ERIC Number: EJ1097346
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0007-8034
EISSN: N/A
It's Written on Their Faces: The Rhetoric of Empathy
Fike, Darrell
CEA Forum, v36 n1 Win-Spr 2007
In a reflection on her teaching practices, Wendy Bishop in "Teaching Lives" suggests that over time she became a "social expressivist," in that by writing about her own teaching she learned "to develop a personal voice within the public matrix of professional communities" (ix). For the compositionist committed to the personal essay as a medium that engages students' interests and creativity in meaningful ways, Bishop's belief that one can use personal reflection to enter and enhance public discourse presents the writing teacher with a challenge: that of offering empathetic acknowledgement of the student writer's individual experience while encouraging rhetorical awareness of the topic and audience beyond the self. This essay examines the "emotional labor"--acknowledgement, empathy, trust--that writing teachers can employ "rhetorically" to guide student writers towards a more public and profound discourse.
Descriptors: Empathy, Rhetoric, Student Writing Models, Teaching Methods, Writing Strategies, Rhetorical Invention, Teaching Experience, Instructional Innovation, Transformative Learning, College English
College English Association. Web site: http://www.cea-web.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A