VI

Style, Stages, and Steps Toward Progress

I. STYLE

     1.1 At present, the field of stylistics appears somewhat stagnant and disunified. So many definitions of style have been offered—Guiraud and Kuentz (1 970: 4-1 5) listed 34 of them—that it is questionable whether different scholars are even discussing the same thing. For example, style has been variously explicated as: (a) extra ornamentation imposed on a message (cf. Enkvist, 1964; Lorian, 1970); (b) grammatical choices (Ohmann, 1964b; Hayes, 1969; but cf. Milic, 1971); (c) deviation from a norm (Enkvist, 1964; Levin, 1965; Marcus, 1968), specifically, from an abstract “grammar” in the sense of II.3.5 (Bierwisch, 1965; Thorne, 1965; Revzin, 1970; Abraham, 1972), or from a pattern established in the text itself (Riffaterre, 1959, 1960); (d) the reader’s experience of meaning (Alonso, 1942; Fish, 1970; Mounin, 1971); (e) the habits and traits of the individual text producer (Marouzeau, 1959; Chatman, 1966; Winterowd, 1970b); (f) the function of the text in communication (Havránek, 1964; Benes, 1975); and so on. Some explications were supported less by empirical discovery than by assertiveness (cf. I. I.2), ranging from the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count de Buffon’s 1753 aphorism, “style is the man,” over to Gray’s (1969) denial that style even exists. Moreover, the main object of inquiry was not the text, but the literary text (VI. I.7f)—a special case acting as the general case (cf. I. I. 3).

   1.2 For a time, modern linguistics was considered a sound candidate for reorganizing the study of style (cf. Spitzer, 1948; Sebeok [Ed.], 1960; Ihwe [Ed.], 1971; Ihwe, 1972; Enkvist, 1973; Sinclair, 1975). However, this enthusiasm has gradually abated as linguistics itself reached a point of diminishing returns and linguistic theories of style remained controversial and vulnerable (Spillner, 1976). If style is extra ornamentation, then many texts could have no style at all. If style is deviation, research must wait until {280} the norm or grammar is defined (cf. criticism in Riffaterre, 1959; Delbouille, 1960; Sayce, 1962) — a project that seems rather remote now (cf. II.3.14; V.2.17). In retrospect, it was probably naive to have hoped that a purely linguistic analysis of language artifacts can account for the rich communicative contexts that define style. Linguists who study style are supplying the context themselves, including the prior supposition that a given usage or passage is stylistically relevant. The activities of the analyst as audience (selection, focus, evaluation, motivation, etc.) would be the most interesting thing to investigate (cf. II.1.7, 11; VI.I.7; Wienold, 1972; Schmidt, 1982).

    1.3 The existence of style is often argued on the grounds that you can convey the same content in different, but synonymous, expressions—in my terms, that asymmetry obtains between conceptual development vs. expression and phrase linearization (cf. III.2.27). For example, Hockett (1958: 556) maintained that “two utterances in the same language which convey approximately the same information, but which are different in their linguistic structure, can be said to differ in style.” In transformational grammar, style would result from applying different syntactic rules (Ohmann, 1964b). However, not all differences in “linguistic” or “grammatical” structure qualify as stylistically relevant (cf. I.2.8.5; V.3.19). For example, the manipulations performed during sentence-combining do not always improve the writer’s style (cf. Hunt, 1965; Christensen, 1968; Mellon, 1969; II.3.25). At least some language options can be interchanged without materially altering the style of a stretch of text. For example, we could rework a passage by John Steinbeck (1978: 96) like this:

 (464) Americans are remarkably kind and hospitable with both guests and strangers; and yet they will make a wide circle around a man dying on the pavement. Fortunes are spent getting cats out of trees and dogs out of sewer pipes; but a girl screaming for help in the street draws only slammed doors, closed windows, and silence.

(464a) Americans treat both guests and strangers with remarkable kindness and hospitality; and yet they walk in a large circle around a person who is dying on the pavement. Large sums are spent retrieving cats from trees and dogs from sewer pipes; but if a girl screams for help in the street, doors slam, windows close, and the rest is silence.  

Most of these alterations in the surface text barely affect the style at all. A really conspicuous change, such as going from ‘draws only silence’ to ‘the rest is silence’, affects the style less via its linguistic structure than via its cultural context. Hamlet’s famous dying words (Hamlet, V, 11, 369) to a vast, intensely involved public in countless theatres contrast starkly with the anonymous ‘screams’ of a ‘girl’ to a small, uncaring public in an urban neighborhood. {281}

     1.4 We can conclude that style, like the rest of language, should be studied in terms of human processes within society and culture. Style is above all something intended by a text producer or experienced by a text receiver. Conspicuous elements, the so-called “style markers,” draw so much attention that it is easy to identify style with ornamentation or deviation (VI.1.1f, 7). But style actually results from the total selection, including all the background that makes the conspicuous elements meaningful. This background cannot be reconstructed with only the aid of statistical counts of items in the surface text itself, such as frequencies and proportions of nouns, verbs, modifiers, and so on (cf. Miles, 1967; Dolezel & Bailey [Eds.], 1969). These measures are inconclusive unless they bear on human processes. A stylistic background often includes elements not selected in the text at all, but expected at certain points. These elements easily go unobserved during linguistic and statistical analysis of the text as artifact.

  1.5 Style could be formulated in an empirical inquiry: how do text producers control style, and how do text receivers react to it? Milic (1971) proposed a distinction between selecting basic language options vs. making the conscious (“rhetorical”) choices that mark the style; yet this distinction is more likely a gradation of interactive processing factors such as feedback, attention, goodness of fit, threshold of termination, complexity, familiarity, informativity, and motivation (cf. III.3.3). Evidence for these factors must come from a range of diverse sources. We can compare a text with a later revision of it, assuming that changes were deliberate (Cervenka, 1971). We can try to list the various alternatives the text producer might have used (Dupriez, 1971). We can ask readers to single out text elements they consider important for the style (Frey, 1970). We can delete elements and have readers guess them (Groeben, 1975)—the so-called “cloze procedure”. Aside from the last-named one, these methods have been applied predominantly by European scholars to literary texts. American literary studies has been less favorable toward empirical research, mainly because the humanities and the sciences have been split by an unfortunate misunderstanding of each other’s methods. The complex, creative contexts of the humanities have been wrongly judged chaotic and subjective, while the experimentally controlled contexts of the sciences have been given an unduly narrow, sterile interpretation (cf. I. I.2ff; I.2.23.7).

    1.6 Operationally, style is presumably processed by SPECIALISTS: operational components assigned to regulate a particular aspect of production or reception (1.4.8; III. 1.11, 14, 27; III.2.11). These specialized processes are usually on call, but become active when triggered by relevant events and settings (e.g., if a writer wants a “formal” style for an official memo). During text production, style specialists would send appropriate parameters to memory search processes to influence the choice of options (cf. III.3.10ff). These parameters would not become active for stylistically neutral items (cf. I.2.8.5; III.3.13; V3.19), but only for candidate expressions carrying style markers in memory. The same filtering procedure would {282} run during text reception. Obviously, the skill and training of communicative participants determines how active, dominant, and well-defined these specialist processes are. The latter may not enter conscious awareness or emerge distinctly from the vastly larger complex of processes wherein they function as components. Consequently, style can hardly be uniformly defined for all texts, but at best, described in terms of its applications and effects in particular contexts. Attempts to do the former merely lead to the stagnation and disunity surveyed in V(I.1.1f.

    1.7 LITERATURE can be defined as the domain of discourse where it is allowed, though not obligatory, to envision and present alternative models of reality. POETRY can be defined as the sub-domain of literature where this alternativity is extended to possible models of discourse itself. Literature is not forced to depart from reality, nor is poetry forced to violate normal language. These domains of communication simply open conventional reality and discourse to scrutiny and discussion as one alternative among others. Of course, attention centers upon marked departures and violations because of their high informativity, so that the analyst comes to consider them the sole determinants of style (cf. VI.1.2, 4). For the same reason, stylistics naturally gravitated toward literary and poetic texts. Important writers and readers of those texts are usually distinguished by the focus they devote to language selection. In most cultures, prestigious authors have developed a style that gives them a recognizable individual voice (cf. I.2.8.6), whereas obvious imitation and ordinariness count as drawbacks. However, these values presuppose definite social and institutional expectations about how and how far an author should innovate vs. imitate. Literary criticism reflects these expectations in its value judgements.

   1.8 The devotion of stylistics to literature and poetry as sketched out above has generally eclipsed the stylistic study of non-literary texts. Traditional composition courses were largely devoted to reading, critiquing, and imitating literary styles. McLuhan (1975: 202) cites an 18th-century entry in the Oxford English Dictionary defining the “textbook” as a “Classick Author written very wide by the Students, to give room for an Interpretation dictated by the Master, &c., to be inserted in the Interlines.” In some quarters, this attitude still lives on, leading to the impasse of “programs where teachers of English literature are required, under the exigencies created by open admissions policies, to teach the rudiments of writing but end up teaching literature just the same” (Shaughnessy, 1977: 222; cf. Maimon, 1981). Non-traditional students confronted with such complex refinement of literary styles as few of them could realistically hope to emulate during the course may be more intimidated than inspired.

   1.9 Literacy education has to begin from a gradual acquisition of styles for everyday purposes. As usual, the composition teacher is caught in a dilemma (cf. I.2.18: V.2.3, 31). Large segments of the average course or textbook are devoted enforcing conformity with the conventions of usage, grammar, {283} punctuation, and so on. Yet style depends crucially upon the individuality that lends writers their own voice. In practice, conflicts between upholding vs. transcending a norm are all too often resolved at the expense of creativity. The imitation of sample texts is an interesting compromise (cf. Weathers & Winchester, 1969, 1978; Weathers, 1980): gaining freedom by temporarily abdicating it. The “alternativity” of literature and poetry lends itself well to such training. The goal is to learn flexibility and control by assuming various stylistic tendencies in turn and thus getting a feel for the possibilities, including entirely new ones. Ideally, the students learn the principles of style, rather than a jumble of marked expressions to sprinkle over a text like Christmas-tree tinsel. But this goal presupposes an ambience in which students are not constantly anxious about choosing the “wrong” options (1.2.11, 17). Unless the demand for conformity is consistently balanced against the encouragement of creativity, style is likely to be treated as just another game with strict but mysterious rules (cf. VI. I. 16).

   1. 10 Students particularly need to appreciate how the stylistic tendencies of casual speech differ from those of expository writing (cf. V3.2). Though neither speech nor writing has one uniform style, the proportions of language options are typically different for the two modalities. Despite certain discrepancies, research generally indicates that writing is distinguished from speech by having longer words, more diverse vocabulary, fewer recurrent words, fewer references to the text producer and receiver(s), longer independent clauses, and more dependent clauses (cf. Borchers, 1936; Green, 1958; Horowitz & Newman, 1964; DeVito, 1965, 1966; Gibson, Gruner, Kibler, & Kelley, 1966; O’Donnell, 1974; Einhorn, 1978; Danielewicz & Chafe, 1981; Chafe, 1982). Some of the discrepancies in the findings came from difficulties deciding what would constitute a “spoken sentence,” or the spoken equivalent of a sentence (cf. II.3.13; IV.2.17; V.2,18; V.3.7ff). Others were due to differences in the choice of samples. For instance, Blankenship (1962: 422) found few clear differences and concluded “that syntactical structure is determined by an individual’s style,” and “that dimensions other than ‘written/oral... would be more useful to study.” But her samples, taped speeches vs. published essays by nationally known figures like Margaret Mead and Adlai Stevenson, are hardly representative of everyday communication: public speakers are prone to align their spoken style with their written one (V3.27), especially since they often compose written versions to be presented orally.

    1.11 Even unanimous statistics about the linguistic proportions of writing vs. speech would hardly stipulate concrete methods for teaching style. Tabulations are not procedures for developing a writing style, just as structural analysis of language samples by professional linguists is not an account of human language acquisition. Linguistic proportions are symptoms, not explanations (II.3.23); and may not be consciously monitored as proportions. Writing typically has longer, more diversified words and fewer recurrences {284} because the preserved surface text allows and encourages better control of familiarity and informativity (recurrence innovation, paraphrase, parallelism, ellipsis, etc.) (cf. IV.2.37-44; V. 3.32-37). The tendency toward more lengthy and subordinated clause formats corresponds to the more hierarchical organization of writing, as compared to the more additive organization of speech (cf. I.3.18; II.3.41, 43; IV.2.46; IV.3.15, 24; V.3.10, 13; VI.2.22). References to the text producer and receivers are less probable in a situation where the two sides don’t meet each other face to face. Hence, these linguistic proportions reflect communicative conditions that are by no means uniform in all contexts. To flatly recommend that a learner follow these proportions—or to reward them where they spontaneously appear (cf. II.3.32f)—is to reverse the natural causalities of communication. For example, sentence-combining increases the length of independent clauses, and the number of dependent clauses; but so far, no one has a documented empirical and theoretical account of how such manipulations fit into the total picture of a person’s style (cf. II.3.36-44).

   1.12 To appreciate the statistics summarized in VI.1.10,we should bear in mind that schooling massively intervenes in the natural selection of language options. The clearest illustration is found in the “class menagerie” of “rules” turned up by my student surveys (cf. I.2.14ff). During at least one course, and sometimes over several years, a student may be forbidden to use legitimate, strategic language options: first and second person, passives, contractions, etc. The dummy constructions ‘there is’ and ‘it is’ are deemed needless words by teachers unaware of the role of place-holders in creating focus, e.g. the “cleft” construction (IV.2.63). At the start of a sentence, ‘because’ is banned as an perilous instigator of sentence fragments; ‘and’ falls victim to the overuse it inherits from speech habits (V.3.13). The conversational frequency of ‘anyway’, ‘a lot’, ‘a little’, ‘very’, and ‘really’ doom them to exile. In all these “rules,” the expressions themselves are made the scapegoats merely because they are used carelessly in some contexts (1. 2. I 5).

   1.13 This unduly negative, coercive stance of some English teachers is a drastic response to the many bizarre dilemmas wherein they find themselves (cf. I.2.18; I.3.13; III.3.30; IV.3.44; V.1.40; V.2.3, 31; VI.I.9; VI.3.2). The educational system is heavily oriented toward a fixed dichotomy between “right vs. wrong responses” without regard for social and psychological contexts (I.2.13). Thus, a language item which is misused on occasion is easily thrown on the heap of items that are always plain “wrong.” Without clear definitions or theories of style, there is often no rational, orderly recourse for determining which options should or should not be used. By default, personal attitudes can be converted to rules and enforced by social and institutional leverage (grading, career chances, etc.).

    1.14 The damage done by this understandable but unfortunate attitude is hard to calculate (cf. I.2.17). The learners’ language insecurities mount, {285} especially among disadvantaged groups whose literacy skills ought to be our greatest concern. Rising anxiety makes writing far more taxing and error-prone than it has to be. The ever-changing lists of multifarious “rules” blur into chaos. Several students reported they had been forbidden to use “conjunctions”; we finally found out that the rule had really blacklisted “contractions.” Two students remembered the rule: “never underline the title of a book”—a conflation of “never underline the title of a paper” and “always underline the title of a book.” A student who loses track of all the rules tends to write in a pessimistic prescience that some of them are being unwittingly violated at any moment.

    1.15 Similar effects can result from forcing writers to follow numerical patterns (I.2.14). Several students from the same high school turned in papers as primitive and uniform as mass-produced Model T’s. Every paper had five paragraphs: the first and last stated the thesis in two sentences apiece, though in different wording; the middle three paragraphs opened, respectively, with ‘first/first of all’, ‘next/secondly’, and ‘finally/last of all’, and had exactly five sentences, the fifth one (which had to begin with “thus/ therefore/ consequently/ of course’) paraphrasing the first. The impression was oddly forced, ungainly, and repetitive, like a bad French villanelle:  

(465) First of all, deciding on the game is a very essential start. One must think carefully and decide on what game he would like to write. But he can’t pick a game that he would be unable to write. Also, he has to realize that the computer he is using may be limited in memory compared to what his needs are for the program. Of course, one can see that deciding on which program is a vital need to begin. 

At first I wondered if these students were all paying the same cut-rate hack to ghostwrite their papers ]This was long before the Internet paper-market]. It turned out that the students believed expository writing always follows this same drastic “pyramid” format (III.2.16) they had had to use on every paper in their high-school careers—they had never learned to write any other way. Their English department had decided as a body to allow no deviations, evidently to make grading easier (cf. I.2.15; I.3.14). The uniform pattern actually impeded the development of the effective, self-reliant writing skills that fit patterns to contexts, as in:  

(465a) The first step is to decide on a game that one is willing and able to write. The programmer has to stay within his abilities and also within the size of the computer’s memory.  

(465a) says the same thing neatly in two sentences (34 words), instead of awkwardly in the obligatory five (80 words) of (465). I sent a courteous but emphatic letter to the high school principal (whom my students wanted to sue in court), pointing out the unrealistic and unproductive nature of the approach; no answer came back.

     1.16 Few of students we surveyed had ever questioned the validity of the “rules” they were made to obey. They didn’t know, for example, that {286} many rules were simply the heritage of centuries of advice from obtuse grammarians. For example, “split infinitives” are still frowned upon, yet the original reason for their proscription was that they don’t work in Latin, the language taken in the old days (e,g. by John Dryden) as a model for English grammar (cf. Postman & Weingartner, 1966: 47). The fact that this construction is often useful, even inescapable, because the interposed adverb can’t very well go anyplace else, e.g.:  

(466) Just as the committee was about to rapidly consider and approve requested funds falsified figures were discovered.  

didn’t disturb the hallowed tradition. In the students’ view, teachers are supposed to know what is right or wrong; and if not, there is no recourse comparable to re-doing a math problem or looking up a historical fact in the encyclopedia. A student with divergent opinions on usage has no authority to defend them in class. As one said, “What could I do when she was handing out the grades?” Eventually, students were drilled to accept, even believe in, whatever prescriptions and prescriptions got handed down. Odd prose like (465) readily emerges from this compulsion: writing as if playing a game of hopscotch-step on the legal squares, and jump over the others, no matter how clumsy your progress becomes.

   1.17 Rather than following “rules,” writers should make stylistic decisions that fit the purpose of the discourse, as Aristotle showed long ago. The main concern of modern composition programs is EXPOSITORY WRITING, writing that tells what something is or how it works (III.1.29). As Irmscher (1979a: If) points out, exposition is not cleanly distinct from narration, description, or argumentation, but often an amalgam of all these things. Thus, “expository style” is not a set of distinctive features exposition must have in opposition to all other types; it is the range of resources that are helpful for explaining things to an audience (cf. Cooper & Gray, 1981). Standards of correctness enter in only to the extent that their violation genuinely impedes that task. Otherwise, student writers must have the right to develop their own style, and the freedom to form the text according to its uses.

    1.18 Scientific and technical discourse are among the major professional uses of exposition (Faigley et al., 1981). Competence in a field normally includes the ability to write reports about it. Even here, however, writing styles are open to language intervention. Journals and publishing houses typically employ copy editors whose authority to control usage is out of all proportion to their knowledge of either the language or of technical topics involved. For example, the contributors to a recent volume on writing research were surprised by rash of arbitrary tinkering with our manuscripts. ‘While’ was changed to ‘although’, ‘upon’ to ‘on’, ‘like’ to ‘such as’, and (of course) ‘which’ to ‘that’. The useful abbreviations ‘e.g.’ and ‘i.e.’ got axed in favor of the longer ‘for example’ and ‘that is’ {287} — despite monotony and wasted space. Commas bloomed into semicolons, and vice-versa. Dashes, hyphens, and quotation marks vanished like sand in a desert wind: their presumed inelegance was grounds to make authors suppress the distinction between their own terms and terms quoted from special sources; and adopt oddities like ‘loosely-knit’. My angry letters brought to light that our copy editor was trying (sporadically) to uphold the “good” usage prescribed in the handbook Modern American Usage by the arrant Wilson Follett, of all people. In effect, the prose of noted researchers on writing, such as James Britton, Carl Bereiter, and Arthur Applebee, was being tailored to the whimsical biases of an self-aggrandizing pedant (cf. I.2.11). Small wonder that the letter replying to my objections stiffly hoped I wasn’t “insisting that there were no standards to be adhered to” (i.e., that I wasn’t another “saboteur” in Follett-ese).

   1.19 Quaint notions about science as an institution filter down into stylistic biases about expository writing. Scientific objectivity is widely thought to require that the participants in communication, plus their goals and belief systems, should remain invisible, like the tricks and gadgets that make us think we’re seeing miracles in a Hollywood Bible epic. The teachers who sternly forbid opinions in student essays (cf. I.2.14) are sacrificing their incense (and sense) on the same altar. The shibboleth denouncing the first and second person, another proverb from the same gospel, is still revered in “style sheets” (including, I am pained to say, the one issued by my own department). In scientific and technical discourse, the text topic and the issues it entails naturally dominate over the roles of text producer and audience, who are after all not usually face to face (VI.1.11; VI.2.9). But a clumsy avoidance of personal references is not in the interests of genuine science. The more an author agonizes over locutions and circumlocutions that obscure his or her own role and motivation in the discussion, the more we might suspect the statements being made—just as a jury disbelieves an evasive witness. Yet “many writers of scholarly prose, and almost all teachers, believe—mistakenly—that editors will not accept” the first person; “scientific writing in particular, they believe, demands an aloof, third person style to demonstrate the author’s objectivity—or at least his or her modesty” (Williams, 1981b: 27f). Baldwin’s (1981: 223) survey found the second person “in all but the most scholarly journals,” including “addressing the reader” and “uses of ‘you’ as an indefinite pronoun.1[Strangely enough, Baldwin (1981: 224) clings to the old misconception that “technical and scientific writing never uses the first or second person, employing as it does the third person and passive voice to emphasize the objectivity of the research.” Let’s hope this “objectivity” doesn’t rest on grammar alone.]

   1.20 The rule presumably lives on because it also presents the scientist’s own intuitions, inclinations, and commitments as an abstract institution. You can garner authority by casting yourself as ‘this researcher’ (or ‘the present writer’): {288}  

(467) This researcher simply felt that grammar is an indispensable tool for the researcher (O’Hare, 1973: 2)

 If you can’t figure out what your findings mean, you can say:  

(468) An interpretation of this interaction does not readily present itself. (Blass & Siegman, 1975: 31)

 I can’t see the benefits of these coy, ungraceful flourishes, least of all in studies of the writing process itself. I know I am ‘1’ (for better or for worse); an audience should decide for itself whether I am also a ‘researcher’. If ‘I’ am the one making a presentation, surely (469a) rather than the awkward (469) is no act of hybris:  

(469) This whole question will of course be returned to. (O’Hare, 1973: 37) 

(469a) I will of course return to this whole question.

   1.21 If an audience is expected to read a paper, they deserve to find out what this particular writer has to offer. The latter’s stance and thesis affect the entire dynamics of communication and thus the motivation for reading the text at all. A writer’s views should be openly identified as such whenever their departure from the prevailing consensus might not be clear. Stylistic taboos against the first-person may lead to genuine confusion. One paper of mine was scolded by a journal referee whose own style exhibited no shimmering polish:  

(470) The informality of the paper has been localized in the use of the first person.

The anonymous pedagogue serenely deleted all first-persons, even if the statement was thereby falsified:

(471) According to the most recent version I could obtain, the reading process would run as follows. [my text]

(471a) According to the most recent obtainable version the reading process would run as follows. [revision]

I didn’t even know what the “most recent obtainable version” was; I only could cite what I personally had coaxed, over the telephone, out of a harried scientist at BBN battling madly against grant deadlines. For all I knew, he grabbed the report from the top of some stack and mailed it off.

   1.22 The abuse of the passive to conceal the individual and his or her views inside a protective institution has long been censured by writing experts (e.g. Gibson 1966: 94; Shaughnessy, 1977: 86; Williams, 1981b: 25ff). However, such abuses mislead some people to see the tool itself as the villain and throw out the passive along with its many positive uses (Walpole, 1979; cf. I.2.14; VI.I.2). The experimental research reviewed in IV.2.61 shows that the passive is the natural and justified choice for ranking the object of an action over the agent in numerous contexts. In scientific and technical writing, for example, the agent is often a lab technician, an experimenter, or a natural force, none of which need be relevant to a statement. Compare:

(472) Excised curarized frog sartorius muscles were massively stimulated. (Gopnik, 1972: 126)

(472a) Two overworked and nauseated graduate students in biology massively stimulated excised curarized frog sartorius muscles.  

Curiously, passives are often condemned in the same “style sheets” as the first person. A student who strains to avoid the latter, e.g.: 

(473) It was wondered if this doll was the last. 

falls from grace for using the former. In practice, style-conscious expository writers avoid the first person much more consistently than the passive. Language authorities may employ the passive at the very moment they berate it (Williams, 198la: 158):  

(474) I list [... ] the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged [ ... ] the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active. (Orwell)

(475) Emphasis is often achieved by the use of verbs in the active rather than in the passive voice. (Reisman)  

Evidently, the conflict between two mutually exclusive “rules” is resolved in favor of the one that lends more institutional authority to the writer’s role (cf. VI. I. 20).

    1.23 Scientific and technical style are also characterized by specialized vocabulary whose acceptance is a necessary ritual for membership in a scientific or technical community (cf. Kuhn, 1970). The original impetus was to promote communication by agreeing on a set of defined, standardized terms. But communication only suffers when the terms are used as barriers against the general audience, and displayed like medals in a military parade to cow the ordinary citizen. Many terms continue to appear in published prose long after the theories that engendered them have grown unfashionable — “stimulus/response’ (II.2.5), ‘competence’ (II.3.9), ‘left-branching’ (II.1.13), ‘T-unit’ (II.3.18), etc. Unless the terms are re-defined via current theories, large research projects may be misleadingly conceptualized and described. On the other hand, changing entrenched terminology is a hard and thankless labor. Some of my terms in this book, though carefully explained and indexed, are ungainly and novel enough to be attacked as “jargon.” ‘Text producer’ covers both ‘speaker’ and ‘writer’; ‘processing’ includes both mental and physical agency; ‘informativity’ and ‘intertextuality’ designate standards that make a text a text. Elegance and euphony must be sacrificed to precision now and then, but finicky demurrals can be expected.

   1.24 Professional organizations may set express guidelines for style. For example, the “publication manual” of the American Psychological Association has been embraced by many journals and has contributed greatly to standardization. But some of its specifications are arbitrary {290} and inconsiderate.1 [See the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Assocation, second edition (Baltimore: Garamond/Pridemark, 1974), pp. 59ff. Saving space can’t be the motive, since the same sheet demands ‘pp.’ for page numbers, e.g. (1970, pp. 3If) where (1970: 3ff) would be perfectly clear. More likely, the convenience of the author (not having to look up names and numbers) is being rated over that of the reader (cf. III.3.16).]  In a bibliography, researchers have only initials, not first names, and page numbers are given for journals, but not for edited volumes. Interdisciplinary readers may spend hours in the library trying to find the mailing address of ‘J.R. Anderson’ or ‘E.E. Smith’; or sorting out ‘G. Miller’ into ‘George’ vs. ‘Gerald’, and ‘N. Johnson’ into ‘Nancy’ vs. ‘Neal’; or leafing through thick tomes to track down a citation. References in the text go in alphabetical order, though chronological order is more sensible in fields where research is historical and cumulative. I myself follow such directives only when they do not inconvenience readers. Uniformity is no excuse for hampering communication.

    1.25 As this illustration suggests, standardization ought to be done on rational grounds. Style is not likely to improve in the whole society until we all agree to resolve the trade-off between the writer’s convenience and mannerisms vs. the audience’s needs for clarity and readability (cf. I.2.1 1; III.3.16; IV.2.67; IV3.35; VI.2.37). Traditional priorities have largely been the opposite, and for at least two cogent reasons. First, verbose, complicated, and disorganized prose is much easier to churn out than concise, streamlined, and transparent prose. When I thought, after at least twenty revisions of most passages, that I had this book done, I read it again (silently and out loud) and saw it was still too long and awkwardly composed. To take my own advice, I had to face the orgy of fear and loathing involved in starting over. Even spending between 7 and 16 hours a day at a word processor (far better than a typewriter for this sort of thing), I needed over two months to manicure the monster into what I began to consider readable English. (Chapter 1, for instance, shrank by almost 20%—and it had already been edited the most, since revising complete chapters is less horrible than drafting new ones.) Nearly every word and sentence was eyed with keen distrust; paragraphs and sections migrated from chapter to chapter to unify the stages of the discussion (not too nice when you are working with those 5-inch floppies that held about five pages each). To insist on clarity and organization in exposition sometimes demands a twinge of fanaticism.

   1.26 The second reason is that verbose, complex prose can bring rich rewards. Businesses and agencies win out over customers by giving them unreadable contracts to sign, as I have learned from testifying in court on the meaning of cryptic insurance policies,1 [Things improved when Florida passed a regulation that the customer wins the case as soon as the court is convinced that the disputed passage is indeed ambiguous or incomprehensible. However, not all customers know about this advantage.] e.g.: 

(476) “Residence employee” means an employee of an insured person while performing duties arising out of and in the course of employment in connection with  the maintenance or use of the residence premises, including similar duties elsewhere, not in connection with the business of an insured person.  

Public laws and statutes are often too arcanely expressed for the general public to discuss or contest, sometimes even baffling professional lawyers (cf. Bond, Hayes, & Flower, 1981; Charrow, 1981). Beyond these tangible effects, cumbersome prose apparently flatters the ego of its perpetrator. Forcing readers to slave for comprehension, and to reply in the same arduous language, is an exercise of power and privilege, as bureaucrats well knows (cf. II.3.26; III.3.16; V3.37; VI.I.23). The allurements of writing obscurely are almost irresistible. On one side, tradition, philosophy, government, law, commerce, science, and technology seem to clamor for ornate, complex, and abstruse discourse; on the other side, the obliging, unseen reader modestly asks for clear, concrete, and readable discourse.

    1.27 A reorientation of style toward the reader can begin nowhere else but in the teaching of English composition. Instructors should both align their responses to style with socially general responses and work to disseminate stylistic tolerance and enlightenment in society itself (Gere & Smith, 1979). Purpose and audience should be better defined (III.2.12f, 19), so that stylistic choices could be made in terms of their relevance (VI.1.17). If we concur that writing in school should prepare students for writing in real life, stylistic compulsions such as blacklisted words or phrases and straitjacket essay formats (VI.1.12-15) are irrelevant. Writing with the sole purpose of following “rules” to get a good grade doesn’t equal writing to convey a message. A clear, direct style is hard enough without fretting over whether it is “incorrect” to open a sentence with a conjunction or a relative clause with ‘which’ instead of ‘that’. Too much stress on minor points blocks the major ones from view (cf. I.2.17).

    1.28 Paradoxically, students worry about style to the point of adopting tactics that only make the matter worse. Rule violations, they hope, will get lost in a tangle of complex prose. This strained, pretentious complexity is naturally disaster-prone, as we see in a memo mailed out by rural Florida high-school graduates to explain how they selected a site for a class reunion. No doubt pseudo-officialese was thought to be the tone a proper organizing committee should adopt, but the result was:  

(477) Our conclusions were based on many features, of which includes mutual agreement as of the time and nature of the reunion. Although we strongly considered pursuing indivudal [sic] imput [sic] from all former class members on this matter, we all felt that it would be best to tentatively commit ourselves to the plans outline below [... j Please include with remittance pictures of you children, names & ages on back please they will be returned at reunion.  

Student writers with greater skill may still fall victim to their own mazes, e.g., overlooking the reactivation in (cf. V.3.33): 

 (478) The actionist is the one with whom the practitioner deals with to accomplish tasks and to achieve goals of change effort.{292}  

Somewhere in their schooling, such students must have had teachers who graded highly for pompous style, even if it wasn’t officially recommended (cf. II.3.26f). Otherwise, why would freshman writers proudly hand in prose replete with nominalizations and recurrences, e.g.: 

(479) a new engineer may be assigned to a design department where he assists in the performance of calculations needed to the development of a new vehicle design; or to a structural analysis group where he cheeks strengths of the vehicle’s structures; to a performance group in which calculations on speed and other performance items are made [etc.]  

The student who defined ‘good writing’ as ‘writing you can’t understand,’ or the student who complained that she deserved a higher grade on her essay because she had read it to her friends and they hadn’t understood it, or the class that ranked a piece of gobbledygook above a passage by Mark Twain-such students have merely accepted the models that society offers them” (Shaughnessy, 1977: 196f).

    1.29 To bring about changes in people’s writing style, we can start from the same approach I proposed for moving from speech to writing in V. 3. We can diagnose and build upon the current skills and attitudes people exhibit toward style, for instance, when asked to vary the style of a stretch of text. We can test how stylistic variations affect the people’s abilities to understand and remember text content (cf. Jones, 1977; Thorndyke, 1977; Beaugrande, 1979c, 1980a, 1982e). This second line of inquiry accidentally shed some light on the first. Working with Walter Kintsch, I designed variants of a prose sample he (and several researchers before him, such as Ernie Rothkopf at Bell Laboratories) had already used in experiments. It wasn’t very well-written to begin with (an old “reading test lesson” from McCall and Crabbs) as I have since been told more often than was at all called-for, but I had to use what was available. The original went like this:¹ [The other versions are listed in Beaugrande (1979c: 51f); which report also deals with how readers tended to imitate in their protocols the style of the version they read; and with how the six versions were graded by composition experts.]  

(480) A great black and yellow V-2 rocket 46 feet long stood in a desert in New Mexico. Empty, it weighed five tons. For fuel it carried eight tons of alcohol and liquid oxygen. Everything was ready. Scientists and generals withdrew to some distance and crouched behind earth mounds. Tvo red flares rose as a signal to fire the rocket.

     With a great roar and a burst of flame the rocket rose slowly and then faster and faster. Behind it trailed sixty feet of yellow flame. Soon the flame came to look like a yellow star. In a few seconds it was too high to be seen, but radar tracked it as it sped upward to 3,000 rnph. A few minutes after it was fired, the pilot of a watching plane saw it return at a speed of 2,400 mph and plunge into earth forty miles from the starting point.

 {293} Our tests with Colorado psychology students had a striking result: whether the style was plain, terse, ornate, blundering, or downright misleading, readers understood and recalled the content almost uniformly well. Yet surely style matters in everyday life, unless students have become experts at dealing with disorganized prose. To my relief, later tests showed that the uniformity was due to the well-structured, familiar topic that helped readers predict and integrate content (cf. IV2.48). The same style variations had significant effects when the topic was more remote, e.g., ‘the cause of sunspots’.

   1.30 Meanwhile, I was re-running the original tests with composition students, partly as another memory probe and partly as a diagnostic of their writing experience (cf. VI.3.8ff). I would read it aloud and have them “tell it in their own words.” The switch from psychology classes to English composition classes had a curious side-effect. Several students thought the point of the task was not to recall the content so much as to parade their style. Instead of a dumb test lesson for kids, prose came back that xould qualify its instigators as future writer for Hollywood:  

(481) Thier they stood, three striving scientists looking at thier creation, thier live ambition. The Autumn night was cool, with a gentle breeze, and moonlight streaming down reflecting off thier metallic god looming above them.

(482) Night turns to day, light to dark [huh?]; lightening sparks, the heavens open up dragging the rocking and panicing craft to an unwilling destiny Forces. encircle and pull and draw to the brimstone hell in heaven Through icicle stars and around Jacob’s-coat colored bodies of matter, past hazy smoke forming rivers ending in misty whirlpools.  

The psychology students had used a mere handful of mildly extravagant words, and only on the one version I had transformed into a correspondingly overdone style. Apparently, entering a composition class creates a special context that can impose a peculiar interpretation upon a neutral task (cf. III.3.24-30).

     1.31 To pursue the matter, I gave another class copies of (480) and asked them to “put it into a fancy-sounding style.” What that might mean they had to imagine on their own. The topic of space flight should allow some leeway to enact whatever the students believed to affect style. As it turned out, most of them manipulated the style with a limited set of consistent techniques:
   1.31.1 Synonyms were substituted for text expressions. The ‘rocket’ was a ‘missile’, ‘craft’, ‘spacecraft’, ‘projectile’, ‘ship’, ‘space vehical’, ‘vessel’, or ‘tower’. ‘Stood’ was traded for ‘towered’, ‘abode’, or ‘stalked’, ‘empty’ for ‘vacant’, ‘carried’ for ‘transported’, and ‘fuel’ for ‘propellant’. Instead of ‘withdrawing’ and ‘crouching’, the personnel ‘dispersed and shielded themselves’, or ‘receded and squashed down’. The ‘radar’ ‘detected’ or ‘traced’ the rocket rather than ‘tracking’ it. The synonyms were presumably intended to be rarer and fancier than the original vocabulary; some of the uses were certainly unconventional in these contexts. {294}

   1.31.2 Modifiers were inserted so generously that they must have been considered decisive markers of style. Some papers opened with a flourish:  

(483) An uncomprehendable, pitch-black and sun-blazing yellow, high-speed, V-2, rocket jet

(484) An enormous jet stream glossy black and canary yellow V-2 rocket 

The ‘desert’ was termed ‘dry’, ‘arid’, ‘barren’, ‘lifeless’, ‘lonely’, ‘red-hot’, ‘scorching’, ‘blistering’, and ‘sun-bleached’. The ‘alcohol’ was ‘potent’, and the ‘liquid oxygen’ ‘precious’. The ‘scientists’ and ‘generals’, who were extolled as ‘brilliant’, ‘important’, ‘well-trained’, and ‘respected’, hid behind mounds that wavered among being ‘chocolate’, ‘clay colored’, ‘sandinfested’, or ‘muddy, sloshy’.¹[Cape Kennedy may have been the launching scene that triggered such mental imagery. When slides of that location were shown during the reading, readers tended to disregard the ‘desert’ in their reports.)] The ‘star’ was (inevitably) ‘twinkling’. The epidemic of modifiers even seized expressions of quantity: ‘a complete forty-six feet’; ‘time-lacking seconds’; ‘a seemingly endless few minutes’; and ‘a whopping 3000 miles per single solitary hour’.

     1.31.3 Sensory impressions were conveyed, mostly visual, some acoustic. Colors were intensified: ‘coal black’, ‘brightly painted yellow’, ‘lemon yellow’, ‘blood red’, ‘ruby red’, and ‘scarlet’. Costumes were donated: ‘scientists dressed in white lab coats and generals clad in military attire’ ‘with tons of medals hanging from their uniforms’. The ‘roar and burst’ touched off apocalyptic eloquence: ‘radiant’, ‘sweltering’, ‘fearful’, ‘growling’, ‘tumultuous’, ‘thunderous’, ‘deafening’, ‘earth-shaking’, and ‘earth-shattering’. The take-off left behind a ‘collection of torrid flames’ and a ‘fluttering waning star’ as the rocket ‘dashed upward’ and then ‘spiraled to the earth’, where it ‘smashed into the hard terrain’ and was left a ‘smoldering hulk’. In the burgeoning euphoria, the modest ‘flares’ of the original (480a) were promoted to miniature rockets:  

(480a) Two red flares rose

(485) A pair of crimson flares jetted into the sky

(486) Two lazerlike flares raged across the sky

(487) Two fiery, engine-red flares were forcefully shot up into the heavens.  

Evidently, the students associated high style with vivid, colorful scenes and events.

    1.31.4 Quantities were emphasized or increased. The ‘V-2 rocket’, actually quite humble compared to a Titan or an Atlas, was ‘hulking’, ‘humongous’, ‘colosal’, and ‘gargantuan’; the ‘tons’ it weighed were ‘massive’, ‘ponderous’, and ‘whopping’. The personnel, along with ‘millions of onlookers’, withdrew to an ‘extreme distance’ behind ‘massive mountains of earth’. The rocket flew at ‘blazing’, ‘fantastic’, or ‘unfathomable speeds’ {295} and returned ‘minutes, seemingly hours later’ to its ‘wopping impact’ at a ‘considerable lengthy distance’ from the starting point. Hyperbole of diniension thus assumed the stylistic role it sometimes had for such authors as Rabelais and Shakespeare: 

(488) His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear’d arm

Crested the world. His voice was propertied

As all the tuned spheres […] Realms and islands

Were as plates dropped from his pocket. (Antony and Cleopatra, V, ii, 82-92)  

   1.31.5 Human reactions to events were depicted. Sometimes, the reactions were assigned to the characters in the story. The ‘scientists and generals’ were ‘cautious’, ‘eager’, ‘sceptical’, ‘unbelieving’, ‘tense’, ‘concerned’, ‘anxious’, or ‘excited’. The ‘pilot’ was ‘worried’ or ‘incredulous’. Other times, the reactions belonged to no agent in particular. The ‘overwhelmingly great’ or ‘incredibably bulky rocket’ with its ‘overwhelmingly awesome 46 feet’ was ‘unbelievably rurnored to weigh a massive five tons, when empty!!!!’ After the ‘alarmingly red flares’ rose, it went aloft with ‘an impressive roar’ and an ‘agonizing slowness’ that gave way to an ‘incredible’, ‘amazing’, or ‘hair-raising speed’. After ‘climactic’, ‘breathtaking moments’, it went into a ‘devastating’, ‘pitiful plunge’. The writers’ intention was no doubt to suggest how the reader should react.

   1.31.6 Metaphors were introduced into a text previously devoid of them (aside from the ‘yellow star’). The rocket ‘thrived on’ fuel ‘to satisfy its huge appetite’. A ‘explosion screamed’ as the craft took off like a ‘ray of fury’ amid ‘a great bluster of engines’ and a ‘chorus of rumbling volcanoes’. It ‘crashed through the atmosphere’, ‘released by man’s claws into the uncaptive desolution of space’, and ‘worked toward its destiny’, followed by its ‘plume of yellow flame’. Though it ‘escaped from the clutches of earth’s gravity’, the rocket couldn’t elude ‘the invisible, reaching fingers of radar’, that ‘modern miracle’. Finally, a ‘pilot, sentinel to the atmosphere’, saw it ‘return like a loyal friend’ and ‘plunge like a meteor’ down to ‘mother Earth’.

    1.31.7 Technological terms served as stylistic decorations. The ‘fuel-injected rocket’, a ‘huge piece of man’s technology’, was powered by a ‘highly combustible’ and ‘highly volatile mixture’ of fuel with ‘oxygen in its unusual liquid form’. The launch came ‘with all systems go’, when ‘all mechanisms had the go-ahead’. Tracking was done with a ‘precise and complicated’ or ‘advanced radar system’, or with ‘highly technical radar equipment’. The ‘pilot’ was retrained to be an ‘engineer’. Apparently, technological terms are taken as style markers because they are characteristic of scientific and technical text types, just as metaphors are associated with literary and poetic texts.

   1.32 It was striking that a class of naive writers should spontaneously deploy such consistent techniques to influence style. {296} The techniques listed in I.31.1-7 accounted for nearly all operations performed on the original sample (480). Apparently due to the vivid, concrete topic, vague bureaucratic language was only rarely put into play, e.g., when the rocket returned to the ‘point of commencement of this activity’; or when the personnel ‘withdrew their physical position’. Also, I had been inoculating the students all along by having them simplify and revise ponderous, gratuitous verbiage (VI.1.34).

    1.33 Admittedly, the freshmen didn’t firmly control their forays into fancy style and slipped off into parody. Their intent to “substitute” the words of academia” “for the plain words of daily life” (Shaughnessy, 1977: 188) was not always felicitous: ‘magnanimous’ for ‘huge’, ‘vacuous’ for ‘empty’, ‘abode’ for ‘stood’, etc. And their neologisms or solecisms may have been mere confusions of established words: ‘illustrous red blazes’, an ‘illuminous flame’, a ‘gleamy star’, an ‘inconvincible five tons’, an ‘uncaptive desolution’, or a ‘desecration of the rocket’. Still, whatever we want to teach about style must begin from the learner’s beliefs and tactics regarding style. Like their grammar, the students’ style is a body of procedures derived from experience and deserves to be tapped and applied-not just derided and patronized because the writers do not wield the academic authority of scholars and poets. Freedom to experiment is the first step toward improving stylistic sensitivity and competence (cf. Weathers, 1980; VI.1.9).

   1.34 Though at an early stage, my findings on style and its acquisition support these contentions. If, as Marcel Proust remarked, “style is a quality of vision, a revelation of the universe particular to each of us, not seen by others,” a teacher should encourage more variety and less conformity. Students can profit most by manipulating styles without being afraid of intolerant reactions. At least in basic work, students should be encouraged to expand the uses of their current vocabularies before they risk the appropriation of exotic new words. Even unskilled writers have a larger and more complicated stock of words than their casual conversation reveals. As we saw in VI. 1.28, the teacher sometimes needs to calm them down when they want to display dangerously elaborate language. For the naive writer, a thesaurus is treacherous by listing items without contexts. Many words in such lists cannot be substituted for each other except to pursue a specific intention (sarcasm, hyperbole, etc.). Exercises should include simplifying style as well as making it fancier. It requires some exertion to retrain a writer who thinks that English papers should be as pompous as possible. The student who wrote (489) regularly has to go through a cumbersome version before she reaches a more readable one like (489a):  

(489) Various forms of emotional frustration and behavioral disturbances result from the child’s inability to meet the demands of the world with adequate equipment for communicating. Autistic children have difficulty making use of auditory information.

(489a) Disturbances result because the child cannot meet the demands of the  world without the ability to communicate. The autistic child has a pronounced hearing problem.  

In principle, there is no reason why toning down elevated style can’t be done with explicit revision techniques just as well as reworking (‘toning up’) casual, speech-based style (cf. V.3.39ff). Whatever resources the student already has should be harnessed.

   1.35 In a society where language style is so closely tied to roles, status, and attitudes, the teacher’s task cannot be easy. But for the same reason, it is extremely crucial that stylistic flexibility and control be acquired during one’s education. As Mellon (1969: 82) observes, “the teaching of styles” is “what we really mean when we speak of teaching writing.” Individual interviews help to tailor our advice on style to the aspirations of each student. Much more research needs to address the evolution of stylistic awareness in skilled writers, and the methods for influencing that evolution through instruction. Some intuitions and strategies are already present, as we can see from the results in V.1.3.1. Comprehensive, tolerant training can encourage the advancement of the student’s own skills and, in the long run, of society’s disposition toward straightforward communication and mutual respect among linguistic personalities.  

2. THE STAGES OF DISCOURSE 

    2.1 Like style, the STAGES of a discourse, i.e., its progression from beginning to end, have not been well defined in terms of processes. The preoccupation with mechanical matters eclipsed the instruction of stages until the recent re-introduction of rhetoric into composition (cf. I.3.17f; II.3.34; III.2.23; IV.2.41; VI.2.22). Skilled speakers and writers intuitively know how to organize a progression such that a discourse has a workable beginning, middle, and end. The beginning and end are typically less fuzzily defined than the middle (whatever comes in between). Explicit signals such as ‘to start with’, ‘in conclusion’, and so on, are less decisive (and more intrusive) than the flow of content and purpose (VI.2.10, 36). A complex interaction among goals, ideas, and conceptual development decides what is talked about and when. Frequently, writing states a THESIS: an outlook on a problematic issue (cf. III.2.16). The strategic position of the thesis is often, but not always, at the beginning and end. Presenting your thesis at the beginning appears to be effective if the audience is not yet strongly committed on the issue, or is unfamiliar with it; and if the opposing thesis won’t be presented, or else only after the audience has committed itself (cf. Hovland, 1974). Following up your thesis right away with supporting evidence is persuasive (cf. Weiss, Rawson, & Pasamanick, 1974). Restating your thesis at the end is helpful if the opposing thesis was presented quite a bit earlier; {298} and if the audience can  act on your thesis soon after the discourse (cf. N. Miller & Campbell, 1974; Wilson & H. Miller, 1974).¹ [Attitude change is affected by other factors besides order of presentation, e.g., by the impact of the discourse on emotions, anxieties, prior commitments, participant roles (self- esteem, social influence, ego defense), and so on. An important collection of papers is offered in Himmelfarb & Eagly (Eds.), (1974). Although cognitive states are assiduously circumscribed in iron-clad behaviorist jargon (e.g. “{attitudinal verbal reinforcements”), the work merits consideration—provided a theoretical framework can be found (cf. Steinman, 1982: 320f).

     2.2 Since the deepest phase of processing is goal-planning (111.2.6), participants need a reason for the discourse: why speaking or writing should take place at all. The reason is usually clarified during the beginning, either through monitoring the immediate situation, or through introducing a topic that is relevant, i.e., bearing on the participants' goals and intentions (cf. 11.2.10; 111.2.9, 15; VI.2.6f, 11, 32). In the next-deepest phase, that of ideas, the content of the discourse is organized and inter-connected in an, explicit topic flow. This flow is often controlled by degrees of generality (cf. Vi.2.7, 22ff, 28, 34, 36): thesis vs. evidence, whole vs. part, and so on. Each topic in succession is expected to be both interesting (novel, unexpected,] etc., VI.2.32) as well as relevant within the context of previous topics or of the situation. Since problems are typically both interesting and relevant (VI.2.8-1 1), a thesis makes a good topic. Eventually, the discourse ends when the the topic flow appears satisfactorily resolved, e.g., when headway has been made toward the participants' goals. The middle of the discourse therefore usually pursues goals and elaborates topics, and is accordingly lower in generality than the beginning and ending (VI.2. 10f, 23; 34ff). But all these tendencies can change in context. For instance, a general thesis is more common in personal essays than in scientific and technical texts (VI.2.7ff). 2.3 In spoken conversation between two people, both participants can contribute to beginning and ending the discourse, plus negotiating the topics in the middle (cf. Schegloff, 1968; Jefferson, 1973; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). When the speakers meet face-to-face, greetings are exchanged with the options of entering into a discourse or continuing on one's way. If conversation begins, the first topic is likely to be construed and remembered as the reason for the discourse; hence, the more relevant (urgent, important, salient) a possible topic seems, the more likely a speaker is to start a discourse rather than walk away. Once the discourse gets going, the conversation itself offers further contexts in which other topics become relevant (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973: 301f). Thus, topics may concern the situation at hand, the immediately preceding utterances, and the prior knowledge shared among participants. Consider this sample (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973: 314).² [Following Schegloff and co-workers, I use 'h' and 'hh' for less vs. more intense aspira-tions; and '[&]' for the point where an utterance starts to overlap with that of the next speaker. The need for special ways to transcribe speech typically collides with the need to read the samples in a easy, natural way.} 

(490) A: Allo

B: Did I wake you

A: Who’s it

B: Nancy

A: Oh hi

B: Hi did I wake you

A: No no no, not at all hh [&] h ed ringing I kept thinkin maybe

B: [mumble] after a while it start I should hang up but I you know hh

A: No no no, it’s OK. [&] I was just uh rushing a little that’s all hh

B: Oh good. hh Urnmm don’t bring any sausage [etc.]

The opening is devoted to the reason why speaker A took so long to answer the phone. When the situation has been monitored to see if conversation is convenient, the topic of ‘bringing sausage’ supplies the reason for the discourse. B’s goal is to prevent an expected action on A’s part.

    2.4 The middle of a conversation has a topic flow that can be influenced by how speaking turns are assigned (cf. Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). Reichman (1978) argues that a small range of content relationships accounts for the coherence of conversation. A topic may be either a specification or a generalization of its predecessor, or may rehearse the same content in a clarified or reconsidered perspective. One example is a conversation where A is telling about her mother (Reichman, 1978: 303f normalized the transcription for print):  

(491) A: She never liked her position in her job, which was a big part of her stupid problem, that she never changed it. Oh didn’t I tell you, when I was home a couple of—about two months ago I was really angry ‘cause I know how much she’s suffered ‘cause she hasn’t had a career—or feelings of inferiority. And here I’m doing it and she’s trying to stop me. And so, you know, I get so angry, and she was sitting and talking how important it is to have a career and to be able to do what you’re doing. And I was just sitting in the living room dying, really getting angry. But I didn’t say anything, which I thought was progress that I didn’t say anything.

B: Is it?

A: Oh it was progress, ‘cause I used to get into stupid arguments and fights with them.

B: But isn’t it hard work, to keep all that in? 

The general topic of how someone’s mother feels about her job shifts down to a specific incident between her and the speaker in regard to ‘having a career’. A confrontation with the mother and the speaker’s reported reactions lead off toward a different general topic, whether it’s better to keep silent when you’re angry or to say something about it. Each topic illustrates, or is illustrated by, the one just before it. This sequence of close content associations contrasts with far-ranging topic shifts that pick up on something in the external situation, as in (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974: 714): {300} 

(492) A: Oh I could drive if you want me to.

B: Well no I’ll drive,don’ min’

A: hhh I meant to offah [pause of 16 seconds] These shoes look nice when you keep putting stuff on ‘em

 The ‘driving’ topic was exhausted, and, after a pause, the ‘shoes’ were noticed and monitored as the new topic.

    2.5 Once the reason for the conversation is apparent, the major option is to close; one participant offers a closing which the other one accepts or rejects (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973: 307):  

(493) A: I ... ] and uh we’re gonna see if we can’t uh tie in our plans a little better

B: Okay [&] fine

A: Alright?

B: Right

A: Okay boy.

B: Okay

A: Bye [&] bye

B: G’night  

As Schegloff and Sacks (1973: 306) note, a popular conversational closing is a general statement, such as “conventional wisdom which can be heard as the ‘moral’ or ‘lesson’ of the topic thereby being possibly closed.” In (493), the general goal of ‘tying in plans better’ winds things up. In another example (ibid.), one speaker closes off the topic with a commonplace saying:  

   (494) A: Uh-you know, it’s just like bringin the blood up.

             B: Yeah well, things uh always work out for the best  

and the conversation ends almost at once. Such general statements make good endings because they won’t be argued with (even when things work out for the worst) and don’t need further illustrations. Just as a controversial thesis leads into a discourse, a trivial one leads back out.

   2.6 The coherence of expository writing is of course organized differently from that of conversation (cf. Tannen [Ed.], 1983; V.3.2). The communicative situation and shared past experience are mediated in time and space, so that commonsense knowledge may be the only reliable background. Harweg (1980) calls most written texts “non-obtrusive” (the audience comes to the text rather than vice-versa) and “pluri-local (the audience does not share the visual field of the text producer).¹ [Harweg stresses that this is not a speaking vs. writing distinction. For example, students pass written notes in class: the text comes to the audience, and visual fields are shared. Still, written texts are more often “non-obtrusive” than spoken ones.] These factors constrain the options typically used in the beginning, middle, or end of the written text. The discourse goal tends to be less explicit, sometimes unacknowledged, {301} and its relevance to the audience’s personal situation more remote. Topics can be presented for their interest value, or their relevance to wide social concerns (cf. VI.2.2, 33, 36). For example, Hunter S. Thompson’s study of the Hell’s Angels portrays motorcycle gangs as losers fighting back on a society that both abhors and is fascinated by the lawless freedom of its own outcasts. Yet audiences may prefer to read the book for its novel and salient content and to disregard its social aspect.

    2.7 The fact that the audience must seek out the written text influences the overall transaction between writer and reader (cf. Shanklin, 1982). By obtaining and concerning itself with the text, the audience has already shown its willingness to consider topics and goals whose relevance is mediated. If you start reading a biography, such as Lytton Strachey’s The End of General Gordon:  

(495) During the year 1883 a solitary English gentleman was to be seen, wandering, with a thick book under his arm, in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.  

you face a higher density of informative content than you would at the opening of a normal conversation (Harweg, 1980: 318f). The writer is expected to reward the audience’s effort of obtaining the text and accepting dense, remote content. The personal essay, an expository sub-type favored in some composition courses, lends the writer a conspicuous role: to inform or entertain the audience with personal knowledge and experience. To fit this main goal, the text often begins with a high degree of generality, e.g., what is true of society at large, so that the topic appears widely revelant and motivates further reading:1 [Samples (496-499) are from Levin (Ed.), (1977: 2, 169, 7, 57) ] 

(496) We live in an age of change and mobility. (Martin Krovetz)

(497) Everybody at some time has probably felt blood pressure rise and pulse when loaded words have been used to diminish him. (Russell Baker)

 Conversely, a specific beginning should make the audience interested in finding out what general issue is at stake, e.g.:

 (498) A handsome brownstone house is being razed across the street from us, thrusting us into conflict between two seemingly irreconcilable groups. (Caskie Stinnett)

(499) One hot night in the summer of 1949, I climbed to my usual perch in the cramped press box above the wooden stand of the baseball park in Lumberton, North Carolina. (Tom Wicker)

 These detailed beginnings later lead to the general topic of old ways of life disappearing.

     2.8 The personal essay seeks relevance especially by taking sides on a problematic human issue (cf. VI.2.1). This problem is an uncertain {302} (and  hence dynamic) situation affecting the beliefs and goals of many people. Audiences enjoy controversy, especially if the writer seems to support their own belief system (cf. III.3.15). Topic shifts are free to move toward any content the writer feels will support the thesis, e.g., historical trends illustrated by urban clearance (498) or by baseball leagues (499). The continuation of (496) is a collection of incidents in the author’s life that can represent ‘change and mobility’. The “truth” of the general thesis about the human condition is strengthened by the truth of one’s real-life experiences. The essay ends when the thesis seems sufficiently well-supported.

    2.9 The stages of scientific exposition reflect a different approach to stating and supporting a thesis. The content of the thesis is usually far more specific than that treated in the personal essay, so that supporting materials are in turn extremely detailed, and the writer’s experiences play a much smaller part. The customary beginning is to announce the problem. One’s own thesis can be presented by itself (500), saved for later (501), or contrasted with its predecessors and rivals (502):  

(500) A basic theme of this report is that early school experience is probably the most important stage in a child’s educational career. (Cicourel, 1974: 1)

(501) In this Chapter I am concerned with the placement of students in particular classes. (Leiter, 1974: 17)

(502) In recent years cognitive psychology has shaken off the artificial limitations of its subject matter and methodology that had impaired its progress. [... ] It is not enough to describe behavior in certain well-controlled laboratory situations; such descriptions must be powerful and general enough to deal with a much broader range of observations about cognition and language derived from other disciplines. (Kintsch, 1974: 1)

The audience can decide at once if the problem is interesting or relevant enough to warrant reading more. For the scientist, relevance is also specialized, as befits the topic.

     2.10 The middle of a scientific text brings in evidence to support the writer’s thesis according to much stricter conventions than in the personal essay. At the end, the writer sums up the evidence brought forth and the reasons why it justifies a conclusion about the problem and its solution:  

(500a) Objectivity is claimed in standardized testing conditions by holding constant or eliminating cultural background conditions and socially relevant features. These so-called objective measures do not recognize that each child’s performance is a product of each child’s conception of his own language abilities and social understanding as they interlace with the natural intrusions and contributions of the learning or testing setting as socially defined by adults. (Cicourel, 1974: 16): 

(501a) The practices described in this chapter are everyday activities {303} which form seen but unnoticed” sense-making methods for locating and describing students. [These] practices are essential to the process of more “standardized” tests as well. (Leiter, 1974: 73)

(502a) I have tried to show that the formal representation of meaning can [be] a useful basis for experimental investigations; [... ] it appears capable of providing the broad conceptual framework for the psychological study of memory and knowledge which the problem demands. The experiments reported here demonstrate that a broadly based approach is possible today, and even fruitful. (Kintsch, 1974: 261) 

Such endings affirm the merits of the original thesis and may predict that future evidence will also bear them out, as in (502a) (which it did). The generality and relevance of an ending identify it better than time-worn cohesive signals like ‘in conclusion’ (cf. VI.2.1, 36).

    2.11 Technical exposition is devoted to a different kind of problem than is scientific. The facts are taken as given, rather than in dispute. The problem is to report and explain them to people for whom they have practical relevance. (503) addresses those who want to learn a certain computer language; (504) leads into an account of an electrical project:  

(503) This manual is designed for people who want to learn to program in Apple’s Applesoft BASIC. With this manual, and an Apple computer, and a bit of your time and attention, you will find there is nothing difficult about learning how to program a computer. (The Applesoft Tutorial, p. v).

(504) Although Consumers Power presently has distribution underbuild on 46kV lines, it does not have distribution underbuild on 138kV lines. The Planning Commission has recently proposed adding distribution circuit underbuilds to existing single and double circuit lines in the Northwest area. Therefore a study was conducted by the Systems Analysis section to determine the feasibility of the proposal. (Mathes & Stevenson, 1976: 265)

 Ordinary language is well suited to the much wider audience of (503) and reassures them that ‘nothing difficult’ is in store. The narrower audience of (504) knows the technical terms and concepts (‘distribution circuit underbuild’) and wants advice on a particular project. After their middle sections, where the details are provided, the texts end with a return to the contexts raised in the beginnings: 

(503a) This book has presented the core of Applesoft BASIC. If you now go through this book again, writing your own programs with the statements that have been presented here, you will solidify your knowledge considerably. (The Applesoft Tutorial, p. 111)

(504a) The problems with the proposed construction of 138kV single and double circuit underbuild can be solved by the use of the methods outlined in this report [... I we will be able to provide continuous, low cost electricity to our customers in these rural areas for many years to come. (Mathes & Stevenson, 1976: 270)

{304} By asserting that the problem is solvable in the way proposed in the middle, the ending leaves the audience satisfied. The “technical” problem is settled in conjunction with the writer’s own “rhetorical” problem of tailoring the topic and goal to the audience (Mathes & Stevenson, 1976) — the public, the management, the technician, the researcher, and so forth (cf. also Pearsall, 1969).

   2.12 As we see, the stages of written discourse are yet another dimension that students must learn to distinguish from spoken discourse. The writer’s audience is broader, so that the relevance of goals and topics is more mediated. Hence, the writer must be more careful to keep the topic flow explicit or easily inferrable (cf. VI.2.4, 19). Graphic patterns to signal the stages of the text are imposed by PARAGRAPHING. The motives of writers for marking off paragraphs are still in dispute. Early scholars since Alexander Bain drew an analogy between the paragraph made up of sentences and the sentence made up of words (cf. Rodgers, 1965). However, the analogy remained controversial (cf. Becker, 1965; Christensen, 1965, Christensen, Becker, Rodgers, Miles, & Karrfalt, 1966; Rodgers, 1966), and can’t help us without a more complete theory of how writers mark off sentences. The formal structure of a sentence is easier to define and has at best a metaphoric resemblance to a paragraph; for instance, a “sentence fragment” is a more reasonable notion than a “paragraph fragment” (cf. VI.2.16). On the other hand, both the sentence and the paragraph (a) indicate conceptual chunking; (b) are shorter for heavier materials and longer for less heavy ones; (c) can be sequenced to begin with the point of orientation and move from there to new or unexpected materials; and (d) are fuzzy notions for speaking, but well established for writing (II.3.13, 41f; III.2.78; IV2.60, 63f; IV.3.12f, 17; V2.18, 33, 37). Some languages have spoken paragraph markers but English has at most some sporadic signals like ‘okay’, ‘well’, ‘anyway’, etc. (V3.14).

    2.13 Like punctuation, paragraphing is partly a reaction to the organization of a text, and partly an intentional shaping of it (cf. IV3.1). The content of a paragraph is intended to be processed as a chunk; and, because the content forms a chunk, the writer is impelled to mark off a paragraph. Text processing typically distributes the most resources to the first and last sentences of a paragraph, according to studies of memory (Sachs, 1967) and eye movement (Just & Carpenter, 1980). Yet there is no single correct way to make paragraphs, but only a range of motivated ways. Here also, paragraphing resembles punctuation, and, since paragraphs are linear units, they might be accounted for in terms of the seven principles of linear processing presented in Chapter IV. These principles could interact and adapt to a range of contexts and communicative intentions.

      2.14 Following the core-and-adjunct principle, the topic sentence is an explicit statement of an idea formatted as a single phrase unit. The look-ahead principle suggests that the preferential position for the topic sentence {is} at the start of the paragraph (cf. Kieras, 1978). The topic is then made clear before it is developed, as in:¹ [Examples (505, 508-510, and 514) are from TIME Magazine (Feb. 15, 1982).  

(505) Leading farmer organizations have been of little help. Wary of all government regulation, they favor conservation programs but oppose any effort to make them mandatory. Environmental groups are only beginning to wake up to soil erosion as a pressing national problem.  

But the look-back principle may require that the opening sentence relate back to the preceding paragraph, so that the topic sentence gets moved at least into second position, e.g.:  

(506) [ .... ] for Hegel, the most eloquent demonstration of the ethical life, a sister’s disinterested love for her brother, is the fidelity of “the heavenly Antigone, the noblest of figures that ever appeared on earth.”

    My point is not that Hegel’s argument is particularly compelling as either philosophy or literary criticism. Rather, I wish to suggest that Hegel’s addiction to the play, partially for so idiosyncratic a reason, may be seen as the nineteenth century appreciation exactly polar to Arnold’s summary dismissal. For if Arnold focuses on the Antigone as the classical work irrelevant to modern existence, Hegel keeps returning to it as the single most expressive play in Western literature. [etc.]

 The opening sentence goes back to repudiate an inference drawn from the previous paragraph; the second sentence of the new paragraph brings forward the real ‘point’, the new topic. The topic sentence should not go first if an abrupt or confusing shift would result.

 2.15 According to the heaviness principle, a paragraph’s length should be arranged so that the content forms a manageable chunk. Minimal paragraphs of only one sentence naturally attract strong focus. Newspapers and advertisements, which may get read in distracting settings (e.g., while riding a bus or train, waiting at a stoplight, etc.), have abnormally short paragraphs, partly to grab attention or to compensate for casual, sporadic reading, and partly to provide blocks that the eye can take in and follow without losing one’s place. In most other published texts, such as essays and reports, one-sentence paragraphing is reserved for special effects (cf. IV.2.60; IV.3.17; VI.2.21). In (507), unusual focus falls on a question (what ‘friend’ means to Americans) that could easily have gone at the end of the previous paragraph or at the start of the following one:  

(507) Coming into an American home, the European visitor finds no visible landmarks. The atmosphere is relaxed. Most people, young and old, are called by first names. Who then is a friend? Even simple translation from one language to another is difficult. {306} “You see,” a Frenchman explains, “if I were to say to you in France, ‘This is my good friend,’ that person would not be as close to me as someone about whom I said only, ‘This is my friend.’ Anyone about whom I have to say more is really less.” (Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux)  

The heaviness principle may also affect order, as we saw for sentences (IV2.56-64). Interest can be aroused by postponing the topic sentence until second position:  

(508) It is among the most durable of American dreams. The young man with a bright idea for a new product or service decides to form his own-company. He invests his family’s savings in the new venture. He is soon working 18-hour days [etc.]

 or even until the next paragraph:

 (509) The blond host sits on a windowsill, smiling into a filtered lens. An apple is in one hand, a hair dryer in the other. Dress is informal; in fact, it is nonexistent. The host is: a) Diane Sawyer, co-host of CBS’s Morning show, making an all-out bid to win the war of the a.m. news programs; b) ABC’S David Hartmann, doing the same; or c) Lassie, doing what comes naturally. 

      The answer is none of the above. The correct response: Shannon Tweed, the November 1981 Playboy centerfold, inviting viewers to join her in Hugh Hefner’s new electronic rabbit warren — a series of one hour video magazines.

 If the material is interesting, readers stay tuned in until the topic is revealed.
     2.16 The listing principle applies when paragraphs are built around enumerations. In (508), the topic sentence brings ‘American dreams’ to the fore, and the following sentences list in turn the actions belong to the ‘dream’. However, a whole paragraph may list illustrations of a topic announced elsewhere. A paragraph further on in the same text as (508) enumerates people who lived out the ‘American dream’: 

 (510) Some of these successful new capitalists are tinkering innovators in blue jeans, while others are button-down bankers with M.B.A’s. Some are immigrants or the sons of blue-collar workers, while others are from old established families. Most are still little known outside their own fields. Frederick W. Smith, 37, is just another guy named, well, Smith. Yet his company, Federal Express Corp., has become a 600 million firm by delivering packages that “absolutely, positively have to be there overnight,” as its ads claim. Nolan K. Bushnell, 39, invented Pong, the first video game, in 1972. He then sold his company Atari, to Warner Communications in 1976 for 98 million. Steven Jobs, 26, the co-founder of five-year-old Apple Computer, practically single-handedly created the personal computer industry. This college dropout is now worth 149 million.  

All sentences in this paragraph are at the same lower degree of generality than the topic established before. I have not found many examples of this pattern, but it doesn’t make a “paragraph fragment” (cf. VI.2.12).

     2.17 If paragraphing indeed adapts to the conditions of linear processing, {307} then a “rule” demanding a topic sentence in the first position of every paragraph is unrealistic. Teachers may have imposed the rule because some students followed conversational habits by making abrupt, unannounced topic shifts (cf. VI.2.4, 12, 19). But the rule has been criticized from the standpoints of rhetoric (McConkey, 1964; Rockas, 1964; Rodgers, 1966) and textual evidence (Braddock, 1974). My own graduate students John Picters, Steven Robitaille, and Manolo Pineiro surveyed the location of topic sentences in 120 paragraphs from expository writing in essays and journal articles. All but 5 had a topic sentence: 95 had it at the start, 6 at the end, and 14 in the middle; the proportions were almost the same in Spanish paragraphs as in English ones. The large number of journals in the sampling probably contributed to the high ratio. In any case, the initial topic sentence is common and efficient for look-ahead, though contexts may call for other patterns (506, 508-510). Its absence should count as an “error” only if the topic flow is thereby obscured.

    2.18 Context also requires some flexible and adaptable strategies for selecting the point to indent for a new paragraph. The conceptual chunks of a text need not always coincide with paragraphs (cf. Rodgers, 1966; Pitkin, 1969; Nold & Davis, 1980). Undoubtedly, the most essential strategy in expository writing is: 

Start a new paragraph at a topic shift.   

Many transitions that would seem abrupt in the middle of a paragraph do not at the start of a new one. A new conceptual chunk is expected, though not obligatory, following each indentation. The essay on ‘friendship’ already cited in (507) has a global list of paragraphs, each one specifying the topic for one nationality. These contrastive subtopics are named right after each new indentation, thus conforming to the heaviness principle which, as was shown for punctuation, marks off contrastive content into separate units (cf. IV3.4, 6, 8, 27, 40; VI.2.21, 30. 

 (511) For the French, friendship is a one-to-one relationship that demands a keen awareness of the other person’s intellect, temperament, and particular interests. [etc.]

In Germany, in contrast with France, friendship is much more articulately a matter of feeling. [etc.]

English friendships follow a still different pattern. Their basis is shared activity. [etc.]

 In this sample from Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Cooper, 1932), contrast again calls for a paragraph boundary:

 (512) If you have taken an oath before, and it contradicts the present oath, you must argue that either the first oath or the present one was brought about by force or trickery, so you cannot be held responsible.

     On the other hand, if it is your opponent who has sworn conflicting oaths, you must argue that a man who does not abide by his oath undermines the whole established order.  

Like many contrasts, this one is set against a background of similarities (cf. IV.2.40, 5 I): the same actions expressed with recurrence and parallelism to highlight different agents and lines of ‘argument’.

    2.19 Whereas topic shifts in conversation can draw their coherence from the participants’ shared experience in a current or past situation (VI.2.4f), topic shifts in writing are best controlled by following up typical conceptual relations. These relations would be assumed as defaults if the writer offers no signals to the contrary. One strategy is:  

Start a new paragraph when moving from cause to effect.

 An illustration would be:

 (513) [... ] He sent Constans’s letter and his own to the Journal des débats in Paris, where they were published fourteen days later. Thus the news traveled with astonishing speed to Paris and from there to other cities.

      Local scholars pricked up their ears immediately. And naturally, the whole body of ancient mythology about wild men and savages reappeared in the press. (Shattuck, 1980: 20)  

Though less common (presumably because text order tends to follow causal order), the reverse strategy:  

Start a new paragraph when moving from effect to cause.  

does apply sometimes:  

(514) [... ] The government announced last week that new street clashes near the Lenin shipyard had ended in 14 injuries and the detention of 205 demonstrators.

     The six-hour uprising began after shipyard workers placed flowers at the base of a 140-ft. steel monument honoring their comrades who were killed by government troops in Odansk during the riots of 1970.

  2.20 Another common strategy follows temporal, rather than causal, relations among topic concepts:

 Start a new paragraph when moving from earlier to later.

 A series of indentations can signal movement through a time progression from event to event:  

(515) The first time I witnessed people eating pet food was among neighbors and acquaintances during my youth in the South. [etc.]

     The second time occurred in Cleveland in the summer of 1953. [etc.]

     The next time I ate dog food was in 1956 while struggling through a summer session in college without income for food. [etc.]
     Later, while working as a hospital corpsman, I had the opportunity to ask new recruits about their home life and nutrition practices. [etc.] (Edward Peeples)  

{309} The time expressions (‘the first/second/next time’, ‘later’) at the start of each paragraph make the transitions explicit. These expressions could be omitted, however, since the mention of dates and places keeps the events distinct, and readers normally assume that text order matches temporal order (III.3.19).  

2.21 The next strategy is easy to subsume under the listing principle:  

Start a new paragraph when moving from the whole to apart, or from one part to another  

One good occasion would be the exposition of objects distributed in space, as in Robert Ramirez’ portrayal of a Chicano ‘barrio’. He first depicts the ‘entire area’, and then devotes one paragraph each to a single part:  

(516) Members of the barrio describe the entire area as their home, but it is more than this. The barrio is a refuge from the harshness and coldness of the Anglo world. [etc.]

      The tortilleria fires up its machinery three times a day, producing steaming, round, flat slices of barrio bread. In the winter, the warmth of the factory is a wool sarape in the chilly morning hours, but in the summer, it unbearably toasts every noontime customer.

     The panaderia sends its sweet messenger aroma down the dimly lit street, announcing the arrival of fresh, hot sugary pan dulce.

     The small corner grocery store serves the meal-to-meal needs of customers, and the owner, a part of the neighborhood, willingly gives credit to people unable to pay cash for foodstuffs.

     The barbershop is a living room with hydraulic chairs, radio, and television, where old friends meet and speak of life as their salted hair falls aimlessly about them.

 At every shift of place, the new location is mentioned right away as sentence subject: ‘tortilleria’, ‘panaderia’, ‘corner grocery store’, and ‘barbershop’ — again, contrast as a motive for division (VI.2.18). Notice that this organization calls for some one-sentence paragraphs justified by their unity as conceptual chunks, and by the heaviness of the contrast (cf. VI.2.15).

     2.22 As was remarked in VI.2.2, the stages of discourse are most pervasively influenced by degrees of generality and importance. Writing allows for more complex and elaborate hierarchies than speech does (cf. IV.3.15; V.3.10; VI.1.11). Any two related elements in a discourse are co-ordinated (on equal planes in the hierarchy), or else one of them is subordinated (on a lower plane) to the other.¹ [The general-to-specific progression is sometimes called “deduction,” and the specific-to-general “induction,” especially when the general is the thesis, and the specific is the supporting evidence (cf. Christensen, 1963; 156; Christensen et al., 1966; 65f; Rodgers, 1966; 2f, 6; Grady, 1971; 354; D’Angelo, 1974; 3900. However, these patterns are fairly deep and potentially fuzzy, so that Christensen’s “rhetoric” does not suffice as an active procedure for “invention” of the surface text (cf. S. Johnson, 1969; C. Bond, 1972).] Syntactic subordination inside sentences is well-known in traditional grammar (II.3.19; IV.2.52; V.2.25);{310} but recent exploration, especially among rhetoricians, have been devoted to content subordination within whole paragraphs and texts (cf. Christensen, 1965; Christensen et al., 1966; Pitkin, 1969; Winterowd, 1970a; Grady, 1971; D’Angeto, 1974; Jones, 1977; Van Nostrand et al., 1978; Nold & Davis, 1980; I.3.18). In linear processing, the superordinate element is the core, and the subordinate element the adjunct (IV.2.7). Co-ordinate elements have the same status: they are both cores for elements below them in the hierarchy, or both adjuncts for elements above them. Several motives favor stating more general content at the beginning and end of a written text rather than in the middle (cf. VI.2.2). A general topic (a) leaves the writer substantial leeway for conceptual development; (b) is easily comprehensible without specialized knowledge; (c) can be supported with large amounts of evidence; (d) is readily viewed as important; (c) is relevant to many possible goals; and (f) should thus motivate a wide audience to read the text. The tendency of the important elements in expository hierarchies to gravitate toward the beginning and end of a paper is an interesting parallel to the movement of important items to the start or conclusion of a sentence (cf. IV.2.64; VI.2.12). As psychologists and rhetoricians know, the first and last speaking turn in persuasive interaction can be a strong advantage (VI.1 1).

     2.23 Besides initial and final positioning, many other means are available to indicate the components of a hierarchy and their relative status. In this book, for example, central terms appear in BLOCK CAPITALS (the first time (or after a long interval) (in case you need to locate them again) and in italics when ordinary emphasis is needed later on; paragraphs with two-place decimal numbers, e.g. (I.1.1), are subordinated to those with one-place decimals, e.g. (I.1). Indentation is a more conventional, though less determinate, means to suggest hierarchies. The strategy would be:  

Begin a new paragraph when you move to a lower or higher plane in the hierarchy.  

This strategy commonly calls for an indentation that marks the transition from the opening paragraph(s) to those in the middle and thereby delimits the main components of the text. In this typical student paper, the opening goes from general topic plus thesis to the specifies of the equipment:  

(517) Video taping is one of many styles of photography. The images from the camera are recorded on a tape, rather than on a film. I started working with video tape equipment in high school and found it the most satisfying way to photograph.

     There are two main types of units, portable and stationary. [etc.]  

Conversely, the transition from the middle to the end of the paper takes us back from specific to general, and leads into the concluding paragraph:  

(518) My final copy had the still frame with the credits rolling over the picture, and the music “We Are The Champions” by Queen, playing in the background.

     I think video taping is an excellent way of expressing oneself. It can be used to tape special events in one’s life, to help athletes in their games, and to teach students in schools.  

The writer turns from describing one of his films to restating his thesis that ‘video taping’ is rewarding and useful. This conclusion both reviews the details from the middle of the paper (e.g. ‘special events’, ‘games’) and asserts the importance of his topic, so that the effort of having read the paper seems worthwhile.

     2.24 Another pervasive influence upon stages of discourse, as we have seen, is problem-solving (1.4.16; III.1.19; III.2.24; IV2.4; VI.2.1f). Organizing the text itself, e.g., finding ways to put together cohesive and coherent configurations, is one aspect of this activity, but there are many others. A “thesis” implies that the topic is problematic, and that opposed viewpoints are possible (VI.2.1f). The writer relates the thesis to the problem by producing evidence that the problem is serious and relevant for many people; and that the writer’s thesis or solution is justified and effective. Frequently, problem vs. solution is made the topic or used as the explicit framework for topic flow (VI.2.30, 33-37). A supporting strategy in paragraphing would be:  

Begin a new paragraph when you move from problem to solution.  

In (519), the problem is how to catch crowds of TV viewers without offering them ‘ideas’; the solution is ‘violence’:  

(519) Television could, and occasionally does, present conflicts of ideas, but you can’t run a crowd-catching business at this level. Instant crowds require simple phenomena, quickly grasped. Furthermore, ideas are controversial, dangerous; people have convictions, they take sides, are easily offended. Crowd-catchers want only happy customers.

      The type of conflict that will deliver instant crowds most efficiently is physical violence.

 Paragraphing can also be used to mark off chunks of evidence that define the problem, for example:  

Begin a new paragraph when you move from the thesis to the supporting evidence, or vice-versa.  

Rhetorically, the thesis is more general than the evidence, as well as more important. In (520), the classes of ‘agents’ and ‘deeds’ are followed by instances listed in a new paragraph:  

(520) [ ... ] at present, instead of being champions and persons, the agents of great deeds are becoming personnel of the collective.

This has occurred rapidly in the past century. Pasteur was an epic figure; Fleming and Salk have been much less so. Laying the railroad and the cable and digging the Panama Canal were more epic than building the big dams or orbiting Telstar. Going to the Poles was more epic than going to the Moon. (Paul Goodman)  

If the thesis or problem statement might be surprising or unwelcome, the writer could back it up first, i.e., move from the evidence to the thesis (Rogers, 1952). Otherwise, the audience could become hostile and uncooperative right away, and not consider the evidence fairly. In (521), the report prepares its readers before presenting the unpleasant ‘conclusion'. 

(521) The procedure for certification presently used in Centerville Hospital does not always provide the proper certification information. Certification cards are often missing from patients' charts or are only partially completed. The result is that cards are sometimes illegally completed by unauthorized personnel in the Medical Records Office or Credit Offices.

     The obvious conclusion is that the present system is defective. (Mathes Stevenson, 1976: 35)

 Again, an indentation helps to mark the border between thesis vs. evidence.  

     2.25 The focused position of the text ending obliges the writer to find some satisfactory way to close off the discourse. The thesis may reappear (502a, 518), or a statement closely related to the thesis (500a), e.g., a solution to the problem (504a) (cf. VI.2.36f). The audience's contribution to solving the problem may be made explicit, e.g., using personalized ‘testing practices’ (501a) or ‘solidifying their knowledge’ (503a). Or, the contribution may be left implicit, e.g., to make testing ‘socially relevant’ (500a) or to get involved with ‘video taping’ (517). Looking back to the thesis allows a return to the degree of generality and importance that carries conviction—analogous to the general statements for closing a conversation (V1.2.5). The final statement of the thesis, being able to look back over the evidence, is normally stronger than the initial one. Whether or not the audience can be expected to accept it, the thesis should appear to address dynamic, worthwhile issues (IV.2.23). The essay on 'What is friendship?' (507, 511) closes with the ‘common elements’ shared by cultures, and moves from a major concern of humanity to a practical benefit for the intended reader:

(522) [ ... ] friendship, in contrast to kinship, offers freedom of choice. A friend is someone who chooses and is chosen. Related to this is the sense each friend gives the other of being a special individual, on whatever grounds this recognition is based. And between friends there is inevitably a kind of equality of give-and-take. These similarities make the bridge between societies possible, and the American's characteristic openness to different styles of relationship makes it possible for him to find new friends abroad with whom he feels at home.  

The elements common to friendship everywhere make the most general and important material for the ending. The final touch, though, is to hold forth hopes to Americans that they will ‘find new friends abroad’. A similarly reassuring note is sounded in other closings: that ‘things work out for the best’ (495); {313} that ‘a broadly based approach' to 'the study of memory and knowledge’ is ‘fruitful’ (502a); that ‘customers’ will have ‘continuous low cost electricity’ (504a); and so on. Audiences appreciate a hopeful resolution, even if they believe something very different (e.g., that ‘things work out’ disgustingly — especially plans for ‘low-cost’ energy).

     2.26 As was argued for grammar and style (V2.7ff, 20ff; VI.I.29ff, 33f), the stages of discourse should be mianlly instructed on the basis of what the learners already know. Recent textbooks have tried to harness commonsense associative reasoning as a vehicle for conceptual “invention” (e.g. Young, Becker, & Pike, 1970; Miller, 1976; Corder, 1979; D’Angelo, 1979a; Tibbetts & Tibbetts, 1979; Flower, 1981). Burke’s (1947) dramatistic “pentad” was dusted off and used as a framework for building content around “act,” “scene,” agent,” “agency,” and “purpose” (a scholarly version of the “what/where/who/how/why” jingle with “when” thrown out for some reason). The difficulty with associative reasoning is that once it gets going, a flood of content may pour out into stilted, trivial writing (cf. III.2.14, 19f). Don Adriano de Armado is as zealous a disciple of the “pentad” as any freshman could aspire to be — and as tedious:  

(523) As I am gentleman, I betook myself to walk. The time When? About the sixth hour, when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. So much for the time When. Now for the ground Which? [The hapless Spaniard takes ‘ground’ not as ‘purpose,’ but as ‘piece of land.’] which, I mean, I walked upon. It is ycliped thy park. Then for the place Where?, where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most prepost’rous event that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-colored ink which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place Where? It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden. (Love’s Labour’s Lost, I, i, 233ff).  

Obviously, schemes for associative reasoning are only the first step. Content must then be organized, and screened for interest and relevance within its context (III.2.15; VI.2.32).

    2.27 To get started, students need a topic which interests them, and about which, either through experience or research, they are knowledgeable (cf. III.3.20ff). Such a topic will bring sufficient content to mind, but in a miscellaneous order closer to the additive organization of casual speech (cf. VI.2.22). This disarray characteristically appears in a rough draft, and carries over into the final version of unskilled writers, e.g. (524). This student couldn’t make sense of his notes from various source books. Straining for complex sentences probably drew off vital resources from ideation and conceptual development:  

(524) First, new technologies advanced and diffused in recent years have exhibited vast power to alter society and affect the environment on a scale previously unknown. Electric power generating technologies such as burning coal, has emitted daily thousand to tons of fly ash, and sulfur oxides to the air. Supersonic aircraft, pesticides, nuclear wastes with half lives of thousand of years the decline of industries relocating populations. Motor vehicles cause most of the air and noise pollution in the environment. For example, certain insecticides pollute the soil and water endangering plant and animal life.  

More experienced writers can still profit from simple strategies for determining what should be mentioned, and in what patterns. At least four steps are helpful. Materials need to be sorted, arranged, consolidated, and developed. Though these steps are doubtless not cleanly separate in natural writing, they can be done in sequence by writers who need to make more manageable sub-tasks out of the larger task of organizing a text into stages (cf. I.2.21; I.3.24; VI.3.13). The disarray of content in rough drafts then looks less fearsome and hopeless.

    2.28 I have found simple, small-scale demonstrations useful for expounding the four steps. Here is a first draft by a twelve-year-old in a rural Florida school, writing from his own experience:  

(525) Trees are very tall. Trees are green. Trees wave in the wind. Pine trees contain tar. Tar sticks to you when you sit on a stump. Trees have seeds. Trees sometimes whistle. Trees are helpful and fun.  

The text seems a faithful record of ideas coming to mind, like a snapshot taken early in a complex event. The childlike impression is partly due to the lack of plan in the sequence. However, the child’s revision—a shapshot of a later moment—already sounds more mature:  

(526) Trees are tall and green. They wave in the wind and whistle. The wind blows out seeds which float to the ground to begin new trees. Trees contain tar which sticks to you. Trees are very helpful and fun but can be dangerous.  

The child has sorted his materials by discarding some items (‘very’, ‘pine’, ‘when you sit on a stump’, and ‘sometimes’), and by grouping the rest according to similarities: the appearance of trees; the effects of the wind; tar; and concluding thesis (the closest statement to a topic sentence). The sorting made it easy to arrange related things near each other, and to consolidate them by deleting redundant words. The ‘wind’ offered an explicit bridge among three events it causes, ‘waving’, ‘whistling’, and ‘blowing out seeds’; the first two were compact enough that two sentences got combined into one; the third was given its own sentence. The appearance of trees offered an implicit bridge between ‘tall’ and ‘green’, and again, the respective sentences were combined. The writer discarded some qualifiers because distinctions were either levelled, e.g. ‘very’ in ‘very tall’ (the height of trees varies), or else not relevant, e.g. ‘sometimes’ in ‘sometimes whistle’ (all his statements apply only ‘sometimes’). The loss of ‘sit on a stump’ may have come from a desire to keep a unified perspective focused on the ‘trees’ alone. Finally, the child developed some aspects of the topic. The randomly mentioned ‘seeds’ of (525) are now explicitly related in (526) to ‘wind’ and {315} lead to the further idea of how ‘new trees’ come about. The final thesis is also developed to add the reservation that ‘trees can be dangerous’. The ‘tar’ may have triggered this association; or perhaps some memory of falling (or falling out of) trees was activated, but not expressed. The switch from ‘pine trees’ to just ‘trees’ may have also come from trying to maintain a single plane of generality, or to give evidence for the thesis that ‘trees’ in general ‘can be dangerous’.

    2.29 Despite its simplicity, (526) partially illustrates revising processes that adults carry out on more extensive and complicated materials. To encourage revising, I have students take rough drafts, informal outlines, or mere notes (lists of key words and phrases) and carry out the four steps sketched above. SORTING materials by putting similar things together and discarding irrelevant or uninteresting ones can work from a set of notes like this: 

(527) lots of things I hate to do - getting up early-paying bills – registering for school -hassling with the bank – having  classes in the morning – worrying  about money – filling   out applications  

or from a disordered, awkward sample text like this:  

(528) Florida is a very attractive state. Many lakes are found. The range of wildlife is large and varied. Disney World and Circus World provide entertainment. The beaches are among the world’s finest. Jacksonville and Miami are centers of commerce. Florida has many things of great natural beauty. Real estate is booming. The sun shines most of the year. The countryside is flat. Lagoons provide for fishing and scuba diving. Mother Nature has been good to Florida.  

After some demonstration exercises with similar examples, most students had no trouble making a smooth prose passage out of (528). The preferred order was: general opening thesis; supporting evidence (natural beauty, waters, sunshine, wildlife; entertainment; commerce); and general closing thesis. One student’s revision was:  

(529) Florida is a very attractive state. It has many things of great natural beauty, such as lakes, sunshine, and a large and varied range of wildlife. Its beaches are the world’s finest and there are lagoons for fishing and scuba diving. The countryside is flat. Disney World and Circus World provide entertainment, while Jacksonville and Miami provide commerce with booming real estate. Mother Nature has been good to Florida

 Some papers classified waters with entertainment, or sunshine and landscape with real estate and commerce. {316} I had expected the waters to be all grouped in a series, but students more often mixed them with the other items of ‘natural beauty’.

    2.30 ARRANGING is easy after the materials that go together have been sorted out (VI.2.28). Basic students start by formatting notes into just two or three statements whose relations can also connect larger chunks (cf. VI.2.19-24), such as cause-effect (530), problem-solution (531), or thesis-evidence (532):  

(530) winds of hurricane force – dramatic evacuations near Miami

(531) energy shortage – more efficient transportation – public  mass transit – car  pools -smaller,  more economical engines

(532) erosion of public confidence in the new government – large  protest rallies in Washington

 Later, complete (though short) expositions with several paragraphs are fashioned from more elaborate notes like (533). We use a problem-solution framework because of its prominent role in exposition (VI.2.2, 8-11, 24). 

(533) recent rise in crimes on or near campus – grave situation – students, administrators alarmed – thefts – assaults – vandalism – huge increase over the last ten years – new security for dorms – outside doors locked – room doors locked – night watchmen – hall patrols – new escort service across campus after dark – student volunteers – escorts with walkie-talkies – requested by phone – new lighting – sidewalks – parking lots – dorm vicinity – new hot lines – phone services 24 hours – call for immediate help – new courses – self – defense training – karate – judo – boxing – better student awareness – avoid needless risks – be alert 

 Paragraphing is first practised by applying the strategies in VI.2.18-24 in order to find plausible points for indentation in samples that move from cause to effect, earlier to later, thesis to evidence, etc., such as:  

(534) The status of the middle class has improved in many ways over the last fifty years. Personal cars, private homes on their own tracts of land, and technological equipment have become commonplace. But this picture has now been darkened by inflation and unemployment. Money no longer buys the same goods, and increasing numbers of once secure jobs are melting away.

(535) The disease spread rapidly in the hot, moist summer air. Sanitation was poor in that part of the world. Hospitals were filled even before the epidemic broke out. Finally, the authorities recognized that a state of emergency had arrived. They sent a call to the government asking for special forces to meet the disaster.

 Contrasts are helpful (VI.2.18, 21), though I didn’t put any dead giveaways like ‘On the other hand’ in the samples. Content, not syntax, was supposed to be the central motive for paragraphing.¹ Becker (1965) undertook to show that paragraphs are “grammatical structures” by having people restore deleted indentations. The surprising finding was that people agreed on paragraph boundaries almost as much if all content words were replaced with nonsense syllables (Christensen et al., 1966: 69f; cf. Koen, Becker, & Young, 1969). Becker tells me he hasn’t followed up this research since then.] {317) Students in my class readily marked ‘But’ in (534) (contrast, earlier-later) and ‘Finally’ in (535) (earlier-later, cause-effect) as good places to indent. Patsy Lynn also explained the strategies to 32 students and gave a test, and only 4 students failed to mark these points.

     2.31 CONSOLIDATION resembles the training to reduce redundancies (cf. V.3.40), but with more focus on topic relationships. Students practice ways to make one statement out of a whole passage by removing fillers, recurrences, and self-paraphrases, and then recombining the essential words left over. One of our samples was:  

(536) People in the caste system in India have almost no way of changing it. This means that changes in the system to improve it don’t happen very often. They happen hardly ever.  

Students circle the essential words (‘caste system’, ‘India’, etc.) and bracket the inessential and repetitive ones (‘This means that’, ‘very often/hardly ever’, etc.) to make a version such as:  

(537) People in the caste system in India hardly ever find a way to change or improve it.  

This drastic “sentence-combining” is more necessary for many students than the contrived, quasi-formal manipulations of projects like O’Hare’s (1973), where insufficient emphasis was placed on combating verbosity and obscurity (II.3.45ff).

     2.32 DEVELOPMENT is divided into two training sessions. First, students focus on RELEVANT details that an audience would need to know for some purpose, particularly to solve problems. Students use notes to develop expositions of how to do things; if necessary, experts or reference works are consulted. For example, directions are to be given for handling the common woes of the would-be gardener in stormy, pest-bitten Florida, based on a set of notes like this:  

(538) planting a garden – time of year – amount of sunlight – water sources and drainage – kinds of plants – flowers – vegetables – pests – weeds  

In the second session, students focus on INTERESTING details that an audience would find unusual, novel, unexpected, specific, variable, and the like (cf. III.2.24; VI.2.2). Exercises start with detecting the interesting details in a sample like (539): ‘cancer’ is problematic, unusual, and extreme; the ‘wonder drug’ is relevant, novel, and mysterious; ‘one out of every four people’ is a specific and scary statistic;¹ [11 The dividing lines where numbers become tedious and irrelevant is frequently obscured the bias toward quantification in science (1. I.2). The numbers seem well-structured, even if facts they represent aren’t very noteworthy.] and so on.  

(539) Of all known diseases, cancer is the most dreaded. One out of every four people contract some form of cancer in their lifetime, {318}  and a thousand people die of it every day. Every year new wonder drugs are developed to fight cancer, such as interferon. Scientists are still baffled by how interferon works. Somehow it disrupts the capacity of cancer cells to reproduce.  

After picking out items and saying why they’re interesting, the students develop prose with their own interesting details, working from more sets of notes, e.g.:

 (540) satellite television – number  of channels – programs – special  interest groups – music – arts – ports – movies 

 Trivial, commonplace details are to be avoided; experts are to be consulted as needed on specialized issues (problems from an electronic, commercial, legal, etc. standpoint). This training helps reduce the dangers I sketched for associative reasoning techniques such as Burke’s “pentad” (VI.2.26). For instance, the “scene” (Amado’s ‘ground’) where interferon was discovered and tested is hardly relevant; the obvious “agent” (gardener) with a “purpose” (grow plants) requires far less elaboration in a set of directions than “act” and “agency”; and so on. Screening for relevance and interest constrains the “invention” of details to fit the rhetorical context.

     2.33 To provide students a supporting framework for an entire composition, the problem-solving approach has been helpful for organizing topics (cf. I.4.16; VI.2.1f, 8ff, 24). Here is a complete short exposition by a student working from his own set of notes:  

     (541.1) Although rarely spoken about by society, child abuse is one of the nation’s most pressing problems today. As population continues to grow, so does the number of unwanted and unplanned children. It is estimated that six or seven out of a hundred children will be maltreated or neglected.

     (541.2) Child abuse can come in three forms: (1) passive cruelty in the neglect of children by an unloving or uneducated parent; (2) occasional cruelty in the momentary violent reaction of a frustrated or overburdened parent; and (3) consistent, deliberate cruelty in uncontrollable actions by a mentally sick parent. Simple neglect is easiest to correct. Actual abuse on the spur of the moment is more serious, but still much less than continual abuse due to mental illness.

     (541.3) Most cities and counties maintain social workers to investigate reports of child abuse. These workers are sent to the reported offenders and can make recommendations about the future of the child. If counseling fails or is rejected by a stubborn parent, the child may eventually be placed in a foster home. This solution would be called for in cases of mentally ill parents.

    (541.4) Some high schools and colleges are introducing programs on family planning and child care. Future parents learn what their situation may be like and how to deal with it. Abuse due to ignorance or lack of attention can be reduced in this way. Also, learning how to deal with stress reduces the likelihood of sudden violent outbursts.

     (541.5) Day-care centers for children help to unload overworked parents. The parents need not feel responsible for every moment of the child’s day, and are thus less likely to feel inadequate and frustrated. The day-care center also benefits the child with companionship at the same age.

     (541.6) If day-care centers are not available, improved public recreation areas would be a partial solution. The child would be out of the home, relieving any tensions that might build up. Companionship with other children would again be offered. Of course, some responsible adult ought to be in the area in case of an accident.

      (541.7) In the future, society must get a firmer grip on child abuse, and stop ignoring it. Social workers for offenders, school programs for future parents, and day-care centers or public recreation areas for children are all helpful. But we must do much more. We must be ready to devote all necessary resources to solving this grave social problem.  

The ‘problem’ is identified in the very first sentence with the thesis that it is ‘one of nation’s most pressing’—the strategy of saying why the topic is important and relevant for a wide audience (VI.2.22ff). The next sentence reveals a movement from effect to cause (cf. VI.2.19): ‘unwanted and unplanned children’. Then, the thesis is backed up with specific (statistical) evidence, i.e., how many children ‘out of a hundred’ suffer abuse.

     2.34 A new paragraph (541.2) marks a shift from the general topic to the specific ‘forms’ of ‘child abuse’, and a related shift from the whole to its parts (VI.2.1,21). In keeping with the principles of listing and heaviness, the three ‘forms’ are arranged from less extreme and frequent to more so (IV.2.73): ‘neglect’, ‘occasional cruelty’, ‘consistent, deliberate cruelty’. The two remaining sentences in the paragraph adhere to the same order of mention when estimating the relative difficulty of ‘correcting’ the abuses. The second paragraph belongs with the first as a statement of the problem and thesis, but is a step lower in the hierarchy of generality. Hence, it hovers at the transition between the beginning and the middle of the text (cf. VI.2.1, 36).

    2.35 The list of solutions plainly belongs to the middle. By definition, a feasible solution is relevant material for developing a problem topic (cf. VI.2.32). Here, the main topic of the problem is broken down into four subtopics, each of them treated in one paragraph: ‘social workers’ (541.3), ‘school programs’ (541.4), ‘day-care centers’ (541.5), and ‘public recreation areas’ (541.6). Each paragraph opens with a topic sentence containing the key expression for each solution, so that the sequence is immediately coherent without emphatic——and possibly tedious——cohesive devices at every transition (e.g., ‘the first solution to the problem is’, and so on) (cf. VI.2.1, 36f). More subtle cohesion is provided by recurrences and paraphrases looking back to the second paragraph that lists the three ‘forms’ of abuse: ‘mentally ill parents’ (541.3) vs. ‘mentally sick parent’ (541.2); ‘sudden violent outbursts’ (541.4) vs. ‘momentary violent reaction’ (541.2); and ‘frustrated’ (541.2, 541.5). These devices promote unity without the disadvantage of bulky restatements (compare 447, 456, 458, and 462 in V.3.34, 37, and 40).

      2.36 After surveying four solutions in the middle, the writer signals the ending by returning to a high degree of generality (cf. VI.2.1, 10). {320) The indentation at (541.7), followed by mention of the global time (‘future’) and agent (‘society’), marks the concluding paragraph—again, worn-out cohesive cues (‘in conclusion’, etc.) are spared. The four solutions are passed in a quick review: ‘social workers for offenders’, ‘school programs for future parents’, ‘day-care centers’, and ‘public recreation areas’. The three ‘forms’ of abuse are not recalled here—a possible indication that the writer grouped the second paragraph with the middle, not with the beginning (cf. VI.2.34). The opening thesis that the problem is important is reasserted with more force, but also with the reassurance that solutions are possible (VI.2.25). The supporting evidence presented in the middle is thereby drawn together to satisfy and convince the reader, while at the same time, the unity of the text is strengthened. The ending is dynamic because the ‘much more’ to be done ‘in the future’ looks ahead outside the text itself to large-scale societal goals (cf. IV.2.9, 47; VI.2.10).

     2.37 Though hardly posh prose, (541) is a well-organized exposition of the kind students will find useful for professional careers. My short analysis of a whole student paper (not just of the brief excerpts usually discussed) should indicate that global organization has principles similar to those of local organization. We saw some positive effects of training students along the lines sketched in VI.2.26-32 to organize and unify their writing without “procrustifying” them up in heavy-handed, tiresome surface formats (VI.1.15). When the stages of discourse are developed and controlled by coherent conceptual relations like cause-effect, earlier-later, problem-solution, thesis-evidence, and the like, clumsy signposts (‘this paper is about’, ‘in this paragraph I will deal with’, ‘the next thing to consider is’, ‘let me conclude by saying’, and many more) are no longer needed as a crutch or a substitute for clear topic organization (cf. VI.2.1, 10). Well-aimed exercises in sorting, arranging, consolidating, and developing can clear up the mystery of “invention” as propagated by vitalistic and romantic folk-wisdom (cf. I.2.23.7; III.2.23). Ultimately, society will be more considerate toward readers if writers have effectual methods to break their own task into more manageable sub-tasks (cf. I.2.21; VI.2.27; VI.3.13f). The writer vs. reader trade-off (III.3.16; VI.I.25) becomes less acute and antagonistic as the writing of a whole paper is widely recognized to be the outcome of powerful strategies average people can readily acquire and apply.  

3. THEORY AND PRACTICE: A COMMON CAUSE 

    3.1 The most crucial step for progress in resolving the “literacy crisis” is that theory and practice finally co-operate on a large scale and without the customary gaps in time and outlook. The value of theories or models of language and discourse ultimately rests on whether they can account for human language acquisition and development, including the success or failure of classroom  techniques. {321} Progress can also profit if theory and practice maintain a constant, constructive skepticism toward accepted priorities, attitudes, curricula, diagnostics, evaluations, and so on (cf. VI.3.25). A dynamic respect for scientific progress should have precedence over a static reverence for established scientific institutions. Valid, thoughtful, and constructive criticism must not be misunderstood as an attack upon individual persons. From the standpoint of future theories, all those we now have are wrong (I.1.9); there is no disgrace in acknowledging the inevitable and getting on with the quest for something new. Theoretical research is steadily clarifying the rational foundations and guidelines for resolving disputes over language.

     3.2 In absence of such foundations, public and educational language policies have traditionally been diffuse, fragmented, or uninformed. Administrators, teachers, and students are all caught in multiple dilemmas between unrealistic, biased language attitudes vs. the social and psychological contexts of productive research and education (cf. I.2.18; I.3.13; III.3.30; IV.3.44; V.1.40; V.2.3, 31; VI.I.9). Teachers face a tough choice: either to embody and enact public attitudes, risking credibility and fostering inhibitions among students; or to accept current usage among prominent writers, evoking the illusion of an enlightened public audience and risking reprisals from reactionary “Ministers of Education’ and their minions. In the schools, sporadic, disunified, and coercive approaches to literacy impede cumulative learning and fail to harness the actual preconditions and resources of the learner (I.2.12, 17). In society, intransigent “language authorities” dismiss reform efforts as bridges to anarchy and try to force upon the world the alternatives of accepting their “rules” (I.2.1 1). Meanwhile, the practical issues, such as the size of writing classes and the course hours they are allotted, are arbitrarily decided. The numbers hardly matter as long as none of them are theoretically justified — the sizes of rooms and the numbers of chairs to put kids in do not constitute a theory. The lack of expertise on research seriously distorts and blocks everyday methods.

      3.3 The old division between theory and practice threatens to make both sides irrelevant. Structuralist, behaviorist, and mentalist theories all hit a point of diminishing returns because they assumed that a properly “scientific” method must drastically abridge the realities of everyday communication (cf. Chapter 11). Already overworked teachers had to choose between ignoring the official theories and experimental findings vs. extrapolating tentative, makeshift approaches out of them—either way, the needs of society and education were prone to be misunderstood. The lines of communication between theory and practice were impaired to the extent that neither side could make much progress on its own concerns, let alone on each other’s. Surely this factor, more than any other, has been responsible for the slow headway toward resolving the literacy crisis.

    3.4 I have tried to set forth some ways in which the two sides can meaningfully interact for their mutual advantage. Each special concern can best be clarified in the framework of the general conditions under which cognition and communication take place in human activities. {322} Processing is a complex system of operations which reorganizes itself as skills develop and improve, but whose demands and limitations define each successive state and mould the impact of knowledge and training upon future performance. Hence, unless these conditions are both expounded in theory and consulted in practice, we lack any way to tell which issues should be pursued for what motives. Whether human beings can enact what they know always depends on the context of the action. If each experiment or instructional module is designed in isolation, its measurable effects on the total capacities which we are trying to test, observe, and describe, may be pure artifacts or accidents. An improvement or degradation of performance might then be a side-product of factors not even contemplated when the method was designed. For example, sentence-combining has been found to improve writing quality in some cases, and to make no great difference in others; so far, we have no theory to explain what syntactic manipulations can best assist a person’s overall stylistic and rhetorical skills, or how and why this comes about (cf. II.3.35-44, 47).

     3.5 Teaching is a very special case of communication (cf. Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Teacher and learner must negotiate the effort each of them has to contribute, just as a trade-off is worked out between the text producer and the audience (III.3.16; V2.27). However, the average school overworks the teacher so heavily that the learners’ end of the bargain is unavoidably disproportionate. For example, countless incidental “facts” are dispensed, but the learner is left to develop his or her own strategies for organizing them into a sufficiently coherent chunk to be remembered just for the next quiz, let alone for any coherent exposition or real-life application (1.3.6). There is no evidence that the average child is competent to select and work out optimal strategies at this degree of power—which may help explain why the “average” grade of “C” usually implies some kind of inadequacy bordering on failure (I.3.9). The evidence suggests instead that many children improvise haphazard strategies and patch them up pretty aimlessly and ineffectively. So many processing resources are concentrated on performing isolated tasks under high pressure from day to day that little remains for designing and optimizing the powerful strategies that congeal into the true “basics” of learning. Consequently, failure is not caused by “low intelligence,” “laziness,” “poor attitude,” and all the other catch-phrase alibis that shift the blame onto the child. Those deficiencies are effects, not causes, of the fragmented context in which the child is placed to sink or swim in a turgid sea of obscurely interrelated activities (Combs, 1979).

    3.6 The same overload and pressure prevents the average teacher from designing new instructional modules that could promote the strategic evolution of high-powered learning strategies. This task falls by rights to the research community with the time and resources denied to the teacher, but demanded for understanding the actions and events of instruction. If “science” insulates itself from the everyday processes—mistakenly believing them to lack a properly “scientific” structure (I.1.3)—the task is left in a limbo {323} where theory and practice either ignore or talk past each other. And the victims are the teachers, the learners, and society at large.

    3.7 Consider the inescapable necessity of diagnosing language skills in order to place students in workable groups. A narrow diagnostic such as a multiple-choice or a fill-in-the-blanks quiz is easily graded and produces a strict numerical scale, but bears little resemblance to spontaneous communication and is a poor measure of ability (cf. Nairn, 1980). A free-style diagnostic, such as an in-class essay, is more realistic, but harder to grade, and produces a rough, disunified scale — to say nothing of the sheer numbers of essays students of entering each year. The more personal a writer’s voice, the less chance we have for a meaningful comparison based only on the traits shared by everybody (I.3.7). Therefore, we cannot sensibly place students unless we can tell the difference between indicators of those skill levels we want to advance vs. indicators of individual freedom of choice. An increase in skill ought to expand and strengthen that freedom; hence, methods that restrict freedom with a barrage of “rules” can scarcely be expected to improve writing skills (cf. Youdelman, 1978; Ohmann, 1979; Rose, 1981).

    3.8 One diagnostic to filter out the factors relevant to teaching fundamental expository writing can be derived from the assumption that most college students already speak more fluently and successfully than they write (cf. II.2.28; II.3.36; V.3.3). At the start of the course, my students bear two short recorded samples and are asked to “write in their own words” what they just heard. One sample is taped from the casual speech, e.g., a student recounting her high school graduation trip to Disney World (542); and the other from reading aloud a well-organized written exposition, e.g., John Brainerd giving instructions on how to move stones (543) (Levin [Ed.], 1977: 179f):  

(542) about ten o’clock in the morning / before grad night / bout nine friends and I got together / at one of my friends’ house // with // a lot of booze / and a lot of mixers // aaand we started drinking // and // we kept and kept drinking and kept drinking for a couple hours I’d say // then we put the leftovers / the leftovers alcohol and everything in our coolers and hid it in our / luggage and stuff // then we went down to the beach which is / right down the road from the school and partied some more // then it was time to go get on the bus / and we get to school and we find out we had to / have our / luggage checked and every and our coolers checked and everything / by this time everyone was very paranoid because everyone was pretty wasted // aannd // luckily / we all made it through without getting checked // got on the bus and started partying some more [etc.]

(543) When lifting a rock, bend your knees, not your back, to let your legs do the work. Keep your toes out from under; you can never predict when a rock may slip and drop accidentally. Do not let your fingers be pinched between your rock and another; one slip can in a second crush a finger or hand if a rock is heavy. When a stone is too heavy or awkward to lift by yourself, get a helper. Roll or slide the stone onto a burlap bag or canvas which can form a sling between you, to distribute the weight and keep it farther from your feet in case it falls. Stones can be hoisted a bit at a time by using a pry bar at one corner. Slide small stones or sticks under the lifted edge to hold it up while you repeat the process at another corner. [etc.)  

Memory experiments have shown that students do not write down a verbatim rendition of what they’ve heard. Instead, they impose a given style—depending especially on their awareness of stylistic types—on whatever gist of the content they could recall (cf. VI. I.29ff). I predicted that unskilled writers should follow the tendencies of casual speech in rendering both samples; skilled writers should do so on neither; and intermediate ones should imitate the style of each original sample. Specific indicators of literacy development should be easier to recognize and compare if style was varied while content was made equally available and stable for everybody (cf. V.3.6).

     3.9 These predictions were largely confirmed: the spread of results proved a fairly reliable clue to the problems the individual students manifested later during the course. The unskilled writers duly retold the ‘grad night’ story with the inconsistencies and redundancies of casual speech (cf. V.3.10-37), e.g.:  

(544) About 10 0’clock in the morning a young lady and her friends started drinking and they kept on drinking and then they went to the beach and drank some more. By this time it was time for their luggage to be checked that where they had put the liquor, but all of them managed to make through the check in point.

 This effect did not depend on reproducing the same expressions and constructions as the original. One intermediate student followed the speech pattern in which the first part of each sentence or main clause rehearses material from the previous one (cf. (447) in V.3.34):

 (545) This girl tells about how she gets drunk before going to school. Before she gets to school, she hides some liquor in her luggage, but a teacher says that the luggage will be checked. Somehow she and her friends manage to get on the bus without getting their luggage checked, so when they got on the bus they started drinking again. 

In contrast, more skilled writers duly edited the story into reasonable prose. In (546), the immediate cross-outs (in pointed brackets) reveal a conscious avoidance of vague pronouns and repeated words:  

(546) Before arriving at the highschool to board the buses they consumed a fairly large quantity of alcohol and packed an auxiliary supply in their luggage for their stay in Orlando. Because of their inebriated condition they were worried when they heard that luggage would be checked, but luckily <they> these students didn’t get < checked > searched.  

The intermediates were the largest group of students, attenuating the traits of casual speech here and there, but not consistently or reliably, viz. (545).

       3.10 The unskilled writers retold the ‘stone’ exposition with the same inconsistencies and redundancies as their ‘grad night’ stories, e.g.:  

(547) In this the speaker how to move a rock and moving a rock can be dangerous. When moving a rock or a stone keep your fingers and feet out of its way, if a large rock rolls over your feet or your fingers the rock can crush these parts of your body. 

The skilled writers preserved the style of written prose:  

(548) When moving stones let your legs do the work. Be careful not to pinch your fingers between your stone and another. 

 The intermediate writers tended to imitate the style of each original, casual for ‘grad night’, and concise for ‘moving a stone’, e.g. the student who wrote (549) also wrote (550). 

(549) They just kept drinking and drinking. Then they went to the school, after putting all the remaining booze in the cooler, they realized that the luggage and coolers were being checked, luckily they got on without being checked.

(550) When a person moves a large stone, he should use his legs for power. lf a stone is too large for a single person, you should get help. Take a burlap bag and roll the stone on it.  

The recurrences and fuzzy sentence boundaries in (549) have no counterpart in (550), though the same student wrote both only a few minutes apart.

     3.11 This two-sample diagnostic should illustrate the kind of interaction I am advocating between theory and practice. By investigating how the respective conditions of casual speech and of competent writing are reflected in text features, we are better able to design the means for classroom techniques and to evaluate the results. We can in turn identify the essential tasks for a particular student or for a whole class during the course. A syllabus can be tailored to the occasion, rather than carried over blindly from class to class (cf. VI.3.15, 26); and individual profiles can be set up for the interviews. The less skilled writers take on modest projects and focus on explicit revising. The more skilled ones attack fairly ambitious projects, such as research papers, and focus much less on revising. Any gradation in between can be worked out for the intermediates.

    3.12 A theoretical account would also help define how writing becomes easier through support activities that composition experts have propounded (e.g. Rohman, 1965; Moffett, 1968; Macrorie, 1970; Elbow, 1973; Miller, 1976; Nystrand & Widerspiel, 1977; Shaughnessy, 1977; Irmscher, 1979a; Booher, 1981; Bruffee, 1981; Staton, Shuy, & Kreeft, 1982). Some hypotheses could, I would hope,  be derived from the framework advanced in this book. Prewriting probably aids ideation and conceptual development by relaxing the strict demands for cohesion during phrasing: students gather materials, make notes, and explore ideas without actually producing extended, continuous text. Outlining offers a similar trade-off, but its more rigid patterning may make the savings on resources smaller. {326} In free writing, coherence is relaxed in order to promote fluency: students loosen up and write at top speed whatever occurs to them. Journal keeping lowers the requirements for relevance and interest so that situationality, familiarity, and perceptual immediacy can come to the writer’s aid. Peer tutoring raises feedback and audience awareness and lowers anxiety by using students to help each other write. Detailed research could pursue hypotheses like these to find out which support activities are effective and reliable enough to be widely included in future textbooks and curricula for particular groups and ages of learners.

    3.13 The same outlook can be extended to decisions and policies regarding all aspects of literacy. The more detailed and precise our theoretical understanding of the writing process, the better our chances to fit instructional design to human contexts, and to transcend the dreary regimenting of assignments, topics, tasks, and number of papers per course, plus the menacing arsenal of points and demerits— all the juggernaut machinery of standardization so unsuited to such a creative, individual activity as writing (cf. I.3.6ff, 12). Realistic, dynamic standards should reward, not ignore, the development of personal voice, the transition to a higher plane of skills, and the actual strain of mastering technical matters teachers mistakenly consider simple (cf. I.2.16.6; I.3.8, 22). Grades should gauge how a student progressed in the framework of what could be realistically required or accomplished at his or her state of development. When teachers and students agree on explicit procedures for recognizing and resolving the problems of prose organization, the forbidding task of writing can become an orderly set of manageable sub-tasks (cf. I.2.21; I.3.24ff; VI.2.27, 37). Failure would be likely only if the student refused to carry out the procedures, or suffered from uncommon difficulties not yet explored or treated in the method. In my experience, these two factors apply to about 10% of average college students. If standards are ill-defined, errors are stigmatised, and self-help procedures are vague, alienation and acceptance of failure are high (in some schools, close to 50%); and plagiarism is more frequent because students who are too fearful or intimidated to believe they can reach the goal honestly are prone to hand in an already approved paper.¹ [Dishonesty might cloud the method I am advocating if students willfully underperform at the start of the course so that progress can appear greater at the end. However, most student writers need our courses precisely because they are not skilled enough to manipulate quality, either downwards or upwards. Whoever knowingly inserts features of bad writing can also edit them out.] Teachers may sincerely believe that an “A paper” or “F paper” can exist for all times, places, and persons (cf. I.3.13); but the objectivity of such a judgement is, to say the least,  a moot point until its basis is explained to students in terms they can understand and apply.

    3.14 The same interaction between theory and practice is the only plausible way to convince society and its educational institutions {327} that a reform of literacy programs can be based on rational criteria, not just on faddish innovations or momentary political pressures. The best theories are those with the most substantial implications for improving literacy throughout society. But attitudes, biases, and customs are entrenched at deep levels, and will not yield to mere assertion. Only a scientifically credible quest for the means to replace this hoary legacy can hope to carry conviction among administrators and executors. For example, the interview approach is advocated by the need for individual profiles and priorities. The emergent strengths and weaknesses of writers from diverse language backgrounds set the real conditions for progress. Personal counsel is more convincing, specific, and tactful than advice or censure dispensed in a classroom. The unskilled writer has already discovered that the usual class techniques don’t work for everybody, and desperately needs to experience success in order to have faith in the whole enterprise. Working though a series of sub-tasks may be a slow road to improvement, but it holds forth hopes that large, badly defined tasks deny.

    3.15 This line of argument, for which I have presented detailed empirical and theoretical support in the preceding chapters, has obvious, immediate consequences for institutional decisions. One-way lectures should be replaced by two-way discussions. The size and frequency of classes must be trimmed to strict limits to make way for the interviews and  personal contact. The clear impact of these numbers on the teachers actual work load must receive recognition in faculty assignments and pay scales . ¹ [I usually schedule the interviews for 10 minutes, so that 6 students equals I teaching hour; but my teaching load is comparatively light. I have also found 6-minute interviews quite workable (hence 10 students per hour). Whatever ratio is selected, the point is the same: the proportion between the teacher’s burden and class size should be immediately transparent.] Syllabuses should be flexible enough to meet the group demands as defined by efficient diagnostics (cf. I.2.23.11; VI.3.11, 26). Grades should be non-punitive wherever it appears strategic. All these implications provide decisive leverage in administrative decision-making.

   3.16 The interaction between theory and practice would also have the most favorable effect on student attitudes. The advice dispensed by teachers should carry a conviction and authority beyond personal opinions and institutional pressure. Students who do or don’t do things because the teacher says so cannot learn the reliance and self-discipline good writers possess; when the pressure is removed, a vacuum is left to be filled with the half-hearted guesses and quirky jigsaws of rules that make real-life writing tedious, inhibited, and hard to read. But if we can show on the basis of careful research what the choices are, and what effects follow from them, students come to appreciate and apply their own powers of judgement. For example, they can stop fretting over “how long should my paper be? “ when they learn that length is not a fixed value, but one which is discovered as the text evolves. {328} Detailed procedures for organizing the stages of discourse — sorting, arranging, consolidating, developing (cf. VI.2.27-32) — provide a way to let the topic control the length. A paper is then too long or too short not because it doesn’t have the 500 words dictated by somebody’s lesson plan, but because the degree of generality or specificity doesn’t reflect the range of details the audience would consider relevant (important, problematic) and interesting (novel, unexpected). Qualified professional writing respects these motives more than arbitrary numbers of words and pages. Texts produced merely to fill a quota are hardly likely to be worth anybody’s while.

     3.17 The same outlook can relieve the confrontation and resentment in traditional paper-correcting. Little is accomplished as long as the corrections are meaningful only to the teachers who make them (Butler, 1980). The students who elicit the most red rnarks cannot reliably infer the nature, causes, and remedies of their problems. Workable, helpful remediation requires new research on how errors arise from systematic factors intervening between intention and action, between knowledge and performance (cf. I.2.8.2; I.3.3, 11; II.2.10; III.1.19; III.3.2.2; IV.I.12; IV.2.48; V.1.14f, 36, 40; V.2.16; Bartholomae, 1980). An “error” is an unmotivated, disruptive departure from a genuine consensus among one’s audiences (cf. I.2.19f). Students must first understand the options and their effects before they can sensibly appreciate, detect, and repair their own errors. After concentrated editing practice, the teacher can indicate at the top of a paper which error types are present, and the student has to find them. The teacher is thereby spared a huge waste of time and effort on work that the student should rightfully be practising anyway (Applebee, 1981: 73) The student can actively rewrite, instead of just re-submitting the same paper, in neater handwriting, with only those items reworked that somebody else pointed out.

    3.18 For all these motives, I believe that a “science of composition” is not only possible, but indispensable to any real improvement in public literacy. No commitment of intellectual and institutional resources is too great for the enterprise at hand. This book has been an exploration in search of a framework for using prior theories and experiments alongside an expanding range of newer ones. I shall conclude with ten general guidelines I consider productive at this time.

     3.19 First, the theoretical and practical issues of discourse and literacy should be treated from multiple perspectives (cf. Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1982b). Exploration and classification can refine and specify our corpus of knowledge. Being a dynamic event, the text should also be considered in its evolution, and the skills of text processing in their development. Our conclusions come partly from observation of manifest actions and texts, and partly from reconstruction via the process models we design (e.g. III. I.7-32). The models should therefore try to restate logical notions (derived from static analysis after the fact) as operational ones (derived from dynamic synthesis of the fact). {329} By including the motives and effects of communicative actions in our inquiry, we can approach the evaluation of texts as the correlation between intention and action, or between knowledge and performance. These multiple perspectives can help us to situate detailed issues in the broader context they merit.

  3.20 Second, we should take a really close look at what people in general and students in particular actually know, say, and write (e.g. Emig, 1971; Britton et al., 1975; Perl, 1977; Shaughnessy, 1977; Matsuhashi, 1979; Flower & Hayes, 1980; Gould, 1980; Lunsford, 1980; Goswami, 1981; Harste, 1981; Hidi & Klaiman, 1981; Mosenthal & Na, 1981; Rentel, 1981; Scardamalia, Bereiter & Goelman, 1982; Staton, Shuy, & Kreeft, 1982). Traditional discussions tended to favor philosophical arguments more than the direct analysis of ordinary discourse. (e.g. Ong, 1975; Hirsch, 1977; Olson, 1977a). For instance, Hirsch’s “philosophy of composition” includes (and doesn’t analyze) exactly one sample of student writing, and none at all of student speech. Instead, he directs his remarks to passages from the writings of William Painter, Ben Jonson, John Milton, John Bormuth, Marcel Cohen, Ernst Nagel, Thomas Macaulay, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Moorehead, Edward Sapir, and The Times Literary Supplement; and to the made-up sentences so dear to linguists and psycholinguists.¹ [See Hirsch (1977: 60f, 69ff, 81, 84ff, 87f, 103f, 118, 130f, 135, 156). Hirsch’s book is suspended between the conflicting tendencies of philosophical speculation and empirical research. On the one hand, he backs up his arguments with citations of psychological and sociological research. On the other hand, he regales us— “in ignorance of the actual history of many European grapholects” (p. 58) — with speculations that can easily be proven empirically wrong: that the “verb-at-the-end” rule “holds in none of the oral dialects of German” (p. 119) (not true except in some disappearing eastern-territory dialects like Silesian); or that “the number of frequently used syntactic patterns has become much reduced in all the grapholects of Europe — the scope for choice of word order has diminished since Shakespeare's day” (p. 57) (not true for the Slavic languages, cf. Sgall et al., 1973). Moreover, his “theoretical case” regarding “practical implications” is that “the tried and true maxims of composition turn out to correlate very well with the psychological principles of readability” (p. 145)—in his eyes, a vindication for using Strunk and White (p. 168). Actually, this “correlation” does not hold very well (cf. I.2.11; IV.3.31; V.3.32f, 39; VI.1.15, 19, 22). And the “psychological principia” are in part outdated, e.g., “correct more faults than one comments on,” and “repetition” is “an effective teaching device” (p. 160f) (cf. discussion and references in I.2.17, 20, 22; III.1.18, 28; VI.3.17).] Most of the revision of everyday writers is done by Hirsch himself. The real conditions, stages, and problems of everyday writers can hardly be uncovered in such remote sources. Olson’s (1977a) paper doesn’t examine a single real-life example for his very restricted notion of a “text”.² [Whereas Olson’s “text” is “best represented by formal, written, expository prose statements” (1977a: 262), his examples are a handful of banal ‘John-and-Mary’ sentences, contrived philosophers’ samples, and children’s utterances (1977a: 261, 272, 275; 1977b: 17, 20, 22f). As I argued in ch. VI, Olson’s “text” is a pious fiction: all texts, including written ones, are processed by enriching, expanding, or modifying the explicit “logical meaning”; at most, writing restricts actions based on immediate situational contact. Thus, in contrast to Hirsch’s book, Olson’s recent work appears misguided in its fundamental intentions, though more refined in its empirical and experimental procedures (cf. work cited in II.2.19; III.3.19; IV.2.61).] {330}

   3.21 Third, we should include the contexts and settings of discourse in our inquiry. These factors strongly affect the style, organization, and evaluation of any one text. The “modes” of discourse are conventional frameworks for suiting the text to the occasion (cf. surveys in D’Angelo, 1976; Kinneavy, 1980). The broad text types, such as description, narration, argumentation, and exposition, have characteristic dominances (III. I.29); more immediate goals decide how these types are selected and combined. For example, the personal essay regulates the writer-reader relationship and the topic flow in ways distinct from scientific and technical reports (e.g.. VI.2.7-11).

   3.22 Fourth, we should not be so preoccupied with statistical norms that we lose sight of the individual action or human being, or stress quantitative research to the exclusion of qualitative. The interchange between special cases and general ones is vital to the theoretical interpretation of evidence, and to the “ecological validity” of research (cf. I.1.3, 12, 15; III.1.31.1, 8). Though measuring large proportions in “experimental groups” vs. “control groups” is vital to scientific generality, all acquisition, development, and application take place via a particular person in a a particular context. Individual case studies (e.g., Emig, 1971; Nystrand & Widerspiel, 1977; Matsuhashi, 1979; Bartholomew, 1981) should therefore supplement group studies, and may shed new light even on general theories. For example, theories or methods that work for a majority should not lead us to neglect special literacy problems; the treatment of the latter can make the biggest difference in the lives of the people affected, and our responsibility is correspondingly urgent. Nor should we use a student’s speech and behavior to invoke a stereotype that colors our later evaluation of writing (cf. Gwin, 1981: 125), or our estimate of true potential (cf. I.2.7).

     3.23 Fifth, an interdisciplinary approach is the only way to encompass the issues raised in VI.3.18-22. In theoretical research, communication and cognition require the consideration of psychology, linguistics, sociology, ethnography, education, neuroscience, and computer science (cf. Beaugrande, 1980a). In practice, literacy programs can profit from collaboration with other departments and with funded projects in order to improve writing all across the curriculum (cf. Shaughnessy, 1977: 88; Deaux, 1981; Graham, 1981; Maimon, 1981; Maimon, Belcher, Hearn, Nodine, & O’Connor, 1981). The awareness of writing strategies and standards can thereby reach a larger sector of social and professional writing (e.g. Bond, Hayes, & Flower, 1980; Swarts, Flower, & Hayes, 1980; Charrow, 1981; Goswami, 1981; Holland & Redish, 1981).

     3.24 Sixth, an expanded outlook can promote closer collaboration between theory and practice. Theories can both profit and contribute by their applications in real-life settings. Practical methods carry the greatest conviction in the framework of a theory that accounts for their effects, especially when we need to advise institutions on the format of writing programs. {331} Current theories of cognition and communication can help adjudicate the concerns of the English curriculum: the benefits of teaching sentence-combining, grammar, or linguistics (II.3.19-47; V.2.lff); the contribution of support activities like imitating literary styles, pre-writing, outlining, free writing, and peer tutoring (VI.1.9; VI. 3.12); the dangers inherent in spelling, sentence formatting, and speech habits (V.1.40-49; V.2.30-45; V.3.13-40); the tactics for advising, evaluating, and grading (1.3.21-26; VI.3.13); and the size and frequency of classes (VI.3.14).

    3.25 Seventh, the alignment of theory and practice offers a forum for re-examining our basic assumptions on language and literacy. Teachers should not be content to re-enact the same methods they underwent as students (cf. Milic, 1965: 66; Macrorie, 1970: 176; Irmscher, 1979a: 8). lf these assumptions remain invisible and unchallenged, we risk pursuing irrelevant issues and overlooking the relevant ones outside our customary framework of thinking, for example, taking the role of the “sentence” in discourse for granted and thus not adequately investigating its unstable empirical and instructional status (II.3.13ff; V.2.5, 19ff). Explicit discussion of underlying beliefs clarifies them and suggests how they can be impartially examined and tested. We should not strive to rescue or patch up old theories and methods when there is good reason to search for new ones, given that all theories are only approximations along the way toward better ones (cf. I.1.9ff; V.3 1). Scientists and educators who are not complacent, assertive, and self-serving regarding their own public image welcome a refutation not as a personal failure, but as an increase in our cumulative knowledge about the enterprise. The point is not to insist on already being right, but to accept new discoveries and raise ones chances of eventually being right. And if we concur that teaching is research (1.4.17; II.2.33; III.2.40), nothing prevents the teacher from dropping an ineffectual technique, just as a scientist drops a refuted hypothesis. For example, many claims about “incorrect” usage can be overturned by showing that the contested item appears in high-quality prose (cf. IV.3.3 1; V 2.32f, 39; VI. I.22).

    3.26 Eighth, we should strive to see that new insights are reflected in textbooks and learning materials (syllabuses, style sheets, etc.) (cf. D. Stewart, 1978). Traditionally, the publishers of composition textbooks have a neat division of labor: the promotion department loudly proclaims the next book is new and innovative, while the production department quietly makes sure it is just the opposite. The teachers lament the lack of modern, helpful textbooks at the same time the publishers lament the reluctance of schools to buy any. This vicious circle can be broken only by a concerted effort of writing experts to provide truly innovative materials to publishers, and to convince the rank-and-file teachers that reforms lead out of chaos, not into it (cf. I.2.1 1, 15). A reviewer for a pilot version of my workbook remarked, “if you don’t get to the teacher-purchaser, you will never reach the student user since he has no choice as to which grammar or handbook he will buy”; {332} once the book gets ordered, it may, by a “happy accident,” also be “appropriate for or appealing to the student-user.” Teachers who stubbornly cling to familiar textbook formats unwittingly defeat their own calling, particularly at the expense of disadvantaged students (cf. I.2.23. 10; V.2.6).

     3.27 Ninth, writing experts must also work to spread enlightened, tolerant language attitudes (cf. I.2.13-22; VI.1.9-28). Arbitrary, rule-bound teaching only confuses and intimidates the learners who need the most aid. The anxious, helpless, or prejudiced attitudes in a whole society can only be changed through educational programs. Writers who are denied freedom of choice by elaborate compulsions and prohibitions never learn how good writing evolves from decision-making; instead, they learn that writing of any kind is a stressful, hopeless task they should either avoid or else perform behind a smoke screen of verbosity and obscurity. Hence, improvements in literacy depend on the willingness of institutionalized authorities to view language realistically and impartially. Students who know what consequences language options have can work out their own style, voice, and role.

     3.28 Finally, composition should receive the respect it deserves. Literacy can be an enduringly great achievement of culture and a decisive vehicle of personal, social, and technological advancement. The complexity of language processing makes the enterprise of exploring and improving written communication enormously challenging. The efforts of teachers and learners are no less formidable than those of academic researchers. The way out of the literacy crisis is not “back to the basics” toward a simpler age with small, uniform student population, but ‘forward to the basics”—the essential skills of cognition and communication as we are coming to discover them among a large diverse student population. Ultimately, communication (and the theory and practice of mastering it) is utopian in the sense that texts and text processes are never as perfect, definitive, or complete as they might be. Still, a utopia is not a hopeless trap; it is an endless domain for new progress. The partial, provisional theories and methods of the past offer bridges to the more extensive and precise ones of the future. Our “science” reposes in following the best insights we can gather and apply.

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