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Between the Lines: Writing Ethics Pedagogy A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Phillip W. “Cactus” May IV May 2018 ©2018 Phillip W. “Cactus” May IV. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Between the Lines: Writing Ethics Pedagogy by PHILLIP W. “CACTUS” MAY IV has been approved for the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by Sherrie L. Gradin Professor of English Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT MAY, PHILLIP W. “CACTUS” IV, Ph.D., May 2018, English Between the Lines: Writing Ethics Pedagogy Director: Sherrie L. Gradin This research project seeks to establish the degree to which morality and ethics are implicated in writing pedagogy. While writing, rhetoric, and ethics have long been interlinked in the traditions of rhetorical pedagogy, perhaps most famously in Socrates’ admonishment of the Sophists, postmodern skepticism has, in part, diminished the centrality of morality and ethics to college writing instruction. I arrive at this project prickled by my own assumptions that writing might well be taught aside from moral and ethical considerations. To this end, I curate a collection of representative work applying the concepts of ethics to composition pedagogy research and scholarship from 1990 to the present. This work is necessary because the theory and practice of ethics in composition studies is diverse and diffuse. While a few scholars have made ethics a primary concern (for example, Marilyn Cooper; Peter Mortensen; James Porter) and others who have sought to map the disciplinary engagement (for example, Paul Dombrowski; Laura Micciche), treatments of ethics in composition scholarship remain fragmented and idiomatic. This research project draws together the streams of thought informing composition’s diverse engagement with ethics to provide a representative sampling of approaches and ethical treatments pertaining to writing pedagogy. My approach is to seek to understand what prompts scholars to engage ethics: What problems and questions drive writing scholars toward ethics? And what do these scholars hope to accomplish by doing ethics? Employing a descriptive method grounded in feminist 4 interpretations of pluralist ethics, this research project collects ethical interventions into writing scholarship interested in writing tradition, theory, research methods, and social advocacy. This research projects concludes by considering how writing ethics has transformed my writing praxis. 5 DEDICATION For ευδαιµονια. 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to recognize my dissertation committee (Sherrie Gradin, Mara Holt, Albert Rouzie, and Wolfgang Sützl) for their support, insight, and mentorship throughout my time at Ohio University, and especially, for their guidance in drafting this dissertation and for challenging me to push my methodology into better focus. I also want to express my gratitude for the camaraderie of my cohort and peers. I am grateful to the Ohio University English department for the nurturing and caring environment and for the generous summer research grant that afforded me a good jump on this project. Thanks to the awesome English department administrators, and in particular, Barbara Grueser, for always being there. Thanks to Todd Dunbebin for keeping the network running. You are missed. Thanks to lorraine wochna for her classroom support and to the helpful people of Alden Library. This project wouldn’t have been thinkable without the support of my mentors, both formal and informal, who have contributed to my growth. Thanks to Don Dudding for your good energy and to Matthew Vetter for your encouragement. Thank you, Ray McKerrow, for your advice. Wolfgang Sützl and Vladimir Marchenkov for the philosophy; Steve Hayes for the paradigm nouns; Thanks to Jim Greenwell, Kevin Chasey, Larry Smith, Randy Norton, Diane Dean, Karen Yang, Ken Parmeter (you are missed), Tim Lochner, and Laura McCanlies, my TEL-world teachers. Thank you, Donna LeCourt, Nick Carbone, Stephen Reid, Kate Kiefer, and Mike Palmquist at Colorado State University for starting me on this path. This would not have been possible without each of you. 7 Special thanks to Sherrie Gradin for coaching me through this effort. She somehow managed to do everything right and make it look effortless. If ever there was a guiding angel of dissertations, Sherrie is that shining star. I owe much of the coherence and rigor of this work to her penetrating questions, and I fear I may not have even begun the trek if Sherrie had not somehow, and against all reasonable hope, saw a spark, a slight glimmer of an idea, which she gently guided me toward. I want to thank my family for their love and encouragement – especially my mother Karen who never stopped believing in me. And finally, I want to recognize Talitha for her emotional and intellectual companionship. Talitha has not only helped me to endure, she has taught me that with a friend as magical and marvelous as Talitha, anything is possible. 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ....................................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Writing Ethics .............................................................................................. 11 The Curator and Catalogue of Writing Ethics ............................................................. 11 Writing Ethics as the Deliberate Practice of Freedom ................................................. 13 What We Talk About When We Talk About Ethics .................................................... 15 Methodology .............................................................................................................. 16 Provisional Framework .............................................................................................. 19 Provisional Senses of Ethics and Morality .................................................................. 21 The Moral Problem .................................................................................................... 22 Composition by Moral Fiat......................................................................................... 23 Toward Writing Ethics ............................................................................................... 25 Chapter Summaries .................................................................................................... 26 Chapter 2: Ethics and Rhetorical Pedagogical Tradition................................................. 29 Rhetorical Tradition and Ethics .................................................................................. 29 Anti-Foundationalism in Writing and Ethics ............................................................... 30 Efficacy and Ethics .................................................................................................... 32 The Rhetorical Turn ................................................................................................... 34 The Moral Project of College Composition ................................................................ 35 The A/moral Project of Writing Pedagogy .................................................................. 38 Rhetorical Ethics and Internet Writing ........................................................................ 39 Character Ethics ......................................................................................................... 42 Moral Language ......................................................................................................... 49 The Ethico-Political Subject ....................................................................................... 53 Ethics as Character and Habit ..................................................................................... 56 Ethical Literacy .......................................................................................................... 58 The Rhetoric of Ethics ................................................................................................ 62 Ethics of Rhetorical Virtue ......................................................................................... 68 Curator Comments: Writing, Ethics, and Rhetorical Pedagogy ................................... 73 Chapter 3: Ethics and Postmodern Theory ..................................................................... 76 Rationality in Fragments ............................................................................................ 76 Cartographers of the New Ethics of Writing Pedagogy ............................................... 77 9 The Ecological Model of Writing ............................................................................... 80 Writing and the Web of Purpose ................................................................................. 82 Writing and Ideology ................................................................................................. 83 Ethics and Informal Reasoning ................................................................................... 85 The Moral Education of Academic Discourse ............................................................