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.