Composition and Rhetoric

Students can specialize in Composition and Rhetoric at both MA and PhD levels at UHM. They may pursue an MA in English with a formal concentration in Composition and Rhetoric, or they may pursue a PhD in English that includes focused coursework, exams, and a dissertation in Composition and Rhetoric. The information on this page pertains to the MA concentration; for a broader overview of this area of study (including undergraduate offerings), please visit the Composition and Rhetoric at UHM page.

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Specialists in Composition and Rhetoric study writers and their writing--at home, in school (kindergarten through college, across the disciplines), in the workplace, and in communities. They examine the relationship among language, thought, and action. They study historical and contemporary issues in literacy. They write and teach writing, considering the ways in which literate behaviors are nurtured and practiced. Generally speaking, they are interested in the practical, in making as opposed to interpreting, in what might be called a rhetoric of doing, or as Kenneth Burke wrote, "language as symbolic action."

The fields of Composition and Rhetoric are interconnected. Composition traces its roots to classical Greece and Rome, where student-rhetors were taught to examine what we now call the rhetorical situationthe contextual relationship among speakers, their audiences, and their topicsas they prepared to present their cases in the legislature or the court or to give effective speeches at ceremonial occasions. Over the years, rhetoric's aims have ranged from the ideal ("the art of influencing the soul through words," Plato) to the more practical ("the study of misunderstanding and its remedies," I.A. Richards). In the medieval period, rhetoric, along with grammar and logic, was the core of a liberal arts education. Today, scholars are "reclaiming Rhetorica" and investigating how rhetoric's concerns have manifested themselves in non-European societies. Rhetoric's notions of agent and intention offer ways to address pressing problems and to make intelligent choices, thus engaging with postmodernism's questions about the autonomy and agency of individual writers.

When the focus of academic study changed from oral to written texts during the last century, the field now known as composition studies emerged. Composition itself enjoyed a resurgence in the 1970s, when case studies of writers helped better explain writing processes and rhetorical situations. It continues to flourish in conjunction with the recent call for a new literacy that prepares students to engage critically with work, politics, social criticism, and consumer culture. As a preparation for teaching, students in composition courses study writing processes (inventing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing), genres, styles, collaboration, response, assessment, and computers and the electronic media. To learn more about writers and writing, they conduct both rhetorical and empirical researchthe former employing such approaches as historical and critical analysis and the latter such approaches as case studies and ethnographies.

Rhetoric and composition have become increasingly important to English departments and the academy in general as critical methods have shifted to focus on language and its effects, and on the interpretation of diverse texts within rhetorical and social contexts. For example, scholars in literary studies use literary rhetoric to examine the strategies of argument that authors weave into imaginative works to confront literary, political, and social issues. Composition and rhetoric specialists who study discourse communities have been leaders in shaping writing-across-the-curriculum programs in many schools, colleges, and universities, thus shaping curriculum reform. This interest in curriculum extends to grades kindergarten through 12; typically, specialists maintain close links with teachers in those grades.

With its ethnic diversity, Hawai'i offers a productive site for composition and rhetorical studies. For example, the subject of language variation and its relationship to cultural diversity introduces issues of class, age, race, ethnicity, and gender, thus raising complex political and ethical questions. These issues, in addition to those discussed above, invite exploration through the M.A. project, the culmination of study in the MA concentration.