I’ve already considered Berlin’s Objective rhetorics – particularly in regard to positivism and current-traditional rhetoric. The remaining two top-level spaces of Berlin’s taxonomy belong to Subjective and Transactional theories of rhetoric.
Subjective theories of rhetoric locate truth within the individual. I’m still interested to dig deeper to see if these theories include or are related to social constructivism. There clearly seems to be a relationship to philosophical idealism, particularly in regard to how Berlin invokes the Foucault and the “terministic screen” in his retort to Robert Connors’ critique of his historical narratives (of Connors arguing that history can be done objectively, claiming Berlin was biased by his "terministic screens). Berlin and Foucault see otherwise, not arguing the existence of such screens, but claiming that it is impossible to perceive any object except through terministic screens.
In regard to the teaching of writing, Berlin notes that, “The most immediate sources of subjective theories for college writing courses during the 20s and 30s were encouraged by the rise of aesthetic expressionism and the proponents of progressive education .... in the 60s and 70s by cognitive psychology ... and by English department interpretations of romanticism" (11-12).
Subjective theories require that the writing teacher create an environment that allows the student to come to their own versions of the truth as they can best express it. I see here some application to the teaching of professional, business, and technical writing at a time when English was dealing with its own issues of disciplinary identity. Subjective pedagogies are based on three activities commonly found in engineering and the sciences -- the use of original metaphor, the keeping of a journal, and participation in peer group editing.
Transactional rhetorics arise out of the interaction of some or all of the elements of a rhetorical situation: subject, object, audience, and language. Pedagogies shaped by transactional rhetorics fall into three types: 1) classical, 2) cognitive (Emig, Lauer, Phelps, etc.), and 3) epistemic (Ohman, Berthoff, Young, Becker, Pike).
I’m not addressing the classical simply because I don’t see the implications/applications of its role in shaping the similarities and tensions between Com and Tech Comm. I am trying to see how cognitive pedagogies different greatly from pedagogies based on objective theories. Like subjective pedagogies, there are elements of the cognitive in use-case scenarios, highly contextualized writing, and perhaps the embedded writing instruction models we are currently using with WRT 407. I see in Berlin’s description of the cognitive some of what I struggle with in the classroom. "The work of the writing teacher is to understand [the] basic cognitive structures and the ways they develop in order to provide experiences for students that encourage normal development and prevent structural distortions. The teacher intervenes in the composing process of students in order to ensure that their cognitive structures are functioning normally, this enhancing their ability to arrive at truth in examining the external world. The emphasis in this classroom is on the individual, but the individual is conceived of as inherently transactional, arriving at truth through engaging the surrounding material and social environment" (16).
In the epistemic, I see a clear opposition to objective theories (those most closely related to positivistic pedagogies and the current traditional. Berlin notes (as opposed to the objective), "All truths arise out of dialectic, out of the interaction of individuals within discourse communities. Truth is never simply out there in the material world or the social realm, or simply in there in a private and personal world. [Truth] emerges only when the material, the social, and the personal interact, and the agent of the mediation is language" (16-17).
So here I come back to Berlin’s taxonomy and historical progress narrative fleshing out my framework. With the emergence of the current-traditional rhetorics that appeared in the late 19th century English department, we see the alignment with attempts to create more specialized and focused “advanced” writing instruction provided in reaction to industrialization and external demands on the university. “Grounded in positivistic epistemology, it provided a counter-part to the scientific logic that distinguished the methodology of the courses in the new elective university from those in the old college" (26) For the specialized writing teacher, the task was to provide instruction in arrangement and style--arrangement so that the order of experience is correctly recorded, and style so that clarity is achieved..." (26-27). No doubt this approach necessitated the early use of forms in the technical and science writing classroom.
In the end, Berlin finds the influence of the current-traditional unfortunate: "...creation of rhetoric that defined the role of the writer, reader, and language as arriving at meaning, that instead placed truth in the external world, existing prior to the individual's perception of it" (36). I see the progress differently and perhaps not so pessimistically. I’m claiming that modern Tech Comm pedagogies contain current-traditional DNA, which can at times place them in opposition to Composition pedagogies which do not give the writer the currency necessary to “reproduce in the mind of the reader the particular experience as it took place in the mind of the writer" (26). Does the prescriptive nature of teaching genre in the tech writing classroom trace back to the current-traditional?
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