Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy

by Brian Ray

REFERENCE GUIDES TO RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION, edited by Charles Bazerman, Mary Jo Reiff, and Anis Bawarshi | AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY, THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PEDAGOGY conducts an in-depth investigation into the long and complex evolution of style in the study of rhetoric and writing. The theories, research methods, and pedagogies covered here offer a conception of style as more than decoration or correctness-views that are still prevalent in many college settings as well as in public discourse. The book begins by tracing origins of style in sophistic-era Greece, moving from there to alternative and non-Western rhetorical traditions, showing style as always inventive and even at times subversive. Although devalued in subsequent periods, including the twentieth century, contemporary views now urge for renewed attention to the scholarly and pedagogical possibilities of style as experimentation and risk, rather than as safety and conformity. These contemporary views include work in areas of rhetoric and composition, such as basic writing, language difference, digital and multimodal discourse, feminist rhetorics, and rhetorical grammar. Later chapters in this book also explore a variety of disciplines and research methods-sociolinguistics and dialectology, literary and rhetorical stylistics, discourse and conversation analysis, and World Englishes. Finally, teachers and students will appreciate a final chapter that explains practical teaching methods, provides ideas for assignments and activities, and surveys textbooks that promote a rhetorical stance toward style. | BRIAN RAY is Assistant Professor of English and composition program coordinator at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. His work on style and language issues has appeared in Rhetoric Review, Composition Studies, Computers and Composition, and the Journal of Basic Writing.

278 pages, Paperback

Published November 29, 2014

About the author

Brian Ray grew up in Georgia and spent his college years in Columbia, where he toured old prisons by moonlight and learned to deal with paranoid schizophrenic relatives. He also drank a lot of coffee.

He earned his MFA from the University of South Carolina in '07 and stayed there a year to teach creative writing. Now he's working on his next novel while earning a PhD at UNC-Greensboro.