Fulkstockerson

I frankly found the stasis chapters to be more difficult than Toulmin, though as with other chapters there are a number of useful gems to extract and hoard, thus creating an artifical scarcity (sorry, my imperialism class is spilling over). Fahnestock/Secor's discussion of stasis and audience (61) is interesting; another angle for talking about audience in general, which I'd like to find room for in my class plan...my favorite bit in Fahnestock/Secor was the discussion and results of the David Leverenz article from PMLA- pointing out that academic writing need not be reduced to binary opposition, arguing only for or against; as they quote Leverenz on Emerson, "not to take a stand within that paradoxical either-or but to see how his language resonates with the unresolved tensions of his life and time" (70). This is another one of my pet goals, getting students to strive for more complex and considered theses instead of simple, absolute, either-or debate (only a Sith deals in absolutes). The quality F/S ascribe to literary criticism, I think we can expand to all the writing we teach: "we can pose problems about literary works, uncover historical and biographical facts, sift evidence in the light of definitions, celebrate or question certain values. In doing so we come not to clear answers but to delight in the complexity of the process" (70).

Fulkerson's more direct focus on logic was more stultifying for me, though again I found some interesting stuff. _Writing Analytically_, which I'm reviewing, has a chapter on this inductive/deductive format, and I admit I never even considered whether this actually reflected classic logic's definition of these terms. At least that book doesn't fall all the way into the "complementary and exhaustive" trap (323); they also note that the forms can blend and produce several variations.

I most liked his STAR acronym: that examples used in evidence should be sufficient, typical, accurate, relevant. This is the sort of handy and readily understandable thing I can see undergraduates actually retaining. Also noteworthy was his assertion that "writing...almost always deals with contingent issues" (366) which I think another poster may have brought up. This goes back to the idea from Fahnestock/Secor of the complexity and qualifiers in most good (interesting?) arguments.