Theories of rhetoric and composition pedagogy

The field of rhetoric has been a matter of considerable debate for millennia. Derived from the Greek word for public speaking, rhetoric's original concern dealt primarily with the spoken word. Aristotle wrote a philosophical work that still has major scholarly impact, Rhetoric, in which he identifies five of the field of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Invention is concerned with the content or idea being expressed, and relates to the rhetorician’s understanding of his goals. Arrangement deals with issues of how to best organize an argument in order to attain the speaker or writer’s goals. It is closely related to style, which relates to gestures, metaphors, and word choices selected to best influence the audience and reach the desired goal. Memory is the third and simplest element of rhetoric in being related specifically to spoken rhetoric, specifically concerned with remembering the words in one’s speech. Finally, delivery concerns tone, word choice, posture and other such bodily signs that influence the effect of one’s words on an audience.

Rhetorical theory is the body of thought about human symbol use. The term rhetoric, in its popular usage, typically has negative connotations. Rhetoric is contrasted with action; it is empty words, talk without substance, mere ornament. This contemporary understanding of rhetoric is at odds with a long history of rhetorical theory, dating back in the West to ancient Greece and Rome, that provides a long-standing foundation on which the contemporary discipline of communication is built.

From 1870 to 1900, as the American college system moved from small schools to a larger, diverse set of universities with distinct academic disciplines, the field of composition studies grew from traditional rhetorical studies. As pioneers in the field of composition studies, Harvard University enacted a new program in their English department that, for the first time, made “a total commitment to writing,” though the initial focus was on personal writing and did not include rhetoric or literary analysis. However, the field of composition studies soon became paired with the field of rhetoric as the modern university developed, because scholars began to realize that elements of rhetoric and not “systematic grammatical study” were necessary to improve writing and composition abilities. While rhetoric traditionally concerned matters related to verbal orations or speeches, both rhetoric and composition are related to the expression of ideas, often in an attempt to influence one’s audience. In addition, composition is also concerned with the principles of invention, arrangement, style, and delivery traditionally associated with rhetoric; even memory can become an element of composition when one is writing a speech or a scholarly paper to be delivered orally. Thus, rhetoric and composition— colloquially termed “rhet/comp” or “comp/rhet”— became a field of its own and remains a burgeoning discipline in universities today.

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