Rhetorical Theory texts for Undergrads?

November 2, 2009 11:36 AM

What textbooks and/or texts would you recommend for an undergraduate Rhetorical Theory class?

I’ll be teaching Rhetorical Theory for the first time next semester and have been struggling to find a textbook or some combination of textbooks for the course. Alternatively, I can choose articles and selections from primary texts to post online, so suggestions for articles and key primary texts are also helpful. The students are mostly junior English majors focusing their studies on Lit or Creative Writing, and this will be their first exposure to rhetorical theory.

This question has given me a good head start, but I'm hoping to find things that are compelling for undergraduates without overwhelming them.

posted by BlooPen to education (6 comments total)

MIT provides complete sylabi, assignments and other course material for free online. It looks like they have several on Rhetoric.
posted by nestor_makhno at 11:44 AM on November 2

That previous question has my list, but what I liked most as an undergrad were the essays by Corbett and a history of rhetoric book that is escaping me right now--I think the title was Rhetoric and Human Consciousness, but I forget the author.
posted by lockestockbarrel at 12:11 PM on November 2

Kenneth Burke -Language as Symbolic Action
Bosmajian - The Language of Oppression
James Herrick - The History and Theory of Rhetoric, An Introduction
Foss, Foss & Trapp - Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric
Rizzell & Herzberg - The Rhetorical Tradition
Brummet - Rhetoric in Popular Culture
Burgchardt - Readings in Rhetorical Criticism
posted by sadiehawkinstein at 2:47 PM on November 2

The above list makes good sense, but I've found with the sort of student audience you describe primarily texts alone can be a slog. I've had better luck, at least for a first course, with some of the short, introductory books from The Elements of Composition series (by Longman):

- For an overview of traditional rhetoric/reason, Edward Corbett's The Elements of Reasoning

- For applications of rhetorical theory to popular culture, William Covino's The Elements of Persuasion

- For Kenneth Burke, David Blakesley's The Elements of Dramatism

In a similar vein, but published by Pearson, is John Ramage's Rhetoric: A User's Guide, which synthesizes a wide range of rhetorical theory around issues of popular culture and contemporary life.

As a main text for such a course, I'd go with the current edition of Golden, Berquist, & Coleman's The Rhetoric of Western Thought, since it provides excerpts from primary sources (Plato to digital rhetoric, etc.) but with a lot of glossing and background that undergraduate students new to the field really appreciate.

Otherwise, *you* will probably want a copy on hand of Lucaites, Condit, & Caudill's Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, which reprints key articles such as Lloyd Bitzer's "The Rhetorical Situation" and the follow-up critiques of Bitzer's theory, Thomas Goodnight's piece on the "spheres of argumentation," as well as works by Edwin Black, Michael Calvin McGee, Thomas Farrell, and Phillip Wander that I'd at least talk about myself, even if I didn't have students read directly or perhaps not in their entirety.

In any case, congrats on getting to teach such a sweet course! It's one of my favorites.
posted by 5Q7 at 6:32 PM on November 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

oops, "primarily" = "primary" ;-)
posted by 5Q7 at 6:37 AM on November 3

Thanks for the input. I was looking for something like the Herrick or Golden et al since I want them to have some context for their reading. I know I don't want them lugging around The Rhetorical Tradition and I can't imagine junior lit majors being too keen on working with just primary texts, so thanks for your suggestions!
posted by BlooPen at 8:35 AM on November 3