ENG 5028 Spring 2019 Fleckenstein

The latter part of the twentieth century is marked by what neopragmatist Richard Rorty has called the “linguistic turn,” where we live the world historically and know it linguistically. Language is the tool of tool in our cultural toolbox, a move that subordinates poetics and aesthetics to the architectonic arts of rhetoric. While Rorty announced this linguistic turn in 1964, philosopher I. A. Richards had made a similar argument for the centrality of rhetoric 40 years earlier. Thus, our entry into modernism during the early decades of the twentieth century and our entry into post-modernism during the latter decades of the twentieth century can be characterized as a rhetorical as well as a linguistic turn.

Our goal in this course is to trace 20th- and 21st-century configurations of rhetoric. We will do that by exploring the influence of specific philosophers/rhetoricians and by exploring issues in the early decades of the 21st century that shape and, reciprocally, are shaped by a particular philosophy of communication. Theorists range from I. A. Richards and Gloria Anzaldúa to Kenneth Burke and Donna J. Haraway.

Requirements include six response essays (2-3 pages single spaced), a midterm project introducing a theorist not included on the syllabus, and a final seminar paper.

This course satisfies required coursework in Rhetoric and Composition (MA and PhD programs).