RHETORIC 233

Instructor: Jon Stone

CRN: 37326

Summer II Session

M – Th, 11-12:15

SOUND WRITING: Advanced Composition, Sonic Culture, and the Music of Rhetoric

SOUND WRITING is a course designed to meet the University’s requirements for advanced composition. We will arrive at and practice our study of composition and writing through an exploration of the notion of soundness in both the sonic sense and in the sense that “sound” can be used to describe something reasonable, carefully organized, and reliable. This will include discussions about the relationship between voice and identity, the function of music in communication and everyday life, and the use of sound as a material for composition. We’ll think about how ways of listening are part and parcel to ways of writing and rhetoric and focus on the ways that good or sound argument is based in an understanding of the various audiences and communities we participate in.

Music comes into play as a way of thinking carefully about-and drawing corollaries to-the rhetorical principles of invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery, audience, genre, and performance. Each of these principles can also be found in musical practices. Music will give us a familiar jumping-off point from which to think about the rhetorical situation and about the ways in which persuasion is both an overt and unconscious part of everyday communication.

Here are a few questions that are central to the class:

*       How do compositions resonate with their audience?

*       How do we listen critically?

*       How might musical terminology inform the flow and layering of

written argumentation?

*       How does auditory filtering intersect with rhetorical awareness?

*       And how does voice-in all of its valences-influence writing?

The course is open to anyone. Students with little or no experience studying music or sound should feel comfortable registering for the course and will be in good company.