Definitions And History Of Rhetorics

AGNES FIDELIS GLORIA-PINZON 87-15240 TMA 2 ENG 262, 2 SEM AY 08-09 PAGE 1 OF 13 I. II.

HISTORY OF RHETORIC (see COLOR chart and appendix) DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS IN RHETORIC DEFINITION OF RHETORIC Plato

Rhetoric is "the art of winning the soul by discourse

Aristotle

Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion

Cicero

Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five lesser arts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio." Rhetoric is "speech designed to persuade

Quintilian

Rhetoric is the art of speaking well

Francis Bacon

The duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will

George Campbell

[Rhetoric] is that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.

I.A. Richards

Rhetoric is the study of misunderstandings and their remedies.

Richard Weaver

Rhetoric is that "which creates an informed appetition for the good

Erika Lindemann

Rhetoric is a form of reasoning about probabilities, based on assumptions people share as members of a community

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Philip Johnson

Rhetoric is the art of framing an argument so that it can be appreciated by an audience

Kenneth Burke

: The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.

George Kennedy

Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy expanded in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the recipient in decoding the message

Lloyd Bitzer

...rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.

Douglas Ehninger

[Rhetoric is] that discipline which studies all of the ways in which men may influence each other's thinking and behavior through the strategic use of symbols.

Gerard A. Hauser

Rhetoric is an instrumental use of language. One person engages another person in an exchange of symbols to accomplish some goal. It is not communication for communication's sake. Rhetoric is communication that attempts to coordinate social action. For this reason, rhetorical communication is explicitly pragmatic. Its goal is to influence human choices on specific matters that require immediate attention.

C. H. Knoblauch

...rhetoric is the process of using language to organize experience and communicate it to others. It is also the study of how people use language to organize and communicate experience. The word denotes both distinctive human activity and the "science" concerned with understanding that activity.

John Locke

[Rhetoric,] that powerful instrument of error and deceit.

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Charles Bazerman

The study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities . . . ultimately a practical study offering people great control over their symbolic activity.

Michael Hyde and Craig Smith

The primordial function of rhetoric is to "make-known" meaning both to oneself and to others. Meaning is derived by a human being in and through the interpretive understanding of reality. Rhetoric is the process of making known that meaning. Is not rhetoric defined as pragmatic communication, more concerned with the contemporary audiences and specific questions than with universal audiences and general questions?

Alfred North Whitehead

The creation of the world -- said Plato -- is the victory of persuasion over force. The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion.

Patricia Bizzel

George Kennedy

Victor Villanueva

"Rhetoric is the study of the personal, social, and historical elements in human discourse- how to recognize them, interpret them, and act on them, in terms both of situational context and of verbal style. This is the kind of study one has to perform in order to effect persuasion, the traditional end of rhetoric." "Foundational and Anti-Foundationalism" (1992) "Rhetoric in the most general sense may perhaps be identified with the energy inherent in communication: the emotional energy that impels the speaker to speak, the physical energy expanded in the utterance, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy experienced by the recipient in decoding the message." "A Hoot in the Dark" (1992) "Language used consciously, a matter of rhetoric, is a principal means -- perhaps the means -by which change can begin to take place. . . . Rhetoric, after all, is how ideologies are carried, how hegemonies are maintained. Rhetoric, then, would be the means by which hegemonies could be countered." Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color (1993)

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CONCEPTS IN RHETORIC THROUGH THE AGES MIDDLE CLASSICAL AGES/RENAISSANCE • Main preoccupation was • Parts of judicial with style and delivery speech: proem, narration, arguments • Purpose of rhetoric and peroration became to amaze or • Five Stages of fascinate an audience Rhetoric – Inventio, rather than to persuade Dispositio, Elocutio, through the use of all Memoria and flashy tricks of delivery Pronuntiatio • Artificiality and • Three artistic modes extravagance of word of persuasion: logos, usage prevailed pathos and ethos. • Two schools of thought: • Stress on the sophistic which designated audience as the the academic study of chief informing rhetoric as an art and the principle in political which was persuasive discourse concerned with the • Artistic, ornate, high practical applications of mannered style the art • Extension of scope • Reshaping of classical of rhetoric rhetoric that served • The belief that the Christian purposes perfect orator had to • Two major rhetorical forms: be knowledgeable composing and writing of about many subjects letters for matters of • Stress on the church and state and the orator’s character art of preaching. • Emphasized that

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Shift from ornate to simple and precise style Importance of brevity, conciseness which led to the development of the “curt” style The rise of the “natural” style which placed a premium on ideas since style would naturally follow these The use of native words and the vernacular The rise of the plain but elegant prose style Interest in the sermon or the homily as a proper subject of rhetoric Students of rhetoric were being encouraged to “strike out on their own and discover a style that was natural to themselves” Pulpit Oratory became

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America becomes the main player in rhetorical theory Introduction of the multimodal approach to rhetoric which marked the shift from the singular purpose of persuasion Formalization of the discourse types The creation of a theory of the paragraph Rhetoric becomes devoted to writing instruction and composition studies

Page 5 of 14 MIDDLE AGES/RENAISSANCE

CLASSICAL simple words could also create the same rhetorical effect if arranged skillfully First included written discourse as part of rhetorical art

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Renewed interest in the classical modes. Focus on rhetorical training in the schools Separation between stages of rhetoric and the importance of their sequence Invention and arrangement were made to be part of logic and not the rhetorical act Rhetoric only dealt with style, memory and delivery Shift from Latin to English

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19TH -20TH CENTURIES

popular More attention was paid to the stage of delivery

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APPENDIX A EXPANDED CHART OF HISTORY OF RHETORIC The Classical Period a. Greek Rhetoricians & Significant Works • Corax of Syracuse

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Gorgias of Lentini

5th Century BC

~ 427 BC

Formulated an “art” that was designed to help ordinary citizens to plead their claims in court and reclaim property confiscated during the reign of Thrasybulus the tyrant of Syracuse. His formula became staple to rhetorical theory and became known as the various parts of a judicial speech: “proem” (introduction), “narration” (statement of fact), “arguments” (both confirmation and refutation) and “peroration” (conclusion).  Notable for having stirred an interest in oratorical theory and practice among the Athenians. He was considered to be the most successful teacher and practitioner of oratory in Athens.  Main contributions: recognition of the “persuasiveness of emotional appeals” and the attention he paid to “the cultivation of an ornate style”. He valued figures of speech.

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Isocrates

436-338 BC

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Plato

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Aristotle

384-322 BC

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ON STYLE

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RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM

~86-82 BC

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Can be considered as one of the first successful Sophists (professor who lectured on the new learning in literature, science, philosophy, and especially oratory) in Athens. Believed to be the most influential of the Greek rhetoricians among his contemporaries. He was a renowned teacher of rhetoric and his school produced a number of skilled orators. His contribution to rhetoric was his development of an artistic prose style. He was also concerned with the rhythm of prose and centered his attention on the sonority of the periodic sentence. He also emphasized proper training for the ideal orator. Did not trust rhetoric; he believed that rhetoric was only an artificial form of flattery which distorted the truth. He set up conditions for any rhetorical piece to speak the truth. In countering rhetoric, he displayed himself to be a masterful rhetorician. Most influential among the Greek rhetoricians. He wrote Rhetoric whose first 2 books dealt with the discovery of arguments – “a response to those who accused rhetoricians of being more concerned with words than with matter”; he also sought to prove that rhetoric was a “true art, a teachable and systematic discipline that could guide men in adapting means to an end” Aristotle’s main treatise on rhetoric can be considered as the source of all later rhetorical theory Contributions to rhetorical theory: the three modes of proof/appeals; the enthymeme as the rhetorical equivalent of the syllogism, the example as the rhetorical equivalent of logical induction; the topics as a system of discovering available arguments; stress on the audience as the chief informing principle in persuasive discourse Date and authorship are uncertain Important in the history of rhetoric because it is one of the first texts to analyze the “kinds” of style in a detailed manner Also, added a fourth type of style – the forcible type (the heightened informal) to the three styles (informal, formal, literary) Authorship still unknown This work is distinct for its being the earliest extant Latin work on rhetoric and the earliest treatment of prose style in Latin Offers “the oldest extant division of the kinds of style into three and

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 b. The Roman Rhetoricians • Cicero

106-43 BC

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Quintilian

~35-95 AD

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c. Other Significant Rhetoricians • Dionysius of Halicarnassus

~ 30 – 8 BC

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the oldest extant formal study of figures” Also presents the most complete treatment of delivery and memory that we have in the any of the surviving classical rhetoric Major contribution is his “extension of the scope of rhetoric”; while Aristotle believed that rhetoric had no proper subject matter, Cicero maintained that the perfect orator had to be knowledgeable about many subjects. The perfect orator must have a profound grasp of a diverse range of knowledge if he were to invent arguments. This resulted in rhetoric being a liberal arts course. Compilation and criticism of the Greek rhetorical tradition in which he put together the works of Corax, Georgias, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, et at and made comments of their views of rhetoric and defined these notions which he believed to be of real concern to rhetoric. Also developed the periodic sentence, and is considered as the real creator and master of the periodic style Wrote a 12 book treatise, Institutio Oratoria; Book I deals with the preliminary education necessary for a study of rhetoric; Book II defines the nature, aims and scope of rhetoric; Books III-VII treat of oratory itself with emphasis on inventio and dispositio or materials; Books VIII-X treat of style (elocutio); Book XI deals with memory (memoria) and delivery (pronuntiatio); Book XII deals with the requirements for a perfect orator Put together the principles and precepts governing stages of rhetoric in a more organized and directed fashion. Believed that the broadly educated man would be the fittest candidate for a course in rhetoric. He emphasized that apart from being intellectually prepared for his responsibilities, “the orator must be trained to be a man of strong character”. Chief contribution: On the Arrangement of Words which schoolboys were required to use in their study of rhetoric. This stress on arrangement of words erased the popular notion that long, polysyllabic and artful words were necessary for the creation of rhetorical effect; rather it emphasized that simple words could also create the same effect if they were arranged in a skillful manner. Also, this work stressed that word choices and sentence construction

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IHermogenes and Aphthonius

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Longinus

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were both important in the creation of rhetorical effect. Wrote and published rhetorical texts entitled Progymnasmata, which was a set of 14 rudimentary exercises, intended to prepare students of rhetoric for the creation and performance of complete practice orations (including the first writing exercises on “themes”). These texts also provided a list of technical rules for the construction of the other elements of composition and common examples of these elements. Wrote the famous On the Sublime, which is considered one of the most influential documents in literary criticism.

THE MIDDLE AGES • It was during this time that Plato’s negative views of rhetoric became most apparent and the fundamental precepts of invention laid out by the classical rhetoricians were overlooked and the main preoccupation was with style and delivery. • The purpose of rhetoric became to amaze or fascinate an audience rather than persuade it through the use of all flashy tricks of style and delivery. • Artificiality and extravagance of word usages prevailed earning Middle Ages rhetoricians the unpleasant reputation which greatly influenced the definition of rhetoric today. • Two schools of thought: the ‘sophistic’ which designated the academic study of rhetoric as an art and the ‘political’ which was concerned with the practical applications of the art. It is the ‘sophistic’ school which was so popular that rhetoric ceased to be pursued primarily as a practical art and became rather a scholastic exercise. • During this time there occurred too a reshaping of classical rhetoric to a rhetoric that served Christian purposes. If classical rhetoric was concerned with leading the state, Middle Ages rhetoric focused on saving souls. The fourth book of St. Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana showed that rhetoric could be a means of persuading Christians to lead a holy life. This kind of rhetoric laid the foundation for “the rhetoric of the sermon, the branch of study known today as homilectics. • The two rhetorical forms that were taught during the Middle Ages were the composing and writing of letters for matters of church and state and the art of preaching. THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD

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Renewed interest in the classical models. The most influential rhetorician of this period was Erasmus who set the pattern for the English grammar-school curriculum and for rhetorical training in the schools. He was also commissioned to write De Ratione Studii and De Duplici Copia Verborum ac Rerum in 1512. The De Ratione Studii is more a treatise on pedagogy but espoused extensive practice for students. The De Copia on the other hand, was

Page 9 of 14 “designed to assist grammar school students in acquiring elegance and variety of expression in Latin composition; it was written on the belief that students should first have fullness of expression – by accumulating a number of things to say on a subject and by being able to say the same thing in a variety of ways - if they wanted to be effective practitioners of rhetoric.

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Erasmus’ treatise on letter writing, Modus Conscribendi Epistolas published in 1522 which dealt with the different kinds of letters and provided examples of effective letters. Peter Ramus whose influence could be traced mainly to his revision of the medieval trivium (school subjects of grammar, logic and rhetoric)Fed up with the preoccupation of medieval rhetoricians with style and their neglect of invention and arrangement, Ramus proposed a strict separation between stages of rhetoric and the importance of their sequence, where invention and arrangement were no longer part of rhetoric, but made to be the concern of logic. Ramus ultimately hoped for a logical and scientific discourse that was devoid of non-logical appeals; a kind of discourse that would persuade by rationality alone to an audience that was purely rational. This meant that under the Ramist school, rhetoric only dealt with style, memory and delivery. In England, there was a shift from Latin to English of rhetorical texts based on classical models due mainly to the growing sense of pride and nationalism of the English people as the status and achievements of their country grew. The most influential English writers were Leonard Cox, Richard Sherry, Thomas Wilson and George Puttenham. Three main groups composed the vernacular rhetorical tradition of the English Renaissance: The Traditionalists – those who taught a full-fledged rhetoric with attention to the five parts: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery; the Ramists – those who focused on style and delivery and the Figurists – those who primary interest centered on the study of schemes and tropes.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FIGURES/EVENTS MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS/EXAMPLES • Francis Bacon • One of the main proponents of the shift from an “ornate, highly mannered style” to a style characterized by “relative brevity of the sentences, looseness of structure, succinctness and pithiness of phrasing and jerkiness of rhythm” • Maintained the separation of reason and imagination with the latter being subservient to reason; he believed that less focus was being paid to the “weight of the matter, the worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention or depth of judgment”. • While he considered style, he did not subscribe to the style valued by the Renaissance rhetoricians. For Bacon, style should consist of only three principles: “conformity of the

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Thomas Blout

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Thomas Hobbes

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John Dryden

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The Homily as a Rhetorical subject

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The decline of rhetoric

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style to the subject matter, the use of simple words and the cultivation of agreeableness (appropriateness of one’s style to the audience)” His criteria of style included brevity, perspicuity, life or wit, and respect or propriety. He stressed particularly the importance of brevity, what he called conciseness, which led to the development of the “curt” style. Like Bacon, he also believed that while style should be taken into consideration in the process of writing, it should be within the tight control of reason. An advocate of the “natural” style which operated on the principle that knowledge or ideas would naturally have an effect on style therefore, it was imperative that premium be placed on ideas because style would naturally follow them. He characterized natural style as free from “high sounding but hollow words and phrases. He gave little attention to tropes and figures and advised that they be used carefully and cautiously. Considered to be the father of modern English prose style; he advocated the use of “native words: and “the vernacular, rather than the Latinate”; he worked to refine the language and to attain more naturalness, more ease, more spontaneity in writing which all gave rise to “the plain but elegant prose”. The movement which started in the Middle Ages and continued to develop in the 17th century, the turn toward the sermon or the homily as a proper subject of rhetoric. John Smith wrote, The Mysteries of Rhetoric Unveil’d which dealt with rhetorical figures in relation to the scriptures. John Prideaux also published a treatise entitled Sacred Eloquence: or the Art of Rhetoric as It Is Laid Down in the Scriptures. Because much of the significant work that came out during this period were not really by rhetoricians this means that while they did give their views on rhetoric and style, they were primarily concerned with the development of the English prose style and its implications in their particular discipline (Bacon with literary practice and theory; Hobbes with philosophy and Dryden with poetry).

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

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A questioning of Aristotelian notions of rhetoric that began with the rediscovery, new editions and translations of Longinus’ On the Sublime – judgment came to be more a thing of taste and less a thing of rule. In schools and universities, while there was still emphasis on classical rhetoric, students were also being encouraged to “strike out on their own and discover a style that was natural to themselves; to submit to the dynamic force of enthusiasm”. A second trend was the continuation of the cultivation of pulpit oratory, resulting in the huge sales of collections of

Page 11 of 14 popular sermons. Works by English preachers like Tillotson, Barrow and Atterbury and more influential French preachers like Bossuet, Bourdaloue and Massillon were responsible for this development.

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A third trend was the attention given back to delivery through the efforts of English dramatists like Thomas Sheridan and John Walker. Students of rhetoric took advantage of the newly-revived interest in elocution or delivery to advance their careers in preaching which was a choice vocation of the period. It was actually in the Scottish line of this rhetorical tradition where real rhetorical work was to be found. The works of Kames, Campbell and Blair became the basis of the rhetorical tradition that was to spring in America in the next centuries.

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Lord Kames whose work Elements of Criticism exerted great influence on both literary theory and rhetoric. Kanes wanted to study human nature through human psychology. Identifying what pleased or displeased people, what made them happy or sad, what encouraged or disheartened them was actually linked to the notion of the emotional appeal. It was Kanes who brought the notion of audience back into the picture through his belief that it was in the study of human nature where we could find the standard by which all texts can be judged.

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George Campbell published The Philosophy of Rhetoric in which he discussed at length some new possibilities for the study of rhetoric, saying that “rhetoric could have an end – to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passion or to influence the will - other than to persuade”. He also regarded logic as a tool of rhetoric. Campbell was the first to suggest that the scope of rhetoric could be expanded to include those works that did not necessarily persuade but were able to explain, inform, or please audiences (expository prose or exposition). He also countered the position of the classical rhetoricians by saying that logic was actually a device of rhetoric and not the other way around.

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Hugh Blair whose influential work titled Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle-Letters was translated into French, Italian and Russian. What is noteworthy about Blair’s work is “the amazing comprehensiveness of the forty-seven lectures that included: discussion of taste, beauty and sublimity; a survey of philology and a review of classical and English grammar; a detailed exposition of the principles of style, and a detailed analysis of several pieces of prose composition; a history of oratory; and instructions for the composition of various kinds of speeches; discourses on poetry; and a compilation of the best classical and contemporary rhetorical doctrines.” Also, Blair’s work had a distinct religious tone in his conviction that “a man of eloquence must be a man of virtue” which schoolmasters appreciated and thus used his text in school.

THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

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America became the main player in rhetorical theory in the 19h and 20th centuries but what was conceived and

Page 12 of 14 developed in America was primarily a rhetoric of writing; the theoretical advances were made in the area of composition.

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Main Rhetorician of the 19th century: Alexander Bain Three developments: • The introduction of a multimodal approach to rhetoric – a shift from the singular purpose of persuasion • The formalization of the discourse types • The creation of a theory of the paragraph. According to Alexander Bain, all paragraphs should have a central organizing principle, the topic sentence, which should be refined, developed, supported, argued and explicated. Three precepts for the paragraph: unity, coherence and development. Other important rhetoricians: John Whately, John Walker, Samuel Newman, Richard Green Parker, George Quackenbos, Henry Noble Day, Adams Hill, John Genung and Barrett Wendell Period of statis because: o While there was some serous text on rhetoric, specifically those that went back to the Aristotelian stance that invention was the most important stage of rhetoric (with the rational appeal being the most important appeal); the complexities of these theories were ignored in the classroom and students were asked to pay more attention to matters of style and correctness. o Rhetoric also did not enjoy the prominence and influence it once held owing to its oversimplification or its over emphasis on style, or the division between poetics and rhetoric with the former growing in importance in universities. o A rhetoric or composition course would essentially be a service course (general education) on correct rules of grammar, style and organization. Students were asked to write strictly following the types of discourse – narration, description, exposition and argumentation. Beyond these, there was nothing more to teach. These subjects were also handled by junior faculty. CENTURY In the early 20th century, departments of speech were growing numerous in colleges, taking over the study of historical rhetoric and many of its traditional concerns, such as response to audience. Speech teachers eventually broke away from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to form their own organization: the National Association for Academic Teachers of Public Speaking (now the Speech Communication Association). This formally marks the separation between the teaching of speech and public speaking and rhetoric and composition. Progressive education (grounded in the assumption that all individuals are equal and must therefore have equal rights and equal opportunities for education) sought to free writing instruction from the service of canonical literary study. They stressed the communicative function of writing to help draw diverse groups together and integrate them into the mainstream American society.

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Progressive education also took interest in social science as a source of information for English studies (rhetoric in the 18th -19th centuries had incorporated some study of psychology too). • Freshman English courses were rarely devoted to writing instruction; its main goal was to introduce students to literary study and in the process correct the writing in students’ literary essays according to standards of grammar, style and formal correctness. Beginnings of Modern Composition Studies • New Criticism in the 1930s approached literary texts as complete structures of meaning and made it possible to see the relation between thought and language as fundamental rather than superficial.

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In 1957, alongside the drive to encourage excellence in all areas of American education, ways were sought to make college writing courses more rigorous by expanding its focus beyond socialization or linguistics to the full traditional range of rhetorical concerns. In the 1960s there was renewed attention to the classical heritage by rhetoricians which helped foster an increased interest in the stages of the writing process and in style as an expression of personal ethos. The classical model of a five staged process (invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery) while the Ramist tradition excluded invention and arrangement. American writing courses, in focusing in the single stage of style, lost a sense of writing as a process. Writing as a process was reemphasized. Invention and arrangement began to be reclaimed for composition studies as preliminary stages in the writing process. Style, too, was seen as a process of developing ideas by rewriting sentences. There was a renewed conviction that writing instruction should emphasize self-expressive uses of language and assist students in shaping their ideas through writing. The new writing courses (Dartmouth model) encouraged more interaction among teacher and students, more dramatic and collaborative activities. There was a clamor for writing instruction that takes more notice of students’ needs for self-expression as opposed to their adjustment to social demands. Composition studies searched for a pedagogy to help students find personal writing styles that were honest and unconstrained by conventions (the term writer’s authentic voice). In the 1970s, there was an emphasis on the cognitive activities involved in writing; composing is what goes on in the writer’s head and is then recorded in the actual written work. This interest in the composing process is like the focus given to invention and arrangement in the classical process. Theorists developed structured invention techniques that would guide the student through an optimal composing process. But the whole composing process when studied appeared to no longer be neatly linear as described in the classical model but recursive and hierarchical. The increasing number of college freshmen whose home language was not Standard English tested the applicability of cognitive theories of writing. Teachers were thus made aware that the new classroom population needed help with academic writing requirements not so much because of cognitive deficiencies but because of linguistic and cultural diversity. This realization helped teachers see that students would learn Standard English more easily if they were

Page 14 of 14 allowed to write some school assignments in their home languages first.

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With so many students seeming to need extra help in mastering college-level writing, many composition scholars came to feel that professors in all disciplines must be enlisted in the effort of teaching writing. To address these needs, cross-disciplinary writing programs (writing across the curriculum) began to develop. These programs typically attempted to educate students and faculty form all disciplines about the conventions of academic discourse and about the range of activities that constitute mature composing processes. In the 1980s, composition scholars focused on the social nature of writing, building upon previous work in both basic writing and writing across the curriculum. Interest now focused on how the writing process was conditioned by social circumstances. James Kinneavy’s earlier work on the modes of discourse, returned to Aristotle for a revitalized sense of the decisive role of social function in determining the form of discourse. Kineeavy classifies rhetorical situations according to their emphasis on the writer (expressive), audience (persuasive), subject matter (referential) or verbal medium (aesthetic). The search for a social theory of writing became broadly interdisciplinary. Scholars in all disciplines sought an account of discourse – language in use – that acknowledges the power of rhetoric to help create a community’s worldview, knowledge and interpretative practices. In the 1990s the powerful themes of the 1980s – social construction, politics, literacy and gender issues – were still discussed. Social construction was widely accepted as a theoretical basis for understanding language use. The history of composition too received attention in the 1990s. A number of scholars explored the connections among social construction, postmodernism, politics and cultural studies and their implications for composition. With more understanding of the complexities of students’ literacies and identities, composition continues to respond to issues of diversity in the classroom, institutions and communities. The last few years have also seen an emerging critical discourse on race in composition studies, a discourse that does not embrace multiculturalism necessarily but that tries to confront institutionalized racism through analyzing images, discourses and practices. Feminist teacher and gender issues in the classroom also continued to be important scholarly concerns in rhetoric and composition in the 1990s. Challenges are seen for composition scholars is electronic writing technologies. Still intrigued by the new frontiers of networking and hypertext and other online writing technologies, compositionists continue to explore those regions for their pedagogical implications.