It shouldn't be surprising that although tagmemic theory has been around for more than twenty- five years, it is only in the past decade that its implications for disciplines other than linguistics have been recognized and pursued. Linguistics, as a "science," has perennially held out much potential for other disciplines, but seemingly has failed to "deliver." Interest in tagmemics' possible use in composition began, as related above, as early as 1964. In the preface to their text, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change, the authors explained the combination of events which brought them together:
Pike, a linguistic scholar, had sought to determine whether linguistics could provide the basis for a method of improving competence in writing. Many linguists and composition teachers had assumed that it could, yet the actual contributions of linguistics had not borne out the assumption. New methods of grammatical analysis and pattern practice, and sophisticated approaches to punctuation and usage--to name some of the more significant contributions--came nowhere near providing the basis for a coherent and comprehensive method. Pike suggested that one particular linguistic theory, tagmemics, could make a much more extensive and fundamental contribution by supplying the theoretical principles and problem- solving procedures necessary for a distinctly new approach to rhetoric. Becker and Young, for several years teachers of freshman rhetoric, were convinced that rhetoric was potentially an important part, perhaps the most important part, of a college student's education; yet they were dismayed by the intellectual emptiness and practical ineffectiveness of conventional courses. The solution Pike proposed to his problem seemed also to offer a solution to their own.20
All three sought, not a stop- gap measure, but a comprehensive method--and beyond that, a paradigm--which would provide composition teachers with an effective means for teaching what the profession had assumed it had always taught: composing.
Between the years 1964 and 1970, these professors experimented, tested, probed and pried, searching out and fashioning, first, a pedagogy, elucidated in and exemplified by the text, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change; and since 1970, centering their work in the search for a paradigm, a context in which the pedagogy established earlier could be put to the greatest use.
In the first part of this section, I want to explore the paradigm developing around the tagmemic pedagogy; in the second section, I want to explicate the pedagogy itself. To make it easier to clarify the theoretical base of tagmemic theory and how the pedagogy comes out of it, I will thus reverse the order of their actual conceptualization.
Young, Becker and Pike believe, as do other tagmemicists working in composition, that the composing process should be the focus of composition teaching and that, indeed, it is something which to some degree can be taught. That is, of course, in direct opposition to the "current- traditional rhetoric" which either denies there can be any direct influence over the process or ignores it altogether as irrelevant. The tagmemicist basically sees invention--the category which, along with arrangement, style, memory and delivery, formed the basis for classical rhetoric--as the key to the composing process. And he sees invention as essentially a "problem- solving" activity. "Problem- solving" here does not mean "puzzle- solving" but is a concept derived from the work of the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget.
Piaget posits that humans think in terms of resolving "disequilibriums" in their lives. This process, which begins at a very early age, manifests itself in different strategies which are employed by a person to resolve or eliminate the "disequilibriums" or problems. According to Piaget, all human activities such as play, fantasy, analytical thought--in short, all "creative processes" manifest the same goal, eliminating the disequilibrium or dissonance which a person senses in his life.21 The three conclusions of Piaget which have the greatest significance for the tagmemicist are these: (1) our understanding of ourselves and our world is always subject to revision--we are continually adapting, synthesizing, maneuvering; (2) the activity the mind engages in during these "maneuverings" is, to some degree, accessible to us through inferences drawn from careful observation and experimentation; and (3) these activities/strategies of the mind are acquired through experience.22
The implication of these conclusions for the tagmemicist is clear: if Piaget is right, then this "problem- solving" activity is the key process that underlies human behavior and if the activity is accessible, if one can isolate and identify its features and further if the process is learned empirically, then it may form the basis for a new rhetorical procedure which can be taught to the student. Richard E. Young puts it this way:
The awareness of inconsistencies in one's image [of the world] produces the wrinkled brow and uneasy feeling characteristic of the earliest stage of inquiry. If the inconsistency is sufficiently uncomfortable, we set about eliminating it. But how do we get enough control over the felt difficulty to begin systematic investigation?23
Young answers his own question later on:
Control over a felt difficulty begins with its articulation....Could we develop a set of operations, a heuristic procedure which can help us articulate problems?24
What Young is asking for is a means by which the "problem- solving" activity--which Piaget argues is basic to human consciousness--can be tapped, goaded and enlisted in the struggle for the articulation of "felt difficulties." What is needed, Young says, is a way to summon what is basic and natural to human mental processes. His solution is Kenneth L. Pike's tagmemic discovery matrix which we will consider in the second portion of this section.
This budding paradigm is thus part linguistics, part psychology. The framework on which it is built challenges not only the content of the "current- traditional" paradigm but also the educational theory on which it is founded. The tagmemicist argues that the predominant dictum of education has been that the educational process, the role of the teacher, may be defined as the dissemination of a body of pre- packaged information--an inherited, intrinsically valuable set of facts, beliefs, worldviews. The student's role is simply to "acquire" this information by whatever means at hand. He is "educated" when he has mastered this body of information. But here an epistemological question is raised. What if human consciousness is not designed to be a passive receptor of pre- packaged information? What if the education process as described not only does not utilize, but actually handicaps and stunts the manifestation of the basic human impulse to "resolve disequilibriums?" It is often observed that children seem to be more alive to the world, more curious, more interested, etc., than adults. What if, say, this lively inquisitiveness on children's part was a manifestation of this inquiring, "problem- solving" activity? A good case could easily be made that this process is eventually drained and eroded out of the child by the "education" he/she endures during the twelve years of public schooling.
The tagmemicist thus demands the "radical and sweeping reforms" for composition programs which Albert Kitzhaber called for in 1963. Such reforms must involve not only content, but also the educational theory upon which those programs are founded. New techniques and tricks are only band aids on third- degree burns when what is needed is a new paradigm. More than anything else the student needs to be motivated toward inquiry--toward a recovery of what was active in childhood but has disintegrated in the intervening years because of a well- meaning but misguided educational theory. As Lee Odell puts it:
The teacher's role in education is: 1) to help the student learn to recognize those experiences that create dissonance for him; 2) to help the student in his attempt to solve his problem by changing his world, his understanding of the world, or both.25
Specifically in regard to composition teaching, Young draws a broad contrast between the "current- traditional" paradigm and the one he envisions as its replacement. Because of its orientation, the ''current-traditional" paradigm can only offer a "trial and error" method of approaching writing problems; it survives as a monument to the befuddled state of pedagogy and the weakness of the educational theory supporting it Young has characterized it well here:
Today the trial and error method is generally used to solve writing problems. It characterizes the efforts of both the experienced writer and the beginner as they move toward a finished discourse. And it provides the rationale for the instructional techniques in our composition courses. Typically, the teacher gives the student an assignment which loosely describes the completed discourse either by asking a question which the discourse answers or by specifying some of its features (a definition of, an essay on the subject of an essay in imitation of, or some combination of structural, semantic and phonological constraints). In addition to a loose specification of the terminal product, the input is sometimes specified as well (e.g., after reading x's article, write a 1000 word critical review). False leads filling his wastebasket, the student somehow develops solutions to the work of rhetorical problems, finally producing , something which meets the specifications of the assignment. He then submits his work for comment (an attempt at verification) and revises it, if unsatisfactory. He tries, errs, and tries again until the instructor feels the work meets the assignment. By repeatedly making mistakes and learning from them he solves his problems, and in the process develops, hopefully, that complex set of intuitive habits characteristic of the skilled writer.26
In contrast to this arduous, inefficient, enormously time- consuming default method, Young offers an alternative, based on the problem- solving paradigm and tagmemic theory. The core of it is Pike's tagmemic matrix.
This matrix presents a "heuristic" or discovery procedure intended to stimulate and tap that mental process at the center of human behavior. Young carefully distinguishes this heuristic procedure from rule- governed, mechanical procedures and random, trial- and- error ones:
A rule governed procedure specifies a finite series of steps that can be carried out in mechanical fashion without the use of intuition or special ability and that infallibly results in a correct answer....A heuristic procedure, on the other hand, provides a series of questions or operations that guides inquiry and increases the chances of discovering a workable solution.27
Thus the heuristic procedure is mid- way between rule- governed and trial- and- error methods; like "trial- and- error," it does require the use of "guessing"--it is open- ended, uses "intuition,"--but unlike "trial- and- error" the guesses are not random but systematic. The questions or operations of the heuristic procedure are determined beforehand to guide inquiry and in this way it is like rule- governed behavior.
The "current- traditional rhetoric" has long dealt with the conscious, editorial, "product" side of composition. The missing dimension, however, is the long neglected inventive, "process" side of composition--that which is unconscious. The tagmemicist argues that the composition teacher must start earlier--before the words get to the page--in order to make any successful progress with the would- be writer. But the tagmemic principles cannot be simply tacked on to existing methods and means; they demand not just a new pedagogy, but a new paradigm. The "current- traditional" paradigm stifles, not starts the student on the way to finding his "authentic voice."
The question which of course must be raised is, "If the existing paradigm is so bad, how did any of us learn to write?" A facile answer would be something to the effect that we learned in spite of or oblivious to the paradigm. But Young himself frankly admits.
It would be wrong to say that this [trial- and- error] method is inappropriate or unproductive. The loosely specified product and the absence of any attempt to control the process by a sequence of precise operations implies, quite correctly, that rhetorical problems belong to a class which may have several acceptable answers. There is no single correct essay which meets the assignment; many reasonable solutions are possible. Furthermore, the method allows the writer to bring into play all his intuitive capacities, special knowledge and values. Although nothing in the method stimulates imaginative and original work, it at least permits it. Undoubtedly, many people learn to write with this method; most of us did (with or without the help of a teacher), and many of our students do.28
The choices, then, are clear; the profession as a whole can continue safely within the borders of the tacit, unarticulated, "Current- traditional" paradigm, foundering in a sea of impressionistic strategies; or it can move boldly into a new framework, incorporating the insights of psychology, linguistics and other disciplines into its pedagogy and attempt, perhaps for the first time, to face up to its responsibilities for teaching composing.
Though it was published almost a decade ago, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change remains the fullest and most accessible statement of tagmemic pedagogy. And since to a great degree the composition profession is its texts, it is both purposeful and crucial to spend time in close, critical analysis of those texts. I propose here to examine Young, Becker and Pike's text, concentrating mainly on the "six maxims" that form its theoretical core. From this examination, a clear picture should emerge, depicting how the tagmemic pedagogy "works" in the classroom setting. I have avoided trying to suggest how any given assignment might be derived from this core, assuming that the would- be user could visualize his own syllabus of activities after he understood the principles involved.29
The authors maintain a much broader view of "rhetoric" than is normally conceded, positing that it "is concerned mainly with a creative process that includes all the choices a writer makes from his earliest tentative explorations of a problem in what has been called the 'prewriting' stage of the writing process, through choices in arrangement and strategy for a particular audience, to the final editing of the final draft."30 The text then is heavily weighted in favor of "process," of invention; such matters as grammar, spelling, punctuation and usage are treated only briefly. The authors explain their controlling theme this way:
In planning this book we sought to isolate and describe the choice- points in the writing process- --the points between first discovery and finished work at which the writer has a major choice to make. To make appropriate choices the student must understand the process of writing and must have procedures for controlling it. The contributions of tagmemics to understanding and controlling this process are presented in a series of six maxims.(pp. xi- xii)
These six maxims are:
- People conceive the world in terms of repeatable units.
- Units of experience are hierarchically structured systems.
- A unit, at any level of focus, can be adequately understood only if three aspects of the unit are known: (a) its contrastive features; (b) its range of variation; and (c) its distribution in larger contexts.
- A unit of experience can be viewed as a particle, or as a wave, or a field.
- Change between units can occur only over a bridge of shared features.
- Linguistic choices are made in relation to a universe of discourse. Each maxim will be discussed separately and a final part in this section will attempt to synthesize in coherent form the strategy and goals of tagmemic pedagogy.
Maxim One
This first assumption arises from simple observation of the world we live in. Each human being brings his own unique perspective to existence; all events need interpretation. In the plethora of experiences in life and the changing, dynamic flow of events, personalities, things, how can one make sense out of life, eliminating or at least sidestepping misunderstandings and misinterpretations in order to lead a fairly well- ordered life? The answer, as Maxim One states it, is that we all view life in terms of repeatable units. Despite the fact that things outside of us, as well as inside us, are constantly changing, we are still able to recognize a degree of sameness, able to maintain our own identity which we ourselves can recognize and which others can also.
Language provides a way of "unitizing" experience. As the authors put it, language is a "set of symbols that label recurring chunks of experience"(p. 27). Their example is a chair. Despite the fact that ''chair'' is a label given to a number of different things (rockers, recliners, sling chairs, etc.) and although its meaning changes as people use it in different situations, each individual chair is seen as a special instance of a recurring unit. "Language depends on our seeing certain experiences as constant or repeatable" (p. 27).
Maxim Two
Maxim One leads naturally into Maxim Iwo: besides "unitizing'' experiences into recognizable chunks, people are also able to focus on these as "chunks" in different ways, from different perspectives. The authors' example here is a baseball game. Baseball, with its nine innings constituting a game, can be seen as a recognizable, repeatable chunk or unit. Yet within each game itself, there are smaller units, such as individual pitches, plays and players. In addition to activity on the field itself, there are announcements over the P.A. system, shouts from the spectators and so on. Each unit of the game may be broken down into still smaller subunits and can as well be seen as units in a larger context. Thus each repeatable unit can be seen as a part of a larger whole, as a unit in itself, or as a system made up of still smaller parts. Thus, one could choose to focus on (1) the game as a whole, the spectacle of the two teams playing against each other, or (2) any individual player and his role in the game, say the pitcher or (3) something in particular about the player, the way he winds up when he throws or how he walks off the mound after an inning.
These first two maxims set the stage for the presentation of the tagmemic discovery procedure which is visually portrayed as a matrix in which any unit can be seen under the perspective of any one of nine possible categories. Maxims Three and Four constitute this matrix, which is pictured in the chart on page 21.
Maxims Three and Four
Maxim Three suggests that any unit, to be understood, must be explained under three rubrics: its contrastive features, its range of variation and its distribution in larger contexts. In other words, in order for the unit to be understood, one must know, first of all, how it contrasts with everything else in its class, then, how much it can change and still be itself, and then finally, the part it plays within the larger system of which it is a member. The questions which Maxim Three can generate about a unit are limitless, as the authors' illustration of teaching handicapped children to swim indicates:
- (1) What are the contrastive features of this unit? What makes teaching handicapped children different from teaching other children? Is teaching them to swim different from teaching them other things? How was this experience unique for me? What makes it stand out in my memory as a significant experience?
(2) What is the unit's range of variation? Conceived of as a unit, the experience of teaching handicapped children to swim is a recurring experience--it can be done more than once. Nevertheless, each instance of the unit is somewhat different. How did the experience change from day to day? What different sorts of situations did I encounter? Howdid different kinds of handicaps alter the experience? What particular experiences with particular children illustrate the sorts of problems I encountered and the different results I achieved? How did I myself change from day to day or from the beginning to the end of the summer?
(3) What is the unit's distribution in larger contexts? That is, what place, or slot, does it occupy in a larger pattern or system? Where and when did this teaching take place? What was the physical setting? What was the larger program of which swimming lessons were a part? What was the function or purpose of swimming in this program? How did this experience fit into my life? What other experiences preceded it? Followed it? What other experiences were similar for me? Can I conceive of it as one of a class of experiences that all share some feature?
(pp. 56- 57)
Maxim Three combines with Maxim Four to establish a heuristic, or method
of systematic inquiry, which generates information about a problem and
asks fruitful questions. It is at this stage that another dimension evolves
in the system.
|
|
VIEW UNIT AS | VIEW UNIT AS | VIEW UNIT AS |
| CONTRAST | VARIATION | DISTRIBUTION | |
| Particle |
|
|
|
| Wave |
|
|
|
| Field | (3) as an abstract, multi-dimensional system | (6) as a multi-dimensional physical system |
|
Maxim Three deals with characteristics of the unit itself--how it contrasts, changes, is distributed; Maxim Four deals not with the unit, but with theperceiver of the unit and the perspective he brings to it. Consequently, Maxim Four takes the unit as a given and asks the perceiver to view it from three different perspectives: "as if it were static, or as if it were dynamic, or as if it were a network of relationships or part of a larger network" (p. 122). The unit is not to be looked upon as either a particle or a wave or a field, but can be seen as any of the three at any time.
Thus the chart above provides the framework for a systematic exploration of a given unit. As an example, the authors chose a common oak tree and worked their way through the chart in this fashion:
(1) "Old Faithful" contrasts in size and age with the surrounding trees.(2) It is shedding its leaves more slowly than the other trees. Although still stately, it has passed its lifetime peak of mature, vigorous health .
(3) It is composed of roots, trunk and branches, leaves, and reproductive system (the last is not readily discernible and, for this inquirer, constitutes an unknown); each part is composed of subsystems (which again are not discernible and constitute unknowns). Since all trees have roots, trunks, branches, and so on, this oak probably differs from other kinds of trees most clearly in the peculiarities of its subsystems. The parts can be classed according to function: vegetative and reproductive. They exist in a typical spatial relationship; and each of the parts is governed by an intricate time table--acorns appear early in the year, leaves fall late, and roots continually draw sustenance from the soil or store food for later use, and so on .
(4) It is now old, nearly leafless, with one broken limb and numerous scars where others have fallen off. Ten or twenty years ago it was the same tree, but not at its inception as a seed. Then it was only potentially a tree. When it falls and rots or is cut up into lumber, it will lose its identity.
(5) It is clearly rotting; some of the branches are already dead and others show signs of decay.
(6) Its subsystems support, feed, and repair each other by means of a physiological network. The state of the system differs from hour to hour (e.g., in the regulation of moisture loss) and from day to night (in the handling of carbon dioxide). Some parts of the system can be lost, either temporarily (leaves) or permanently (some branches) without destroying the system.
(7) It is a member of a class of trees called hardwoods, which in turn is part of a larger class system that includes all trees. One of the few remaining trees of the original stand of oaks and hickories (a characteristic kind of forest in this part of the country), it dwarfs the second- generation trees around it.
(8) As part of a scene, its branches stand out sharply against he sky, like irregular lacework, but from a distance its dark trunk merges almost indistinguishably with the trunks of surrounding trees. The vines growing on it give it a special charm but probably contribute to its decay. It shelters wildlife; it draws raw materials for growth from the earth in which it is rooted and in turn enriches the earth with its fallen leaves.
(9) A system in itself, it fills a place in a larger system, a niche in the ecology of the area. (Without extremely close observation and a knowledge of ecology, these questions constitute significant unknowns.)
(pp. 128- 129)
This operation, as the authors suggest, hardly exhausts the possibilities left to be explored, but suffices as an illustration of the kind of discovery that the method can generate.
Maxim Five
This assumption considers the basis upon which a writer can effect change in his audience and reflects the traditional, classical view of rhetoric as the art of persuasion. Maxim Five declares that the writer must seek out the experience he happens to share with his audience; these features must not only exist, but the writer must employ them in his presentation or the desired change will not take place. It is apparent that the foundation of the maxim is Pike's emic/etic distinction discussed earlier. If a writer is to be successful in his attempt to persuade, he must communicate in an emic way--that is, he must learn the perspective, manner of expression, et al. of his audience as it were from the inside, as a participant within a system. If he speaks or writes only in an etic fashion, clearly as an outsider, there is little chance of his success. Consequently, the writer must seek out these shared features and again the heuristic procedure defined by Maxims Three and Four provide an adequate means of identifying them. Here is how the authors illustrate the point:
Suppose that a student interested in physics wants to describe a recent invention, a fuel cell, for example, to the members of his composition class. He might begin his quest for shared features by asking:
(1) "How do my fellow students differ from other readers?"
- a) They differ from a class of physics students in that they probably have more varied backgrounds in science.
b) They differ from newspaper readers in that on the whole they probably have more intellectual curiosity.
c) They differ from engineering students in that they have widely different vocational and academic interests.
- a) Since concrete explanation and definition of terms have been stressed in class, the students are likely to look for these features in his paper.
b) The last time the writer wrote for the class, one student said he didn't know what he was talking about and proved it. At the beginning of the semester the writer was an unknown; now he has a reputation to overcome.
- a) In class, they are university students, freshmen, socially and economically middle- class, and so on.
b) In sequence and space, all are freshmen in their late teens; most are urban midwesterners, and so on.
c) In systems of categories, they are, as freshmen, at the bottom of the undergraduate hierarchy; they are potentially members of widely different disciplines within the university community.
(pp. 179- 180)
A corollary to Maxim Five, though not explicitly put forward as a "maxim" in itself is the argumentative strategy devised by psychologist Carl Rogers. His strategy is based upon the view that "out of a need to preserve the stability of his image, a person will refuse to consider alternatives that he feels are threatening, and hence, that changing a person's image depends on eliminating this sense of threat" (p. 274). This strategy is designed to accomplish three things: (1) to let the reader know he is understood, (2) to explain the areas where the reader's position is valid, and (3) to convince the reader that he and the writer share similar moral qualities, such as honesty and integrity, and aspirations, such as discovering a mutually acceptable resolution to a problem (p. 275). Thus a Rogerian argument would be patterned like this:
- (1) An introduction to the problem and a demonstration that the opponent's position is understood.
(2) A statement of the contexts in which the opponent's position may be valid.
(3) A statement of the writer's position, including the contexts in which it is valid.
(4) A statement of how the opponent's position would benefit if he were to adopt elements of the writer's position. If the writer can show that the positions complement each other, that each supplies what the other lacks, so much the better.
(p. 283)
Maxim Six
Maxim Six attempts to underscore the necessity for appropriate choice in composition. Such choices are affected by several different factors, including the structure of the language to be employed, the personality of the writer and the peculiarities of the topic, the audience and the kind of discourse being attempted. Such factors comprise the writer's "universe of discourse," the context of his creative effort. "Appropriate" choice will take into account each of these factors. Consequently, this maxim is an exhortation to be aware of one's context in composing; to ignore it is to stumble haphazardly through the communicative process and leave effective writing to chance.
A Summary
Tagmemic composition theory is thus a synthesis of
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