"Composition and Communication: Chronicling a Discipline's Genesis" (Donna Burns Phillips, Ruth Greenberg, and Sharon Gibson)

We began this study assuming that we could read the pages of CCC as a transcript of the ongoing conversation of CCCC. Examining each issue published between 1950 and May of 1993... (443)

In these years, CCC records the making of a new professional field. Changes in its appearance, in the content of the conversations contained between its covers, and in the conventions for conducting those conversations suggest that while such growth may have been unimagined by, or even unimaginable for, the early CCC editors, by the mid-seventies, composition had become a specific area of study, and at the end of the eighties, a potential discipline still experimenting with methodology and refining its theoretical, pedagogical, political, and social vision. (445)

Early issues consisted almost entirely of actual reprints or adaptations of CCCC presentations. In 1950, convention-based articles accounted for 47% of all signed articles; by 1964, the figure is less than 5%. (445)

Another significant change was the addition in 1975 of Richard Larson's annual annotated "Selected Bibliography of Research and Writing About the Teaching of Composition." The need for a formal, systematic report of published pieces implies not only an expanding body of work in the field, but also a growing sense of disciplinary corpus. (446)

There is a dramatic contrast in the number of citations between early and recent CCC issues, attributable to the developing body of composition scholarship, the maturing of the field, the increasing demand for theoretical grounding of pedagogical practices, and the political necessity for supporting the professionalism of the discipline. During the early years of CCC, authors neither possessed nor professed a body of scholarship to call their own, and they did not acknowledge their sources in any formal or consistent way; the composition community for a long time did not require the formal conventions of reference expected in an established field. Moreover, early articles most frequently offered advice about teaching, and authors relied on personal experience and opinion to produce "here's what works for me" or "here's what we do at our school" articles. (451)

 (p.452)

Period: 1965-79

Between 1965 and 1979, formal citation counts from the beginning to the end of the period differ substantially, despite the facts that no standard style sheet was published in CCC at that time and that many authors continued to include casual references rather than formal footnotes or endnotes. (452)

We often consider 1965-1979 as a period of exploration, so it is not surprising that few individual writers received over two percent of the scholarly mentions. An examination of frequently cited authors who were not among the top ten suggests the variety in the profession's interest. (453)

Certain books published between 1965 and 1979 emerge as central to that period: Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student; Martin Steinmann, Jr.'s New Rhetorics; Young, Becker, and Pike's Rhetoric: Discovery and Change; and Gary Tate's Teaching Composition: Ten Bibliographic Essays. (453)

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 (p. 454)

1950-1964

In these early years, the composition classrooms and what teachers-and, to a lesser degree, students-did therein were the primary concerns: graduate programs in rhetoric and composition were non-existent and composition teachers were usually new hires, adjunct faculty, or graduate students in literature programs. The prominence of the word teaching in article titles bears witness to the prevalence and diversity of classroom-related articles and concerns: teaching diction, teaching style, teaching reading, teaching exposition, teaching spelling, teaching the research paper, teaching the "sub-freshman,"and teaching teachers. (454-455)

1965-1979 

 In 1965, CCCC still rested on the foundation of literature and literary criticism, for even when rhetoric or composition appeared in a title, the focus was upon words and small units of texts, on style in the canonical literature. By 1975, however, there were fewer references to literature-only 26 (and 10 of those in a single article)-but to 23 linguistics and 94 (excluding Richard Larson'sbibliography) to rhetoric and composition. Likewise, in the texts of articles, the uncited mention of literary figures decreased considerably, replaced by mention of writers in composition or adjacent fields: one example comes from Ann Berthoff's brief "Counterstatement" response, which names a new corps of knowledge-makers (216-17). All but three of the footnoted references to linguistics; and many of those to literature, concern the special issues of Black English and sexist language. (457)

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For the most part, our conversation has moved from informal anecdotal beginnings to heavily-documented scholarly articles that reflect the best and worst tendencies of professional academic discourse. (461)