Draft:George David Gopen

American author and writing consultant From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George David Gopen, published widely as George D. Gopen, is an American rhetorician, educator, writing consultant, and classical musician.[1][2][3] He holds the title of professor emeritus of the Practice of Rhetoric at Duke University where he taught for 30 years.[2] He is best known for creating his Reader Expectation Approach to writing in the English language known as REA.[4] Gopen first introduced concepts underlying REA to audiences through his 1990 American Scientist article, co-authored with Judith A. Swan, titled "The Science of Scientific Writing."[5] He also co-founded the Great Durham Pun Championship.[6]

Early Life and Education

Gopen was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[7] From 1957 to 1963 he attended the Roxbury Latin School, founded in 1645.[8] Gopen received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Brandeis University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1967. His undergraduate education included a year at the University of Reading in England. He simultaneously earned his Juris Doctor (JD) from Harvard Law School and his PhD in English from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1967 to 1975.[2][9]

Career

Gopen taught in the English Department at Harvard University for five years while pursuing his PhD at the institution. He then taught in the English Department at the University of Utah between 1975 and 1978. From 1978 to 1985, Gopen served as Director of Writing Programs and assistant professor of English at Loyola University of Chicago. He also served as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School for five years in the 1980s. Gopen was the founder and director of the University Writing Program at Duke University where he taught from 1985 to 2014. He also taught part-time for sixteen years at Duke University School of Law.[2][9]

Consulting

Gopen began serving as a professional writing consultant in 1978. In 1980, he joined with partners Joseph Williams of the University of Chicago and Gregory Colomb to form Clearlines, a consultant firm dealing with legal writing. Since 1990, Gopen has worked as an independent consultant to professional writers in the field of scientific research in addition to the fields of law, business, government, and education. As of 2019, he had worked with over 200 clients.[9] As of 2021, more than 19,000 participants had attended his writing seminars and workshops.[2][10]

Reader Expectation Approach (REA)

Main article: Reader Expectation Approach

The Reader Expectation Approach is a framework for writing clearly and persuasively that Gopen created based on the premise that readers of English derive approximately 85% of their interpretive clues from the structural location of words within a sentence and of sentences within paragraphs, rather than from word choice or word meaning.[5][4][3] REA has been applied in peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature[11][12] and was discussed by actor and science communicator Alan Alda in his 2017 book If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?.[13]

Publications

Books

  • Writing from a Legal Perspective (West Group, 1981) ISBN 978–0829921236
  • The Moral Fables of Aesop (translated from 15th-century Middle Scots, with introduction and notes; University of Notre Dame Press, 1987) ISBN 978-0268013615 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0268013622 (paperback)
  • The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader's Perspective (Pearson Longman, 2004) ISBN 978–0205296323
  • Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader's Perspective (Pearson Longman, 2004) ISBN 978–0205296170
  • Gopen's Reader Expectation Approach to the English Language: A New Tweetment (THINKaha, 2016) ISBN 978–1616991746

Audiobooks

  • Peter Sterling, What is Health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design (narrator; Author's Republic, 2023; print edition MIT Press, 2020)[14]

Book chapters

  • "The State of Legal Writing: Res Ipsa Loquitur" in Writing in the Business Professions, ed. Myra Kogen (National Council of Teachers of English, 1989) pp. 146–173 ISBN 0-8141-5900-1

Articles

  • "The Science of Scientific Writing," co-authored with Judith A. Swan, American Scientist, November–December 1990[5]

From 2011 to 2023, Gopen contributed a quarterly article to the American Bar Association's Litigation journal, producing 42 articles applying REA principles to legal writing.[15][16] He has published 69 articles in total as of 2019.[9][17][16]

Awards and recognition

  • Phi Beta Kappa (Brandeis University, 1967)[9]
  • "The Science of Scientific Writing" (American Scientist, 1990), co-authored with Judith A. Swan, was selected by the journal as one of 36 classic articles from its first century of publication.[5][18]
  • Golden Pen Award, Legal Writing Institute, 2011, awarded for lifelong efforts to improve the quality of legal writing[19]

Music

Gopen has sung with choruses including the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Choral Society of Durham. He has performed in public lieder recitals as pianist. Since 2007, he has served as the Director of the Chamber Arts Society of Durham, which was founded in 1945.[20][21][9]

In 2022, he composed a score of more than 100 pages for string quartet to intertwine with the oration of T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece Four Quartets, which he also narrated. The work was given its world premiere performance by the Eliot Quartett in Erlangen, Germany, in April 2025.[22]

Humor

Gopen co-founded the Great Durham Pun Championship with Tom Campbell.[6] The annual event was reported on by Mental Floss magazine.[23] Gopen also serves as MC and judge for the competition, roles he performs while wearing the neon pink graduation robe from his Harvard graduation ceremony in the 1970s.[6]

Media appearances

WUNC

  • March 2015: Frank Stasio interviewed Gopen on The State of Things about his roles as MC and judge of the 4th Annual Great Durham Pun Championship.[24]
  • September 2015: The State of Things host Frank Stasio interviewed Gopen about his life, career, and the Reader Expectation Approach.[7]
  • February 2018: Gopen was interviewed by Frank Stasio about his roles as MC and judge of the Great Durham Pun Championship.[25]

University of Pittsburgh

  • February 2017: Gopen was interviewed by Dan Kubis for the University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center podcast Being Human, discussing his life, career, and the development of the Reader Expectation Approach.[3]

WTVD

  • February 2020: Gopen was interviewed by WTVD about his roles as MC and judge of the Great Durham Pun Championship and ABC 11's Ryan Brisesi profiled him and co-founder Tom Campbell ahead of the ninth annual championship.[6]

See also

References

External links

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