History of Composition Studies

History of Composition Studies

Berlin, North, S. Miller, Connors, Crowley, Smit

James Berlin

Berlin makes an argument in Rhetoric and Reality that we should consider “rhetorics” (plural) instead of “rhetoric (singular) because rhetoric is epistemological and therefore each rhetorical system is based on the natures of each knower’s reality. There are three epistemological categories of rhetoric: objective (reality is within the external, material world of experience), subjective (reality is within the subject and discovered internally), and transactional (reality is the interaction of subject and object, mediated by audience and language). For objective rhetoric, the writer’s job is to record experience exactly as it has been experienced; CTR is objective because it requires finding truth through observation and then finding the language to describe it. Subjective rhetoric is demonstrated by Plato, who believes that truth transcends the material world; it can be known, but not communicated or taught. Weaver sees rhetoric similarly, but its possibility is expanded by the suggestion that metaphor can suggest the supersensory. The writer’s role is to offer positive knowledge or correct error in order to help lead the audience to truth via a private discovery. Transactional rhetoric types are classical (truth is located in a social construct); cognitive (correspondence between structures of mind and nature); and epistemic (reality involves all elements of the rhetorical situation). In this view, rhetoric is implicated in all human behavior, and language mediates reality and truth. In another article, “Contemporary Composition,” Berlin argues for the superiority of epistemic rhetoric because it is the most practical.

In the 19^th century, the university was opened to anyone from the middle class who could meet the requirements, and at Harvard in 1874 Eliot introduced the writing test as an entrance requirement. This led to the rise of what has been called CTR, a pedagogy that focuses heavily on surface perfection, like an error-free composition but pays little attention to thought processes; the influence of CTR is still felt in classrooms that focus mainly on grammar and mechanics.

In the early 20^th century, there were three main approaches: CTR; an approach that inspired only those who possessed “genius” (usually elitist and aristocratic); and an approach that emphasized writing as training for participation in the democratic process. There was also an “ideas approach” that connected learning to social political life. The Efficiency Movement study of the NCTE determined that composition classrooms should have no more than 50 pupils per teacher and that the course should only be taught by the best teachers.

Between 1920 and 1940, college enrollments grew. CTR still held dominance, but began to be challenged by a subjective rhetoric that favored the individual. FYC programs were developed and headed by directors to provide an administrative structure for students and faculty. Objective writing tests were used to place and evaluate students who were grouped into classes by ability in order to respond to their individual differences. Expressionist rhetoric began to form as an indirect result of the liberal culture’s philosophic idealism and emphasis on self-cultivation.

Between 1940 and 1960, the most significant curricular development was the general education movement, which resulted in the rise of COMS (writing, speaking, and listening). CCCC was developed in 1949 after a 1948 NCTE conference presentation spawned a long discussion about composition that needed to be continued; the founding of 4Cs led to a burgeoning sense of professional identity. Many comp teachers taught writing through literature; great literature was needed to provide knowledge and stimulation to keep the teacher’s career active and vital. In the 1950s, there was a renewed interest in rhetoric as a discipline of historical importance and contemporary value.

Between 1960 and 1975, there were growing numbers of graduate programs in rhetoric; it began to be seen as a respectable specialty, especially with the growing numbers of students demanding more teachers and leading to a need for professionalization. The process movement began to take off during this time as well. There were many theories grouped under the category “new rhetoric,” but none of them became dominant. Instead, there was a multiplicity of rhetorics in which each was unique in describing elements of rhetoric. The major pedagogical approaches of this time were CTR, Expressionistic, Classical/Transactional, Rhetoric of Cognitive Psychology, and Epistemic Rhetoric. The biggest transition from the 19^th century to 1975 was the shift from writing courses for cultivation of taste, to writing for preparing students for a profession, to writing for preparing students for citizenship in a democracy and enabling self-discovery.

Stephen North

North describes and accounts for the emergence of a methodological community in composition. First, he describes the Practitioners: scholars and researchers make knowledge, but practitioners apply it. They contribute to the “lore” of how writing is done, learned, and taught; lore is a body of knowledge housed in either ritual (passed along by example), writing (textbooks), and/or talk (conversations with other practitioners).

There are three kinds of Scholars: Historians, Philosophers, and Critics. The Historians write the pedagogical history of composition through a complex web of cause and effect relationships. The making of history is a neverending cycle of interpretation and reinterpretation. The Philosophers account for, frame, critique, and analyze the field’s fundamental assumptions and beliefs. Thus, they can help us choose teaching methods. The Critics establish a canon, interpret it, and generate theories about both how they created it and how they interpreted it.

There are four kinds of Researchers: Experimentalists, Clinicians, Formalists, and Ethnographers. The Experimentalists discover generalizable “laws” that can account for the ways people do, teach, and learn writing; they try to measure the impact of a manageable feature of a pedagogy on students. The Clinicians focus on individual “cases” and how they do, teach, and learn writing; they are concerned with what is unique or particular to some unit within a population, but bring the larger population to bear on their observations. The Formalists build modes and simulations to examine formal properties under study; they focus almost exclusively on modeling writing in order to highlight what we do not understand. The Ethnographers make stories or fictions for people as members of communities. North is not very optimistic for ethnography’s potential, but it has become one of the most valid approaches for cultural inquiry.

With all of these different approaches available and competing, North explains that there has been a “methodological land rush” as various inquiries scramble to claim what constitutes knowledge in composition. There are two themes that result from this inter-communal struggle: 1) there is the notion that there is a knowledge and method crisis that justifies radical action in teaching writing, and 2) Practitioners have been targeted as lacking knowledge and methods to do anything on their own. Therefore, some have pointed out that since the ability to generate or control knowledge rests with non-Practitioners, they must import their knowledge in order to repair the practices of the Practitioners. There are two assumptions operating here: 1) that Practitioners are 2^nd class knowledge users (not makers), and 2) they should become the recipients of a random flow of information.

Since Practitioners have become a communal target, there hasn’t been much inter-disciplinary conflict. In fact, many inquirers use knowledge from various groups. However, as each community puts out new research, the field’s self-image of multi-methodological “progress” is harder to keep up. The stakes for methodological dominance are power, prestige, professional recognition, and advancement. However, North does not envision comp studies as a discipline because such a term implies unity and preparation for doing something. He offers three conditions that must be met in order for composition to be an independent discipline: heightened methodological awareness, methodological egalitarianism, and re-establishing the validity of practice-as-inquiry. North fears that each community will be absorbed by other fields and literary studies will continue to dominate. In order for composition to survive, he argues that we must break away from literature by either taking a larger share of knowledge making or by moving out of English departments, and/or we must establish inter-methodological peace to keep its vital core. North ends by predicting that composition as we know it will disappear and we can only survive by breaking institutional ties with English; however, he also clarifies that he prefers for composition more strongly with English.

Susan Miller

Miller argues that writing in higher education is simultaneously marginal and central. Part of this is because composition is confused about its own goals; thus, it is undermined in universities, and especially by literary studies in English departments. Literary studies are devoted to displacing the ordinary composition circumstances around texts it calls extraordinary; in other words, literary studies must be dissociated from the textual product so that the history of literature is told by “authorship,” whose origins, successes and privileges are considered unbound to the material circumstances of readers and writers.

One justification for why composition became part of English departments is that literary studies needed something practical to add to burgeoning English departments. Both replaced the classics, both were utilitarian means to an educated populace. Each could instill refinements of taste and correct grammar (both necessary in order to be “cultured”). Composition became the location where the unwashed were cleaned; where the masses were convinced of their dirtiness while being saved from it.

The subjectivity of a composition student is often infantilized: comp is seen as a transition-to-college course and often relies on pedagogies used at earlier levels. The student has no choice how the course is run; instead, they are unified with the university’s ideologies, often unaware that such a thing is happening. Miller argues for a politically aware composition course that prepares students to generically “be” writers in the classroom and other settings. Such a move could allow the students and teachers to acknowledge and analyze these hegemonic demands and their implications for the composition students.

Process theory has become one way in composition as legitimated itself as a field (though Lisa Ede would disagree with this notion). However, Miller argues that the paradigm shift for which it called has not yet happened. In fact, she still sees elements of CTR everywhere, and CTR and Process share some elements: priority of speech over writing, student-centered but independent individual, a “goal text” that can accurately represent intentions, and seeing words as having settled meanings. Still, Process Theory stabilized the field because it is “scientific” and gives composition an object of study and allow it to discover self-contained “meanings” in the act of writing. Miller also brings up the issue of the feminization of composition. Not only is it a marginalized field, but it is also taught by more women than men, thus further marginalizing and stigmatizing it. Composition is not considered to be a respectable field to teach. But Process works to reinforce the profession’s claim on a “normal” identity among colleagues. Miller ends by arguing that Composition could make a new identity by acknowledging that it is a culturally designated place for political action; it can work counterhegemonically while showing that making new knowledge is a shared process. We must reconceive the student subjectivity as responsibly, participatory, and potentially influential in writing.

Robert Connors

There is no such thing as CTR: Fogarty (1959) coined it, Young (1978) refined it, but no one has ever claimed to be part of a CTR movement (Eded points to a similar occurrence for Process Theory).

In the 19^th century there was a shift from oral/argumentative rhetoric to written/multimodal rhetoric, which required that the 2500-year-old rhetorical tradition adopt new theory, pedagogies, and cultural status. Women entered the university for the first time, which shifted the possibilities available to genders; the rhetoric in the classroom shifted from agonistic/male to irenic/males and females. Writing tended to be perceive as something both men and women could do, not only men. Through most of the 19^th century, information on composition disseminated through textbooks, not journals or other publications; in 1949, CCCC was founded and journals began to be established. From the 1940s-1990s, journals and textbooks struggled for epistemological primacy.

Connors also points out that the composition teacher used to be revered and well-paid, but is now overworked, ill-paid, and often marginalized.

Sharon Crowley

One of the reasons comp is marginalized is because it tends to focus on processes of learning rather than on acquisition of knowledge. Composition pedagogy focuses on change and development, encourages collaboration, and recognized the work of women long before other fields. In general, composition has little status in the university simply because most other fields tend to forget that it exists and can be a fruitful location for materialist, feminist, ethnicist, and postmodern theories. Teachers of comp are overworked and underpaid (as Miller pointed out) and often employed on a contingent basis. The majority of teachers are part-timers and graduate students, ostensibly because nobody wants to teach it. FYC is associated with teaching, not scholarship; research lead to promotion, but teaching is seen as drudgery.

Like Miller, Crowley also picks up on the tension between comp and lit in English departments. Using literature texts in composition classes only affirms the universal importance of literary study and reinforces the dominance of literature over composition. Also like Miller, Crowley determines that one of the reasons there is such tension between lit and comp is because literary studies suppresses the role of composition in producing literature; they have redefined completed literature as an embodiment of “full, central, and immediate human experience” without accounting for the process it took to get there.

Crowley finds impractical the notion that Comp must prepare students for their fields; every field has such specific requirements that they cannot all be contained in one course.

To Crowley, the pedagogy of tastes (19^th century) is a policing mechanism that works to naturalize that which is culturally instituted and harden class distinctions.

Crowley argues against a universal FYC requirement. She says it exploits teachers and students while having negative effects on curriculum, classroom climates, disciplinary and institutional aspects, and professional issues. She wants us to instill writing vertically and horizontally, across fields. Crowley thinks enrollment will remain high, especially with high caliber instruction. The FYC requirement has nothing to do with student needs, but everything to do with the academy’s image of itself as a place with special language needs.

David Smit

Despite ongoing efforts to unify and professionalize composition studies, Smit argues that we still haven’t come up with a unitary definition of what it is. Smit offers four tenets that can help work toward interdisciplinary consensus about language and how it works: 1) Writing is always constrained by students’ interest and motivation (background and experience), 2) Formal instruction will never be able to supply novice writers with adequate training because language development happens via acquisition, 3) All writing is subject to a range of interpretations, whether intentional or not, 4) All writing is constrained by social context and by the circumstances/concerns of the reader via introspection. He makes two assumptions about comp studies: 1) Writing is a global activity, 2) It is foundational to advanced learning.

Smit believes that Comp should not belong in English departments; instead, individual disiplines should teach their own version of writing.

How I would answer a question on this theme

I probably won’t need to. This document is really just to organize the main theories about the history and state of comp studies.

Composition in Rhetorical Theory

Composition in Rhetorical Theory

Since I’m also sitting for a special field exam in Composition Studies, I probably won’t get a question on this, but it’s best to be prepared. In all reality, unless I am asked to address any of these specific authors, I will likely draw from the Comp Studies reading list for an answer on composition.

Berlin, Blair, Pratt, Winterowd

Blair

Blair’s ideas were rooted in the belletristic tradition, which argued that rhetoric and “polite arts” should be categorized as “rhetoric and belles lettres.” He was interested in notions of taste, style, criticism, and sublimity. He largely discounted the canon of invention and instead believed that genius is the key motivator and enabler to coming up with a topic; this genius cannot be affected by the rules of rhetoric and so cannot be taught. Blair is also concerned with taste, which he defines as “the power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and of art.” There are two facets of good taste: delicacy (feeling well and accurately) and correctness (a standard of good sense). He points out that everyone has taste to some degree, but some are more refined than others due to finer organs and internal powers. However, it is possible to develop taste through exposure to art and literature that those with a more refined taste have deemed “good.” Because of his notions about genius and taste, Blair argues that good writers are developed through acquainting themselves with the best authors. At first, these aspiring-to-be-good writers must recreate the writing of the best authors from memory; however, he does not want them to imitate it, but to adapt their own style to the subject and its hearers/readers. Such pedagogy shows that learning writers do not yet have the genius to devise their own topics and so much take them from others, and it seeks to develop the learner’s taste through exposure to the best works.

It should be noted that though many (most?) composition theorists and practitioners find the belletristic notion Blair propagates to be outdated and not terribly useful for our students, many composition teachers still continue to use this pedagogy in their classrooms. These teachers teach FYC using literary texts and ask students to write papers on them, which limits the number of genres they learn and thus rhetorical situations to which they are prepared to respond. Some scholars (Hairston, for example) think that such practices are the result of FYC being house in English departments where literature scholars hold most of the sway; thus, many of the grad students who teach FYC are aspiring lit scholars who do not want to teach writing and so teach lit instead. But that is a discussion for another question.

Winterowd

Winterowd questions the sanity of requiring FYC, arguing that the justification that details its inherent usefulness is not a good enough reason. He argues that Comp’s real effectiveness comes when we shift from context and content to addresser orientation, what he calls “self-expressive writing”; in other words, he calls for the writer to take the center of their compositions in order to express themselves through writing. He argues against Current-Traditional Rhetoric when he states that there is no such thing as good or bad language, except in relation to a purpose; in other words, there are no “right” or “wrong” words as long as they accomplish their rhetorical goal. Such expressive writing will give students a chance to write toward these goals while also feeling motivated to master the aspects of written English because their writing is centered on them. The role of the instructor in this scenario is to lead students to analyze various texts and to provide feedback. The instructor should also focus on process and much as product. Interestingly, Winterowd’s book is divided into three parts: invention, form, and style, and organizational plan that belies what he believes are the three most important aspects of writing.

Pratt

Pratt exhorts us to use our classrooms as contact zones (social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other) when teaching students. Such pedagogy would resists the hegemonic relationships of power in the academy in order to allow students of various cultures and backgrounds the opportunities to learn about each other and question dominant power structures. Pratt’s argument comes a few years ahead of its time: by the end of the decade in which she wrote, many composition scholars were calling for (and some were arguing against) a critical cultural approach that would perform many of the pedagogical moves Pratt describes. For instance, feminist scholars argued for a more negotiative and irenic rhetoric to be taught (instead of the traditional male, agonistic rhetoric), and digital scholars call into question issues of technological access and how it affects the teaching of underprivileged students.

Berlin

In Rhetoric and Reality, Berlin lists several kinds of rhetoric that have influenced compositin pedagogy. First is objective rhetoric, which led to CTR and behaviorist pedagogies that assumed that teachers do not know how good writers write and whose goal was to make the student self-sufficient and responsible for their work rather than relying on teacher approval; some of its proponents were Lynn and Martin Bloom and Zoellner. Second is subjective rhetoric, which is an expressionist approach that relies on solitary activities and considers group activity to be dangerous. Some proponents of this approach were Macrorie, Murray, and Elbow. Third is transactional rhetoric, which led to Aristotelian pedagogy that studied all elements of the rhetorical situation as involved in the rhetorical act and thus considered rhetorical. Two of its proponents are McDowell and Corbett, who argue respectively that comp courses should include persuasive/expository writing and take social problem as subject matter and that they should include moral and aesthetic issues such as arrangement, style, and the awareness of audience in shaping a discourse. Fourth is the rhetoric of cognitive psychology, which seeks to determine how social and psychological structures influence writing process. For example, in 1971 Janet Emig suggested a longitudinal study of students to learn the developmental dimensions of their writing processes. And finally, epistemic rhetoric argues that writing involves the transmission and generation of knowledge; knowledge is dialectical and thus rhetorical construct. Proponents of this kind of pedagogy are Bruffee and Berthoff.

How I’d answer a question on this theme

I’d probably draw from my Comp Studies list for any question on Comp. Many of these resources (except for Pratt) are outdated and largely out of fashion in Comp Studies. Berlin’s book is still important, but he’s also written other more recent(ish) things since then that are more pertinent. Frankly, most of the Comp stuff on the Rhetoric list is just boring and I don’t want to talk about it in an answer unless I have to (and I have a hunch I won’t have to).

Influence on my Composition Pedagogy

How these readings have influenced my approach to composition pedagogy

McComiskey, Bruffee, Berlin, Shor, general self-awareness (via Hillocks)

I will undoubtedly be asked a question about how all this reading has influenced how I approach pedagogy. I will bring up McComiskey, Bruffee, Berlin, and Shor, as well as discussing the general self-awareness I have gained (via Hillocks perhaps).

McComiskey, Bruffee, Berlin: writing as social epistemic and social process

While doing these readings I was struck by something so obvious that I have always been aware of but have not really put much consideration into: writing is social. I have been doing assignments with my students for a few years where such an assumption was the basis of the project, but had never thought through just how important those assignment are or could be to helping students realize that writing is not just about coming up with what to say, but also saying to others and spreading knowledge.

McComiskey argues that we should teach writing as a social process of cultural production (the creation of social values), contextual distribution (the contexts of cultural values), and critical consumption (the social uses to which readers put their interpretations of produced and distributed cultural values). The example he gives of how this process plays out in the composition classroom involves college viewbooks (brochure-like booklets that promote universities and colleges). Each viewbook propagates its own cultural production of specific values: diversity, educational standards, campus appearance, etc. Then, contextual distribution refers to where the cultural values are presented to audiences: this can be socio-economic class, education level, gender, etc. Finally, critical consumption refers to how the audience interprets the values manifest in the viewbook, such as that the college as a beautiful campus with diverse students and faculty bodies as well as top-notch educational programs. McComiskey has students analyze these viewbooks, looking for both what they show and what they leave out: what cultural values are encoded in these viewbooks and how are they manifested? But what I find most interesting about McComiskey’s argument is that he does not end any of his projects with analysis. Such critique leaves students with the helpless feeling that their world is less than perfect and that there is no way to change it. So he adds an additional step. For the viewbook assignment, he has students make their own viewbooks and comment on how and why they represent what they do the way they do. In another assignment, students analyze a problem on campus then write a letter to campus personnel suggesting how that problem can be solved. I have my students analyze various cultural artifacts, but I have never had them produce their own artifacts or written letters suggesting solutions. It is a useful exercise because it shows students the importance of their writing and how it can impact the world in which they live; it shows them that they can make a difference while teaching them how to address a broader range of audiences. Importantly, it also gives them a sense of closure by allowing them to voice their opinions in the public sphere.

My approach has also been influenced by Bruffee and Berlin, both of whom argue a social constructionist/epistemic approach. Bruffee argues for a social construction pedagogy that recognizes that thought is internalized conversation and, since writing is externalized thought, writing is re-externalized conversation; thus, students must work collaboratively in order to both refine thought and practice conversation, therefore leading to better writing. Most importantly, collaborative learning also challenges authority by revealing that is a social artifact; in other words, it shows students that knowledge is negotiable: it can be challenged and changed through conversation with others. This plays right into Berlin’s social epistemic approach. He argues that knowledge and truth are constructed socially via dialectic, and that such conversations determine reality and knowledge.

The notions of McComiskey, Bruffee, and Berlin have inspired a new project my students will work on next semester in ENGL 104. In the last five or so weeks of the semester, students will work collaboratively together to use expertise from their major field to solve a problem on campus. In groups of 3-4, they will identify and analyze a problem or shortcoming they find here on campus, perform research on it, and suggest how to solve it. The example I’ll give them is that an engineering major, business major, physics major, and environmental sciences major could work together to argue that the Huskie buses should be replaced by more efficient biodiesel or hybrid buses, drawing on each other’s expertise to show the cost benefit, environmental benefit, and other benefits their field’s knowledge can bring them. In the process of this project, they will present their research at the Showcase of Student Writing. The final product will be a research proposal in which they will target someone on campus to whom they can appeal with their solution to the problem or shortcoming. Thus, they will gain a greater understanding of how their writing is part of a social process and that their knowledge is socially constructed.

Ira Shor

Another resource that has influenced my pedagogy is Ira Shor’s notion of making the classroom more democratic. He worked with the students in his class to negotiate course policies in an effort to get them more invested in the class and to alleviate the Siberian Syndrome (the name he gives to some students’ penchant for sitting in the far reaches of class in an effort to, in some small way, challenge the authority of the teacher). Shor also implemented an After Class Group (ACG) to meet after each class session to discuss how it went and how he can do better. I’m really interested in this idea of giving students more power in the classroom in order to help them become more civically and democratically engaged citizens beyond the classroom, but I’m not yet ready to give up as much power as Shor did. After reading this book (near the end of the semester), I altered my approach to preparing students to write their semester reflections. I engaged them in a discussion (with some light reading) on what reflection is, how it benefits them, and what kind of rhetorical moves a good one should make. Then, as a class, they came up with a list of 10 questions an effective reflection should be able to answer. Then, they negotiated the criteria on which I would grade them. The result was some of the most interesting reflections I have ever read; the students were clearly invested in the assignment because the guidelines were more transparent, and they had a hand in determining every aspect of it. As Shor cautioned, not every student was on board and invested, but more students put more effort into a usually hastily completed assignment than I had previously experienced; I’m excited to see next semester if this was just a one-time fluke or if it is a consistent pedagogical success.

General Self-Awareness (via Hillocks)

The most important influence on my pedagogy is a general increase in my self-awareness as a teacher. It was genuinely fun to read these works and discover how the assignments I’ve been doing (many of which have been inherited from ENGL 600) fit into the map of pedagogical approaches out there. For instance, ENGL 103’s arch from personal to public draws on elements of Expressionism’s writing to express oneself and Social Constructivism’s/Epistemic’s notion that knowledge is produced socially and that writing needs to be adapted to various audiences. Assignments like the visual analysis draw on a Cultural Criticism approach, while the blog project draws on aspects of digital composition and new media. I obviously knew that these assignments were valuable to students, but now I know why they are useful and have resources on which I can draw in order to perform the kind of critical reflection Hillocks calls for teachers to do. Hillocks says that we must reflect on our teaching constantly (both in the classroom while teaching and out of it) in order to assess how we are helping our students and how we can do it better. I’ve already started making changes to my course curriculums based on the readings from my list and will undoubtedly make more as I reflect on my teaching and adapt it to help my students as much as possible.

Composition Pedagogies

Major Approaches to Composition Pedagogies

Belletristic (19^th C): using literature to teach writing

Blair: the key to learning to write well is reading the best authors in order to develop taste

• Imitate their style (Connors)

The problem with the belletristic tradition is that it focuses too much on the product of writing

• Students always compare themselves to literary greats – look like failures by comparison

Another problem is that the kind of critical thinking you use when analyzing lit, while important, is not the only kind of critical thinking

• They must develop the ability to think/write in/about other genres

Current-Traditional (19^th C – now): Fogarty (1959) coined it; Young (1978) refined it

• Knoblauch pointed out that it doesn’t mean anything – no one is a member of the “CTR paradigm” (Connors)
• Emphasis on final product – loves the 5-paragraph essay
• Major focus on error-free prose as part of the final product
• Static abstractions: Unity, Mass, Coherence, Denotation, Metaphor, etc (Connors)
• Four genres: exposition, description, narration, and argument (EDNA) (Crowley)
• Truth exists prior to language (Berlin)
  • Language is a distorting mechanism that either alters the original perception or captures the original experience so it can be reproduced exactly (Berlin)
• There is no invention – ideas for texts are given, or other texts are imitated
• 19^th C’s pedagogical concern with clean texts are a reflection of a greater cultural attempt to convince the masses of their dirtiness while saving them from it
• Conservative – resistant to rule changes – reinforces traditions and lines of authority
  • Conservative: respect for human proclivity to go wrong; point of education is to acquaint new generations with old traditions (Crowley)

Blair, Campbell, Whately, Bain: Good style requires purity and propriety

• Invention does not exist – genius supplies the topic

Berlin and Inkster show how the CTR method restricts writer engagement with audience

• It also diminishes the importance of the author
• It focuses too much on the product

Process Theory (1972): developed as a response to CTR

• Professionalized the teaching of comp (Crowley)
• Reconceptualized students as writers (Crowley)
• Gave comp teachers something to study – a substance on which to base a field (Hairston)
• Main genre is expressive/expository essay (Crowley)
• Liberal – encourages novice writers to write freely as individuals
  • Liberal: humans are inherently good; point of education is to help individuals get better at what they do (Crowley)

Donald Murray: Three stages: prewriting, writing, rewriting

• Gives students the chance to own their writing, subject/truth, language
• Multiple drafts with focus on mechanics coming last
• The process is individualized

Janet Emig: teaching in intervention into a process to improve the process or the product of that process – the process is internalized and deliberate (not arbitrary)

• Two modes of intervention: 1) proffering freedoms; 2) establishing constraints

Peter Elbow: Freewriting as a means of invention

• Generating raw material and figuring out what to say

Susan Miller points out that PT did not create some major paradigm shift – shares a lot with CTR

• Both describe a student-centered but independent individual
• Both assume a “goal text,” or final version,” that could accurately represent intentions
• Both see words as having settled meanings
• Still, she acknowledges that it stabilized the field and gave scholars a subject to study

Lisa Ede argues that the Process Movement is not responsible for legitimizing the field

• Many other things were happening at the same time that worked to professionalize Comp
• She also argues that we use the term “Process Movement” in much the same way that we use “CTR”: no one in the “movement” referred to it as a movement, and it was named after the fact as a derogatory term against which define the new theories and make them look better

Post-Process Theory/ies argue against Process (see below), but David Foster defends it

• It legitimized the field of Comp and kept admins from over-enrolling classes in the 80s
  • Relationships between teacher and students are individualized, yet regularized
• He cautions that PPT’s turn toward the social endangers this progress and threatens to invalidate writing programs

Post-Process Theory: Actually a collection of (sometime conflicting theories) that are a reaction to process theory

• Three assumptions: 1) Writing is public, 2) Writing is interpretive, 3) Writing is situated (Kent)

Nancy Blyler: Flaws of PT: 1) The belief that composing is a systematic, codifiable entity that we can isolate and examine, 2) Assuming that understanding and mastering the codifiable entity are necessary prerequisites to learning how to write

• PPT scholars believe mediation of process is unnecessary – knowledge of the world/writing results directly from interpretation
• PPT entails hermeneutic guessing as paralogic: writing can never be codified or reduced to a comp process – writers guess until they find a fit between their strategy and another’s in order to create understanding

Helen Rothschild Ewald: PPT acknowledges that teachers are tools of the dominant culture – to hide that is to hide traces of power, tradition, and authority present at the scene of writing

• PPT exposes that power
• PPT situates communicative interaction in writers’ existing cultural, local, personal forces
  • Students make their own knowledge through writing

David Russell: Activity Theory – analyzing writing processes in terms of different networks of human activity can help us understand how writing works and people work with writing, individually and collectively

– An activity system is a unit of analysis of social and individual behavior

Fulkerson and Bloom both say that there is no such thing as a Post-Process Theory

• It is an oxymoron – there is no agreed-upon meaning for it – it is just a way of seeming au currant
• There are three meanings:
  • 1) Field no longer researches processes
  • 2) (Kent) “Process” implies regular, sequential procedures, but writing is discursive and messy
  • 3) Process is an isolated writer making personal meaning alone, and we are beyond that

Cognitive Process Theory (1981): developed by Flower and Hayes to describe how writers approach a writing task

• Thinking exists in the mind apart from language
• Concerned with how language is developed from the mental processes of the mind
• Concerned with goals of the writer, and decisions made during composing

Sondra Perl: examined unskilled writers moving through three stages of prewriting, writing, editing

• Found that composition is not linear
• Focusing on fixing surface errors intrudes in the process
• Teachers need to find aspects of each student’s process facilitate/inhabit writing

Flower and Hayes – four points:

• Writing is a set of distinctive thinking processes orchestrated by writers while composing
  • The process is recursive and nonlinear
• These processes have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any given process can be embedded within any other
• Composing is the goal: directed thinking process, guided by writer’s own growing network of goals
• Writers create goals in two ways:
  • 1) Generating high level and sublevel goals that embody the writer’s developing sense of purpose
  • 2) Changing major goals or establishing new ones based on what has been learned in the act of writing
• Theory emphasized writers’ powers of invention
  • It puts the credibility (exploring idea; developing, acting on, testing, and generating goals) in the writer’s hands

Marilyn Cooper and Michael Holzman dismantle Cognitive Process Theory

• The belief on which it is based (that writing is thinking and therefore an essentially cognitive process) obscures many aspects of writing we have come to see as not peripheral
• Language and texts are social activities that depend on social structures and processes
• Flower and Hayes’s model is too underspecified to be testable
  • Testing their central hypothesis (that writing is a goal-directed process) requires a definition of goals and a discussion of the distinctions and relationships between at least goals and plans if not also between goals and scripts
• Flower and Hayes claim that protocols give direct access to writers’ cognitive processes
  • But this claim cannot be granted on both theoretical and methodological grounds
  • Any research methodology that ignores the context in which writing takes place cannot produce valid data
• But Cooper and Holzman emphasize the importance of F and H’s work – they have identified the proper goal of research, but they have not given an ecologically valid, replicable research methodology
  • Cognitive psychology could still help us understand the recursive and complex writing process

Expressionism: Truth can be learned, not taught, through the act of writing

• Goal is to find your one true voice and to learn to use that voice in all areas
• Personal narratives are the best way to find this voice, along with journals, freewriting, and imitation practices (Elbow)
• Concentrate on process, not product

Donald Murray: writing is a process of discovery and experimentation

• It is a search for truth in a specious world
• Writing is an exploration of what we know and feel about what we know through language using language to learn about our world, evaluate that knowledge, and communicate it

Maxine Hairston: calls for a non-prescriptive atmosphere in teaching, including less focus on grammar and syntax

–     Instead, focus on the process of growth experienced by the writer

Peter Elbow: Emphasizes freewriting as a way to translate the messy chaos of though to the page

• Helps writers explore what they want to say
• Supports private writing and low stakes assignments in general
  • This allows writers to write for a variety of audiences and find their voices
• Wants to provide a classroom space that makes “mother tongues” feel safe, but also trains students to survive in the real writing world by teaching them SWE

James Berlin: Critiques Expressionism in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Classroom” (1988) – says that the fragmentary nature of expressionism and its emphasis on the individual and her resistance to dominant “economic, political, and social arrangements” deprived expressionsists of real political power.

• Expressivists ran a depoliticized classroom that ignored social, economic, and political circumstances of its students/institutions
• Berlin is dismayed at the notion that all humans have the same common core (a collective or shared experience)

Social Constructionist/ Epistemic Rhetoric/ New Rhetoric: language and the mind are inseparable – and individual needs language to think

• Writing is inherently political in nature and writers are part of a discourse community with an assumed set of principles and a distinct language of its own

Patricia Bizzell: attacks cognitivists’ belief that writing can be understood as distinct sets of mental processes

• These theories focus too much on the individual writer’s language and learning processes and overlooking the importance of society and discourse communities in composition

• Instead, Bizzell believes writing takes place within a community
  • In order to improve composition, teacher’s need to explain what the community’s conventions are

James Berlin: Rhetoric is epistemic – it is a means of arriving at truth

• Truth itself is dynamic and dialectical
  • It arises out of the interaction of writer, language, reality, and audience
• Rhetoric determines what is considered reality/knowledge
  • The writer is the creator of meaning, not the passive receptor
• Truth is not discoverable via sense impression – it must be interpreted to have meaning
  • It is impossible without language since language generates it
• It’s the most practical approach to teaching and studying rhetoric
  • It emphasizes invention via heuristics to discover truth
  • Attention to arrangement and style is more fastidious than in CTR
    • Structure/language as the center of discovering truth, not just dressing up thought
  • Closer to classical rhetoric in written language than CTR, Neo-Platonic, or Neo-Aristotelian

Kenneth Bruffee: Reflective thought and social conversation are related functionally

• Thought is internalized conversation, so they act the same way
• Thought is an artifact created by social interaction
  • To understand how we think requires us to understand the nature of conversation
    • Which requires us to understand the nature of community life that generates and maintains conversation
  • To think well individually, we need to learn to think well collectively (to converse)
  • Therefore, writing is internalized conversation re-externalized
• The ways students talk with each other determines the way they will write
• Knowledge is established/maintained by communities of knowledgeable peers – it is what we agree it is, for the time being
• Collaborative learning challenges authority of knowledge by revealing that authority is a social artifact

Social (Process/Action) Theory:

Marilyn Cooper and Michael Holzman argue for composition as a social action

• Writers bring entire communities with them when they write
  • To ignore these communities is to ignore the complexities of social structure and dynamic that characterizes writing
• Social means real interaction among social groups and individuals – Writing is a way of interacting with others
• The purpose of FYC is to convince students of the value of using writing to criticize and change their social world
  • Students need to see the immediate value of what we are asking them to do
• C and H do not like the use of the word “discourse community”
  • A discourse community is useful for characterizing a group of people who have certain assumptions, knowledge values, and interests that its members hold in common and who use certain language conventions
  • But it is also a way of labeling individuals as insiders or outsiders
    • It can regulate who has access to power, resources, even discourse itself, and creates gatekeepers to make sure that the right people get in and all others are excluded

Bruce McComiskey: Social theory offers a wealth of critical methodologies for interrogating social institutions and cultural artifacts

• He proposes a cyclical model of the writing process that accounts for the composing strategies of individual and collaborative writers as well as the socio-discursive lives of texts
  • 1) Cultural production; 2) Contextual distribution; 3) Critical consumption of cultural values
  • Careful rhetorical interventions into this cycle make reforms possible
    • The process of intervention turns useful knowledge into shared knowledge and enhances the potential for social change that is less likely to occur if students end their composing processes with critical essays
    • Critique alone leaves students feeling helpless – there is no way to change the world
    • Students need to learn to produce their own values/identities, not just to critique texts that promote other values and identities
    • They learn that individual texts participate in larger contexts of institutional discourses that are steeped in cultural and social values, and the success of any text relies ultimately on its interactions within these discursive environments

Critical Cultural Studies / Feminist Approach: Both deal with critiquing culture, dominant discourses, essentialism, and identity politics (especially feminism for the last one)

• Both have an activist proclivity and background
• Both articulate differences and show privilege/erasure of some categories by others
• Credentials for CCS courses: 1) cultural activity is interpretation, 2) multiple texts reflect one theme, 3) interpretive move assumes artifact/text reveals deep structural truths about power in American society, 4) Students write papers interpreting social artifacts, 5) course goal is to empower and liberate students (Fulkerson)
• Philosophy of composition questions:
  • 1) teacher cannot be oppressor
  • 2) knowledge is socially constructed through dialectic exchanges (Fulkerson)

Sally Miller Gearhart: recognizes that students have varied backgrounds and languages, not all of which are accepted by the academy

• Feminism rejects the notion that these students must give up their “home” language and instead adopt traditional academic discourse

Pamela Annas: women’s writing should be grounded in the self and women’s lives – marginalized students should not have to ignore these aspects of themselves in order to achieve academic discourse

• For many it is impossible
• They should use writing to validate their lives instead – as instructors, we can help them

Gearhart and Annas represent a politicized approach that combines feminism and composition in order to create a place where all aspects of the self come together to stimulate and create change

Patricia Sullivan: Comp studies it too slow in examining how gender informs writing

• She examines research/teaching practices, classroom/mentoring experiences, and student published writing – she finds a pervasive androcentrism in comp studies
  • She asks how gender shapes the writing situation

Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede: Found two kinds of writing

• Hierarchical (masculine): writing delegated by superior and implies bureaucratic writing – values efficiency; sees multiple voices and shifting authority as problems
• Dialogic (feminine): values fluidity of meaning, openness, and creative tension – writing as producing (not discovering) knowledge – has potential to challenge phallogocentric, subject-centered discourse

Catherine Lamb: Favors a negotiative, mediating rhetoric (cooperative approach to resolve conflicts) over the divisiveness of a monologic argument (emphasizes its own interests and only acknowledges opposition to refute it)

• Power is not a quality to exercise on others, but a force that energizes and enables competence and reduces hierarchy
• The goal is to see knowledge as collaborative, cooperative, and constructed

Nancy D. DeJoy: feminist discourse allow us to accommodate critical practices within the dominant frame

• She calls for the revision of process in order to allow for the opportunity for critical understandings
• As it is, process forces students to recognize stereotypes and recreate them (to appeal to audience) rather than break them down
• Reposition writers as participatory subjects – rearrange context and challenge its limitations

Patricia Bizzell: the instructor should be true to herself (and her social/political/economic beliefs) in front of the class without inundating her students

• Composition can make the world a better place
  • Do the proper work of teaching comp – helps students succeed beyond college
  • While doing this, raise issues of social justice and foster reflection on rhetorical methods of engaging them
  • Help them connect with professor’s personality and values

David Foster is against challenging cultural cites in these ways

• Students want to avoid conflict in classrooms, not seek it out
• He warns that PPT scholars/teachers need to think carefully about the effects of dissonance in the writing classroom
  • 1) Difference must be framed in and interactive structure and laid out for all participants
  • 2) Teachers must prepare themselves/students for personal tensions created by dissonance/conflict
  • 3) Classrooms valuing difference – articulating differences is risky, stressful, and potentially painful

Richard Fulkerson also argues against it – he thinks they seem inappropriate

• The reading, analyzing, and discussing upon which course rests are not conducive to actual writing instruction – there is no time to do it all
• And the likelihood of indoctrination is high – cannot accept opposing viewpoints or register contemporary relevance