Studies on coherence in the paragraphs produced by English language learners have focused on cohesive devices and their correlation with perceptions of writing quality. Inconsistent findings suggest that other measures of coherence might be at play, one of which is coherence relations. This study aimed to explore coherence relations in learners'…

Responding to the call for embracing mêtis in the classroom, this piece puts scholarship on embodiment and emergent gameplay in conversation with one another to explore a potential means of cultivating "mêtic" intelligence in the composition classroom by empirically examining how the open world game "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of…

This study tried to investigate the application of the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) in analyzing the relationships between the markers used in the four texts and identify the types of the marker relationship and their functions in the whole clauses. It found out that RST operated with highly generalized Rhetorical Relations, such as…

This work relates L. S. Vygotsky's theory to the rhetorical and poetic pedagogy, which is a set of educational ideas and practices derived from the philosophical-educational tradition initiated by the Sophists. It is verified that the Vygotskyan concepts contribute to broaden the foundations of poetic and rhetorical pedagogy, presenting a…

This article argues that rhetoric-focused first-year composition curricula may effectively use feminist revisions to rhetoric by employing a method the author calls "procedural feminism," or the distillation of feminist rhetorical practices and theory within curricular development that does not make feminism a topic students will…

This essay claims that contemplative classroom practices can cultivate "kairotic" composure, which is an attunement to the dual aspects of the rhetorical concept of "Kairos"--a sense of timelessness or deep presence, and a sense for saying or writing the right word in the right moment. While theorists of contemplative writing…

This essay notes a resurgence of interest in rhetorical studies on the appeal of form, grounded in the work of rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke. The essay argues that form is not only a way to structure discourses, it is a way to structure experience. Form is foundational in creating perceptions and thus experiences. Form is also highly…

The Rhetoric* of Writing Assessment uses strategic variations of rhetorical theory to reimagine writing assessment's complicated disciplinary past and rethink its foundational concepts through its multifaceted rhetorical situatedness. Although scholars such as Bob Broad, Brian Huot, Patricia Lynne, Norbert Elliot, Edward M. White, and Kathleen…

Epideictic rhetoric reifies and reshapes the shared values of a community, and in this article, I reread William E. Coles Jr.'s "The Plural I" as showing forth a classroom built upon epideictic rhetoric, his own epideictic pedagogy asking that teachers of writing engage student work not expecting to be persuaded but as observers of…

The essay examines the ethical tensions surrounding the common cultural and disciplinary demand that writers write "clearly." The essay seeks to advance the discipline's engagement with Linda Kintz's and Sharon Crowley's separate critiques of the "ideology of clarity," arguing that clarity potentially manipulates audiences primarily through either…

Poetry is about the experience of meaning as well as the meaning of experience. To read a poem is to feel one's way into the inner workings of its language, rather than to peer through that speech to an extractable truth. Most students of literature today have difficulty in grasping the performative or rhetorical dimensions of the texts with which…

The increasing visuality of our culture was observed in 1994 by Mitchell, who coined the term "pictorial turn" to describe the interest in the visual taking place in culture and discourse (Mitchell, 1994). Since then, this process has increased further, particularly in all the areas of digital/new media. This chapter will consider this…

This article describes an activity in which students will be able to apply rhetorical theory effectively and critically from specific theorists throughout history to modern-day issues. Through a simulated trial of a current figure, this activity makes connections between rhetorical theories to current affairs, thereby inviting students to consider…

Recent theoretical and technological developments, including concepts of networking elaborated by Bruno Latour, enable composition studies to take an empiricist turn toward issues of identity. More specifically, these developments help the field more strongly connect the figure of the writing-subject to the experiences of actual writers. In this…

This article considers how rhetorical scholarship might proceed if it were to take the charge of pragmatic meliorism seriously. After discussing the notion of meliorism as employed by John Dewey, I argue that it would involve a radical reshaping of method in rhetorical theory, criticism, and pedagogy. Not all research must be meliorative, but…