Response to Readings for 7 Apr 08

Well, I typed up my responses to the first 3 readings while I was in New Orleans, but I didn’t post them until today. I was a little busy, to say the least, so I’m just happy that I did some reading and writing while I was at the conference. Regarding the conference, I can honestly say that the 4Cs convention was a very educational and interesting experience. I heard some really great speakers, and I had the opportunity to speak to Lisa Ede, Andrea Lunsford, and Kathleen Blake Yancey about my project for this class. They were very helpful!

Anyway, if my responses don’t make very much sense this week, please understand that I was suffering delirium as a result of the 100% humidity in New Orleans….

“The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction” by Ong

Ong appears to have two primary purposes for writing this piece: 1) to illustrate how writers – regardless of what they might believe – create an audience as they are creating a text and 2) to promote future research for “a study of the history of readers and their enforced roles” (57). The latter purpose is clearly stated several times in Ong’s piece, although the author does take it on himself to provide a brief timeline in Section Four of different ways in which audiences were fictionalized in the past. In this timeline, Ong covers such methods as “frame stories” (66) and “hyperrhetoricizing” (67) to explain how writing to audiences has evolved with time.

Ong accomplishes his primary purpose, however, by explaining how “audience” was originally a rhetorical function of oral communication. In Ong’s view, audience cannot mean quite the same thing in written communication because the act of writing distances the writer from the necessary social interaction with others. Writing to an imagined audience lacks both the immediacy and relevance that is an intrinsic element of speaking. Therefore, the writer must not only imagine a possible audience but must also find a way to instruct readers as to the roles they will play.

The question that kept coming to my mind while I was reading Ong’s article was: “As a writer himself, what instructions is Ong giving us as far as our roles in his piece?” I generally like Ong’s ideas and his writing, but at times in this article he seemed to imply that we, as his audience, should all take the position that oral communication does not invent and assign roles to an audience like writing does. The one exception to this is when Ong admits that an “oral narrator calls on his audience to fictionalize itself to some extent” (66). I agree that writers must work harder to create a connection with a discourse community than a speaker does, but speakers have also used plenty of rhetorical devices in the past to create situations in which to establish roles for their audiences. For example, don’t epideictic speeches ask audiences to place themselves into a state of suspended reality at times?

“Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” by Porter

Porter asserts that all writing is intertextual to some extent because writers always draw upon previous works to develop their own texts. As Porter points out, a writer’s connection to precursor works can range from the “explicit citation” (34) that we see in research papers to the subtle influences of one writer’s ideas upon another writer’s work.

In defining what he means by “intertextuality,” Porter specifies two types: iterability and presupposition. Through iterability, texts show “traces” (35) of other works by using repeatable clichés, phrases, etc. Presupposition moves beyond the surface features of iterability and carries an indication of a writer’s beliefs about an audience. In terms of Ong’s article, I see presupposition as indicating how a writer might fictionalize his/her audience through the assumptions made in the writing.

I know that I am in the minority who actually liked the Flower and Hayes article last week, but I feel that Porter’s example of Jefferson’s borrowing from other texts while he was writing the Declaration of Independence (36) is one example of how we pull things from our “long-term memory” (Flower and Hayes). We cannot help but be influenced in some way by all of the materials that have come before us. This is why I am always slightly uncomfortable when I am doing creative writing. I often wonder if I am unconsciously including elements that are not truly of my own invention.

“Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” by Bruffee

At a time when collaborative learning was just beginning to interest writing teachers, Bruffee advocates the value of teamwork in the writing classroom. Bruffee asserts that since knowledge is a socially constructed activity that leads to introspective thought – and, as a result, externalized cognition through writing – students will be able to develop their understanding of a project, etc. through their working conversations with their peers. Bruffee provides us with the principles behind collaborative learning, as well as a little history, but does not try and prescribe any specific practices for teachers.

Interestingly, one of Bruffee’s points about collaborative learning – the idea that “human conversation takes place within us” (419) conflicts sharply with the view Ong espoused about diary writing. Whereas Ong feels “we do not normally talk to ourselves” (Ong 73), so a diary audience is extremely fictional, Bruffee believes that we do talk to ourselves in order to make sense of our everyday social interactions with people. To me, that is the best reason for keeping a diary because you have a chance to reflect back on conversations with people and work out any tension you might have so you can learn how to improve your life, etc.

Anyway, it should come as no big surprise that I enjoyed Bruffee’s article. As I have already mentioned in previous blogs, I try to use collaborative learning in my classes as much as I can. I have personally seen how a student’s knowledge can be enhanced through conversations with his/her peers and how social interaction can increase the “buy-in” factor for less motivated students. In fact, at times I know that students are much more adept at explaining some concepts to their peers than I am.

“Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning” by Trimbur

Trimbur seeks an expanded view of consensus in collaborative learning – one which welcomes dissensus as a way to help students understand how and why “outsiders” of a discourse community might have difficulty entering a discussion. Noting that the usual criticism of collaborative learning includes the concern that the practice “stifles individual voice” (461) and “overlook[s] the wider social forces that structure the production of knowledge” (462), Trimbur argues dissensus would actually empower students to express themselves more fully and allow them to see how past attempts to access a discourse community have failed.

Like Trimbur, I like collaborative learning because it focuses less on the teacher and more on the students. While working together, the students’ ability to hash out differences and create solutions to problems prepares them for the “real world” better than any lecture I could give them. I also feel working in groups provides students with another audience for their texts besides myself – the students must consider and write to each other as they try to complete a document. As much as I like collaborative projects, though, I still have to remind myself to pull back a little when students are engaged in collaborative learning. It is very easy for me to slip into the authoritative role because I want to know that things are going as planned.

“Plagiarism, originality, assemblage” by Johnson-Eilola and Selber

Comparing a writer’s natural tendency to call upon precursor texts and images in the creation of a new document to “remix” (376) tapes made by musical artists, Johnson-Eilola and Selber maintain that our traditional – and stagnant – ideas of plagiarism need to be changed to include “assemblages” (380). The authors explain assemblages as a textual mosaic of sorts wherein a writer would be allowed to freely mix his/her own ideas with the text from other authors. Instead of worrying about percentages of writer contribution to a paper, the authors argue that teachers should focus more on a student’s rhetorical ability to decide when and how often other writers are worked into his/her classroom assignment.

Well, I read this article on the plane as I was flying back from New Orleans yesterday. Unfortunately, I was not very helpful to the lady sitting next to me because I kept saying “WHAT?!?” as I read through the piece and disturbed her naps. Okay, I can see the authors’ point about showing students the rhetorical value of knowing when it might be appropriate to bolster their own ideas with the ideas of others without requiring citations, etc. A teacher could even have students do an exercise in which they must support their reasons for including certain material and so on. And, I understand the value of benchmarking available tools (like pre-existing webpage templates) to build a document.

But, even I think collaboration, iterability, and intertextuality can be over privileged in a classroom. In my view, Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s belief that “assemblages” are “a powerful form of rhetorical invention” (388) is inaccurate. To me, assemblages would be more similar to the canon of arrangement than invention, especially if students were working on “complete assemblages” (400). After all, if students are simply moving around pieces of other authors’ work, aren’t they just organizing and arranging rather than composing? And, how would we go about helping first-year composition students in assembling their work with other texts when the students often don’t have an idea of what they want to say to begin with?