Krista Ratcliffe: Rhetorical Listening
An associate professor of English at Marquette University, Krista Ratcliffe's work explores feminist theory, rhetorical theory, and composition pedagogies. In composition courses where informed reading and effective writing are often the primary focus, Ratcliffe teaches listening as a rhetorical strategy. Although Ratcliffe does not study rhetoric of emotion specifically, the discussion below demonstrates how her theory of rhetorical listening in composition pedagogy is useful to any pedagogy of emotion. Her article "Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a 'Code of Cross-Cultural Conduct'" defines rhetorical listening, explains the importance of listening to and across difference, and outlines how listening can be emphasized in the writing classroom.
Listening in Pedagogies of Emotion
If we recognize not just the claims but the historically-grounded cultural logics enveloping other people's claims, we may still disagree with the claims, but we may better understand the personal and cultural assumptions (dare I say, values and beliefs) that guide other people's logics." |
The marginalization of listening in rhetorical theory bears striking similarities to the devaluation of emotion. As with emotion, Western rhetorical theory has neglected listening. Ratcliffe points out that almost all classical rhetorical thought is oriented around the writer and speaker with respect to persuasion. Furthermore, (listening as revealed by Deborah Tannen's work) has also undergone a feminization similar to that of emotion. While speaking has been aligned with the masculine and associated with a public good, "listening is gendered as feminine and valued negatively" (200). Thus, speaking and listening have fallen into a harmful hierarchy which current composition theory reinforces through repeated neglect. Ratcliffe argues that the privileging of logos in the West--"the logos that speaks but does not listen"--underlies our devaluing of listening (202). A related claim invested in understanding the privileging of reason resonates throughout emotion studies as this website shows.
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In Feeling Power, Megan Boler reflects on her own struggles with adopting an ambiguous self when confronted with student opinions she disagrees with. She proclaims, "Listening is fraught with emotional land mines" (179). Boler highlights that emotion informs our listening, as does Stenberg when she says, "Emotional investments determine what we choose to see and not see, listen and not listen to” (361). The "mutual exploration" that Boler's pedagogy of discomfort requires--the joint willingness between students to see as another sees--depends upon a willingness to listen without defensive anger (199). Stenberg speaks directly to this point, asking her students, "What emotional responses prevent or enable my listening to a particular text or voice?" (361). When so much of emotion studies is about creating space for people to become aware of--and relate to--one another in ethical ways, learning to listen is vital.
Listening: What, How, and Why
Ratcliffe claims that listening is a trope for "interpretive invention" (196). This term marks rhetorical listening as a "way of making meaning with/in language" (202). It is interpretive in that in involves being receptive to and aware of assumptions in various discourses and ideologies. It is inventive in that rhetorical listening, when done right, has the potential to change people, or, to change the way people see themselves and the discourses they subscribe to. Rhetorical listening is both a process of reception and production.
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"Rhetorical listening is another way of helping us continually negotiate our always evolving standpoints, our identities, with the always evolving standpoints of others." |
How should we listen, then? Ratcliffe distinguishes listening for intent from listening with intent. She argues that when we listen with intent, we participate in "identifying the various discourses embodied in each of us" and "hear and imagine how they might affect not only ourselves but others" (206). Listening has more to do with awareness than mastery. When we listen with intent, we're not only able to identify the unspoken assumptions and cultural logics which inform our's and others' beliefs, but we also "integrate this information into our world views and decision-making" (206). We interpret and then we invent. This last aspect speaks to the transformative potential of rhetorical listening.
"Acquiring [listening] literacy is both a political and ethical issue for people wielding power and for people lacking it." |
Listening with intent, with the openness to change that Boler, Winans, and Stenberg call for, has the potential to help us "hear discursive intersections of gender and race/ethnicity' (including whiteness)" and "facilitate cross-cultural dialogues about any topic" (196). The stakes in teaching rhetorical listening are high: if people are to engage with social inequality critically, they must learn to listen for both differences and commonalities to avoid blame, defensive anger, or paralyzing guilt (208).
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Like Winans, Boler, and Micciche, Ratcliffe searches for ways to help students reach some empathetic, middle-ground between their limited subject positions when delving into questions of morality, injustice, and identity formation. Only through a simultaneous awareness and detachment from one's identity can we critically engage with difference (in sexuality, race, and gender). For Ratcliffe, rhetorical listening makes this cross-cultural communication possible.