How I Understand Official Style: Critique of Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures Refiguring College English Studies

 

 

The text I chose is from my Rhetoric and Writing class reading.
 Since I am an English major and my minor is rhetoric and writing, I am
required to read it and have a deep understanding of it. So I am quite familiar
with the text. The title of the text is called Rhetorics, Poetics, and
Cultures Refiguring College English Studies published by Parlor Press LLC
at West Lafayette in Indiana in 2003 and the author is James A. Berlin. This
text was originally published in 1996 by the National Council of Teachers of
English as part of the Refiguring English Studies Series. This text talks about
how English studies in postmodernism are different from that of modernism, and
has an official style because of its strategies of writing and its readability.
 

According to this text, the groups of people who might be the
readers or users are English teachers especially college writing teachers and
college English writing major students. For college students, when they read
this text, they might be confused about the differences between postmodernism
and modernism since modernism claims that the inner voice we write in our
writing is from our mind—the inside world while postmodernism says our ideas
are shaped by social environment—the outside world. For English teachers, they
might want to figure out how to explain clearly to students what and why these
two ideas are different. As we know, a correct pedagogy is very important to a
teacher. They might also think about the pedagogy Berlin talked about in his
text and then compare it with the one they currently apply.

Because the text is used amongst scholars to challenge and
instruct aspiring scholars, it has a very formal style of diction. The
following is one paragraph example I chose from the text. “One of the most
obvious features of the employment picture today is the decreasing number of
jobs in manufacturing and the increasing number in the service sector. The vast
majority of the latter fall into the two unstable employment tiers and offer
few attractions for most workers. There are, however, conspicuous exceptions.
One obvious feature of flexible accumulation is that accelerating cycle time in
production requires accelerating cycle time in consumption. The result is the
growth of well-compensated workers-almost exclusively educated workers in the
business of producing the artifices of need inducement: advertising, public
relations, and the like. As Harvey explains, the media, through advertising and
other means, have encouraged a postmodernist aesthetic that celebrates
difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the commodification of
cultural forms" (156). Additional well-compensated service jobs have been
created by new information industries that meet the increasing need for data to
coordinate decentered operations as well as provide up-to-date analyses of
market trends and possibilities. In flexible accumulation, markets are as much
created as they are identified and so "control over information flow and
over the vehicles for propagation of public taste and culture have likewise
become vital weapons in competitive struggle" (Harvey 1989, 160)” (Berlin,
2003).

After pasting this paragraph at the Readability-Score.com
website, the result shows that the Flesch-Kincaid Reading
Ease is 19.1, which is low, and the average grade level is 17.6, which
is a high level to public readers. This data indicates that this text is not
easy for the public to read. People who can understand the text totally or at
least mainly, are required to achieve the educational level at least at 17.6
grade. Even though characters in per word are 5.6, words at per sentence is
25.6! Those are such long sentences. Why are the sentences so long? Let’s look
at them closely. At the first and second sentences, prepositional phrases are widely
used also, for example, “One of the most … of the … number of jobs in … and the
… in the ...”.  Here are eight prepositional phrases, which make these
sentences longer. The second sentence uses coordination. “And” connects the
first part and the second part into one sentence. What’s more, “fall” and
“offer” share the same subject “the vast majority of latter”, which is
parataxis that clauses are equally emphasized. For another example, the subject
“One of the most obvious features of the employment picture today” is very long
and is embellished by many words by using prepositions. This is euphemistic,
verbose and slow sentence opening that are three of the features of official
style.

Let’s look at this sentence: “The result is the growth of
well-compensated worker almost exclusively educated workers in the business of
producing the artifices of need inducement: advertising, public relations, and
the like.” It is also verbose. “Is the growth of” is prepositional phrase as
adjective of “worker”. “Well-compensated” is a combination of two words to be
an adjective to describe what kind of worker; here “Well-compensated”,
“compensate” has to be past participle in this form.  “Advertising, public
relations, and the like” is kind of like Asyndeton, consisting of omitting
conjunctions and gives the effect of unpremeditated multiplicity. This
sentence: “…celebrates difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the
commodification of cultural forms” also has this kind of effect.

            I would like to analyze the last sentence.
“In flexible accumulation, markets are as much created as they are identified
and so "control over information flow and over the vehicles for
propagation of public taste and culture have likewise become vital weapons in
competitive struggle.” “In flexible accumulation”- a prepositional phrase -
appears again. According to the readability test, Flesch-Kincaid Reading
Ease is pretty low, only 6.9, much lower than that of the whole
paragraph. The Average Grade Level is 20, also
higher than that of the whole paragraph. The words per sentence is 37! This
might be very hard for most readers even college students.  “Markets
are as much created” is passive voice, which
shows the official style again. Looking at the whole sentence roughly, we can
see there are three “and” coordinating different short sentences. The strategy
used here is what we call Polysyndeton that is opposite to Asyndeton,
but it also demonstrates the effect of multiplicity, energetic enumeration, and
building up. Besides “and”, let’s look at this sentence closely, and then we
will see these prepositions: “in….as…as…over…for…of…in…” and that’s why this
sentence is long, shapeless and unreadable.

 

            In conclusion, this is a classical
professional and academic article. We can definitely call it official style.
According to readability test, Flesch-Kincaid Reading
Ease is low and Average Grade Level is high. With
my analysis of several sentences in details, the sentences are long and
complex. Most strategies that belong to official style can be found here, such
as passive voice, complex sentences, slow sentence opening, euphemistic etc.
The author shows his credibility successfully. Because he is able to use such
complex academic language, readers are more likely to give credibility to his
ideas and claims. The text is probably speaking to insiders because of complex
and uneasy sentences that English professors and scholars in the discipline of
rhetoric can understand better than the average reader. English major students
start to understand, but aren’t quite there yet. Their educated level does not
achieve the level which give them ability to understand the discipline of
rhetoric. They need their instructor’s help to lead them into the professional field
of English study. Therefore, compared to other majors’ undergraduate students,
they may understand better, but not as good as their instructors or scholars.  However, since this text is an academic article,
why did the author use “we” and “I” in his writing? (You might not see them
because I didn’t put them in my essay. You can find it in the whole text
according to my reference page.) What did he mean “we”? Was he talking to those
people who are in the English study field or to the general public? “We” and
“I” make text like conversation. Therefore, even though the text is official
style, it is not a very restricted official style. I think what is still needed
to be known is why Berlin did this, and what the effect of it is. We all could
think about it.

 

By Li Jintian