Against such a disease, Burke prescribes a healthy dose of rhetoric, hidden in the epigraph to A Grammar of Motives: ad bellum purificandum, to the purification of war. But this is not a kumbaya community of good feelings: this is the perversion of community that Kenneth Burke warns us of in the beginning of A Rhetoric of Motives: “You will understand war much better if you think of it, not simply as strife come to a head, but rather as a disease, or perversion of community” (22). In either case, clarity is serving to create community. Clarity works as a tent pole if I agree with the author-gathering all of us together to actively agree with a clear point-or a straw man if I disagree-a clear point we can oppose. In scholarly arguments, clarity is a wonderful ruse in the service of identification. This question disappears in the FYC classroom because context is so often neglected or denied. Of course, so are students (at least that is what they are preparing to do), but in the classroom we often engage in hypothetical writing for hypothetical audiences-generalized writing.Ĭoherence and clarity are effects whose desirability depends on context. Scholars are writing for a specific audience. The major distinction, then, between student and scholarly writing is one of specificity. Suffice it to say, when we teach writing, we teach it broadly. On the other side of the spectrum, even the specificity of writing In the disciplines (WID) courses allows a fair degree of generality, because all disciplines require multiple genres. The exceptions (colleges that for various reasons do not have majors) lead us to teach an even more generalized conception of writing. Depending on the school, most classes will have a mix of many of these. In a typical first year composition (FYC) course, our students might have preprofessional majors like premed or prelaw, science majors like engineering or chemistry, fine arts majors, liberal arts majors, and no major at all. When we teach writing, we teach it as generally as possible. What does that mean for scholarly and student writing? For one thing, it means that there is no difference between them (or that the difference is one of specificity). Whereas clarity is the illusion that all subjects are the same (which is not far from saying that there are no subjects), coherence is the illusion that the subject is in control. Coherence belies the fiction that the writer is a whole subject, in complete control of his or her writing: the habit of saying I. Clarity is the covering up of a differend.Ĭoherence, on the other hand, is the illusion that an argument holds together, that it is all of one piece. Clarity covers over a true exigence (in which parties disagree) with a false one (in which not only do they now agree, but they always have-the supposed disagreement was just a misunderstanding). If we can be clear, then why speak? The reader already knows what you’re going to say. If we already agree, there is no exigence. Author, reader, and text disappear, leaving only a meaning that we all already agree on. In a sense, it is the illusory dissolution of the rhetorical triangle. With clarity, the effect is that the reader knows the author’s mind. Each is an effect created by a piece of writing on an audience. Neither of the two is inherent to a piece of writing. Links between sentences and between paragraphs.At this point it would be easy to confuse clarity with coherence. Transitional devices also operate at the paragraph level to provide The specific strategies of exemplification, analysis, comparison and contrast, definition, enumeration, and description, all of which furnish distinct approaches to developing ideas. Paragraph development is achieved partly through Supporting sentences, paragraphs pull together material and emphasize various forms of conceptualĭevelopment. By organizing material into a topic sentence and The paragraph is one of the most powerful instruments ofĬoherence. Abstracts,Ĭlear titles, introductions, and problem statements all promote coherence by linking various parts of a piece of writing. Map to help them anticipate the content of your work. Valued in science and technology because of the inherent complexity of the subjects.Īt the level of the whole document, coherence helps to provide the larger picture, in which theĬonnections among the parts of the document are made clear by the writer. Coherence can dramatically improve the reader'sĪbility to understand your material by promoting its flow or readability. The elements of a document strengthen its impact. Efforts to emphasize the relationships among Their material logically and stylistically consistent, and by organizing and expressing their ideas in Together, of providing the reader an easily followed path. Look for ways to improve the coherence of your writing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |