Using Stylistic Imitation in Freshman Writing Classes: The Rhetorical and Meta-Rhetorical Potential of Transitions in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Medieval Treatises

Denise Stodola

      Kettering University

      Within the last decade or so, the debate over the relationship between form and content in writing pedagogy has been gathering momentum once again. In a New York Times article from May 31, 2005, Stanley Fish asserts that form must take precedence over content, suggesting that “[s]tudents can’t write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are.” Fish thus has his students create their own languages with parts that operate as English does, so that they can get a sense of how language works. Of course, although Fish rightly observes that grammar has been subordinate to content in much writing pedagogy over the last fifteen years or more, I think that many of us would take a more moderate view of the issue and agree that form and content shape each other. Along these lines, Laura Micciche’s article, “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar” asserts that grammar overlaps with style, and that both categories shape and are shaped by the rhetorical context in which they operate (2004). Despite the problematic conceptual relationship between form and content as illustrated by the current incarnation of this perennial debate, however, I contend that style actually serves to bridge the two. In fact, much like rhetoric is the discipline without a subject and therefore cuts through all subjects, style has no clear and specific definition, allowing it to transect the rhetorical canons.

      More specifically, I assert that the medieval focus on stylistic imitation, as well as the concept of transitions, can help us to bridge the form-content dichotomy actively and construct a pedagogy and course that more effectively enact the writing process for students of prose composition. In other words, while process theory as presented in composition textbooks tends to present the first three rhetorical canons—invention, organization, and style—in that order (providing the potential for a type of imitation that is chronological and task-centered), implying that students should likewise follow that order in their own composing processes, I wish to suggest that focusing on style, essentially disrupting the implied chronology, helps students gain insights about language and their own ideas that can then help them move into invention, adopting a more advanced, recursive form of revision. Transitions play a key role in this dynamic: in fact, Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi provides a precedent for a pedagogical emphasis on transitions in prose composition, while simultaneously implying, through its structure, a way of implementing these pedagogical methods (1968). Moreover, an emphasis on transitions is consistent with a lot of work being done in cognitive psychology, which makes it, at least potentially, a valuable tool in the writing classroom.

      First, though, we must examine the notion of style more closely, as the various definitions of style can illuminate both how and why the form-content dichotomy has developed, as well as the importance of the role that style can potentially play in the writing process. Several definitions from the O.E.D. are significant in this context. The form-content dichotomy is apparent, of course, when one considers the emphasis in the following definition on the “form” end of the dichotomy. This definition states that style includes the “[f]eatures of literary composition which belong to form and expression rather than to the substance of the thought or matter expressed” (2004, p. 14), which is further reinforced by another definition that states that style is “[a] kind, sort, or type, as determined by manner of composition or construction, or by outward appearances” (2004, p. 22.a.)

      Style is more broadly defined in other O.E.D. entries, however. One states that style is “[t]he manner of expression characteristic of a particular writer (hence of an orator) … a writer’s mode of expression considered in regard to cleanness, effectiveness, beauty, and the like” (2004, p. 13.a.), a definition that, upon close examination, reveals how broadly and varied the concept of style can be: in fact, the concept of “effectiveness” indicates the notion of “content” to some extent, as the author must consider how to gear her message for the audience in order for it to be effective. Indeed, these “features” are intended to culminate in an effect on the audience, as style is further defined as “[a] manner of discourse, or tone of speaking, adopted in addressing others or in ordinary conversation” (2004, p. 15), as well as the “[m]anner of executing a task or performing an action or operation …” (2004, p. 23.c.) These more nebulous qualities are apparent in “Limits of Grammar in Writing Improvement,” when author Rei Noguchi says that style

      … covers such aspects of “mechanics” as verb tense, sentence fragments, run-ons, comma splices, and subject-verb agreement. But it also covers more than mechanics insofar as it also deals with options that lead to effective communication of content (e.g., the sequencing of linguistic elements, parallelism, subordination, transitions, and pronoun reference. (Noguchi, 1991, p. 11)

      All of these various definitions, interestingly, are included in the glossary of the Harbrace College Handbook, 13th edition, which says that style is “[a]n author’s choice and arrangement of words, sentence structures, and ideas as well as less definable characteristics such as rhythm and euphony”( Hodges, Horner, Webb, & Miller, p. G-44). Of course, from all of these definitions, it would seem that style itself is not particularly definable. Still, it is clear that style operates from the level of small mechanical units, like diction and punctuation, through the broadest conceptual levels, like content, making it a much more important facet of writing and the writing process than many of us acknowledge.

      Likewise, imitation has played a role in writing pedagogy, but has also appeared in myriad forms, much like style has done. Like the notion of “style,” “imitation” can take place at various levels, and can play a key role in learning and creativity. According to Piaget,

      [I]mitating … means trying to do something which seems to be useful in reality, but which one’s own schemata are not yet prepared for. But to be able to imitate, one must be aware of what is to be imitated and how it can be imitated. Thus, imitation is closely connected with observation and analysis (Geist, 2005, p. 172).

      Significantly, the most recent usage note for “imitation” in the O.E.D. points to its pedagogical potential, stating that imitation is “[t]he adoption, whether conscious or not, during a learning process, of the behavior or attitudes of some specific person or model” (2004, 1.c.)

      Moreover, the broadness of the definition is illustrated in the ways in which imitation has been applied historically in writing pedagogy. These applications can be subdivided into various categories: imitation at the overall organizational level, and at the sentence level—both in terms of diction and grammatical structure. At the broadest level of overall paper organization, of course, “teaching the modes,” more widely popular in writing pedagogy twenty or more years ago, encouraged a kind of fundamental imitation at the essay level. Students would write, for example, comparison-contrast papers following one of two general organizational patterns: