Introduction

Penman 1
Will Penman
Mar 30, 2014

Proposal for Qualifying Exam (Final)

In sociolinguistics, the phenomenon of shifting from a high-prestige language variety
such as standard English, to a low-prestige variety like African American English, is known as
crossing (Rampton). Crossing, as a shift that is often tied up with identity, introduces
questions of the shifts authenticity, a recognition that a speaker can fail to perceive the
social and political aspect of the culture or fail to be sensitive to the issue of group
boundaries through unilateral discursive markers of group membership (Hewitt in Cutler
435). Indeed, authenticity itself as a (now-discarded) analytic term indicates a powerful drive
for the researcher to be the arbiter of change, social division, and even reality. For
rhetoricians, these concerns are echoed and amplified on the discourse level. Like crossing,
rhetoricians recognize that separate rhetorics can be spoken from for different effect. Like
authenticity, speaking a different rhetoric comes with power-laden social and linguistic
processes (Foucault, Bordieu), which can be negotiated in some settings through the difficult
process of intercultural inquiry (Flower). And like the search for an analytic term, rhetorical
methodologies have gradually begun to include other modes of communication, which I see
as a recognition of the fact that the semiotic resources of a given group are unlikely to be
distributed in the same way as another group (Kress), and therefore privileging the
entextualization of the oral communication channel can leave out significant discursive work
(that is unevenly distributed between groups). In general, this scholarship is moving toward
understanding at a more nuanced level the ways in which discourse community membership
is not static and fixed but is fluid, strategic, and subject to contestation. I propose to study
what I see as the significant bodies of work in this conversation about the establishment of
discourse community membership.
One area in which I can potentially explore these issues is by looking at newcomers to
Pittsburghs neighborhood of Garfield. Garfield is located north of Penn Ave (and the
neighborhood of Bloomfield), west of Negley Ave (and the neighborhood East Liberty), and is
lined to the north and west by the Allegheny County Cemetery. The neighborhood has a long
history in Pittsburgh. Currently, it has primarily African American residents. On the Bloomfield
Introduction
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side of Penn Ave, artsy boutiques line the road; on the Garfield side, there are conspicuously
abandoned houses visible. Ive been told that the line dividing Bloomfield and Garfield is the
most segregated place in Pittsburgh. At the same time, Ive heard from many young people
that Garfield is up-and-coming, in the early phases of gentrification, which is in a more
advanced stage in East Liberty next door. People have started coming to Garfield to get
theirs, a recognition that motives for working in Garfield can include the prospect of financial
gain, with the potential consequence that established members without the financial
resources may be displaced.
Many organizations are working in Garfield. I've had informal conversations with three
separate but overlapping groups:
1. the pastor of Valley View (one of the churches in Garfield), himself a newcomer to the
neighborhood 10 years ago;
2. the leaders of a four year old "community farm" in Garfield (led through a church in
East Liberty affiliated with Valley View) who have few relationships with people in
Garfield; and
3. a set of families who moved to Garfield 10 years ago and attend Valley View.
Although each group has their own set of goals, several aspects of these preliminary
conversations stand out. First, all three groups made their (Protestant) Christianity salient as a
factor for how and why they are living/working in Garfield. Second, all three groups talked
about newcomers in a way that deliberately avoided obvious power structures: newcomers
should develop "kindredness," be "allies" rather than de facto leaders, and be "in solidarity"
with the community's struggles, respectively. Third, all three groups made salient a variety of
differences between newcomers and established community members, including race and
religion.
For the leaders of the Garfield Community Farm, it is a daunting project to come to
know, be trusted by, and find willing participants in the established community members. In
the four years that the community farm has been running, it has been rare for an established
member of Garfield to participate. Yet the leaders of the community farm desire co-
ownership, relationships, and benefit for the community.
My emerging research questions, then, are:
In what ways does community membership in Garfield affect rhetorical performance
around the Garfield Community Farm? What strategies do people use to affect their
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perceived level of community membership? Specifically, what is the role of linguistic
crossing?
What other factors (eg. race, class, age, expertise, commitment, religion) are made
salient in discussion? How do these emerge in discourse and in gesture?
What insight can be developed with the Garfield Community Farm as they work toward
their goals of partnership with the established community members?
This project is important for its contribution to our understanding of discursive
communities as they relate to projects for social change. That members of the Garfield
Community Farm are generally Christians adds an interesting element as well, in that
(conservative Presbyterian) Christianity may have distinctive formulations for power, agency,
and rhetorical success. Finally, this situation provides an opportunity to study non-linguistic
modes of communication across discourse communities. Rhetoricians have recently begun
studying gesture (see Gesture in rhetorical theory and practice below), and this study could
extend that research to include communication across difference.
In the following, I present three areas of examination that will facilitate my exploration
of these questions: first, an area on rhetorical theory to explore the effects and characteristics
of different rhetorics; then, an area on community engagement and empowerment to
investigate how power, agency, and goals for a community have been negotiated in other
projects; finally, an area on rhetorical methodology to see how as a researcher I can be
rigorous as well as participatory and helpful to the community.
I anticipate an ethnographic method being helpful in this project; thus, areas of
examination are particularly tentative, and emphasize being able to recognize categories
rather than assuming a priori that race, say, is relevant.

Cited here, but not on exam list
Rampton, Ben. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London: Longman, 1995. Print.
Rhetorical theory
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My first exam area is Rhetorical theory, focusing specifically on race and religion. This is a set
of theoretical readings in two categories: African American/white rhetoric and Christian
theories of persuasion and their detractors. I hypothesize that these will be relevant vectors of
interpretation for a study of the establishment strategies of some newcomers in Garfield.

African American/white rhetoric will introduce me to basic linguistic and rhetorical work, with
the goal of being able to responsibly analyze race from a rhetorical perspective. Since this is a
new area for me, I have very simple questions. What are features of African American English
(AAE)? How does AAE relate to African American identity, as seen by insiders and outsiders?
What are exemplary texts of African American rhetoric? Most importantly, How does an
analyst know when race is at play? In addition, considering race only as it bears on African
American rhetoric effaces the rhetorical construction of whiteness. So I also ask, What factors
have historically created whiteness? How has whiteness not come to also absorb African
Americans, and to what effect? To answer these questions, I have included foundational
readings in AA(V)E (Rickford), contemporary work in African American rhetoric (Fix; Morgan),
an anthology of African American literature (Johnson and Lyne), articles on discourse and
racial identity (Cutler; De Fina; Johnstone and Kiesling), as well as work in the rhetoric and
history of whiteness (Crenshaw, Jacobson, Nakayama and Krizek, Roediger).
1. Crenshaw, Carrie. Resisting Whiteness Rhetorical Silence. Western Journal of
Communication 61 (1997): 253-78.
2. Cutler, C. Yorkville Crossing: white teens, hop hop, and African American English.
Journal of Sociolinguistics. 3 (1999): 428-442. Print.
3. De Fina, A. Group Identity, Narrative, and Self-representation. In A. DeFina, D.
Schiffrin, and M Bamberg, eds, Discourse and Identity 351-375. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Print.
4. Fix, Sonya. AAE as a bounded ethnolinguistic resource for white women with African
American ties. Language and Communication 2013. Print.
5. Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the
Alchemy of Race. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998.
6. Johnson, Vernon D. and Bill Lyne, eds. Walkin the Talk: An Anthology of African
American Studies. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003. Print.
7. Johnstone, Barbara and Kiesling, Scott. Indexicality and experience: Exploring the
Meanings of /aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburgh. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 12.1
(2008): 5-33. Print.
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8. Morgan, Marcyliena. Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.
9. Nakayama, Thomas K. and Robert L. Krizek. Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric. Quarterly
Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 291-309.
10. Rickford, John. African American Vernacular English. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
1999. Print.
11. Roediger, David R. Working Toward Whiteness: How Americas Immigrants Became
White. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

Christian theories of persuasion and their detractors are important for an understanding of
the ways that insiders and outsiders of Protestant Christianity see Christian beliefs motivating
Christians strategies for and engagement with community development. As Gornik argues,
Christian beliefs entail certain actions: to follow Jesus commands means not to pass by
suffering but to enter into the place of joblessness, institutional violence, alienation, and
stigmatization, and to do so ultimately because of the authoritative word of the Lord (9).
What philosophies of mission have Christians historically held? How do current mission
paradigms respond to past critiques? And how do these visions for transformation challenge
or align with rhetorical theories of persuasion? To answer these questions, I have selected
definitive treatments of the history of Christian missions (Bosch; Stone), renowned Christian
guidebooks for contemporary action (Corbett and Fikkert; Gornik; Perkins; Taylor), and
rhetorical scholarship (Montesano).
12. Bosch, David. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission.
Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2011. Print.
13. Corbett, Steve and Brian Fikkert. When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty
without Hurting the Poor or Yourself. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009. Print.
14. Gornik, Mark. To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City. Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdsman Publishing Company, 2002. Print.
15. Kennedy, George. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from
Ancient to Modern Times, 2
nd
Ed. [Chapter 7: Judeo-Christian Rhetoric] Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Print.
16. Montesano, Mark. Kairos and Kerygma: The Rhetoric of Christian Proclamation.
Rhetoric Society Quarterly 25.1 (1995): 164-178. Print.
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17. Perkins, John. With Justice For All: A Strategy for Community Development, 3
rd

edition. Ventura, CA: Regal. 2007 [1982]. Print.
18. Stone, Bryan. Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian
Witness. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007. Print.
19. Taylor, John. The Go-Between God. Great Britain: SCM Mission, 1972. Print.
Community engagement and empowerment
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My second exam area is Community engagement and empowerment. This section trains me
in rhetoric in action, divided into three categories: power and discourse; agency; and
rhetorical action. I have enough familiarity with these categories to understand some of their
claims: that power is best theorized as emerging in interaction rather than inhering in a
person or position; that rhetorical agency in a post-modern age is fraught with difficulty; that
leadership does not have to follow an authoritative, powerful-man-speaking model.
Newcomers' desire to "help" is in many cases deleterious: speaking from an international
context, Moore-Gilbert summarizes that, The urgent aim of [Edward Saids] Orientalism is to
expose the degree to which Western systems of knowledge and representation have been
involved in the long history of the Wests material and political subordination of the non-
Western world (38). Furthermore, different levels of expertise between newcomers and
established members draws out power dynamics and makes the contribution of newcomers
especially tricky (Flower, Partners). I can use this reading area to go deeper into these
issues.

Power and discourse is a broader lens than African American/white rhetoric above. In what
subtle ways is power manifested and resisted? How do motives relate to power in discourse?
How do structures of power relate to individual practices? Although it is easy to parody
cultural studies for making everything a matter of power, these questions will provide me
with an upper bound for rhetorical analysis of power in Garfield. To answer them, I have
included overviews of critical concepts (Howard; Moore-Gilbert); foundational works in power
and discourse (Bourdieu, Fairclough; Foucault; Freire); and a recent collection of sociolinguistic
studies (Duchne and Heller).
1. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977. Print.
2. Duchne, Alexandre and Monica Heller, ed. Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and
Profit. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.
3. Fairclough, Norman. Language and Power. London: Longman, 1989. Print.
4. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
New York: Random House, Inc, 1977. Print.
5. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York:
Continuum Publishing Company, 1970. Print.
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6. Howarth, David. Discourse. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2000. Print.
7. Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics. New York: Verso,
1997. Print.

Readings in Rhetorical agency ask, To what extent can individual rhetors (within a discourse
community or not) affect an outcome? To what extent should we judge rhetoric by rhetors
agency? I have included Gieslers debate with Lundberg and Gunn in RSQ to address these
questions.
8. Geisler, Cheryl. How Ought we to Understand the Concept of Rhetorical Agency?
Report from the ARS. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.3 (2004): 9-17. Print.
9. Geisler, Cheryl. Teaching the Post-Modern Rhetor: Continuing the Conversation on
Rhetorical Agency. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35.4 (2005): 107-113. Print.
10. Lundberg, Christian and Joshua Gunn. Ouija Board, Are There Any Communications?
Agency, Ontotheology, and the Death of the Humanist Subject, or, Continuing the
ARS Conversation. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35.4 (2005): 83-105. Print.

Rhetorical action is a list to help answer the questions, What does rhetoric seek? What
rhetorical principles apply to situations of social change and community literacy? To answer
these questions, I have included readings in the definition of rhetoric (Bone; Burke; Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca; Ratcliffe) as well as readings in community literacy (Flower, Community
Literacy; Flower, Partners; Swan) and leadership (Heifetz; hooks; West).
11. Bone, Jennifer, Cindy Griffin, and T.M. Linda Scholz. Beyond Traditional
Conceptualizations of Rhetoric: Invitational Rhetoric and a Move Toward Civility.
Western Journal of Communication 72.4 (2008): 434-462. Print.
12. Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Print.
13. Flower, Linda. Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. Print.
14. Flower, Linda. Partners in Inquiry: A logic for community outreach. In L. Adler-
Kassner, R. Crooks, and A. Watters (Eds.), Writing the Community: Concepts and
Models for Service Learning in Composition (pg 95-117). Washington, DC: American
Association of Higher Education, 1997. Print.
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15. Heifetz, Ronald. Leadership without Easy Answers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1994. Print.
16. hooks, bell. Talking Back. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989. Print.
17. Perelman, Chaim and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. The New Rhetoric. Trans. John Wilkinson
and Purcell Weaver. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. Print. [Book
1]
18. Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. Print.
19. Swan, Susan. Rhetoric, Service, and Social Justice. Written Communication 19.1
(2002): 76-108. Print.
20. West, Cornel. Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America. New York: Routledge,
1993. Print.
Gesture, multimodality, and rhetorical research methods
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My third exam area is Gesture, multimodality, and rhetorical research methods. These are
readings focused on methodological insights in five categories: gesture research methods,
gesture in rhetorical theory and practice, multimodality as a link between studies of
technology and studies of face-to-face interaction, ethnography, and participatory action
research. In general, I expect that non-oral modes of communication will be interesting to
analyze in Garfield. Specifically, based on my past research I am focusing on the role that
gesture can play in communication. Kress notes that, under a social semiotic framework for
multimodality, there is no reason to assume that the modal division of labor will be the
same across discourse communities (11). That is, there is no reason to assume that the
mode of gesture in Culture 1 covers the same area or the same concerns, or is used for the
same purposes and meanings as the mode of gesture in Culture 2 (11). Thus, comparing the
extent to which different discourse communities in Garfield use the gestural mode differently
may be a fruitful space to test Kress hypothesis.

Gesture research methods provides a coding scheme and analytic framework for analyzing
gesture in spontaneous situations. Kendon, McNeill, and Goldin-Meadow each make
significant contributions to the emerging field of gesture studies. How can we transcribe
and analyze gesture? What kinds of systematicity have been discovered? In what ways does
the gesture studies research program align with rhetoric?
1. Goldin-Meadow, Susan. Hearing Gesture: How our Hands Help us Think. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2003. Print.
2. Kendon, Adam. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004. Print.
3. McNeil, David. Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992. Print.

Gesture in rhetorical theory and practice extends the work of gesture studies to incorporate
gesture as it is used as part of strategic discourse. As early as 1806, Gilbert Austin lamented
the loss of delivery in critical attention: This art [of rhetoric] has five principal divisions, of
which the first three are constantly used by all our public speakers; namely, invention,
disposition, and the choice of language correct or ornamental, properly called Elocution;
memory, the fourth, is frequently used. Why should the art [of rhetoric] be mutilated and
Gesture, multimodality, and rhetorical research methods
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deprived of the fifth, pronunciation, or delivery? I ask, what rhetorical principles are present
in attention to gesture? What history has gesture research in rhetoric had? To answer these
questions, I have included readings in the history of gesture in rhetoric (Austin; McCorkle;
Quintilian) as well as readings in contemporary rhetorical use of gestures (Haas; Sauer;
Topinka; Wolfe).
4. Austin, Gilbert. Chironomia. 1806.
5. Haas, Christina and Stephen Witte. Writing as an Embodied Practice: The Case of
Engineering Standards. Journal of Business and Technical Communications. 15.4
(2001): 413-457. Print.
6. McCorkle, Ben. Rhetorical Delivery as Technological Discourse: A Cross-Historical
Study. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Print. [Chapter 4:
Harbingers of the Printed Page: Nineteenth-century Theories of Delivery as
Remediation]
7. Quintilian. Institutio Oratia, Book XI.
8. Sauer, Embodied Experience: Representing Risk in Speech and Gesture. Discourse
Studies. 1.3 (1999): 321-354. Print.
9. Topinka, Robert J. Resisting the Fixity of Suburban Space: The Walker as Rhetorician.
Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 42.1 (2012): 65-84. Print.
10. Wolfe, Joanna. Gesture and Collaborative Planning: A Case Study of a Student
Writing Group. Written Communication. 22.3 (2005): 298-332. Print.

I posit Multimodality as a link between studies of technology and studies of face-to-face
interaction. Gesture studies theoretical lens is primarily psychological; multimodality as a
concept from social semiotics argues instead that meanings are made, distributed, received,
interpreted and remade in interpretation through many representational and communicative
modes not just through language (Jewitt and Kress, 1). So I ask, Via the theoretically rich
concept of multimodality, can insights from technology studies be brought back to the face-
to-face interaction characteristic of the Community Farms work in Garfield? To answer this
question, I have included Kress synthesis of multimodal theory (Kress), and two investigations
of technology and semiotic practice (Manovich; Welch).
11. Kress, Gunther. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.
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12. Manovich, Lev. Software Takes Command. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
2013. Print.
13. Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Print.

Ethnography is uncommon in rhetoric, in which the ideological impact of Bitzers rhetorical
situation lingers. However, an ethnographic approach could help me illustrate long-term
changes in the Community Farm and its relationship to Garfield. What literate practices have
been observed through ethnographic research? To what extent and in what ways is
ethnography compatible with rhetoric and with participatory action research (see below)?
What are the components of a rigorous ethnographic study? To answer these questions, I
have included ethnographic rhetorical studies (Cushman; Lindquist), introductions to
ethnographic methods (Berg; Blommaert; Emerson), and challenges to ethnographic research
(Bitzer; Urban).
14. Berg, Bruce. Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences, 7
th
edition.
Columbus, Ohio: Allyn & Bacon, 2008. Print.
15. Bitzer, Lloyd. The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1-14. Print.
16. Blommaert, Jan and Dong Jie. Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginners Guide. Bristol:
Multilingual Matters, 2010. Print.
17. Cushman, Ellen. The Struggle and the Tools: Oral and Literate Strategies in an Inner
City Community. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Print.
18. Emerson, Robert, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Print.
19. Lindquist, Julie. A place to stand: Politics and persuasion in a working-class bar.
Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.
20. Urban, Greg. Entextualization, replication, and power. In Natural Histories of
Discourse, ed Greg Urban and Michael Silverstein. 21-44. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996. Print.

Participatory action research (PAR) is the methodological counterpart and reaction to
community development in the social sciences. PAR first came to my attention when it was
promoted at the Black Urban Farmers and Gardeners conference that I attended. All
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formulations have in common the idea that research must be done with people and not on
or for people (Chevalier and Buckles). We can see this as a step past Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tytecas idea that a variety of non-rhetorical encounters can lay the groundwork for
a contact of minds: Achievement of the conditions preliminary to the contact of minds is
facilitated by such factors as membership in the same social class, exchange of visits, and
other social relations. Frivolous discussions that are lacking in apparent interest are not always
entirely unimportant (17). Whereas Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca see mundane contact
with people as underlying rhetorical action, participatory action research argues that this
should extend self-reflexively to the researcher, as the community participants themselves are
brought into the inquiry. What is PAR? How does it interact with rhetorical concerns about
power and agency? How can a project in Garfield draw on PAR? To answer these questions, I
have included well-respected handbooks on PAR theory and methods (Chevalier and Buckles;
Kemmis and McTaggart; McIntyre).
21. Chevalier, Jacques M and Daniel J Buckles. Participatory Action Research: Theory and
Methods for Engaged Inquiry. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.
22. Kemmis, Stephen and Robin McTaggart. Participatory Action Research:
Communicative Action and the Public Sphere. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative
Research, 3
rd
edition. 271-330. Ed. Denzin, Norman and Yvonna Lincoln. Sage
Publications, Inc., 2007. Print.
23. McIntyre, Alice. Participatory Action Research. New York: SAGE Publications, 2007.
Print.