Reviews 279
WritingArguments:A RhetoricWithReadings,2nd 00., John D. Ramage and
John C. Bean (New York: Macmillan, 1992, 775 pages.)
Reviewed by J. Blake Scott, University of Oklahoma
Professional journals tend to avoid reviewing composition textbooks in
preference of more "scholarly" works. That's understandable, but unfortunate. We may not take writing textbooks seriously, but we cannot ignore their
power. As Kathleen Welch, Robert Scholes and a host of others have pointed
out, textbooks can impose dangerous ideologies on writing classrooms.
Perhaps in response to such concerns, a whole new breed of "rhetorically
aware" composition textbooks has emerged. These books, usually written
for advanced courses, second-semester freshman composition, or special
classes in argumentative writing, can be dangerous and deceptive.
For example, consider WritingArguments:A Rhetoric WithReadings, a
book that focuses on argumentative writing, based on logic, in a variety of
modes. After it first appeared in 1989, a sufficient number of writing
programs adopted it for their advanced or second-semester courses to
warrant the production of a second edition with added "process" elements.
(My own institution, for example, urges us to use this book for our secondsemester courses.) At first I was impressed with the book's apparently wellgrounded applications of important rhetorical theory. A quick scan of its
sections entitled "A Detailed Look at the Uses of Evidence in Argumentation," "Moving Your Audience: Finding Audienced-Based Reasons," and
"Accomodating Your Audience: Treating Opposing Views in an Argument
That Both Clarifies and Persuades" suggested a theoretical stance sensitive
to rhetoric. But once I excavated the book's real underlying theory and saw
its manifestations in my classroom, I was alarmed.
WritingArguments is dangerous for two reasons. First, its authors work
from an unexamined ideology based on absolutist, empirical beliefs in
"truth," "reality," "objectivity," and "clarity" -notions which undermine a
flexible definition of rhetoric. Second, the authors attempt to temper these
ideas with twisted notions of rhetoric, hoping to create a smooth, appeasing
blend of syllogistic logic and audience-based rhetorical theory. In the book's
preface, Ramage and Bean ironically devote three-fourths of a page to
"Theory of Argumentation in the Text." The first theory they discuss, and the
one that guides the first two sections of the book, aligns argumentation with
formal logic. In Part I, "An Overview of Argument," the authors carefully
distinguish between argumentation and persuasion: '''Persuasion' is primarily concerned with influencing the way people think or act, whereas 'argument' is concerned with discovery and conveying our best judgments about
the truth of things through an appeal to reasons." Throughout the book,
Ramage and Bean describe argumentation without a goal of finding "truth"
as less than ideal. Persuasion and manipulation take on negative connota-
280 Journal of Advanced Composition
tions such as "cheating" and "trickery." Indeed, the authors tout argumentation as a defense against persuasion. The clash between argumentation as
discovery of truth and argumentation based on the sophistic gaining of
adherence is clearly the subject of the section "Clarification or Victory? The
Debate Between Socrates and Callicles." The writers describe Socrates as a
"vanquisher of error" seeking enlightenment and clarification. Callicles is
characterized as a "shadowy figure" who takes a utilitarian approach to
argumentation. Interestingly enough, the authors acknowledge Callicles'
position of questioning all truths as legitimate. They say,"Clearly, our world
is more like Callicles'. We are exposed to multiple cultural perspectives
directly and indirectly." Despite this acknowledgement, Ramage and Bean
continue to uphold the idea that arguments can be inherently complete and
thus perfect versions of "truth," revealing text-centered views of writing, and
traces of a Romantic philosophy that emphasizes the encoder's self-discovery and clarification. The rest of the book's first section is devoted to a
"process" approach to reading and writing which depends on constructed
strategies and steps that "systematically" guide the student through that
complex process.
In section two, "The Logical Structure of Arguments: Claims, Reasons,
and Evidence," the writers use syllogistic logic and Toulmin's schema for
classifying arguments as "heuristic" devices. The section begins with an
analysis of the "rhetorical triangle." Ramage and Bean's version, however,
leaves out the critical fourth element: context or culture. Without context or
culture, argumentation can only take place in a vacuum. The writers attach
logos, ethos, and pathos to message, writer/speaker, and audience, respectively. This makes for a neat three-part diagram, but it distorts complex
rhetorical concepts byplacing them in different spheres and simplifying their
meanings. As the book proceeds, logos, ethos, and pathos are used in
increasingly limited ways. After briefly describing ethos and pathos, Ramage
and Bean then abandon these concepts in search of an internally consistent
argument that can stand on its own. They begin, "One way to discover
assumed premises is to convert each of your enthymemic because clauses into
a three-part stucture called a syllogism." Students practice isolating these
three parts in textbook exercises, but then find it a staggering leap to apply
syllogisms to their own writing and end up doubting their usefulness.
Ramage and Bean outline Toulmin's schema in a diagram similar to a
syllogistic proof and include exercises that ask students to focus on finding
and labeling individual elements with little concern about how they relate to
the argument in a macrocosmicway or within a specific social context. Thus,
instead of a unified argument, the student ends up with a series of disjointed
parts. Not only do these arbitrary constructions and mechanistic exercises
confuse students, they also bore them. Ramage and Bean would have a
difficult time answering the ever-popular student question, "What does this
have to do with real life ?"
Reviews 281
The authors' quest for "truth" is particularly evident in the two chapters
dealing with evidence. Throughout this chapter, they assert that there is a
"correct" way of using evidence, a way of sorting out "facts" and achieving
objectivity. One definition of fact that Ramage and Bean provide is "a
noncontroversial piece of data that is verifiable through observation."
Ramage and Bean describe their second major guiding theory as a
rhetorical one which finds "additional philosophical grounding in the work
of Chaim Perelman and others." Instead of using the concepts of audience
and adherence as measuring sticks throughout, the authors reserve them for
selected places. Ramage and Bean first discuss audience in chapter four,
where they describe shared assumptions as such things as "axioms in geometry or the self-evident truths in the Declaration of Independence." After
this chapter, audience and adherence slip into the background until they are
seriously considered for the first time in chapter eight.
The third section of WritingArguments is entitled "The Rhetorical
Structure of Arguments." This title alone displays the authors' incessant
need to express everything in a structure-even the dynamic, interactive
elements of rhetoric. It is here, on page 145, that the book finally addresses
such issues as adherence, ethos, and pathos. But this is too little, too late.
Ramage and Bean offer short overviews of the appeals to credibility and
emotions, and in assigning worth to methods for deploying these appeals
("the problem of slanted language," "Appeal to Emotions Through Appropriate Word Choice"), the authors ignore the psychological and social
dimensions of argumentation. Specific audiences and specific contexts are
sidelined for a text-dominant view; context or culture is still missing from
their rhetorical triangle. In this section about rhetorical "structures,"
Ramage and Bean repeatedly use a bridge metaphor to "connect" the selfcontained arguments in section two to rhetorical concerns. With such titles
as "Audience- BasedReasons: Buildinga BridgeBetween Writer and Reader,"
the authors describe writing as a linear, pipeline transfer between encoder
and audience. This destroys anyand all notions ofwriting as a continuous and
simultaneous interaction among all elements of the rhetorical triangle.
The final two sections of WritingArguments only compound the book's
problems. First, Ramage and Bean divide argumentation into fivecategories
that suggest mutually exclusive purposes for writing arguments and reduce
these purposes to algebraic equations (X is/isn't a Y). Finally, the textbook
provides numerous excerpts from arguments by "professional" writers.
These excerpts, along with the categories of arguments, provide the writing
instructor with a too convenient, too simplistic, and too deductive means of
teaching argumentation.
WritingArguments has its bright spots. Sections on gathering library
sources, conducting field research, and documenting sources are helpful, as
are some of the exercises and invention strategies in the "process" chapters.
On the whole, though, this textbook operates from an ideology foreign to
282 Journal of Advanced Composition
rhetoric, one which denies situational contexts and thereby disempowers
students. Ramage and Bean apply the important rhetorical theory of
Perelman and others, but they do so in a limited, compromised, and distorted
way.
A Note of Gratitude
The editors would like to express their gratitude to lAC's editorial readers: John
Ackerman, Katherine H. Adams, Virginia Allen, Paul Anderson, Deborah Andrews,
Pamela J. Annas, Chris M. Anson, Phillip Arrington, G. Douglas Atkins, Janet M.
Atwill, Linda Bannister, Dean Barclay, Paul G. Bator, Mary Vroman Battle, Dale
Bauer, Charles Bazerman, Walter H. Beale, Pat Belanoff, L. Bensel-Meyers, Carol
Berkenkotter, James Berlin, Don Bialostosky, Wendy Bishop, Nancy Blyler, Richard
Boyd, Alice G. Brand, Deborah Brandt, Charles W. Bridges, John C. Briggs, Linda
Brod key, Robert Brooke, Stuart C. Brown, Christopher C. Burnham, Vincent
Casaregola, Miriam T. Chaplin, David W. Chapman, Gregory Clark, Irene Lurkis
Clark, John Clifford, Richard M. Coe, Roger Cole, Greg Colomb, Brian Connery,
Marilyn M. Cooper, Jim W. Corder, Barbara Couture, William A. Covino, Bene S.
Cox,Sharon Crowley,Timothy W. Crusius, M. Francine Danis, Reed WayDasenbrock,
Bonnie Devet, Mary Jane Dickerson, Anne DiPardo, Robert DiYanni, Stephen
Doheny-Farina, Paul Dombrowski, Timothy R. Donovan, Sam Dragga, Patricia M.
Dyer, Lisa Ede, Richard Leo Enos, Christine Farris, Susan Feinberg, Michael
Flanigan, Kathryn Flannery, Kristie Fleckenstein, Elizabeth Flynn, Sheryl Fontaine,
Tom Fox, Toby Fulwiler, Fredric G. Gale, Pamela Gay, Diana George, Elizabeth
Giddens, George D. Gopen, Stuart C. Greene, Alan Gross, Robert Haas, John
Hagge, Kristine Hansen, Patricia Harkin, Jeanette Harris, Joseph Harris, Gail
Hawisher, John R. Hayes, Janice N. Hays, Tom Hemmeter, Bruce Herzberg, Doug
Hesse, William Holinger, SylviaA. Holladay, Bruce Horner, Winifred Homer, Alice
Homing, Maureen M. Hourigan, Susan M. Hubbuch, Thomas N. Huckin, Christine
Hult, Susan Hunter, Bob Inkster, Alan Jackson, Martin J. Jacobi, Jay Jacoby, Gloria
Jaffe, Susan C. Jarratt, David Jolliffe, Debra Joumet, David S. Kaufer, Thomas Kent,
Kate Kiefer, Joyce Kinkead, Gesa Kirsch, Judith Kirscht, Michael Kleine, Amitava
Kumar, Sarah Liggett, Carol Lipson, Joan Livingston-Webber, Edward Lotto, Kim
Brian Lovejoy, Andrea A. Lunsford, Ronald F. Lunsford, Ben McClelland, Susan
McLeod, Paul Meyer, Susan Miller, Thomas P. Miller, Charles Moran, Michael G.
Moran, Kim Moreland, Kerri Morris, Joseph M. Moxley,Jasper Neel, Janice Neuleib,
James R. Nicholl, George DUe, Gillian R. Overing, Twila Yates Papay, David Payne,
Thomas E. Pearsall, Elizabeth F. Penfield, Ann M. Penrose, Joseph Petraglia, Rita
Pollard, Rosenthene B. Purnell, Alan C. Purves, Paul W. Ranieri, Elizabeth Rankin,
Paul W. Rea, Sally Reagan, Thomas Recchio, James A. Reither, Joy Ritchie, Duane
H. Roen, Katherine Ronald, Mike Rose, Anne Rosenthal, Hephzibah Roskelly,
William T. Ross, Audrey J. Roth, David Russell, John Ruszkiewicz, Mariolina
Salvatori, John Schilb, Penelope Schott, Patrocinio Schweickart, Marie J. Secor,
Cynthia L. Selfe, Jack Selzer, Ira Shor, Jeanne Simpson, David Smit, William E.
Smith, Jeff Sommers, Anna o. Soter, Don W.Stacks, Joe C. Strange, James Strickland,
Michael Strickland, Gail Stygall, James Suchan, Ron Sudol, Patricia Sullivan, Judith
Summerfield, John M. Swales, C. Jan Swearingen, Elizabeth Tebeaux, Nathaniel
Teich, Dene Kay Thomas, Gordon Thomas, Trudelle Thomas, Charlotte Thralls,
Howard Tinberg, Barbara Tomlinson, John Trimbur, Douglas Vipond, Ralph Voss,
Barbara E. Walvoord, David Wallace, Tilly Warnock, Kathleen Welch, Susan Wells,
Edward M. White, Mark Wiley, Elizabeth Winston, Lynn Worsham, William Wresch,
Art Young, Richard Young, James Thomas Zebroski, William Zeiger.