Style and the Future of Composition Studies

Style and the Future of CompositionStudies explores style’s potential for informing how students are taught to write well and its power as a tool for analyzing the language and discourse practices of writers and speakers in a range of contexts.

Many college writing teachers operate under the belief that style still refers primarily to the kinds of issues discussed in Strunk and White’s popular but outdated book The Elements of Style. This work not only challenges this view but also offers theories and pedagogies from diverse perspectives that help teachers and students develop strategic habits and mindsets to negotiate languages, genres, and discourse conventions. The chapters explore the ways in which style directly affects-and is affected by-multiple sources of shifting disciplinary inquiry, contributing new insights by drawing on research in cultural studies, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, translingualism, and writing across the curriculum, as well as new approaches to classical rhetorical theory.

The reemergence of stylistic inquiry can be used dynamically to produce new insights not only about emerging disciplinary interests but also about the study of style as a kind of language in and of itself. Style and the Future of Composition Studies demonstrates that style deserves to be a central focus of writing teaching. More than just the next style collection, the book advocates for style’s larger prominence in composition discussions generally. It will be of interest to a broad range of students and scholars of writing studies, as well as a wider set of readers in academe.

Contributors:
Cydney Alexis, Laura Aull, Anthony Box, Jimmy Butts, Mike Duncan, William FitzGerald, Melissa Goldthwaite, Eric House, TR Johnson, Almas Khan, Zak Lancaster, Eric Leake, Andrea Olinger, Thomas Pace, Jarron Slater, Jonathan Udelson

Paul Butler is associate professor of English at the University of Houston and author of The Writer’s Style, Out of Style, and Style in Composition and Rhetoric.

Star Medzerian Vanguri is associate professor of writing in the School of Communication, Media, and the Arts at Nova Southeastern University. She is editor of Rhetorics of Names and Naming and coeditor of The Centrality of Style.

Brian Ray is assistant professor and director of composition at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. He is author of Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy in the Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition series.