The teaching-questioning strategy developed in this paper, based on reader-response criticism and Kenneth Burke's pentad, can be used by teachers to elicit responses to any literary work and is designed to help students participate in a work's dramatic context, discover meaning as they read, and assure that their critical essays are based on an…

The author advocates and describes a composite unit on rhetorical analysis. (MM)

Defines rhetoric and describes and illustrates conflicting attitudes toward language and the art of rhetoric. States that since rhetoric was the art that brought people together and that taught people not only how to survive but also to live well, the rhetorical tradition is worth rehabilitating. (EL)

The purpose of this study was to organize, synthesize, and explain Kenneth Burke's Title I; the uses of Title I; Process for developing Title I proposals--responsible to rhetoric instruction in the secondary schools. Sections contain (1) a chronological survey of Burke's writing, (2) a consideration of rhetoric as a primary dimension of language,…

Defines the concept of "audience" as a theoretical concept for writing instructors and readers. Discusses its relationship to the teaching of English. (HB)

Recognizing the proliferation of persuasive language in advertising and in politics, this guide explains how to analyze political language for its persuasive techniques and why it is important to do so. The first chapter of the book provides a rationale for analyzing persuasion, and an overview of the book. The remaining chapters explore various…

Identifies the additions, deletions, and changes in the reprinted versions of King's classic speech. (Serves both as a warning that published speeches cannot be depended upon to preserve the original text and as a source of reference for teachers using Dr. King.s speech in classroom study.) (PD)

A study examined the message features that influence an innovation's acceptance by a mass audience. The study looked at three strategies of innovational rhetoric (denial of controversy, subtle criticism of existing institutions, and projection of a rhetorical vision) used by a commercial broadcasting company, called Whittle Communications in 1989,…

The purpose of a five-week pilot project in composition at a Manhattan inner city high school were to test a methodology for teaching the nonnarrative essay and to determine if students could provide informed editorial guidance to other students in regular peer criticism sessions. The assumptions underlying the approach are that the central…

Examines the opposition of objectified exposition and personal narrative posited by rhetorical tradition and maintained by most composition texts and syllabi today. Argues that the best thinking and writing are simultaneously personal and public, infused with private meaning and focused upon the world beyond the self.(MG)

Describes how literature can help students contend with racial stereotypes. Discusses the problematic nature of the concept of race. Uses Christopher Columbus as a case study of the author's claim. (HB)

Composition specialists will find Plato's dialogues, and especially his conception of writing, useful for studying the nature of writing. Plato's strategy, in "Phaedrus" and other dialogues, was to use first person, to conceal himself by using an "I" that he created. In recent times this strategy, using the first person, has…

Chaim Perelman, in "The New Rhetoric," discusses a paradigm for understanding how study of composition can be altered by knowledge of thought processes gained by cognitive psychologists and psycholinguists. He describes this rhetoric as "rhetorical rationalism" that recognizes a multiplicity of ways of being reasonable and…

Describes a method of teaching students to identify and analyze misleading or manipulative rhetoric used in political campaigns. Provides excerpts from student-written journals based on the 1992 presidential debates. Argues that such activities are beneficial in English classes. (HB)