Toward a Rhetoric of Syntactic Delivery
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TOWARD A RHETORIC OF SYNTACTIC DELIVERY by Peter Wayne Moe Bachelor of Arts, Western Washington University, 2005 Master of Arts, Eastern Washington University, 2010 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2015 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Peter Wayne Moe It was defended on June 18, 2015 and approved by Cory Holding, PhD, Assistant Professor of English Don Bialostosky, PhD, Professor of English Paul Kameen, PhD, Professor of English Bruce Horner, PhD, Professor of English and Endowed Chair in Rhetoric and Composition Advisor: David Bartholomae, PhD, Professor of English and Charles Crow Chair II Copyright © by Peter Wayne Moe 2015 III TOWARD A RHETORIC OF SYNTACTIC DELIVERY Peter Wayne Moe, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2015 In this dissertation, I claim the sentence is a form of rhetorical delivery. Building on scholarship expanding delivery beyond voice and gesture––redefining it as (among other terms) medium, circulation, presentation, distribution, and rhetorical velocity––I work toward a rhetoric of syntactic delivery, one that depends upon Performance, Display, and Location. With a chapter devoted to each, these three terms allow me to interrogate the work of the sentence, to think through the performativity of prose, to claim that the sentence moves on the page and that those moves constitute a rhetorical delivery that brings discourse to its readers. This project intervenes in two bodies of scholarship. To work in stylistics calling Composition back to the sentence, I offer a sentence re-theorized in light of its rhetorical delivery, a sentence necessarily bound up in the social, the political, and the rhetorical by way of how its grammar holds ideas in relation one to another. To current scholarship in delivery, I offer the sentence as a mediated and embodied technology delivering discourse. This is a performative sentence, one that asks teachers and students to read and write the sentence differently, looking not to error or argumentation as benchmarks of good writing but instead toward the performative drama unfolding as the sentence moves across the page. But, given that the sentence is the foundation of both a writer’s work and a writer’s education, this dissertation IV reaches beyond Composition to anywhere the teaching of writing takes place, the methods of engaging the sentence I demonstrate here applicable in a variety of rhetorical and pedagogical settings. A note on method: I rely solely on student writing for my corpus of sentences. I do so because most books on the sentence look to the prose of famous writers (Presidents, Martin Luther King, Jr., Didion, Wolfe, Updike, and the like), and student sentences, if they do appear at all, serve as examples of error. The argument is subtle but clear: students cannot write good sentences. I disagree, and this project teaches other ways we might read student work. V TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………………….VIII PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………………….IX 1.0 DELIVERY, STYLE, AND THE SENTENCE ………………………………………...1 1.1 THE TRAJECTORIES OF STYLE AND DELIVERY……………………….8 1.2 ON METHOD…………………………………………………………………...28 1.3 INTERCHAPTER: THE SENTENCE, DELIVERED……………………….31 2.0 READING AND WRITING PERFORMATIVITY ………………………………….38 2.1 READING AUSTIN READING SENTENCES ………………………………49 2.2 READING FISH READING SENTENCES …………………………………..57 2.3 READING TUFTE READING SENTENCES ………………………………..68 2.4 A PERFORMATIVE READING PRACTICE ……………………………….81 2.5 INTERCHAPTER: THE SENTENCE, PERFORMED ……………………..86 3.0 RHETORICS OF DISPLAY AND RHETORICS OF EDUCATION ………………93 3.1 THE RHETORIC OF PRAISE AND BLAME ……………………………….98 3.2 COLES AND AMHERST …………………………………………………….106 3.3 THE COURSE AT CASE …………………………………………………….114 3.4 READING COLES READING SENTENCES……………………………....119 3.5 A STYLISTIC RESPONSE…………………………………………………...133 VI 3.6 INTERCHAPTER: THE SENTENCE, DISPLAYED ……………………...142 4.0 LOCATING A SYNTACTIC SELF………………………………………………….150 4.1 A LOCATIVE, HABITUATED ETHOS …………………………………….154 4.2 READING GRAFF AND BIRKENSTEIN READING SENTENCES …….164 4.3 READING KLINKENBORG READING SENTENCES…………………...172 4.4 WRITING AND TEACHING INSIDE AND OUTSIDE COMPOSITION .185 4.5 INTERCHAPTER: THE SENTENCE, INHABITED ……………………...191 5.0 DELIVERING THE SENTENCE …………………………………………………....203 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………..223 VII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank the University of Pittsburgh for supporting this project with a Lillian B. Lawler Dissertation Fellowship, and I thank my students for providing the material I write about. This dissertation is about teaching, and it would not have been possible without my teachers. I am grateful to Ruthanna Rauer, Brad Read, Carmen Werder, Roberta Kjesrud, Lynn Briggs, Jen Heckler, and Dana Elder; each prepared me for doctoral study. From the University of Pittsburgh, I thank Jess Enoch, Jim Seitz, Steve Carr, Jean Carr, Annette Vee, Nancy Glazener, and Ryan McDermott; each prepared me for the work of a professor. I thank my Committee: Cory Holding, Don Bialostosky, Paul Kameen, and Bruce Horner. Never before has my work been read with such care. I thank my advisor, David Bartholomae. I am grateful that he has been my teacher and I have been his student. In addition to my teachers, I thank my colleagues: Noel Tague, Sam Hamilton, Justin Sevenker, Jess Isaac, Lauren Hall, Trisha Campbell, Pamela VanHaitsma, Steph Ceraso, Danielle Koupf, Jean Bessette, Erin Anderson, and, in particular, Dan Barlow. I thank my friends outside the Cathedral of Learning: Cameron Dezfulian, Jim Hommes, Mike Peets, Kyle Breneman, Jerrod Poe, Nate Moore, Matt Koerber, Grant Martsolf, Brad Chappel, and Andy Leuenberger. And I thank my family: Mom and Dad, Eric and Betsey, and Aaron and Rebecca. Most of all, I thank Jenna. This, for her. VIII PREFACE I came to this project through the 2010 film The King’s Speech, a movie about Prince Albert, the Duke of York, a man who stuttered and a man who would be forced to wear the crown following the death of his father and the subsequent abdication of the throne by his brother, Edward VIII. The film focuses on the relationship between the Prince (who later assumes the title King George VI) and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue. In the film’s culminating scene in Buckingham Palace, King George delivers an historic radio address declaring war with Nazi Germany. Logue stands facing the King in the broadcast booth, the two sequestered from Palace staff. Logue is in black tie. The camera lingers over the King’s speech; it is heavily marked with slashes and accents to guide his delivery. As he speaks, the King pauses between phrases, gathering himself, while Logue, holding a copy of the speech in one hand, gestures with the other as if conducting a symphony. The scene cuts regularly to the British people listening on the battlefield, at the gates of the Palace, in their work places, in the halls and drawing rooms and cramped quarters of their homes. Churchill, Edward VIII, and the Queen listen intently, the King calling his country to steadfastness during the looming war. The King delivers the speech fluently and calmly, the scene a demonstration of all Logue has taught him. After the speech, as the King puts on his coat and he and Logue pack up, Logue quips, “You still stuttered on the w.” The King responds, “Had to throw in a few, so they knew it was me.” Logue smiles. They exit the broadcast booth, Logue following behind the King, the Palace IX staff standing in the halls, applauding. The King sits before a desk, shuffles some papers and pretends to read them, and a photographer snaps a picture for the daily. Exhausted, the King sighs, and to Logue’s congratulations on his first wartime speech, responds: “I suspect I should have to do a great deal more.” I am interested in how The King’s Speech highlights the rhetoricity of stuttering and the rhetoricity of speech therapy. Because disability evokes pity and sympathy (as in the case of Tiny Tim Cratchit) or distrust (as in the case of disabled villains Captain Hook, Darth Vader, and the One-Armed Man), the King’s stuttering calls into question his ethos. Consequently, it calls into question his ability to rally and lead a country through war. His stuttering is, then, an issue of rhetorical practice. Because The King’s Speech focuses on the political and social contexts and exigencies of the King’s stuttering, it resists framing itself solely as a triumph narrative wherein the dignity of an individual lies in the ability to overcome disability. Martha Rose argues such triumph narratives have far-reaching negative consequences because they frame disability as a matter of “personal misfortune rather than a political situation” (65). While there certainly is a triumph in the film, the King’s statement that he will have to do many more of these wartime speeches foreshadows that his stuttering is not so easily contained and that he will contend with it regularly in the years to come. The King’s Speech is a film about rhetorical practice, about ethos, about delivery, and this is made apparent in the many pedagogical moments in the movie. Though they have a therapist- patient relationship, Logue takes on the role of teacher and the King becomes his student. Logue has a reputation for unorthodox methods; their first session together has the King reading Shakespeare aloud while classical music blares. Some 35 minutes into the movie, more of his methods are revealed: Logue has the King sing, breath deeply with the Queen sitting on his X chest, sway forward and back while speaking, perform facial exercises to loosen the jowls and tongue, hold a single sound while yelling out a window 15 seconds. It’s a teaching montage of sorts, Logue and the King meeting every day to practice speech.