Abstract

The combination of rhetorical theory and composition theory that the generic freshman course title "Rhetoric and Composition" suggests has produced writing process models that depict writing in steps or phases. The work of Janet Emig, Linda Flower, and Mina Shaughnessy proposes such models and offers many useful distinctions. Yet no writing process model sufficiently considers the role of rhetorical audience theory within the entire process. Since Aristotle and Kenneth Burke define rhetorical audience theory, their theories of audience can provide the foundation for an audience-centered process model. In addition, no writing process model allows invention its full role within the writing process. Using the work of Emig, Shaughnessy, Burke, and Aristotle, this dissertation will propose and apply an audience-centered invention process model to the freshman composition classroom. ;An invention process model must take into account two invention-related pedagogical concerns, political correctness and cultural literacy. These are widely publicized controversies, yet no one has sufficiently analyzed these issues in terms of their relevance to the process of invention in the classroom. Defining political correctness and cultural literacy is the first step in this analysis. ;Applying an invention process model to politically correct or culturally literate classrooms demonstrates how these two controversies contribute to what remains the single largest problem facing the freshman composition classroom. William Coles in The Plural I labels this problem "Themewriting," which is a type of academic prose most characterized by its lack of authorial engagement and lack of original ethos. In analyzing the causes and results of this type of prose, I will locate this problem entirely within the student invention process. ;To the teacher of freshman composition, the pedagogy of invention is primary, because, arguably, the invention process is the only part of the writing process that a teacher can influence. This dissertation hopes to allow the process of invention its proper, primary place in the freshman composition classroom