But while the external components of current-traditional rhetoric are known, Berlin and Inkster write, the philosophical assumptions that underlie it are not so obvious. Their goal, then, is to explore current-traditional rhetoric, particularly its philosophical assumptions. The most important of these is epistemology, which, they say, involves “concepts of the mind, reality, and the relation between the two” (1). They then trace the epistemological assumptions of the current-traditional paradigm to assess its contribution to an adequate conception of “the rhetorical process,” which, they maintain, must account for the elements of the communication triangle: reality, writer, audience, discourse. “An adequate method of instruction in writing,” they write, “must give a prospective writer a conceptual framework that encourages exploration of each of the elements in the communication triangle in the attempt to bring forth discourse” (2). Changes in the way these elements of the communication triangle are imagined occasion further changes to “the way meaning is seen to occur and to be shared,” changes that are epistemological and thus carry profound ethical, social, and political ramifications (14).
Their method begins with an examination of the current-traditional paradigm’s historical origins, which, they say, will “provide a useful background” (1). They then proceed to examine four contemporary textbooks, using a cognitive map that entails reading the epistemological concepts of mind, reality, and the relation between the two across the communication triangle: reality, writer, audience, and discourse. They employ in this methodology a heuristic, which they explain is one of three available processes by which to work through any sort of cognitive or creative act. Placed along a continuum—algorithmic/heuristic/aleatory—the three available processes range procedurally from the algorithmic process, a strictly rule-governed process that produces predictable outcomes, to the aleatory process, which is completely random and produces unpredictable outcomes. The heuristic method, which is not a compromise between the poles but occupies “a wide middle ground of activities that are neither wholly rule-governed nor wholly random,” entails “a systematic way of moving toward satisfactory control of an ambiguous or problematic situation, but not to a single correct solution” (3). While Berlin and Inkster’s methodological benchmark draws upon the heuristic perspective, they incorporate the continuum itself into their interpretive matrix. This then becomes the underlying field by which they interpret the relation of reality and writer that constitutes the epistemology of the current-traditional paradigm.
They apply the heuristic continuum to assess the ongoing argument in English departments regarding what can and cannot be taught in the composition class. Those who take the position that “stylistic correctness or facility” is the proper classroom content assume the algorithmic position on the continuum, while those who would teach composition as an act of genius occupy the aleatory (13). The paradox, according to Berlin and Inkster, is that both poles of this binary share “epistemologies [that] are wholly consistent with one another” (13). I make a point of this because Berlin alters this interpretation in his 1982 article, “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories.” In claiming that the underlying epistemologies of those who equate composition with stylistic correctness and those who equate it with genius are consistent, Berlin and Inkster’s assessment is based, quite naturally, on the terms by which they define epistemology: the mind, reality, and the relation between the two. From the perspective of “the mind,” then, the two poles are consistent, in that both the algorithmic and the aleatory assume that knowledge is located “outside” of the individual mind. In the algorithmic view, knowledge is constructed to the point of reification, while in the aleatory, knowledge is “found.” What this continuum elides and what Berlin later attempts to correct with a more social orientation, is the emphasis on the individual mind, autonomous and unconstrained by outside forces.
Also related to their claim of algorithmic/aleatory epistemological consistency within the current-traditional paradigm is Berlin and Inkster’s purpose to not only “dissect the paradigm, but to evaluate it, to make some statement about its adequacy for shaping a contemporary rhetoric” (1). The value of freshman composition had been and continued to be contested not only within the English department but also in the academy and beyond. Berlin and Inkster place responsibility for this crisis directly on a faulty rhetorical paradigm and, indirectly, upon those who remain intellectually entrenched within it. There is, then, a concern for reshaping notions of writing process and effecting change in the classroom. This article indicts the current-traditional paradigm as dangerous “to teachers, students, the wider purposes of our educational enterprise, and even our social and human fabric” (14). This goal—remapping notions of writing process and effecting change in the classroom in order to secure the space of the freshman composition course in the academy—permeates Berlin’s work.
“Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories”
In response to recent articles attempting to distinguish various approaches to teaching composition, Berlin in this article contrasts his theoretical approach with that of accepted wisdom that says since the elements of the composing process—writer, reality, reader, language—are uncontested, differences in composing processes must issue from the degree of emphasis given the elements. Berlin says this is a contention with which he “strongly disagree[s],” for “from this point of view, the composing process is always and everywhere the same because writer, reality, reader, and language are always and everywhere the same” (765). It is quite clear to Berlin that since it is common “to speak of the composing process as a recursive activity involving prewriting, writing, and rewriting, it is not difficult to see the writer-reality-audience-language relationship as underlying, at a deeper structural level, each of these three stages” and thus determining the sort of instruction that is or is not prescribed for each activity (765). “Pedagogical theories in writing courses,” he maintains, “are grounded in rhetorical theories, and rhetorical theories do not differ in the simple undue emphasis of writer or audience or reality or language or some combination of these” (765). They differ, he says, in the way writer, reality, audience, and language “are conceived—both as separate units and in the way the units relate to each other” (766). Perhaps I overlook some subtlety, but I do not believe that a change in the emphasis on any specific element precludes a difference in how it is conceived, unless Berlin is claiming that the difference is legitimate only if it is explicit.18 I believe that the elements do, indeed, make a difference, and that, in fact, Berlin’s methodological practice throughout these works depends upon that difference.
While Berlin maintains that composing processes are grounded in rhetorical theories of writer, reality, audience, and language, he contends that the differences between composing processes are explainable by “diverging definitions of the composing process, itself,” specifically in the way each element is characterized (765). The focus should be each composite definition, which presents “a different world with different rules about what can be known, how it can be known, and how it can be communicated” (766). To achieve his goal of explaining how and why teaching approaches differ, Berlin situates the “writer, reality, audience, language relationship” (765) as underlying each element in the activity of composing: prewriting/writing/rewriting. Together, this matrix represents an “epistemic complex” that determines the pedagogy prescribed for each composing process activity: invention/arrangement/style (766). He then organizes and analyzes each of the four dominant pedagogical groups—Neo-Aristotelians/Classicists; Positivists/Current-Traditionalists; Neo-Platonists/Expressionists; New Rhetoricians/Social-Epistemic—according to this “epistemic complex.”
There are subtle but significant