AGNES FIDELIS GLORIA-PINZON

87-15240
TMA 2 ENG 262, 2 SEM AY 08-09
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I. HISTORY OF RHETORIC (see COLOR chart and appendix)

II. DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS IN RHETORIC

DEFINITION OF RHETORIC

Plato Rhetoric is "the art of winning the soul by discourse

Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of
Aristotle
persuasion

Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five lesser arts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria,
Cicero
and pronunciatio." Rhetoric is "speech designed to persuade

Quintilian Rhetoric is the art of speaking well

Francis Bacon The duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will

[Rhetoric] is that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of
George Campbell discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and
influence the will.

I.A. Richards Rhetoric is the study of misunderstandings and their remedies.

Richard Weaver Rhetoric is that "which creates an informed appetition for the good

Rhetoric is a form of reasoning about probabilities, based on assumptions people share as

Erika Lindemann
members of a community
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Philip Johnson Rhetoric is the art of framing an argument so that it can be appreciated by an audience

: The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political
Kenneth Burke ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or
to induce actions in other human agents.

Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in
communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy
George Kennedy
expanded in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced
by the recipient in decoding the message

...rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by
Lloyd Bitzer
the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.

[Rhetoric is] that discipline which studies all of the ways in which men may influence each
Douglas Ehninger
other's thinking and behavior through the strategic use of symbols.

Rhetoric is an instrumental use of language. One person engages another person in an

exchange of symbols to accomplish some goal. It is not communication for communication's
Gerard A. Hauser sake. Rhetoric is communication that attempts to coordinate social action. For this reason,
rhetorical communication is explicitly pragmatic. Its goal is to influence human choices on
specific matters that require immediate attention.

...rhetoric is the process of using language to organize experience and communicate it to

others. It is also the study of how people use language to organize and communicate
C. H. Knoblauch
experience. The word denotes both distinctive human activity and the "science" concerned with
understanding that activity.

John Locke [Rhetoric,] that powerful instrument of error and deceit.

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The study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out
Charles Bazerman human activities . . . ultimately a practical study offering people great control over their
symbolic activity.

The primordial function of rhetoric is to "make-known" meaning both to oneself and to others.
Meaning is derived by a human being in and through the interpretive understanding of reality.
Michael Hyde and Craig
Rhetoric is the process of making known that meaning. Is not rhetoric defined as pragmatic
Smith
communication, more concerned with the contemporary audiences and specific questions than
with universal audiences and general questions?

Alfred North The creation of the world -- said Plato -- is the victory of persuasion over force. The worth of
Whitehead men consists in their liability to persuasion.

"Rhetoric is the study of the personal, social, and historical elements in human discourse- how
Patricia Bizzel to recognize them, interpret them, and act on them, in terms both of situational context and of
verbal style. This is the kind of study one has to perform in order to effect persuasion, the
traditional end of rhetoric."
"Foundational and
Anti-Foundationalism" (1992)
"Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in
George Kennedy communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy
expanded in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced
by the recipient in decoding the message."

"A Hoot in the Dark" (1992)

"Language used consciously, a matter of rhetoric, is a principal means -- perhaps the means --
Victor Villanueva by which change can begin to take place. . . . Rhetoric, after all, is how ideologies are carried,
how hegemonies are maintained. Rhetoric, then, would be the means by which hegemonies
could be countered."
Bootstraps: From an
American Academic of Color (1993)
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CONCEPTS IN RHETORIC THROUGH THE AGES

MIDDLE
CLASSICAL 17TH -18TH CENTURIES 19TH -20TH CENTURIES
AGES/RENAISSANCE
• Parts of judicial • Main preoccupation was • Shift from ornate to • America becomes the
speech: proem, with style and delivery simple and precise style main player in rhetorical
narration, arguments • Purpose of rhetoric • Importance of brevity, theory
and peroration became to amaze or
conciseness which led to • Introduction of the multi-
• Five Stages of fascinate an audience
Rhetoric – Inventio, the development of the modal approach to
rather than to persuade
Dispositio, Elocutio, through the use of all “curt” style rhetoric which marked
Memoria and flashy tricks of delivery • The rise of the “natural” the shift from the
Pronuntiatio • Artificiality and style which placed a singular purpose of
• Three artistic modes extravagance of word premium on ideas since persuasion
of persuasion: logos, usage prevailed style would naturally • Formalization of the
pathos and ethos. • Two schools of thought: follow these discourse types
• Stress on the sophistic which designated • The use of native words • The creation of a theory
audience as the the academic study of
chief informing and the vernacular of the paragraph
rhetoric as an art and the
principle in political which was
• The rise of the plain but
persuasive discourse concerned with the elegant prose style • Rhetoric becomes
• Artistic, ornate, high practical applications of • Interest in the sermon or devoted to writing
mannered style the art instruction and
the homily as a proper
• Extension of scope • Reshaping of classical composition studies
subject of rhetoric
of rhetoric rhetoric that served
• The belief that the • Students of rhetoric were
Christian purposes
perfect orator had to being encouraged to
• Two major rhetorical forms:
be knowledgeable “strike out on their own
composing and writing of
about many subjects and discover a style that
letters for matters of
• Stress on the was natural to
church and state and the
orator’s character themselves”
art of preaching.
• Emphasized that • Pulpit Oratory became
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MIDDLE
CLASSICAL 17TH -18TH CENTURIES 19TH -20TH CENTURIES
AGES/RENAISSANCE
simple words could • Renewed interest in the popular
also create the same classical modes. • More attention was paid
rhetorical effect if • Focus on rhetorical training to the stage of delivery
arranged skillfully in the schools
•
• First included written • Separation between stages
discourse as part of of rhetoric and the
rhetorical art importance of their
sequence
• Invention and arrangement
were made to be part of
logic and not the rhetorical
act
• Rhetoric only dealt with
style, memory and delivery
• Shift from Latin to English
III. APPENDIX

A EXPANDED CHART OF HISTORY OF RHETORIC

The Classical Period

a. Greek Rhetoricians &
Significant Works
• Corax of Syracuse
• Gorgias of Lentini
5th Century Formulated an “art” that was designed to help ordinary citizens to plead
BC their claims in court and reclaim property confiscated during the reign of
Thrasybulus the tyrant of Syracuse.
His formula became staple to rhetorical theory and became known as the
various parts of a judicial speech: “proem” (introduction), “narration”
(statement of fact), “arguments” (both confirmation and refutation) and
“peroration” (conclusion).
~ 427 BC  Notable for having stirred an interest in oratorical theory and practice
among the Athenians. He was considered to be the most successful
teacher and practitioner of oratory in Athens.
 Main contributions: recognition of the “persuasiveness of emotional
appeals” and the attention he paid to “the cultivation of an ornate
style”. He valued figures of speech.
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 Can be considered as one of the first successful Sophists (professor

who lectured on the new learning in literature, science, philosophy,
and especially oratory) in Athens.
• Isocrates 436-338 BC  Believed to be the most influential of the Greek rhetoricians among
his contemporaries. He was a renowned teacher of rhetoric and his
school produced a number of skilled orators.
 His contribution to rhetoric was his development of an artistic prose
style. He was also concerned with the rhythm of prose and centered
his attention on the sonority of the periodic sentence.
 He also emphasized proper training for the ideal orator.
• Plato  Did not trust rhetoric; he believed that rhetoric was only an artificial
form of flattery which distorted the truth.
 He set up conditions for any rhetorical piece to speak the truth.
 In countering rhetoric, he displayed himself to be a masterful
rhetorician.
• Aristotle 384-322 BC  Most influential among the Greek rhetoricians.
 He wrote Rhetoric whose first 2 books dealt with the discovery of
arguments – “a response to those who accused rhetoricians of being
more concerned with words than with matter”; he also sought to
prove that rhetoric was a “true art, a teachable and systematic
discipline that could guide men in adapting means to an end”
 Aristotle’s main treatise on rhetoric can be considered as the source
of all later rhetorical theory
 Contributions to rhetorical theory: the three modes of proof/appeals;
the enthymeme as the rhetorical equivalent of the syllogism, the
example as the rhetorical equivalent of logical induction; the topics as
a system of discovering available arguments; stress on the audience
as the chief informing principle in persuasive discourse
• ON STYLE Unknown  Date and authorship are uncertain
 Important in the history of rhetoric because it is one of the first texts
to analyze the “kinds” of style in a detailed manner
 Also, added a fourth type of style – the forcible type (the heightened
informal) to the three styles (informal, formal, literary)
• RHETORICA AD ~86-82 BC  Authorship still unknown
HERENNIUM  This work is distinct for its being the earliest extant Latin work on
rhetoric and the earliest treatment of prose style in Latin
 Offers “the oldest extant division of the kinds of style into three and
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the oldest extant formal study of figures”

 Also presents the most complete treatment of delivery and memory
that we have in the any of the surviving classical rhetoric
b. The Roman Rhetoricians
• Cicero 106-43 BC • Major contribution is his “extension of the scope of rhetoric”; while
Aristotle believed that rhetoric had no proper subject matter, Cicero
maintained that the perfect orator had to be knowledgeable about
many subjects.
• The perfect orator must have a profound grasp of a diverse range of
knowledge if he were to invent arguments. This resulted in rhetoric
being a liberal arts course.
• Compilation and criticism of the Greek rhetorical tradition in which he
put together the works of Corax, Georgias, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle,
et at and made comments of their views of rhetoric and defined these
notions which he believed to be of real concern to rhetoric.
• Also developed the periodic sentence, and is considered as the real
creator and master of the periodic style
• Quintilian ~35-95 AD • Wrote a 12 book treatise, Institutio Oratoria; Book I deals with the
preliminary education necessary for a study of rhetoric; Book II
defines the nature, aims and scope of rhetoric; Books III-VII treat of
oratory itself with emphasis on inventio and dispositio or materials;
Books VIII-X treat of style (elocutio); Book XI deals with memory
(memoria) and delivery (pronuntiatio); Book XII deals with the
requirements for a perfect orator
• Put together the principles and precepts governing stages of rhetoric
in a more organized and directed fashion.
• Believed that the broadly educated man would be the fittest
candidate for a course in rhetoric. He emphasized that apart from
being intellectually prepared for his responsibilities, “the orator must
be trained to be a man of strong character”.
c. Other Significant
Rhetoricians ~ 30 – 8 • Chief contribution: On the Arrangement of Words which schoolboys
• Dionysius of BC were required to use in their study of rhetoric. This stress on
Halicarnassus arrangement of words erased the popular notion that long,
polysyllabic and artful words were necessary for the creation of
rhetorical effect; rather it emphasized that simple words could also
create the same effect if they were arranged in a skillful manner.
Also, this work stressed that word choices and sentence construction
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were both important in the creation of rhetorical effect.

IHermogenes and Aphthonius • Wrote and published rhetorical texts entitled Progymnasmata, which
was a set of 14 rudimentary exercises, intended to prepare students
of rhetoric for the creation and performance of complete practice
orations (including the first writing exercises on “themes”). These
texts also provided a list of technical rules for the construction of the
• Longinus other elements of composition and common examples of these
elements.
• Wrote the famous On the Sublime, which is considered one of the
most influential documents in literary criticism.

THE MIDDLE AGES

• It was during this time that Plato’s negative views of rhetoric became most apparent and the fundamental precepts
of invention laid out by the classical rhetoricians were overlooked and the main preoccupation was with style and
delivery.
• The purpose of rhetoric became to amaze or fascinate an audience rather than persuade it through the use of all
flashy tricks of style and delivery.
• Artificiality and extravagance of word usages prevailed earning Middle Ages rhetoricians the unpleasant reputation
which greatly influenced the definition of rhetoric today.
• Two schools of thought: the ‘sophistic’ which designated the academic study of rhetoric as an art and the ‘political’
which was concerned with the practical applications of the art. It is the ‘sophistic’ school which was so popular that
rhetoric ceased to be pursued primarily as a practical art and became rather a scholastic exercise.
• During this time there occurred too a reshaping of classical rhetoric to a rhetoric that served Christian purposes. If
classical rhetoric was concerned with leading the state, Middle Ages rhetoric focused on saving souls. The fourth
book of St. Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana showed that rhetoric could be a means of persuading Christians to
lead a holy life. This kind of rhetoric laid the foundation for “the rhetoric of the sermon, the branch of study known
today as homilectics.
• The two rhetorical forms that were taught during the Middle Ages were the composing and writing of letters for
matters of church and state and the art of preaching.

THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD

• Renewed interest in the classical models. The most influential rhetorician of this period was Erasmus who set the
pattern for the English grammar-school curriculum and for rhetorical training in the schools. He was also
commissioned to write De Ratione Studii and De Duplici Copia Verborum ac Rerum in 1512. The De Ratione Studii is
more a treatise on pedagogy but espoused extensive practice for students. The De Copia on the other hand, was
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“designed to assist grammar school students in acquiring elegance and variety of expression in Latin composition;
it was written on the belief that students should first have fullness of expression – by accumulating a number of
things to say on a subject and by being able to say the same thing in a variety of ways - if they wanted to be
effective practitioners of rhetoric.
• Erasmus’ treatise on letter writing, Modus Conscribendi Epistolas published in 1522 which dealt with the different
kinds of letters and provided examples of effective letters.
• Peter Ramus whose influence could be traced mainly to his revision of the medieval trivium (school subjects of
grammar, logic and rhetoric)Fed up with the preoccupation of medieval rhetoricians with style and their neglect of
invention and arrangement, Ramus proposed a strict separation between stages of rhetoric and the importance of
their sequence, where invention and arrangement were no longer part of rhetoric, but made to be the concern of
logic.
• Ramus ultimately hoped for a logical and scientific discourse that was devoid of non-logical appeals; a kind of
discourse that would persuade by rationality alone to an audience that was purely rational. This meant that under
the Ramist school, rhetoric only dealt with style, memory and delivery.
• In England, there was a shift from Latin to English of rhetorical texts based on classical models due mainly to the
growing sense of pride and nationalism of the English people as the status and achievements of their country grew.
The most influential English writers were Leonard Cox, Richard Sherry, Thomas Wilson and George Puttenham.
• Three main groups composed the vernacular rhetorical tradition of the English Renaissance: The Traditionalists –
those who taught a full-fledged rhetoric with attention to the five parts: invention, arrangement, style, memory and
delivery; the Ramists – those who focused on style and delivery and the Figurists – those who primary interest
centered on the study of schemes and tropes.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

FIGURES/EVENTS MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS/EXAMPLES
• Francis Bacon • One of the main proponents of the shift from an “ornate, highly mannered style” to a style
characterized by “relative brevity of the sentences, looseness of structure, succinctness and
pithiness of phrasing and jerkiness of rhythm”
• Maintained the separation of reason and imagination with the latter being subservient to
reason; he believed that less focus was being paid to the “weight of the matter, the worth
of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention or depth of judgment”.
• While he considered style, he did not subscribe to the style valued by the Renaissance
rhetoricians. For Bacon, style should consist of only three principles: “conformity of the
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style to the subject matter, the use of simple words and the cultivation of agreeableness
(appropriateness of one’s style to the audience)”
• Thomas Blout • His criteria of style included brevity, perspicuity, life or wit, and respect or propriety. He
stressed particularly the importance of brevity, what he called conciseness, which led to the
development of the “curt” style.
• Like Bacon, he also believed that while style should be taken into consideration in the
process of writing, it should be within the tight control of reason.
• Thomas Hobbes • An advocate of the “natural” style which operated on the principle that knowledge or ideas
would naturally have an effect on style therefore, it was imperative that premium be placed
on ideas because style would naturally follow them.
• He characterized natural style as free from “high sounding but hollow words and phrases.
He gave little attention to tropes and figures and advised that they be used carefully and
cautiously.
• John Dryden • Considered to be the father of modern English prose style; he advocated the use of “native
words: and “the vernacular, rather than the Latinate”; he worked to refine the language and
to attain more naturalness, more ease, more spontaneity in writing which all gave rise to
“the plain but elegant prose”.
• The Homily as a • The movement which started in the Middle Ages and continued to develop in the 17th
Rhetorical subject century, the turn toward the sermon or the homily as a proper subject of rhetoric. John
Smith wrote, The Mysteries of Rhetoric Unveil’d which dealt with rhetorical figures in
relation to the scriptures. John Prideaux also published a treatise entitled Sacred Eloquence:
or the Art of Rhetoric as It Is Laid Down in the Scriptures.
• The decline of • Because much of the significant work that came out during this period were not really by
rhetoric rhetoricians this means that while they did give their views on rhetoric and style, they were
primarily concerned with the development of the English prose style and its implications in
their particular discipline (Bacon with literary practice and theory; Hobbes with philosophy
and Dryden with poetry).

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

• A questioning of Aristotelian notions of rhetoric that began with the rediscovery, new editions and translations of
Longinus’ On the Sublime – judgment came to be more a thing of taste and less a thing of rule. In schools and
universities, while there was still emphasis on classical rhetoric, students were also being encouraged to “strike out
on their own and discover a style that was natural to themselves; to submit to the dynamic force of enthusiasm”.
• A second trend was the continuation of the cultivation of pulpit oratory, resulting in the huge sales of collections of
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popular sermons. Works by English preachers like Tillotson, Barrow and Atterbury and more influential French
preachers like Bossuet, Bourdaloue and Massillon were responsible for this development.
• A third trend was the attention given back to delivery through the efforts of English dramatists like Thomas Sheridan
and John Walker. Students of rhetoric took advantage of the newly-revived interest in elocution or delivery to advance
their careers in preaching which was a choice vocation of the period.
• It was actually in the Scottish line of this rhetorical tradition where real rhetorical work was to be found. The works of
Kames, Campbell and Blair became the basis of the rhetorical tradition that was to spring in America in the next
centuries.
• Lord Kames whose work Elements of Criticism exerted great influence on both literary theory and rhetoric. Kanes
wanted to study human nature through human psychology. Identifying what pleased or displeased people, what
made them happy or sad, what encouraged or disheartened them was actually linked to the notion of the emotional
appeal. It was Kanes who brought the notion of audience back into the picture through his belief that it was in the
study of human nature where we could find the standard by which all texts can be judged.
• George Campbell published The Philosophy of Rhetoric in which he discussed at length some new possibilities for the
study of rhetoric, saying that “rhetoric could have an end – to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination,
to move the passion or to influence the will - other than to persuade”. He also regarded logic as a tool of rhetoric.
Campbell was the first to suggest that the scope of rhetoric could be expanded to include those works that did not
necessarily persuade but were able to explain, inform, or please audiences (expository prose or exposition). He also
countered the position of the classical rhetoricians by saying that logic was actually a device of rhetoric and not the
other way around.
• Hugh Blair whose influential work titled Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle-Letters was translated into French, Italian and
Russian. What is noteworthy about Blair’s work is “the amazing comprehensiveness of the forty-seven lectures that
included: discussion of taste, beauty and sublimity; a survey of philology and a review of classical and English
grammar; a detailed exposition of the principles of style, and a detailed analysis of several pieces of prose
composition; a history of oratory; and instructions for the composition of various kinds of speeches; discourses on
poetry; and a compilation of the best classical and contemporary rhetorical doctrines.” Also, Blair’s work had a
distinct religious tone in his conviction that “a man of eloquence must be a man of virtue” which schoolmasters
appreciated and thus used his text in school.

THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

• America became the main player in rhetorical theory in the 19h and 20th centuries but what was conceived and
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developed in America was primarily a rhetoric of writing; the theoretical advances were made in the area of
composition.
• Main Rhetorician of the 19th century: Alexander Bain
• Three developments:
• The introduction of a multimodal approach to rhetoric – a shift from the singular purpose of persuasion
• The formalization of the discourse types
• The creation of a theory of the paragraph. According to Alexander Bain, all paragraphs should have a central
organizing principle, the topic sentence, which should be refined, developed, supported, argued and explicated.
Three precepts for the paragraph: unity, coherence and development.
• Other important rhetoricians: John Whately, John Walker, Samuel Newman, Richard Green Parker, George
Quackenbos, Henry Noble Day, Adams Hill, John Genung and Barrett Wendell
• Period of statis because:
o While there was some serous text on rhetoric, specifically those that went back to the Aristotelian stance that
invention was the most important stage of rhetoric (with the rational appeal being the most important appeal);
the complexities of these theories were ignored in the classroom and students were asked to pay more
attention to matters of style and correctness.
o Rhetoric also did not enjoy the prominence and influence it once held owing to its oversimplification or its over
emphasis on style, or the division between poetics and rhetoric with the former growing in importance in
universities.
o A rhetoric or composition course would essentially be a service course (general education) on correct rules of
grammar, style and organization. Students were asked to write strictly following the types of discourse –
narration, description, exposition and argumentation. Beyond these, there was nothing more to teach. These
subjects were also handled by junior faculty.
20TH CENTURY
• In the early 20th century, departments of speech were growing numerous in colleges, taking over the study of
historical rhetoric and many of its traditional concerns, such as response to audience. Speech teachers eventually
broke away from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to form their own organization: the National
Association for Academic Teachers of Public Speaking (now the Speech Communication Association). This formally
marks the separation between the teaching of speech and public speaking and rhetoric and composition.
• Progressive education (grounded in the assumption that all individuals are equal and must therefore have equal rights
and equal opportunities for education) sought to free writing instruction from the service of canonical literary study.
They stressed the communicative function of writing to help draw diverse groups together and integrate them into
the mainstream American society.
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• Progressive education also took interest in social science as a source of information for English studies (rhetoric in the
18th -19th centuries had incorporated some study of psychology too).
• Freshman English courses were rarely devoted to writing instruction; its main goal was to introduce students to
literary study and in the process correct the writing in students’ literary essays according to standards of grammar,
style and formal correctness.
Beginnings of Modern Composition Studies
• New Criticism in the 1930s approached literary texts as complete structures of meaning and made it possible to see
the relation between thought and language as fundamental rather than superficial.
• In 1957, alongside the drive to encourage excellence in all areas of American education, ways were sought to make
college writing courses more rigorous by expanding its focus beyond socialization or linguistics to the full traditional
range of rhetorical concerns.
• In the 1960s there was renewed attention to the classical heritage by rhetoricians which helped foster an increased
interest in the stages of the writing process and in style as an expression of personal ethos.
• The classical model of a five staged process (invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery) while the Ramist
tradition excluded invention and arrangement. American writing courses, in focusing in the single stage of style, lost
a sense of writing as a process. Writing as a process was reemphasized. Invention and arrangement began to be
reclaimed for composition studies as preliminary stages in the writing process. Style, too, was seen as a process of
developing ideas by rewriting sentences.
• There was a renewed conviction that writing instruction should emphasize self-expressive uses of language and assist
students in shaping their ideas through writing. The new writing courses (Dartmouth model) encouraged more
interaction among teacher and students, more dramatic and collaborative activities.
• There was a clamor for writing instruction that takes more notice of students’ needs for self-expression as opposed to
their adjustment to social demands. Composition studies searched for a pedagogy to help students find personal
writing styles that were honest and unconstrained by conventions (the term writer’s authentic voice).
• In the 1970s, there was an emphasis on the cognitive activities involved in writing; composing is what goes on in the
writer’s head and is then recorded in the actual written work. This interest in the composing process is like the focus
given to invention and arrangement in the classical process. Theorists developed structured invention techniques
that would guide the student through an optimal composing process. But the whole composing process when studied
appeared to no longer be neatly linear as described in the classical model but recursive and hierarchical.
• The increasing number of college freshmen whose home language was not Standard English tested the applicability
of cognitive theories of writing. Teachers were thus made aware that the new classroom population needed help with
academic writing requirements not so much because of cognitive deficiencies but because of linguistic and cultural
diversity. This realization helped teachers see that students would learn Standard English more easily if they were
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allowed to write some school assignments in their home languages first.

• With so many students seeming to need extra help in mastering college-level writing, many composition scholars
came to feel that professors in all disciplines must be enlisted in the effort of teaching writing. To address these
needs, cross-disciplinary writing programs (writing across the curriculum) began to develop. These programs
typically attempted to educate students and faculty form all disciplines about the conventions of academic discourse
and about the range of activities that constitute mature composing processes.
• In the 1980s, composition scholars focused on the social nature of writing, building upon previous work in both basic
writing and writing across the curriculum. Interest now focused on how the writing process was conditioned by social
circumstances.
• James Kinneavy’s earlier work on the modes of discourse, returned to Aristotle for a revitalized sense of the decisive
role of social function in determining the form of discourse. Kineeavy classifies rhetorical situations according to their
emphasis on the writer (expressive), audience (persuasive), subject matter (referential) or verbal medium (aesthetic).
• The search for a social theory of writing became broadly interdisciplinary. Scholars in all disciplines sought an
account of discourse – language in use – that acknowledges the power of rhetoric to help create a community’s
worldview, knowledge and interpretative practices.
• In the 1990s the powerful themes of the 1980s – social construction, politics, literacy and gender issues – were still
discussed. Social construction was widely accepted as a theoretical basis for understanding language use. The
history of composition too received attention in the 1990s.
• A number of scholars explored the connections among social construction, postmodernism, politics and cultural
studies and their implications for composition.
• With more understanding of the complexities of students’ literacies and identities, composition continues to respond
to issues of diversity in the classroom, institutions and communities.
• The last few years have also seen an emerging critical discourse on race in composition studies, a discourse that does
not embrace multiculturalism necessarily but that tries to confront institutionalized racism through analyzing images,
discourses and practices.
• Feminist teacher and gender issues in the classroom also continued to be important scholarly concerns in rhetoric
and composition in the 1990s.
• Challenges are seen for composition scholars is electronic writing technologies. Still intrigued by the new frontiers of
networking and hypertext and other online writing technologies, compositionists continue to explore those regions for
their pedagogical implications.