Refiguring Prose Style : Possibilities for Writing Pedagogy

by Johnson, T. R.; Pace, Tom

• ISBN13: 9780874216219
• ISBN10: 0874216214
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-30
• Publisher: Utah State Univ Pr

Summary

Style is of vital practical interest to college writing teachers, because everyone has to teach it one way or another. Yet, for about two decades, the theoretical discussion of how to address prose style in teaching college writing has been stuck, with style standing in as a proxy for other stakes in the theory wars.A consequence of the impasse is that a theory of style itself has not been well articulated. In Refiguring Prose Style, Johnson and Pace suggest that moving the field toward a better consensus will require establishing style as a clearer subject of inquiry.Accordingly, Refiguring Prose Style takes up a comprehensive study of the subject. The hope of the essays here--focusing on historical, aesthetic, practical, and theoretical issues--is to reawaken composition studies to the possibilities of style, and, in turn, to rejuvenate a great many classrooms.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
T. R. Johnson
Tom Pace
PART I: WHAT HAPPENED: THE RISE AND FALL OF STYLISTICS IN COMPOSITION
Introduction	1	(2)
Tom Pace
Style and the Renaissance of Composition Studies	3	(20)
Tom Pace
Where Is Style Going? Where Has It Been?	23	(19)
Elizabeth Weiser
Contextual Stylistics: Breaking Down the Binaries in Sentence-Level Pedagogy	42	(15)
Rebecca Moore Howard
Style Redux	57	(21)
Kathryn Flannery
PART II: BELLES LETTRES AND COMPOSITION
Introduction	76	(2)
T. R. Johnson
The Uses of Literature	78	(15)
Tina Kelleher
Persuasion, More Than Argument: Moving Toward a Literary Sensitivity in the Classroom	93	(14)
Allison Alsup
An Arts-Centric Composition Classroom	107	(12)
Gabriel Gomez
Playing with Echo: Strategies for Teaching Repetition in the Writing Classroom	119	(11)
Melissa A. Goldthwaite
The ``Weird Al'' Style Method: Playful Invention as Serious Pedagogy	130	(9)
Keith Rhodes
When Their Voice Is Their Problem: Using Imitation to Teach the Classroom Dialect	139	(14)
J. Scott Farrin
PART III: TEACHING PROSE STYLE
Introduction	151	(2)
Tom Pace
Style: The New Grammar in Composition Studies?	153	(14)
Nicole Amare
Balancing Thought and Expression: A Short Course in Style	167	(14)
Lisa Baird
Rethinking Stylistic Analysis in the Writing Class	181	(17)
William J. Carpenter
Re-Placing the Sentence: Approaching Style Through Genre	198	(17)
Peter Clements
Tutoring Taboo: A Reconsideration of Style in the Writing Center	215	(13)
Jesse Kavadlo
PART IV: NEW DEFINITIONS OF STYLE
Introduction	227	(1)
T. R. Johnson
Rhetor-Fitting: Defining Ethics through Style	228	(13)
Dion C. Cautrell
Style as a System: Toward a Cybernetic Model of Composition Style	241	(15)
Drew Loewe
Teaching the Tropics of Inquiry in the Composition Classroom	256	(11)
M. Todd Harper
Writing with the Ear	267	(19)
T. R. Johnson
Notes	286	(8)
References	294	(15)
Contributors	309	(4)
Index	313