Revision history for MorgansCompTheoryNotes19Sept2011
Additions:
=== Exercise ===
Imagine a FYC course based on each of these - Kinneavy, D'Angelo, Britton, Rodgers. What gets taught, how? What texts? What do students do in such a classroom? What do you do? What gets written? What do you do with the writing? What do students do with the writing?
Imagine a FYC course based on each of these - Kinneavy, D'Angelo, Britton, Rodgers. What gets taught, how? What texts? What do students do in such a classroom? What do you do? What gets written? What do you do with the writing? What do students do with the writing?
Additions:
The over riding question of the week is how to systematically classify discourse - since that is what we are teaching and not being clear what that is creates a problem for us, for students, for those who will influence us, for those who will control the teaching enterprise politically and financially.
Composing is fulfilling an aim.
Why determine aim?
Usual warnings about determining aim. Mind the intentional and the affective fallacies. Both not to use intent nor response. But not to ignore them, either. 130-1
Chart: Aims as they have been classified in the past. all cultural
K creates his categories by focusing on the dominant component. This creates a tidy model, mostly. But as different analysits would place a text in more than one place, it's a little weak.
Also: The placement is not absolute but a function of reading as much as writing. It's good in that it demands we look at context however. Sim addresses or works w/in context, not in the work itself.
Focus on diagram p 13X
The window metaphor of language is weak at root. Has to be qualified. 136. We cannot see through language to a reality. It is always mediated.
Composing is a Movement from undifferentiated sense of whole towards a realization of that sense in differentiated object made up of parts. Progression is from the homogenous towards the differentiated, the comp.ex, the more perfect, by way of teleological purpose.
It's a one way process, that doesn't backtrack. At least the MENTAL processes don't. They develop forward towards complexity even if the physical processes never backtrack. Process is linear, developmental. Once a stage has been reached, one no longer has to pass through it again.
Much of the basis for this has been abandoned as just one master narrative that doesn't really explain things. Teleology has been bracketed. We see that things can become differentiated w/o a teleological design. We do chaos theory now. But there are ways of understanding the theory that make sense of it. Mechanism of evolution is one of trial and error, however, not of intent. So, function of rhet, and so a comp course, is to guide individuals towards unity, to induce cooperation.
Evokes Jung via archetypes. But this is no more mystical than a lot of ideas towards composing based on talent and inspiration or passion. Narratives of early encounters with books leading to love of language , and ever more differentiated sense of composing. D'A gives us a sense of how much a narrative this is rather than a theory that develops sound principles. It doesn't explain. Has little explanatory power.
Wants to see even the theory of Vygogsky as modeled on an evolutionary model.
What do we do with him? He ends with Burke's position on rhetoric. He sees the paragraph as an evolving form.
Cf Murray and the concern that students learning to write //must// follow conventions as laid down by society. D argues that form will emerge from chaos regardless. That is the way of nature. The movement is developmental, teleological. A drive towards making sense. The new rhetorician can guide this movement, perhaps hasten it, but it's built in. As learning to speak, so learning to write is learning more and more deftly to differentiate, to form.
D'Angelo focuses on teleology. B focuses on developmental models. Seek the understanding in the child's development. The origin is the purest form. Similar to D'A in that the movement is supposed to be from undifferentiated to organized.
Mainly focused on children development towards mastery of written language - reading and writing. But touches in our concerns w distinctions of transactional - expressive - poetic functions of language, which B argues are mastered at a young age.
By this tine, you might be of the mind "What are these theories of discourse for? what can this tell us about anything? What use is it?"
The distinction is how we pay attention to / recount the prose - as a spectator or participant.
> writer places signals in the prose in context that reader must interpret as such.
Framework is psych rather than meaning-making / semiology.
Role of gossip, or standing in HAVE BEEN a participant and are now recounting as spectator. 156. A way of testing out ways of evaluating what happened w others. As spectators we GENERATE AND REFUNE our value system.
> the model is face to face social interaction, some interpersonal but some more broadly social, and the psychological states and effects that Harding and Britton don't substantiate but expect us to verify as commonly experienced and common sense.
Spectator position is articulated on continuum from
Transactional --- expressive --- poetic. 158
The spectator rather than participant role is valorized for purposes of learning. Why: expensive, social, as a recounting seen in whole. Etc.
Expressive function. It is not a matter of informal prose but a matter of self-identification. Profits from being in between a verbal transaction and a verbal object to be shared. In expressive writing, the togetherness is simulated by invoking presences.
> Again, basis for reasoning and model is linguistic code and context and the extent to which written confirms to or departs from.
Contextualization. We read transactional prose by contextualizing how it fits OUR contexts, piecemeal. We read poetic by contextualizing the work as a poetic object. 162
The case study of Clare. Offered as evidence for spectator position as one of storytelling. Reflection. Leads to one main point: that this learning to play with language is learning the spectator role. Play activities with language are spectator role activities. In drafting this, he's following Piaget and Bruner - experienced readers know this and so Britton doesn't explain it. Britton is also following long lead of psychological study that rests its validity on development of children: Piaget, Vygotsky, Murray, Bruner ...
Extending Vygotsky, in that writing is grounded in speed but wants to bring in other elements and activities. Play, drawing, behavior. But statement 169 that story makes fewer demands than transactional writing may not be valid for our use. The idea being that we start teaching w narrative and move towards transactional.
Illustrates how Rules are created and disseminated, often wrong rules. How uninformed even the big names can be. Bain, Strunk. How such an inductive and piecemeal deductive mess can pass for knowledge and practice.
And so your responsibility not to knowingly propagate the mess as gospel. And R work is an example of how to proceed. Introduces rhetoric back into the game in concepts and in method. Demonstrates what Rhetoric can tell us about discourse.
We need, says r, a flexible, open-ended discourse centered rhetoric of the paragraph.
Para is visual punctuation of a larger chunk of text than a sentence.
The rest of the article is working out such an idea.
R is good in confining his deductions to what we find in prose rather than what we imagine in process. Not basing paragraphing on cognitive movement but on visually marking off as a stadia. 180.
The turn R makes is to demonstrate how analysis can and must proceed. What a para CAN be rather than what it MUST be. The movement from prescription to description. The recognition that it's more complex than we suspect, and so must be taught that way. Even at the freshman level.
Composing is fulfilling an aim.
Why determine aim?
Usual warnings about determining aim. Mind the intentional and the affective fallacies. Both not to use intent nor response. But not to ignore them, either. 130-1
Chart: Aims as they have been classified in the past. all cultural
K creates his categories by focusing on the dominant component. This creates a tidy model, mostly. But as different analysits would place a text in more than one place, it's a little weak.
Also: The placement is not absolute but a function of reading as much as writing. It's good in that it demands we look at context however. Sim addresses or works w/in context, not in the work itself.
Focus on diagram p 13X
The window metaphor of language is weak at root. Has to be qualified. 136. We cannot see through language to a reality. It is always mediated.
Composing is a Movement from undifferentiated sense of whole towards a realization of that sense in differentiated object made up of parts. Progression is from the homogenous towards the differentiated, the comp.ex, the more perfect, by way of teleological purpose.
It's a one way process, that doesn't backtrack. At least the MENTAL processes don't. They develop forward towards complexity even if the physical processes never backtrack. Process is linear, developmental. Once a stage has been reached, one no longer has to pass through it again.
Much of the basis for this has been abandoned as just one master narrative that doesn't really explain things. Teleology has been bracketed. We see that things can become differentiated w/o a teleological design. We do chaos theory now. But there are ways of understanding the theory that make sense of it. Mechanism of evolution is one of trial and error, however, not of intent. So, function of rhet, and so a comp course, is to guide individuals towards unity, to induce cooperation.
Evokes Jung via archetypes. But this is no more mystical than a lot of ideas towards composing based on talent and inspiration or passion. Narratives of early encounters with books leading to love of language , and ever more differentiated sense of composing. D'A gives us a sense of how much a narrative this is rather than a theory that develops sound principles. It doesn't explain. Has little explanatory power.
Wants to see even the theory of Vygogsky as modeled on an evolutionary model.
What do we do with him? He ends with Burke's position on rhetoric. He sees the paragraph as an evolving form.
Cf Murray and the concern that students learning to write //must// follow conventions as laid down by society. D argues that form will emerge from chaos regardless. That is the way of nature. The movement is developmental, teleological. A drive towards making sense. The new rhetorician can guide this movement, perhaps hasten it, but it's built in. As learning to speak, so learning to write is learning more and more deftly to differentiate, to form.
D'Angelo focuses on teleology. B focuses on developmental models. Seek the understanding in the child's development. The origin is the purest form. Similar to D'A in that the movement is supposed to be from undifferentiated to organized.
Mainly focused on children development towards mastery of written language - reading and writing. But touches in our concerns w distinctions of transactional - expressive - poetic functions of language, which B argues are mastered at a young age.
By this tine, you might be of the mind "What are these theories of discourse for? what can this tell us about anything? What use is it?"
The distinction is how we pay attention to / recount the prose - as a spectator or participant.
> writer places signals in the prose in context that reader must interpret as such.
Framework is psych rather than meaning-making / semiology.
Role of gossip, or standing in HAVE BEEN a participant and are now recounting as spectator. 156. A way of testing out ways of evaluating what happened w others. As spectators we GENERATE AND REFUNE our value system.
> the model is face to face social interaction, some interpersonal but some more broadly social, and the psychological states and effects that Harding and Britton don't substantiate but expect us to verify as commonly experienced and common sense.
Spectator position is articulated on continuum from
Transactional --- expressive --- poetic. 158
The spectator rather than participant role is valorized for purposes of learning. Why: expensive, social, as a recounting seen in whole. Etc.
Expressive function. It is not a matter of informal prose but a matter of self-identification. Profits from being in between a verbal transaction and a verbal object to be shared. In expressive writing, the togetherness is simulated by invoking presences.
> Again, basis for reasoning and model is linguistic code and context and the extent to which written confirms to or departs from.
Contextualization. We read transactional prose by contextualizing how it fits OUR contexts, piecemeal. We read poetic by contextualizing the work as a poetic object. 162
The case study of Clare. Offered as evidence for spectator position as one of storytelling. Reflection. Leads to one main point: that this learning to play with language is learning the spectator role. Play activities with language are spectator role activities. In drafting this, he's following Piaget and Bruner - experienced readers know this and so Britton doesn't explain it. Britton is also following long lead of psychological study that rests its validity on development of children: Piaget, Vygotsky, Murray, Bruner ...
Extending Vygotsky, in that writing is grounded in speed but wants to bring in other elements and activities. Play, drawing, behavior. But statement 169 that story makes fewer demands than transactional writing may not be valid for our use. The idea being that we start teaching w narrative and move towards transactional.
Illustrates how Rules are created and disseminated, often wrong rules. How uninformed even the big names can be. Bain, Strunk. How such an inductive and piecemeal deductive mess can pass for knowledge and practice.
And so your responsibility not to knowingly propagate the mess as gospel. And R work is an example of how to proceed. Introduces rhetoric back into the game in concepts and in method. Demonstrates what Rhetoric can tell us about discourse.
We need, says r, a flexible, open-ended discourse centered rhetoric of the paragraph.
Para is visual punctuation of a larger chunk of text than a sentence.
The rest of the article is working out such an idea.
R is good in confining his deductions to what we find in prose rather than what we imagine in process. Not basing paragraphing on cognitive movement but on visually marking off as a stadia. 180.
The turn R makes is to demonstrate how analysis can and must proceed. What a para CAN be rather than what it MUST be. The movement from prescription to description. The recognition that it's more complex than we suspect, and so must be taught that way. Even at the freshman level.
Deletions:
The over riding question of the week is how to systematically classify discourse - since that is what we are teaching and not being clear what that is creates a problem for us, for students, for those who will influence us, for those who will control the teaching enterprise politically and financially.
Chart: Aims as they have been classified in the past
all cultural
Focus on diagram p 135
Process is linear, developmental. Once a stage has been reached, one no longer has to pass through it again.
Progression is from the homogenous towards the differentiated, the comp.ex, the more perfect, by way of teleological purpose.
What do we do with him? He ends with burke's position on rhetoric. He sees the paragraph as an evolving form.
Cf Murray and your concern that students learning to write must follow conventions as laid down by society. D argues that form will emerge from chaos regardless. That is the way of nature. The movement is developmental, teleological. A drive towards making sense. The new rhetorician can guide this movement, perhaps hasten it, but it's built in. As learning to speak, so learning to write is learning more and more deftly to differentiate, to form.
By this one, you might be of the mind "What is this for? what can this tell us about anything? What use is it?"
Longish apparent digression into the case study of Clare > leads to one main point: that this learning to play with language is learning the spectator role. Play activities with language are spectator role activities. In drafting this, he's following Piaget and Bruner - experienced readers know this and so Britton doesn't explain it. Britton is also following long lead of psychological study that rests its validity on development of children: Piaget, Vygotsky, Murray, Bruner ...
Additions:
==== Kinneavy, The Basic Aims of Discourse ====
=== test Kinneavy's schema ===
==== D'angelo, Ontology ====
=== test Kinneavy's schema ===
==== D'angelo, Ontology ====
Deletions:
== test Kinneavy's schema ==
=== D'angelo, Ontology ===
Additions:
If, as the handbooks declare, a paragraph represents a "distinct unit of thought," why is it that we can't recognize a unit of thought when we see one? If every paragraph contains an iden- tifiable topic sentence, then why don't all of us identify the same topic sentence? If good paragraphs are really compositions in miniature, why do some of us, given a passage not marked off into paragraphs, find in it two mini-compositions, while others find three or four or five? from Stern, when is a paragraph
Deletions:
Additions:
Paragraphing, Rodgers here suggests, is governed by rhetorical choice rather than by logical or grammatical rule. Like the structure of a sentence or that of a fully- developed essay, the structure of a para- graph arises out of an ethos and a pathos as well as out of a logos-out of the writer's personality and his perception of his reader as well as out of his perception of the structure of his subject-matter. The logic and "grammar" of a given paragraph are conditioned-sometimes -
In sum, today's paragraph is not a logical unit and we should stop telling our students it is. It does not necessarily begin with a topic sentence; it does not necessarily "handle and exhaust a distinct topic," as the textbooks say it must do. It is not a composition-in-miniature, either -it is not an independent, self-contained whole but a functioning part of dis- course; its boundaries are not sealed but open to the surrounding text; it links as often as it divides. Shaped by the writer's individual style and by the reader's ex- pectations as well as by the logic of the subject-matter -
In sum, today's paragraph is not a logical unit and we should stop telling our students it is. It does not necessarily begin with a topic sentence; it does not necessarily "handle and exhaust a distinct topic," as the textbooks say it must do. It is not a composition-in-miniature, either -it is not an independent, self-contained whole but a functioning part of dis- course; its boundaries are not sealed but open to the surrounding text; it links as often as it divides. Shaped by the writer's individual style and by the reader's ex- pectations as well as by the logic of the subject-matter -
Deletions:
In sum, today's paragraph is not a logical unit and we should stop telling our students it is. It does not necessarily begin with a topic sentence; it does not necessarily "handle and exhaust a distinct topic," as the textbooks say it must do. It is not a composition-in-miniature, either -it is not an independent, self-contained whole but a functioning part of dis- course; its boundaries are not sealed but open to the surrounding text; it links as often as it divides. Shaped by the writer's individual style and by the reader's ex- pectations as well as by the logic of the subject-matter<<
