Teaching Middle-class Argument in Firstyear Writing

by Irvin Peckham
Louisiana State University

Before arguing about middle-class argument, I have to get some personal preoccupations on the table—they might be simple irritations more characteristic of my own social dislocation than serious concerns about teaching writing.

First, I'm impatient with academic writing in general and with the associated posture of the carefully reasoned and researched discourse. It outlaws breaks in the veneer of professionalism. You could say the posture is distanced, not caught up in the subject of the discourse, almost as if the writer doesn't really care about her subject . Or maybe it's a matter of showing one's knowledge without letting one's passion break through.

Pierre Bourdieu claims that this act of distancing marks one's place in a social class scale (although the notion of scale seriously compromises his theory of social spaces). The more you are distanced from necessity, the higher your social status—and of course that higher social status (and salary) allows the distance. If you accept this analysis and also the general thesis that social reproduction is a dominant function of educational systems (perhaps more intensely as one goes up the ladder), then you might understand my linking the academic posture with the maintenance of social class relationships; thus, my impatience. Linked as they are to necessity and close-knit communities, members of the working classes are likely to let a kind of raw inner self show in the ways they speak and move—or so the story goes.

The story is far more complicated than this sketch. For instance, social constructions of gender differences are indexes of social status. Bourdieu claims (and the case seems obvious) that gender difference and social class status are inversely related. The higher you go, the less the difference and concomitantly, the less the difference in discourse habits. Ethnicity and race obviously shade these differences. But in spite of these complications, a certain relationship remains: you mark your social class status by the distance you maintain between yourself and raw life. This distance is marked by your language—and by your stance as you use language. Irony, for instance, is an upper class marker. Irony depends on speakers' abilities to distance themselves from their utterances.

As a working class academic, I am marked by a kind pugilistic stance. If I dig deep enough, I excavate a certain social class anger; on the other hand, I am now a reasonably comfortable member of the intellectual fraction of the middle class. Like other working class academics, I have had to reconstruct my notion of the group I left and the group I now hang out with (see Kaufman). In addition, I think there are many situations that one needs to look at from multiple perspectives—which demands that one be able to pull back, to distance oneself from the emotional tangle within the situations. I know very well that when you distance yourself, you gain control over situations, just as you do over language. The effectiveness of this distancing, however, is situational. It doesn't work well for love.

That is the framework from which I see the case for promoting argumentative discourse as the sine qua non of academic writing (normally, after one has graduated from the working class genres in the traditional first semester course). Here are some specific reasons why I resist the focus on argumentative writing.

It functions as an additional screening mechanism by privileging middle-class students who have been socialized into argument and by weeding out working-class students, for whom argument is in conflict with their primary culture. Working class students, for obvious reasons, are trained not to argue, particularly with male figures in positions of authority (see Lareau). Argument as a discourse form isn't any more class neutral than middle-class grammar.

I think the focus on argument derives more from its “status” as a discourse form than from any clear evidence that argument is a common kind of writing one finds in a variety of academic and professional situations.

As a consequence of this ideological elevation of argument's status, teachers have adopted a formulaic pattern for writing based on a prototypical argumentative genre: you introduce your controversial subject (with perhaps some summary of what others have said about it), state your position, explain why others think differently than you, explain why they might be mistaken, develop your reasons (with warrants and evidence) for holding your position, restate it, summarize your points with some flurry of establishing its importance and what people out to do about it. There are of course several variations to this formula, but we all know the somewhat mindless format.

I think teachers like this pattern because it gives them something concrete to do. They can also focus on cool things like the fallacies! On the basis of my own barely concealed motivations, let me speculate that teachers like to teach argument because they think they will learn through teaching it how to argue more effectively (for instance, by spotting fallacies). As I noted above, one increases one's social status by being able to argue effectively. One might even be published.

I dislike the focus on argumentation (particularly the pro/con genre) because teachers tend to focus on the form of the discourse. Students end up writing essays to demonstrate their mastery of the form. It's almost as if they have to go out looking for an argument. This is stupid. Argument, for what it's worth, should develop from an abundance of information. Argument grows from information. Instead of focusing on gathering, sorting, and organizing information, re-presenting it and developing stances toward it and towards others who have gathered and sorted and re-presented differently, we send our students out looking for arguments. The consequence is vacuous discourse . Empty claims made in order to make them. I hate reading this stuff. I realize that my irritation here is class-based.

I recently read an essay by Richard Miller promoting the familiar essay. I took exception to just about everything Richard said, but I back his central thesis one hundred percent. I would far rather read writing that moves toward discovery than the awful kind of essays I have just described. Like Richard, I would rather have my students be wrong than stupid.

I have worked myself into a frenzy. On the other hand, I have enjoyed writing what I mean. I want to end with a caveat of sorts: As with middle-class grammar, our students need to know something about middle-class argument. Working class students need to be introduced into the alternative culture in which argument and negotiation are marks of belonging—since by going to college, they have signaled they want to get into the more privileged social class. But I think middle-class teachers should be sensitive to the cultural conflict their focus on argument presents to students for whom argument, particularly argument with people in positions of authority, is verboten. In addition, I prefer to move away from argument as a genre. Let's focus instead on getting students to recognize when they have made claims—and when those claims have to be backed up by argument.

Discussion

I am supposed to end this rant with a series of questions to promote discussion, but I don't want to. I suspect that by having made a series of claims and accusations, I might encourage some discussion about where the rest of you stand on this subject of middle-class argument. I can, however, see a few questions.

1. Do you like to teach argument?

2. Why?

3. Why do you think it's important for students to learn how to write, for instance, controversial issue essays (pro and con stuff) rather than an explanation of an issue (like an explanation of the ANWR issue).

4. What evidence do you have for your position on the importance of argumentative writing?

5. Does a significant proportion of your students' essays seem vacuous?

6. Is it possible that the way you have framed your instruction is in part responsible for that vacuity?

7. If you wanted to teach writing the way you really want to teach writing, how would you do it?

References

Web Resources

Teaching Composition