Recently in Rhet/Comp Category

This year celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the audacious "little book," The Elements of Style. 

Noted linguist and grammarian Geoffrey Pullum wrote a pretty scathing review of the book in the Chronicle of Higher Education, needling away at Strunk's more ambiguous, if not downright inaccurate, directives which have caused "grammatical angst" for college students and graduates for decades. Subsequently, Pullum contends that

English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.

Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, highlighted her own beef with Strunk & White, noting that the little book is "the only grammar book so many people have ever studied."  And because of this, those prickly stylistic suggestions have taken on the vaunted status of hard-and-fast rules.  How true! 

I was introduced to Strunk & White in my high school composition classes.  Days were set aside where the class broke into small groups and completed handouts devoted to sections of the book.  I remember having to revise sentences according to the "rules of usage" and "principles of composition," as well as explain why "effect" was preferred over "affect."  I wasn't seriously introduced to another grammar book until graduate school when I had to use Lunsford & Connors' The Everyday Writer in the freshmen composition courses I taught.  Yet, by that time, Strunk & White's recommendations were what I knew and thought to be true.

I'm left wondering how much exposure today's college students have in terms of grammar books.  A quick glance in my library's reference collection reveals citation style manuals galore (MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian, AMA, etc.) but few grammars.  Two that did catch my eye: Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (4th ed.) and Shertzer's The Elements of Grammar.   

It's very fitting that presidential inaugurations take place at the beginning of the year.  As the country eagerly awaits the swearing in and inaugural address of Barack Obama, the New York Times recently included an interactive history of presidential inaugural addresses, focusing especially on the words presidents choose and their contexts.  What words and themes will Obama use to connect and motivate this nation?

A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer lamented the use of jargon and "nonsense language" frequently used in the business world and pointed out how three local business schools are trying to create better communicators by offering more writing instruction. 

In his recent article appearing in The Nation, Associate Professor of English at Yale University, William Deresiewicz, argues that the field of (English) literary studies -- and English Departments themselves -- is "slowly dying," "losing its will to live" as fewer students study or major in English literature.  He also points to the profession's lack of an emerging theoretical school in nearly 20 years as well as a dwindling job market.

Despite a poor job market, Deresiewicz notes that the number of "'service'" positions - Rhetoric & Composition, Creative Writing, Technical Writing, and Communications - seem to dominate the Modern Language Association Job Information List. 

Are English Departments becoming too oriented to the teaching of writing as opposed to the teaching of literature?

JSTOR, the electronic journal database, has added 40 new titles to its collection. Some of the highlights include:

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory published by Springer, including the first 21 volumes (1983-2003). The journal provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical research that pays close attention to natural language data, so as to provide a channel of communication between researchers of a variety of points of view. The journal actively seeks to bridge the gap between descriptive work and work of a highly theoretical, less empirically oriented nature.


Rhetoric Society Quarterly published by Taylor & Francis, including volumes 6-29 (1976-1999). The journal features original articles on all areas of rhetorical studies including theory, history, criticism, and pedagogy. The journal addresses an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students of rhetoric who work in communication studies, English studies, philosophy, politics and other allied fields.



The Women's Review of Books published by Old City Publishing, Inc., including volumes 1-21 (1983-2003). The journal provides a unique perspective on today's literary landscape and feature essays and in-depth reviews of new books by and about women.

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy recently released Issue 12.1, focusing on digital scholarship.

Kairos is a "refereed online journal exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy," publishing webtexts that focus on "large-scale issues related to special topics, individual and collaborative reviews of books and media", in addition to news and announcements.

CompPile has a (slightly) new look and three new features: (1) a blog, (2) a section devoted to New/Recent Books, and (3) a section for “CompReviews.”

The winner of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Jim Gleeson, a 47-year-old media technician from Madison, Wisconsin, who penned the following for the international literary parody contest:

Gerald began -- but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash -- to pee.

Sponsored by the Department of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State University and begun in 1982, the department asks writers to submit the worst opening sentence of the worst imaginary novel they can, well, imagine.

The contest is named after the Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who penned a novel with the immortal opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night."

A recent Newsweek article analyzed the current bumper stickers for the 2008 presidential hopefuls, noting color(s), spacing, font style, and overall impact. John Edwards' use of green in his sticker seemed to cause a stir, perhaps denoting a nod to the environmental community.

Which sticker did Newsweek like? Giuliani's (solid like a brick wall).
Which sticker did Newsweek dislike? McCain's (too militaristic).

In his perhaps somewhat circumlocutory article appearing in The Globe and Mail, Ian Brown discusses the impasse between having a sophisticated vocabulary versus a more utilitarian vocabulary, noting the continued mistrust and yet awe people have of logophiles.