JAC Volume 3, Issue 1/2

Some years ago, Louis Milic advised that a theory of style adequate to the teaching of composition required the separation of form and content.¹ Concerned that the modern theory of organic form (supposedly popular among composition teachers trained as literary specialists) allowed for no element that could properly be called style, Milic called for a return to the classical doctrine of rhetorical dualism, for only then could the formal features of written discourse be isolated, discussed, and taught. To support the separation of substance from style, Milic invoked the doctrine of synonymity, arguing that the divisibility of form from content allowed for the possibility of alternative phrases, "of different ways of saying the same thing."² The Crocean view that every utterance was sui generis and hence unamenable to linguistic choice yielded in this theory to a more experientially valid conception, namely, that during the writing process, writers considered different ways of phrasing thought, settling on that formulation which best expressed the meaning intended.

Though Milic's analysis provided a sounder pedagogy for style study than a unitarian theory afforded, it did so by presenting us with a crux. To allow for the possibility of choice, it maintained the interchangeability of linguistic forms; but at the same time, and in opposition to the egalitarianism implied in the doctrine of synonymity, it proposed hierarchy. Though there are multiple ways of saying the same thing, one way, it appears, is better than another, or as Milic puts it, "The writer intends to express something (idea) and he struggles with possibilities until he finds the formulation which best expresses it."³ By this token, dualism, supported by the belief in equivalent structures, subtly alters its shape, arising at the moment of expression as something very like the fusion of form and content. Even if we grant that the route from multiplicity to singleness represents a continuum, the ranking implicit in "best" suggests that synonymity does not adequately explain the relations between intention and expression. If it did, there would be no "best" way; alternative structures would simply be interchangeable, as Milic elsewhere affirms.⁴

In part, the difficulty arises from attempting to transfer a doctrine drawn from contextually innocent sentences to a composing process governed by rhetorical constraints. According to its adherent, the doctrine of synonymity can be illustrated by sentences sealed off from their discourse environment, isolated and self-complete. As Ross Winterowd explains it, we need only examine sentences such as "Man bites dog" and "Dog is bitten by man" to recognize that "two different sentences can share the same meaning."⁵ Similarly, Jane Walpole argues that "we must accept the possibility (indeed the necessity) of synonymity; two or ten differently phrased sentences can, we must agree, 'mean the same thing'."⁶ Meaning, as these critics use it, apparently refers to mere sense that can be paraphrased without doing violence to the conceptual substance of the sentence; and, indeed, on this level, the doctrine of synonymity seems tenable. But as I. A. Richards reminds us, utterances viewed in their rhetorical settings exhibit a far more complicated meaning structure than mere sense can accommodate, operating on multiple levels to "give us different kinds of meaning—mere sense, sense and implications, feeling, the speaker's attitudes to whatever it is, to his audience, the speaker's confidence, and other things."⁷ Equally, Monroe Beardsley's conviction that "a difference of style is always a difference in meaning"⁸ rests on the assumption that meaning is an amalgam of the denotative sense, "the overt or explicit," and the connotative sense, the "covert or implicit." If style is considered a "detail of implicit meaning," Beardsley argues, then a change in style alters what is "suggested, or hinted, or intimated by a sentence rather than . . . what the sentence plainly states."⁹ Even Louis Milic acknowledges that meaning is of "two kinds. . . referential or cognitive meaning, which denotes the substance of what is being said (the difference between 'Literature cannot exist in a vacuum' and 'People cannot exist in a vacuum'); and affective or expressive meaning, which refers to the means for producing different effects on the reader (the difference between 'Literature cannot exist in a vacuum' and 'Writers must be concerned with society')."¹⁰

These descriptions of different kinds of meaning probably account for the disjunction I have earlier described. If synonymity can help us describe symbolic notations whose conceptual sense may be roughly equivalent, it is of limited use in guiding the formulation of a particular utterance, which must, if it is part of a whole discourse, embed conceptual sense in a complex rhetorical network. For this larger purpose, the writer must choose from additional linguistic resources, more finely attuned to a rhetoric of utterance which is inclusive of, but not limited to, cognitive sense. And I suspect that it is this choice, when it succeeds in adapting linguistic form to the rhetorical aims of utterance, that we applaud when we use normative epithets such as "best" or "most effective" to describe stylistic achievement. Though we may resist acknowledging the agreement between form and meaning such epithets imply—lest, perhaps, we revive the rigidity of Croce's one thought, one form—we are nonetheless recognizing their integration, if only implicitly.

If I am correct in assigning a rhetorical significance to our customary descriptions of stylistic excellence, it follows that for the purpose of teaching style, synonymity is inadequate since it provides no guidance for making the best choice among alternative modes of expression. To encourage stylistic discrimination, we need a broader model, one that reflects the contextual roots of utterance (both linguistic and extralinguistic) and allows for stages in its development. My own perference, and one I have found useful in my teaching, goes like this. "Style is the adaptation of form to rhetorical aim(s)." Though such a formulation preserves the classical distinction between language and thought and thus allows for the possibility of choice among alternative language structures, it offers several advantages: it is more overtly process-centered, as "adaptation" implies; it acknowledges the relationship between meaning structures and aim; it suggests that form and meaning ultimately coincide; and it allows for the a-rhetorical acquisition of linguistic forms as preliminary to their use in a rhetorical setting.

To implement my rhetorical model of style, I have found it necessary to redefine and reclassify textbook uses of the term, according to the degree to which each relies on rhetorical considerations. Though the term is notoriously polysemous, it is possible, I think, to discern three distinct categories. Considered as a purely formal feature, style may appear in instructional guises that go something like this. "Be sure to follow the style of academic documentation" (style as format); "Standard edited English is the style likely to be acceptable to your readers" (style as grammaticality); "Try to write in a clear and readable style" (style as precision); "Varied sentence patterns promote a pleasing style" (style as syntactic variation). "Density of embedding is characteristic of a mature style" (style as syntactic complexity); "Modern readers prefer a plain style" (style as linguistic register). Such stylistic counsel is common in composition teaching, and I do not mean to question its importance for inexperienced writers. Notwithstanding, it is well to recognize that when we urge such a view of style, we are, in effect, insisting on stylistic autonomy; we assume the absolute good of a particular formal feature regardless of its rhetorical matrix. Accordingly, I regard these matters as less a feature of style in the rhetorical sense I have proposed, than a set of skills which can be classified as techniques, useful in the acquisition of style but ultimately not synonymous with style itself. They constitute, in short, a pool of linguistic resources from which the writer draws as occasion demands, keeping in mind as he or she does so that they are options entirely relative to the specific rhetorical task at hand.

A second category, more sensitive to the contextual roots of utterance, can, I think, be discerned in stylistic counsel that calls attention to the dependence of linguistic forms on such extralinguistic constraints as occasion, audience, and genre. Though not altogether adequate to the complexity of rhetorical style, this kind of stylistic instruction at least adjusts formal elements to the demands of the rhetorical situation, usually by proposing levels of diction (e.g., formal, informal, colloquial) appropriate to specified types of discourse, and by outlining strategies for gaining special emphasis or effect. Such relativization of usage recalls the classical doctrine of stylistic propriety—what in more modern dress John S. Kenyon calls the "functional varieties" of discourse¹¹ or Martin Joos classifies as the five types of English usage.¹² In my own teaching, I prefer to call this type of style instruction the conventions of style to which the techniques of style are adapted as the "rhetorical profile"¹³ of a particular discourse requires.

My third category is the least amenable to classification, and, indeed, few textbooks accord it much space, possibly because it resists precise formulation or at least that kind of formulation which can be reduced to a set of rules. Richard Lanham describes it as the "opaque style" which, in contrast to the self-effacing language of scientific prose, calls attention to its "stylistic surface," in effect fusing style and subject.¹⁴ I call it the aesthetics of style, by which I mean a union of form and substance that manages to make style itself expressive of the meaning structures set forth.

When anchored to a model of style pedagogy that is both rhetorical and process-centered, my three categories allow me to move comfortably among several theories of style that appear irreconcilable, if considered solely in relation to product. Certainly, a style continuum based on the view that the production of discourse is an evolving act allows for the separability of thought and words at the initial stage of the composing process. Equally, it can accommodate the fusion of thought and content, if integration is seen as occurring at the end of the production spectrum. The view that style is choice is also compatible, if choice is removed from the static doctrine of synonymity and made relative to rhetorical aims, with all the nuances of thought and feeling such aims often entail. Without subscribing to all of its assumptions, it is possible even to borrow from the theory that style is deviation from a norm, if the intuition of an unusual construction can be functionally interpreted.¹⁵

A model that allows for stages in the production of discourse can also accommodate various methods of teaching style--even those whose usefulness has sometimes been questioned. If, for example, we regard the techniques of style as enabling strategies that nurture the production of style in its rhetorical sense, it is theoretically and practically defensible to consider sentence-combining (commonly urged in the name of stylistic competence) a useful instructional tool. Instead of dismissing the technique because it bears "only a tangential relationship to the real use of language"¹⁶ --a common charge-- I see it as part of the acquisition/application stylistic continuum I have described. So considered, the manipulation of a-rhetorical sentence patterns are for the developing writer what the practice of extra-compositional scales, arpeggios, and trills are for the novice pianist-preliminary finger exercises designed, as degree of competence requires, to enrich and perfect technique.

To anchor these techniques to a rhetoric of style we can draw on a number of studies and approaches that seek "the reintegration of thought to expansion." The phrase is James Kinneavy's, whose pioneering analysis of the various aims of discourse includes a rich description of the conventions of style characteristic of discourse types. In addition, Kinneavy provides a number of comparative exercises that help students perceive how discourse with similar content can be significantly different rhetorically, depending on the writer's aim. Edward P. J. Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student similarly treats the interdependence of style and aim, according special attention to a number of stylistic strategies described in classical inventories of style and still very much in use in modern discourse." Corbett's collection of advertisements that rely on tropes and schemes affords a good means of rapidly sensitizing student to the rhetoric of style, as does Walker Gibson's analysis of ad style in Tough, Sweet and Stuffy.¹⁹

Studies in the aesthetics of prose style can equally help us enrich student perception of the rhetoric of style. Though addressed for the most part to a scholarly audience, such studies afford insights into the congruence of style structures and content that can be adapted to classroom use. Possibly the fullest guide to this type of style study is David Lodge's Language of Fiction, which argues that the language of literary prose is “essentially rhetorical," offering in support verbal analyses of passages drawn from literary texts.²⁰ A teaching text like Charles Kay Smith's Styles and Structures combines analyses of the expressive function of style in prose discourse (which Smith maintains reflect patterns of thought) with writing exercises designed to encourage student use of similar strategies.²¹ Useful, too, in raising student awareness of how language structures can themselves be expressive of meaning are the insights of a reader response critic like Stanley Fish (in his early criticism), whose emphasis on the verbal strategies writers use to produce particular effects is of considerable importance in a rhetorical model of style pedagogy.²²

The transition from style analysis to style production follows the logic of a process-centered model, which not only allows for stages in the acquisition of stylistic competence but proposes that the proper object of style study in composition teaching is ultimately the student's own work. Such a view assumes that the production of student discourse issues from an authorial consciousness which, in the act of composing, differs in degree but not in kind from the composing consciousness of the accomplished writer. Given the substantial evidence that many writers engage in stylistic experimentation before settling on a final version, it assumes further that the student writer equally tinkers with alternative constructions in the course of composing. Finally, it proposes that these very trials and uncertain, preliminary gestures, recoverable to us as the worksheets of the professional writer often are not—are themselves the most fertile sources of style instruction, allowing us to explore and question the rhetorical effectiveness of the alternative choices made. In short, a process-centered model of style instruction places evolving discourse at the core of the instructional program.

To act on this developmental view of style mastery is to invite peer scrutiny of student writing at every stage of production, even the most tentative. The interchanges invites students to exercise the skills acquired in stylistic analysis but with the vital difference that in this case the discourse examined requires for completion the reader's stylistic judgment. In effect, the reader comes to participate in the author's task, thereby affirming the rhetorical reciprocity between reader and writer. Such an act of critical intelligence profoundly sensitizes students to the rhetorical subtlety of stylistic choice; ultimately it offers the surest guide to a style pedagogy adequate to the richness and complexity of human utterance.