Liberal Education and Communication Across the Curriculum: A Response to Anthony Fleury

Abstract

Anthony Fleury proposes a Communication Against the Disciplines paradigm as a counterpoint to Communication in the Disciplines approaches to teaching communication across the curriculum. Contrary to Fleury's contention, however, learning about discipline-specific communication conventions can indeed promote the goals of liberal education and citizenship. Students learn about communication as process when they compare communication conventions across disciplines and learn that each context is characterized by its own ways of privileging some communication performances and disallowing others. Communication Against the Disciplines' focus on three broad styles of communication results renders communication products more salient than processes. Moreover, the three styles Fleury identifies are not comprehensive; they neglect non-Western rhetorics, for example. Teaching communication across the curriculum should help students understand how each discipline values particular forms of communicative performance, so that students can choose how they wish to participate in those disciplines.

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