Form and Function

Well, I can understand why Peter Elbow is so respected in the rhet comp world; the man writes a artful and impactful essay. I like that he is trying to fuse "academic writing," whatever that is, with creative/artistic writing. In fact both pieces we read seemed to be pushing the envelope of the rhetorical choices we have available when writing a traditional essay (coincidence? I think not fine peoples). 

Peter (can I call him Peter?) wanted his students to think about their essays in terms of time: when do we let the reader know our intentions, how do we motivate him/her to continue reading and how does our paper set, meet, and frustrate expectations in order to create a satisfying effect that is usually reserved for fiction? These are all great questions, and honestly ones I have never thought about before. 

My central issue with these questions though is: does any undergraduate student, or, heck, even graduate student give enough time to essays to think about these questions. These are very high level organizational issues that rarely come into play if one is writing a essay in a matter of weeks, days and hours instead of months like most publishable essays. 

This thought aside, Peter's point is still a interesting one, and one that might be incorporated into classes that use literature and poetry in some way or another. I know I have already mentioned that I use literature in my class, and I think for me this essay opened up the opportunity to look at the rhetorical choices the author has made in order to demonstrate some of Peter’s ideas about time and organization. I also like the fact that Peter both mentions the importance of and then challenges the reliance on signposting in essays. Sometimes simply stating is the easiest and most transparent way of moving the reader smoothly through the essay, but other times this becomes less than exciting. Thinking about the essay’s energy and what the reader might be feeling while reading the essay are important for any writer to consider. Peter’s five ideas concerning time oriented techniques were standouts and highly practical, and I am definitely toying around with presenting them in my class when we move into the research paper in the next few weeks.

I really liked “Arguing Differently” as well, mostely because it gave a clear framework for dealing with different types of argumentation. While I don’t ever want to deal with subjects like abortion or the death penalty again in my classroom if I don’t have to, this was a interesting way of turning those controversial topics into interesting and nuanced subjects. Again, ideas like this are not ones that I would structure my class around like Kroll does, but they might be interesting rhetorical choices that I might present to my students. Deciding whether the arguments being written should be conciliatory or deliberative, if students should present a thesis in the beginning or the middle, or thinking about how to frame your argument so that the reader responds positively to it are all choices that the student could make deliberately instead of haphazardly, and I like that Kroll gives a solid and practical framework in which to present these ideas to students.