Something different

So, this is a different kind of entry. One thing that has been interesting for me this year has been teaching at RIC, and the little bit of conversation I have had with Marjorie about writing. It has been a bit of a struggle for us. We are coming from different places, even though we are coming from, basically, the same place. Talking with Marjorie the few times we have talked has caused me to wonder about my own theoretical orientation within the field of comp/rhetoric. 

At one point, I would have described myself as a process person. I come from a long line of UNHers who are committed to the idea of the writing process, to teaching the process. But, something happened near the end of my graduate training that began to change the way I locate myself.

I think I can attribute this change to two events:

1. My dissertation project.
   
2. Teaching professional/technical communication.

Why these two events? What are the terms that changed me or changed my thinking?

Activity Theory

Genre Theory

Rhetorical Moves

writing that does things

social act/community

Today, I read a review of three books on teaching academic writing: "Rhetorics of Critical Writing: Implications for Graduate Writing Instruction" by Laura R. Micciche (CCC 60.3, February 2009). This is the book that really got me thinking about these questions of professional (theoretical? pedagogical? I never quite know how to differentiate these two terms). Here are some of the passages that really struck me, from Micciche's review: 

These experiences seem to inform each author’s flexible constructs of writing expressed through an accessible vocabulary and a broadly conceived context, allowing their insights to obtain across a variety of settings. “Writing” is not a synonym for first-year writing or composition; for each author, the starting point for academic writing is engagement with other texts, and the approach to writing is informed more by rhetorical moves and genre conventions than by specific tasks or assignment types. Thus, according to the authors, writing is not best characterized as a process, though process theory is relevant to each author’s emphasis on feedback and revision, nor is it a compilation of static skills (develop a thesis, support it, form an argument, address counter-claims, etc.). Writing is instead a dynamic operation, a social act that does something within a community of writers and readers, and a material practice embedded in a complex web of relationships among readers, writers, other texts, and sets of experience. (emphasis added, W36)

That last line seems to characterize my own positioning. Whereas, it seems, Marjorie and the process folks (traditional) are still focused on the writer, and working towards the "revelation" that they, themselves, experienced, as a result of being a part of the writing process movement, I seem to have moved on to place writers in communities and to see writing as caught up in relationships. This, especially, as a result of the work of my dissertation and listening to my research participants write about their workplace writing.

What interests me in the following passage is this idea of an "emerging trend" in the way we talk about writing. I'm not sure how emergent this is for all in the field--I think Gary Olsen wrote about the "intellectual work" of writing some ways back. But it does feel like an emerging trend for me and has certainly been an emerging trend in my intellectual life. It is, for me, the thing that separates me from my UNH process-parents.

Interestingly, [Harris'] theory of writing as performative coincides with Clark’s focus on rhetorical moves, detailed above. This more than coincidental convergence around writerly moves, together with insights from genre theory that posit genres as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (Miller 159), suggests an emerging trend in how we talk about writing, one that develops an intriguing and flexible vocabulary for describing the cognitive and intellectual work of writing within differing communities. (emphasis added, W41)

Again, a focus on terminology, the notion of writing as a vehicle for accomplishing something

Harris’s terminology is indeed one of the major strengths of the book, for, as noted above, it emphasizes the actions involved in critical writing. Rather than relying on terms that communicate static fixtures to students—thesis, evidence, example—Harris focuses us on the work accomplished by writing, treating writing as in motion, an approach that I find invigorating as a writing teacher. (emphasis added, W41)

As I write this, I think about my teaching this semester and the extent to which the pedagogy embodied in the approach of the textbook flies in the face of my own emergent or evolving orientation as outlined in this post. I believe that my intention was good--to think about the community as U.S. citizens. But, in a way, this was, perhaps, too broad and to general. A better approach would have been with students and the communities they already participate in. And so, I begin to see, the extent to which my own teaching--the practice, is out of line with my orientation--part of the problem. I think that what came through this semester is the importance of genres. The problem, of course, is that the genres are arbitrary and acontextual. A course more in line with this orientation would acknowledge that the genres come with the community, are embedded in the community, do particular work within the community. Investigating Writing Communities. This would be the focus of a more theoretically informed FYC course, in line with my evolving beliefs. It might be divided into two parts:

1. Investigating a community of your own choosing. 
   
2. Investigating an academic community (your major or some other major)--pair with Joseph Harris' book?
   

Perhaps that's how I'll go about it next time...but who will help me teach such a course? I think that Devitt's book might. 

The textbook focuses on the development of writers in isolation and asks them to write genres for the sake of writing genres. They may serve as good antecedent genres, but, of course, there is no rationale for producing them. To my mind, these are the two major objections to the book. 

I'll stop here. One final thought: a pedagogy or a theory is a system. It permits certain activities and ways of thinking and discourages others. I feel this sense of conflict--the way that talking about writing one way requires a certain kind of teaching that crowds out talking about writing in a different way. The interesting and important realization is that I am now talking about writing in a different way--different from the way I talked about it when I entered graduate school and different from the way Marjorie talks about it.