Understand and act: Classical rhetoric, speech acts, and the teaching of critical democratic participation.

摘要

My research seeks to reconceive the idea of a classic rhetoric, with political concerns informed by speech-act theory and critical theory, to invigorate student writing in English composition and in writing-intensive courses in the humanities and social sciences. Current-traditional practice in composition---the dominant pedagogy today---creates a situation of unreality for students by treating their work as practice for later use outside the academy. This study claims that students do their best work when their learning is connected to their vital civic and political interests. Students should be given the opportunity to explore their vital interests as active agents---critical democratic participants---in a polis. This study demonstrates a method of engaging students through critical reading and responding to political texts written by and for the Presidents of the United States.; The study first seeks a necessary connection between language use and democratic participation by accounting for the role of rhetoric in a revised theory of speech-acts. Following from this connection, the study charts the history of civic participation by speaking and writing in ancient Greece. This civic participation and political application of rhetoric is then contrasted with the history of belletrism in English studies in America from the eighteenth century. This history demonstrates how the concerns of rhetoric in education moved from the civic to the literary, or from the polis to the personal.; The study suggests that current practices informed by critical theory fall short of civic engagement. A new model of critical literacy and a related pedagogy, integrating speech-act theory, political analysis, and critical language study, is demonstrated.; Empirical research includes textual analysis of current textbooks to demonstrate how belletristic concerns continue to dominate current pedagogy. Classroom research and textual analysis of student writing---including lexicon analysis by computer---demonstrates how the use of political texts, and assignments that ask student to engage the polis, may lead to more effective and engaged writing by students.; The study concludes with an analysis of presidential rhetoric focused on autobiography, campaign promises, and apologia to demonstrate the richness of these texts for reading and analysis in the proposed pedagogical model.