Downshifting
Downshifting is a concept I’ve borrowed from Francis Christensen’s generative rhetoric to help teach aspects of composition. Essentially, downshifting is a movement from the general to the specific or from the abstract to the concrete, allowing for many gradations between the two terms in each set.
Students find downshifting easy to understand and to apply to their work as writers. Some practical uses:
- Limiting a topic appropriately
War
↓
U.S. involvement in war
↓
Mexican-American War
↓
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
↓
19th century U.S. response to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
↓
19th century transcendentalists’ responses to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
↓
Henry David Thoreau’s response to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
I don’t know that Thoreau ever expressed a response to the treaty, but you get the picture. In this case, I may have downshifted myself out of a suitable topic for the assignment (let’s imagine it calls for a five-page paper based on no fewer than three sources); but then it’s easy to upshift until I find a topic I can research.
- Emphasizing the importance of specifics in making writing more vivid
One of my students revised a sentence this way:
We would sit on the cold vinyl seats of the Party Mobile and try to smoke cigarettes with our mittens on.
We would sit on the cold vinyl seats of the Party Mobile and try to smoke Marlboros with our mittens on.
A small change, but one that brings color and shape—and alliteration—into the sentence I always imagine the Marlboro hard pack ; I see the red and white design and even the thin sheet of foil that lined the box. But I have to use many words to report these images while the student conveys them in just one application of downshifting.
Here’s another example from that same student, same essay:
We had a lot of fun time driving around on the back roads, rock music blaring so loudly we couldn’t hear what anyone said.
We had a lot of fun time driving around on the back roads, Led Zeplin and The Grateful Dead blaring so loudly we couldn’t hear what anyone said.
- Generating interesting sentences
This is an example Christensen includes in “A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence”:
1He shook his hands,
2a quick shake,
3fingers down,
4like a pianist. –Sinclair Lewis
Each addition to the base clause of this sentence downshifts on the part that comes before it. Christensen numbers the levels to illustrate how deeply the downshifting goes (there are four levels to this sentence) and how one can use this concept to think of sentences in terms of movement.
Here’s another example Christensen includes from a master stylist:
2Calico-coated,
2small bodied,
2with delicate legs and pink faces
3in which their mismatched eyes rolled wild and subdued,
1they huddled,
2gaudy motionless and alert,
2wild as deer
2deadly as rattlesnakes
2quiet as doves.--William Faulkner
This use of downshifting can be effectively paired with work on sentence combining. It can also be the first step in a short session on playing with sentences, generating them for no other reason than, well, to play with them.
Here’s a sentence one of my students produced after we began looking at constructions this way (he’s writing about Jimi Hendrix, of course);
In the wail of the high notes and the deep distorted chords you feel the people’s suffering and protest, you feel Vietnam, you feel slavery, civil unrest and the plight of all the peoples in the United States.
And from another student:
Both immensely different characters with different recent pasts, they feel communally at home, at peace, all problems pushed aside, all differences forgotten, while they engage in their childhood traditions.
- Analyzing the movement of a paragraph
Sentences in many paragraphs can be diagramed—leveled—the way phrases and clauses are diagramed in the sentences above. Here’s an example from Christensen’s work:
1The other [mode of thought] is the scientific method.
2It subjects the conclusions of reason to the arbitrament of hard fact to
build an increasing body of tested knowledge.
2It refuses to ask questions that cannot be answered, and rejects such
answers as cannot be provided except by Revelation.
2It discovers the relatedness of all things in the universe—of the motion of
the moon to the influence of the earth and sun, of the nature of the
organism to its environment, of human civilization to the conditions
under which it is made.
2It introduces history into everything.
3Stars and scenery have their history, alike with plant species or
human institutions, and
nothing is intelligible without some knowledge of its past.
4As Whitehead has said, each event is the reflection or effect
of every other event, past as well as present.
2It rejects dualism.
3The supernatural is in part the region of the natural that has not yet
been understood, in part an invention of human fantasy, in part
the unknowable. . . . –Julian Huxley, Man in the Modern World
There’s more to this paragraph, but this is enough to demonstrate how each sentence can be assigned a level based on its relationship to the topic sentence (if there is one—Christensen just leaves out level 1 if there isn’t) or to the sentence that precedes it. When a paragraph is graphically represented like this, its “movement” becomes apparent; its techniques of coherence become more visible. Some students will pick up the parallelism and the rhythm the parallelism helps create with their ear while others will more quickly catch on if they see it represented this way.
Here’s a paragraph from one of my students:
His father forced him to urinate on his mother’s roses at the age of seven, using him as a means of revenge. His father took him into the basement nightly where he had to dodge the belt, finding his way in the dark. His father abused him throughout his childhood and scarred him for life. Long after his father is dead and gone, Walter is impacted by his traumatic early experiences, haunted by images of his father, and determined to escape him yet.
- Explaining the difference between a colon and a semicolon
The colon signals a downshifting relationship: the information that follows it specifies, exemplifies, or makes concrete a referent or implied referent that precedes it:
1 I have only one complaint about teaching:
2 having to assign grades.
1 John treats his wife as if she were a child:
2 he places her in a former nursery,
2 makes all decisions for her, and
2 calls her names like “blessed little goose.”
The semicolon, though, signals a different relationship, a lateral, coordinate movement:
1 John is insensitive; 1 his wife is infuriating.
1 Ask not what your country can do for you; 1 ask what you can do for your country.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of the five-paragraph essay
Finally, you can use downshifting to show students the limits of the five-paragraph essay structure, that it’s essentially a 1 2 2 2 structure (with 1 being the thesis and each 2 being one of the three points that are developed in the three body paragraphs) with little depth and no subordination in its “argument.” They’ll catch on immediately even if they won’t figure out as quickly how to replace the formula with something more suitable for a college paper.
Jo Anne Behling 2005
Christensen, Francis. “A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence.” Contemporary Essay on
Style. Ed. Glen A. Love and Michael Payne. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1969. 27-36.
---.“A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph.” Contemporary Essay on
Style. Ed. Glen A. Love and Michael Payne. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1969. 36-51.