Composition and rhetoric. What do we really do with it? It is interesting to see how others, who are published and acclaimed, view composition. I have never really formally studied composition or the theory of (unless you count professional development days). However, I found that what Klayton presented about Kinneavy made me realize what I have been taught as a student and as a teacher concerning composition isn't anything new.
Having the privilege to listen to Tom Romano, I definitely could make the connections to Kinneavy and his theory of writing. People write and create for a variety of audiences and hope to make some impact or have some influence on the audience they are trying to reach. Kinneavy separates writing into genres hoping to reach a wider audience which makes sense. Not only is his theory of writing trying to reach an audience, but it is trying to influence writers as well. What he presents is multi-genre writing and writing across the curriculum. This is a very important skill because we, as individuals, need to know how to communicate in any given situation. Kinneavy breaks the genres down into specific categories, and each genre has a particular purpose. However, those purposes and genres overlap, thus, creating cross-curricular writing.
Trying to wrap my brain around what Klayton presented was difficult until I started to look at the genres and purposes as a teacher. I cannot force my students to write a particular way just like I cannot make them learn a particular way. Some are auditory learners, visual learners and kinesthetic learners. Kinneavy seems to recognize this and his theory individualizes writing for the writer.
We write for a purpose; we write for an audience. We share our writing with others and we sometimes keep it private. Even though Kinneavy may be full of contradictions (according to Klayton), his theory of writing makes sense because it is so full of contradictions. Writers have their own style of composition and writing that may be contradictory, but isn't that what makes writing unique? I don't think it is the product, but it is the process; and that seems contradictory to Kinneavy, yet fits right in with his theory as well.
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Thanks, Shaynee! I posted more information on Kinneavy that I wasn't able to get to in my presentation, but which helps clarify my overall ambivalence regarding Kinneavy's work.
ReplyDeleteAs for Kinneavy's self-contradictions: hopefully I was able to convey that Kinneavy's thesis, that the "aim of a discourse determines everything else in the process of discourse," breaks down when we consider that most discourse (if not all discourse) is multivalent, and that Kinneavy himself admits as much throughout the book. I'm still wondering why he wrote it, in fact.