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