Composition: History & Theory: 1930 - 1939
Composition Theory
Description
In Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 (1987), James Berlin notes how the onset of the Great Depression shifted the focus in composition studies in the 1930s. Expressionistic rhetoric, which focused on the self, began to fade into the background, as a social rhetoric emerged. This “rhetoric of public discourse,” was committed to teaching writing that served the greater community and had a public purpose (81). Educators had a sense of “communal responsibility” (81). Teaching students to write within a social context and for practical purposes led to further discussion of integrating an understanding of process into the classroom. In large part, the social rhetoric movement sought to make better citizens. Roy Thompson, from the University of Southern California (circa 1930), argues that freshman courses “ought to prepare individuals for citizenship by asking them to write about political subjects. The purpose of doing so would be to train the individual to assume the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy” (82, emphasis added). Part of social rhetoric was also to educate students about the subversive nature of discourse such as in political speeches or advertisements and to note the “motives” behind such language (87). With this view, “Rhetoric will then serve for us the same function as it did in ancient Greece: it will expose error, supply evidence, elucidate courses of action, and defend us from our enemies” (88).
Date of Upload
3/13/09