Tina Bell
English 5001
2 April 2009
Commentary Week 7
Our lives, our world is becoming more global with every passing day. Technology has given us avenues of connection we could only dream of before today, and every day brings new and startling advancements. Our computers, our phones, and even our watches can be linked to the internet providing us the power to chat with, to conduct business with, to exchange recipes with, and even to date people from every part of the world. So much communication is only a click away. This is a new frontier. A frontier that will again make us reconsider and challenge our beliefs.
When rhetoric moved from a completely oral tradition to a written one, it must have been as amazing as what we see today. Plato worried how this change from an oral tradition to a more modern written one would affect rhetoric. It doesn’t seem as though his worry sounds any different than the concerns I hear teachers make every day- whether they are bemoaning text abbreviations being used in the writing or non standard English. The question at the root of these concerns as we continue to globalize is the same as Plato’s. How will rhetoric change?
I must admit that I think about the topic often. David Bartholomae says in his article, “Writing with Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow,” that “there is no writing that is writing without teacher” (63). He believes there are always “traces of power, tradition and authority” present in writing and writing instruction, and writing feedback” (63). I can not help but agree with him. But, my question then becomes, “How will power, tradition and authority change as we globalize?” I see the hints of change in classroom discussions. We are now much more aware that various cultures approach writing differently. And although the idea of what good writing is, has been in constant debate, I see these classroom discussions as a first step toward a new rhetoric.
Bartholomae says there is a “danger in assuming one genre is more real than the other” (63). And although he is discussing the boundaries of traditional academic writing (in the United States), I think it is appropriate to extend this danger to writing from cultures other than our own. Who get to say that on genre is more real than another? I have no answer to this question nor any of the others proposed in this commentary. I only know what I believe is happening right now. Our world is changing and with that change will come a shift in our view of rhetoric, and the debate over what it should be and what it should not be will continue on into the next generation.