Table Of ContentRhetoric and Reality
Rhetoric
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Writing Instruction in American
e
t
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ri Colleges, 1900–1985
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Berlin here continues his unique history of American college com- n
position begun in his Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century d James A. Berlin
R
Colleges (1984), turning now to the twentieth century.
e
In discussing the variety of rhetorics that have been used in writ- a
l
ing classrooms Berlin introduces a taxonomy made up of three cate- i
t
y
gories: objective rhetorics, subjective rhetorics, and transactional
rhetorics, which are distinguished by the epistemology on which
each is based. He makes clear that these categories are not tied to a
chronology but instead are to be found in the English department in
one form or another during each decade of the century.
His historical treatment includes an examination of the formation
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of the English department, the founding of the NCTE and its role in e
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l
writing instruction, the training of teachers of writing, the effects of in
progressive education on writing instruction, the General Education
Movement, the appearance of the CCCC, the impact of Sputnik, and
today’s “literacy crisis.”
James A. Berlin is Director of Freshman English at the University
of Cincinnati.
ISBN 0-8093-1360-X
Southern Illinois University Press US
1MCw9awa1ribw5l o .CUsniodnudaipvelree e6,rs 8sIsiL0.tcy6 6o P2m9re0s1s Drive ISBN 978-0-8093-1360-0 niversity Press outhern Illinois
Berlin_R&R_cvr_CDDC.indd 1 2/22/10 8:37 AM
Studies in
Writing & Rhetoric
~
IN 1980, THE CONFERENCE ON COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND COM-
munication perceived a need for providing publishing opportunities
for monographs that were too lengthy for publication in its journal
and too short for the typical publication of scholarly books by the
National Council of Teachers of English. A series called Studies in
Writing and Rhetoric was conceived, and a Publication Committee
established.
Monographs to be considered for publication may be speculative,
theoretical, historical, or analytical studies; research reports; or
other works contributing to a better understanding of writing, in-
cluding interdisciplinary studies or studies in disciplines related to
composing. The SWR series will exclude textbooks, unrevised dis-
sertations, book-length manuscripts, course syllabi, lesson plans,
and collections of previously published material.
Any teacher-writer interested in submitting a work for publica-
tion in this series should send either a prospectus and sample manu-
script or a full manuscript to the NCTE Coordinator of Professional
Publications, 1111 Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801. Accompanied
by sample manuscript, a prospectus should contain a rationale, a
definition of readership within the ecce constituency, comparison
with related publications, an annotated table of contents, an esti-
mate of length in double-spaced 8Y2 X 11 sheets, and the date by
which full manuscript can be expected. Manuscripts should be in
the range of 100 to 170 typed manuscript pages.
The works that have been published in this series serve as models
for future SWR monographs.
NCTE Coordinator of Professional Publications
Rhetoric and Reality
Writing Instniction in
American Colleges,
1900-1985
James A. Berlin
c.
WITH A FOREWORD BY DONALD STEWART
Published for the Conference on College
Composition and Communication
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Carbondale and Edwardsville
Production of works in this series has been partly funded by the
Conference on College Composition and Communication of the National
Council of Teachers of English.
Copyright © 1987 by the Conference on College Composition and
Communication
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Edited by Marilyn R. Davis
Designed by Design for Publishing, Inc., Bob Nance
Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga
07 06 10 9 8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berlin, James A.
Rhetoric and reality.
(Studies in writing & rhetoric)
"Published for the Conference on College
Composition and Communication."
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. English language-Rhetoric-Study and teaching-
United States-History. I. Conference on College
Composition and Communication (U.S.) II. Title.
III. Series.
PE1405. U6B473 1987 808'.042'071173 86-20428
ISBN 0-8093-1360-X
To
Sam, Dan the Man, and Captain Christopher
Contents
FOREWORD by Donald C. Stewart ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
I. An Overview 1
Theories of Rhetoric 6
Objective Theories 7
Subjective Theories 11
Tramactional Theories 15
2. The Nineteenth-Century Background 20
Rhetoric and Poetic in the English Department 25
3. The Growth of the Discipline: 1900-1920 32
The NCTE 33
The Major Schools 35
Current-Traditional Rhetoric 36
The Rhetoric of Uberal Culture 43
A Transactional Rhetoric for a Democracy 46
The Ideas Approach 51
The Efficiency Movement 53
Graduate Education in Rhetoric 54
Undergraduate Writing Courses 55
The Great War 56
4. The Influence of Progressive Education: 1920-1940 58
The Surveys 61
The Writing Program and Current-Traditional Rhetoric 65
Liberal Culture 71
Expressionistic Rhetoric 73
Social Rhetoric 81
Conclusion 90
viii Contents
5. The Communications Emphasis: 1940-1960 92
The Communications Course 93
The ecce 104
Literature and Composition 107
Linguistics and Composition 111
The Revival of Rhetoric 115
6. The Renaissance of Rhetoric: 1960-1975 120
7. Major Rhetorical Approaches: 1960-1975 139
Objective Rhetoric 140
Subjective Rhetoric 145
Transactional Hhetoric 155
Classical Rhetoric 155
The Rhetoric of Cognitive Psychology 159
Epistemic Rhetoric 165
8. Conclusion and Postscript on the Present 180
WORKS CITED 191
INDEX 217
Foreword
Donald C. Stewart
BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT IGNORANCE OF THE HISTORY OF OUR
profession, particularly ignorance of the history of writing instruc-
tion, is the single greatest deficiency in the majority of this nation's
English teachers, and because I believe that we have just come
through a remarkable period in which we have reexamined and re-
evaluated many old assumptions about the teaching of writing and
have thus arrived at a moment of temporary intellectual exhaustion,
poised to retreat and retrench once again, James Berlin's Rhetoric
and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-.1985
arrives at a most opportune time.
In this work, ·an extension of his earlier monograph, Writing In
struction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges, Berlin identi-
fies three epistemological categories--objective, subjective, and
transactional-that have dominated rhetorical theory and practice
in the twentieth century. "I have chosen epistemology rather than
ideology as the basis for my taxonomy," he says, " ... because it
allows for a closer focus on the rhetorical properties-as distinct
from the economic, social, or political properties-of the systems
considered." But he does not neglect ideology and in so doing chal-
lenges his readers to examine not only the epistemology that in-
forms but the ideology that is served by what they do, day by day, in
the composition classroom. For example, composition teaching
which places greatest emphasis on copyreading skills and limited
concepts of usage and organization, whether or not one wishes to
call it current-traditional (recent bantering about the validity of the
terms, "current-traditional," should not draw our attention away
from the fact that whatever one wishes to call it, it is a pedagogy
