Seminar in Rhetoric (CR)

Place-based Rhetorics and
Public Writing in Hawai‘i

Place-based
rhetorics can be defined basically as the communicative practices used by a
group that identifies with a specific location and that reflect the cultural,
social, political, and historical contexts of that place. This focus on place
suggests that both indigenous and minority rhetorics can be located within the
larger theoretical frame of place-based rhetorics.  In this course, our “place” will be Hawai‘i,
and we will thus examine texts written by Native Hawaiians (indigenous), non-Caucasian
settlers (minority), and Caucasian settlers to identify the ways these groups
have used rhetoric to assert/construct identities, resist/promote colonization,
and how the rhetorical ends of each group can at times align, diverge, as well
as compete.

 

We
will begin the course with a review of rhetoric as it is understood and
practiced in the classical Western sense. 
We will then examine writings produced in Hawai‘i by Native Hawaiians to
identify rhetorical practices that have been adapted from western rhetoric and
those that are uniquely Hawaiian. We will situate texts produced by Hawaiian
writers such as Queen Lili‘uokalani, Haunani Kay Trask, and Noenoe Silva within
the frame of Scott Richard Lyon’s “rhetorical
sovereignty,”
Malea Powell‘s “rhetorics
of survivance,”
and Ellen Cushman’s “cultural perseverance” so as to gain a
fuller understanding of how the Indigenous people of Hawai‘i have and continue
to assert agency and the ways in which their works provide a counter narrative
to the dominant narratives that promote a colonizing agenda.

 

We
will also examine rhetorical practices that can be associated with minority
settler groups in Hawai‘i (specifically those who identify as “local”), the
rhetorical ends to which they have been used, and interrogate whether/how these
discursive practices support and/or compete with Native Hawaiian claims.
Examinations of how Pidgin (HCE) has been used in writing by both groups will
be a particular focus through which we interrogate the convergence and
divergence between Indigenous and minority rhetorical practices in Hawai‘i.

 

As
we examine these rhetorical practices as instances of agency asserted, we will
continually revisit the larger disciplinary question posited by scholars such
as Damián Baca and Malea Powell: is rhetoric indeed a term that can and should
be used to refer to non-Western communicative practices or does using it
reproduce a hierarchical relationship in which non-Western rhetorics are always
subordinate to a dominant Western Rhetoric?

 

Assignments:

Weekly responses to readings. (25%)

In-class presentation on one of our
weekly themes. (25%)

A 20+ page final project juxtaposing
two rhetorical approaches as presented in a public discursive artifact, each
identified with a specific culture/place, critically analyzed in terms of their
(competing/overlapping) rhetorical implications. (50%)

 

Texts will (tentatively)
include (chapters from the books listed below and articles will be available in
a course packet or online):

All
Asking for is My Body (
Murayama)

Aloha
Betrayed
“Ku’e! Hawaiian Women’s Resistance to the Annexation.” (Silva)

Asian
Settler Colonialism
(Fujikane & Okamura)

From
a Native Daughter/Night is a Sharkskin Drum
(Trask)

Growing
Up Local
(Chock et al.)

Hawai‘i’s Story by Hawai‘i’s Queen/The
Queen’s Songbook (Queen Lili
ʻuokalani)

Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature of the
Pacific
(Carroll, McDougall, Nordstrom)

Legendary Hawai‘i and the Politicvs of
Place (Bacchilega)

A
Legendary Tradition of Kamapua’a
(Kame’eleihiwa)

Malama:
Hawaiian Land and Water
(Hall)

Oiwi
Journal
(hoʻomanawanui)

The
Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present
.  (selected eadings to include: Aristotle,
Quintilian, Cicero, Booth, Burke, Fish)

Rhetorics
of the Americas
(Baca & Villanueva)

Sista Tongue (Kanae)

Speed
of Darkness/When the Shark Bites
(Morales)

“Language Change in a Creole
Continuum: Decreolization?” /“Linguistic Inequality in Hawaii: The
Post-Creole Dilemma.” /“Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Attitudes in
Hawaii.”  (Sato)

The Transit
of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism
(Byrd)

ʻWe’re Taking the Genius of Sequoyah into This
Century
ʻ:The Cherokee Syllabary, Peoplehood, and Perseverance.” (Cushman)

“Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians
Want from Writing?” (Lyons)

“Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians Use
Writing” (Powell)