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Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Expanding Argumentation to Include the Working Class
Welch, Nancy. “We’re Here, and We’re Not Going Anywhere”: Why Working-Class Rhetorical Traditions Still Matter.” College English 73.3 (2011): 221-43. ProQuest. Web. 28 Feb. 2011.
Welch’s article is a fascinating study of labor, production, and academia, and how our understanding of each has shifted over the past few decades. Her thesis is that the common understanding of composition as a middle-class zone, coupled with the prevailing view that changes to our economy have included a lessening of workers’ power, has resulted in writing teachers neglecting “some of the most contentious, creative, and powerfully influential arguments this country has witnessed”—i.e., the job actions of the working class.
The anchor of Welch’s piece is a discussion of a successful worker occupation of a Chicago window and door plant in 2008 after Bank of America cut off credit to the company. As she relates, the workers not only argued with their bodies, they also seized a kairotic moment by aligning their issues with the general public frustration with banks and bailouts, adopting the “Yes, we can!” slogan of the Obama campaign, and demanding attention from the public and government.
“Imagine,” Welch writes, “what a provocative multimodal, multicultural text the six-day sit-down […] could provide for study and discussion in composition classes.” Composition instructors should teach stories of similar job actions, she argues, not only because sixty-two percent of the workforce is working-class (which means a large percentage of our students are as well), but because the arguments of organized labor are often effective, and part of our job is to teach effective argumentation. Students can practice soapbox speeches and sloganeering, for instance, and Welch provides an example of how, when her university did not listen to faculty concerns about decreased health coverage, tuition hikes, layoffs, and class-size increases when faculty couched their arguments in middle-class ways (recommendations from the faculty senate, letters, committee work, private meetings), what worked was “demonstrations, pickets, speak-outs,” and other working-class-esque techniques.
Welch’s goal is not limited to the classroom. On a larger level, she advocates a study of the working-class because she seems to believe the country is moving in the wrong direction in significant ways. For example, she writes that our (at least public) beliefs that we are post-industrial, post-Fordist, post-production—that we don’t actually make anything anymore, and that the way the work-world operates is significantly different than how it was four or five decades ago—have led to longer hours, decreased benefits, and a harmful emphasis on producing more with fewer workers. Welch argues that these trends have been harmful for most workers, not just the “working class.” In short, Welch wants us to realize that workers are still important in America, and that we can be strong.
Welch’s article is interesting and potentially far-reaching. I agree that we need to teach effective argument in its many forms, and, as she points out, many of labor’s arguments have been very effective. I would suspect the principle challenge to such a pedagogical shift would come not from the students, who would probably enjoy writing and giving a soapbox speech, but from faculty who are somewhat uncomfortable with the lack of middle-class decorum that characterizes such argumentation. I would hazard a guess that most composition instructors tend to be biased toward logos-centric argumentation—the “surely if we sit down and have a reasoned conversation, we’ll reach a fair conclusion” school of thought. As Welch points out, though, sometimes a closed fist is more effective than an open hand.
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