Vernacular Eloquence

What Speech Can Bring to Writing

Peter Elbow

Authored by bestselling teacher of writing: Elbow's gift for clarity and easy-to-follow explanations has made him the go-to figure for a generation of writers and teachers
Written in an engaging, jargon-free prose: broken down into easily digestible chunks, it offers clear-cut, concrete instructions on using everyday speech to improve prose
A writing guide for the twenty-first century: explores speech in relation to email, blogs, and other new platforms for writing

Vernacular Eloquence

What Speech Can Bring to Writing

Peter Elbow

Description

Since the publication of his groundbreaking books Writing Without Teachers and Writing with Power, Peter Elbow has revolutionized how people think about writing. Now, in Vernacular Eloquence, he makes a vital new contribution to both practice and theory. The core idea is simple: we can enlist virtues from the language activity most people find easiest-speaking-for the language activity most people find hardest-writing. Speech, with its spontaneity, naturalness of expression, and fluidity of thought, has many overlooked linguistic and rhetorical merits. Through several easy to employ techniques, writers can marshal this "wisdom of the tongue" to produce stronger, clearer, more natural writing.

This simple idea, it turns out, has deep repercussions. Our culture of literacy, Elbow argues, functions as though it were a plot against the spoken voice, the human body, vernacular language, and those without privilege-making it harder than necessary to write with comfort or power. Giving speech a central role in writing overturns many empty preconceptions. It causes readers to think critically about the relationship between speech, writing, and our notion of literacy. Developing the political implications behind Elbow's previous books, Vernacular Eloquence makes a compelling case that strengthening writing and democratizing it go hand in hand.

Vernacular Eloquence

What Speech Can Bring to Writing

Peter Elbow

PART ONE. What's Best in Speaking And Writing?
Introduction: Defining "Speech" and "Writing"
1. Speech and Writing as They Are Used: The Role of Culture
2. What's Good about Writing
3. Speaking as a Process: What Can It Offer Writing?
4. Speech as a Product: Eight Virtues in Careless Spoken Language that Careful Writing Needs
5. Intonation: A Virtue for Writing Found at the Root of Everyday Speech
6. Can We Really Have the Best of Both Worlds?
PART TWO. A Role for the Tongue During the Early Stages of Writing: Treating Speech as Writing
Introduction: More Defining
7. What is Speaking Onto the Page and How Does Freewriting Teach it?
8. Where Else Do We See Unplanned Speaking onto the Page?
9. Objections to Speaking onto the Page--And Responses
10. The Need for Care: Unplanned Speaking onto the Page is Never Enough
PART THREE. A Role for the Tongue During Late Revising: Reading Aloud and Treating Writing as Speech
Introduction
11. Revising by Reading Aloud. What the Mouth and the Ear Know
12. How Does Revising by Reading Aloud Actually Work?
13. Punctuation: Living with Two Traditions
14. Good Enough Punctuation by Reading Aloud and Listening
15. How Speech Can Improve Organization in Writing: Form as Energy
16. Summary Chapter: The Benefits of Speaking onto the Page and Reading Aloud
PART FOUR. Vernacular Literacy
Introduction: Dante and Vulgar Eloquence
17. Our Present Culture of Proper Literacy and How It Tries To Exclude Speech
18. A New Culture of Vernacular Literacy is on the Horizon

Appendix I. How Freewriting Went from Dangerous to No Big Deal in the Composition and Rhetoric Community
Appendix II. A list of Publications Written in Nonprestige Nonstandard Versions of English
Appendix III. A List of Published Works by Peter Elbow

Vernacular Eloquence

What Speech Can Bring to Writing

Peter Elbow

Author Information

Peter Elbow is Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and former director of its Writing Program. He is the author of Writing Without Teachers, Writing With Power, Embracing Contraries, and Everyone Can Write.

Vernacular Eloquence

What Speech Can Bring to Writing

Peter Elbow

Reviews and Awards

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Winner of a PROSE award, Language & Linguistics

"Elbow is his own best argument for speaking onto the page: His voice is both authoritative and affable, conversational and professorial." --Erin McKean, International Herald Tribune

"it is written in [the author's] wonderfully approachable, affable voice; it emphasizes the need to indulge one's own impetus when writing, to pour oneself into "freewrites" ... The book is organized in a unique and purposeful manner ... Highly recommended." --E. McCourt, Jacksonville University, CHOICE

"...[S]urely some of the best work [Elbow] has done in his long and brilliant career....Elbow's book talks the talk and walks the walk: it is itself a demonstration of his subtitle--what speech can bring to writing....Bravo to Peter Elbow for this learned, provocative, and forward-looking book." --Andrea A. Lunsford, award-winning author of The St. Martin's Handbook

"Whether you aim to improve your own writing, help others improve theirs, understand more about written language, or just want to enjoy enthusiastic, passionate writing at its best, this book is for you. With a disarmingly simple thesis about what spoken language contributes to writing, Vernacular Eloquence makes major contributions to theory and to practice." --David Barton, author of Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language

"What a wonderful, enticing book! As only he can, Peter Elbow explores the intricate relationship between speech and writing with broad learning, bold thinking, and a finely tuned sensibility." --Mike Rose, author of An Open Language: Selected Writing on Literacy, Learning, and Opportunity

"English and speech-communication educators, linguists, cognitive psychologists, and writers will find this book is filled with a multitude of insightful ideas for application--and scholarly research." --Rosalind Horowitz, editor of Talking Texts: How Speech and Writing Interact in School Learning

"This title should greatly interest English language and linguistics scholars and teachers. Any readers willing either to dig deep or skim and skip will also find fresh ideas and renewed energy for writing." --Library Journal

"More philosophically rigorous, more historically nuanced, and more socially engaged...and...still delivers the sort of deeply refreshing, commonsensical, practical wisdom about the writing process that has become synonymous with his name." --Rhetoric Review

Vernacular Eloquence

What Speech Can Bring to Writing

Peter Elbow

From Our Blog

Maybe academics aren't so stupid after all

By Peter Elbow People who care about good language tend to assume that casual spoken language is full of chaos and error. I shared this belief till I did some substantial research into the linguistics of speech. There's a surprising reason why we -- academics and well-educated folk -- should hold this belief: we are the greatest culprits. It turns out that our speech is the most incoherent. Who knew that working class speakers handle spoken English better than academics and the well-educated?

Posted on February 6, 2013

Read the blog post