The Purpose of this seminar is to introduce you to the discipline or field of 'Rhetoric and Composition'. The purpose is also to prepare you to be successful in the UTA R/C Program. But most importantly, the purpose of the seminar, since it is limited to doctoral students in the Rhetoric Track (for the most part), is to prepare you to be successful colleagues in the profession of 'Rhetoric'--specifically, to prepare you to be productive members of the profession.

II. The Objectives.

III. Criteria for Folio Assessment:

A. The Universe of Discourse.
You will be expected to learn intellectually, use practically and pragmatically, and demonstrate effective scholarly use of the various conventions for Oral Discourse (in seminar), Written Discourse (in seminar papers), and Electronic Discourse (in the online seminar discussions).

B. The Scale of "A" to "F" Grades.
In my discussion on assignments and grades, I discussed very generally the differences between the letter grades "A" through "F." I need to develop those distinctions so that you will come to understand the scale of "A" to "F" more precisely and what the criteria for differences are.

A Four Scale System of Grades for the assigned "graduate" papers:

"A" = is a paper with a publishable insight (in other words, it's a paper that makes a scholarly contribution) to the topic either by adding a new way of thinking about the topic in terms of the field's on-going discussion of it, or by adding a totally new topic of value to the field. (Many of our readings will illustrate what an on-going discussion is and how it got started. There will be, therefore, ample illustrations of this scholarly virtue.)

"B" = is not necessarily publishable, but is, nonetheless, an insightful synthesis of the material read (this grade would signify M.A. level work being done in a seminar designed exclusively for prospective Ph.D. candidates). There will be a few examples of this kind of successful work in terms of published summaries and assessments of work in an area of the field.

"C" = is a mere reporting of information and most likely does not work out of some communal concern with a problem that is relevant to the subject matter of this course in particular or in general. (This grade would signify B.A. level work). There are very few examples of this low level of work that has been accepted for publication and therefore is 'in print' for your consideration. I will supply what I might consider as an example.

"F" = a failure to do the assignment either because it was not handed in or because the paper demonstrates an inability even to explain the readings.

C. The Criteria (or Conventions) for each form of Discourse.

The criteria above for the Scale of "A" to "F" generally focuses on Writing for Publication. There are some very general and specific criteria or conventions for Oral Discussions in Seminars or at Conferences, for Written Communications for print, and for Electronic Communications for online discussions.

Listing What the criteria (for gaining success) or conventions (for establishing agreement or understanding) might be for each of these kinds of discourse and occasions, however, can be very difficult and tricky, for what is considered good and bad or a success and failure can easily become or be perceived to be canonical and ideal (as in Platonic). Moreover, it would be counterproductive and counterintuitive to think that failure cannot be a success. There are ways of turning failure into success. Some of the best ideas that inventive or innovative people have had are ideas that are generally considered "wrong" or "incorrect" or mere "failings." We do not want to box ourselves in with formalistic or algoristic lists or procedures; we do want to drift with both heuristic and aleatory lists or procedrues.

By now, since you are all doctoral students in English (Rhetoric Track), you should know and understand that we cannot always communicate effectively if we use the basic conventions of Print, e.g., when we write something for Oral presentation. Or you should all know that when we write something to be "ironic" and send it to an online discussion, it will seldom be read as y/our attempt to be "ironic" IF you and we do not in some manner or other indicate with emoticons or whatever, y/our attempt to indicate our attitude toward what we are saying. And even then--even in print or face to face--you and we may very well find y/ourself in trouble! Knowing does not prevent us from such mistakes! But nonetheless, I will point out to you, as I am sure you will to me, y/our various mistaken attempts. What would be crucial in this kind of ever-mistaken situation is to work from a resevoir of ways to extricate y/ourself from a bad situation.

Instead of spelling out formally what the criteria are for the first two (oral and literate) or for the third (electronic), which is radically evolving as the technology itself is, I am going to concentrate more on the varioius venues where you might practice your arts in rhetorics. In other words, in discussing the various papers that you will write, I will introduce you to the differences among the print venues (including the editor/s and readers) and What and How to communicate with and in them (e.g., CCC, CE, JAC, Rhetoric Review, PRE/TEXT, etc.). And how these venues's expectations are changing. Variously. Or, I will introduce you to the differences in individual conferences (CCCC, RSQ, NCTE, C&W, etc.) or indiviudal discussions lists (H-Rhetor, JAC, PRE/TEXT, etc.).

It is very important to understand that it is these venues, instead of some set of abstract critical loci, that establish the criteria for what works and does not work.

What all this means, therefore, is that when thinking-a-paper, you will start with a Drama and its material that make up an (unending) conversation in the field, in its journals, and then develop your paper-contribution in terms of that conversation and journal/s (and audience for the journal/s) and begin to think-write your way into a paper that you will rewrite the rest of your part in the conversation.... More about all this as we proceed.

What all this also means is that you do not write a paper for seminar; you write a paper for publication!

As I said in my discussion of objectives, I will take an Aristotelian-sophistic approach to criteria, namely, custom as it variously develops in the venues mentioned above. Hence, the list--if a list--will grow in our discussions. But it will be open to perpetual amendment. As we talk about particular works published in particular Journals or by particular editors and publishers, I will point out what is acceptable and not acceptable. I will point out Why James Corder could write in a particular style and Why you cannot and get published and accepted by y/our audiences. It is a Question of Ethos!, not just Logos or Pathos!

D. The Assessment Guide.

There may seem in what follows to be an overlap between I. and II. The first deals with general writing and research protocols in the field; the second, however, deals with specific crucial issues in the field.

A Caveat: In developing the guide, I have assumed that you should know the English language and be able to write in it. If you do not know the grammar of the language well enough and you do not express yourself well enough in the language, your paper will be--prior to any consideration of your paper in the light of the assessment guide--fundamentally unacceptable and will be returned to you. (This assessment guide is specifically for students in a doctoral-level seminar in Rhetoric and Composition and not for basic writers.)

1. The writer follows the basic research and writing protocols of the field of Rhetoric and Composition by including

(a) an 'argumentative claim' that a significant number of readers in the audience would take issue with;

(b) a compelling statement of the value or importance of the claim (as a 'crucial issue') to the field and audience;

(c) a statement of the method of operation in supporting the claim in a step-by-step process;

(d) a careful and methodical following of the method of operation;

(e) a careful and methodical anticipation and neutralization of counterarguments that could be brought against the claim and its various supporting arguments;

(f) a proper concern for an attribution of other writers's ideas, with a clear introduction (e.g., Jane Smith says: "....") to any quotation (direct discourse) or paraphrase (indirect discourse) of the authors's works;

(g) an accurate and as-faithful-as-possible exposition of the scholarly articles or chapters being referred to;

(h) an accurate and full citation of the works;

(i) if deviating from the standard writing protocol (all of the above) with experimental or other generic forms of discourse (e.g., satire), give a compelling explanation in your introduction for the deviation (why productive?, why necessary?)

B. The writer situates her-himself specifically in relation to

(a) a particular conversation (i.e., a discussion between or among scholarly disputants on an issue that has become 'crucial' and that has been published in a journal or books in the field of rhetoric/composition or in adjacent fields);

E.g., the conversations between Ehninger and Scott in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, or rather the conflicts of interpretation between Bitzer and a host of respondents in Philosophy and Rhetoric as well as other journals, or between Schiappa and Poulakos in Philosophy and Rhetoric, or Schiappa in Rhetoric Review and Vitanza in his book Negation, Subjectivity, and The History of Rhetoric.

(b) specific published works in chronological or thematic order being responded to (inclusion of all of the discussions and exchanges in print is extremely important);

(c) the particular audience/s (in speech-communication, in English, in Classics, etc.) in the field of rhetoric/composition, compensating for the different expectations between or among them;

(d) the particular conventions (e.g., concerning the exchange of ideas) of the particular journal (if applicable)