Showing papers in "College Composition and Communication in 2012"

Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric and Composition.

Abstract: Over the past two decades, critical discourse analysis has emerged as a major new multidisciplinary approach to the study of texts and contexts in the public sphere. Developed in Europe, CDA has lately become increasingly popular in North America, where it is proving especially congenial to new directions in rhetoric and composition. This essay surveys much of this recent literature, noting how rhet/comp has incorporated CDA methodology in a variety of studies of inequality, ethics, higher education, critical pedagogy, news media, and institutional practices. CDA uses rigorous, empirical methods that are sensitive to both context and theory, making it ideal for the demands of a range of projects being developed in our field.

A Taxonomy of Writing across the Curriculum Programs: Evolving to Serve Broader Agendas.

Abstract: A number of scholars have written passionately and well about writing across the curriculum (WAC) as a pedagogical movement (e.g., Barbara Walvoord, Toby Fulwiler and Art Young, Elaine Maimon). Others have offered models that describe stages of WAC development on individual campuses (e.g., Donna LeCourt, Susan H. McLeod, David Russell, Chris Thaiss et al.). These thoughtful analyses focus on the innovative contributions of WAC: the writeto-learn and learn-to-write approaches to pedagogy, the emphasis on faculty development, the necessity of quality leadership, the maturation of a WAC philosophy, and, above all, the message that inoculation via one writing course is insufficient to prepare students for writing expectations in the academy and beyond. Others have warned of the dangers confronting early WAC programs. Becoming a functionary of general education, for example, as Robert Jones and Joseph J. Comprone warned in 1993, would cut WAC off from the disciplines,

Crossing Boundaries: Co-Op Students Relearning to Write.

Abstract: This article reviews the deeply conflicted literature on learning transfer, especially as it applies to rhetorical knowledge and skill. It then describes a study in which six students are followed through their first co-op work term to learn about which resources they draw on as they enter a new environment of professional writing. It suggests that although students engage in little one-to-one transfer of learning, they draw on a wide range of internalized rhetorical strategies learned from across their academic experience. As teachers and researchers of writing, we once assumed that if only we could teach students the skills they would really need in both their academic work and in their future personal and professional lives, they would be able to transfer those skills from the writing classroom to other writing occasions with little difficulty. However, since writing studies researchers began applying situated learning and activity theory to the question of learning transfer, we have questioned whether learning transfer can be accomplished as easily as we once assumed—or indeed, whether it happens at all. This is troubling for all teachers who hope that their students will find what they have learned useful somewhere else, but it is especially so for teachers of business and technical communication, who hope to prepare students for writing in the world of work.

Remapping revisionist historiography

Abstract: Rhetoric and composition historiography has recently undergone a rapid transformation as scholars have complicated and challenged earlier narratives by examining diverse local histories and alternative rhetorical traditions. This revisionist scholarship has in turn created new research challenges, as scholars must now demonstrate connections between the local and larger scholarly conversations; assume a complex, multivocal past as the starting point for historical inquiry; and resist the temptation to reinscribe easy binaries, taxonomies, and master narratives, even when countering them. This essay identifies and analyzes these challenges, posits responses to them, and suggests exemplars for future practice.

Tracking the Mind's Eye: A New Technology for Researching Twenty-First-Century Writing and Reading Processes.

Abstract: This article describes the nature of eye-tracking technology and its use in the study of discourse processes, particularly reading. It then suggests several areas of research in composition studies, especially at the intersection of writing, reading, and digital media, that can benefit from the use of this technology. Using increasingly sophisticated equipment, researchers from several disciplines have studied people’s eye movements as they read text or look at still and moving images. In the scholarship on written communication, eye-tracking devices have generated large amounts of research on reading processes (see Rayner) but far less on relationships between reading and writing. With the exception of two studies in North America and some recent interest among European writing scholars, composition researchers have not utilized the method. But today, eye-tracking research has increasing potential for the study of writing, especially in the context of screen-based learning and digital interaction. In this contribution, we argue that a number of questions about the nature of writing and the relationship between reading (screens or texts) and writing

Avoiding the Difference Fixation: Identity Categories, Markers of Difference, and the Teaching of Writing.

Abstract: In order to show difference as a dynamic, relational, and emergent construct, this article introduces “markers of difference,” rhetorical cues that signal the presence of difference between one or more interlocutors, and suggests practical means by which teachers can engage this concept to improve their teaching practice. When I was about a year old, my parents noticed that I did not react to loud noises, so they sat me in my high chair, stood behind me, and banged on some pots and pans. I didn’t so much as flinch. In that moment, their interpretation of me as “a really laid-back baby” became “She’s deaf, and that’s why she doesn’t get upset when Johnny yells or the dog barks.” That re-categorization created new ways for them to make sense of my behavior: it is not that my parents didn’t connect with me prior to learning that I have a profound hearing loss in both ears, but that the frame through which they made sense of me changed. Similarly, my own relationship to my disability has shifted, and continues to shift, over time and across contexts. Deafness does not exist for me as some concrete fact of my life with an absolute meaning that I can readily define for readers here and now in this article. Deafness takes on different meanings in a

Grasping Rhetoric and Composition by Its Long Tail: What Graphs Can Tell Us about the Field's Changing Shape.

Abstract: Presented as a series of graphs, bibliographic data gathered from College Composition and Communication provides perspective useful for inquiring into the changing shape of the field as it continues to mature. In its focus on graphing, the article demonstrates an application of distant reading methods to present patterns not only reflective of the most commonly cited figures in CCC over the past twenty-five years, but also attendant to a steady increase in the breadth of infrequently cited figures.

College Writing in China and America: A Modest and Humble Conversation, with Writing Samples.

Abstract: This article is a pragmatic, classroom-focused conversation about the teaching of writing among three teachers living in the United States and China, separated by many thousands of miles and many centuries of tradition and culture. Our focus here is on classroom concerns: actual student writing, assignment design, and assessment. We seek to understand more clearly through this conversation how culture and rhetorical tradition help shape the way we teach writing.

Inspecting Shadows of Past Classroom Practices: A Search for Students' Voices.

Abstract: Roll Call How do students in composition’s origin stories answer that classroom summons? Too often they remain mute, as we know precious little of the story through their words. Indeed, the field’s accounts of the origins of composition classes in American colleges focus on teachers, textbooks, and colleges as they weave narratives of upheaval and great change. Materially these accounts depend on textbooks, institutional materials, teachers’ notes, and other archival materials as key to the recovery of those long-ago classes. Yet the learning spaces depicted rarely portray the presence of students in more than sketchy ways. This is understandable: students didn’t publish; they rarely kept their written work; if they wrote about their educations, they did so at a time removed from the events; and aside from “school days” photos the technologies from that period deliver few indications of their activities. Yes, students were present in