The Rhetorician in the Dark
on teaching language skills & rhetorical presence
autumn 2010
|
The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
|
Today,
at the beginning of the second decade of a new century, we struggle, perhaps as we have never struggled before, at an old task: to convey to a new generation the practice and art of reading and writing. An age old task in the western world, and beyond.
We do this for obvious reasons, not the least of which is that it was done to us. Beyond that though we surely see basic language skills as part of the foundation of learning, a bootstrapping skill, and a key to economic survival or vital to the nation's strategic independence even, and an attempt to help secure happiness itself in a competitive world of corporate desires.
The importance of this undertaking and the recurring fear of national failure commands our attention, makes us anxious, impels us to test and measure, reward and remediate in the hope of achieving this age old goal across the broad range of ethnic, economic, social and generational lines, or boundaries. Other countries have similar concerns but none seem more fractious than ours.
We see the value of the undertaking well enough, and yet, in so many different settings, many of our students, our children, our fellow, young, citizens, seem as if they hardly value the gift at all.
For many of them it doesn't seem to open any particular doors that they're interested in going through any time soon.
Language has always been both art and utility[tool].
We have generally tried to teach using literature, usually the short story and novel, as the basis for learning reading and, indirectly, writing.
This would seem logical enough so long as the students can perceive the entertainment value that's assumed to exist in their reading material. But one can legitimately wonder if for many students analyzing and being assayed for comprehension about a long sports article, a software manual, a non-textbook history, an editorial, or a political essay.
Literature based language study has always been problematic.
What to choose? Sherlock Holmes.
I remember thinking that some of the stories that I read as not all that interesting.
The value of or need for literature in language study becomes even more questionable as literature and reading for pleasure wanes.
And also as we value education more for its economic usefulness than for any
more idealistic intellectualism or traditionalism, which is to say a sense of place in history and time; or the development of personal skills and interests.
We might term the pursuit of literacy without recourse to literature literate utilitarianism, or just utilitarianism in this context.
Such a utilitarianism is apt to be seen as depressing to the aging traditionalist and even the young ones,
who grew up enjoying reading;
but the development of language skills needs to be understood in the context that society as a whole uses and understands their value to be, i.e. whether it entertains, is simply something that needs to be confronted and the question asked. If literature entertains than by all means we should use it. But if it fails to entertain than it makes sense to explore other avenues of language development.
What would such a pure utilitarianism look like.
What do reading and writing tasks look like in the real world?
Whose world?
For a lot of commerce, guess what? the medium is spoken language.
Above that there is the sales report, the monthly report, various reports which really consists of a boilerplate, or forms, that need monthly editing, then a few, freely composed, summarizing sentences.
Beyond that the summarizing of some research study or such. THe summary of a studey of investigation.
How do such skills and assignments break up, dissolve, and then align with the high school adolescent???
What are the kind of questions that the average young person is likely to engage in?
We live in a digital world in which the need for entertainment if fulfilled through audio and video recordings. These modalities satisfy the aesthetic longings of a large number of people. The return on investment for reading, in erms of entertainment, is not there, not in the context of video recordings that supply the same kind of genre, i.e. narrative, as traditional literature does.
As McLuhan noted, our devices draws us into a kind of pre-literal society in which literacy assumes a kind of shadow existance.
Members of this a-literate culture demand the more immediate, less taxing, forms of entertainment.
I've heard teachers say that students expect to be entertained.
For many young people in our modern digital, video centered times reading, much less writing, holds little promise of enjoyment.
This is, of course, the culmination of a trend, that began with our first recording and transmission devices which altered the needs for and practice of reading and writing.
Indeed part of the problem is that so many of our teachers are themselves children of a new, diminished form of literacy, and thus presumably suffer from holding many of the values and perceptions that their students do.
Our literary, aesthetic world is changing, and changing fast.
Entertainment consists mainly of popular song and video-based art-forms.
These video genres can be roughly characterized as: computer-based games, sporting events, long and short dramatized storytelling. Of course real world versions of these video-based are still attended, but their video mediated incarnations are the more ubiquitous.
[By and large we all live in a world wrapped in information of which a great deal is entertainment.]
Reading, and its Pedagogy
Generally we have taught reading by reading fiction, mainly short stories, then later, novels.
It has probably always been a problem finding compelling fiction for young readers, and there has always been a market for it, culminating in the cross-over forms like Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling.
(to which there seems to inevitably follow such other fantasies like vampire novels Twilight by
But it may be difficult to teach a literature based reading program at the same time that society at large is turning away from literature as a form of entertainment, and towards the consumption of non-fictional articles and essays. Perhaps our reading pedagogy needs to accept this new orientation and begin restructuring the curriculum along these new lines [or directions].
The point is that we don't really know if our current literature-based pedagogy for reading is really optimal, yet we are reluctant, or cannot see how, to change.
Effective reading material would seem to need to be both voluminous, offering plenty of opportunity for practice, yet not overwhelming. And obviously it should be interesting, enjoyable to the reader. This suggests that reading material ought to be chosen by the student, when possible, or else chosen according to some kind of individualized profile of student's interests and aptitude. Our modern digital devices and networks, and other literary and academic sources, bookstores and libraries, would seem to be more than adequate to supply a wide variety of reading matter. But this undermines the concept of class unity where every student is studying the same thing; a very engendered concept, I think, that may be in need of loosening.
You may say that many students simply won't read unless there is the sense of social conformance which comes from everybody reading the same thing; that the student won't follow through to the end unless he is continually being quizzed about his reading matter, or that the matter is being regularly discussed.
Yet people presumably will read on their own whenever they believe that it is in the interest, is worthwhile, to do so. And social conformity may not be the only or even the best motivator for the enterprise, simply because it may be difficult to find the one size that fits all.
Also one might wonder how can one know how much meaning is being acquired without using a ready set of diagnostic tools, i.e., tests to access semantic capture.
This is a good point and yet one still wonders if what is read should be limited by what there are tests for. Also even if limited to literature and the short story there ought to be still plenty of material available with such study questions, generalized study questions are a possibility, as well as one-on-one discussion and review.
Other academic material can also be viewed as possible reading matter. This consideration places a premium on teachers who are capable of teaching across traditional curricular boundaries.
A compromise on range of reading matter wight be effected by providing reading lists, or assignment sets, [or directives,] that students are encouraged to sign-up for as a group, which would presumably reflect social groups, cliques, within the class and thus provide some of the weight of social conformance.
The point here is to suggests that many issues concerning reading pedagogy, and even the simple choice of materials and structure of course and study are to be seen as unsettled in the current milieu, and I would like to further suggest that defining the goals, methods, and materials of reading study may be something that can be worked out, decided perhaps in some structured fashion, by the teacher and the students.
Part of our problem in teaching literacy stems from a tradition of teaching these skills in a bottom-up style;
where spelling, grammar and vocabulary, are taught before the more integrative skill of writing.
Unfortunately this is probably not a very effective way of learning.
Expanded vocabulary probably requires considerable modeling through reading, and conversation, before new words are considered and used in composition.
There appears to be real difficulty in teaching formal grammar and having the results transfer to writing, this despite the fact that human beings seem to possess innate capabilities in acquiring spoken language rules.
It is probably true that the study of any subordinate set of skills is made easier when they are used in the service of a more holistic project. Thus the student should always be writing, within reason, and the study and practice of grammar et al should occur mainly as a response to the student's writing.
Another shortcoming is the wall that seems to be observed by many language art instructors between what may be called vocal and written rhetoric. We seem to much prefer to instruct, assign tasks, and correct written sentential exercises and neglect the various practices and forms of vocal rhetoric.
Teachers are probably themselves untutored in vocal rhetoric and public speaking. our conceptual pedagogy lacks a course whereby a teacher can practice and improve these important attention engaging skills.
Metaphysics, or the Motivational Matrix
The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
Returning to our concerns about an overly bottom-up pedagogy is that such a practice is apt to seem directionless to the student if such issues such as relevance and utility are simply assumed and never discussed. This may be particularly important when teachers and students come from very different backgrounds. Issues of rhetoric and style, aesthetics, may be a necessary motivating matrix in which the study of the various sub-skills are embedded.
Who are we aesthetically.
what do we like and why do we like it?
Do we always choose that which will most entertain?
How should we use our free time? What leads to the most happiness or enjoyment in our free time. Should there be diversity and how much?
The teacher is a rhetorician in the dark.
My dictionary gives one rather derisive definition of metaphysics as
abstract theory or talk with no basis
This is actually a nice direction. For what I'm going to suggest is that teachers consciously choose for discussion such abstract yet basic concepts such as rhetoric, style, and aesthetics, things that may at first seem destined to lead nowhere.
My dictionary gives the first meaning of metaphysics as:
the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
A New Stage
The language skills class needs to be seen as a rhetorical space where sentence are constantly being made.
A bi-modality of textual and vocal linguistic skills and concerns.
Much of the problem we see in personal behavior can be traced to a lack of comprehension about vocal rhetoric and its development.
Enlarged to the vocal milieu,
the lesson becomes every interaction and utterance.
Presumably that's all there is.
Every gesture or statement has a meaning, or content;
but also a style.
We are always writing, but more likely, saying things in order to persuade or entertain, which is to say, evoke emotion from, the reader, listener, friend, or momentary companion.
We have neglected, never really understood well, the vocal, linguistic, milieu.
The modern student, but all people really, comprehend and respect the immediate vocal presence. What neither teacher or student wants to comprehend is the interpenetration of the vocal and the written, the intormal and the formal. And yet everything tells us that this connection exists and is vital.
Vocal rhetorical presence, improvisation and the memorized, the set piece, is an
adjacent space to the textual, and can serve as an entry way to it.
The semantics of our sentences whather written or spoken describe a space,
conversational space, philosophy. How we should live our lives.
At the same time, what we say also present a style, that is to some degree independent of the content. It is more a presentation, an emotion, a personalization.
Strictly speaking our talk is our meanings, which is some branch or sub-branch of philosophy. Our style is our style: our way of projecting ourselves.
The study of style and semantics, rhetoric and philosophy, that is the study of language arts.
So we see that vocal rhetoric is to be seen as enveloping, supporting, morefundamental to, textual linguistics.
Personalism
aesthetic profile
we do a facile version on facebook
to explain ourselves to our facebook friends
but the information is heavily compartmentalized
as if to say that our aesthetic preferences are to be noted or observed,
and praise ladled out,
but art, aesthetics, a personal, unreflective, aesthetics,
as something to be wondered about, analyzed, recorded;
even though these particular choices, favorites, are taken down in our ipods and other devices or services..
What's a good song?
More particularly,
What songs possess good lyrics?
Why are they good?
Writing, a pessimistic appraisal
Perhaps it is best if we don't even try teaching writing to all students, but only to those clearly ready for it.
Why?
It's a waste of time. They'll never get good enough at it to be useful for anything. They're probably better off seeking aid from other sources when confronted with a task that requires a substantial amount of writing.
Writing, in my mind, is complex; more complex even than most mathematics.
Most subjects in mathematics are rather well circumscribed. The concepts may be difficult to comprehend but in most settings the amount of material needed to master and apply is fairly finite and constrained.
Writing on the other hand is characterized by combinatorial explosion.
THe number of word choices, synonyms, and phrase choices, and sentence structure, and paragraph structure, and overall structure... The choices spiral out of control as in a complex design problem, or a chess game.
One thing no one seems ever to mention is that if complexity is an issue in writing, then the deep thinker may be confronted with greater difficulty than the instinctually conversational poppet, for the deep thinker sees a more complex framework and a greater variety of choices. This complexity ought to show up in more complex, insightful, better argued, writing, but it might also serve as a barrier, or better, a quagmire wherein the deeper thinker is susceptible to lossing his way.
Rhetoric
What the Greeks present is a framework for intellectual discourse
something that we don't recognize as important or useful
but which I'm inclined to think is...
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric is an attempt to systematically describe civic rhetoric as a human art or skill (techne). His definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion," essentially a mode of discovery, seems to limit the art to the inventional process, and Aristotle heavily emphasizes the logical aspect of this process. But the treatise in fact also discusses not only elements of style and (briefly) delivery, but also emotional appeals (pathos) and characterological appeals (ethos). He thus identifies three steps or "offices" of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, and style—and three different types of rhetorical proof:
ethos: how the character and credibility of a speaker can influence an audience to consider him/her to be believable.
Today, this is still an effective means of persuading an audience; however, shrewd, critical listeners will note whether the "expert's" actual arguments are as impressive and satisfying as his or her title, to avoid the informal logical fallacy of an Appeal to Authority.[45]
This could be any position in which the speaker—whether an acknowledged expert on the subject, or an acquaintance of a person who experienced the matter in question—knows about the topic.
For instance, when a magazine claims that An MIT professor predicts that the robotic era is coming in 2050, the use of big-name "MIT" (a world-renowned American university for the advanced research in math, science, and technology) establishes the "strong" credibility.
pathos: the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgment.
This can be done through metaphor, amplification, storytelling, or presenting the topic in a way that evokes strong emotions in the audience.
logos: the use of reasoning, either inductive or deductive, to construct an argument.
Logos appeals include appeals to statistics, math, logic, and objectivity. For instance, when advertisements claim that their product is 37% more effective than the competition, they are making a logical appeal.
Inductive reasoning uses examples (historical, mythical, or hypothetical) to draw conclusions.
Deductive reasoning, or "enthymematic" reasoning, uses generally accepted propositions to derive specific conclusions. The term logic evolved from logos. Aristotle emphasized enthymematic reasoning as central to the process of rhetorical invention, though later rhetorical theorists placed much less emphasis on it.
Aristotle also identifies three different types or genres of civic rhetoric: forensic (also known as judicial, was concerned with determining truth or falsity of events that took place in the past, issues of guilt), deliberative (also known as political, was concerned with determining whether or not particular actions should or should not be taken in the future), and epideictic (also known as ceremonial, was concerned with praise and blame, values, right and wrong, demonstrating beauty and skill in the present).
Quintilian (35-100 AD)
Inventio (invention) is the process that leads to the development and refinement of an argument.
Once arguments are developed, dispositio (disposition, or arrangement) is used to determine how it should be organized for greatest effect, usually beginning with the exordium.
Once the speech content is known and the structure is determined, the next steps involve elocutio (style) and pronuntiatio (presentation).
Memoria (memory) comes to play as the speaker recalls each of these elements during the speech.
Actio (delivery) is the final step as the speech is presented in a gracious and pleasing way to the audience - the Grand Style.
and even philosophy
metaphysics, epistemology, rhetoric, aesthetics, heroes
Yet the more we view reading and writing as skills necessary to employment or further education, the more we come to language as a set of facts and skills that must be foisted on the student for his own good;
and search for the best method for such foist-ering...
We try to get them to read more.
And then test that, or use it for a prompt.
We break down writing into simple steps,
So logical. Yet still we feel the dry mechanicalness of our efforts, every time we test some list of words, or correct some work sheet...
and rarely stop to think that an approach that is less focused on teaching and tests for primary and sub-skills, but more on the secondary concern for interest and enjoyment, may actually be the more fruitful.