Radicis: Ideology, Argument, and Composition Courses in American Colleges

<p>The development of "composition" out of larger rhetorical studies in American</p><p>colleges and universities has narrowed the scope of rhetorical training our students</p><p>receive, most notably excluding the political and social dimensions of persuasion. This</p><p>dissertation is an attempt to recover the larger political and civic scope that was the</p><p>original focus of rhetoric. I join a growing chorus of voices seeking to bring classroom</p><p>practice to bear on the larger social and civic lives of our students. My approach is</p><p>original in that it blends classical rhetoric with contemporary ideological theory to derive</p><p>a pedagogy that will allow students to see the importance of rhetoric and persuasion in</p><p>their lives and provide them with a techne, a set of skills that can be used to analyze and</p><p>generate discourse for a variety of audiences, including academic ones.</p><p>I begin by showing that current-traditional composition methodologies and</p><p>theories do not allow for students to productively generate social and civic discourse, a</p><p>significant change in rhetoric study. Because of the lack of civic and ideological focus,</p><p>students tend to parrot the arguments they are exposed to without truly examining their</p><p>underlying principles. The origin of this "formalist" approach lies in the peculiar</p><p>response to an expanding student population and a new model of the university that</p><p>began to take shape in The United States in the nineteenth century. Increasingly undertrained</p><p>students were faced with a curriculum that demanded an ever-increasing</p><p>specialization of its scholars. As a result, remedial efforts at training newer students to</p><p>write "academic" prose became standard practice.</p><p>As an alternative, I propose a composition course based on classical rhetorical</p><p>principles. Concepts such as ethos, pathos, and logos; decorum; enthymemic reasoning;</p><p>and audience analysis are central to argumentation in both the contemporary era and in</p><p>the classical age. However, contemporary understandings of ideology as the underlying</p><p>motivation for most human belief and behavior must be taken into consideration. By</p><p>incorporating contemporary ideological theory into classical rhetorical theory, this project</p><p>will provide a pedagogical model that will allow students to participate more fully in the</p><p>civic arena, and give them a set of skills that can be used in academic settings, thus</p><p>remaining true to the larger civic nature of rhetoric, while fulfilling institutional goals for</p><p>composition classes.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2010

Author dc:creator

• Braud, Donovan Sean

• Classical Rhetoric
• Composition
• Ideology
• Rhetoric
• Rhetoric and Composition

Repository record dc:identifier

https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/167

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.luc.edu:luc_diss-1166