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Performing Performing Prose Prose The Study The Study and Practice and Practice of Style in of Style in Composition Composition CHRIS HOLCOMB AND M. JIMMIE KILLINGSWORTH EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 2/13/2019 9:05 AM via ARIZONA CHRISTIAN UNIV AN: 452301 ; Holcomb, Chris, Killingsworth, M. Jimmie.; Performing Prose : The Study and Practice of Style in Composition Account: s8982473.main.ehost Performing Prose Performing Prose The Study and Practice of Style in Composition CHRIS HOLCOMB AND M. JIMMIE KILLINGSWORTH Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale and Edwardsville Copyright © 2010 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 13 12 11 10 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holcomb, Chris. Performing prose : the study and practice of style in composition / Chris Holcomb and M. Jimmie Killingsworth. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-2953-3 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8093-2953-0 (alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-8576-8 (ebook) ISBN-10: 0-8093-8576-7 (ebook) 1. English language—Style. 2. English language—Compo- sition and exercises. I. Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. II. Title. PE1408.H6647 2010 808'.042—dc22 2009030705 Printed on recycled paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for In- formation Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ∞ Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xiii 1. Introduction 1 2. Motives of Style 17 3. Convention and Deviation 38 4. Distinction: From Voice to Footing 56 5. The Rhetorical Tradition 71 6. Tropes 84 7. Schemes 106 8. Images 129 9. Rituals of Language 145 10. Style and Culture 163 Appendix on Grammar 173 Notes 187 Works Cited 189 Index 197 Preface Welcome to Teachers and Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition Our oldest and most durable vocabulary for talking about style emerged in the context of performance: the oratory of ancient Greece and Rome. Rhetoricians of the time invested considerable energy in cataloguing verbal devices they heard from both bema and rostrum, as well as from poet and rhapsode. Their primary aim was not to generate a vocabulary for literary analysis (although the terms they devised work very well for such purposes). Rather, they were assembling a repertoire, a collection of verbal moves orators could weave into their choreographed productions. Ideally, this stylistic repertoire would work in concert with other resources for performance: not only strategies for developing subject matter (the topoi of invention, for instance) but also, and more importantly, techniques for manipulating voice and gesture, the province of oratorical delivery. Cicero, for instance, saw style and delivery as a united effort. While he recognized the traditional division of rhetoric into the “five canons” (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery), he grouped the third and fifth parts together under a single heading, “manner of speech,” which he says, “falls into two sections, delivery and use of language [in agendo et in eloquendo]” (Orator xvii.55). What unites these two canons is their preoccupation with identifying performative set pieces, whether linguis- tic or gestural: substituting part for whole, for instance, or juxtaposing contrasting phrases, modulating vocal pitch, or sweeping the arm upward vii viii / Preface across the torso. Richard Schechner would classify all of these actions as “restored” or “twice-behaved” behaviors—that is, “strips” or units of behavior that “people train to do, that they practice and rehearse” (22). Presumably, the goal of such training and practice would be to help orators tap the rhetorical power of these behaviors and use them for orchestrating relationships among themselves, their listeners, their subject matter, their opponents—in short, the entire communicative scene. Since antiquity, the study and teaching of style as performance has gradually declined, owing in large measure to the advent of print, which encouraged viewing style as a static object rather than a dynamic interaction among writer, reader, language, and subject matter (see Carpenter 187). Performing Prose rejoins the two concerns, and it does so at a moment when style is experiencing a modest revival in rhetoric and composition studies. As part of this renewed interest, scholars have begun reconstruct- ing the history of verbal form in our discipline’s recent past. The consensus has it that in the field of English composition, style was a casualty of the process movement (Connors; Carpenter; Clements). According to William J. Carpenter, “Style has existed in writing instruction for close to thirty years as an unwanted child, a reminder of past product-based pedagogies, brought out for exercise only when the real work of writing—the invent- ing, the organizing—had been done” (185). In a field dominated by the writing process, any attention to verbal form looked too much like the older product-oriented paradigm (Rankin). Rather than amend or enrich that paradigm’s conception of style, the process movement diminished it further, presenting it as a minor part of an already minor part of the composing process: editing and proofreading.(cid:20) If, however, we reconcep- tualize process as performance, then style again finds a more central place in composition studies. Performing Prose participates in this reconceptualization by drawing on the stylistic vocabulary of classical rhetoric (with its all-but-forgotten orientation toward performance) and on more recent developments in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and performance studies. Throughout this book, we assume that writing is not just a social act (a way to make one’s mark on the world); it is also, and more fundamentally, a social interaction, an encounter between writer and reader. And in written or printed text, where writers lack access to the communicative resources of oral delivery, style must shoulder much of the interactional load. For this reason, it must be part of the composing process from start to finish and not just during the “mop-up” operations of editing and proofreading. Invention, for instance, is not just a time for generating subject matter. It’s Preface / ix also an opportunity for writers to consider what kind of social interaction they want to initiate and oversee. In fact, there is no such thing as “raw” subject matter. It must always assume some form—a sample of freewrit- ing, an idea cluster, a shaky first draft—and in assuming that form (rather than another), it is already placing the writer into some kind of relation with the broader rhetorical scene—it is, in other words, already a set of choices about which words to use, already an incipient performance and an opportunity for creativity. Performing Prose is itself a prose performance, and in recognizing that, we have worked to cultivate a style—a mode of social interaction—acces- sible and engaging to students in advanced writing, rhetoric, and literature classes. We hope the book is also suitable for graduate students in introduc- tory courses on rhetoric and prose analysis, and for scholars and teachers in rhetoric and composition who want to reinvigorate their approach to style by a review that also weaves in recent theory and the theme of performance. Another audience includes editors and students of editing who need not only to be able to correct errors and revise effectively but also to explain their decisions to fellow editors and to the original authors of the passages on which they work. Throughout we strive to avoid contrived examples and, instead, feature samples of prose from real writers—authors of literature, creative nonfiction, journalism, and even blogs and advertis- ing copy. Our aim in selecting these samples is not only to illustrate key concepts but also to bolster our claims that what we are presenting is, in fact, part of a larger cultural repertoire of style. Welcome to Student Readers We wrote this book for our own students, to be used in the classroom in courses on style and rhetoric. We wrote it because we could not find the book we needed—a book that would integrate instructions on how to analyze prose in close reading with guidance on how to improve one’s own style by following the best practices of modern English-language authors. We drafted chapters toward the book we envisioned and tested those early efforts in our classes, listening closely to our students’ responses and revising accordingly. Other teachers used the manuscript, too, and reported on their students’ responses. More revisions followed. The book you are reading is the result of that extensive engagement with students in active communities of learning. It is a relatively short book (our students told us to keep it short), but it has a big ambition. It aims to show that in the best writing, language is not a dead thing, inky letters printed on a page, but a living force. Good