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.

The Process Movement in Composition Studies

The Process Movement in Composition Studies

Murray, Crowley, Elbow, Flower and Hayes, Sommers, Perl, Emig, Kent, Foster, Miller, Ede

The process movement is traditionally thought to be the salvation of Compositions studies that was developed as a response to current-traditional rhetoric while both professionalizing the teaching of comp and reconceptualizing students as writers (Crowley). Hairston has said that it gave composition teachers something to study, something vaguely scientific, upon which to base a field. The main genre is considered the expressive/expository essay. One of the biggest debates in Comp Studies is whether or not a paradigm shift called the “process movement” really occurred, or if it just reinforced old notions in a new way.

Advocating Process

Donald Murray outlined the three stages of the process in his “Teach Writing As Process Not Product”: prewriting, writing, revising. He argues that such a process gives students the chance to won their writing, subject, truth, and language – they are in control of what they produce because the process is individualized to what each student needs. Students produce multiple drafts with a focus on mechanics coming as the last step. Peter Elbow advocates a similar process and has promoted freewriting as a means of invention that can serve as part of the prewriting stage. While prewriting, students generate raw material and figure out what to say. Elbow asserts that freewriting makes revision easier for students later because they have not yet crafted their writing in any way; thus, they are less attached to it and will be less likely to resist moving, deleting, and/or adding new material. Janet Emig also adds onto this original notion of process by advocating intervention: a teacher should intervene into a process sin order to improve the process itself or the product it produces. There are two modes of intervention: proffering freedoms or establishing constraints.

Other proponents of a kind of process are Linda Flower and John Hayes. Flower and Hayes developed the cognitive process theory to describe how writers approach a writing task. They argue that thinking exists in the mind apart from language, and they are concerned with how language is developed from the mental process of the mind. They posit a model of cognition that focuses on how the writer sets goals and makes decisions during the composition process.

One contemporary defender of process is David Foster. He uses the process movement to argue against cultural criticism in the composition classroom, which he argues is too politically charged and is likely to, through exposing and exploiting difference, offend and hurt some students. Instead, he argues that we should stick to process because it not only legitimated our field, but that a turn to the culture may even threaten to undo all the progress we made through using the process movement to establish ourselves.

Neutral?

Perl and Sommers examined revision processes of both unskilled novices and adults; their findings contradict the notion of a linear process. Perl examined unskilled writers moving through the three stages, and found that composition is recursive: the writers continuously moved back and forth among the three stages. Likewise, Sommers’ study of student writers and experienced adult writers found that each demographic revises in drastically different manners: the students focused on local revision only, but did not focus on conceptual, global matters, while the adults saw composing as constantly writing and rewriting. These findings suggest that there is no “Process,” but perhaps a series of “processes” that are individualized to each writer, and perhaps even assignment.

Post-Process

Thomas Kent developed the term “post process” to refer to a collection of sometimes conflicting theories that are a reaction to process theory. These theories maintain three assumptions: Writing is public, it is interpretative, and it is situated. In other words, it works against the notion that writing (via process) implies regular, sequential procedures and that it is an isolated writer making personal meaning along. We have come to understand writing as a messy and discursive process and that meaning is created socially (Bruffee, Cooper, McComiskey). I tend to agree with Richard Fulkerson and Lynn Bloom that there is no such thing as post-process theory. Fulkerson and Bloom argue that the term is an oxymoron and there is no agreed-upon meaning for it; indeed, it seems as if Kent’s definition of post-process is broad enough to encompass any pedagogy that is not considered current-traditional or process, such as critical cultural approaches and social epistemic/constructionist approaches.

No Such Thing As Process Movement

Susan Miller and Lisa Ede go one step further and propose that there never was anything such thing as a “Process Movement.” First, Miller points out that, though process stabilized the field, there was no major paradigm shift: Process Theory shares a lot with Current-Traditional: Both describe a student-centered by independent pedagogy, both assume a “goal text” or final version that could accurately represent intentions, both see words as having settled meanings.

Ede agrees, going so far as to assert that there was never anything as unified and coherent as a “process movement.” As she points out, the very scholars often attributed to the process movement (Emig, Perl, Sommers, Flower and Hayes) do not themselves use the term “process movement.” Further, there is no such thing as “post-process” because, not only was there never a process movement, but also elements of process are everywhere in our pedagogies: drafting, revising, etc). Finally, process was the not the primary engine of comp’s professionalization; there were multiple movements underway at the same time, such as seminars, institutes, conferences, workshops, and the rise of basic writing. Ede argues that the term “process movement” functions in much the same way “current traditional” does in that it is a “floating signifier”: everyone recognizes it in its context, but a concrete definition is difficult to pin down. However, it enables scholars to pit new theories against a generalized and devalued past that poses a threat to current efforts.

How would I answer a question on this theme?

I would do it in much the same way I do here. I set up the process proponents, then the neutral side, then post-process, then those who think the process movement never existed. I’d side with Ede’s argument. As I was reading all of these texts on process, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was uncomfortable with it conception. It wasn’t until I got to Ede’s text that I realized Process had been CTRed: vilified and denigrated despite it never once articulating itself as a coherent theory or pedagogy.

“Politics” in Composition Studies

The “Politics” of Composition Studies

Should FYC exist? Should it be required? Where should it be housed?

Crowley, Smit, Bartholomae, Hairston, S. Miller

In Textual Carnivals, Susan Miller argues for Comp to make a new identity by acknowledging that it is a culturally designated place for political action; in other words, Comp teachers must account for the political event their work constitutes. She discusses how Lit Studies devalues Comp, but at the same time Comp is attached to Lit. But, as Miller points out, maintaining Comp as a field divorced from Lit affirms that there is a language other than literary activity; in other words, it shows that writing is not just a masterpiece product: there is a process behind writing to which students have access. Although, even this mention of process is problematic because the paradigm shift promised by process theory has not quite happened. In fact, process shares a lot in common with current traditional rhetoric. One of the most interesting discussions Miller has about Comp involves its “feminization”: more women than men teach it, and the image of the comp teacher is powerless yet authoritarian, occupying the transgressive, low status site form which language may be arbitrated. Miller argues that by creating a new political identity for Comp, two things will happen: 1) It will becomes a place for counter-hegemony, 2) Making new knowledge will becomes a shared (not isolated) process. Another product of this redefinition of student writing and subjectivity will change the view that Comp is a punitive and infantilizing course; instead, we can focus on student empowerment by reconceiving the student as responsible, participatory, and potentially influential in writing.

In Composition in the University, Sharon Crowley argues against a universal requirement for FYC. One of the main themes Crowley picks up on is the tension between Comp and Literary Studies; Comp is often seen as the lesser of the two and therefore is taken less seriously than Lit. This relegates FYC to nothing more than a service course. Crowley also points to the irony that FYC is valued enough to be required, but not enough to adequately provide for its teaching; the majority of FYC teachers are part-time or grad students. She explains that FYC is associated with teaching, not scholarship, but research is what leads to promotion. Thus, FYC teachers are held in lower esteem and attached to a negative stigma. Crowley argues that since FYC was developed as a punitive course for students who did not write up to the expectations of university admissions personnel, it should no longer be universally required for all students; such requirement exploits teachers and students, and it has negative curricular, classroom, disciplinary, institutional, and professional effects. Without a first-year requirement, we could install writing vertically and horizontally, across fields. She defends her stance against some potential opponents: to those who would argue that FYC teachers would lose jobs, she asserts a belief that enrollment will remain high, especially with high caliber instruction; to those who argue that students who take it won’t need it, she asserts that we can either trust students to decide if they need it, or, she hesitatingly adds, universities can maintain testing to ensure students who need the course take the course. Crowley finishes by claiming that the abolition of a universal requirement can provide the opportunity for writing to be installed at various other locations and departments on campus, rather than only in the first year. This vertical writing curriculum would have a goal to help students understand what composing is and to articulate its roles in their intellectual lives.

David Smit’s The End of Composition Studies is a play on words: he means not only the “end” as in the goal, but also the “end” as in the termination. He argues not for Comp to be abolished, for it to be taught by specific disciplines. He thinks that the best way to create broad-based ability is to encourage novice writers to learn the genres of the discourse communities students intend to join. Beyond the sentence level, Smit sees very little in common among various types of writing; each kind requires different knowledge, conventions, organization, rhetorical strategy, and processes. It is a misguided notion, he argues, that good writers have mastered some general syntax in an introductory course. Instead, he points out that the expected length and/or complexity of sentences varies from genre to genre, and different discourses require different knowledge and skills. We should think of teaching as training and shaping practice over time until it fits into some range of a discourse community. Such an approach assumes students will want to participate because they want to join that community. Finally, Smit proposes and three-pronged approach to teaching writing instruction:

1. Teach sentence fluency and editing, analysis and critique – Introduction to Writing as Social Practice (one semester, responsibility of individual departments)
2. Advanced practice in domains, disciplines, professions, discourse communities – Writing in [Field]
3. Initiate writers into writing beyond the classroom – Writing “on the Job”

Smit wants universities to offer and require as much writing as possible because it’s their ethical responsibility to make this important knowledge available to students. Smith reinforces his notions by insisting that English departments need to integrate into other fields, become more interdisciplinary, and reduce their role in writing; most of the teaching in Comp is done by graduate students who have no interest in it.

In “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing,” Maxine Hairston calls for Comp to split off from English departments. She spends most of the article enumerating all the reasons why a critical culture approach to composition instruction has no business in the curriculum, but she raises an interesting point when she blames this political fad on Comp’s placement as part of English programs. She argues that scholars of literary criticism, as the top of the totem pole in English studies, sets trends that other below tend to follow. As deconstruction, post-structuralism, and Marxism have dwindle in literary studies (this is in the early 90s), Comp Studies has picked them up and applied them to its theory and pedagogy. She dislikes this turn of events and blames it entirely on Comp’s location in English departments. She implies here (and outright states during her CCCC Chair’s Address in the 80s) that Comp Studies should break off from English departments.

In Writing on the Margins, a collection of seminal works, David Bartholomae states that Comp Studies should remain within English departments. He sees Composition as a commitment to do work with a commitment to the values of and problems of English. His stance is both personal and political. It is personal because, as he points out, literary training for Comp teachers enables them to learn key skills like close reading, and it prepares one to assign values to acts of writing, and to think about writing in relation to history and culture; it’s political because he argues that the routes for professionalization in Comp have already been paved in English departments. Because we are part of an established department, we have access to funding and opportunities that would not be available otherwise. He thinks Comp professors would also lose access to tenure-track employment. Interestingly, Bartholomae makes this argument while also acknowledging the Comp’s denigration comes not from outside disciplines, but from those within English who attack Comp Studies, such as literary studies.

If I had to answer a question on this theme

I’d outline the major stances and support for them: Miller thinks Comp needs to redefine itself politically; Crowley thinks Comp should not be required; Smit thinks individual disciplines should teach Comp; Hairston thinks Comp should not be housed in English; and Bartholomae thinks Comp should remain housed within in English, ostensibly with no paradigm changes. I’m not quite sure what to make of this debate. Part of me thinks Comp should abandon English for the sake of distancing itself from a discipline that has been trying to hold it back, but doing so would cause Comp personnel to lose access to the opportunities afforded by being part of an established field. Another part of me is as optimistic as Crowley that even if Comp isn’t required, students will still want to enroll in it, but another part of me has a hard time believing that to be true. Even if I were to wholeheartedly support the notion that Comp should leave English, I would not support it for the reasons Hairston gave, but for the ones that Smit did. Instead of any of these options, it seems to me that Comp should stay in English, but actively work to make Literary Studies respect it. However, I suspect that this is the approach that has been undertaken for decades, and that Miller, Crowley, Smith, Hairston, and Bartholomae wrote because it has not been working.

In other words, I don’t really have a stance on this issue, so I’ll need to develop one within the next two weeks.