Reviews 265 Bosmajian shows that, while metaphors have been the primary figurative influence on doctrine, metonymies and personifications have also been significant. He examines the role of the "schoolhouse gate" and other persuasive, long-standing metonymies, and he discusses several personifications, such as the pervasive image of justice as a blindfolded woman with a scale in one hand and a sword in the other. As Bosmajian points out, this image and other common personifications strongly influence the course of judicial decision-making as well as the way the public perceives the judicial process. This is an interesting and readable book, and I recommend it to all readers interested in tropology. However, I believe that it falls short of being an influential work. Myreason for this judgment isexemplified in Bosmajian's concluding chapter, in which he writes, "The tropes can help us comprehend what may have been incomprehensible, can help us find new 'truths,' clarify and create new realities; however, there always remains the danger that through the tropes we can also mislead, conceal, create misunderstandings." Inexplicably, Bosmajian fails to note that what he says about tropes could be said about all language, as the substantial body of post structuralist literature painstakingly argues. Either Bosmajian hasn't read this literature, or he does not agree with it. If the latter is the case, then he ought at least to recognize the literature's existence and explain his disagreement with it. Absent such an explanation, this otherwise fine work will appear flawed to the many readers who take poststucturalism for granted. Readingas RhetoricalInvention:Knowkdge,Persuasion,and the Teachingof Research-BasedWriting,Doug Brent (Urbana: NCTE, 1992,133 pages). Reviewed by Edward Schiappa, Purdue University Doug Brent, a member of the interdisciplinary faculty of general studies at the University of Calgary, has put together a tightly argued, highly suggestive monograph that deserves the attention of any scholar concerned with the reading and writing of nonfiction texts. The guiding premise of this book is that readinghas been an insufficiently investigated practice. Most rhetorical analysis approaches discourse from the producer'spoint of view, rather than the consumer's. Especially in light of recent research regarding the constructedness of meaning, a shift of emphasis to the cognitive and social processes involved in reading is overdue. Bydeclaring that the act of reading is epistemic, Brent provides an important corollary to the generally accepted concept that writingis epistemic. Brent identifies a series of questions he wishes to address in the book:
266 Journal of Advanced Composition (1) What aspects of rhetoric, both traditional and modem, can inform a theory of rhetorical reading? (2) How can we describe within a rhetorical framework how meaning is generated during the act of reading? That is,how does a reader knowwhat propositions awriter is trying to persuade her to believe? (3) How does a reader evaluate the propositions presented by individual texts and decide which to be persuaded by? (4) How does a reader negotiate among the claims of various texts in order to develop a unified system of knowledge? These are significant questions aimed at engaging no less important a set of problems than the status of inquiry and reason in an age in which most knowledge is acquired through reading. Those who find these questions well put and important should consider this book mandatory reading. Brent begins with a description of what a distinctly rhetoricalperspective must entail. Weaving together concepts from Aristotle, Kenneth Burke, Wayne Booth, Donald Bryant, Lloyd Bitzer, and others, Brent suggests that a rhetorical perspective must focus on the use of "symbols on paper" used to persuade readers to accept a particular view of the world and ones place in that world. In so doing, such a perspective must account for the production of meaning and describe how readers evaluate the claims they encounter in the texts they read. Brent then describes a theory of interpretation designed to answer the question, "How does a reader know what propositions a writer is trying to persuade her to believe?" While he rejects radical reader-response theories that deny the text any stability, Brent insists that the reader is "an active creator rather than a passive recipient of meaning." In fact, the process by which "readers construct writers" suggests that readers constantly make inferences about authorial intentions and meanings. The task now is to explain"why we have such a persistent conviction that we often know more or less what each other intends to mean." Brent evokes the metaphor of a transaction,in which both the author-created text and the reader contribute to each construction of meaning. Accordingly, texts have a range of meanings, but not an infiniterange; it is a range limited by the "schemata" shared by readers in a given interpretive community. Interpretations may vary, but one "cannot hallucinate a text." Thus, readers' "private associations" as well as various "social forces" may influence the "meaning" produced in any given act of reading, but authors are in a position to anticipate, at least to a limited degree, enough about their readers to produce persuasive discourse. In addition to the repertoire of skills that readers are likely to bring to a text-"interpretive conventions, linguistic and world knowledge, and personal associations organized as schemata" -the "meaning" constructed in any given act of reading is also influenced bythe "rhetorical situation." Brent adapts Bitzer's notion of rhetorical situation to suggest that the primary exigence for readers "consists largely of a question or questions." The fundamental question for readers engaged in "efferent reading" is "What
Reviews 267 sorts of information and judgments must I add to mysystem of beliefs in order to bring it nearer to perfection?" Writers have the opportunity to indicate to which ongoing "conversations" their text is intended to contribute, thereby anticipating "the rhetorical exigency" they must address. Brent then addresses his third and fourth research questions. The process of deciding which claims to accommodate into ones belief structure and which ones to reject is described in mostly Aristotelian terms. Brent describes "how texts persuade" by reference to three dimensions: the logical, the emotional, and the ethical. He then takes each of these categories and describes how they can be used to understand how writings persuade readers to accept or reject the propositions set forth in the text. Thus, '''being persuaded' means accommodating an organized system of beliefs to take account of the new perspectives that are being offered." Brents last two chapters are an effort to demonstrate the utility of his "model of rhetorical reading." The first describes a strategy of "dialogic criticism" designed to investigate "acts of reading as they occur in a larger process of epistemic interchange," Brent claims such analysis answers Edwin Blacks call in Rhetorical Criticism for criticism that seeks to reveal the processes that underlie the act of persuasion through discourse. Dialogic analysis of reading could be conducted in a variety of ways, from "controlled experiments" to "close interaction" and interviews with readers. Such studies would provide "clues to the mental processes involved" in reading rhetorically "that could not be inferred as reliably from texts alone." Brent provides an extended example of the potential issues involved by applying the model he has described in the previous chapters to a series of published, critical responses to James Kinneavy'sA Theoryof Discourse. He concludes that his approach enables "a precise account of rhetorical interactions," thereby promoting "a more general understanding of human beings and the way they create knowledge through discourse." Brent closes the book by suggesting his model has important implications for composition pedagogy-in particular, for teaching research papers. Brent encourages two groups of methods aimed at enhancing students abilities to write and read research papers: "tellingabout the process of research and constructingactivities to help students internalize research skills." The most interesting suggestion described by Brent is that of turning "an entire classroom into an active research community," thereby enacting the notion of a discourse community engaged in producing knowledge. Brent concludes that a rhetorical model of reading enhances the theory and practice of "mutual inquiry and exploration" through which we construct ourselves and our world. In short, no theory of composition, or of discourse in general, or even of human understanding,will be complete without taking into consideration the unique processes involved in the act of reading. In the long run, I believe Brent's book is more valuable for the vision of future research it encourages than for the specific illustrations it provides.
268 Journal of Advanced Composition Brent is correct in arguing that we have not paid sufficient attention to the consumption of discourse. All too much scholarship makes assumptions about what meanings readers take from texts without bothering to ask readers. More research is needed that directly investigates the cognitive and social forces at work in the experience of reading. Brent's book deserves praise to the extent that it encourages such research. At the same time, if his advice is heeded, Brent may soon find that his book is rendered obsolete. Three examples can illustrate mypoint. First, the book has a decidedly Aristotelian flavor that is unnecessarily constraining; a rhetorical approach to reading can begin with Aristotle, but it certainly cannot end there. While Brent invokes Edwin Black's RhetoricalCriticism, he simply rejects Blacks influential arguments against a Neo-Aristotelian stance toward criticism. Though I commend the idea of investigating the rhetorical aspects of reading, a set of errors in research in speech communication willbe repeated ifwe follow Brent's reliance on the categories of ethos, logos, and pathos. Similarly, Brent's discussion of Bitzer's "rhetorical situation" ignores nearly twenty years and a fistful of articles that have challenged Bitzer's Aristotelian approach from social constructionist, phenomenological, and deconstructionist perspectives. Apart from academic texts, Brent's description of the rhetorical exigence of reading simply does not seem to fit most acts of reading (how would one describe the "exigence" of those who read to put themselves to sleep?). Even within academic reading, I doubt that reading is as single-minded and rationalistic as Brent describes it. Finally, the audience described byaristotle was a homogeneous group of privileged males. As is the case with Aristotle, it is not self-evident that Brents analysis works, except in the loosest sense, to describe the experience of non- Western readers or readers who are part of marginalized social groups. Second, Brent limits his rhetorical analysis to "efferent" reading of texts (typically nonfiction reading in which the primary concern is what the reader will learn from the text) to the neglect of recreational and "aesthetic" reading. Brent claims that it is efferent reading that "rhetoric is most concerned with." But surely we learn, intentionally or not, about language and the world in all of our reading (here Brent would benefit from Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative). It maywell be the case that what we learn in recreational-aesthetic reading (especially from heavily mythic or rhythmic works) is more powerfully persuasive in directing our desires, beliefs, and interests than what we acquire when we consciously set out to research a topic. Three addenda are appropriate: that aesthetic-recreational reading requires as much attention as efferent reading; that Brents Neo-Aristotelian approach is unlikely to be of much help in investigating aesthetic-recreational acts of reading; and that the distinction itself between efferent and aesthetic..recreational reading needs to be investigated, rather than assumed, as a starting point.
Reviews 269 Third, Brent does not always follow his own suggestions. In his discussion in chapter three of how texts persuade readers, Brent reverts to a largely Aristotelian discourse-productionperspective rather than pushing forward to a new understanding of reading.to provide a genuinely new, interdisciplinary perspective will probably require a new vocabulary that better fits the objects, experiences, and relationships involved in reading. Though Brent begins this process, considerably more needs to be done. Furthermore, after making one of his most provocative recommendations (namely, study of actual readers), Brent reverts to a twenty-page analysis of written texts. It is precisely the inferences that Brent makes about the relationship between the written text and the authors' mental states that needs scrutiny. Here, and elsewhere, readers will be better off by doing what Brent says, rather than what he does. As the book progresses, Brent falls into the habit of referring to the hypostatization "the thetorical model of reading." While he clearly has not provided the model, he has provided one useful model and a very important set of research questions. Though I disagree with many of Brent's points, in the months since I first read his book I have found myself referring to it and being coaxed by it to consider texts and the experience of reading somewhat differently. If I learned and was persuaded by his book, then according to Brent's own analysis, his text deserves at least half of the credit. A Teacher'sIntroductionto PhilosophicalHermeneutics,Timothy W. Crusius (Urbana: NCTE, 1991, 103 pages). Reviewed by Mark Thompson, University of Oklahoma Perhaps it is because I read this book last spring during the riots in Los Angeles or because of the nightly news' parade of students arrested for carrying weapons to schools much closer to my home that I welcome a pedagogy that seeks to place the control and power available through words in students' hands-a pedagogy that, as Crusius paraphrases Burke, seeks "not to eliminate conflict, but to make it a contest of words rather than bullets." This second book in the NCTE Teacher's Introduction series is both the promised introduction as well as a response to the series' first book, Sharon Crowley'sA Teacher'sIntroductionto Deconstruction. Crusius offers a readable orientation to a difficult interpretive theory but, much more than that, he offers philosophical hermeneutics as a pedagogical approach which, unlike deconstruction, finallyencourages its users to strive for consensus and make decisions, especially in the arena of public discourse. Of course, most composition pedagogies-be they process, Marxist, deconstructivist, a combination, or from some other base-insist they em-