All the, uh, Essay’s a Stage

This article is, for me, perhaps the most revolutionary of the articles we’ve read, if only for its progression-through-unlearning attitude. No, that’s not quite correct—the article certainly isn’t asking us to unlearn anything; rather, it’s asking us to consider that, as we progress into a society increasingly dominated by hypertextuality and technology-based discourse, our methods of composition may return to those advocated by rhetors from antiquity. This is stated most clearly when the authors suggest that “[c]ertainly, we will need to pay more attention to the fifth canon of rhetoric, delivery” (246). For years, composition assignments doled out to students have focused on the first three canons of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, style (by which they meant something akin to our English words grammar or punctuation or correctness)—at the cost of the last two canons, memory and delivery. Thus, the vast majority (I’d say) of composition assignments in many high school (and even university) English classes are situated in a stylistic vacuum, with instructors focusing on the arrangement of the paragraphs, the correctness of the grammar and punctuation, and whether the students follow the “proper” steps for constructing introductions (do they have a three-part thesis, do they set up the arrangement of the essay) and conclusions (do they restate the thesis). Thus, when many students come to us, we get the standard five-paragraph essay: easy to follow, easy to grade, easy to forget.

By incorporating the sense of performance which the authors advocate, the students may gain perspective on their writing; that is, what is the rhetorical situation demanded by their audience, not necessarily the course instructor? What appeals will best work? What is the timely thing to say? As the authors insist, quoting a student:

In Todd’s words: “The substance is the difference.” Important, too, is students’ sense of a rhetorical situation and the presence of an audience for their writing. As Paolo puts it, “[P]ersonal writing has more of my style and is more liberal with grammar, though not because it is writing without conventions or rules. Instead, Paolo makes choices that are deliberate and planned, with a clear sense of audience and rhetorical purpose. “I’m willing to break rules more often in order to get a specific effect I desire,” Paolo explains […]. (231)

Thus, while students still learn the rules of effective writing, they also learn when it is appropriate to unlearn those rules, or ignore them—or, yes, use them to the letter of the law. By letting the students perform—and, by perform, I mean that the students can write in a variety of media in a variety of genres in a variety of situations—they can experiment and gain a better sense of what each individual situation demands. They gain, to use the word that my students toss around so casually, a sense of writing’s flow.

Ultimately, by allowing students the freedom to participate in and out of class in a variety of rhetorical modes, they will become, as the authors note, “rhetors in both a classical and a distinctly modern—even postmodern—sense: individuals who, singly and in groups, participate in numerous communication situations that involve a dazzling, sometimes staggering, array of literate practices” (245). And, really, what more could we want for our students? While we would love to think that many of our students will go on to careers in humanistic studies that allow them to think large thoughts steeped in theory, many have no desire—but, with this training, they will be able to perform whatever they want to be.

(Credit to T.A. Noonan for suggesting the use of “perform” in that last sentence.)