The readings for this week, grouped under the heading Computers and Writing, begin to discover the possibilities and limitations for composition done through emerging technologies. While some scholars see great potential in the methods of teaching and composition possible through the advent of the computer, others debate some very poignant warnings (perhaps evolutions of the same warnings scholars have always given toward writing) that computer-based and processed writing still engender language and embed fierce power struggles that may be overlooked at first glance. Still, computer writing appears to be here to stay and a few powerful programs have certainly overtaken our composition processes (McGee and Ericsson note that it is estimated about 80%-90% of word processing is done on Microsoft Word). As such, it is an important subfield of study and certainly worth more and deeper investigation.
Patricia Sullivan opens the week as our earliest featured scholar, which is perhaps not saying much since she publishes in 1991. Arguing that new developments in page-layout manipulations in word processing platforms have given great (and perhaps foreign) power to writers, Sullivan diagrams the ways in which computer writing has blurred the process method. The writer (notice the careful word choice here: writer, not author) traditionally has submitted text to a publisher and then with careful critique and revision, the publisher prints the final form of the text for the reader. Sullivan argues that with the implementation of word processing programs, the writer can manipulate text as traditionally only could a publisher. As such, the drafting process becomes obscured as writer now has more control over their text before submission to readers. Interestingly, I believe Sullivan’s argument could even be taken a step further. Perhaps the drafting process does become obscured through computer-based word processing, but if we see computer-based writing in its most organic form—hypertext—we can begin to see that computer-based writing also obscures the roles and identities of writer/reader. Who really is the writer of the text of a wiki? How do we define the writer of a blog comment, as reader or as writer? I didn’t read any of the optional articles on internet plagiarism by Purdy or Howard, but I suspect that they might also tend toward viewing hypertext composition (especially with the theories of Web 2.0) as a collaborative effort on behalf of writer and reader instead of the more traditional composing processes as described (and antiquated) by Sullivan.
Harris and Wambeam being to this week’s reading perhaps the most encouraging article for computer-based writing. Their work, “The Internet-Based Composition Classroom: A Study in Pedagogy,” describes and expounds upon a “pedagogical experiment” conducted in the spring semester of 2004. Working with complimentary syllabi, these two professors set out to test if teaching composition through an internet-based classroom would be more effective than not. Utilizing multiple cutting-edge, yet accessible and what sounds like pretty inexpensive, resources like MOO, the classes found some startling results. From a purely statistical standpoint, students in the internet-enriched classroom became significantly better writers from the start to the end of the semester while student in the controlled non-enriched classroom actually became marginally worse writers. Furthermore, students in the control significantly disagreed with the statement “I enjoy writing” by the end of the semester while students in the enriched classroom significantly agreed. Despite proving that students actually perform better in the enriched classroom, Harris and Wambeam make a compelling argument that the enriched classroom also creates students who are enthusiastic about writing.
McGee and Ericsson take a startling shift in tone from that of Harris and Wambeam. Their study on Microsoft and the development of its grammar checker (MSGC) open a whole new area of study but most importantly reveals hidden power struggles latent within computer-based composition. I immediately connected with this article because I have often thought—as I’m sure we all have—of the ineffectiveness of MSGC. It is startling that in comparison to the hundred of thousands of English teachers who teach grammar, MSGC influences tens of millions. It is depressing that so many of those who use MSGC cannot ignore shoddy suggestions and actually (as my little brother has) take its word over that of their teacher’s.
But I have to shed some positive light on this article (just as Mueller does with the digital underworld) and take us back to Sullivan. Yes, we are (as McGee and Ericsson claim) entrenched in MSGC and can never get around it as long as we compose on the computer; however, just as Sullivan urges the contemporary writer to become part publisher, I urge today’s writer to become part programmer. MSGC has an amazing feature within its settings that actually allows users to program suggestions into its algorithm. What this means is that we can manipulate what MSGC constantly monitors. I first discovered this when I took advanced composition as an undergraduate in a computer-enriched classroom. Someone has actually programmed MSGC as a monitor for sexist language. Every time I wrote “he,” a squiggly green line appeared and prompted me to change to “he or she.” So, yes, I must agree with Harris and Wambeam that MSGC does favor some and marginalize others, but the program is easily manipulated and must also be seen for its ability to aid a writer in monitoring any number of errors for which he (or she) wishes to watch.
Finally, and quickly since I already seem to be rambling, I chose to read Diehl, Grabill, and Hart-Davidson’s “Grassroots.” A compelling illustration of the social use of computer-based composition, these scholars recount the efforts of a program entitled Grassroots which is described as an “asset-based mapping tool” and its contribution to the conversation on knowledge work, analytical thinking requiring abstract reasoning. Essentially, I see this article as an example of how the Web 2.0 movement has obfuscated lines between writer and reader and created web programmers as “producers” of text in a more theatrical context—they are those who allow for text to be created but do not necessarily act as either reader or writer. It’s an incredibly thought-provoking article, but in its impact further proves that there is still so much more we can learn from the study of writing with computers.
3.18.2010
De-Emasculating the Marginalized Voice
This week’s readings describe composition theory as the opportunity to explore marginalized voices in writing. In the words of Elizabeth Flynn, composition studies “demonstrate that the works produced by established authors are often the result of an extended, frequently enormously frustrating process and that creativity is an activity that results from experience and hard work rather than a mysterious gift reserved for the select few” (572). In essence, composition studies becomes a field which embraces these other voices since the goal is to understand and explore the composition process and its influences rather than produce an elite society and mystify the sacred and revered act of writing. This week, we are familiarized with the field’s interest in marginalized voices and the contribution they make not just to the larger study of composition itself but also to a better understanding of the experiences of marginalized academics in general.
As already mentioned, Flynn represents the feminist voice and envisions composition studies as an outlet for this marginalized voice in academic settings. By no means the first feminist, Flynn does, however, write at the earliest time among our sampling of seven scholars, 1988. At this time, as we have already studied, more and more developments were being made in the field and Flynn writes at a time when major changes and innovations were being made to composition studies. Among her ideas, I particularly was interested in the idea (reiterated by Culler) of reading as a woman. This process, which is admittedly difficult, is incredibly useful in that it seeks out the male-driven givens in our society, makes connections between facts and ideas that have been left unconnected by male-driven society, and empowers the individual female experience by using it as a tool to de-immaculate itself. I find this idea particularly interesting because it is one I continually use when critically reading. Trusting my own experience and intuitions has led me to great disagreements with academics or inspirations for papers. Whether or not I fit into the demographic of “white, middle-class male” is of unimportance. Reading from my own personal experience and perspective makes me an individual who can bring something to the discussion that no one else could. I feel like this—coupled with the importance of retrieving the female experience—is the heart of Flynn’s message and also Royster’s message in “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” She, like Flynn, advocates readers become alert and aware of voices which marginalize their own and argues we tune our own voices to become both “well-spoken” and “well-heard” (622).
Ritchie and Boardman also write on the marginalized feminine voice. Providing a brief history of the feminist voice from its emergence in the 70s to its explosion in the 90s, Ritchie and Boardman claim that while study of the feminist voice has flourished in the past years implementation of its study have not. “Many women still teach composition in the ‘basement,’” they write, “and the wider institutional, economic, and cultural conditions continue to create barriers against improving their status” (605). I find that this is still true today, over 11 years after Ritchie and Boardman write. But I agree with these scholars that feminism will do nothing but continue to improve our field and within the next 40 years there will be great changes even from now, to the point—I would not be surprised—that it dominates our study.
Villanueva opens the discussion of marginalization in composition studies up vastly with his work. By clearly asserting that we should not overlook concepts brought up by others due to racism or hatred, especially in his examples of the Latin Americas or Native Americans. His work reminds me of my first experience reading Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” So many of the concepts brought up in the novel are so foreign to me and I could not understand what they meant or why I was so drawn to them. Later I read the novel again in college in a literary theory class and realized that I was a marginalized voice in the novel, or rather the book was not written to my usually-heard voice of the white, middle-class man. It was much more playful, childlike, and awe-struck instead of commanding, authoritative, and direct. I loved it, and I completely agree with Villanueva in the assertion that discoveries like these are trademarks in becoming better scholars and better citizens.
Silva and also Zamel further explore the marginalize voice, but turn study to ESL students. From our sample, it seems as though the ESL student has had very little attention until very recently, Silva writing in 1993 and Zamel in 1995. This seems to be the hot topic of our current study, much like feminism was twenty to thirty years ago. The ESL student is completely lost in today’s systems of literacy, and even though it may be a long and hard right to reconcile with the student whose entire method of understanding and cultural givens differ from the traditional English voice of high literacy, the understanding that can come from this reconciliation holds major implications for the future of global communication, understanding, and knowledge. Suresh continues this point, arguing that there exist so many different voices left undiscovered, even within English. It will undoubtedly be a great contribution that composition studies will make to academia each time it considers and celebrates another marginalized voice; however, how long will it take before we finally realize that we all exist in plurality? Convention is the tie that keeps us together, but no one is ever fully exactly like the one beside him/her.
As already mentioned, Flynn represents the feminist voice and envisions composition studies as an outlet for this marginalized voice in academic settings. By no means the first feminist, Flynn does, however, write at the earliest time among our sampling of seven scholars, 1988. At this time, as we have already studied, more and more developments were being made in the field and Flynn writes at a time when major changes and innovations were being made to composition studies. Among her ideas, I particularly was interested in the idea (reiterated by Culler) of reading as a woman. This process, which is admittedly difficult, is incredibly useful in that it seeks out the male-driven givens in our society, makes connections between facts and ideas that have been left unconnected by male-driven society, and empowers the individual female experience by using it as a tool to de-immaculate itself. I find this idea particularly interesting because it is one I continually use when critically reading. Trusting my own experience and intuitions has led me to great disagreements with academics or inspirations for papers. Whether or not I fit into the demographic of “white, middle-class male” is of unimportance. Reading from my own personal experience and perspective makes me an individual who can bring something to the discussion that no one else could. I feel like this—coupled with the importance of retrieving the female experience—is the heart of Flynn’s message and also Royster’s message in “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” She, like Flynn, advocates readers become alert and aware of voices which marginalize their own and argues we tune our own voices to become both “well-spoken” and “well-heard” (622).
Ritchie and Boardman also write on the marginalized feminine voice. Providing a brief history of the feminist voice from its emergence in the 70s to its explosion in the 90s, Ritchie and Boardman claim that while study of the feminist voice has flourished in the past years implementation of its study have not. “Many women still teach composition in the ‘basement,’” they write, “and the wider institutional, economic, and cultural conditions continue to create barriers against improving their status” (605). I find that this is still true today, over 11 years after Ritchie and Boardman write. But I agree with these scholars that feminism will do nothing but continue to improve our field and within the next 40 years there will be great changes even from now, to the point—I would not be surprised—that it dominates our study.
Villanueva opens the discussion of marginalization in composition studies up vastly with his work. By clearly asserting that we should not overlook concepts brought up by others due to racism or hatred, especially in his examples of the Latin Americas or Native Americans. His work reminds me of my first experience reading Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” So many of the concepts brought up in the novel are so foreign to me and I could not understand what they meant or why I was so drawn to them. Later I read the novel again in college in a literary theory class and realized that I was a marginalized voice in the novel, or rather the book was not written to my usually-heard voice of the white, middle-class man. It was much more playful, childlike, and awe-struck instead of commanding, authoritative, and direct. I loved it, and I completely agree with Villanueva in the assertion that discoveries like these are trademarks in becoming better scholars and better citizens.
Silva and also Zamel further explore the marginalize voice, but turn study to ESL students. From our sample, it seems as though the ESL student has had very little attention until very recently, Silva writing in 1993 and Zamel in 1995. This seems to be the hot topic of our current study, much like feminism was twenty to thirty years ago. The ESL student is completely lost in today’s systems of literacy, and even though it may be a long and hard right to reconcile with the student whose entire method of understanding and cultural givens differ from the traditional English voice of high literacy, the understanding that can come from this reconciliation holds major implications for the future of global communication, understanding, and knowledge. Suresh continues this point, arguing that there exist so many different voices left undiscovered, even within English. It will undoubtedly be a great contribution that composition studies will make to academia each time it considers and celebrates another marginalized voice; however, how long will it take before we finally realize that we all exist in plurality? Convention is the tie that keeps us together, but no one is ever fully exactly like the one beside him/her.
3.11.2010
Annotated Bibliography!
Bromme, Rainer and Elmar Stahl, eds. Writing Hypertext and Learning: Conceptual and Empirical Approaches. Amsterdam: Pergamon, 2002.
Bromme and Stahl’s edited work is a fantastic and rich resource on the teaching and reception/learning of hypertext. The main purpose, as stated in the book’s introduction, is to give readers a general familiarity with what little has been said on the empirical and conceptual effects of learning hypertext. The collection of work that follows is a fierce collaboration of scholars who write on everything from the interference of linear and unlinear text, ideas of collaborative grading, the design (shape) of hypertext space, new ideas of authorship, to a new concept to me: hypervideo. For my research, the book is especially useful in chapters six and seven, where Karsten D. Wolf and A. Talamo and A. Fasulo write on the influence of hypertext on collaboration in the composition classroom.
Chakrabarti, Soumen. Mining the Web: Discovering Knowledge from Hypertext Data. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman, 2003.
Essentially a users manual to the mechanics behind a useful web mining program or search engine, this book is all mathematic jargon and algorithm building for the web programmer save one final section at its end entitled “Profiles, Personalization, and Collaboration.” Web mining, defined as “the automatic discovery of interesting and valuable information from the Web” (vii), may be understood as the ultimate trailblazing of hypertext as it is the programmer’s duty to effectively weed out useless lexia while sorting and ranking useful lexia. What makes this section of Chakrabarti’s manual interesting my research is that he states in his final chapter “The Future of Web Mining” that “despite their increasing sophistication, the most popular Web search engines remain impersonal” 305). Pointing to collaborative context analysis as the solution, Chakrabarti prophesies collaborative efforts to be the future of hypertext trailblazing. The academic connection between teaching collaborative hypertext media and this envisioned future of search engines has yet to be made.
Hanrahan, Michael and Deborah L. Madsen, eds. Teaching Technology, Textuality: Approaches to New Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillon, 2006.
Michael and Madsen’s handbook to teaching “new media” (a synonym for anything essentially hypertext) is geared toward the teacher who is entrenched in high literacy and stands at edge with his/her students who seems to despite all his/her efforts to be “illiterate.” Complete with a glossary that defines “WWW” and “wiki,” the handbook might be evaluated as an experienced teacher’s guide to beginning hypertext theory. What I enjoy about this work is its subtle support for e-literacy and up-front explanation of secondary orality as the result of “inherited, interiorized” literacy (1). What will most likely make it into my research is the book’s understanding and solution for student aversion to collaborative methods in the writing classroom.
Hutchby, Ian. Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity P, 2001.
Hutchby is, like McLuhan was, interested in how hypertext not only changes the way we communicate but also changes the cultural meanings about which we communicate. This work traces such an argument through multiple communication technologies (e.g. telephone, videophone, internet conferencing, artificial intelligence systems, computerized expert systems), but is especially useful to my research as it pertains to computerized media in general. Hutchby makes a two-part claim. First, that society shapes the way it uses technology. He supports this with the triumph of social constructivism, which claimed that social process has influence over all area of technology. This is important to me because it essentially proves that collaboration shapes technological use. Second, and much more theoretically, he claims that technology shapes sociality. This is important for my interest in collaboration because it suggests that contemporary hypertext theories, which have their basis in collaboration, shape discourse communities that inherently disenfranchise some and privilege others. Collaboration, then, is a skill or marketable attribute that privileges a student over others who are unwilling, scared, or unable to collaborate.
Katz, Steven B. The Epistemic Music of Rhetoric: Toward the Temporal Dimension of Affect in Reader Response and Writing. Carbondale, IL: U of Southern Illinois P, 1996.
I chose this work because of its smart-sounding title and use of the words “temporal dimension.” Just kidding. I did choose to include it, though, because it is one of the few examples (outside of Ong, of course) to utilize the term “secondary orality” to describe the renewed importance of sound for today’s writer. Katz provides many examples of implementing a vocal element into composition courses, but all involve physically speaking and having students speak their writing. This is important for my research because it once again highlights collaboration at the forefront of creating better writers in the contemporary classroom. In every scenario Katz presents as the implementation of secondary orality in the classroom, a student speaks in order to receive insight into the importance of sound in the written word and receives. The student, then, must collaboratively decide with and against other students the emotional and social meanings that lie beneath those sounds. Its an interesting pedagogical model, but once again places collaboration at the center of a contemporary composition classroom.
McLuhan, Marshall and Bruce R. Powers. The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.
Wildly influential, I choose to include The Global Village mainly because I knew it would interest my work in one way or another and, further, because I have always wanted to read it. And I was right to choose it. An eerily accurate portrait of an America thirty years in the making, McLuhan and Powers’ work makes powerful assumptions based on the iconic tetrad used as a pedagogical tool to teach the ways in which media enhance, retrieve, reverse, or negate social processes. These assumptions paint the America of 2020 as a county overrun with right-minded (or right-hemisphered) “robots” who “instead of being captured by point-to-point linear attitudes, so helpful to the mathematician and accountant, most Americans will be able to tolerate many different thought systems at once” (86). For my research, the implications of teaching collaboration become that much more important. It means that instead of viewing collaboration as simply working together, we must realize that collaboration threatens the importance of the singular authority and values the work of the society over the work of the individual. McLuhan and Bruce seem to paint this as a negative change for society (changing us from “angles to robots”), but I argue it in fact—in the long run—is not.
Torrance, Mark, Luuk Van Waes, and David Galbraith, eds. Writing and Cognition: Research and Applications. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007.
This collection of work summarizes the cognitive movement and specifically views the cognitive changes that take place with changing writing technologies. The entire collection is divided into three sections that deal with a history of interaction with the writing process, the effects of writing on cognition, and the various writing media. My research can be influenced especially by the final section, specifically in the chapters “Learning by Hypertext Writing: Effects of Considering a Single Audience Versus Multiple Audiences on Knowledge Acquisition” and “Supporting Individual Views and Mutual Awareness in a Collaborative Writing Task.” These two chapters continue to ask questions considering the loss of personal authorship to community in hypertext-enriched classrooms and seeks to suggest that in certain circumstances collaborative efforts in fact benefit the individual as it benefits the group.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Datacloud: Toward a New Theory of Online Work. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 2005.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1997.
I have not yet had a chance to read these two works (I'm picking them up from the library today ... they're on loan from California.) But I wanted to include them just because I know I will be including them in the rough draft of my final project.
Bromme and Stahl’s edited work is a fantastic and rich resource on the teaching and reception/learning of hypertext. The main purpose, as stated in the book’s introduction, is to give readers a general familiarity with what little has been said on the empirical and conceptual effects of learning hypertext. The collection of work that follows is a fierce collaboration of scholars who write on everything from the interference of linear and unlinear text, ideas of collaborative grading, the design (shape) of hypertext space, new ideas of authorship, to a new concept to me: hypervideo. For my research, the book is especially useful in chapters six and seven, where Karsten D. Wolf and A. Talamo and A. Fasulo write on the influence of hypertext on collaboration in the composition classroom.
Chakrabarti, Soumen. Mining the Web: Discovering Knowledge from Hypertext Data. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman, 2003.
Essentially a users manual to the mechanics behind a useful web mining program or search engine, this book is all mathematic jargon and algorithm building for the web programmer save one final section at its end entitled “Profiles, Personalization, and Collaboration.” Web mining, defined as “the automatic discovery of interesting and valuable information from the Web” (vii), may be understood as the ultimate trailblazing of hypertext as it is the programmer’s duty to effectively weed out useless lexia while sorting and ranking useful lexia. What makes this section of Chakrabarti’s manual interesting my research is that he states in his final chapter “The Future of Web Mining” that “despite their increasing sophistication, the most popular Web search engines remain impersonal” 305). Pointing to collaborative context analysis as the solution, Chakrabarti prophesies collaborative efforts to be the future of hypertext trailblazing. The academic connection between teaching collaborative hypertext media and this envisioned future of search engines has yet to be made.
Hanrahan, Michael and Deborah L. Madsen, eds. Teaching Technology, Textuality: Approaches to New Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillon, 2006.
Michael and Madsen’s handbook to teaching “new media” (a synonym for anything essentially hypertext) is geared toward the teacher who is entrenched in high literacy and stands at edge with his/her students who seems to despite all his/her efforts to be “illiterate.” Complete with a glossary that defines “WWW” and “wiki,” the handbook might be evaluated as an experienced teacher’s guide to beginning hypertext theory. What I enjoy about this work is its subtle support for e-literacy and up-front explanation of secondary orality as the result of “inherited, interiorized” literacy (1). What will most likely make it into my research is the book’s understanding and solution for student aversion to collaborative methods in the writing classroom.
Hutchby, Ian. Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity P, 2001.
Hutchby is, like McLuhan was, interested in how hypertext not only changes the way we communicate but also changes the cultural meanings about which we communicate. This work traces such an argument through multiple communication technologies (e.g. telephone, videophone, internet conferencing, artificial intelligence systems, computerized expert systems), but is especially useful to my research as it pertains to computerized media in general. Hutchby makes a two-part claim. First, that society shapes the way it uses technology. He supports this with the triumph of social constructivism, which claimed that social process has influence over all area of technology. This is important to me because it essentially proves that collaboration shapes technological use. Second, and much more theoretically, he claims that technology shapes sociality. This is important for my interest in collaboration because it suggests that contemporary hypertext theories, which have their basis in collaboration, shape discourse communities that inherently disenfranchise some and privilege others. Collaboration, then, is a skill or marketable attribute that privileges a student over others who are unwilling, scared, or unable to collaborate.
Katz, Steven B. The Epistemic Music of Rhetoric: Toward the Temporal Dimension of Affect in Reader Response and Writing. Carbondale, IL: U of Southern Illinois P, 1996.
I chose this work because of its smart-sounding title and use of the words “temporal dimension.” Just kidding. I did choose to include it, though, because it is one of the few examples (outside of Ong, of course) to utilize the term “secondary orality” to describe the renewed importance of sound for today’s writer. Katz provides many examples of implementing a vocal element into composition courses, but all involve physically speaking and having students speak their writing. This is important for my research because it once again highlights collaboration at the forefront of creating better writers in the contemporary classroom. In every scenario Katz presents as the implementation of secondary orality in the classroom, a student speaks in order to receive insight into the importance of sound in the written word and receives. The student, then, must collaboratively decide with and against other students the emotional and social meanings that lie beneath those sounds. Its an interesting pedagogical model, but once again places collaboration at the center of a contemporary composition classroom.
McLuhan, Marshall and Bruce R. Powers. The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.
Wildly influential, I choose to include The Global Village mainly because I knew it would interest my work in one way or another and, further, because I have always wanted to read it. And I was right to choose it. An eerily accurate portrait of an America thirty years in the making, McLuhan and Powers’ work makes powerful assumptions based on the iconic tetrad used as a pedagogical tool to teach the ways in which media enhance, retrieve, reverse, or negate social processes. These assumptions paint the America of 2020 as a county overrun with right-minded (or right-hemisphered) “robots” who “instead of being captured by point-to-point linear attitudes, so helpful to the mathematician and accountant, most Americans will be able to tolerate many different thought systems at once” (86). For my research, the implications of teaching collaboration become that much more important. It means that instead of viewing collaboration as simply working together, we must realize that collaboration threatens the importance of the singular authority and values the work of the society over the work of the individual. McLuhan and Bruce seem to paint this as a negative change for society (changing us from “angles to robots”), but I argue it in fact—in the long run—is not.
Torrance, Mark, Luuk Van Waes, and David Galbraith, eds. Writing and Cognition: Research and Applications. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007.
This collection of work summarizes the cognitive movement and specifically views the cognitive changes that take place with changing writing technologies. The entire collection is divided into three sections that deal with a history of interaction with the writing process, the effects of writing on cognition, and the various writing media. My research can be influenced especially by the final section, specifically in the chapters “Learning by Hypertext Writing: Effects of Considering a Single Audience Versus Multiple Audiences on Knowledge Acquisition” and “Supporting Individual Views and Mutual Awareness in a Collaborative Writing Task.” These two chapters continue to ask questions considering the loss of personal authorship to community in hypertext-enriched classrooms and seeks to suggest that in certain circumstances collaborative efforts in fact benefit the individual as it benefits the group.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Datacloud: Toward a New Theory of Online Work. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 2005.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1997.
I have not yet had a chance to read these two works (I'm picking them up from the library today ... they're on loan from California.) But I wanted to include them just because I know I will be including them in the rough draft of my final project.
3.04.2010
Collaboration and Consensus: A New Social Hierarchy
Readings for this week call attention to writing as a collaborative process, dispelling myths of the writer as a genius in his tower above and separated from the society to which he writes. Our sample of six articles span from early theories on a writer’s relationship within his/her invoked discourse community (Ong) in 1975 to modern-day theories of composing as assemblage, remix, or design pattern over thirty years later (Johnson and Selber). Clearly, social theories of writing are still in great demand as writing technologies expand and scholars continue to examine the influence (and confines, as Porter suggests) of audience, collaboration, intertextuality, and intellectual property.
Ong publishes in 1975, and as a result is the earliest sample of social theory available this week. He argues that writers are successful when they create a fictitious audience for which to write. For example, though the novelist may at some times think of a specific type of person who might read his/her novels, he/she must create a population of readers that does not yet exist and write to them as if they already do. This also has implications for the act of reading, Ong explains, since to read in this model is to conform to the fictitious audience that has already been created by a writer. Interestingly, in this model of reading/writing the writer is author, powerful creator of discourse communities and trailblazer of new knowledge. What is problematic for me in this view of authorship is that it is assumed all readers will approach a writer in a similar way, not at least to mention that it assumes all readers will be trained to read in the same fashion and assume the same things when reading.
Ede and Lunsford also write in response to Ong and other early social theories. Claiming in 1984 that the acts of reading and writing and intertwined, these two scholars find similar problems with Ong’s notion of audience as that of “audience invoked.” Ede and Lunsford juxtapose this invoked notion of audience with its complete opposite, that of “audience addressed,” and find that both are able to be successful modes of understanding audiences but also have severe weaknesses. “Audience addressed,” for example, neglects the fluidity between the components of writing, as outlined by Mitchell and Taylor’s general model of writing: writer, written product, audience, and response. Rather that progressing in a cycle, the process of writing is more unlinear, chaotic. Any step of the process may influence or change any other step at any time. As to the notions of “audience invoked” supported by Ong’s research, Ede and Lunsford argue a writer must always be writing in some capacity to a real audience and can be viewed, then, as a product of that audience. Rhetoric as a tool helps the writer to know when to address/invoke an audience and to what degree.
Porter further entrenches the writer in his/her role as a product of an audience. Arguing that “according [to the view of intertextuality], authorial intention is less significant than social context; the writer is simply a part of a discourse tradition, a member of a team, and a participant in a community of discourse that creates its own collective meaning. Thus the intertext constrains writing” (35). But rather than wallow in text’s continual reference to more text, Porter suggests such an understanding gives a writer great power in writing for specific discourse communities. If in fact “readers, not writers, create discourse” (38), then a writer must guide a discourse community with the tools of that community if he/she is to be successful.
Bruffee (1984) and, later, Trimber (1989) both wrestle with implementing social theories of writing in the composition classroom. Bruffee first expounds on the importance of collaboration in teaching students the important relationship between conversation and thought: that thought is always related to social interaction. Teaching normal discourse (the discourse a student would use everyday) in a collaborative way opens up the opportunity for students to demonstrate abnormal discourse (which occurs when consensus no longer exists within a discourse community). But Bruffee ultimately claims that though collaboration is important, there is no recipe for its implementation in the classroom. Porter picks up two years later, suggesting (as noted above) that intertextuality suggests students be taught to write for specific, defined discourse communities to which they wish entrance. But Trimber responds three years later to criticisms against Porter and Bruffee, that consensus is totalitarian and collaboration focuses too heavily on discourse communities instead of knowledge structures. It is finally that Trimbur argues collaboration is effective not in conforming many voices into one but in making the students see that so many voices exist. In a sense, collaboration reveals consensus is not accommodation but conflict. Consensus leads to dissensus, a utopian notion that even though everyone does not agree a community can continue working toward solving its problems. This, trimbur asserts, is the benefit and needed element which collaboration (and consensus) teaches.
As a final scholar, Johnson-Eiola and Selber bring us twenty year later to the modern-day discussion of social theories of composition. As heated as ever, the debates over collaborative efforts of writing and consensus reveal major tensions between academic and legal functions of writing. Including problems of the theories of plagiarism and originality, Johnson and Selber suggest there remains little if anything in the world that is original. They purport: “What if the ‘final’ product a student produces—a text—is not concerned with original words or images on a page or screen but concerned primarily with assemblage of parts?” (380). This embrace with social theories of writing completely accepts assemblage (the using of unoriginal text and images in new contexts) as the breakdown of a tradition hierarchy in which originality reigns over borrowed content. The goal is to write well, not necessarily write originally. Assemblages, remixes, pattern language, design (architectural) patterns, and the like all help achieve this goal but must first be seen as legitimate. Certainly, such tools are much more accepted than they were thirty years ago when Ong wrote; however, much must still be done before a traditional hierarchy of originality is broken.
Ong publishes in 1975, and as a result is the earliest sample of social theory available this week. He argues that writers are successful when they create a fictitious audience for which to write. For example, though the novelist may at some times think of a specific type of person who might read his/her novels, he/she must create a population of readers that does not yet exist and write to them as if they already do. This also has implications for the act of reading, Ong explains, since to read in this model is to conform to the fictitious audience that has already been created by a writer. Interestingly, in this model of reading/writing the writer is author, powerful creator of discourse communities and trailblazer of new knowledge. What is problematic for me in this view of authorship is that it is assumed all readers will approach a writer in a similar way, not at least to mention that it assumes all readers will be trained to read in the same fashion and assume the same things when reading.
Ede and Lunsford also write in response to Ong and other early social theories. Claiming in 1984 that the acts of reading and writing and intertwined, these two scholars find similar problems with Ong’s notion of audience as that of “audience invoked.” Ede and Lunsford juxtapose this invoked notion of audience with its complete opposite, that of “audience addressed,” and find that both are able to be successful modes of understanding audiences but also have severe weaknesses. “Audience addressed,” for example, neglects the fluidity between the components of writing, as outlined by Mitchell and Taylor’s general model of writing: writer, written product, audience, and response. Rather that progressing in a cycle, the process of writing is more unlinear, chaotic. Any step of the process may influence or change any other step at any time. As to the notions of “audience invoked” supported by Ong’s research, Ede and Lunsford argue a writer must always be writing in some capacity to a real audience and can be viewed, then, as a product of that audience. Rhetoric as a tool helps the writer to know when to address/invoke an audience and to what degree.
Porter further entrenches the writer in his/her role as a product of an audience. Arguing that “according [to the view of intertextuality], authorial intention is less significant than social context; the writer is simply a part of a discourse tradition, a member of a team, and a participant in a community of discourse that creates its own collective meaning. Thus the intertext constrains writing” (35). But rather than wallow in text’s continual reference to more text, Porter suggests such an understanding gives a writer great power in writing for specific discourse communities. If in fact “readers, not writers, create discourse” (38), then a writer must guide a discourse community with the tools of that community if he/she is to be successful.
Bruffee (1984) and, later, Trimber (1989) both wrestle with implementing social theories of writing in the composition classroom. Bruffee first expounds on the importance of collaboration in teaching students the important relationship between conversation and thought: that thought is always related to social interaction. Teaching normal discourse (the discourse a student would use everyday) in a collaborative way opens up the opportunity for students to demonstrate abnormal discourse (which occurs when consensus no longer exists within a discourse community). But Bruffee ultimately claims that though collaboration is important, there is no recipe for its implementation in the classroom. Porter picks up two years later, suggesting (as noted above) that intertextuality suggests students be taught to write for specific, defined discourse communities to which they wish entrance. But Trimber responds three years later to criticisms against Porter and Bruffee, that consensus is totalitarian and collaboration focuses too heavily on discourse communities instead of knowledge structures. It is finally that Trimbur argues collaboration is effective not in conforming many voices into one but in making the students see that so many voices exist. In a sense, collaboration reveals consensus is not accommodation but conflict. Consensus leads to dissensus, a utopian notion that even though everyone does not agree a community can continue working toward solving its problems. This, trimbur asserts, is the benefit and needed element which collaboration (and consensus) teaches.
As a final scholar, Johnson-Eiola and Selber bring us twenty year later to the modern-day discussion of social theories of composition. As heated as ever, the debates over collaborative efforts of writing and consensus reveal major tensions between academic and legal functions of writing. Including problems of the theories of plagiarism and originality, Johnson and Selber suggest there remains little if anything in the world that is original. They purport: “What if the ‘final’ product a student produces—a text—is not concerned with original words or images on a page or screen but concerned primarily with assemblage of parts?” (380). This embrace with social theories of writing completely accepts assemblage (the using of unoriginal text and images in new contexts) as the breakdown of a tradition hierarchy in which originality reigns over borrowed content. The goal is to write well, not necessarily write originally. Assemblages, remixes, pattern language, design (architectural) patterns, and the like all help achieve this goal but must first be seen as legitimate. Certainly, such tools are much more accepted than they were thirty years ago when Ong wrote; however, much must still be done before a traditional hierarchy of originality is broken.
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