Kategoria BISAC: Language Arts & Disciplines >> Rhetoric

Considered the first significant teacher of rhetoric in America, John Witherspoon also introduced Scottish moral philosophy in America, and as president of Princeton reformed the curriculum to give emphasis to both studies. He was an active pamphleteer on religious and political issues and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas P Miller argues that Witherspoon s career exemplifies the Ciceronian ideal, and the eight selections Miller presents from the 1802 American edition of the "Works "corroborate that claim."

Established in 1961 by Alvin A. Goldberg, Franklyn S. Haiman, Mark Klyn, Robert M. O Neil, and George P. Rice to provide a forum for promoting the essential place of free and responsible communication in a democratic society, the "Yearbook "has sought for a quarter-century through articles, essays, and reviews to support the right of peaceful expression by any communicative means available.

Topics covered include points of constitutional law, court cases, government regulation, obscenity, philosophy of communication, and the teaching of communication."

Back in print after 17 years, this is a concise history of rhetoric as it relates to structure, genre, and style, with special reference to English literature and literary criticism from Ancient Greece to the end of the 18th century.

The core of the book is a quite original argument that the figures of rhetoric were not mere mechanical devices, were not, as many believed, a "nuisance, a quite sterile appendage to rhetoric to which (unaccountably) teachers, pupils, and writers all over the world devoted much labor for over 2,000 years." Rather, Vickers demonstrates, rhetoric was a...

Lucille M. Schultz's "The Young Composers: Composition"'"s Beginnings in Nineteenth-Century Schools" is the first full-length history of school-based writing instruction. Schultz demonstrates that writing instruction in nineteenth-century American schools is much more important in the overall history of writing instruction than we have previously assumed.

Drawing on primary materials that have not been considered in previous histories of writing instructionlittle-known textbooks and student writing that includes prize-winning essays, journal entries, letters, and articles written for...

Margaret A. Syverson discusses the ways in which a theory of composing situations as ecological systems might productively be applied in composition studies. She demonstrates not only how new research in cognitive science and complex systems can inform composition studies but also how composing situations can provide fruitful ground for research in cognitive science.

Syverson first introduces theories of complex systems currently studied in diverse disciplines. She describes complex systems as adaptive, self-organizing, and dynamic; neither utterly chaotic nor entirely ordered, these...

Candace Spigelman investigates the dynamics of ownership in small group writing workshops, basing her findings on case studies involving two groups: a five-member creative writing group meeting monthly at a local Philadelphia coffee bar and a four-member college-level writing group meeting in their composition classroom. She explores the relationship between particular notions of intellectual property within each group as well as the effectiveness of writing groups that embrace these notions. Addressing the negotiations between the public and private domains of writing within these groups,...

Based on an ethnographic study spanning four years, George H. Jensen s "Storytelling in Alcoholics Anonymous: A Rhetorical Analysis "calls upon Bakhtinian theory to analyze storytelling in AA.

Jensen introduces his study with an analysis of Bill W. s Story as it appears in the first chapter of AA s central text, "Alcoholics Anonymous." Drawing on Walter Ong s work on orality and literacy, he argues that Bill W. s Story as it appears in print cannot fully capture the oral tradition of storytelling as it occurs in AA meetings.

In his first section, Jensen discusses storytelling as...

It s no secret that, in most American classrooms, students are expected to master standardized American English and the conventions of Edited American English if they wish to succeed. "Language Diversity in the Classroom: From Intention to Practice "works to realign these conceptions through a series of provocative yet evenhanded essays that explore the ways we have enacted and continue to enact our beliefs in the integrity of the many languages and Englishes that arise both in the classroom and in professional communities.

Edited by Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva, the...