Identifying rhetorical precedents and resources for ethical communication in teaching and practicing composition

Abstract

My dissertation defends a broad ethical-rhetorical stance for the teaching and practice of composition, a stance which encourages teachers and students to negotiate specific ethical guidelines for their local purposes, audiences, and situations. This stance is characterized by what Richard Lanham calls the "strong defense"--and by what Jasper Neel calls "strong discourse." Far from establishing 'ethics' as prior to and necessary for the practice of composition and rhetoric, the "strong defense" posits rhetoric as what constitutes ethics. This "architectonic" view of rhetoric is the one promoted in the Western traditions of jurisprudence and deliberation. Ultimately, proponents of the strong defense argue that we don't know what's ethical until we debate and decide. Complementing the strong defense is "strong discourse," Neel's term for the discourse of a democracy in which all voices have the opportunity to speak, participate, contribute. For those who embrace the ideals of democracy and the strong defense, strong discourse is important because it averts the irreparable losses and damage of systematically excluding certain races, classes, or ethnic groups from processes of deliberation. Ultimately, strong discourse invites diverse voices into debate, giving them "every opportunity to be heard" (Neel 208). Strong discourse exists "in a plurality of other voices" (209). It questions "received notions," defines "truth" as the product of critical debates, and searches continually for "better truth (s) " without seeking permanent closure (209). Education in strong discourse teaches ways of analyzing contexts and arriving generally at the "best choice" for a "given time," "a given place," and "a given set of circumstances" (208). Such an education also teaches disputants to keep competing alternatives available for future deliberations. This dissertation examines several pedagogies and methodologies which are consistent with strong discourse and the strong defense--pedagogies and methodologies which can be used to negotiate, apply, and evaluate local ethical guidelines. These are feminist nurturing and confrontational pedagogies, collaborative methods, and rewriting assignments. My purpose is not to promote one pedagogy, methodology, or assignment as the solution to all problems--or to brand any of them as worthless or harmful in all cases. Instead, I assess the usefulness of these resources for a variety of composition purposes, audiences, and situations. Though they provide no transcendent ground for ethical action, the pedagogies, methodologies, and guidelines I assess give students and teachers more resources for handling conflicts, more resources for collectively composing shared ethical guidelines, and more resources for evaluating the complex effects of their communicative acts.