The post-process movement in rhetoric and composition: A philosophical hermeneutic reading of being-in-the-world with others.

摘要

This dissertation spotlights and articulates, in a philosophical hermeneutic framework, the emerging intellectual discourse of the post-process movement in rhetoric and composition studies. It provides a clarifying hermeneutic reading of post-process theory, according to the potential it holds for compositionists, researchers and writing practitioners who teach or write about composition courses. The study stimulates new thinking on post-process theory, while solidifying the intellectual traditions that underscore its assumptions, toward the goal of understanding what it means to write and the pedagogical ramifications of this understanding. Philosophical hermeneutics is used as a viable and desirable methodology of discovering, clarifying, enlightening and voicing the intellectual foundations and the ontological implications of perceiving writing as a public, interpretive, and situated act.; Chapter one underlines the divergent strands of the post-process movement, intending to delineate the purpose and significance of exploring the assumptions of the movement for the field of composition. Chapter two situates post-process theory within the cultural narratives of its antecedents in rhetoric and composition, while featuring two main intellectual forces: (1) The current-traditional rhetoric of the 1960s, and (2) The process movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter three provides an overview of 'the social turn', with its pedagogical manifestation in social constructionism and social epistemicism, in relation to the discourse of post-process theory. Chapter four focuses on the intellectual legacy on which post-process theory has built its assumptions, showing its rootedness in the philosophy of Sophism and the rhetoric of paralogy, which integrates Donald Davidson's philosophy of externalism.; Chapter five applies Heidegger and Gadamer's hermeneutic concepts to post-process theory, aiming at offering an in-depth and comprehensive exploration of what philosophical hermeneutics can tell us about the nature of post-process writing, and the implications of this understanding for the teaching of writing. Chapter five ends with a pedagogical vision of post-process theory, pointing out the importance of viewing writing as a human value and a mode of existence and inquiry. The last section of the dissertation, Theory-into-Practice , brings a global perspective to the teaching of post-process writing and a responsibility to teaching for a better world.