What We Value but Cannot Name

It’s a bold book. Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri’s new edited collection, The Centrality of Style, begins with the assumption that style is central to the whole enterprise of composition. However, as T. R. Johnson and Tom Pace assert, “style means different things to different people” (qtd. on 5). Star Medzerian Vanguri earlier captured the paradox of style by explaining, “Style is either something we name but do not value or value but cannot name” (Medzerian 2010: 187). Scholars and teachers of composition cannot help but wonder why articulating style presents us with such a conundrum. If style is something we value, then why is it so difficult to name?

Instead of trying to settle the dissensus on what style means, the editors embrace multiple voices in order to create a rich collection of essays. In the foreword, Paul Butler, a leading scholar of style in composition studies, explains that style offers a way to embrace “the cacophony of differences that defines our field” (xii). Butler points out that style is central to the discipline of composition studies, yet many ideas about style emerge from other disciplines (vii). The authors contributing to The Centrality of Style utilize ideas from various disciplines, including linguistics, literary studies, creative writing, cognitive psychology, and business and technical communication. By exploring a range of perspectives, the editors encourage scholars and teachers of composition to rethink style as a historical construct, a theoretical undertaking, and a practical heuristic.

This collection is divided into two parts: “Conceptualizing Style” and “Applying Style.” Part 1 aims to increase the visibility of style. Moving beyond its mere “revival,” the essays demonstrate how style intersects with current interests and values of the discipline (5). Instead of perceiving style as something that is just too amorphous to talk and write about, the authors of these chapters imply that varying definitions of style serve as a rich resource for both theoretical and pedagogical approaches.

In the opening chapter, “An Ethics of Attentions,” William C. Kurlinkus asks, if style is an unavoidable aspect of writing, why not embrace its manifestations as “rhetorical possibilities” (13)? By shuttling between classical rhetorical considerations of style and new media possibilities for composing, Kurlinkus calls for a pluralistic stance on style as experimentation and manipulation. Style is never neutral, but that does not mean we should pay no attention to it. He concludes with three heuristics for the writing classroom that engage questions of audience, participation, and self-construction (28–31).

“Aposiopesis? Metalepsis? Zeugma? What did my students think when first introduced to these and other terms?” So begins William FitzGerald’s chapter, in which he discusses an elective course he taught called Go Figure that focused on rhetorical figures (37). He finds that when students learn and practice figures, they begin to see how figures function as “an open-ended, yet not arbitrary, set of linguistic moves” (49). In the course, students practiced exercises in copia, wrote varied sentences using figurative language, and composed individual projects of six to eight pages that focused on analyzing figurative language in a particular context (52). FitzGerald stresses writing about figures, not just writing figures. He worries a little about reducing rhetoric to mere figuration but concludes that there is more than enough substance there to teach and engage (52–53). He raises the question of how this pedagogy of rhetorical figures might factor into first-year writing. While an entire semester is not really necessary, he does suggest that figures can be productively integrated into first-year writing if the instructor focuses on maybe half a dozen figures (53).

Denise Stodola locates rhetorical strategies in thirteenth-century treatises and draws from landmark research in cognitive psychology in order to show how style can be taught in a business communication course at the undergraduate level. Stodola articulates how Geoffrey of Vinsauf ’s medieval treatises demonstrate that imitation and transition can serve to express and connect ideas (61). This metarhetorical potential is useful for...