utah state university press out of style reanimating stylistic study in composition and rhetoric jan 2008

C M Y CM MY CY CMY K 679-0_OutOfStyle.ai 5/19/08 2:38:16 PM679-0_OutOfStyle.ai 5/19/08 2:38:16 PM OUT OF STYLE OUT OF STYLE Reanimating Stylistic Study in Composition and Rhetoric PAUL BUTLER UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Logan, Utah 2008 Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322–7800 © 2008 Utah State University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-87421-679-0 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-87421-680-6 (e-book) “Style in the Diaspora of Composition Studies” copyright 2007 from Rhetoric Review by Paul Butler. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC., http:// www. informaworld.com. Manufactured in the United States of America. Cover design by Barbara Yale-Read. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Butler, Paul, Out of style : reanimating stylistic study in composition and rhetoric / Paul Butler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87421-679-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Language and languages Style. 2. Rhetoric. I. Title. P301.B79 2008 808’.042 dc22 2007041720 To Joan L. Baxter (Mrs. B.) In memory of Shirley B. Butler CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: Reanimating Style in Composition and Rhetoric 1 2 Historical Developments: Relevant Stylistic History and Theory 25 3 Out of Style: Reclaiming an “Inventional” Style in Composition 56 4 Style in the Diaspora of Composition Studies 86 5 Style and the Public Intellectual: Rethinking Composition in the Public Sphere 114 6 Back in Style: Style and the Future of Composition Studies 142 Notes 160 References 163 Index 176 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS On a recent summer morning, unable to write in my office because a fire had disabled a transformer on campus and cut power to most of the university, I piled approximately twenty books and my laptop computer into the backseat of my car and headed to the Truckee Book and Bean, near Lake Tahoe, California. As I pulled onto I-80, the main east-west route in the area, a sign said the town of Truckee was just nineteen miles from my home in northwest Reno, with all but a few of those miles across the California border. Along the way, I passed through some of the West’s most scenic terrain, with Truckee the first leg in a route that ascends through the Tahoe National Forest and Donner Pass before eventually descending into Sacramento and San Francisco. The Book and Bean, which I had discovered earlier in the summer after a colleague suggested it, is one of a handful of coffeehouses or similar venues that have seen me through the writing and revising process of this book. For those like me who do our best work in public spaces, it is gratifying to know that the European café tradition is alive and well in the American coffee- house, whatever shape or vision that takes in different locations. For me, those spaces include, roughly in chronological order, Borders in Syracuse; Space Untitled (now Pomegranate) and the Reading Room of the New York Public Library in Manhattan; Baker Boys and Basic in Jersey City; Barnes and Noble, Bibo, Borders, and Walden’s Coffeehouse in Reno; and the Book and Bean. I appreciate the cheerful reception I received in all these places and the long, uninterrupted hours I spent at their small and large open tables with laptop in hand. Along with these scenes of writing, I would also like to acknowledge the institutional spaces that informed the writing of this book. While grounded in theory rather than pedagogy, [...]... groundbreaking book on tagmemic rhetoric, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change Other works in the field included Lanham’s Style: An Anti-Textbook (1974); Winterowd’s Contemporary Rhetoric (1975); Donald Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg’s Sentence Combining and the Teaching of Writing (1979); and Donald McQuade’s Linguistics, Stylistics, and the Teaching of Composition (1979) These works were joined in the... by linguistics, the study and description of language phenomena in units up to and including the sentence, and by rhetoric, the study and use of language in context to inform, persuade, and produce knowledge Some of the linguistic and rhetorical features I examined in Heredia’s sonnet include sound and rhythm, vocabulary, diction, register, syntax, and semantics, as well as figures of speech like tropes... were my natural inclinations and showed me how they can make a difference in others’ lives In a culture that doesn’t seem to admire teaching or the life of the mind very much, we are fortunate to have exemplary individuals like Joan Baxter who remind us daily of the real values that sustain us Reno, Nevada January 2008 OUT OF STYLE 1 INTRODUCTION Reanimating Style in Composition and Rhetoric O V E R... absence of discussion about style in the field I point out the difficulty of composition s relinquishment of the debate to outsiders and suggest what it would mean to explain issues to a broad audience as composition- trained public intellectuals (see Chap 5) PURPOSES AND AIMS OF THIS BOOK Given the current state of affairs in stylistic studies, what would it mean to reclaim this area of study in the... 1986—the end of the Golden Age Despite the sea change in the influence of various theories and disciplines on composition during that time, it is still difficult to ascertain what happened specifically to the study of style Why did the field abandon style? Did composition s turn to more social, political, and public views of language and more rhetorical approaches to teaching and theorizing about writing lead... untapped tools to writers and teachers In abandoning this important arena of study, the field has lost theoretical knowledge of the systems underlying stylistic resources, practical knowledge about how writers learn to deploy them, and the potential value of that knowledge for composition practice and pedagogy I argue that the study of style stands at a liminal moment in composition and rhetoric today, a time...x OUT OF STYLE Out of Style s origins clearly benefited from the teaching of a number of fine professors in composition and rhetoric First, I thank those with whom I was privileged to study at Syracuse University: Collin Brooke, Fred Gale, Xin Liu Gale, Margaret Himley, Becky Howard, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Kendall Phillips, Eileen Schell, Catherine Smith, Gay Washburn, and Jim Zebroski; at the University. .. composition had occurred in the intervening years, and part of that shift involved the vastly diminishing influence of pure linguistics on the field In the revised article, which might be characterized as “post-Golden Age” in that it appeared in 1987, it is important to note that Winterowd called linguistics “a branch of rhetoric (265) that is “meaningless outside the context of literacy” (266), and. .. Depending on what aspect of a stylistic relationship is being emphasized, one of several definitions of style might be used, each one representing a different theoretical approach to the topic Indeed, it is fair to say that any definition of style involves one of several long-standing debates that have informed the study of the canon throughout history Thus, for example, when Ohmann defines style as... neglect of style? Did the disappearance of stylistic interest in composition occur in part because of the mistaken tendency to associate the canon of style with current-traditional rhetoric instead of the process-oriented approaches to writing that had begun to dominate the field? Given what appears to be the sudden demise of the study of style, what has caused a recent resurgence of interest in the . C M Y CM MY CY CMY K 679-0_OutOfStyle.ai 5/19/08 2:38:16 PM679-0_OutOfStyle.ai 5/19/08 2:38:16 PM OUT OF STYLE OUT OF STYLE Reanimating Stylistic Study in Composition and Rhetoric PAUL BUTLER UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Logan,. Composition and Rhetoric 1 2 Historical Developments: Relevant Stylistic History and Theory 25 3 Out of Style: Reclaiming an “Inventional” Style in Composition 56 4 Style in the Diaspora of Composition. 2008 OUT OF STYLE 1 INTRODUCTION Reanimating Style in Composition and Rhetoric OVERVIEW: STYLE AND LANGUAGE As a student in the French School at Middlebury College, I wrote a stylistic analysis of