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Annotated Bibliography Interviews

James Kinneavy

Discourse Studies in Honor of James L. Kinneavy which provides a bibliographic listing of James Kinneavy’s work. The annotations remain my own with a few additions to the bibliography. I have kept the same format as it appears in the original work edited by Gabin with the exception of the last two entries to the “Articles and Anthologized Section” and three new sections including Interviews, Criticism, and In Honor Of.

Interviews

In this interview, Kinneavy describes how he believes he fits into the discipline of composition, as a historian, theorist, and, a little less so, as a taxonomer. He also explains the impetus behind his most influential text A Theory of Discourse as a desire to displace the total emphasis on modes. He further clarifies the basis of the work, the communication triangle, envisioning it as a three dimensional graphic, demonstrating how aims can and do overlap. Furthermore, Kinneavy addresses some of the critiques of his work particularly the criticism regarding the factors which determine the aim, the lack of emphasis on product in process writing, and the value of imitation. In his discussions of postmodernism and critical literacy, Kinneavy tries to find a balance eschewing the more extreme positions held by some French postmoderns and by not overemphasizing one type of aim over another while respecting the native literacy of the student.

This interview developed from a series of emails and phone conversations between Thompson and Kinneavy, culminating in the published interview. In his discussions with Kinneavy, Thompson began to understand Kinneavy’s concept of kairos as a rhetorical foundation. According to Thompson, Kinneavy claimed that he did not think “rhetoric was possible without a concept of kairos . . .” (73). Consequently in order for students to receive an ethical education, Kinneavy believes that kairos must be at the core of the composition classroom, allowing students to understand how their times coincide with history and how they can make a change through a rhetorical act. The interview itself begins with a clarification of the term kairos both historically and contemporarily and then moves into a discussion of the implementation of the term and its political nature. Though Kinneavy does not attach a transcendental nature to the concept, he does observe kairos’s universal nature across civilizations. As the term becomes more familiar, the future of kairos as a concept, according to Kinneavy, will evolve and change in its application to technology, ethics, and literature. Lastly, Kinneavy provides insights, hope, and advice for the discipline of rhetoric and composition.