betajames

This marked our last week within what Fulkerson called CCS axiology (critical, cultural studies, feminist). Of the three lumped together here, I think feminist composition theory may have been the most clearly grasped. This was due in no small part to the facilitators, concerned as they were with defining necessary terms. Ideology is not criticism is not composition theory, they posited in a convincing manner. Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies as well as references to Lady Gaga and Xena helped bring this point home.

What appears to separate feminist composition theory from critical and cultural studies theories concerns self-criticism and reflection. At least in how facilitators framed it, feminist composition theory has a greater degree of openness in terms of active pedagogical changes, that if an activity or assignment doesn't work well, a feminist pedagogue may be more likely to reflect on its failure and perhaps even engage students in discussion of that failure. It was on this point that I later raised the question of whether or not it was on the basis of this aspect that Fulkerson separated one feminist approach from CCS. I see now that I was wrong to pose such a query. Fulkerson declares one feminist approach as concerned with raising students' consciousness, with having them come to voice (666). In light of this, perhaps an argument could be made that Fulkerson overlooked this self-critical/reflective aspect.

Much of the conversation beyond the facilitation signaled deviations, but not to a distressing degree. Of course, I say this having instigated such deviations to some degree, curious as I am about the processes and spaces of writing. Perhaps some of the discussion also had to do with the facilitation and the readings for the week, given nods to the importance of fun and joy and conveying passion and viewing the class as a developing community.

Also, despite any thoughts to the contrary, I have considered the suggestion of a location change for next week's class. With many more reasons for denial than approval, I look forward to meeting with all of you at our regularly scheduled time in our regularly scheduled classroom. If you are at all curious about the reasons why, I'd be happy to discuss them via email.

If the technologies I use and value take steps to jeopardize the important connections and relationships cultivated and facilitated there, I will stop using and valuing those technologies. I'll entreat everyone for their email addresses and then otherwise eliminate my persistent online presence. 

My interest in and patience for being a digital migrant, of moving to a different online oasis every couple years, nears null. I want a measure of reliability and stability in where I am online. No more TOS changes, no more sudden and limiting archives, no more rumors or threats of being shuttered or sold. 

If this is too much to expect, then perhaps I don't belong on the internet.

This spring, I'll be guiding my third graduate-level course in the MA in English program at the University of Michigan-Flint. Listed as ENG 560: Topics in Writing and Rhetoric, my current vision for the course concerns the execution of a booksprint. To be more specific, ENG 560 will be an eight-week collaborative writing project. The focus will be an issue, theme, or topic within rhetoric and writing studies. The issue, theme, or topic will be identified and decided upon by students and instructor. 

The result of our work will not be an edited collection, though. Most every graduate course concludes with a series of essays somewhat related to the overall focus of the course. That is not what will happen in ENG 560. The emphasis instead will be cohesion over collection. That is, we will be aiming for a cohesive, if not comprehensive, codex. There will be an overall argument and point to the work. Chapters will relate to and succeed each other in an academic, linear fashion.

Of course, the overall length of the book will depend on student enrollment. For example, if the minimum number of students take the course (10), we should be looking at a 150-page book. If the maximum number of students take the course (15), we should be looking at a book of over 200 pages. For either scenario to happen, students will need to work in pairs on individual chapters. That is, there will be two primary researchers/writers for every chapter. As such, I see my primary roles as facilitator and executive editor. If all those involved in this project approve of the end result, I may very well drum up external interest and/or pitch the text to publishers.

Given my preferred area of focus, i.e., rhetoric and writing studies, current ENG 567 students will be better prepared and primed for ENG 560. This should not dissuade others in the MA program from enrolling, though. 

ENG 560 will be mixed mode, meeting every Tuesday night from May 9 until June 28. Here's a quick shot of each week:

Week 1 - introducing & brainstorming
Week 2 - delegating & researching
Week 3 - researching
Week 4 - researching
Week 5 - writing
Week 6 - writing
Week 7 - editing
Week 8 - finishing

The technology/technologies we use to facilitate the entire process will also be decided upon by students and instructor. Google Docs is the foremost possibility in my mind right now, but I'm very open to other recommendations/suggestions.

I'm also open to questions and concerns from current students and otherwise interested parties. Your thoughts?

Of major focus the last two weeks has been what Fulkerson calls critical cultural studies (CCS), a particular pedagogy/theory that frames the composition classroom as a place for challenging and questioning students and the status quo. With talk of contact zones and accomodations, authority and critical thinking, discussions in class and on our blogs have tread familiar ground. When I asked if Fulkerson's CCS grouping was unfair (even though feminist theory hasn't been discussed/facilitated yet), the answer was close to a resounding no. Still, I think spending a single week on CCS would have been a monumental disservice to the theories as well as to students. It's difficult for me to even picture which 4-5 readings would be most essential for that fictitious week. 

Overall, though, we continue to model writing studies overall, engaging in many of the same debates that the field has had in the last 60-75 years (depending upon when you mark the beginning of the discipline). We talked about what we owe students, what they consider as a lie, how we need to move away from platitudes and toward praxis, that all this should be happening to help students become better writers (and/or critical thinkers). We shouldn't give students something to talk about, but instead provide them with opportunities for them to find what they want to talk about. We should be more like Yoda than Palpatine, but also call into question the malleability of students' minds. We need to realize our roles as gatekeepers, understand the difference between accomodations and allowances and be ware of where we can/need to be flexible. 

I do acknowledge, though, that some students are becoming more direct in asking for my input. I don't fault them for it and I was happy to provide something of a walkthrough of my most recent syllabus for ENG 112. That said, I suppose some clarification is in order. If I appear reluctant to share ideas/observations/thoughts related to the immediate discussion, the reasons concern indulgence and influence. I realize my opinion and perspective probably has some value, but I'm wary of appearing self-indulgent and/or exerting undue influence. As I see it, students are in #567crt to find/refine their own pedagogical paths. I am in #567crt to help facilitate and/or question that, not to seduce or strongarm. Then again, given the strong personalities in our class, I suppose I shouldn't be too concerned about any self-indulgence being called into question. 

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Teaching Composition. Edited by T.R. Johnson and Shirley Morahan. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. 73-101.

In this piece on the overall aims of composition, Bartholomae argues that, above all, we must enable our students to participate in the discourses of the academy.  His chief interest lies in bringing students to share in the authority that the academic institution makes available; therefore, we must teach students to acquire those particular habits of mind that are the mark of that authority.

By the very title, Bartholomae means

The student has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community. (74)

This necessarily involves an appropriation of a specialized discourse (74) and many students “try on” such discourse without the knowledge to make the discourse more than “a set of conventional rituals and gestures” (75).  Bartholomae also calls this “a necessary and enabling fiction” (75).  And, given the weight of such an act, there are times when student writers say “I don’t know,” it is not so much a case of having nothing to say as not being in a position to carry on a particular discussion (77).  On other occasions, writers enter the discourse without a successful approximation (77).

Also present in this piece is some discussion of Linda Flower’s notions of “writer-based” and “reader-based” prose, and Bartholomae has this to say further: “Teaching students to revise for readers, then, will better prepare them to write initially with a reader in mind” (77).  This pedagogy is still rather problematic, though, for students have to not only appropriate (or be appropriated by) a specialized discourse, but also appear comfortable with an imagined audience (78).  Having the ability to not only imagine but also manipulate an audience allows one to write from “a position of privilege” (78).  Bartholomae continues: “The problem of audience awareness, then, is a problem of power and finesse” (78-79).  

Regarding the product vs. process aspect of writing, he states:

If writing is a process, it is also a product; and it is the product, and not the plan for writing, that locates a writer on the page, that locates him in a text and a style and the codes or conventions that make both of them readable. (80-81)

Furthermore,

…all writers, in order to write, must imagine for themselves the privilege of being ‘insiders’—that is, the privilege both of being inside an established and powerful discourse and of being granted a special right to speak. (81)

This imaginative state, however, can cause learning to become “more a matter of imitation or parody than a matter of invention and discovery” (82).

Bartholomae also stresses his understanding of knowledge as “situated in the discourse that constitutes ‘knowledge’ in a particular discourse community, rather than as situated in mental ‘knowledge sites’ (83).  Necessarily, then, we might see two parts to teaching composition: learning to command certain codes unique to the discourse and learning to write/think as a writer (83).

Our beginning students need to learn…to extend themselves, by successive approximations, into the commonplaces, set phrases, rituals and gestures, habits of mind, tricks of persuasion, obligatory conclusions and necessary connections that determine the ‘what might be said’ and constitute knowledge within the various branches of our academic community. (84)

Furthermore, regarding basic writers, it would be better for us, as educators, to look at student writing “in the context of other student writing [so] we can better see the points of discord that arise when students try to write their way into the university” (85).  It is this ability to imagine privilege, writes Bartholomae, which enables writing (90), but there’s more to it than that

The movement toward a more specialized discourse begins (or, perhaps, best begins) both when a student can define a position of privilege, a position that sets him against a ‘common’ discourse, and when he or she can work self-consciously, critically, against not only the ‘common’ code but his or her own. (92-93)

From this, Bartholomae goes on to explain ways students might establish their authority as writers (94-95) and ultimately challenges researchers to turn attention to products for “a written text, too, can be a compelling model of the “composing process” once we conceive of a writer as at work within a text and simultaneously, then, within a society, a history, and a culture” (97).

Bizzell, Patricia. “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty.”  Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. Edited by Victor Villanueva. 365-389.

Bizzell begins by asking “What do we need to know about writing?” (365), observing that it is only recently have we needed to ask this question, and the very asking created composition studies, which in turn created views of the ‘writing problem.’  It is thus clear that “our teaching task is not only to convey information but also to transform students’ whole world view” (365), and many now see the aforementioned problem as “a thinking problem primarily because we used to take our students’ thinking for granted” (365).  Bizzell relates this to a teaching style based on model essays, which “has not prepared us to explain or repair these students’ deficiencies” (366), and stresses the need for a reconsideration of the relationship between thought and language.

Bizzell thus points to two theoretical camps, one seeing writing as inner-directed and the other seeing writing as outer-directed (366).  The former is interested in “the structure of language-learning and thinking processes in their earliest state, prior to social influence” (366), while the latter has greater interest in “the social processes whereby language-learning and thinking capacities are shaped and used in particular communities” (366).  Seeking to discover writing processes that are “so fundamental as to be universal” (367), writes Bizzell, inner-directed theorists have a particular model on the development of language and thought (see Figure 1, 367).  In explaining in greater detail the outer-directed theorists, Bizzell offers up a similar diagram (see Figure 2, 369).  In essence, while inner-directed theorists believe that universal, fundamental structures can be taught, outer-directed theorists do not, believing that “thinking and language use can never occur free of a social context that conditions them” (368).  Despite these differences, though, Bizzell stresses that “answers to what we need to know about writing will have to come from both the inner-directed and the outer-directed theoretical schools if we wish to have a complete picture of the composing process” (370), and she offers the perspective on the current debate as “the kind of fruitful exchange that enlarges knowledge” (370).  

Delving deeper into the inner-directed theory, Bizzell makes mention of Flower and Hayes, who “see composing as a kind of problem-solving activity” (371), and explains further the Flower-Hayes model, ultimately critiquing it though for its emphasis on the how of the writing process and its ignorance of the why.  Put another way, as Bizzell does, “if we are going to see students as problem-solvers, we must also see them as problem-solvers situated in discourse communities that guide problem definition and the range of alternative solutions” (373).  This is what inner-directed theorists fail to account for, but, never fear, for outer-directed theory can help, specifically with planning and translating, the latter of which Bizzell names as the “emptiest box” in the Flower-Hayes model and the former of which Bizzell names as the fullest (373).  In other words, “we can know nothing but what we have words for, if knowledge is what language makes of experience” (373).

Bizzell then moves briefly to Vygotsky and sociolinguistics, before ultimately offering a lengthy explanation of just what students who struggle to write Standard English need: “knowledge beyond the rules of grammar, spelling, and so on” (374).  Furthermore, composition specialists need to learn from sociolinguistics to avoid George Dillon’s ‘bottom-to-top’ fallacy: “the notion that a writer first finds meaning, then puts it into words, then organizes the words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, etc.” (375).  In short, then, writes Bizzell, “educational problems associated with language use should be understood as difficulties with joining an unfamiliar discourse community” (375).  Now, does this remind anyone of Bartholomae?

Moving on, Bizzell stresses that “finding words is not a separate process from setting goals.  It is setting goals, because finding words is always a matter of aligning oneself with a particular discourse community” (375-376).  Therefore, Bizzell prefers the term ‘interpretive community’ over discourse community (using Stanley Fish’s term), explaining that “because this interaction is always an historical process, changing over time, the community’s conventions change over time” (376).  And, “changes in conventions can only define themselves in terms of what is already acceptable (even if such definition means negation of the currently acceptable)” (376).  There are two other important passages on this same page:

An individual who abides by the community’s conventions, therefore, can still find areas for initiative—adherence is slavish adherence only for the least productive community members. (376)

Producing text within a discourse community, then, cannot take place unless the writer define her goals in terms of the community’s interpretive conventions.  Writing is always already writing for some purpose that can only be understood in its community context. (376)

Bizzell then returns to the Flower-Hayes model, noting how neglect of the role of knowledge in composing makes it “particularly insensitive to the problems of poor writers” (378), noting that what is underdeveloped in students is “their knowledge of the ways experience is constituted and interpreted in the academic discourse community and of the fact that all discourse communities constitute and interpret experience” (379).  And, in the very next paragraph, Bizzell makes some hypothetical observations which could relate quite well to the experiences Mike Rose details in his book (379), before explaining that, to help poor writers, “we need to explain that their writing takes place within a community, and to explain what the community’s conventions are” (380).  Two more chunks:

To “define” a problem is to interact with the material world according to the conventions of a particular discourse community; these conventions are the only source for categories of similar problems, operational definitions, and alternative solutions, and a conclusion can only be evaluated as “well supported” in terms of a particular community’s standards. (381)

Discourse communities are tied to historical and cultural circumstances, and hence can only be seen as unenlightening instances of the general theory the cognitive approach seeks: the one model is the universal one. (381)

Bizzell then centers on Collins and Gentner’s approach, critiquing it thusly: “it assumes that the rules we can formulate to describe behavior are the same rules that produce the behavior” (382).  Rhetorical situation anyone?  Later, Bizzell reiterates her main argument: “both the inner-directed and the outer-directed theoretical schools will have to contribute to a synthesis capable of providing a comprehensive new agenda for composition studies” (383).  She then makes mention of protocol analysis (383-384) before turning back to inner-directed theory and how no scientific research possess the authoritative certainty that inner-directed theorists seek (384).  Ultimately, though, Bizzell calls for inspection of ‘the hidden curriculum,’ “the project of initiating students into a particular world view that gives rise to the daily classroom tasks without being consciously examined by teachers or students” (385).  Furthermore,

If we call what we are teaching “universal” structures or processes, we bury the hidden curriculum even deeper by claiming that our choice of material owes nothing to historical circumstances.  To do this is to deny the school’s function as an agent of cultural hegemony, or the selective evaluation and transmission of world views. (385)

Bizzell thus thinks we must acknowledge cultural differences in the classroom, even though this will increase emotional strain for compositionists as “members of one group trying to mediate contacts among various others” (385).  And, it is discourse analysis, writes Bizzell, that would foster responsible inspection of the hidden curriculum, and it might offer students “an understanding of their school difficulties as the problems of a traveler to an unfamiliar country” (386).

In conclusion, then, writes Bizzell,

Composition studies should focus upon practice within interpretive communities—exactly how conventions work in the world and how they are transmitted.  If the work of these disciplines continues to converge, a new synthesis will emerge that revivifies rhetoric as the central discipline of human intellectual endeavor. (387)

M1:

Blogging
Posts are now due by 11:59PM Tuesday and Friday. That is, at least one blog post by Tuesday night and at least one more blog post by Friday night. All comments are due by 11:59PM Sunday.

Twitter
There is no longer a quota. Instead, focus on making positive contributions to #345tw via Twitter. See @jamiemac15, @gymgodess, @cawaites, @sadarhiphopblog, and @mstirban for examples. Tuesday and Sunday are 24-hour, optimal/optional "tweet-heavy" days. 

M2:

Blogging
Posts are now due by 11:59PM Wednesday and Sunday. That is, at least one blog post by Tuesday night and at least one more blog post by Sunday night. All comments are due by 11:59PM Sunday. 

Twitter
There is no longer a quota. Instead, focus on making positive contributions to #345tw via Twitter. See @jamiemac15, @gymgodess, @cawaites,@sadarhiphopblog, and @mstirban for examples. Sunday is a 24-hour, optimal/optional "tweet-heavy" day.

Consigny, Scott. “Rhetoric and Its Situations.” Philsophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 175-186.

After summarizing the arguments put forth by Bitzer and Vatz concerning the rhetorical situation, Consigny argues that while “Bitzer correctly construes the rhetorical situation as characterized by ‘particularities,’ but misconstrues the situation as being thereby determinate and determining…Vatz correctly treats the rhetor as creative, but that he fails to account for the real constraints on the rhetor’s activity” (176).  He thus proposes mediating on rhetoric as an art, “an art of ‘topics’ or commonplaces” (176).

In the first section, Consigny provides a more in-depth summary of Bitzer’s argument (“the rhetor does not differ from the expert or scientist who can solve specific problems by using well-formulated methods or procedures” (177)), before refuting it, stating that “the rhetorical situation is not one created solely through the imagination and discourse of the rhetor” (178) and what the rhetor must be able to do (178-179)

In the second section, Consigny stresses that

The real question for rhetorical theory will become not whether the rhetor or situation is dominant, but how, in each case, the rhetor can become engaged in the novel and indeterminate situation and yet have a means of making sense of it. (179)

Again, Consigny zeroes in on faults in Bitzer’s and Vatz’s arguments (180) before explaining how a rhetor must function to be effective, how the art of rhetoric is both heuristic and managerial (180) and then introducing the conditions of integrity and receptivity.  He illuminates the former as demanding that “rhetoric as an art provide the rhetor with a ‘universal’ capacity such that the rhetor can function in all kinds of indeterminate and particular situations as they arise” (180).  He illuminates the latter as “allowing the rhetor to become engaged in individual situations without simply inventing and thereby predetermining which problems he is going to find in them” (181).  Consigny concludes this section thusly:

…the rhetor must remain receptive to the particularities of the individual situation in a way that he can discover relevant issues. If the art of rhetoric does not allow for receptivity, the rhetorical act will be neither heuristic nor managerial. (181)

In the third section, Consigny states that “the art of rhetoric must not predetermine what the rhetor finds in the novel situation” (181) before explaining further the topic, “a device which allows the rhetor to discover, through selection and arrangement, that which is relevant and persuasive in particular situations” (181).  Furthermore, “the topic functions both as instrument and situation; the instrument with which the rhetor thinks and the realm in and about which he thinks” (182), and Consigny explains how Bitzer ignores the instrument and Vatz ignores the situation, before stressing that “the topic must maintain a dynamic interplay between instrument and realm, thereby mediating between and dissolving the apparent antimony of rhetor and situation” (182).  From this, Consigny follows Aristotle in explaining that “the formal and the material factors must exist in a dynamic interrelation if the rhetor is to be able to discover and manage the particular exigence of the situation” (183).

The rhetor possess a freedom of choice, of course, but “not any choice of terms will be functional in a given situation” (183), and Consigny also explains the option available to rhetors regarding various modes of opposition: contradictories and correlatives (183-184).  In the final two full paragraphs on the following page, Consigny explains how rhetoric as the art of topics meets the conditions of integrity and receptivity. And, in conclusion, Consigny reiterates his main argument before closing thusly:

The real question in rhetorical theory is not whether the situation or the rhetor is “dominant,” but the extent, in each case, to which the rhetor can discover and control indeterminate matter, using his art of topics to make sense of what would otherwise remain simply absurd. (185)

Vatz, Richard E. “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 6.3 (1973): 41-71.

Vatz refutes Bitzer’s idea of the rhetorical situation by first stating: “No situation can have a nature independent of the perception of its interpreter or independent of the rhetoric with which he chooses to characterize it” (154).  Vatz also explains Bitzer’s point of view as thus: “There is an intrinsic nature in events from which rhetoric inexorably follows, or should follow” (155).  Vatz then sums up the rest of Bitzer’s argument before moving into his main argument, which involves a perspective on how the world is “a scene of inexhaustible events which all compete to impinge on what Kenneth Burke calls our ‘sliver of reality’” (156).  An essential part of this, of course, is context and choice, for “any rhetor is involved in this sifting and choosing” (156) and “the very choice of what facts or events are relevant is a matter of pure arbitration” (157).  Before moving into the next section of his argument, Vatz makes clear that “meaning is not discovered in situations, by created by rhetors” (157).

Vatz then turns to the implications for rhetoric and the rhetor, specifically the notion of responsibility.  According to Vatz, Bitzer’s perspective places very little responsibility upon the rhetor regarding salience; however, “if we view the communication of an event as a choice, interpretation, and translation, the rhetor’s responsibility is of supreme concern” (158).  Furthermore, “to view rhetoric as a creation of reality or salience rather than a reflector of reality clearly increases the rhetor’s moral responsibility…the rhetor is responsible for what he chooses to make salient” (158).

From this, Vatz asks the essential question: “What is the relationship between rhetoric and situations?” (158), stating that “situations are rhetorical…utterance strongly invites exigence…rhetoric controls the situational response…[and] situations obtain their character from the rhetoric which surrounds or creates them” (159).  Vatz then invokes Vietnam, explaining that “the meaning of the war (war?, civil war?) came from the rhetoric surrounding it” (159), before drawing on the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which “once the situation was made salient and depicted as a crisis, the situation took new form” (159-160), and then commenting on the assassination of JKF (160).

In conclusion, Vatz stresses “rhetoric is a cause not an effect of meaning” (159) for “after salience is created, the situation must be translated into meaning” (160).  Furthermore, “to say that the President is speaking out on a pressing issue is redundant” (161).  And lastly, “it is only when the meaning is seen as the result of a creative act and not a discovery, that rhetoric will be perceived as the supreme discipline it deserves to be” (161).  This last sentence carries the implication that Bitzer’s very argument cheapens, even demeans rhetoric.