Heuristics & Tagmemic Notes

 

A 2014 New York Times article—“Can Writing Be Taught?”— asks a central question that has motivated scholarship in rhetoric and composition theory since the 5th century BCE[1]. It’s a question that will continue to motivate scholarship long into the future.  In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, such questions renewed focus on rhetorical invention (or inventio, one of the five canons of rhetoric) and led to the process movement in composition studies. If we’re still asking the question—can writing be taught?—then clearly, we don’t have the answer. For that reason, the question is still worth exploring.

Donald Murray is an important figure in the Process Movement in composition studies. Among his contributions was “Teach Writing as Process, Not Product” (1972). Phrased as a blunt imperative, the title alone reflects the sea change that saw the scholarly conversation moving away from criticisms of Current Traditionalism (instruction in the modes of discourse, emphasis on form, and modeling) and moving toward contributing to what would be the Process Movement. Murray didn’t usher in the Process Movement, but he made significant contributions[2], and perhaps, he put a name to work already being done in rhetorical invention.[3]

Jumping backwards and looking ahead, we have Janice Lauer addressing the nuts and bolts of process writing in 1970, long before Connors marked the fall of the modes of discourse (which haven’t really fallen anywhere, unless you count “out of favor,” or “repackaged” as a fall). In the crisis of current traditionalism, Lauer was one of a few germinal scholars who (re)turned to the canons of classical rhetoric. Returning to our rhetorical roots was largely pragmatic as a means to deal with the realities of teaching composition in the trenches. But it was also a move towards disciplinarity, as then “Sister” Janice Lauer asserted in opening lines that are equal parts poetry, prophesy, and sisterly smackdown:

Freshman English will never reach the status of a respectable intellectual discipline unless both its theorizers and its practitioners break out of the ghetto. Endless breastbeating, exchanges of despair, or scrambles after rhetorical gimmicks can result in little more than an ostrich solution.

1. Although Aristotle was 4th century BCE, I prefer to start with the first Sophistic movement of the 5th century BCE. For the record, the Sophists got a bad rap… but that’s another topic for another time.
2. Murray went on to write several articles expanding on his approach including “Write Before Writing” (1978), “Writing as Process: How Writing Finds Its Own Meaning” (1980), “Teaching the Other Self: The Writer’s First Reader” (1982), and others.
3. Work by by Janice Lauer, David Harrington, Richard Larson, Gordon Rohman, Alan Wecke, and Richard Young, Kenneth Pike, and Alton Becker.

Heuristics: Redux

A heuristic is a flexible strategy that can be used in any situation to generate ideas. It’s not a template, formula, or a fill-in-the-blank worksheet, and not all of it’s components will be helpful in every writing situation. Part of what a heuristic does is to help you see what components are more or less important in any particular writing situation.

A heuristic (hyoo-ris-tik) “is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical methodology not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals . . . [H]euristics are strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings and machines.” (“Heuristic,” Wikipedia)

According to Janice Lauer, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) at Purdue University:

“Psychologists characterized heuristic thinking as a more flexible way of proceeding in creative activities than formal deduction or formulaic steps and a more efficient way than trial and error. They posited that heuristic strategies work in tandem with intuition, prompt conscious activity, and guide the creative act but never determine the outcome. Heuristic procedures are series of questions, operations, and perspectives used to guide inquiry. Neither algorithmic (rule governed) nor completely aleatory (random), they prompt investigators to take multiple perspectives on the questions they are pursuing, to break out of conceptual ruts, and to forge new associations in order to trigger possible new understanding. Heuristic procedures are thought to engage memory and imagination and are able to be taught and transferred from one situation to another.While students typically use heuristics deliberately while learning them, more experienced creators often use them tacitly, shaping them to their own styles.” (Lauer, Invention in Rhetoric and Composition, 8-9, emphasis added)

Heuristics aren’t rule-goverened (formulaic) or random, but instead, heuristics guide writers toward conscious activity without prescribing the final product. You’ve probably used them before. Free-writing, mind-mapping, outlining, the five Ws of journalism (who, what, when… etc.)… all generative writing heuristics.

tagmemics examples
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Tagmemics

While most heuristics will help you generate ideas, the best ones don’t simply generate answers — they help you generate questions and ideas, and help you think of new ways to approach a topic.

As a heuristic strategy, tagmemics is designed to help writers

  1. see a topic from different perspectives, and
  2. help generate questions and ideas about a topic—fruitful, interesting areas of inquiry that are worth thinking about, reading about, and writing about.

While excellent overviews of tagmemics are available (at Bowling Green State University here and here), for our purposes, we might summarize the tagmemic method as a heuristic that uses six “master topics” to break down a subject into component parts which can be examined individually or in combination.

There are many variations on tagmemics — its oldest, most complete form is a “matrix” that looks like something like this:

Contrast Variation Distribution
Particle [*]
Static, in itself		 View the unit as an isolated, static entity. What are its contrastive features that differentiate it from similar things and identify it? View the unit as a specific variation of a concept or category. What is the range of variation? How much can it change without becoming something else? View the unit as part of a larger context. How is/should it be classified? What position in a sequence? In space/geography? In a system of classes?
Wave [t ]
Dynamic, as a process		 View the unit as a dynamic, changing project or event. What physical features distinguish it from similar objects or events? In particular, what is its nucleus or essence? View the unit as a dynamic process. How is it changing? View the unit as part of a larger dynamic context. How does it interact with and merge into its environment? Are its borders clear-cut or indeterminate?
Field [∞]
Relational, as a whole		 View the unit as an abstract multi-dimensional system. How are its components organized in relation to one another (for example, in class, temporal sequence, space)? View the unit as a multi-dimensional physical system. How do particular instances of the system vary? View the unit as an abstract system within a larger system. What is its position in the larger system? What systemic features (interactions?) and components make it part of the larger system?

Adapted from Rhetoric, Discovery and Change by Richard Young, Alton Becker, and Kenneth Pike

The master topics can be used as a list, but in it’s more modern forms, the tagmemic matrix has been turned into a list of prompts loosely organized into “three perspectives,” 1) static, 2) dynamic, and 3) relational.

Three Perspectives

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STATIC
freeze your topic in time; describe it and distinguish it from other topics/issues
  • Describe your topic or issue. What is it? What are its features?
  • How is it like/unlike other topics or issues?
  • What/who is involved? (objects, institutions, businesses, places)
  • What are it’s parts? How do its parts interact?

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DYNAMIC
trace moves and changes from the past, to the present, and into the future
  • Place your topic within a context of events, shifts, and changing conditions
  • When did it “start”? What was it in the past? What might it be like in the future?
  • How does it change over time? How much can it change without becoming something else?

time5

RELATIONAL
map networks and relationships between topic/issue and larger cultural context
what are cultural narratives?
A cultural narrative is a story a group of people tell about themselves OR stories people tell about others (other people, other cultures, etc.). Cultural narratives offer explanations of how things came to be or how things should be. For our purposes, we can think of cultural narrative as cultural trope, or even metanarrative: “a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience.”4
Cultural narratives, cultural tropes, and metanarratives prescribe cultural codes, societal norms, and expectations. For example, “rags to riches” is a well known cultural narrative or trope that relies on the idea (or belief) that if you work hard, you’ll do well in life.
  • Group your subject. Groupings are helpful for understanding your subject. Once you’ve placed your particular subject in a larger group, you can make connections between your subject and the general characteristics associated with that group. In addition, sometimes describing your subject from within a larger, more generalized framework makes it easier to construct important features. Usually a subject can be placed in many groups.
  • How is it part of a larger system (either physical or abstract)?
  • What are the relationships between your topic and the larger cultural context/s (including social phenomena, politics, trends and institutions)?
  • What larger cultural changes have influenced your subject? (e.g., the changing roles of women, increased sex in marketing, cultural sensitivity, 9/11, the Iraq War, the widespread use of the internet, the rise in mobile technologies…etc.)
  • What cultural narratives govern your subject?
  • What assumptions, stereotypes, habits, social practices, and institutions frame your subject, questions, and values?
4. Stephens, John, and Robyn McCallum. Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives In Children’s Literature. Routledge, 2013.

Supplementary Readings

Enos, Richard Leo, and Janice M Lauer. “The Meaning of Heuristic in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Its Implications for Contemporary Rhetorical Theory.” A Rhetoric of Doing: Essays on Written Discourse In Honor of James L. Kinneavy (1992): 79–87.
Keith, Philip M. “Burkeian Invention, from Pentad to Dialectic.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 9.3 (1979): 137–141.
Kneupper, Charles W. “Dramatistic Invention: The Pentad as a Heuristic Procedure.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 9.3 (1979): 130–136.
Lauer, Janice. “Heuristics and Composition.” College Composition and Communication 21.5 (1970): 396–404.
Lauer, Janice. “Issues in Rhetorical Invention.” Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse (1984): 127–39.
Lauer, Janice. “Toward a Metatheory of Heuristic Procedures.” College Composition and Communication 30.3 (1979): 268–69.
Lauer, Janice, and Kelly Pender. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition. Parlor Press LLC, 2004.
Murray, Donald. “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product.” The Leaflet 71.3 (1972): 11–14. (.pdf of article reproduction in The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America’s Greatest Writing Teacher. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers/Heinemann, 2009.)