lost sight of all the other levels—it zoned in on one specific aspect of the schema. This, as I’ve stated throughout this essay, is counterintuitive to what it is that Gage, Kinneavy, and my partner and I are trying to accomplish. Perhaps a better tool would be a “You are Here” map where throughout the schema, the viewer can visualize where they are in respect to the bigger picture. That would even be a great tool in composition—something that is in a way already in place through drafting. Yet, it must be realized this is not a complete theory, but the aim here is to get the reader thinking about perhaps ways they do or do not see this happening in their composition classroom.

--LC

The Kairotic Struggle for the Faceless Audience

Our schema focused on the readings “Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric” by Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel as well as “The Usefulness of Classical Rhetoric” by Cobertt. These reading covered similar topics in vastly different ways so the best way for me to see the connections within these texts was to look at them in terms of a diagram. Additionally, the final conceptualization of these connections ended up looking more like a floor plan than an intricate pathway. This was partly due to my inexperience with the program, draw.io, which led to one-way networks rather than reciprocal pathways.

            Sheridan et al. define the concept of Kairos as “the way rhetors negotiate or ‘struggle’ with and against their contexts as they seek a particular discourse” (Sheridan et al., 50).  Put simply, the authors argue that kairos should be taken into account though all parts of the writing process: before, during, and after. This made me ask the question, “how do we grapple with these multimodal public texts in the present time as social media has become a popular platform?”. Additionally, Corbett introduces the subject of the faceless audience and how giving an audience a “face” gave the rhetor a form for their discourse. He makes that argument that we need to bring this awareness and importance of the audience “back to the composing process” (Corbett, 162). This begs the question “Does social media aim towards a formless of form focuses audience? How does the Kairotic struggle take form in this context? These questions served as a guide for my interaction with these texts.

            I believe the answer to these questions is complicated but can be examined in a couple of ways. I will focus on just one for the duration of this assignment. Social media as a multimodal public text can be looked at through Sheridan et al.’s lens of a before-after framework of composition. As Joel stated in class, students explicitly know their audience for different social media platforms. For example, Facebook is for their parents while Snapchat is explicitly for friends. This would be seen in Sheridan et al.’s point of view as before the composition of a text. Kairotic inventiveness begins before the rhetor commits themselves to a specific mode or media (Sheridan et al., 53). At this point in time, the audience has a face and form. This original message follows the linear communication model that Kneupper discussed last week (Kneupper, 1981). However, as the kairotic struggle continues as the text moves into production, delivery, and reproduction. The context begins to get more complex after the text moves through these processes.

            The circulation of a text takes on an important role, as the message needs to be delivered or published to its intended audience. This illustrates that the kairotic struggle extends beyond just the creation of a text of thesis. The rhetor desperately needs the notion of kairos in how they compose their message (Kinneavy,). Social media itself privileges circulation over all other rhetorical concerns (Sheridan et al., 61). This emphasis on circulation and reproduction of a text leads us to an audience that has form but is faceless in that they are not the intended audience. 

            I am personally still struggling with these constraints of facelessness and form as it is related to media as we use it now. As Sheridan et al. call for a full assessment of the kairotic context; I believe we need to take a deeper look into how we view audience in a multimodal space.  How does our view of audience transform in this situational context? As rhetors, how do we account for this reproduction of our discourse in a kairotic way?

-AM

Dialectic Unifying Rhetoric as Knowledge, Rhetoric as Action, and Kairos

The utility of a Venn Diagram in describing relationships among various concepts and ideas seems to be understated. I recall seeing them utilized throughout high school, but rarely in college with the exception of quite possibly one of these diagrams being used to show the relationships between key terms and concepts in math. The Venn Diagram seemed key for displaying the relationship between John T. Gage’s ideas on how composition should be taught, and James L. Kinneavy’s ties of Kairos to rhetoric and composition.

                               In Gage’s work, Aristotle’s description of dialectic as “knowledge that can be created in the activity of discourse” (156) notes its power to bring audience and rhetor together. Without dialectic, rhetoric is doomed to remain argumentative in the search for knowledge (Gage 156). Dialectic also entails as Gage elaborates on Aristotle, “an activity, carried out in relation to the intentions and reasons of others…” (156). Given the status as an activity through dialectic, the idea of rhetoric as action is established.  Dialectic also influences Kairos, the concept of which Kinneavy defines per Tillich as “emphasis on time, on change, on creation, on conflict, on fate, and on individuality” (90). This follows the more abstract definition of Kairos as “right timing and the principle of a proper measure” (Kinneavy 85). Dialectic’s location at the center of the Venn Diagram emphasizes its power to create a Kairos defined by Kinneavy, in which the connection established by rhetoric—both as knowledge and action—creates a sense of change and fluidity arrived at through the connection of rhetor and audience. In other words, although rhetoric stands alone with its own origins when dialectic is negated, it becomes a hybrid of ideas when it reaches the point of dialectic. Kairos also truly moves from status of simply “right timing and…proper measure” (Kinneavy 85) to become representative of “emphasis on time, on change…” (Kinneavy 90) as communication is permitted a back-and-forth flow of ideas through dialectic.

                               Dialectic ultimately results in the united hybrid of rhetoric as knowledge, rhetoric as action, and Kairos through enthymeme, given the latter is “a necessary compromise between what one who wishes to persuade may want to say and what an audience will allow to be said” (Gage 157). Dialectic begins the conversation between rhetor and audience, thus connecting the necessary parties and allowing knowledge and action to form, but it is the more specific enthymeme that allows the process more precision, or in other words permits a clearer connection of ideas. Kairos then also maintains its status as a factor considering the change and flow of ideas, and as ideas become more precise through enthymeme, so too might the concept of Kairos become stronger. It is this interplay when Kairos, rhetoric as knowledge, and rhetoric as action intersect with dialectic and enthymeme that allows an ongoing cycle of changing and flowing forms of knowledge.

                               This intersection of two categories of rhetoric and Kairos with dialectic and enthymeme seems captured fairly well by both Gage’s and Kinneavy’s arguments for a revamp of composition studies. Gage argues that prompting students to think beyond their own ideas will “improve the condition of the human parliament” (169) through encouraging thought about “conflicts and cooperations” (169). Kinneavy elaborates in detail on various aspects of what an improved composition studies program would look like, including ethical and social concerns of Kairos (98-9). Those being a few of the aspects Kairos affects, Kinneavy appears to be saying that Kairos and rhetoric are indeed connected through the bridge Aristotle emphasized as dialectic and enthymeme. Gage also supports this idea, although in the more general sense that students need to think beyond themselves. This clearly underscores the idea of an important connection between rhetoric as knowledge, rhetoric as action, and Kairos, because only when they are pieced together through dialectic and enthymeme can the ideas of a composition program with concern beyond each individual student’s viewpoints be formed.

-CS

The Role of Audience

In their chapter “Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric” Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel argue for the expansion of the concept of Kairos in order to make Kairos an appropriate tool for thinking about multimodal composition and public rhetoric. Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel use the term Kairos “ to refer to way rhetors negotiate or struggle with and against their context as they seek a particular outcome” (50). To expand the concept of Kairos Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel challenge us to consider not only the composition itself but to consider the questions that arise before, during and after the composition (51). In order to expand the notion of Kairos into the multimodal sphere scholars rethink or expand the role of audience within the rhetorical situation. In order to do this, we must first consider the role that audience has traditionally played in within rhetorical discourse.

                In “ An adequate Epistemology for Composition: Classical and Modern Perspective” Gage argues that the background systems of rhetoric have grown in two general directions (153). “ One is that rhetoric consists of techniques for successfully communicating ideas which are either unknowable or are discovered and tested by means which are beyond the rhetoric itself” (153). The goal of rhetoric in this context becomes to essentially win over an audience through the successful application of rhetorical strategies. The second way to view the goal of rhetorical discourse itself “as a means of discovering and validating knowledge” (153). Thus, mutual understanding becomes is the goal rather than persuasion. If rhetoric has as its goal mutual understand rather than persuasion, mutual understanding can serve as “the basis for inquiry into sharable truths” ( my emphasis 154).  This dialectic approach to knowledge creation requires the participation of both rhetor and audience in order to come to work towards sharable truths. Therefore, knowledge is not something that is passed from one person to another but something that is created through the dialogue between people. If we are to assume this dialogical approach to rhetoric how then do be bring this form of classical rhetoric to bear on multimodal composing?

                In “The Usefulness of Classical Rhetoric” Cobertt stare that “classical rhetoricians kept constantly in mind the audience towards which the discourse was directed” (162).  It is this awareness of audience Corbertt argues that we need to bring back to the composing process (162). I argue that one way to do this is through the lenses of multimodal composition. Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel argue that in order in to analyze multimodal compositions we need to first expand the idea of Kairos to include questions that arise both before the rhetor commits to composing and after the rhetor is finished with the composition (51). Before the rhetor commits to composing they need to take several factors in to account: the mode of the composition, the media of production and delivery as well as the genre (53). When taking all of these factors into account the rhetor/ composer needs to take his or her audience in to account. The example that Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel elude to in the text is of an activist who must decide the best way to counteract the media’s distorted view of a protest scene. The authors note that in this scenario the activist, who they call Jim, was trying to reach an audience of younger people; therefore he chose a mode he thought his audience was more likely to value ( 53). The concept of considering one’s audience is not new. What is new is that not only does the composer need to consider his audience while composing he needs to think about what mode, medium and genre will best reach the target audience. With more than oral or written communication as viable options for composing decisions made even before one starts composing become increasingly complicated as do decisions that arise after the composition is “finished”.

Once a composition is “finished” the composer must decide how he or she is going to disseminate the composition to his or her audience or real audiences. This task often gets complicated when barriers to dissemination and circulation. Many in academia are aware of this dissemination barrier when we try to get something that we have written published. Not only do we have to find someone who is willing to publish said article or book but in order for our publication to be considered “legitimate”, we need to have our published in a journal or by a company that our field considers reputable. For example, if I self-publish an article on my personal blog it is not going to be valued as if it appeared in the CCC journal or in College English. If I as a scholar in the field of rhetorical and composition want to be considered legitimate then I have to publish in a publication that has already gained legitimacy with my target audience of others in my field. As a scholar then, my hope is not only that my target audience will read my work but that my work will fuel other compositions and to bring about discussion with the field. Thus, the way that we create knowledge is still dialectical. What has expanded are the options available for distribution and circulation. What I am unsure of is if multimodal composition has helped us to rethink barriers to legitimization.

What I mean when I say that I am unsure that multimodal composition has allowed us to rethink the barrios to legitimization what I mean is that I unsure if we have utilized multimodal composition as a way for scholars to rethink barriers of entry into a given community. If we use the notion of Kairos as struggle as Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel challenge us to do then it seems to me that there is more that can be done to address whose the disappearance in the voices are traditionally legitimized those that are not. While I think that concept of Kairos has helped us to grapple with the questions that a composer must deal with before, during and after composing I think that there is still more that can be done to address the social contexts in which a composition is constructed and circulated. If we use Kairos as a way to expose corrupt social structures how then can we use address the struggle with and against this structure?

--AP

Activation, Audience, and Kairotic Ecologies: New Composition Curricula

Cindy and I chose to put John Gage and James Kinneavy in conversation to better understand and schematize kairos and its effect on textual production. In my personal interpretation lies at the tensions between their main points. Gage argues that modern perspectives of rhetoric are actually “pseudo-dialectic” (162). He points out that conceptualizing an audience as only a recipient of a text is incorrectly practiced. Though rhetors may be well intentioned, they will always be talking at or writing for an audience rather than working alongside. Gage recommends activating the audience to the role of participant of meaning making, thus reviving true dialog. Meanwhile, Kinneavy asserts bringing in a different classical rhetorical term. He argues that rhetors should pay attention to both kairos as timing and kairos as due measure (80). The latter term is the most often neglected aspect of kairos, which is generally disregarded, according to Kinneavy. Connecting these two authors comes at the crux of activation.

Activation helps to connect these to authors and each call for reviving classical rhetorical terms. Nathan Crick’s “Composition as Experience” similarly moderates the tensions between expressivism and constructivism as represented in Elbow and Bartholomae. Both theoretical camps, Crick argues in "Composition as Experience," present a dualism that constitute unhelpful theories of composition. This article takes up representative work from Elbow and Bartholomae to explain their theories of composition and then critique them. Crick moderates this argument not by taking sides or by camping out in the middle. Instead, he adds a third consideration, mediating the mind-body schism by activating “mind” in a way that opposes treading the mind as a passive receptacle or recipient. In a similar way I argue that Gage’s activation of audience out of the “pseudo-dialectic” allows audience members to participate in the rhetorical situation. (Bitzer in "Rhetorical Situation" claims that audience is one of the three pillars of rhetorical situations.) This participation with the rhetorical situation then places the rhetorical situation into the rhetorical ecology which advocates for meaning over time through a cycle of diverse situations mutually affecting exigencies and constraints on communication (Edbauer "Unframing Models").

If we understand these critiques of modern rhetoric and by extension Rhetoric and Composition curricula, which Gage and Kinneavy do fault, then we need curricular reform that is enlivened by classical rhetoric. The new curriculum should be based on an active, kairotic, and ecologically-informed rhetorical situation and its effect on communication practices. Kinneavy argues that Writing across the Curriculum and vertical writing pedagogies can remedy these critiques. Kevin Brooks and Andrew Mara’s webtext “The Classical Trivium: AHeuristic and Heuretic for New Media and Digital Communication Studies” presents a “Y” axis model that, though intended for new media, is an effective model that can address Gage and Kinneavy’s critiques of modern rhetoric and composition instruction.

By the Hellenistic period the trivium was an educational “schema” with a curriculum that balanced areas of knowing, doing, and theorizing. Brooks and Mara revive conscious attention to the “classical trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic—as a heuristic for interpreting contemporary theories, practices, and curriculums of new media” (n.p.). They outline and then expand each area of the trivium on individual pages of the webtext. As they do so, Brooks and Mara argue that we should revive the relationship of the “Y” axis rather than treating binaries within each unlinked part of the trivium. By treating the relationship as well as delving into each branch of the trivium, we knowers, doers, and theorizers can better see individual aspects of new media and the relationships those artifacts or actions have. As I understand them, these are definitions of the trivium:

• Grammar is the practice of collecting text and connecting the content in those texts with other texts and ideas. Grammarians are closest to literary scholars and function on the level of “encyclopedic content” and are the most at risk population in the trivium (n.p.).
• Rhetoric refers to “political engagement” and “formal techniques” of producing texts (n.p.).
• Dialecticians, the authors note, would likely be misnamed as scholars, philosophers, and, possibly, rhetoricians rather than dialecticians.

While Brooks and Mara’s text aims to address the trivium in digital communication studies, the trivium as a research and curricular process has applicability to composition studies in its broadest form. As I was reading this week’s texts, I was making more connections as I neared the end of the list. However, the concept of the trivium started to make the most connections for me, even though kairos was named in more of the readings. It was the idea of trivium that led to our group’s decision to move towards a Venn diagram model to foster dialog about how kairos functions in relationship with rhetorical dialectic.

As a curriculum, the trivium can tease apart WAC pedagogies. Grammars can help students to understand writing as an area of study and content—as Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle argue in “Writing Misconceptions” and in their Writing about Writing textbook. Students in WAC curricula are asked not only to “look around” at other disciplines’ methods of communication but also to look vertically (i.e. transitioning from WAC to Writing in the Disciplines pedagogies, which are closely linked) to differences between their own writing process as they move from writing in General Education classes to discipline-specific writing. “Looking around” in WAC and “looking up and down” in vertical writing curricula constitutes an understanding of rhetorical ecologies, or the second branch of the trivium. Dialectic, not to intersect with rhetoric at the expense of grammar, is a balance that must be reclaimed to avoid the dualism that I have noted above. Dialectic is situated in the curriculum alongside problem-solving dilemmas, as a true dialog runs the gamut between what we know, what is yet unknown, and how dialog shapes that conversation. Logics (see Toulmin, "The Layout of Argument") can help us uncover and theorize constructions of knowledge, notably through implicit assumptions in warrants and beliefs.

Check out our project link here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1zHjyWcs3_4MG14RUVlaFE4VDA/view?usp=sharing

-BH

  

Sep 26: From Trivium to Kairos

Dear Good Folks,

I offer a link to our definitions work space for today, and I hope we will also have time to revisit the theoretical turns, in the interest of re/combining some of what we read for today into intertextual conversations or threads. Even as we have our hands full with grasping the parameters of our theoretical texts each week, it is not a bad idea to begin returning to this larger ecology (or, matrix-of-concerns-on-the-way-to-becoming-an-ecology) so as to begin rehearsing what it means to re-see.

For example, after today's discussion we may want to ask ourselves whether Corbett, Gage, Kinneavy, Brooks & Mara, and Sheridan, et al,  respectively help us to newly conceptualize a "grammar" or a "rhetoric." If so, then how could we unpack those concepts in order to understand how their subconcepts had to align?

Or, assuming we had to make an argument for composition as knowing without necessarily drawing on a reappropriation of Classical rhetorical theories, we might want to ask on what other aspects of their arguments could we draw?

Or, assuming we wanted to rethink the focus of today's discussion as "digital writing" or "literacy studies" or "WAC/WID (Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines)," how would we need to be able to situate these readings into viable conversations so as to support the development of those other themes?

Update on 9/28/17:
I think we did a good job during Tuesday's conversation of trying to figure out the "here" and "there" of each of the readings, i.e., Corbett's, Kinneavy's, and Gage's particular stakes, as well as Sheridan, et al's and Brooks & Mara's newer imperatives with kairos. When we read deeply into their classroom contexts, spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s, we have a better appreciation of the problems in which each theorist was trying to intervene. We also have several options for reading them historiographically.

For example -- option 1:

• Corbett drew on the art, form, and function of rhetoric as audience-specific discourse, emphasizing composition as the engagement of the whole person.
• Gage offered method in place of what was typically understood as status quo.
• Kinneavy offered a convergence of the writer's awareness, understanding, and ability to identify audience. 
• Brooks & Mara enacted this convergence multimodally.
• Sheridan, et al, demonstrated that composition theorizing is concurrent, collaborative, and participatory.

Or -- option 2:

• Taken together, C, K, & G find fault in systems of composition instruction that either remove rhetoric from the process of making knowledge (Corbett), that ask the writer to write for "Universal" or "all-purpose" audiences (Gage), or that ignore the creative power that writers can use when examining the full situation around writing (Kinneavy). 
• This fault-finding could offer one justification for composing multimodal enactments of the Trivium and of kairos. 
• Alternatively, this fault-finding could have inspired Sheridan, et al, or Brooks & Mara to identify what the most important aspects of the discourse situation might be today, i.e., memory vs. circulation, circulation vs. delivery, a priori vs. a posteriori knowledge, etc.
• Perhaps we also see some interesting groundwork being lain for re-purposing Classical rhetorical concepts, allowing us a better sense of what those concepts might have been used for prior to our theorizing, and suggesting what they could be used for since.

Finally, I have been reflecting on a few passages since last class, primarily in response to our final question about whether any of these theories could be seen as promoting or enabling a multicultural imperative. In my reflection, I realized that, although each passage appears in only one of our texts, several passages could easily have appeared in more than one of the texts. I also recognized a thread I hadn't noticed before: precursors to theorizing that form has function. For example:

• "I am not calling for a mechanical adoption of figures to prettify our prose; I am calling rather for a realization of the functions of style, in all its aspects, in effecting our purpose. We are all vaguely aware of the function of style; classical rhetoric can make us clearly aware" (Corbett 104) (but it resonates with Sheridan, et al). At some point, it became feasible for Corbett to suggest writing for the sake of writing itself.
• When Gage argues for the importance of knowing the "intentional cause of investigation" (Gage 36), I get the sense that he is pushing for a mechanism by which all writers can begin to mature from personal expression to situated expression, and that kairos is the most advantageous mechanism.
• While Corbett thought he was addressing the need to return to audience-specific prose (rather than mode-specific exposition), it is after Gage, when the concept of "mode" became more sufficiently broad. And then Kinneavy will define fluidity between the whole human and the world.
• Relatedly, Kinneavy's solution to re-incorporating kairos into the composition curriculum--without losing its complexity--is to "devise a college composition program that will have ethical, epistemological, rhetorical, aesthetic, and political dimensions involving something like a notion of contemporary practical relevance to the young women and men of today" (Kinneavy 93-94). The principle of "proper measure" is more elusive/difficult to determine than the principle of "right timing" (Kinneavy 85): "To apply [the transcendent idea] to man, the divine ideas must become immanent in human life through kairos. This can be achieved when the writer enters into the 'psychological situation of whoever has perpetrated the deed [being written about], trying to understand its individual character.' This, for Gorgias, came about only through the deceptions of persuasive rhetoric and poetry" (Kinneavy 89).

-Dr. Graban

Sep 19: From Modern Argument to Dialectic

Dear All:

Here are some links in advance of today's seminar:

• we may begin with an observation of "stakes" in Sir Kenneth Robinson's 2010 Royal Society Lecture on Paradigms (animated courtesy of RSA Animate)
• we may do some definition work in this space
• and some gridding in this space
• and we may work on a case study, courtesy of the listserv archives of WPA-L (but I'll likely distribute that in hard copy.

Looking very much forward to it,
-Dr. Graban

Sep 5: Historical Theories of Invention

Dear Seminar:

You worked very hard in and out of class last week to establish a sense of our course methodologies; today in class we will try them on through a series of related activities that will center our discussion of historical theories of invention.

We'll begin by discussing the results of your warm-up assignment using David McGrath's 2002 article in the Chicago Tribune, deconstructing four of this week's readings in the process.

From there, we may (in pairs) do some definition work in this space, before completing a brief writing opportunity in response to one of the following synthesis questions:

• Across these various essays, "invention" is discussed as (a) prewriting, (b) heuristics, (c) a mode of associating and recombining language into discourse, and (d) a social act, among other things. Could you define/distinguish between these aspects of "invention" if you had to understand them as separate aspects, and do you see that any of these aspects incompatible? Why or why not?
• First, explain briefly Young, Becker, and Pike's tagmemic heuristics for initiating and exploring discourse (i.e., what are the strategies?). Then, discuss how these strategies implement "writing as inquiry."

We'll then consider Crick's article as either an evolution of these prior invention theories or a resolution (if you will) of the earlier perspectives we used to respond to McGrath.

Finally, we'll spend some time in class exploring our course resources and considering the usefulness of trying to stabilize -- thematically or chronologically -- our vast course of study this term.

Update on 9/7/17:
Folks, thanks for all your good, hard work in seminar this week. No, we did not reach the end of this ambitious agenda, but -- as promised -- in advance of our next class meeting, I have demonstrated how those two spaces can (ideally) work for us. I encourage you to browse them and then give me your thoughts on them next week.

I have also uploaded to Canvas a heuristics handout that might make a good case study for us in the near future. It reflects something like a "crib sheet" I used in various contexts when mentoring other instructors who were teaching first-year composition from an ethnographic approach. NB: had we had time to discuss this handout in class, I would have contextualized that discussion by describing how my thoughts on heuristics -- and their presentation in FYC -- have evolved over the years, as well as which heuristics I find too flat to be useful. If you're curious, ask me about this next week.

I am aware that you may have lingering questions about Young/Becker/Pike's challenging model of tagmemics, and I do hope you will voice those questions next class. We may also need to bring Crick back into the conversation in the near future, as we did not have sufficient time to consider how his argument was significant to this week's theoretical "turn."

Looking very much forward to it,
-Dr. Graban