Sara Ferracone Lawrence
December 20, 2010
ENG 704
i-Search Paper
A Closer Look at Rhetorical Grammar
Let me say this upfront: I am of the opinion that grammar should be included in
composition pedagogy. From what I can tell, this opinion is slightly less unpopular today than in
recent decades, but I think (and I hope) that the tides are really beginning to shift toward
acceptance. The biggest questions that seem to come up, though, are how to best teach grammar,
and to what end. In an effort to find my own answers to those questions, I decided to research
rhetorical grammar to see if it might be something I could use in my own classrooms.
I had heard the phrase “rhetorical grammar” come up in a few different classes but only
in conjunction with my classmates’ individual projects; it wasn’t ever on the syllabus or a part of
my own research, so I hadn’t looked into it further. Still, the idea stuck with me and I kept
wondering what it entailed and how grammar could possibly be conceived of rhetorically. I have
been hoping to find ways to teach grammar that showcase its possibilities rather than its
limitations – which I truly believe is possible – but I haven’t seen much that has seemed in line
with my own teaching style. Rhetorical grammar, however, has seemed rather favorable among
my classmates who studied it (as well as my teachers who encouraged their pursuit), so I was
interested in finding out what it was all about and how I might teach it.
Starting the search was easy. I had heard one article in particular named in every relevant
conversation, so I knew that I would begin by reading Laura Micciche’s “Making the Case for
Rhetorical Grammar” (2004). Following that article, I was then led to Martha Kolln’s piece
“Rhetorical Grammar: A Modification Lesson” (1996). This is where things start to get bumpy. I
began researching rhetorical grammar believing that I knew little-to-nothing about it, but
suddenly the ideas were very familiar. Following my instincts, I decided to revisit some friendly
old topics to confirm my suspicions, and I found myself swimming in theory on stylistics in
composition.
But before I knew where my search would eventually lead, I was ready to learn about
what rhetorical grammar was and hear the arguments on its behalf. I have been interested in
rhetoric and rhetorical approaches to teaching composition for some time, so I felt like I was the
prime audience for hearing about a marriage between rhetoric and grammar. From the beginning,
Micciche had me hooked with her opening block quote:
Rhetorical grammar analysis encourages students to view writing as a
material social practice in which meaning is actively made, rather than
passively relayed or effortlessly produced. The study of rhetorical grammar
can demonstrate to students that language does purposeful, consequential
work in the world—work that can be learned and applied.
Sold! So far, I’m with her 100%. Who wouldn’t want to integrate an approach that highlights the
purpose of language and the ways that it can be used to make meaning? She goes on to say that
teaching rhetorical grammar analysis to students “emphasizes grammar as a tool for articulating
and expressing relationships among ideas,” an understanding that I think every writer could
benefit from. As Micciche continues to make her case, I’m entirely in agreement: she mentions
the importance of analyzing the rhetorical situation, the ideological functions of grammar, the
power of the dominant discourse, and the relationship between writing forms and critical
thinking. I’m definitely feeling convinced that teaching rhetorical grammar is a good thing, but
I’m not sure that I actually understand what rhetorical grammar is. It’s time for a closer look.
The first red flag pops up when I notice that she says style is “the ‘extraordinary’ use of
language” whereas grammar is “the ‘ordinary’ use of language.” Wait, what? Says who? Can’t
style just be a description of the manner in which an author chooses to write? (And wouldn’t that
segue nicely into a discussion of the aforementioned rhetorical situation?) And since when is
grammar defined as “the ‘ordinary’ use of language?” I have heard a few different definitions of
and perspectives on grammar in my day, but none resemble what Micciche just delivered. I am
suddenly feeling like I have no idea what she is talking about. Next, I come across this:
Writing teachers need to be able to talk about how a well-coordinated
sentence can keep your reader breathlessly moving with you, how
techniques that create rhythm and emphasis heighten the feeling being
conveyed, how subordination expresses relationships among ideas, how
someone like Eminem uses repetition and power words—or words of
emphasis—to create culturally relevant and, for some people, resonant
stories.
Again, sold! I could not agree more that all of these points are excellent examples of the power
of structural choices, and I know that 15 years ago, I learned quite a bit about writing when
examples like these were taught to me. But, wait – if someone taught me these ideas more than a
decade ago and rhetorical grammar is a fairly new concept, how were they a part of my own
education? Recalling back to my own high school English classes, I remember all of these
concepts coming under the heading of style, and more specifically, the choices that a writer made
(or could make) to strengthen an argument or connect form and content (or both). Now, am I
crazy or is Micciche just talking about the same things here? I’ll admit there is slightly more
attention to the rhetorical context in the way that she frames it, but since style is already one of
the five canons of rhetoric (thanks, Quintilian!), isn’t style already a rhetorical device ipso facto?
I’m inclined to say yes, and it looks like Micciche secretly agrees with me. In the article’s end
notes, she describes one of the courses in which she taught rhetorical grammar analysis, which
was called Writing with Style, noting: “This course integrated rhetorical grammar study with
issues of style, a pairing that reflects the frequent blurring of distinctions between grammar and
style in composition scholarship” (emphasis added). So if rhetorical grammar is actually just a
new, fancier way of saying “style,” what are we gaining by calling by a new name?
Micciche hints now and then about the genesis of the idea of rhetorical grammar, but I
thought I had better take a look at her most frequently cited source, Martha Kolln’s 1996 article,
“Rhetorical Grammar: A Modification Lesson.” I believe (though I’m not certain) that Kolln
coined the term, and after reading her article, it is much easier to see her influence in Micciche’s
work, even if the slant is slightly different. While Micciche’s ideas lean heavily toward rhetoric,
Kolln stays more focused on the grammar part. She begins, in fact, by noting the many different
possible definitions of grammar (courtesy of Patrick Hartwell’s significant 1985 work,
“Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar”) and arguing that its negative
connotations are related solely to “formal” or “school” grammar. She then traces the origin of
grammar’s “harmful effect” stigma to a 1963 study that concluded that teaching decontextualized
grammar did not improve students’ writing and even damaged it in some cases. Kolln, however,
believes that there are ways of teaching grammar that will ultimately be helpful to students, and
thusly poses her underlying question: “Has anyone wondered what would happen if grammar
knowledge were introduced in a positive way – in a ‘rhetorical’ way, perhaps – into the writing
process?” She then frames rhetorical grammar as largely different from formal grammar (though,
she notes, it may use the same terminology) because of its inclusion of stylistic grammar (!) and
its focus on a writer’s ability "to select effective structures for a given rhetorical context,”
borrowing a phrase from Hillocks to make her point. There is no question, then, that Kolln
believes this new perspective on grammar will increase not only students’ structural proficiency
but also their rhetorical awareness.
Now, I want to love all of this, I really do, but there are two big points that I simply
cannot get past. First, I really don’t like the way that this approach came about. I know it might
seem unimportant in the bigger picture, but I feel like the motivation for creating rhetorical
grammar as a concept came from the wrong place. In my imagination, it happened like this:
Writing teachers want to
include grammatical
instruction (with the best ==>>>
of intentions, of course)
but are bombarded with
research that says not to
do so.
Writing teachers realize
that grammar must be
reinvented in order to
gain acceptance in the
discipline.
Writing teachers decide
to teach grammar
==>>> rhetorically in the hopes
that these contextualized
lessons will have greater
success than approaches
from the past.
I don’t mean to be such a skeptic, but this looks so much to me like a way to shoehorn
grammatical instruction into writing classes instead of thinking about what the students will most
benefit from. In other words, what started as a student-centered question (how can we include
useful grammatical instruction?) was inadvertently answered by a teacher-centered solution (if
we call it rhetorical grammar, then it’s ok to teach it!). It’s all right there in Kolln’s own words:
Clearly, the time has come to modify grammar in ways that clarify its place
in our profession. And, yes, it does have a place – in the writing process, in
the whole language classroom. The time has come to modify our antigrammar stance, to recognize that modifying grammar with adjectives such
as functional and rhetorical can contribute to positive, meaningful changes
in the language arts curriculum.
I love that Kolln is ready to be grammar’s biggest cheerleader, but I’m just concerned that
somewhere along the way, she lost sight of why she began thinking about this in the first place.
That is not to say that students don’t have anything to learn from the concepts of rhetorical
grammar, but I think that there is already a much simpler idea that already exists and
encompasses all of the facets here. This brings me to my second problem: taking the principles
of stylistics and changing the name (and little else) to rhetorical grammar will just ultimately be
confusing for both students and teachers. I’m reminded of a story that one of my professors told
me. She thought that the phrase “thesis statement” didn’t fully express what she wanted her
freshman composition students to understand about its function in an essay, so she decided to
call it the “controlling idea.” After a few weeks of discussing what a “controlling idea” is and
how it works in an essay, her students were still puzzled by the term, and their confusion was
getting in the way of their learning. She then took a quick poll asking if they would just prefer to
call it a “thesis statement,” to which they emphatically replied yes. Now, the word “stylistics”
may not have permeated high school English classrooms in the way that “thesis statement” has,
but I think the point still carries: if we already have a name for these concepts, why can’t we just
use that name and call it stylistics?
Ah, if only it were that simple. These days, stylistics has nearly as bad a reputation in the
world of composition as grammar does, but it wasn’t always viewed so negatively. As a
mainstay in the study of rhetoric for centuries, stylistics traditionally held great importance in the
craft of a persuasive argument, and as such it was an influential piece of the beginning of the
study of composition. But after an especially fruitful period in the 1960s, stylistics was all but
verboten by the early 1980s. This reversal was explored in Robert Connors’ “The Erasure of the
Sentence” (2000), which showed how style and stylistics became unfairly connected to the
current-traditional model of teaching. Suddenly, style meant only prescriptive style or correct
style, instead of a device with many options that can be used to various rhetorical ends.
Moreover, Connors is able to identify a few studies from the 60s that show how certain sentencelevel stylistic exercises can improve writing, and he also points out that there have been no
studies that show that these exercises harm writing. Still, the damage had already been done, and
one untrue association put stylistics completely at odds with the process movement that swept
the discipline 30 years ago.
But something so essential doesn’t stay down for long. Components of stylistics began to
pop up throughout composition studies with new names or slightly tweaked concepts; stylistics
was by no means gone, but rather it was in disguise. In his book Out of Style: Reanimating
Stylistic Study in Composition and Rhetoric (2008), Paul Butler argues that stylistic analysis was
unfairly chased out of the discipline but has since adapted by dispersing into various topics like
genre theory, cultural studies, approaches to personal writing, and (naturally) rhetorical analysis.
In each of these areas, teachers and scholars are investigating the impact of syntax, diction,
audience, voice, and other elements that historically fall under the umbrella heading of style, and
in the field of composition in general, the return to focus on the rhetorical situation inherently
requires an awareness of different stylistic effects. So has the time finally come to return
stylistics to its rightful place in the teaching and study of writing? Can we bring back together all
these disparate parts of style and evaluate it as an intact device? Absolutely. Not only is there a
wealth of information on the uses of style throughout almost 2500 years of rhetorical history, but
there is also a growing movement today looking for the most relevant aspects of rhetoric to be
reintegrated into composition studies. People are now rediscovering the work of stylistics
proponents from the last 40 years like Edward Corbett, Winston Weathers, Elizabeth Rankin,
Frank Farmer, and Virginia Tufte (Butler 2010), and more contemporary writing on using
rhetoric – including style – in today’s classrooms is emerging from notable authors like Andrea
Lundsford, Patricia Bizzell, Sharon Crowley, and Victor Villanueva, among others. At long last,
it seems like stylistics has finally been exonerated.
So how does this all filter down into lesson plans? Well, I can say for sure that I will
definitely avoid the phrase “rhetorical grammar” in my own teaching. It seems both too
confusing and too limiting when compared to the alternative of just teaching stylistics, which I
think is the proper conceptual setting for teaching how (in Hillocks’ words, once more) “to select
effective structures for a given rhetorical context." Still, I don’t want to be too hard on Micciche
and Kolln. Perhaps if I had been teaching for years and had mounting frustrations with students’
persistent grammatical errors with no discipline-approved method for fixing them, I would have
come up with a plan, too. But try as I might, I simply can’t see rhetorical grammar as an effective
approach for teaching either the full scope of stylistics or the detailed nature of formal grammar.
This brings me back to the impetus for my search: how can I effectively teach grammar
in a composition class? I still can’t decide if I’ve answered that question. On one hand, I believe
that teaching style offers a chance for some sentence-level work that can lead to more
sophisticated syntax in my students’ writing. On the other hand, I can’t seem to think of
situations where style will allow me to really address fragments vs. complete sentences, or how
to avoid a dangling modifier. (Then again, how important will those ideas be in the larger context
of teaching composition? So many unanswered questions!) I’m certainly not interested in making
grammar central to the teaching of writing, but the very fact that grammar competency (or lack
thereof) can either open or close doors in people’s lives is precisely why it must have some
presence in a composition classroom. All in all, I can definitely see a value in teaching style and
stylistic awareness – I just wish I could have come up with a solid approach to teaching grammar
as well.
Ultimately, I am quite happy with the trajectory of my search. I feel like I now have a
very thorough understanding of what rhetorical grammar is and what it aims to do, as well as a
rebuttal at the ready for why I am not a fan. Even better, though, is that I rediscovered stylistics
and found plenty of scholastic support and methodology for its inclusion in teaching
composition. While I will still have to search a bit more for ways to teach contextualized
grammar, I am happy that I now have a solid theoretical and practical foundation for the
inclusion of stylistics in my teaching.
Works Cited
Butler, P. (2008). Out of style: Reanimating stylistic study in composition and rhetoric. Logan:
Utah State University Press.
-----. (2010). The Stylistic (Re)Turn in Rhetoric and Composition. Style in Rhetoric and
Composition: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Paul Butler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Connors, R. (2000). The erasure of the sentence. College Composition and Communication,
52(1), 96-128.
Kolln, M. (1996). Rhetorical grammar: A modification lesson. English Journal, 85(7), 25-31.
Micciche, L. (2004). Making a case for rhetorical grammar. College Composition and
Communication, 55(4), 716-737.