Rhetorical Perspective

[Seth L. Kahn-Egan]

Ah, good.  I seem too have gotten control of the cold-medicine buzz and
sort of made the point I was after.  More to come below...

Seth Kahn-Egan
Syracuse University
PhD Student in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric
slkahneg at mailbox.syr.edu
315-423-8042 (home)
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On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Constance J. Ostrowski wrote:


> I agree with Seth (and others) that setting up the composition/rhetoric
> relationship as content/form is objectionable.  (I also object to the
> synecdochal reduction of rhetoric to composition that exists in so many
> academic job ads, and that obviously exists throughout large sectors of
> academe, at the least.)  The relationship I see between them pretty much
> forms the basis for my first-day introduction-to-the-course lecture with
> which I start my comp. courses.  After defining rhetoric generally as
> the art/science (ie., practice) and study of human communication (which
> had as its origin and still has as its primary--though not only--focus
> verbal [language-based] communication), I state that in the comp. course
> the students will deal with basic principles of communication that they
> will focus on applying in a particular context:  academic writing.

Hmmm...I hadn't thought about distinguishing between practice (i.e.,
rhetoric) and application (i.e., comp.) like that.  My inclination has
been to collapse practice and application into the same concept.  Or am I
misunderstanding?  I can also read this to say that comp. is a specific
context in which to practice rhetoric.  Is that closer to what you meant?


> In other words, I see composition as a specific application of rhetorical
> principles in a particular context/situation (academic writing, mainly
> the essay), just as the speech course I teach focuses on the specific
> application of rhetorical principles in the context of oral exposition, and
> technical writing deals with the specific application in business/industrial
> contexts, and journalism in . . . and so on.

OK--I guess that pretty clearly answers my question.  Should have read the
posting all the way through first...

> Now, I'm interpreting the use of the word "composition" in this thread to
> refer to the first-year writing course(s)--largely because Seth has
> identified himself as working in Composition.   If another sense of the
> word has been intended, please enlighten me.

Right off hand, that's what I meant because it's all I've taught, although
I wonder if/how the issue changes in Adv. Comp courses (an issue we
vaguely discuss in this program, but not in any detail).

> Of course, I wonder how we might connect "composition" in the musical
> sense to this discussion.  Is musical composition considered to be
> something completely different from verbal composition (creating
> expository prose), or do they pretty much follow the same principles,
> using instead different media?

$64,000 question--from my understanding of the discipline of music,
there's a pretty sharp division among theorists as to whether music acts
as exposition.  Of course, plenty of writing teachers don't limit their
notions of composition to exposition either, expanding categories to
include expression, criticism, etc.  I once read a review of a Philip
Glass performance that labeled him as a classical
deconstructionist--pretty critical terminology.

Seth