Monthly Archives: October 2014

*insert witty title about revisiting the past*

In their essays, Hutto and Campbell describe several rhetorical traditions practiced in Africa centuries ago, showing that Greek rhetoric was not the only, nor necessarily the best, discursive practice of the Ancient World. These essays reveal that, despite the dominance of Greco-Roman rhetoric around the world today (perpetuated by the West’s assumed ideological, political and cultural supremacy over other cultures and rhetorics), many rhetorical practices actually have roots in other, equally ancient and valid, discursive frameworks and distinct purposes, presenting, therefore, “alternative views on what makes a skilled speaker” (Hutto 1).

Hutto’s analysis of ancient Egyptian rhetoric shows that what most have internalized as “the purpose of rhetoric,” that is, the Greek notion of “eloquent expression” and persuasion, does not actually apply to all rhetorical practices. In fact, ancient Egyptian discourse seemed to emphasize a “balance between eloquence and wise silence,” where knowing when not to speak was a valued skill (1). Good rhetorical skills and silence did not serve the purpose of self-expression so much as they were aimed at developing good citizens in the public sphere and good people in the private. It was also, in opposition to Greek rhetoric as Hutto points out, a way to reinforce the social status quo (1; 6). Similarly to what Matalene describes about Chinese rhetoric in “Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China,” Egyptian rhetoric relied heavily on the repetition of traditional maxims as a sign of respect for authority and the past (1; 6). Invention and originality, emphasized in the Greco-Roman-Anglo-American model, didn’t matter much to ancient Egyptians. Instead, as the author points out, the most important rhetorical features one could possess were “silence, restraint and truth” (9), which would ensure the upkeep of the social hierarchy, but also curb self-involved egos and develop credible ethos by advising modesty towards their social or intellectual “inferiors” and allowing others to speak (7). On a religious level, language was seen as a powerful tool, having the power to create worlds (much like in Christianity) and potentially save the individual’s soul in the afterlife (3-4).

It is interesting to notice that, throughout the essay, Hutto uses a comparative approach, describing Egyptian rhetoric (or rhetorics, as the author points out that external influences affected language and discourse in different ways throughout Egyptian history (2)) in relation to Greek rhetoric, and often relying on the work of Western scholars such as Michael Fox, George Kennedy and Antonio Loprieno, which may attest to the dominance of Western scholarship in Rhet/Comp Studies and the need to extend it to other, more localized, and perhaps more specialized, voices. Campbell, on the other hand, immediately acknowledges the recent shift in Rhet/Comp to the exploration of non-Western cultures and rhetorics and attempts to provide a description of ancient Ethiopian rhetoric within the context of other ancient African discursive practices (255)-256). In fact, Campbell argues for the need to study African non-literate (that is, predominantly oral) practices independently from the Western tradition, as they possess distinct features (257). As Campbell shows, despite their largely oral tradition, the cultures of cities such as Napata, Meroe and Axum possessed their own rhetorical practices, which, similarly to ancient Egyptian rhetoric, had a moralistic intention and were aimed at elevating the ethos of the speaker (261). Another important feature of some of these cultures was the connection between rhetoric and divinity: figures of authority often drew their rhetorical and political power from invocations to god’s protection (266).

In seemingly different ways, both authors aim to show that there was once rhetorical diversity in Africa that was as complex as, and independent from, Western rhetoric. Campbell’s words sum it up very well: “Africa has rhetorical traditions that are oral and literate; ancient and modern; political, religious, and social – in other words, traditions that are as rich and diverse as any in the Western world” (274). But, as this author also acknowledges, this diversity is still very much unstudied, leading to misconceptions about these cultures and rhetorics. Perhaps what we need is a paradigm shift that focuses on the value and validity of these practices, that puts them at the center of the discussion for once. The question is, how do we go about making that happen?

Teaching Writing in Portugal

This week, instead of commenting on one of the readings, I thought I would write about the practice of teaching writing in Portugal, based on a survey carried out by Prof. John Elliott at the University of Lisbon (http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/6021.pdf). For many educators, writing is still seen as the primary indicator of literacy and academic success. However, the strategies used often fall short of actually motivating students to write or developing their writing skills.

The teaching of writing in Portugal still tends to emphasize theoretical frameworks in detriment of practical activities where the student has the chance to apply what he/she has learned. Classes are still very much based on the teacher speaking and showing a set of rules and the students having to absorb them for later application in tests. Students are taught into all sorts of fictional and nonfictional genres, mostly through reading and analysis, with the sole purpose of being able to distinguish them, but not necessarily to write in them.        But what is most noticeable is the amount of attention paid to grammar as a marker of good writing. Extensive class time is spent on the explanation of grammatical rules and terminology and applying them to isolated instances (fill in the blanks type of exercises) instead of working them into the actual process of writing. The ultimate goal of teaching writing is to enable students to respond to generic prompts (often argumentative essays between 200-300 words) and succeed in exams where they are assessed for reading skills (even the teaching of reading is a problem, since students are often drilled on concepts disembodied from real text and assessment depends much more on the students’ ability to memorize and dump information on to paper than on their ability to interpret and analyze the piece of text in front of them) and grammar.

The results of Elliott’s survey of the students’ relationship with writing at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon seems to indicate that this pedagogical approach does not prepare students for academic writing or even writing in general. According to Elliott, students attach less importance to writing than to speaking and do not feel motivated to write because of the theoretical focus and the limited creative outlet. He states that “there is a world of difference between the idea and the execution of that idea” (59). In other words, students express interest in writing, but do not feel motivated to perform the written tasks for class. The survey reflects another problem: students appear to equate good writing with good grammar and the ability to follow certain conventions. When asked about their preferred mode of assessment, a majority of students replied that the most useful comments were those on grammatical correction, punctuation and spelling.

In the final part of the survey, Elliott asked students to further comment on writing and several mentioned the lack of creativity and freedom as reasons for not being interested in improving their writing. Others did not feel that they had enough skills to write (which may be attributed to the focus on surface-level issues instead of higher order concerns) and some even suggested doing more writing in class and as homework (which may indicate that there is insufficient practice).

This study suggests, then, that teachers in Portugal need to rethink their approaches to teaching writing, as they are clearly not preparing or motivating the students to the task at hand. There needs to be a bigger focus on writing as an activity that encases more than just grammar, that has a purpose other than assessment and that the student can become truly engaged in.

Local, Global, Glocal Knowledge(s)?

In “Reconstructing Local Knowledge,” Suresh Canagarajah explains how the concept of “local knowledge” has been historically and ideologically perceived in different disciplines, including Rhet/Comp. Throughout the essay, Canagarajah expounds on the history of prejudice that has surrounded the term, essentially attributing it to a binary ideological context that tends to favor more widely adopted value and rhetorical systems in detriment of localized types of knowledge-making frameworks, often associated with specific cultural traditions, and, as a consequence, considered anachronistic and limited in their scope of influence.

Canagarajah addresses a very important issue right at the beginning of the essay: what is essentially knowledge and who is responsible for defining this concept? He starts by tracing the evolution of the expression “local knowledge” throughout different types of discourse – anthropological, social, academic, professional – and points out the fact that, in all of them, local knowledge is perceived as “context bound, community specific, and nonsystematic” (244). For that reason, local knowledge tends to be perceived as inferior, irrational or unreliable by many, often associated with superstitions, myth and backward traditions that no longer seem to have a place in the current landscape. However, as he argues, this perception is created by those who hold political, ideological and, most importantly, discursive power, often smothering the small yet distinct voices of local populations. For Canagarajah, European cultures, through modernist ideals and colonialist practices, were responsible for the suppression of local cultural specificities, as they “refused to acknowledge that the divergent cultural practices of other communities could have a parallel life of equal validity,” thus attempting to assimilate them into what they believed to be “the right way” to do things or “the right type of knowledge” (245). As a consequence, Canagarajah argues, all forms of local knowledge were simply subjected and replaced by another form of local knowledge (246).

It is interesting to see, particularly in this essay, how the notion of knowledge and its dissemination do not seem to have changed much in the last couple of centuries. As Canagarajah argues, despite of the fragmented and fragmentary nature of postmodernist thought and the technological success in channeling local voices into the dominant discourse of the West, there seems to remain an unbalanced power relationship, as local identities are only ever shown through the lens of the dominant culture, which tends to construe them as static artifacts rooted to a specific time and place. As he points out, even local scholars have to resort to Western rhetorical tools in order to study and understand local specificities (250). The world of academic publishing also helps perpetuate the dominance of Western discourse, since “[t]he prestigious journals in almost every discipline are published in the English language and from Western locations” and periphery scholars often lack the resources and networks to produce their own publications (254). Local communities should instead be perceived as “relational and fluid construct[s]” that have their own idiosyncrasies and internal tensions, and, most importantly, that are constantly changing. Many of them, as the author points out, have even become transnational, as they have taken and kept their traditions alive elsewhere, occupying new physical and virtual borders, and thus questioning the dominant claim that local knowledge is geographically static (249).

Canagarajah calls, then, for new rhetorical and cultural practices that allow dominant and local discourses to negotiate their existence on an equal footing (251). The twist, he argues, is we should position ourselves not on the side of Western rhetoric (as has been case so far), but on the side of local knowledge(s). This requires a double process of deconstruction and reconstruction of both the dominant form of discourse and the local forms of knowledge: not only must we question and look for the gaps in the established knowledge, but we also need to interpret and reinterpret local knowledge as it changes, paying attention to its uniqueness while, at the same time, recognizing its limitations (252-253). For this purpose, it is necessary that we provide the means and outlets for local scholars to participate, as well as new modes of presentation that integrate the types of discourse in which these scholars are better versed (or that are particular to a specific form of local knowledge) (255).

While Canagarajah’s words are encouraging, there is still the logistic problem of how we can go about doing it. As other authors have discussed, this is a matter of breaking a centuries long cycle of the West’s ideological and rhetorical domination. How can we bring local discourse into the global – if there is such a thing as global discourse, since it is, essentially, just another type of local discourse? Do we have the tools to fully examine, understand and use these local rhetorics interchangeably with Western discourse?