Berlin's Rhetoric and Reality examines writing instruction in American Colleges from 1900-1985. Berlin offers a 3-part taxonomy to understand the trends of rhetoric and composition: objective, subjective, and transactional. For Berlin, we need to think about the connection between rhetoric (which he argues works better defined as rhetorics) and the social contexts in which a rhetoric emerges.
Key terms/Quotations:
Rhetoric = rhetorics, since rhetoric is diverse, historic, contingent. Rhetoric = "production of discourse" (xi).
Objective rhetoric: reality and truth within external (material world); writers record reality exactly as it happened to transfer unfettered to the reader. "current traditional" rhetoric/modes
Subjective rhetoric: Truth located within individual and only accessible to him or her; can't be transmitted. In the writing class, writing can't be taught, but the teacher provides the environment for the student to find her truth. Classroom practice consists of metaphor, journals, and peer groups.
Transactional rhetoric: Truth emerges from interaction between individual and the world.
3 forms: classical, cognitive, and epistemic
Truth is uncertain; concerned with "total range of human behavior" (15).
New knowledge is important; this new knowledge emerges from interactions
language constitutes all reality and experience.
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