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Frank D Angelo Annotated Bibliography Essays

Fort Worth, TX: TCU Press, 1987.

D’Angelo examines the aims (intentions) that are ascribed to rhetorical practices and how they are defined, the modes (strategies) undertaken to achieve those ends, and the forms (styles) that they are constructed in for strategies that achieve the intended goals. Through examining a variety of theoreticians and their deconstructions of these terms, D’Angelo’s focus on nineteenth century constructions of rhetorical terms demonstrates their inefficiency in accurately and definitively defining the tools of rhetoric. He argues for an understanding of modes as constantly changing, non-static conventions and warns against forms becoming formal and static, and ultimately hindrances to composition.

“Fiddle-Faddle, Flapdoodle, and Balderdash: Some Thoughts about Jargon.” Beyond Nineteen-Eighty-Four: Doublespeak in a Post-Orwellian Age. Ed. William Lutz.Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1989. 121–131.

Jargon exists in all professions and has a variety of uses that individually function to suit the needs of the rhetor. D’Angelo argues that jargon can obfuscate, confuse, avoid direct expression of unpopular realities/terms/etc, and avoid answering questions which could be damning for politicians or public figures. Jargon also requires stock phrases that indicate the field of communication while simultaneously distancing the audience in overly verbose and inaccessible statements. In this article, D’Angelo defines several types of jargon and argues that writers and rhetors should succinctly and simply emphasize their points of discussion and demystify their ultimate intentions. In this way, audiences will not suffer from confusion or misunderstandings as frequently.

There emerged a fear in academic circles during the 1970’s that college students lacked basic expository writing skills. Despite attempts to address why standardized test scores have diminished and other moves to create methods for improving writing in classrooms, there had, up to this point, been little to no visible improvement. D’Angelo argues that, because writing is a mental process, utilizing information gathered from cognitive development research can assist teachers guide students’ towards improvement. Rather than simply marking a paper wrong, composition teachers can instead try to understand the mental workings of their students. From the new rhetoric’s model, instructors can construct models and lesson plans designed to help direct students’ idea productions into particular modes that the students can then draw from in the future.

D’Angelo enters into the debate on what English studies should encapsulate. Trends in the 1970’s began to call for new approaches to teaching writing and new ways of reading texts. However, the limited resources of composition textbooks, especially in classic rhetoric, had made a transition into composition studies difficult, as well as mystifying what needed to be studied or how. D’Angelo defines classical rhetoric as invaluable to literature classes for the purposes of deconstructing books and exposing the conventions and strategies that make these works successful or persuasive. Development of classical rhetoric composition textbooks has facilitated the development of Rhetoric and Composition studies within English Departments. However, D’Angelo determines that there remains a need to examine, engage, and question the role that this field of inquiry plays and its range of possibilities for the future.

The development of literacy has a correlative relationship with cognition and perception. A.R. Luria’s case studies of 1931 and 1932, unavailable in English until 1976, demonstrate the importance of literacy in developing abstract reasoning capabilities. These studies, involving Soviet peasants who ranged from complete illiteracy to basic literacy, depict the progression of abstract thinking as it relates to introducing individuals to modes of thinking beyond concrete and direct access interpretations and material relationships. Despite modern contentions that literacy studies will be less important due to non-print media, D’Angelo demonstrates that literacy is fundamental for the human brain’s ability to think abstractly.

Outlining the historical development of analytical topoi, D’Angelo notes its original function within oral productions as a memorization technique. Topoi then transformed into means of organizing a persuasive argument in the 19th century, and have recently reemerged as methods of developing and structuring paragraphs within a written work. The systematic formation of ideas in these texts illustrates the cognitive workings of individual composers. D’Angelo argues that from this insight, rhetoricians can extrapolate strategies for comprehending the nature of invention.

Slogans, catchphrases and graffiti are forms of statements that can address significant social and political issues. Rhetorical strategies such as rhyming, alliterating, and repetition within a short phrase make slogans and catchphrases memorable. The more memorable the phrase, the more effective it has been in entering the conscious/subconscious of the audience. Graffitists place these sentiments embodied within these statements into public view. Within the classroom, study of these three composition styles provides students with representations of different ways of creating effective social and political satire.