We had the pleasure last year of Skyping with Bartholomae and talking with him a little bit about this article and his work in general, which can be found here. Students must appropriate this discourse or be appropriated by it in order to pass as members of the academic community. However, this is difficult, and Bartholomae notes that the characteristic slip of the basic writer is when they move away from this authoritative voice of someone whose claims are deeply rooted in scholarship and analysis and into a more comfortable role of someone offering a lesson or advice Part of this is an issue of having access to commonplaces—a culturally or institutionally authorized concept or statement that carries with it its own necessary elaboration—that allow us to interpret our experiences

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Nov 14, [intro] Welcome to MR the podcast for beginngs and insiders aboutt he ideas, people and movements who have shaped rhetorical history. For many of them, this was the first time they had been asked to write a rhetorical analysis and this assignment always makes me nervous. I give them sample papers. We practice writing a rhetorical analysis together.

We discuss in depth examples and abuses of ethos, logos, and pathos, but many of them struggle tremendously. I know I could write a 3-page rhetorical analysis in 20 minutes; why do my students take hours and still fail the project? Writing in the early 80s, Bartholomea, like a score of composition scholars like Mina Shanessey and Linda Flower, were interested in the needs of a population sometimes called Basic Writers. Not having been exposed to reading or writing much of it, they must fall back on what they think academic writing is supposed to sound like.

It impacts big-picture ideas, too. And every time the task changes, students can find themselves flummoxed. A student can write smooth, error-free prose in a form that makes sense to them, but asked to assume new authority, and they panic in the new register.

And who can blame them? Imagine being asked to give a public speech in Japanese without knowing the language.


But when I ask them to apply their knowledge of rhetorical terms to argue how the articles were working and they fall to pieces, just as Bartholomae says. But students who are outside of the academic discourses they write also recognize that it is not fair that they have to be outsiders.

Being put into a position of insider to which they beleive they have no claim, some students doggedly imitate while others also subtly criticize. What is the solution then? This can seem quixotic, especially when a grade is on the line. This can mean anything from pointing out the expectations of MLA citation to providing templates of academic discourse. Another strategy is to look broadly at where students are all falling short together--is everyone falling back on summary instead of moving into analysis?

Is everyone asserting the opinion of the audience without reasoned conjecture? Seeing where students depart, like a big-picture Error and Expectation, can give insight into where students feel uncomfortable acting as insiders. Batholomae, however, wants to to consider they way they write and what they want to write about.


David Bartholomae

That is what Bartholomae means by "inventing the university," "learn to speak our language," and "carry off the bluff". An example that he used to prove his point was the essay of a college freshman. The reason why Bartholomae used the essay as an example was because it clearly shows the reader what he is trying to get out to them. If Bartholomae did not state that the writer of the essay was a freshman, then I would have believed that it has been written by someone of a higher status. Something that Bartholomae mentions are commonplaces, which are thoughts that are self-explanatory.


Mere Rhetoric



Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University”

Bartholomae is explaining the struggles of basic writers, the way expert writers write, and the difference between these two types of writers. Bartholomae shows these differences through various examples of former student essays. The author used two essays: one full essay and a conclusion. Although his points are supported, this study has limitations in the sample area. The author has limited observations using only one full essay and a conclusion of another. The meaning of this phrase comes from the idea that every freshman college student faces a new community in which the student has to adapt to new ideas, language, and ways of doing. With this new adaption comes a challenge of a new discourse academic community in which the student has to develop and formulate a new way of speaking and writing to be a part of and understood in a certain academic community.


Inventing the University

Bartholomae , however, admits to the difficulty of such a task; in fact, he states it is difficult for basic writers "to take on the role — the voice, the person — of an authority whose authority is rooted in scholarship, analysis, or research" p. The solution to this problem, Bartholomae suggests, is for writers to "build bridges" p. In order to successfully manipulate readers, writers must be able to find common ground with their audience before moving to more controversial arguments; moreover, to better accommodate their audience, advanced writers not only find common ground with their readers, but also understand their position and knowledge. The Study of Error[ edit ] Throughout "The Study of Error," Bartholomae expounds upon the idea that basic writers must be able to "transcribe and manipulate the code of written discourse" in order to develop expert abilities p. He asserts that the mistakes of basic writers are intentional, catalyzed by a deficient understanding of, and inability to properly identify, how academic language sounds Bartholomae, , p. Therefore, similar to his claims set forth in "Inventing the University," Bartholomae again suggests that instead of attempting to fix errors via drills and practice sentences, basic writers must learn to understand the code of written discourse , and mimic the voice of the language found within the academic community.

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