A Century of Confusion

Frank D' Angelo

"Nineteenth Century Forms/Modes of Discourse: A Critical Inquiry"

p. 347-357

(In case you haven't already, check out Vicki’s response to D’Angelo. 

In this article, D’Angelo argues that composition teachers should not only become familiar with the influence (and problems), of nineteenth century ideas on current composition theory, but also to consider alternative approaches to teaching writing, as the “nineteenth-century forms/modes of discourse ought to be discarded[…] because they confuse forms of discourse with modes of discourse”(348). Additionally, D’Angelo also argues that the categories of narration and description are not equal to exposition and argumentation, contrary to what nineteenth century theorists suggest (352). Lastly, he points out that this particular era of composition studies was highly influenced by what are now considered outdated psychology theories (351).

With these points in mind, D’Angelo’s criticism of these four categories is justified, and necessary. It doesn’t make any sense that writing classes often rely on these categories, and I highly doubt that doing things out of “tradition” can be such a reliable strategy, especially if every decade contains some sort of haunting literacy crisis. Doing things because “we’ve always done it that way” isn’t the most effective or innovative way of solving matters.

I found D’Angelo’s discussion of the recent developments in psychology to be really interesting, as it presents several possibilities for changing the way we teach writing. (Additionally, I also became aware of how little I know about educational psychology.) He explains that knowledge is stored in the memory in “schemas”, which are “a mental framework into which new facts are fitted” (354). I like thinking of the brain as something that can expand--the four categories can be arbitrary, and that doesn’t match how the brain works, as recent psychology theory suggests. I also thought it was interesting to learn that as we learn new things, our brain will actually morph “the knowledge structure to account for the experience”(355). That means that we have so many possibilities for how to teach writing!  

However, I’m not exactly sure how we would change the way we teach writing. We rely on nineteenth century discourse because we know it, we’re comfortable with it, and justifying change to other audiences (that provide funding), can be difficult. I agree with D’Angelo that doing more reading and historical work in composition studies would be useful for attaining a better understanding of the nature of contemporary composition theory and teaching.