Michael G. Moran

Rhetoric and rhetorical theory have been gaining in prominence throughout the 20th century. As leaders in all fields give careful attention to issues in communication, rhetoric becomes increasingly central to a range of disciplines. Many of these leaders have shaped rhetorical theory through their work in other fields, and rhetoric becomes more and more difficult to define and delimit. This reference is a guide to major trends and developments in rhetoric and rhetorical theory during the last 100 years.Included are alphabetically arranged entries for major and minor rhetoricians, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Wayne Booth, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Peter Elbow, and Linda Flower. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a brief biography, an analysis of the figure's rhetorical theory, and a current bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The figures included represent a range of rhetorical schools. An extensive introduction discusses these schools, and the volume concludes with extensive bibliographical material.

In 1584 Walter Raleigh received a patent from Queen Elizabeth to settle an English colony on Roanoke Island, on the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina, soon to be named Virginia. Within the next few years, he sent a reconnaissance voyage and two actual colonies (both of which failed) to explore and settle the region. To support his colonization efforts, Raleigh assembled a group of communication experts who wrote reports and produced ethnographic drawings of the people and maps of the region to interest potential investors and colonists in the project. Inventing Virginia is the first book to thoroughly explore the communication strategies that Raleigh's circle developed and applied in Virginia. This book will make important contributions to several fields, including technical and commercial communication, early American literature, Renaissance literature (especially prose studies), and rhetorical theory and practice.

Using a biographical approach, this book examines Frank Aydelotte's enduring contributions to English studies in America and the various social, cultural, educational, and personal forces that shaped his pedagogy. Educated at Harvard and Indiana, Aydelotte's seminal experience was becoming a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1904. While at Oxford University, he experienced a system of teaching writing that he found superior to the Harvard formalism that dominated many American English departments at the time. This comprehensive work explores the three curriculums developed by Aydelotte: the 'thought' approach to composition developed at Indiana University, the technical communication curriculum developed at MIT, and the influential Honor's Program developed at Swarthmore College.

Eighteenth-century rhetorical theory and rhetoricians figured prominently in the development of contemporary composition and rhetoric. This reference provides critical overviews of the careers and contributions of all major and many minor British and American rhetoricians of the 18th century. The volume begins with an introduction that discusses the various rhetorical movements of the time, including the importance of women to rhetorical theory. The entries that follow are arranged alphabetically, and each provides a bibliography of important primary and critical sources. A bibliography of general sources on 18th-century rhetoric concludes the work.

This reference handbook surveys research on the central issue associated with the teaching of unprepared writers. Though basic writing has only been recognized as a distinct area of teaching and research since 1975, the existing bibliographic texts already seem limited due to their age or lack of annotation. This volume provides current and extensive bibliographic essays and will help to define this new field of study for teachers and researchers.Following an introduction that summarizes the origins and significant texts in basic writing, the book is divided into three sections, Social Science Perspectives, Linguistic Perspectives, and Pedagogical Perspectives. The first section, which contains three essays, views the field through the lens of social, psychological, and political issues. The second section, also containing three essays, examines contributions made from studies of grammar, dialects, and second-language acquisition. The third section, in its four essays, focuses on the design, development, administration, and evaluation of basic writing courses, the use of computers in basic writing classrooms, the role of the writing lab, and the preparation of basic writing teachers. An appendix that reviews current textbooks for basic writing courses is also included, as well as an index. This book will be a valuable resource for teachers of basic writing, in education courses and workshops that train teachers and tutors, and in fields such as linguistics, technical writing, and Teaching English as a Second Language. It will also be an important addition to public and university libraries and many education programs.

This sourcebook demonstrates the vigorous work being done in the field of technical and scientific communication. Collectively, the essays offer researchers a basis from which to begin constructing the theoretical framework necessary for the study of technical communication. The book begins with general concerns and progresses to particular applications. The chapters comprising Part I outline larger theoretical perspectives from which to examine techical communication: humanistic approaches to technical communication, the history of technical communication, communication theory and technical writing, and the teaching of technical writing. Part II examines the relationship of technical communication to traditional rhetorical concerns such as invention, audience, modes of organization, and style. Specific types of technical communication--proposals, reports, and business correspondence, among others--are discussed in Part III. The use of the computer, oral presentations, and specialized forms of technical communication are examined in Part IV. The appendixes offer guides to textbooks and style manuals and an overview of the technical writing profession.

This anthology focuses on the writing process itself and on fundamentals of compositional theory. Essays explore the psychology of composition, research on writing anxiety, the relationship of literary theory to composition, and reading theory as it relates to the composing process. The historical development of research methodologies in the field is examined, with particular emphasis on evaluation methods and construction of effective writing sequences and assignments. With recent educational trends toward basic writing, even teachers of the most advanced composition classes will welcome the contributions on sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, paragraphs, and volcabulary development. The essays that place composition within larger intellectual traditions will be particularly valuable to scholars currently extending their research into other disciplines. Two appendixes on text books and evaluation are designed to help composition educators and scholars select useful, innovative texts and handbooks.