Coe,
Richard M. "Critical Reading And Writing In The Burkean
Classroom: A Response To Mary Salibrici." Journal
Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 42.8
(1999): 638-40. ERIC.
Web. 2 Mar. 2014.
Richard
Coe takes up Mary Salibrici's call for instructors to create, indeed
require, dissonance, ambiguity, and complication within the
composition classroom. Coe acknowledges the difficulty of getting
students to pinpoint positions unfamiliar to them, especially ones
that have not cross their minds. To nurture this process of critical
thinking Coe draws on Salibrici's notion that rhetorical pedagogy
must hinge on two levers: “language as symbolic action and
perspective by incongruity” (638). Burke's concept of symbolic
action requires us to see language and texts involved not just in
meaning but meaning-making, it
moves
us to look at utterances, texts, and other symbolic communications by
asking what they do, not merely what they say. In short we need to
ask about speech acts the same sorts of questions about context,
motive, effect, and so forth that we would ask about any other sorts
of acts. (638)
The
tendency Coe wishes to push against is the belief that texts
represent merely ideas, thoughts that are already transparent simply
by reading a written work. Instead texts need to be understood as
representations of more implicit ideas that are hidden behind the act
of writing, and writing in a particular way. Coe uses the examples
of “date rape” and “harvesting overmature timber” (639) to
argue that language is interpellation, “leading us to see [words]
in terms of the
category evoked by the name” (639). Used in this way, language
enters into an identity politics, citing a personality behind the
print that: 1) asks readers to consider the intentionality behind the
act of language, and 2) asks writers to consciously consider the
rhetorical grammar that best communicates this intentionality. For
Coe, then, the symbolic action of rhetoric is about more that
persuading readers or listeners. It is about putting a human
identity to the textual voices that occupy the Burkean conversation.
Perspective
by incongruity, the other half of this coin, straddles the line
between relativism and objectivity. By making students aware of
divergent views of a single issue, and encouraging them to
contemplate these contradictions, it becomes evident that rhetorical
questions are a matter of perspective rather than questions that
culminate in an easy, often unitary answer. By viewing issues
through heterogeneous lenses, students begin to internalize the idea
that “each perspective is less than the whole truth. Human beings
can criticize a perspective only from another perspective” (639).
What ensues is a closer relationship with a dialectic pursuit of
truth as opposed to yes-or-no thesis questions.
In
practice, Coe's suggestions read a lot like stasis theory. He
encourages students to adopt what he calls “negative thinking”,
explaining that “if any statement is true,
there must be some sense of some context in which its contraries are
true” (670, his emphasis). This means that
students are tasked with devising these contrary situations that will
shed light on when the opposite of what they think is true. He
requires these multiple perspectives to work their way into students
thesis statements, which I think is an excellent idea for avoiding
yes-or-no papers (670). Another tactic of Coe's I appreciate,
relating back to symbolic action, is asking students what they want
their writing to do, which seems a good jumping-off point from which
to consider how to best help students become better writers (as
opposed to blindly critiquing a paper with suggestions that might not
mean much to them) (638). Finally, one of the better recommendations
Coe offers in this article is in fact a critique of Salibrici:
I
would have been more comfortable if Salibrici had told us not only
how she generated perspective by incongruity for her students, but
also how she used it to challenge her own understanding …
Perspective by incongruity ought to work for us as well as our
students; and our own ability to live with dissonance and discomfort
ought to be a prerequisite for asking our students to do the same.
(670)
This
is the part I appreciated most from the article. Beyond the obvious
advantages, I think it speaks to being present in the classroom –
thinking and struggling through the complex ideas that the
composition classroom raises, keeping us in the moment with our
students. I very much appreciated Coe's assessment of critical
thinking in this piece. Of course, his notions need to be updated.
Thinking back to my research from last week, I would like to consider
how it might even be more productive to consider symbolic action
through visual media. Reviewing television commercials is something
I've done in class and it seems ripe for just this sort of
discussion. By demonstrating that there is not only the idea behind
a Toyota commercial, but a strong sense of identity being sold as
well, I think it would be easier to then transfer this idea to the
symbolic act of writing.
