JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 28, Numbers 1 & 2, 2008 Page: 71
390, [6] p. : ill. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Paul Butler
thing composition teachers are not talking and writing about these days
is how to teach students to compose clear, logical prose." Mac Donald's
emphasis on clarity in writing is echoed by Menand, who gives a list of
speech characteristics that writing teachers should help students elimi-
nate from their writing "in the interest of clarity"; these include "repeti-
tion, contradiction, exaggeration, run-ons, fragments, and cliches, plus an
array of tonal and physical inflections-drawls, grunts shrugs, winks,
hand gestures-unreproducible in written form" (94). Yet, the idea of
clarity is, in fact, more problematic than Menand or MacDonald allows.
At least one scholar, Richard Lanham, began to question the common
assumptions about clarity as early as 1974. Recognizing that the term
"clarity" itself is impossible to define (because it is a rhetorical concept
that shifts), Lanham writes, "Obviously, there can be no single verbal
pattern that can be called 'clear.' All depends on context-social,
historical, attitudinal" (Style 33). Lanham reveals the chief principle he
sees at work in most theories of clarity: the tendency to want to make
writing transparent, or to have it seem invisible to those reading it, as if
it points to some definitive underlying reality.
Thus, at least part of the problem in the disappearance of stylistic
study, I argue, is that composition has essentially been interpellated by
myths regarding clarity as well as other public myths about style. By
"interpellation" I mean that there has been a tendency to accept prescrip-
tive standards of grammar, punctuation, and style that support a reductive
view of the canon. By "myths" I mean that frequent repetition makes so-
called "rules" take on a life of their own, raising them to the level of
prescription. As an example, in opposition to what many claim as the
inherent transparency of a clear style, Lanham proposes instead the idea
of an opaque style that calls attention to itself. He states, "Either we notice
an opaque style as a style (i.e., we look at it) or we do not (i.e., we look
through it to a fictive reality beyond)" (Literacy 58). Lanham recognizes
that an opaque style is seen as "the enemy of clarity" and that a binary
has developed favoring a clear or transparent style. "Transparent
styles, because they go unnoticed, are good," he writes. "Opaque
styles, which invite stylistic self-consciousness, are bad" (47, 59).
Lanham's theory thus complicates the notion of clarity in writing in
important ways. He argues persuasively that the injunction to "be clear"71
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 28, Numbers 1 & 2, 2008, periodical, 2008; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc268403/m1/69/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .