ENL 501 Rhetorical Theory - Final Paper

Guten Tag mein Freunden,

as 2020 is mere hours away and I have a few moments to blog, blog I shall.

What kept me from blogging for most of the semester was my Rhetorical Theory class.

So why not post my final paper for your limitless enjoyment. Who doesn't desire to read about Rhetorical Theory with 2020 breathing down your neck like a vicious god, no wait, dog, I meant dog.

ENL 501 Final Paper

Shannon Scott


The narrative of online and adult learners in the world of higher education is one
so far in the background as to be considered scenery. It is there nonetheless, and while
the arc of their story is in some ways similar to that of the traditional college student
fresh from high school sitting in an eight a.m. freshman composition, brick and mortar
classroom, in other ways it is a world apart, with adult responsibilities such as a career
in full-swing, children and all they entail, and mortgage payments and health-care costs
to make homework for their Studies In Literature course seem paltry by comparison.
As a professional advisor of primarily online and adult learners, the rhetorical
opportunities are ample, and this course has provided insight into some of the rhetorical
tools I have used by instinct and some that can now be implemented by design. This
paper is a catalogue of rhetorical tools used and those to be implemented and how they
pertain to three rhetorical categories: Audience, Genre, Invention.
AUDIENCE
According to Maurice Charland (1987), Interpellation occurs as soon as an
individual recognizes and acknowledges being addressed; I interpellate online
students/adult learners, the moment I refer to them as college graduates and I do this
intentionally, as a rhetorical tool. A la Charland’s constitutive rhetoric, I place online
students/adult learners in a narrative, especially a transhistorical narrative, when I
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explain to them how their past transfer credits work toward their present program as
future UMASSD College Graduates. I reinforce the narrative of college graduate by
positing a future by looking at bls.gov and possible occupations and the expected
growth of the expected occupation, and most importantly cite statistics (especially to
first generation and educationally disadvantaged students) that they will be entering
elite company, statistically speaking. By contrasting that almost two thirds of adults don’t
possess a bachelor’s degree, their interpellation into, becoming one of, this elite “group”
of “peoples” begins.
Barbara Johnstone (2002) considers it useful to frame how people orient to their
own and others’ roles in terms of “footing”. For professional advising purposes, the
alignment adult students take up to themselves, as returning students in a new mode of
education, and the others present as expressed in the way they manage the production
or reception of an utterance (as a student ), implies a new footing. I will often suggest to
an adult student, that is also a full-time employee, full-time parent, spouse,
son/daughter, take only one or two courses in their first semester back to get their
“ footing ” in this new role as, degree seeking student.
It is hoped that placement into the transhistorical narrative of College Graduate,
in concert with a foundation of rhetorical footing, helps adult learners form an attitude of
completion, because, per Hauser (2002), attitudes are the first stage (incipient) of the
future we anticipate will occur. This is important for the professional advisor, because
retention and completion are the ultimate definitions of success not only for the
university, school or college, and all the way down to the level of department, but also
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for the student seeking a degree, and not just learning for the sake of learning.
Through the navigation of curriculum and policy choices a student might make in
any given semester, I make it a point to affirm my students’ agency when I remind them
that my job is to help them make an informed decision , but that they make the
decisions. By acknowledging and adapting to the fact that my advisees have the need
of autonomy like my own, I am showing what Johnstone (2002) refers to as, linguistic
“politeness”. Often, I can refer back to a successful decision they made when they need
encouragement or some sense of footing about a new choice they must make.
Per Hauser (2002), I attempt to get colleagues to Identify With a concept, through
sharing a vocabulary of motives, which Hauser defines as: a language for coordinating
diverse social functions. The vocabulary I invoke is: “Retention Is Everyone’s Business.”
The diverse social function is helping online students navigate all that is involved with
obtaining their degree (advising, financial aid, teaching, tutoring, billing, registrar, etc.)
The audacity of such an undertaking requires a rallying cry that unites siloed
departments and drives collaboration toward a common goal.
Under the parameters set forth by Barbara Mirel (2002), the creation of an
Advisement Report that is both easy to use and useful, should be a top priority,
especially in light of the modern, elective-heavy, curriculum, and a digital-savvy student
body. If Redish (1993) is correct, online students, like everyone else using a document,
are busy and will use the Advisement Report as a means to an end: ergo the design of
the Advisement Report with Mirel’s parameters in mind, must also be user in context
oriented.
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GENRE
As noted above, retention is everyone’s business in higher education. Retention
encapsulates not only the year to year retention, but also the graduation of students.
Thusly understood, retention is the exigence to which Genre is the Social Action, as
understood in Miller (1984). With retention the prime measure of success in higher
education, it is the exigence that, over time, has formed and shaped the discourse(s)
meant to counter the exigence. Be they promotional brochures citing ample personal
and academic resources, departmental web pages with pictures of caring faculty
peering over the shoulder of students mid-assignment, or university wide emails posting
important events, the genre is shaped by retention.
For the professional academic advisor, especially an advisor with a
predominantly online advisee load, there may be, per Eisenhart and Roscoe (2016), an
emerging “check-in” email genre to address the exigence of retention. Some possible
typifications in the genre, include:
● Timing of the email (not too near to the beginning of the semester so as to be
premature, and not too near to mid-term so as to be ignored due to workload)
● Posting of important deadlines, especially partial refund and course withdrawal
dates. These are especially important in the online realm as courses have
varying running times.
● Inclusion of interactive links to available resources, especially academic tutoring
● Interactive link to schedule an advising appointment
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Because the check-in email serves retention, and because retention is multi-faceted, it
is important to keep in mind Bazerman’s (2003) Techniques of Intertextual
Representation , when drafting. Emails too hyperlink heavy may come off as solicitous
and emails intimating text anything over a welcome paragraph in length may appear
promotional or didactic.
Intertextuality, combined with Campbell and Jamieson’s (1990) idea that
rhetorical form follows rhetorical function , can be used to shape the check-in email
specifically, and also to shape advising discourse in general. A la Fahnestock (1993),
advisors can pursue a genre shift via highlighting and omitting certain aspects within
discourse, to move from a transaction approach/genre, to a more holistic
paradigm/genre that better accommodates the retention exigence. Hence, an
understanding of extratextual - not spelled out in the discourse but supplied by context,
by assumed references the intended audience will make (Fahnestock, 1993)- will be
crucial to accommodate retention.
Lastly in regards to Genre, because Eisenhart and Roscoe (2016) noticed that
monitoring fellow rhetors catalyzed typification, the use of professional associations
such as National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) and the Online Learning
Consortium (OLC) to shape both check-in email and advising practices is intuitive.
Through these associations an advisor is better able to know the boundaries of genre in
relation to professional advising but also, and perhaps more importantly, where the
boundary is stretching and where invention, in the form of topoi, might be found.
Consider that Miller (1984) advised that, due to the intersubjective grounding of genre, it
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remains open-ended, and subject to addition. This intersubjective nature is most
explicitly plumbed through professional association conferences and peer-reviewed
discourse.
INVENTION
Metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another
(Lakoff, 1980). Argument is war, time is money, and life is a highway that I want to ride
all night long. And while my metaphor for understanding the advisement report in terms
of a map to graduation, is effective, it was probably a matter of luck to at least some
extent. To guide metaphor construction in a more reliable manner, professional advisors
(and educators at any level) can reference John Pollock’s (2015) Shortcut: How
Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas ,
specifically chapter five, How We Can Choose Better Analogies :
● Deconstruct analogies to reveal strengths and weaknesses
● Remember that humans favor coherency over accuracy
● Don’t absent-mindedly accept the framing of an idea - be more proactive and
creative about the analogies we accept, reject, and employ
● Remember that analogies are models and models help translate complex
concepts and diffuse data into discrete and potentially useful ideas
● Imagination is more important than knowledge: how we categorize knowledge
and how well we resist categorization, determines how freely our imagination can
retrieve and apply that knowledge
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Employing these guidelines to didactically use metaphor to advise students and explain
curriculum and policy not only serves the retention exigence but also the professional
mantra that advising is teaching .
Helpful, guiding metaphors and finding and then pushing the boundaries of genre
can help aid communications and discourse in professional advising and Chris
Anderson’s Style As Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction (1987), through
analyzing the works of Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion, is
a reminder that style can be as much a tool as content - not just what is said but how it
is said. In this sense, style can be aligned with the aforementioned extratextuality. This
is not remotely suggesting that professional advisors emulate Tom Wolfe in their
discourse, but it does definitely suggest that professional communications can have
some style; it is not a forced dichotomy, an either/or , as style and practicality can both
be present at the same time, even in professional advising discourse. Style can serve
the argument for professional advising to a lesser extent than it does to provide a sense
of freedom for the professional advisors in their communications, so as not to become
rote, robotic and perfunctory. If Anderson is correct, and the presentations of prose
tacitly argues for values and attempt to persuade the adoption of those values, advisors
will be wise to reference some of Anderson’s Techniques for greater presence in
language:
● Repetition
● Amplification - an aggregation of all the consistent parts and topics of a
subject
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● Union of figures for a common object - piling up of several figures to
describe the same idea of image
● Accumulating sentence structures
● Present tense narration - in the “now”
Via Toulmin’s account, McPeck (Eemeren, et al 1996) contends that: Learning to
think critically requires learning the epistemology of each field. This imperative is
misguided. The main reason it is misguided, is because it is impossible. To attempt to
learn the epistemology of a field is a quintessential Sisyphean task; by the time one got
around to learning the epistemology of one field alone, the epistemology will have
changed. Given his birth date, Toulmin should have been aware of Bertrand Russell’s
Barber Paradox, and also G ö del’s incompleteness theorem - just two examples of
epistemologies rolling back down the hill like Sisyphus’ stone. Epistemologies, and
times, change. From a flat earth to geocentrism, from phrenology to spontaneous
generation, science is replete with enough superseded theories to prove that
epistemology is a process in flow.
Martin Heidegger (1962) investigated Being with a capital B and his methodology
was phenomenology. In studying Being this way, Heidegger realized that the starting
point of his investigation is a particular being in the world. His term for this starting point,
was the very pregnant: Dasein. The english translation: being there. To be, there, in the
world is to have a vantage point such that other vantage points are inaccessible.
Consider the analogy from anatomy that all humans have a blind spot - where the optic
nerve exits the eye. But for Heidegger, it goes beyond mere sensation. Because we are
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thrown into the world - the german word geworfenheit - to a time and place over which
we have no control, our vantage point, our perspective is forever restricted. Certain
knowledge, epistemologies, vantage points, are closed off because we are thrown into a
zeitgeist - spirit of the times - from which we never exit. The title of Sartre’s play is no
accident. Returning to Toulmin & McPeck, how can we possibly be expected to meet
the criteria of critical thinker? What do we do if epistemologies change and some
perspectives are permanently closed off?
For professional advising: the imperative changes. Instead of learning
(supposedly absolute) epistemologies, advisors must learn the konoi and idia (Hauser,
2002) as they relate to advising and advisees.
● Konoi topoi - applied to any subject and provide overall patterns of thought
● Idia - generated specific premises peculiar to a subject
I must learn about my advisees, at least attempt to get their perspective, by learning
their why . As in why are they doing this. The good news is that the imperative is
achievable because the more one learns, the easier it becomes to learn new things.
Like a spider web with a new thread and increased diameter, more knowledge can
connect to foundations previously gained. The more I know, the more connections I can
make, the more topoi, the more available means of persuasion, I can find to increase
advising effectiveness.
The narrative of online and adult learners necessarily invokes advisors -calls
them to action. Interpellation casts a wide net; indicts all the players and all the parts
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that make up the whole of the act. More knowledgeable about rhetoric, specifically
audience, genre, and invention, I am now more capable than ever to assist my advisees
and play a role in their ascension to college graduate, which feeds the ravenous
statistics used to influence said ascension, and those statistics will feed the narrative for
future students ad infinitum.
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Works Cited
Anderson, Chris. Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction . Southern
Illinois University Press, 1987.
Bazerman, Charles. “Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts” What Writing Does
and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices .
Bazerman, Charles, and Prior, Paul A. London: Erlbaum, 2003.
Campbell, Karlyn, Jamieson, Kathleen. Presidents Creating The Presidency: Deeds
Done In Words . University of Chicago Press. 1990.
Charland, Maurice. Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois. Quarterly
Journal Of Speech, 73 (1987), 133-150.
Eemeren, Frans H.van, Grootendorst, Rob, and Henkemans, Francisca S, et al.
Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds
and Contemporary Developments . Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1996.
Eisenhart, Christopher, Roscoe, Douglas D. (2016) The emergent genre of campaign
e-mail in the 2008 presidential nomination campaign. The Communication
Review, 19:3, 159-191, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2016.1195201 .
Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts”
The Literature of Science : Perspectives on Popular Scientific Writing . McRae,
Murdo W. University of Georgia Press. 1993.
Hauser, Gerald A. “Acting with Language” Introduction to Rhetorical Theory . Hauser,
Gerald A. Waveland Press. 2002.
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Hauser, Gerald A. “Finding Ideas” Introduction to Rhetorical Theory . Hauser, Gerald A.
Waveland Press. 2002.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time . Harper Collins, 1962.
Johnstone, Barbara. “Speakers, Hearers, Audiences” Discourse Analysis . Johnstone,
Barbara. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 111-135.
Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By . University of Chicago
Press, 1980.
Miller, Carolyn R. Genre As Social Action. Quarterly Journal Of Speech, 70 (1984),
151-167.
Mirel, Barbara. “Advancing A Vision Of Usability” Reshaping Technical Communication:
New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century . Ed. Barbara Mirel, Ed.
Rachel Spilka. Mahwah: Routledge, 2002. 218-239.
Pollock, John. Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell
Our Greatest Ideas . Penguin Publishing Group, 2015.
Redish, Janice C. “Understanding Readers” Techniques for Technical Communicators.
Barnum, Carol, and Carliner, Saul. New York: Macmillian, 1993. 1-23.
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