Argument in Composition. John Ramage
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of a textbook on argument and a theory of argument. Or, in the language of Kenneth Burke, our approach is pitched to the level of “talk about” argument as opposed to “talking” argument or “talking about the talk about” argument. Those of our readers who wish straight argument talk should consult any of the numerous fine textbooks devoted to the subject. Those who wish a narrower but deeper understanding of argument should consult the many primary sources we refer to throughout this book. Our emphasis on this mid-level of generality derives from our purpose: to help teachers translate theory into pedagogy and to make informed choices about which argument textbooks (if any) make best sense for their courses. We hope the first three chapters of Argument in Composition equip our readers to formulate their own classroom approach to argument and to read more critically the materials catalogued in the rest of the book.
As the above allusion to Kenneth Burke might suggest, Argument in Composition is heavily influenced by Burke’s approach to rhetoric. While Burke’s theory receives little if any explicit attention in most argument textbooks (beyond the often oversimplified treatment of his pentad), we believe it to be the most cogent and comprehensive framework available for unifying the sundry approaches to argument—Toulmin’s schema, stasis theory, informal fallacies, the rhetorical situation, and so forth—that form the backbone of most contemporary argument textbooks. Because Burke serves as the primary lens or “terministic screen” through which we view argument, some commonly used terms are not featured in the main body of our text. In some cases such terms, through no fault of their own, are incongruent with or peripheral to our approach. We do not, for example, give extensive attention to the enthymeme. We do cite it in our glossary of argument terms and more importantly, we cite John Gage’s thoughtful analysis of the term. Certainly we recognize the important place of the enthymeme within the history of argument instruction and its potential usefulness for some contemporary classroom teachers. We just have trouble making it fit our own approach. Other terms are not discussed primarily because we feel that they are already included under different names within our own rubric. In the case of the rhetorical situation, for example, we discuss Lloyd Bitzer’s notion of exigence because we believe it uniquely describes a concept critical to students of argument. We do not, however, mention another element of the Bitzer’s rhetorical situation, “constraints,” in the belief some of the other argument tools that we discuss, notably stasis theory, more clearly and usefully fulfill the role filled by constraints in Bitzer’s theory.
Argument in Composition is, inevitably, itself an argument as much as it is a compendium of approaches to argument. We have tried to present our argument without being too argumentative. At the same time, we would be the first to acknowledge that our field, “rhetoric and composition,” is a far from settled one. There are indeed arguments to be made for and against the inclusion of expressive writing in an argument class (we try to make an argument for inclusion). There are also arguments for and against the inclusion of visual argument in such a class. In the case of visual argument, our position is more complex. We applaud the goal and recognize the importance of visual argument. We cite work being done in the area. But we decry the lack of useable tools—or a common vocabulary for that matter—that might make such work accessible for undergraduates. For now, we would probably advise teachers either to wait until better tools are available or to get to work developing their own tools. In the meantime, we view visual argument to be something like those intriguing websites one eagerly hunts down only to be greeted by a screen announcing that they remain “Under Construction.”
1 Introduction: Why Argument Matters
Anyone who remains skeptical about the important role argument plays in college writing curricula across the country today need only look to the sheer abundance of textbooks devoted to the subject. Every major textbook publisher features at least three or four competing argument texts. Moreover the quality of the current generation of argument texts certainly exceeds the standard—though it was not, truth be told, a particularly high standard—set by generations of argument texts prior to the mid-1980s. While a number of thoughtful critical thinking textbooks written by philosophers were successfully adapted to writing courses in argument during the seventies, the standard argument texts comprised a pretty rum lot.
In fact argument was seldom taught as a stand-alone subject in writing curricula prior to the 1980s. Typically, argument was taught as part of some taxonomic scheme such as the so-called “current-traditional” curriculum. The current-traditional, or “modes-based” writing courses that dominated college curricula for decades were organized around supposedly functional categories of writing such as narration, description, process and so forth, each of which came complete with a prescribed format. The most striking feature of these modes in retrospect was how arhetorical they were. Students were given little sense of why an audience might wish a description of a family pet or favorite teacher or an excruciatingly detailed account of how to make a peanut butter sandwich; and the main thing they were told about audiences generally was to assume they were a bit thick and needed things spelled out for them in, well, excruciating detail. Students progressed over the course of the semester from simple to complex tasks in a manner prescribed by a loosely behaviorist learning theory. Because it was considered the most complex of the modes, argument was typically accorded pride of place at the end of the syllabus. But being placed in the final position also ensured that it frequently got short shrift, even total neglect, at the end of the term.
Many teachers were in fact relieved not to teach argument given the difficulties their students had with it in the context of current-traditional instruction. In retrospect, those difficulties were hardly surprising. While the relationship between arrangement and aim remains pretty much self explanatory when one’s task is to describe the process of making a sandwich, that same relationship is complicated by several orders of magnitude when one sets out to persuade an audience that a constitutional ban on same sex marriage may or may not be a grand idea. Whatever transference might have occurred among earlier assignments, it appeared to stop abruptly when it came to argument. As we’ve since learned, when the cognitive demands of an assignment fall outside our students’ “zone of proximal development,” all sorts of other problems—with spelling, with grammar, with syntax, with style—erupt like a pox. Argument, many writing teachers reluctantly concluded based on their sad experience in such courses, should either be taught later in the curriculum or elsewhere in the university.
Clearly, thus, many of the problems students had learning how to construct arguments in a current-traditional writing course could be laid at the feet of the approach. It was as if we tried to prepare students for calculus by assigning them a series of arithmetic problems, pretending that solving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems prepared one to solve quadratic equations. Not every composition course was of course organized around current-traditional principles. But few of the texts apparently intended for use in stand-alone argument courses were any more promising. They mostly consisted of anthologies of canonical arguments interlarded with unhelpful advice and potted assignments. The usually brief—and one rarely wished them longer—prefaces and introductions rehearsed some classical terms, informal fallacies and model syllogisms and invited students to apply the material, some way some how, to the essays that followed. Needless to say the complexities of the essays handily eluded the dubious pieties of the opening chapter, leaving students and teachers alike to wonder if perhaps, indeed, argument was not beyond the ken of mere mortals.
What caused all this to change over the past twenty years or so? Here we run up against a confusion of the chicken and egg variety—Did our approaches to argument gain in sophistication and usefulness because of a growing recognition of how much argument mattered in the world, or did the growing sophistication and usefulness of our approaches make us progressively more aware of the capacity for argument to matter in the world? In all likelihood, the two phenomena occurred more or less simultaneously and mutually reinforced each other. Or more accurately, our belated awareness of the many fine tools available to students of argument, tools that were in many cases adapted from tools a couple of thousand years old, rendered the study of argument more fruitful and the transmission of argument skills more reliable. For whatever reasons, thus, we find ourselves today in the midst of a sort of golden age in the history of argument instruction. Later on we will look further back into the past to see just how this came about and where the present era might