"Beyond Economics: Intersections and Opportunities with Adam Smith in the Writing and Rhetoric Classroom"

About the Author

Lara Smith-Sitton is a Rhetoric and Composition PhD student at Georgia State University. Her primary research interests are writing program design, 18th- & 19th-century rhetoric, service learning, and business & technical writing. She also serves as Associate Director of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association and Managing Editor of South Atlantic Review.

Contents

Introduction
   

Building a Bridge...

Making The Introduction

Keeping Smith Relevant

Uncover the Truth

Close Analysis and...

Moving from Historical...

Works Cited

Making the Introduction: Who Was Adam Smith and How Does He Fit in the Writing Classroom?

Consideration of Smith’s education, lecture notes, and publications reveals that Smith was not a scholar or theorist primarily focused on economic reform: Smith’s first lectures, given in Edinburgh  in 1748 were on the topic of rhetoric. Stephen J. McKenna, in his work Adam Smith: The Rhetoric of Propriety describes Smith’s presentations as “public lectures on rhetoric” (McKenna 14). His audience members were law and theology students, and his work led to an appointment at the University of Glasgow as the Chair of Logic and later the Chair of Moral Philosophy. Smith’s lectures as a professor addressed ethics, law, politics, and rhetoric—not economics (15-16). So while Wealth of Nations is a treatise concerned with economics, Smith’s interests in ethics, human nature, and rhetoric seep in throughout.

Many scholars, of course, are aware that Wealth of Nations is far more than simply free-market economic theory. McKenna writes, “The society Smith intended to promote both in his works [Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments] was no libertarian utopia wherein a free-market ‘invisible hand’ takes care of all” (136).  In his article “The Role of Invention in Belletristic Rhetoric: A Study of the Lectures of Adam Smith,” Michael Carter recognizes that to many, Adam Smith is best known as the “father political economics” but recognizes rhetorical scholars are well-aware of his work to “unite belles letters and rhetoric,” work that paved the way for the advancement of belletristic rhetoric, written composition, and college English instruction (3). Linda Ferriera-Buckley and Winifred Bryan Horner also recognize the Smith’s contributions beyond economics: “Although Adam Smith is better known today for Wealth of Nations (1776) than for his course in rhetoric, for example, his influence in language education was consequential” (198).

When the students respond to inclusion of Smith in our classroom discussions, I then can introduce Hugh Blair, whose Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres are deeply rooted in the work of Smith. Like Smith, Blair emphasizes style and arrangement in personal, professional, and academic writing. Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Elizabeth Tasker make strong connections to the work of 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment theorists to the pedagogical practices that shaped 19th- and 20th-century American higher education. They specifically connect “writing instruction to social and technical developments, issues of empowerment and democratization, and the integration of vernacular language within academic curricular” (69), and contend “the field [of rhetoric] must make primary and secondary works accessible to undergraduates as well as graduate students and professional scholars” not only to attract students and scholars to rhetorical study but also for “widespread dissemination of rhetorical theory and practice” (79).

Using Smith, I make the argument for the necessity of strong rhetorical analysis abilities and how learning about writing and communication is much more than grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Smith recognized the need for the application of rhetoric to communication to create the leaders of the new society. He also valued individual study and interpretation: “What we call human reason, is not the result of the reason of many, arising from lights mutually communicated . . . " (Smith 1). The works of Smith and Blair emphasize writing, discourse, and composition: the pillars of our modern English studies classroom. In our classrooms, we have the leaders of tomorrow and helping them to discern an understanding of a rhetorical approach to writing or at least engage in a conversation about the historical foundations of rhetoric allows for a better understanding of composition and writing instruction.