Hilldog

In one of her recent "down but not quite out yet" speeches, Senator Clinton used a line that poked me. She claims that she wants to revamp the education system into one where "Teachers can teach, not just test."

Just six little words.

I like 'em.

Here's hoping.

Petrie Dishes and Social Constructs

Ok. Any of you who know me, even marginally, know that I actually like Cultural Studies. It's an especially interesting discourse into which you can toss different theoretical systems and, well, play. So I approached the George and Trimbur article with a pretty open mind. I was just curious as to see how Cultural Studies could have it's application to composition teaching. After wading through 7 pages of familiar and unfamiliar names, dates and titles I got to the section on “Connections to Composition.”
I continued to wade.
And wade.
And wade.
Through such well argued positions as Berlin's “particularly rich discussion of. . . reading of cultural texts,” and Faigley's evaluation of “postmodernism not just as a theoretical problem but as a sensibility that increasingly pervades contemporary social life.” (GT 80-81) This is rigorous, challenging, possibly even brilliant stuff. There are worthwhile insights that should be considered and kept in mind, especially when you do cultural inquiry.
I was only left with one question. How is this composition?

Relatedly, I bounced up and down on the theoretical diving board and, somewhat more cynically, jackknifed into “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty” by Patricia Bizzel.
It was a belly flop on the order of Free Willy. Bizzel's critique of the Hayes and Flower article I was previously so enchanted with was reminiscent of Simon from American Idol, just more meticulous. However, I felt like a Beatles fan at an Oasis concert when she started to propose her own recommendations regarding “the fact that all discourse communities constitute and interpret experience.” (VV 401) Much like Robin felt about the stage process model in Hayes and Flower, I feel here. Bizzel is explicating audience rather well, but she's not really adding much by interchanging the term with discourse communities. She hasn't really added anything beyond a well described process pedagogy when she concludes that “the main casualty of our theoretical debate can be the debilitating individualism which adds so much to classroom strain.” (VV 409) A well-focused approach involving voice, purpose, and audience will serve this end just as well.

Trimbur. Consensus. Dissensus. With all his focus on “exploring the differential access to knowledge and the relations of power and status that structure this writing situation” (VV 471) as well as references to Habermass, Benjamin and Rorty that there wasn't so much as a nod to bio-power or Foucault. As it stands I must reiterate the above – it's great to inform the students of the social influence and ideological interpellations and limitations they live in the middle of, but emphasis based on their own voice and experience still seems to be the most realistic method for the actual learning as opposed to indoctrination in the classroom.

Tobin or Not Tobin, that is the Question

“...by not emphasizing the teaching of grammar, usage, audience analysis, and proofreading, college composition teachers were accused of failing students who needed to learn the conventions of academic discourse.” (Tobin in Tate, et al 11) This point seems like much of the highly contentious, emotionally charged discussion that's gone on in our class lately. But by the end of his essay, Tobin points out that, while he centers on Process Pedagogy, he has “minilessons” on ethos, citation format, and even the 5 paragraph essay. How can he be an adherent of Process and do this? He can because he can. Just because he likes one method doesn't mean that it must be the ONLY thing he teaches. By recognizing the usefulness for his students of other tidbits, details, and morsels he can make use of them and keep his classes well-rounded. Going to extreme positions doesn't usually work, whether it's in politics, arguments or classrooms.

Magic, Dragons, and Comp Theory

No, wait for it, stay with me. In Dungeons and Dragons there is a class of wizard known as an "invoker." So when I saw that "Writers conjure their vision [for the audience's role]...by using all the resources of language available to them to establish a broad, and ideally coherent, range of cues for the reader," (Ede and Lunsford in VV 90) I immediately imagined some jehovian-bearded scribe locked away in his basalt monolith, scratching spells into a moldy tome, envision the entities he would bind to his will with the mystic symbols thus inscribed.

The analogy isn't too far off really. That "range of cues" is like the summoning circle that you fit your audience into. Since you can't know exactly what will speak to exactly that audience, you imagine them as best you can and give them hints to make the reader match the writing. And anyone who hasn't felt the magic in a well written piece is a robot, lobotomized or dead.

Thinking Writing or Brain to Paper and back (Alot)

Flower and Hayes make a distinction in their piece on Cognitive Process that had never occurred to me, namely that what many of us call the writing process is really the stage process of the product completion. Aside from the somatic component of hitting a key or inscribing with a pen, the process is mentally interior (Moffet's Inner Speech, anyone?). By somewhat minutely describing the moment to moment activity of a writer in the midst of process they are using protocol analysis to do something that could really offend the intuitive, romantic writer.

They're using science, they're demystifying the process. They're aiming to destroy the art and replace it with a quantifiable account of the recursive, near-simultaneous acts a person goes through during the act of composing. If this positivist, experimental methodology is successful it could destroy the elitism of "talented writers." If they are able to isolate which manner of goal setting, monitoring and revision are most effective, it's feasible that anyone could become an effective writer.

Damn scientists.

Grammar is not your Mom's mom.

It's funny. We read this Hartwell piece last semester in ENG470, and it wasn't exactly easy to keep track of. Grammar 1, grammar 4, grammar 3b sub theta, I actually found myself wishing for a Venn Diagram. Argh! (and yes, I know that 'argh' good grammar not is.} But now that I'm revisiting it, it was for more enjoyable as well as grabbable. and really, it just reinforced what i was convinced of the first time. Diagramming sentence and knowing about gerunds may be fun and even useful, but it doesn't contribute to making you a good writer. Writing does. Reading does. Caring about what you are writing about does. Heck, if you want to write a long explication of participles, dangling and not (you wierdo!), then the writing will improve your writing.
I like the pseudomagical metaphors used in the grammarians and non-grammarians, or incantation users and alchemists, but I believe I have a similar yet better metaphor for what the so called "alchemical" method is doing. Alchemy was more pseudoscience and each alchemist hid his secrets from the others, but I think of Hartwell more like I think of the way my roommate cooks. He (my roommate) reads about cooking. He watches other people cook. He tries all sorts of different foods and tries to figure out what's in them. But when he actually makes dinner, he never follows a codified recipe. 9 times out of ten, it's mmmmmmmmdelicious. Sometimes it's a dismal failure. But it gets better every time.

King of the Brittons, or Why I Loved that Man

I gotta tell ya, I loved Britton. The concept of a continuum between transactional and poetic discourses with expressive discourse a shady fluid center is beautiful. Just these three little (humongous) categories cover what we do in all our communications. The description of poetic discourse really nails the dichotomy: “And poetic discourse is the form that most fully meets the demands associated with the role of the spectator, demands that are met, we suggested, by MAKING SOMETHING with language rather than doing something with it.” (VV 158) With expressive capability and purpose as the wellspring from which both transactional and poetic discourse are birthed, Britton makes the assertion that expressive writing is a way in which we both wish for a state affairs and advertise or relationship to that state of affairs.

This isn't dead, cold, dessicated production of literary study objects. It's the making of worlds! Everyone needs to find their place in the world, continually. With this need as a motivator, writing becomes one of the best ways to make the world and me fit. All the other uses to which writing can be put will come about when they are desired as the best method to getting what we want, whether that is the aesthetic chills brought on by powerful fiction or a clearly explained set of instruction for bomb defusing.

One last thing about Britton's example of Clare. The little chart on page 167 about story length, age and T-unit length is powerful evidence for the influence of reading on writing, not just in subject matter or “feel,” but in level of sophistication as well. It's good to see it confirmed in someone else, I was starting to worry that I was the only one prone to “write snooty” after reading a bunch of theory.