Re: To form or not to form

[Linda Bergmann <bergmann@umr.edu>]

At 12:41 PM 6/2/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Well, the 5P discussion has been good, really good.  I'm left wondering
about why we teach any form at all and conclude that it's less for the sake
of the writer than for the sake of the reader; that is, I think we
design/shape what we write with a reader/audience in mind.  This seems OK.
But are we taking it a bit overboard?  I mean are we suggesting to writers
that readers are: 1) only capable of recognizing a set number of forms (and
in particular ways),  or 2) capable of recognizing all forms, but too lazy
or harried to take the time?  I mean I'm beginning to wonder why all the
emphasis/onus is on the writer.  Don't  readers have some responsibility to
work to understand different forms (or not-forms) of writing?
>>

One last comment before I take off for a few days:  There are readers and
there are readers.  There are rhetorical situations and there are
rhetorical situations.  As a writer, I of course have the "freedom" to
write as I choose--but as a rhetorician, I try to be aware of how my
audience will react.  My engineering students can certainly write lab
reports as first person meditations--but they cannot expect them to be read
sympathetically.  My philosophy students can write in another dialect than
edited American English--but they cannot expect to get A's if they do so.
I can certainly write a memo that is longer than a page, and that holds out
on giving the point until the end, or buries it in the middle--but I cannot
expect that it will be read.  I can write a budget in the form of a
narrative rather than a chart, but I cannot expect to have it passed.

The problem is, that in the world outside of "writing," writing is judged
less by how it makes us feel or think, and more by what it does (does it
get us the grant?  the project? the book contract?  publication in a
prestigious journal? or whatever?)

I often think of a truly marvelous director of multi-ethnic programs we had
at a university I used to work for.  The provost asked her for a
report--one page--on her activities.  She presented a 30+ page, bound
document, full of details of projects and lots of philosophy of
multicultural education.  That was the beginning of her being edged out of
her position--a real loss for the school, which desperately needed her
talents.

We're into the Barthomae/Elbow debate, I believe--writers vs. readers all
over again.

Linda S. Bergmann
Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum
University of Missouri-Rolla
Rolla, MO  65409

(573) 341-4685

bergmann@umr.edu