Unthought-Of Connections: The Intersection Of Rhetoric And Composition

Unthought-of Connections: The Intersection of Critical Stylistics and Rhetoric and Composition

Shuv Raj Rana Bhat

PhD Student

University of Texas at El Paso, Texas

Critical stylistics and rhetoric and composition are two disciplines that have always remained distanced from each other in the academic world. Because the epistemological orientations of these two disciplines are perceived as so dissimilar, rhetoric and composition, despite its interdisciplinary nature, has been reluctant to encompass critical stylistics as one of its constituent parts. In fact, these two disciplines have more similarities than dissimilarities and can inform each other. Critical stylistics stems from the premise that the stylistic choice made consciously or tacitly by writer in the production of a text is “always ideologically loaded and may also be ideologically manipulative” (Critical Stylistics). This

In particular I argue that there are many overlaps between critical stylistics and rhetoric and composition particularly in the treatment of language, the objects of writing studies such as multimodal written texts and teaching praxis and rhetorical criticism like diction, style, and critical thinking. In the second part of presentation, I will demonstrate how critical stylistics is a more linguistically oriented approach that provides the writers, researchers, teachers and students with specific linguistic tools—naming, describing, representing actions, equating, contrasting, prioritizing, implying, assuming, negating and hypothesizing—to study multimodal written texts, composing practices and teaching praxis. Thus the presentation will promote greater awareness of the intersection of rhetoric and composition and critical stylistics among the professionals on the one hand and equip the participants with critical stylistics as a practical methodology to probe into rhetoric and