The Nature of Rhetorical Reflection

Invention as Janice Lauer defines it concerns “strategic acts that provide the discourser with direction, multiple ideas, subject matter, arguments, insights or probably judgments, and understanding of the rhetorical situation” (2). “Rhetorical reflection” is just such a “strategic act” that extends the concerns of invention throughout the activity of writing, helping writers achieve an appropriate and effective rhetorical stance. In this discussion, I will define rhetorical reflection and outline its relevant links to rhetoric and invention, then discuss the significance of rhetorical reflection as a concept and pedagogical activity within the field of Rhetoric and Composition.

Rhetorical reflection, as I define it, represents a teacher-prompted activity that occurs within the activity or writing for the purpose of validity testing or problem-solving. Following Linda Flower's paradigm of writer-based/reader-based prose, rhetorical reflection is written for the writer's own purposes and with herself in mind as audience. Typically, these acts of reflection come between the drafts, after peer feedback and before revision begins. This chart of the “Writing Feedback Loop” illustrates the pedagogical location of rhetorical reflection within a teacher-guided sequence of the writing process:
Figure 1: The Writing Feedback Loop and Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle

This sequencing of the writing process follows David Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle closely, where “reflective observation” on experience leads to “abstract conceptualization” that leads to “active experimentation” in another (and presumably improved) attempt at the experience, which then leads to a repeat of the cycle. This “looping” describes the multi-draft sequence of the writing-feedback loop and the significant role peer response and rhetorical reflection have in helping students formulate critical perspective and insight into their own text and process so as to assist them in revising and completing the writing assignment more successfully. Rhetorical reflection contrasts with what I call “curricular reflection” which is done post-task rather than in-task and predominantly for constructivist purposes and assessment. The portfolio letter represents the most typical kind of curricular reflection. As Richard Haswell notes, these kinds of student self-evaluations “both measure and allow learning” (98). It asks students to demonstrate their learning even as they construct it. Since this kind of reflection is done once the task is completed, it does not involve the same kind of problem-solving as the strategizing done in rhetorical reflection in the midst of a writing task. Jennifer Moon calls this kind of reflection where no new learning material is involved “cognitive housekeeping” that involves a “re-ordering of thought” (90).

Figure 2: The Three Poles of Reflection's

The diagram of the three poles of reflection chart out these two different frameworks for reflection typically used in Composition. Curricular reflection, then, has the predominant purpose of promoting learning, while rhetorical reflection is chiefly characterized by judgment.
An examination of Donald's Schon's thinking on “reflective practice” reveals further features of “rhetorical reflection” and why this kind of reflection can be closely connected to rhetoric and invention. Kathleen Blake Yancey and Joel English are two of the most prominent scholars in Composition who have directly brought Schon's ideas into the field of Composition. Yancey in her book Reflection in the Writing Classroom introduces Schon's concepts by describing his views on knowledge: “In explaining his epistemology, Schon begins by distinguishing between two kinds of knowing: that of the technical realm and that of the non-technical realm. The world of technical rationality, Schon says, allows for a knowing by way of causal inference that is controlled. … The second world is … where causal inference is a judgment call, no matter how well informed” (12-13). Within Schon's two competing views of epistemology, we see the same competing views about truth and rhetoric's role that go back to the sophists, and through Schon's conception of “reflective practice” we can make direct connections to “rhetorical practice.”

In Schon's 1983 The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, he describes the crisis in professional practice as a mismatch between then current methods for guiding practice and real life practice situations. He labels the culprit as “the model of Technical Rationality”: “According to the model of Technical Rationality … professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique” (21). He characterizes this technical rationality later as the “application of scientific theory and technique to the instrumental problems of practice” (30). The crisis Schon identifies is that this technical rationality does not always work in the messy, real world which involves “complexity, uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict” (18). He labels these situations as “indeterminate zones of practice” (Educating 6-7). His entire thesis surrounding “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action” is about applying a different kind of thinking to these indeterminate zones of practice.

Within Schon's two conflicting models of knowledge guiding practice we see the ancient conflict between philosophy and rhetoric. Stanley Fish summarizes this conflict in his essay “Rhetoric” by bringing up Richard Lanham's distinction between homo seriosus and homo rhetoricus: “In the philosopher's vision of the world, rhetoric (and representation in general) is merely the (disposable) form by which a prior and substantial content is conveyed; but in the world of homo rhetoricus rhetoric is both form and content, the manner or presentation and what is presented” (1616). When truth is already known either through logic, religion, or science, rhetoric is reduced to “mere rhetoric” and becomes a matter or arrangement and style only, leaving invention out or rhetoric's purview. In contrast, Isocrates and Aristotle define the realm of rhetoric as being exactly the indeterminate zones of practice that Schon discusses. For Aristotle, the art of rhetoric deals with things that "belong to no definite science"(1354a), "the probable" or those things that "may be one way or another" (1357a). Distinguishing the contingent from the necessary or the impossible, Aristotle determines the subject matter of the contingent to be "perishable circumstances, incomplete knowledge, and fallible human action" (Farrell Norms 78).
Schon's complaint against the model of Technical Rationality also mirrors the debate classical rhetoricians had between whether the practice of rhetoric was a science or an art. We see this same conflict in recent times in post-process thinkers who complain that writing process pedagogy and views of writing have become a form of technical rationality. Is rhetoric and composition a science where rhetorical practice is guided by “scientific” rules and generalizable truths that can be applied in any situation? In this case, rhetorical practice becomes a matter of techne. Schon's clear links to the classical view of rhetoric can be seen in his view of reflective practice as involving “artistry”: “It is rather through the non-technical process of framing the problematic situation that we may organize and clarify both the ends to be achieved and the possible means of achieving them” (The Reflective Practitioner 41). If rhetoric is as John Poulakos defines it is “the art which seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggest that which is possible,” (26) rhetorical practice “enacts the norms of propriety collaboratively with interested collective others” (Farrell “Practicing” 91). This rhetorical practice, like Schon's view of reflective practice as artistry, aims “to practice judgment (to enact krisis) where certain sorts of problematic materials are concerned (Farrell “Practicing” 81). The classical term for this practical judgment (or wisdom) is phronesis which Farrell refers to as the "practical ideal of the appropriate" (81). Phronesis, Steve Schwarze points out, is crucial to the practice of rhetoric: “the relationship of phronesis and rhetoric emphasizes how rhetor, text, and audience are brought together in the enactment of practical wisdom” (“The role of display in phronesis”). As Kathleen Yancey states after a summary of Schon's views on reflection, “reflection is rhetorical” (12).

Rhetorical reflection, then, relates to invention because as a form of phronesis it seeks to discover what is appropriate within uncertain and particular situations. This quest for the appropriate in writing has been referred to by Wayne Booth as “rhetorical stance”:
Rhetorical stance is] a stance which depends on discovering and maintaining in any writing situation a proper balance among the three elements that are at work in any communicative effort: the available arguments about the subject itself, the interests and peculiarities of the audience, and the voice, the implied character, of the speaker. I should like to suggest that it is this balance, this rhetorical stance, difficult as it is to describe, that is our main goal as teachers of rhetoric. (141)

As Richard Young, Alton Becker and Kenneth Pike state in Rhetoric: Discovery and Change, “invention involves a process of orientation rather than origination” (qtd. in Bawarshi 6). Rhetorical stance is a conceptual metaphor that communicates the spacial sense of orienting toward and aligning the various elements and complexity of the writing situation (or we might say the writing ecology).


Figure 3: Elements of Rhetorical Stance

If we presume that writing is epistemic and a form of inquiry (Odell 1980, Hillocks 1982), then the concerns of invention persist throughout the writing process, not just the “pre-writing” phase of composing. Rhetorical reflection, as a teacher-prompted activity, like invention is a heuristic activity designed to guide a student writers' inquiry into establishing their rhetorical stance. If we see the activity of writing as a goal-directed, problem-solving activity as Flowers and Hayes do, then rhetorical reflection is a discursive space where student writers can define and seek (invent) solutions to problems and felt difficulties they encounter within their process of drafting a paper. It is where students can practice what Dewey defined as “reflective thinking”: “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends” (6). It is where students get to practice the phronetic art of rhetoric.

The significance of rhetorical reflection to recent perspectives on pedagogy in Rhetoric and Composition can be seen in recent calls by scholars and teachers to shift the focus of what we teach in Freshman Composition from a narrow “proficiency” in academic writing to a broader “rhetorical sensitivity” that can serve student writers in all instances of writing (Halasek). Donald Bartholomae, a chief proponent of teaching academic writing, imagines a composition that teaches a deeper form of criticism than our current practice: "we can imagine that the goal of writing instruction might be to teach an act of criticism that would enable a writer to interrogate his or her own text in relationship to the problems of writing and the problems of disciplinary knowledge. … as something to be learned in practice, perhaps learned at the point of practice" (17). Joseph Petraglia believes the goal of writing instruction should be the "turn away from developing rhetorical skills and toward development of rhetorical sensibilities" (62). Summing up ideas from Roderick Hart and Don Burks in the field of speech communication, Petraglia states: "the ideal rhetorical training will have at its core the development of sensitivity to the rhetorical possibilities available to students and will provide some guidance as to how they may determine to select among those possibilities" (62). Anis Bawarshi, speaking from a position of the importance of genre in writing, states a similar belief for what our goals should be in 21st century writing classrooms: “The rhetorical art of adaptation or repositioning should become central to our teaching of writing, especially our teaching of invention, which would then become the art of analyzing genres and positioning oneself within them” (156). Finally, Chris Anson in his recent CCC article on assessment cites the results of Elizabeth Wardle's research into transfer to advocate for this same kind of focus for Freshman Composition: “meta-awareness about writing language, and rhetorical strategies in FYC may be the most important ability our courses can cultivate” (qtd. in Anson 124). Rhetorical reflection, as an “effortful, interpretive, and fallible but strategic process” (Flower 268) is one teaching activity we can engage students in that will help them develop this rhetorical sensitivity and practice the art of adapting and repositioning—that is, the art of rhetorical practice.

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