Inventio and Elocutio: Language Instruction at St. Paul's Grammar School and Today's Stylistic Classroom

Abstract

The Centrality of Style presents readers with a paradox. The editors begin with the convincing argument that style must be regarded as central to the discipline of composition studies. Indeed, the collection's rich diversity of chapters reasserts the prominent place of style in the field from different perspectives, historical moments, and theoretical and pedagogical approaches.Yet despite the book's claim of style's centrality, it makes an equally forceful case-which may appear contradictory at first-that some of the most exciting new ideas in stylistic study have emerged not from the center but the margins of the field-and the margins' intersections with other disciplines, ideas, cultures, and sites of inquiry.The paradox inherent in the tension of seeing style as both central and marginal is not new to those in rhetoric and composition. Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) has described a similar phenomenon in discussing the clash of language's unifying, or centripetal forces, and their counterpart-the dispersing, or centrifugal forces that often disrupt prevailing norms. In public sphere theory, critical theorist Michael Warner (2005), borrowing from Jurgen Habermas (1989) and others, depicts an identical discordance in the tension between publics that dominate social discourse and their counterpart, a culturally less powerful, oppositional group, called a counterpublic, which constantly works against that dominance even as it maintains, says Warner, "at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status" (p. 119). With respect to counterpublics, Warner says it is the oppositional aspect of their style that "performs membership" (p. 142).There is no question that The Centrality of Style navigates the push and pull of these kinds of oppositions in compelling new ways. The real question is, How does the volume manage to position style in the field as what Frank Farmer (2008), borrowing from anthropologist Victor Turner, calls a liminal counterpublic, emanating from the break or rupture of the public-counterpublic relationship that somehow exists "betwixt and between" the two? How, in other words, does style's very centrality depend on its marginalization, lack of power, and sometimes "renegade" status (Johnson, 2003) both inside, and outside, the field? Some answers to that question, and paradox, can be found in this volume. While there are many examples throughout the collection, here are some of the representative concepts that suggest even larger ideas in The Centrality of Style and show the current push and pull of style's liminal status in the field. Butler x STYLE AS ASSESSMENTStar Medzerian Vanguri exemplifies the paradox of style in her chapter on scoring rubrics in composition classrooms. Vanguri's study reflects the way style remains at the margins, sometimes undergoing a reversal of sorts: "We are more specific about those aspects we value least … while we are less specific about the qualities we value most." Vanguri goes on to explain the paradox she outlines: "Qualities like eloquence, rhetoric...