Interrupting the Conversation: The Constructionist Dialogue in Composition.

Abstract

In Current-Traditional Rhetoric: Paradigm and Practice, James Ber lin and Robert Inkster make the important point that epistemological assumptions underlie every conception of rhetoric and composition. They suggest that we cannot demonstrate what it means persuade or explain without a tacit belief in what it means know. I believe they are also correct in acknowledging a general neglect of these assumptions on the part of those of us who teach writing: it is fairly easy for instructors of composition (indeed, most teachers) to buy into a dominant theory of knowledge unquestioningly. Nevertheless, though awareness of the ways in which written and oral discourse contribute to what people believe they know (that is, how rhetoric may be epistemic) may seem marginalized in the contemporary writing classroom, it has been a central issue for philosophers and rhetoricians since Plato and Aristotle. From that classical period to the contemporary writings of Burke, Perelman, and Young, Becker, and Pike, the tradition of investigat ing rhetoric's role in producing rather than merely transmitting knowledge has remained intact. Though it is not surprising that composition studies should follow in the wake of rhetoric and begin investigating the knowledge generating capacity of language, the writing field seems to have carved out for itself the distinction, and perhaps the burden, of being the first discipline to bring to the fore questions of how this theory of knowledge relates to classroom practice. A problem has arisen in the field, however, in that most of the rhetoric as-epistemic arguments have settled on a rather eclectic and politicized conception of the issue and its relevance to the teaching of writing. Compo sition theorists, working within what appears to me to be a closed dialogue, downplay or completely ignore a wealth of critical thought available in related disciplines?speech communications and social psychology in par ticular. My use of the term dialogue is intended both as a convenient shorthand for a-community-of-writers-in-composition-who-have-introduced and-continue-to-popularize-r/i^ronc-^-^pw^m/c, and as a way to convey