In his review of Jeanette Harris’s Expressive Discourse, Elbow claims that Harris’s book makes two different arguments—the first explicit, the second implicit—which do not necessarily follow from each other. The first is that the term “expressive discourse” is too ambiguous to be useful, and the second is that teachers of writing should not have their students write in an expressive mode. Elbow embraces Harris’s stated aim of establishing a more precise set of labels for different kinds of discourse—“pragmatic,” “aesthetic,” “experience-based,” and “information-based”—but opposes her desire to eliminate expressivist classroom exercises, such as free writing.
Elbow situates his review of Harris’s book in the context of a wider debate about expressive discourse in composition studies. He gives examples of scholars who use the term “expressive” far too loosely, but also defends himself and other expressivist scholars from the charge that they believe expressive discourse is superior to all others. Moreover, he argues that the discipline suffers from “competing paranoias” (937), as both expressivists and anti-expressivists believe they are in an endangered minority.
Elbow offers selected quotations from Harris’s book, as well as a reading of its tone, to support his argument. He uses quotes from Harris to show that her analysis of expressivists is hardly comprehensive and her understanding of intellectual history is oversimplified. Elbow demonstrates that while Harris accuses expressivists of elevating expressive discourse above others, she actually creates a hierarchy among different kinds of discourse by belittling personal narrative and praising information-based discourse. His most persuasive evidence is the dissonance he identifies between Harris’s “detached judicious tone” (934) and the vehemence with which she opposes expressivist pedagogy.
Elbow concludes that the true takeaway from Harris’s book is that students must be taught that each type of discourse is suited to particular audiences, contexts, and rhetorical goals. Giving students this kind of awareness of different modes of writing should be a major priority. Elbow correctly realizes that students will learn this best by employing different kinds of discourse in a range of diverse assignments.
One potential problem with Elbow’s argument is that in seeking greater nuance on certain issues he never settles down on a coherent position. For instance, he both praises Harris’s distinction between “aesthetic” and “pragmatic” discourse and questions whether the distinction is truly valid. Furthermore, he is content with Harris’s “ambivalence or even confusion” (941) about the relationship between what she calls the “interior text” and the final text.” According to Elbow, Harris construes the interior text as an embryonic version of the final text, but also claims that the former is fundamentally non-verbal whereas the latter is verbal. Elbow gladly accepts this tension in the name of the “mysteriousness of how writing issues from the mind” (941). Nuance is great, but appealing to mystery seems like giving up on answering a baffling question.
What is the difference between “pragmatic” and “aesthetic” discourse and between “experience-based” and “information-based” discourse? What is the value of this schema?
Is the “interior text” an embryonic form of the “final text,” or is the former fundamentally non-verbal whereas the latter is verbal? Should this tension remain unresolved?
What is the significance of Elbow’s claim that he and other “expressivists” are motivated by a “renewed interest in invention”?
Why does Elbow value writing for an “audience of self” so much?
Hey, Josh. You raise an interesting question here. When do you think heuristic loses its generative or taxonomic power?