Discourse and Composition

Discourse = "the full text, oral or written, delivered at a specific time and place or delivered at several instances" (Villaneuva 129).

Kinneavy discusses the Basic Aims of Discourse in this chapter. What he is trying to relay is that discourse needs to have a meaning for the reader or listener for whom it is intended. When a reader or listener chooses a discourse it is usually for pleasure, to be informed, to be persuaded, or for the simple fact of getting proof of a position. Although, these may be things a reader or listener look for in a discourse, he or she can be lead astray by norms within the discourse, and the true intent of the discourse may not be gleaned due to these norms. A reader or listener can be dissuaded by historical, cultural, grammatical, and even the material used. One can never assume that what the author is trying to convey is what the reader or listener will gain from the discourse. For example, if one attends an oral discourse on Eating Healthy for Life,the author may be trying to persuade you to eat healthier for a longer life, but due to cultural norms, a person may not be able to be persuaded to eat the foods discussed, because perhaps of a religious belief that does not allow many of the things on the food list.

What a reader or listener needs to remember is that each aim of discourse contains within itself a logic all its own. When one considers the aims of discourse he or she will realize that each aim, has an internal framework, and organization of its own, and also contains its own set of norms. I suppose in my own readings, from years of analyzing works, I have come to look at the reading in an organizational manner. I start asking myself questions as I read, or when I am contemplating a chapter. When does this piece take place and are the same things relative to me that were relative to people in the time period written about? Are the social norms the same as they are today? Are the cultural aspects of the piece relative to where I live? So many questions that we ask ourselves as readers relate to the aims of discourse.

Contemporary Composition

There are a set of standard components involved in composition: writer, reality, reader, and language. Berlin states in his essay, "the composing process is always and everywhere the same because writer, reality, reader, and language are always and everywhere the same" (Villaneuva 255). What does this mean to me? Well, fist I don't think I agree as when I think of "everything always and everywhere the same" I see me, and I picture perhaps a person of Chinese decent,maybe someone from Guatemala, etc. We are NOT always and everywhere the same. I think what he means by this is that the process itself, no matter where you are from or what you stand for will always and everywhere be the same. Prewriting, writing, and rewriting will never differ no matter the author. He goes on to further explain that the process of composition is a three step process of prewriting, writing, and rewriting. If we take our own experiences as college students, this three step process applies every time we write a paper. We outline what we would like to write about (prewriting), we begin to lay out sentences, paragraphs, and pages of our topic (writing), and the we revise and edit to form the final paper (rewriting).

Within the approaches outlined by Berlin which include: Neo-Aristotelians or Classicists, Posivists or Current-Traditionalists, Neo-Platonists or Expressionists and New Rhetoricians, is the idea that each reader or listener must in themselves discern the truth of a matter that he or she is writing or reading about. He expresses that composition can be learned but not taught. He states, "many teachers...look upon their vocations as the imparting of a largely mechanical skill, important only because it serves students in getting them through school and in advancing them ,in their professions" (Villeneuva 257). A reader is always in intimate contact with reality and in composing, it is the readers' ability to discern truth from the universe of reality and convey that to his or her reader, that makes a composition worth reading. Berlin uses a quote from Robert Cushman who says that, "the central theme of Platonism regarding knowledge is that truth is not brought to man, but man to the truth" (Villaneuva 261). In discourse and composition, truth is fundamental to the understanding of the piece and what the author is trying to convey.

Compositions should be personal as well. A piece can be made more persuasive, more believable, or more truthful when personal experiences are injected. If I compose a work about an African Safari Expedition, but I have never been on one, how realistic is it that the reader will believe in African Safaris and the things that happen or can happen on one? An author using his sense impressions and his intimate view of reality can lend so much more to a work, than an author who uses no personal views of the work. It can be said that it is "always" the writers job to make the reader believe what he or she is saying. Berlin says, "As a writer, you learn to make words behave the way you want them to....Learning to write is not a matter of learning the rules that govern the use of the semicolon or the names of sentence structures, nor is it a matter of manipulating words; it is a matter of making meanings, and that is the work of the active mind" (Villaneuva 267). Composition and the teaching of it, is more than words on paper, or teaching a skill that is mechanical, it is about teaching a student to organize the truths they know into meaningful literature that will help others discover their truths as well. For me, writing to an audience is making them believe in me, using the composition process outlined by Berlin. I organize my thoughts taking into consideration the audience I will be presented to, I write my piece trying to make my words behave in such a way as to bring the truth of the piece forth, and then I rewrite my work always being sure to edit anything that is too colloquial etc. as to reach a broader audience.

Some things can be taught, others must be learned.