Jonah Lehrer's "The Future of Reading" is a short opinion piece on the unintended but disappointing results of electronic reading devices (such as Kindles). This piece is clearly intended to be scientific discourse by nature of the topic, evidence offered, and its place of publication. It was published on science blog and appeals to a readership made primarily of people interested in neuroscience.
Lehrer’s article complicated the reader’s understanding of the physical book vs. Kindle/Nook debate. He takes the debate far beyond the usual new vs. old, traditional vs. innovative, though he acknowledges that such a debate exists and gives his position in that debate. It's easy to appeal to the audience's possible nostalgia for books by speaking to the tactile senses involved in reading, perhaps by writing about favorite memories of reading as a child, idyllic scenes of old bookstores, and the like. Lehrer mentions that he is a tradition book-lover (revealing a bias in favor of books), but instead, Lehrer appeals to the scientific argument for books. This is a surprise, at least to me, and possibly to many readers. I did not realize that there are viable scientific reasons to read real books, rather than e-books.
Lehrer’s piece certainly acts as scientific simply by the nature of the evidence given. It does not follow traditional Baconian induction-influenced arrangement, but it does answer all of the stases questions posed by Fahnstock and Secor. States, these authors tell us, are a “format for the arrangement of an argument” (429).
The first question posed by Fahnstock/Secor on page 129 is simply, “What are they?” In the case of Lehrer’s article, “they” refers to electronic reading devices. Fahstock and Secor’s fist None of these questions surprise the reader, nor do they offer any stunning analytical insights. Interestingly, Lehrer’s piece follows Fahnstock and Secor’s assertion about states pattern, but it does not seem so at first glance. According to Fahnstock and Secor, “The stasis pattern not only generates these questions but also determines the order in which they are asked. Questions of fact must be addressed before questions of value or policy can be addressed” (429).
It seems that Lehrer assumes that the audience already knows the answer to the first several questions – questions of fact – that Fahnstock and Secor assert must come first in the arrangement of an argument. The audience to which Lehrer is writing (especially since his article appears in an online science blog) is fairly technologically savvy. They do not need an explanation of how Nooks and Kindles work, who uses them, and how they came to be. It is quite likely, in fact, that many members of the audience already use these devices. Formally answering these first few questions of fact would be redundant and boring for the intended audience.
However, Fahnstock and Secor don’t mention that sometimes the questions of stases may need to be answered for more than one topic in the same article. In this article, the basic, fact-level questions do need to be answered for the secondary topic – how the brain processes written language. On this topic, understanding exactly how the brain processes work is necessary to his argument: the vast majority of his audience does not know the ins and outs of written language processing as it applies to reading e-texts and traditional texts.
Fahnstock and Secor write that articles in the scientific sphere occupy primarily the realms of fact, definition, and cause (432). While Lehrer’s article definitely includes these, he does not stop there. To do so would be extraordinarily dull. It is necessary in this case to address questions of value and policy: otherwise, the audience might understand the relationship between the neuroscience of how people read and how that is loosely related to using Kindles and Nooks, but the argument would stop there – basically, the point of the article would be, “People’s brains read differently when e-book devices are used.” No value judgment would be made, and no policy (or corrective action) could be introduced.
The audience to which Lehrer is writing enables him to skip part of the stases arrangement set forth by Fahnstock and Secor without detracting from his argument – in fact, in this case skipping the basic questions strengthens his appeals. Although Lehrer is writing on a scientific topic to a neuroscience community, he clearly addresses “upper level” stases of value and policy that Fahnstock and Secor believe to appear only (or nearly only) in literature. He offer his argument for value: he sees the worth of e-books (easy access, portable, adaptable to different situations), but articulates that such value is not worth the trade-off. It’s too easy to read e-books, and something major (and neurological) is lost in the process. He also offers solutions to the problem (policy stases).
Lehrer’s article does follow elements of Fahnstock and Secor’s definition of stases, both as it applies to literary and scientific rhetoric. Through using the stases questions (though not necessarily exactly as Fahnstock and Secor intended), Lehrer demonstrates that rhetorical nature of scientific writing truly expands far past Fahnstock and Secor’s definition: it’s not free of value judgments and policy statements simply by nature of appearing in the scientific sphere, and those stases questions from page 429 don’t apply only to the main topic.
In some ways, Fahnstock and Secor seem to have tunnel vision when it comes to scientific rhetoric - they assume that it all falls neatly into one category and one level of complexity (Perhaps they have not read Kinneavy's "Basic Aims of Discourse?") To be fair, Fahnstock and Secor wrote about scientific discourse in the late 1980's, well before the advent of scientific blogging. Still, their writing about stases can assist a reader in understanding the aims and questions answered in scientific discourse; however, the reader has to avoid into the incorrect assumption that all scientific rhetoric must fit into their definition. It's limited.
Jonah Lehrer's "The Future of Reading," from Wired Science blog: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/the-future-of-reading-2/
Fahnstock, Jeanne and Marie Secor. "The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument." Written Communication 5.4 (Oct. 1988): 427-443.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Ready, Aim, Fire: Where's He Going?
Kinneavy define the aim of discourse as “the effect that discourse is oriented to achieve in the average listener or reader for whom it is intended” (297). Kinneavy also mentions that discovering the intent of the discourse is imperative to understanding its aim. He sorts types of aims by the “focus on the component of the communication process which is stressed in a given discourse.”
"A Rescue Plan for College Composition and High School English," by Micheal B. Prince falls into two of Kinneavy's categories quite neatly. Prince’s intent is fairly clear: he wishes to offer a solution to the problems in high school and college composition courses. Considering this statement of aim, it seems that this piece of writing falls neatly under the “referential/exploratory” division – a subcategory of the “Reality” part of Kinneavy’s triangle. However, the piece also functions as an editorial (persuasive), which is a subcategory of the “Decoder” part of the triangle. This piece fits extremely neatly into both categories, but neither category alone tells the whole picture.
Discourse that is concerned mainly with subject matter falls under that category of emphasis on reality. Kinneavy’s piece focuses on the reality of mismatched aims in high school and college English curricula, a pre-college test that doesn’t really measure what it claims to, and the problems that these situations cause for student writers and teachers. He proposes a solution to the problems.
Were Prince’s aim only to provide information and explore a solution to a problem (that is, if his piece was only referential), the audience construction would be less important. Generally, pieces that provide information only (textbooks, encyclopedia articles) don’t have to “grab” the reader in the same way that persuasive texts do. Prince needs to grab the attention of a broader readership that would generally be interested in a teaching pedagogy article, and so he constructs his article to persuade as well as inform. He structures his piece to persuade the audience both of the urgency of the problem and the sensibility of his solution. He appeals to the audience by relating his topic (teaching English) to two things most people understand: the bad economy and SATs. After catching the reader’s interest by using these two things (especially the vignette about Baylor paying college students to re-take the SATs) he can get into the meat of the article and the real issues.
Prince then shows the audience how the SAT does not measure up to “real world” writing, and then how high school English curricula fail – enormously – at preparing students for what college writing expects. He doesn’t get into the heavier pedagogical material until the second half of the article, after clearly demonstrating how SAT and high school English has failed college preparation and student preparation for actual writing and analytical thinking. It is possible that he will loose some readers who are not personally invested in teaching and writing once he beings writing about product vs. process pedagogy, but if he looses them there, the main and most important points of the article have already been made. Oddly enough, his solution – teach students the craft of writing with an apprenticeship model in all classes – is probably not as important rhetorically as is the beginning to middle of the article, in which he outlines just how far apart high school and college writing aims can be.
Once the author strays into the area of persuasion, the audience construction becomes far more important. The aim of the article is far more complicated – it goes beyond simply providing accurate and helpful information to a certain audience. The article must pull the audience in, establish common ground and give the audience a personal stake in the problem.
Let me demonstrate.
As a reader of this text, I am a member of two different audiences. First, I come to this text as a student studying writing theory and rhetoric. Secondly, however, I do read this text as a teacher, writing tutor, and education student, and it is difficult for me to step back from what I think about Prince’s teaching ideas and suggestions for change to consider only the rhetorical strategies. This situation is, I think, a good example of how the lines of an audience become blurred. I can be a member of two audiences at once; in fact, I can be a member of two audiences with completely different aims – the first, to analyze the rhetorical aims of article and explain how those occur. Secondly, however, I do read the article with my own (strong) teaching philosophy and experiences with high school and college writing courses.
My approach to the article is heavily influenced by both of my situations. I feel as though I have a personal stake in this text: what Prince says has the possibility to influence my tutoring and teaching on a very concrete and almost immediate level, if I so choose. However, my knowledge of writing rhetoric makes me somewhat slower to react to his pedagogical claims. It causes me to hesitate, to reserve action until I have considered how Prince makes his claims, how he constructs his argument, and to what aim he chooses to do this. I am learning to reserve judgment, to do, in fact what college English teachers wish high school curricula would teach: step back and think analytically, rather than jump in and criticize. (Thank you, IU English program.)
So, by Kinneavy’s definition of the aim of discourse, has Prince’s article achieved its desired affect in its average reader? If I am an average reader, yes. Prince has convinced me that there is a much bigger disparity between college and high school English aims than I previously thought. After reading this article, I can definitely identify key differences between teaching critical thinking and teaching analytical thinking. I don’t buy Prince’s proposed solution, but I do understand how he got there. Using both my own contextual situation (teaching, schooling, other education reading, tutoring), and rhetorical analysis (Kinneavy, Killingsworth, Ong), I can come to a more nuanced understanding of Prince’s article, appreciating it’s strengths, learning from the information it provides, and identifying ways that it might influence how I write, think, and teach without agreeing with Prince’s conclusion.
That’s a lot more valuable than simply saying that I disagree and arguing about why.
EDIT (Saturday, 9/18, 7:30pm): I forgot to include the link to the article: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Rescue-Plan-for-College/47452/
Also, here's the citation information for the Kinneavy article:
Kinneavy, James E. "The Basic Aims of Discourse." College Composition and Communication 20.5 (Dec. 1969): 297-304
"A Rescue Plan for College Composition and High School English," by Micheal B. Prince falls into two of Kinneavy's categories quite neatly. Prince’s intent is fairly clear: he wishes to offer a solution to the problems in high school and college composition courses. Considering this statement of aim, it seems that this piece of writing falls neatly under the “referential/exploratory” division – a subcategory of the “Reality” part of Kinneavy’s triangle. However, the piece also functions as an editorial (persuasive), which is a subcategory of the “Decoder” part of the triangle. This piece fits extremely neatly into both categories, but neither category alone tells the whole picture.
Discourse that is concerned mainly with subject matter falls under that category of emphasis on reality. Kinneavy’s piece focuses on the reality of mismatched aims in high school and college English curricula, a pre-college test that doesn’t really measure what it claims to, and the problems that these situations cause for student writers and teachers. He proposes a solution to the problems.
Were Prince’s aim only to provide information and explore a solution to a problem (that is, if his piece was only referential), the audience construction would be less important. Generally, pieces that provide information only (textbooks, encyclopedia articles) don’t have to “grab” the reader in the same way that persuasive texts do. Prince needs to grab the attention of a broader readership that would generally be interested in a teaching pedagogy article, and so he constructs his article to persuade as well as inform. He structures his piece to persuade the audience both of the urgency of the problem and the sensibility of his solution. He appeals to the audience by relating his topic (teaching English) to two things most people understand: the bad economy and SATs. After catching the reader’s interest by using these two things (especially the vignette about Baylor paying college students to re-take the SATs) he can get into the meat of the article and the real issues.
Prince then shows the audience how the SAT does not measure up to “real world” writing, and then how high school English curricula fail – enormously – at preparing students for what college writing expects. He doesn’t get into the heavier pedagogical material until the second half of the article, after clearly demonstrating how SAT and high school English has failed college preparation and student preparation for actual writing and analytical thinking. It is possible that he will loose some readers who are not personally invested in teaching and writing once he beings writing about product vs. process pedagogy, but if he looses them there, the main and most important points of the article have already been made. Oddly enough, his solution – teach students the craft of writing with an apprenticeship model in all classes – is probably not as important rhetorically as is the beginning to middle of the article, in which he outlines just how far apart high school and college writing aims can be.
Once the author strays into the area of persuasion, the audience construction becomes far more important. The aim of the article is far more complicated – it goes beyond simply providing accurate and helpful information to a certain audience. The article must pull the audience in, establish common ground and give the audience a personal stake in the problem.
Let me demonstrate.
As a reader of this text, I am a member of two different audiences. First, I come to this text as a student studying writing theory and rhetoric. Secondly, however, I do read this text as a teacher, writing tutor, and education student, and it is difficult for me to step back from what I think about Prince’s teaching ideas and suggestions for change to consider only the rhetorical strategies. This situation is, I think, a good example of how the lines of an audience become blurred. I can be a member of two audiences at once; in fact, I can be a member of two audiences with completely different aims – the first, to analyze the rhetorical aims of article and explain how those occur. Secondly, however, I do read the article with my own (strong) teaching philosophy and experiences with high school and college writing courses.
My approach to the article is heavily influenced by both of my situations. I feel as though I have a personal stake in this text: what Prince says has the possibility to influence my tutoring and teaching on a very concrete and almost immediate level, if I so choose. However, my knowledge of writing rhetoric makes me somewhat slower to react to his pedagogical claims. It causes me to hesitate, to reserve action until I have considered how Prince makes his claims, how he constructs his argument, and to what aim he chooses to do this. I am learning to reserve judgment, to do, in fact what college English teachers wish high school curricula would teach: step back and think analytically, rather than jump in and criticize. (Thank you, IU English program.)
So, by Kinneavy’s definition of the aim of discourse, has Prince’s article achieved its desired affect in its average reader? If I am an average reader, yes. Prince has convinced me that there is a much bigger disparity between college and high school English aims than I previously thought. After reading this article, I can definitely identify key differences between teaching critical thinking and teaching analytical thinking. I don’t buy Prince’s proposed solution, but I do understand how he got there. Using both my own contextual situation (teaching, schooling, other education reading, tutoring), and rhetorical analysis (Kinneavy, Killingsworth, Ong), I can come to a more nuanced understanding of Prince’s article, appreciating it’s strengths, learning from the information it provides, and identifying ways that it might influence how I write, think, and teach without agreeing with Prince’s conclusion.
That’s a lot more valuable than simply saying that I disagree and arguing about why.
EDIT (Saturday, 9/18, 7:30pm): I forgot to include the link to the article: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Rescue-Plan-for-College/47452/
Also, here's the citation information for the Kinneavy article:
Kinneavy, James E. "The Basic Aims of Discourse." College Composition and Communication 20.5 (Dec. 1969): 297-304
Friday, September 10, 2010
Rhetorical Masquerade
It may seem odd, in a news piece about feminism, bra burning, Miss America, and other hot topics (sorry, no pun intended) to do a textual analysis, rather than focus on the obviously fascinating combination of historical and contemporary context of the piece. I’ve found, however, that the rhetorical twists and turns of this piece are simply to interesting to ignore.
Specifically, the last paragraph of the text provides a mind-blowing moment. It is there that Kantrowitz surprises the audience with what Seltzer would call an “argument by example”(Seltzer 288). Her rhetoric is powerful yet gentle, with the occasional unexpected twist.
However, before appreciating the curious ending, we need to understand the set-up.The piece is, overall, deliberative rhetoric. The author is asking the audience to make a decision about the possible progress and success of the feminist movement since the late 1960s. However, there are clear epideictic elements: the piece opens with a short narrative about what really happened at the fabled bra-burning protest, and from that point on reads a bit like an article one might find in the Reminisce magazine lying around an elderly relative's house – a somewhat nostalgic remembrance of an important historical event. The article continues under the facade of epideictic rhetoric for some time, as the author established ethos and pathos.
The emotional appeal, or pathos, is set up in the first paragraph. The scene is described in a way that will probably cause the reader to remember how he or she felt about the event, if it is remembered, or to give the younger audience a clear picture of what went on. Yet, Kantrowitz tempers the descriptions – perhaps for the sake of reality, or perhaps to moderate the feelings of her more passionate readers. She assures them that, actually, no bras were burned. In reality, this wasn’t a particularly large or violent demonstration. In this way she begins setting up her ethos, or reliability as an author as well. She presents a clear, factual, and fairly dispassionate report of the events surrounding the protest and the Miss America 1970 pageant, while acknowledging their formidable historical significance. She does not hint rhetorically whether or not she has a personal stake in feminism. The only clue of the change to come is a short quote from Miss America 1970, Judith Ford, who says that she does not remember the pivotal moment in which the "Women's Lib" sheet was released at her crowning. The astute reader should wonder why, of all the famous people involved in this event to quote, Kantrowitz chooses Ford - especially as she doesn't say anything particularly inflammatory.
The logos of this article, as developed by Kantrowiz, does not become immediately clear. According to Killingsworth’s “Appeals in Modern Rhetoric,” logos involves “…referneces to the world shared by the author and audience” (Killingsworth 26). For quite awhile, while this article masquerades as an epideictic remembrance, she does not appear to ask the audience to do anything besides listen. Then, in the second to last paragraph, Kantrowitz brings the reader into the present, pointing out the issues that permeate our current news and are still a struggle for the current feminist movement: abortion rights, GLBT rights, and rigid beauty standards. In this move, she raises the question of what progress, exactly, has been made.
Then comes the bomb.
In her final paragraph, Kantrowitz gives her audience the surprising answer as to why she quoted Judith Ford earlier. Ford was not exactly the anti-feminist ideal woman that the protesters thought. Kantrowitz shares that Ford, a child of the Title IX era (sorry, momentary contextual slip), was the first woman to win a varsity letter (on a men's team, no less) at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. In fact, as a divorced single mother, she sincerely appreciated the feminist movement.
Kantrowitz's most amazing rhetorical move is her ability to spin a narrative that persuades the audience to reconsider a long held view in a gentle yet effective way. Her deliberative article – that cleverly masquerades as an epideictic piece – she places in the minds of her rhetorically-minded readers two things:
1. There’s more than one way to burn a bra, as it were.
2. Persuasion doesn’t necessarily involve overt arguments and aggressive discourse.
The sisterhood is powerful, indeed – especially when a sister can write like Kantrowitz does.
Works Cited:
http://www.newsweek.com/2007/11/10/it-s-ms-america-to-you.html
"It's Ms. America to You," by Barbara Kantrowitz, published in Newsweek Magazine, November 10, 2007
"Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary Language Approach." M. Jimmie Killingsworth. Southern IL U.P: 2005
"Rhetorical Analysis: Understanding How Texts Persuade Readers." Ed. Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior: What Writing Does and How It Does It. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003.
Specifically, the last paragraph of the text provides a mind-blowing moment. It is there that Kantrowitz surprises the audience with what Seltzer would call an “argument by example”(Seltzer 288). Her rhetoric is powerful yet gentle, with the occasional unexpected twist.
However, before appreciating the curious ending, we need to understand the set-up.The piece is, overall, deliberative rhetoric. The author is asking the audience to make a decision about the possible progress and success of the feminist movement since the late 1960s. However, there are clear epideictic elements: the piece opens with a short narrative about what really happened at the fabled bra-burning protest, and from that point on reads a bit like an article one might find in the Reminisce magazine lying around an elderly relative's house – a somewhat nostalgic remembrance of an important historical event. The article continues under the facade of epideictic rhetoric for some time, as the author established ethos and pathos.
The emotional appeal, or pathos, is set up in the first paragraph. The scene is described in a way that will probably cause the reader to remember how he or she felt about the event, if it is remembered, or to give the younger audience a clear picture of what went on. Yet, Kantrowitz tempers the descriptions – perhaps for the sake of reality, or perhaps to moderate the feelings of her more passionate readers. She assures them that, actually, no bras were burned. In reality, this wasn’t a particularly large or violent demonstration. In this way she begins setting up her ethos, or reliability as an author as well. She presents a clear, factual, and fairly dispassionate report of the events surrounding the protest and the Miss America 1970 pageant, while acknowledging their formidable historical significance. She does not hint rhetorically whether or not she has a personal stake in feminism. The only clue of the change to come is a short quote from Miss America 1970, Judith Ford, who says that she does not remember the pivotal moment in which the "Women's Lib" sheet was released at her crowning. The astute reader should wonder why, of all the famous people involved in this event to quote, Kantrowitz chooses Ford - especially as she doesn't say anything particularly inflammatory.
The logos of this article, as developed by Kantrowiz, does not become immediately clear. According to Killingsworth’s “Appeals in Modern Rhetoric,” logos involves “…referneces to the world shared by the author and audience” (Killingsworth 26). For quite awhile, while this article masquerades as an epideictic remembrance, she does not appear to ask the audience to do anything besides listen. Then, in the second to last paragraph, Kantrowitz brings the reader into the present, pointing out the issues that permeate our current news and are still a struggle for the current feminist movement: abortion rights, GLBT rights, and rigid beauty standards. In this move, she raises the question of what progress, exactly, has been made.
Then comes the bomb.
In her final paragraph, Kantrowitz gives her audience the surprising answer as to why she quoted Judith Ford earlier. Ford was not exactly the anti-feminist ideal woman that the protesters thought. Kantrowitz shares that Ford, a child of the Title IX era (sorry, momentary contextual slip), was the first woman to win a varsity letter (on a men's team, no less) at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. In fact, as a divorced single mother, she sincerely appreciated the feminist movement.
Kantrowitz's most amazing rhetorical move is her ability to spin a narrative that persuades the audience to reconsider a long held view in a gentle yet effective way. Her deliberative article – that cleverly masquerades as an epideictic piece – she places in the minds of her rhetorically-minded readers two things:
1. There’s more than one way to burn a bra, as it were.
2. Persuasion doesn’t necessarily involve overt arguments and aggressive discourse.
The sisterhood is powerful, indeed – especially when a sister can write like Kantrowitz does.
Works Cited:
http://www.newsweek.com/2007/11/10/it-s-ms-america-to-you.html
"It's Ms. America to You," by Barbara Kantrowitz, published in Newsweek Magazine, November 10, 2007
"Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary Language Approach." M. Jimmie Killingsworth. Southern IL U.P: 2005
"Rhetorical Analysis: Understanding How Texts Persuade Readers." Ed. Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior: What Writing Does and How It Does It. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003.
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