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Tag Archives: theory

Reading Notes (ENG 894): Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge

26 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by Carol in ENG 894 Theories of Networks, ENG 894 Theory of Networks, Reading Notes (ENG 894)

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archaeology, archaeology of knowledge, archive, discontinuity, discourse, discursive, displacements, ENG 894, foucault, interconnexion, irruption, oeuvre, preconceptual, reading notes, statements, structuralism, theory, transformations, unities

On my first pass, these are extensive summary notes as I needed them to try to be able to make any future sense of Foucault for application or understanding…I have some notes to myself to come back to along the way — but wow…Foucault, you made my brain hurt! 

Michel Foucault - Archaeology of Knowledge Book CoverArchaeology of Knowledge – Michel Foucault

This book has been cited 21,525 times according to Google Scholar.  That may be one of the largest I have seen.  I note these things as I teach about the scholarly conversation and since coming back to school, I have noticed Foucault. A lot. Everywhere.  In fact, to the point where I add a hashtag #foucaultiseverywhere with a photo tag to my FB posts as I see references.  So this term seeing Archaeology of Knowledge on the syllabus was both exciting and terrifying.

How should I approach the book?  Background reading first? Summaries so I don’t miss anything important? I chose overviews, along with my reading, trying to stop at each chapter to get the gist – but knowing as I got deeper into the book that full gists were not going to be possible on a first read, so vague ideas might be a better approach…

Oh yeah, don’t forget to apply to my OoS “First-Year Seminars”. . . so here it goes. First, summary notes so that I have reference points to come back to —

Part I – Introduction: Foucault points out that the study of history in the traditional way is being replaced by disciplines that look at histories of ideas, thought, science, literature and philosophy  where they “evade very largely the work and methods of the historian” where “attention has been turned, on the contrary, away from vast unities like ‘periods’ or ‘centuries’ to the phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity” (4).

He sees history studied traditionally as a focus on “linear successions” — that study of “long periods” that attempt to

“reveal the stable, almost indestructible systems of checks and balances, the irreversible processes, the constant readjustments, the underlying tendencies that gather force, and are then suddenly reversed after centuries of continuity, the movements of accumulation and slow saturation, the great silent, motionless bases that traditional history has covered with a thick layer of event.” (3)

So, rather than continuities that look for patterns, it is the “interplay of transmissions, resumptions, disappearances, and repetitions” that become the points of study (5). BUT – he stresses that it isn’t one type of focus over another, “that these two great forms of description [continuities and discontinuities] have crossed without recognizing  one another” (6) – because the problems are still on “the questioning of the document” (6). Instead of looking for the continuities – the interpretation that provides the truth, there is a push to “work on it [the document/text] from within and to develop it”:

“history now organizes the document, divides it up, distributes it, orders it, arranges it in levels, establishes series, distinguishes between what is relevant and what is not, discovers elements, defines unities, describes relations.” (6-7)

“history, in its traditional form, undertook to ‘memorize’ the monuments of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal, or which say in  silence something other than what they actually say; in our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments. In that area where, in the past, history deciphered the traces left by men, it now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities.” (7)

Foucault attempts to clarify his aims in the Introduction.  He writes he is not trying to put a “structuralist method” on the study of history or “use the categories of cultural totalities” to impose “forms of structural analysis.” Instead, he is posing ways to “question teleologies and totalizations” and “freed from the anthropological theme” look to “historical possibility” (16).

Terms: Interruptions, displacements, transformations, epistemological acts and thresholds, discontinuity, convergence, structuralism 
Photo of Michel Foucault

Paul Michel Foucault (1926-1984), philosophe français, chez lui. Paris, avril 1984. Credits: http://thissideofsunday.blogspot.com/2013/06/readings-in-race-drama-of-race-foucault.html

Part II -The Discursive Regularities:

It’s time to rid ourselves of the negatives says Foucault – get rid of the “mass of notions” that “diversifies the theme of continuity” that include tradition, influence, development, evolution and spirit, major types of discourse and most of all – the unities of the book and the oeuvre (20-22).

Foucault sees the need for a theory, one that “must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption” (25). But – what is the purpose he asks for such a theory that breaks down the established unities?  IT is the statement – with discourse as a way to analyze the statement. Discourse then becomes the OoS looking at the things said, and the statement without collective memory.

Knowledge archive – becomes another discursive effect rethinking what they are/do. If we start with the unities, but not from within them, then the forms of continuity can be suspended and the field set free (26).

Instead of chains of influence or tables of difference, look to systems of dispersion.

“Rather than seeking the permanence of themes, images, and opinions through time, rather than retracing the dialectic of their conflicts in order to individualize groups of statements, could one not rather mark out the dispersion of the points of choice, and define prior to any option, to any thematic preference, a field of strategic possibilities?”(37)

Foucault next sets out “rules of formation” for how his theory could be approached. He lays out three “rules” for how objects might have appeared as objects of discourse (40):

  1. the “first surfaces of their emergence” – when they begin to be used and how
  2. the “authorities of delimitation” – groups that are imposing the rules of structure/authority
  3. the “grids of specification” – ways the system is divided, regrouped or classified

But – Foucault grows on me as he is constantly questioning himself – as he notes from the above, that “such a description is still in itself inadequate” (42)  — as

“the problem is how to decide what made them possible, and how these ‘discoveries’ could lead to others that took them up, rectified them, modified them, or even disproved them.” (43)

He offers remarks and consequences for his proposed theory:

Conditions for saying things about an object – the same or different “are many are imposing” – and my favorite point of all –

“is it not easy to say something new; it is not enough for us to open our eyes, to pay attention or to be aware, for new objects suddenly to light up and emerge out of the ground” (43-44).

He gets it!  New knowledge, finding new things to say – it is TOUGH!  Thank you Foucault for recognizing this.

Objects exist “under the positive conditions of a complex group of relations” and they are “not present in the object” – broken down into primary (real) and secondary (reflexive) relations – with the secondary formed through discourse – and a system of relations (discursive) (45).

“Discursive relations are not . . . internal to discourse” – nor are they “exterior to discourse” – they are “at the limit of discourse” (46).  They characterize “discourse itself as a practice” (46). Foucault stresses that “it is not the objects that remain constant . . . but the relation between the surfaces on which they appear” (47).  Discourse then offers not a way to analyze an object, but a way for it to emerge through its own complexity (47).

This limit area that Foucault discusses makes me wonder how much it might be applied to liminal spaces – or boundaries, such as threshold crossings?  [Note for follow-up to see if it comes up in areas of transfer, threshold or liminiality – as all of these are relevant in first-year and information literacy studies].

“what we are concerned with here is not to neutralize discourse, to make it the sign of something else . . .  but on the contrary  to maintain it in its consistency, to make it emerge in its own complexity. What, in short, we wish to do is to dispense with ‘things’. To ‘depresentify’ them. To conjure up their rich, heavy, immediate plenitude,  which we usually regard as the primitive law of a discourse that has become divorced from it through error, oblivion, illusion, ignorance, or the inertia of beliefs and traditions, or even the perhaps  unconscious desire not to see and not to speak. To substitute for the enigmatic treasure of ‘things’ anterior to discourse, the regular formation of objects that emerge only in discourse.” (47-48)

Analyze discourses – comes from ordering of objects – not treating discourses as “groups of signs” – but – “as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (49).

Foucault asks the questions:

  • Who is speaking – who has the right / qualifications to speak about a subject?
  • What are the institutional sites from where discourse “derives its legitimate source and point of application” [he brings in library here – the books, treatises – “documentary field” – later discusses archive]
  • What are the positions of the subject – such as in relation to other groups of objects?

Arrangement of the statements governing things (57-58):

  • Field of presence – what’s acknowledged as truthful, criticized or rejected
  • Field of concomitance – includes other domains
  • Field of memory – statements no longer true

The procedures of intervention aren’t the same for all – there is a preconceptual level – anonymous dispersion through texts, books, oeuvres – “compatibility of differently opposed systems” (61).

Important to look at how the theories and themes  — the strategies are distributed in history – was is successive or chance?  Was there regularity? (64)

Foucault points to the direction of his research (65) through his previous writing, establishing his methodology for why he did/didn’t write/explain things in his previous books. For this book, his research is to

  1. Determine the possible points of diffraction of discourse – points of incompatibility, points of equivalence, alternatives, link points of systematization.
  2. Specify the authorities that guided his choices, as no all of the alternatives could be realized. Choices made – through principle of exclusion and principle of the possibility of choices.
  3. Choices dependent upon authority – function – carried out “in a field of non-discursive practices” and “rules and processes of appropriation,” as well as “possible positions of desire in relation to discourse” (68). [Within this authority is also a power dynamic – how would this apply to the authority and practices applied within FYS?]

Foucault does not see an ideal discourse or “natural taxonomy that has been exact”  — stressing that “one must not relate the formation for theoretical choices either to a fundamental project or to the secondary play of opinions (70).

His section of “Remarks and Consequences” (71) was like a breather chapter where he asks the questions of his own writing, trying to explain his whys, and provide counter interpretations. He asks if his work is worth it?

Interesting note from this chapter – Foucault points out the levels aren’t free from each other, but they are established in a reverse direction – with the lower not dependent on those above – there is coexistence, but not then co-reliance it would seem (73)?  Choices and change stood out for me here, as discourse and systems produce each other – with the concept of boundaries coming up again here as well as a “regularity of a practice” (74).

Terms: unities, discourse, formation, statement, epistemes, discursive formations, historiography, memory, objects, enunciative modalities, concepts, strategies, consequences, irruption (to rush in forcibly or violently), dispersion, interference, interconnexion, rules of formation, signs, succession, orderings of enunciative series,  dependence, coexistence, field of presence, field of concomitance, field of memory, procedures of intervention, methods of transcribing, modes of translating, approximation, delimits, systematizing, dispersion, preconceptual, principle of determination, discursive formation, dispersion of elements, preterminal regularities

Part III – The Statement and the Archive:

Foucault asks what has been his purpose – he does ask that throughout, as I imagine I can’t be the only one that had to keep flipping around in my notes thinking – what? He acknowledges he may have changed his points, or even his focus throughout, but that it is time to “take up the definition of the statement at its very root” – — starting to connect his descriptions.

So … what is a statement?

  • ”A point without a surface, but that can be located in planes of division”
  • “A seed that appear on the surface of a tissue”
  • It is “the atom of discourse”
  • “an elementary unit of discourse”

That then moves into “what is a sentence?” Are a statement and a sentence equivalent?  Foucault says no, despite that “it is difficult to see how one is to recognize sentences that are not statements, or statements that are not sentences” (82). Finally – there is no “structural criteria of unity for a statement” – as it is “not a unit, but a function” (87).

Series of signs become a statement – if they possess “something else.” The relation between the signifier (significant) – to the signified (signifie)  — “the name to what it designates” – or “the relation of the sentence to its meaning” – and the “relation of the proposition to its reference (referent) (89). And yet – the statement is not “superposable on any of these relations”  — ACK!

And this – “A sentence cannot be non-significant; it refers to something, by virtue of the fact that it is a statement” (90).

  • Signs only have to be given for a statement to emerge
  • Statements are not “confronted by a correlate”
  • Statements possess a particular relation with a subject
  • Statements can operate without the existence of an associated domain [characteristic of the enunciative function]
  • Statements are always bordered by other statements
  • Statements aren’t neutral – they belong to a network of statements (99)
  • No statements that don’t presuppose others
  • Statements must have material existence – they are “always given through some material medium, even if that medium is concealed” (100)
  • Statements should not be treated as an event from a specific time or place or an act of memory

Rule of repeatable materiality – example of different editions or printing of a book — but “small differences” not enough to “alter the identity of the statement” (102).

In defining statements – Foucault sees he has to draw from enunciative functions that bear on different units (106).  There is a performance aspect to the statement

Foucault again begins to discuss what it seems he is doing  –

I am trying to show how a domain can be organized, without flaw, without contradiction, without internal arbitrariness, in which statements, their principle of grouping, the great historical unities that they may form, and the methods that make it possible to describe them are all brought into question. (114)

Rather than founding a theory – and perhaps before being able to do so (I do not deny that I regret not yet having succeeded in doing so) – my present concern is to establish a possibility. (115)

Thus, he lays out a number of propositions about discursive formations (116-117) that establish the need for them to be justifiable and reversible, as part of discursive practice.

Foucault places discourses between the “twin poles of totality and plethora” (118).

Discourse

  • Offers a plurality of meanings
  • Is both plenitude and endless wealth
  • Based on the principle that everything is never said

 Foucault points out that “Our task is not to give voice to the silence that surrounds them, nor to rediscover all that, in them and beside them, had remained silent or had been reduced to silence” (119) – so to what extent is this in contrast to Derrida and making meaning in the void – that blank space between the columns? For Foucault, exclusions are not being linked to repression. His focus in on the said, the spoken – the enunciative domain – that which is on the surface – “to interpret is a way of reacint to enunciative poverty” (120)

To describe a group of statements not as the closed, plethoric totality of a meaning, but as an incomplete, fragmented figure; to describe a group of statements not with reference to the interiority of an intention, a thought, or a subject, but in accordance with the dispersion of an exteriority; to describe a group of statements, in order to rediscover not the moment or the trace of their origin, but the specific forms of an accumulation, is certainly not to uncover an interpretation, to discover a foundation, or to free constituent acts; nor is it to decide on a rationality, or to embrace a teleology. It is to establish what I am quite willing to call a positivity. (125)

 Positivity has a role in historical a priori – which “take[s] account of the fact that discourse has not only a meaning or a truth, but a history, and a specific history that does not refer it back to the laws of an alien development” (127).

The archives are then those “systems of statement” articulated through historical a priori (events or things)

The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events. But the archive is also that which determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities; that which determines that they do not withdraw at the same pace in time, but shine, as it were, like stars, some that seem close to us shining brightly from afar off, while others that are in fact close to us are already growing pale. (129)

An archive is not the “library of all libraries” – “it is the general system of the formation and transformation of statements” (130).

Terms: enunciative function, statement, function, historical a priori, archive, signs, unity, signifie, referent, repeatable materiality, field of stabilization, verbal performance, linguistic performance, formulation, rarity, discursive practice, exteriority, accumulation, additivity, recurrence, remanence

 Part IV – Archaeological Description:

 So…what to do?  Foucault starts this part with a note that this thing he calls archaeology – “are at the moment . . . rather disturbing” (135)

While he writes that he set out with “a relatively simple problem”  (yeah right…), he has gotten out of hand as he has moved into a “whole series of notions”  that

“I have tried to reveal the specificity of a method that is neither formalizing nor interpretative; in short, I have appealed to a whole   apparatus, whose sheer weight and , no doubt, somewhat bizarre machinery are a source of embarrassment.” (135)

And he asks, are more methods needed? Is it “presumptuous” to want to add another? He has a “suspicion” that while he has tried to avoid drawing from the history of ideas, has he “all the time” been in that very space?

“Perhaps I am a historian of ideas after all. But an ashamed, or, if you prefer, a presumptuous historian of ideas. One who set out to renew his discipline from top to bottom; who wanted, no doubt, to achieve a rigour that so many other, similar descriptions have recently acquired; but who, unable to modify in any real way that old form of analysis . . . declares that he had been doing, and wanted to do, something quite different. All this new fog just to hide what remained in the same landscape, fixed to an old patch of ground cultivated to the point of exhaustion.” (136)

But he presses on – as he writes he won’t be satisfied until he has “cut myself off” from the history of ideas and “shown in what way archaeology differs” (136).

This was an interesting section, as one of the classes I teach looks at the history of ideas, especially related to technology and how knowledge/scholarship has developed. Foucault recognizes the necessity for crossing disciplines and sees the “history of ideas . . . [as a] discipline of beginnings and ends, the description of  obscure continuities and returns, the reconstitution of developments in the linear form of history” (137). It can also be seen as the “discipline of interferences” or of “concentric circles.”

So, what is the difference from his archaeology? He sees “a great many points of divergence,” but four discrete differences:

  1. Archaeology doesn’t define thoughts, images, themes, etc… revealed in discourse, but the discourses themselves – as practices obeying certain rules. Its concern is with “discourse as its own volume, as a monument” (138).
  2. Defines discourses in their specificity, showing how the rules are irreducible from any other. It is not a doxology, but a differential analysis of the “modalities” of discourse.
  3. Not ordered in accordance of oeuvres, but rather it “defines types of rules for discursive practices that run through individual oeuvres”
  4. Doesn’t restore what has been thought, experienced at the moment. It is a rewriting – a regulated transformation of what has already been written.

In his approach, Foucault is attempting to open up future exploration – distinguishing between linguistic analogy and enunciative homogeneity –uncovering the regularity of a discursive practice.  This is what archaeology is interested in – the emergence of disconnexions.

In looking for the smallest “point of rupture” – between the already said and the “vivacity of creation” into differences – there are two methodological problems: resemblance and procession (143).

Archaeology is looking to establish the “regularity of statements” as “every statement bears a certain regularity and it cannot be dissociated from it” (144).  It is not in “search of inventions” or “concerned with the average phenomena of opinion” – but rather the enunciative regularities of statements.

Archaeology is concerned with and only with – the homogeneities of linguistic analogy, logical identity and enunciative homogeneity (145) and one of its principal themes  — “may thus constitute the tree of derivation of a discourse” (147) with governing statements at its root.

“Contradictions” [Part IV, Chapter 3] pokes at coherence – and the contradictions that arise within the history of ideas’ use of it, pointing to the need for analysis to “suppress contradiction as best it can” (150).  He looks for his own contradictions in this work, asking if there are only minimal ones at the end, or if there is a “fundamental contradiction” that might emerge that might constitute “the very law of its existence” – as it is on this that discourse emerges  – as the “contradictions…function throughout discourse, as the principle of its historicity” (151).

“Discourse is the path from one contradiction to another” (151)

And in this chapter I found my AHA moment here

Archaeology is looking at how the contradictions derive from a certain domain – that fundamental level that “reveals the place where the two branches of the alternative join”  — “where the two discourses are juxtaposed”  — “to determine the extent and form of the gap that separates them.” Archaeology “describes the different spaces of dissension.” (152)

  • Archaeology study is “always in the plural” (157).
  • Its analysis is “always limited and regional”
  • Its horizon “is not a science, a rationality, a mentality, or a culture; it is a tangle of interpositivities”
  • It wishes to uncover “the play of analogies and differences as they appear at the level of rules of formation” through five tasks”
    • Show how different discursive elements may be formed on the basis of similar rules
    • Show how the rules do/do not apply or are linked, or arranged in the same way
    • Show how different concepts occupy a similar position within positivity
    • Show how a single notion may cover two archaeologically distinct elements – indicating the archaeological shifts
    • Show how from one positivity to the other, relations of subordination or complementarity may be established – archaeological correlations
  • Reveals relations between discursive and non-discursive domains
  • Situates itself at the level of formal analogies or translations of meaning (160-165)

“Archaeology, however, seems to treat history only to freeze it” (166).

  • Rules can’t be established for every statement, as such archaeology “defines the rules of formation of a group of statements” (167).
  • Not all rules of formation for a positivity have the same generality – “some are more specific and derive from others” (168).

For an archaeological history of discourse – two models must be put aside –

  • The linear model of speech – with all events succeeding another without coincidence or superposition
  • The model of stream of consciousness (169)

Instead of homogenous events that make up discourse, archaeology looks at the levels of statements themselves, their derivation, or unique emergence (170), the changes/transformations that occurred.

Responding to perceived questions that might come up, Foucault points out that

  • Archeology does not describe disciplines
  • Positivities do not characterize forms of knowledge

In the section “Different thresholds and their chronology” – this furthers my idea that there are connections to the threshold concepts – post Foucault, as well as liminal spaces – while those terms are never used here – he does forward thresholds – of positivity, epistemologization, and formalization. For Foucault, he notes they are domains for further exploration. He is pushing against a linear movement or passing through for any of these thresholds and  (186 187).  [Come back to these points for case study to align with FYS and IL].

Archaeology is concerned with not describing specific aspects of science, but “the very different domain of knowledge” (195).

Terms: archaeology, contradictions, comparative, change, transformation, resemblance, procession, enunciative homogeneity, disconnexions, regularity, linguistic analogy (translatability), logical identity (equivalence), derivation, totalitarian periodization, spaces of dissension, contradiction, intrinsic oppositions, discursive formation, correlations, positivity, threshold of positivity, threshold of epistemologization, episteme

Part V – Conclusion:

Referring to himself as “you” in the beginning of conclusion as if to speak from the audience’s response to his text – Foucault points to the “great pains” he took to “disassociate” himself “from structuralism,” echoing his original point from his Introduction (199). But here he asks, what was the benefit if he didn’t take advantage of the benefits of structural analysis? Moving back to I, he expands on his misunderstanding – of the “transcendence of discourse” and in refusing “to refer to it as a subjectivity” (200). The “you” and “I” banter continues in the conclusion – as if he is having a conversation with a critic.

He writes that he did not “deny history, but held in suspense the general, empty category of change in order to reveal transformations at different levels” (200). Foucault asks if the discourses he is following are philosophy or history (205)? He’s rather coy here – citing embarrassment in being found out – as if he wanted the suspense to continue – and to be able to draw from both – and “avoiding the ground on which it [his discourse theory] could find support.  This is a “discourse about discourses” (205).

What came across throughout the book was that Foucault wasn’t trying to dictate a new way to think or to respond to history.  In fact, he provides commentary on his own self-doubt as to what he is doing in different parts of the text, such as  the “impotence of his method” (199). He is questioning, offering alternatives and putting it all out there for discussion . . . which at the end was much more appealing for how I might start to think about my own OoS and trying on new theories.  They might work, they might not, but that’s ok.  Thank you Foucault!

Terms: historico-transcendental dominance, teleological, structuralism, transcendence, temporalization, polemics, historical phenomenology, displacements, performance, competence, correlative spaces.

Connections and Thoughts:  Too early…that is my first impression – as I read back through my notes after reading the text, writing the notes, reviewing what’s been said about the text and still – my brain hurts and I’m not sure I even see a “theory” in all of this to compare.

As I start to think about my OoS: FYS and how they tie into networks, the amount of interaction they have with the various constituents on campus – from the disciplinary faculty to the library to the writing, speech and academic skills centers, to CAPS and Civic Engagement, it’s begging for a Popplet of its own [coming soon] that I can then link out to the theories and readings that I will be starting to put together.

For this week, Foucault’s questioning and approach to history [and discourse] drew out some interesting terms I noted throughout – especially as he stressed the discontinuities and transformational offerings that looking at history – or any subject through this different lens might offer new understandings. I admit, I think linearly and when I’m asked to go outside this comfort area to visual approaches, I want to apply my linear way of thinking to a visual medium.  When Foucault writes that moving away from linear ways of thinking is his approach, it is intriguing as he isn’t offering visual in its stead, but rather ruptures and a move back to preconceptual understanding and its irruptions (I hadn’t seen that work before, but I like it!).

Michel Foucault - photo and quote

Photo and Quote from http://sites.psu.edu/foucault2016/2016/01/

Works Cited and Bibliography

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language. Trans. From the French by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.

Gutting, Gary, “Michel Foucault”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Reading Notes W1 (ENG 894): “How Stuff Works: Memory” and the Rhetorical Situation

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Carol in ENG 894 Theories of Networks, Reading Notes (ENG 894)

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audience, biesecker, bitzer, brain, computers, connections, context, derrida, differance, latour, memory, networks, processing, rhetorical situation, rickert, situation, symbols, theory, vatz

The pre-week 1 readings all discussed the rhetorical situation, while providing differing views on the role and place of situation, context, and audience. I read the articles in chronological order, so as Lloyd Bitzer (1968) wrote of the nature of the rhetorical situation, with the necessity for situation to precede rhetorical discourse, his argument seemed logical. In order for there to be rhetorical discourse on an event or situation, it first must occur and is based on five general characteristics: it is provided as a “fitting response” prescribed by the situation, that is also located in reality, exhibits structures and provides a level of maturation in that it comes into existence, matures and then decays or persists.

For Bitzer, “rhetoric is situational” (3) as he defines it contains three constituents: exigence, audience and constraints and can be defined as

A complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence. (6)

Rhetorical situations that persist become part of the body of rhetorical literature – those universal rhetorical situations, such as the Gettysburg Address, MLK’s “I Have a Dream” or Socrates’ Apology. In Bitzer’s view, meaning is always intrinsic to the rhetorical situation, situations must be persuasive and they must answer an urgent need.

Richard Vatz provides a response to Bitzer, pointing to what he calls the “myth” of the rhetorical situation. According to Vatz, Bitzer misses key aspects, that of the quality of the situation, the relationship between the rhetor and the situation, and the role of choice as a necessity for how a situation is communicated. For Vatz, there is no static individualized situation, instead rhetorical discourse is a form of translation of choices, communicating select aspects of situations, not a situation. Proposing an alternate to Bitzer, Vatz outlines how situations are rhetorical and utterances are what invite exigence. For Vatz, rhetoric is a cause, not an effect of meaning as no situation can be independent of the perception of the interpreter.

Vatz’ “essential question” is what is the relationship between rhetoric and situations (158) with Bitzer and Vatz offering opposite views. Vatz sees political motive in some rhetorical situations, with them being “created” rather than “found” (159), such as the case of the “Cuban Missile Crisis” as it was both an act of rhetorical creation, as well as a political crisis. This resonated with me having just finished a class in Cultural Affect and the ways that emotions can often be “sold” to a populace through the media or via authority, as a “culture of fear” or a “war on terrorism” can become part of a society’s fiber of action/response, as Vatz notes that rhetoric can “create fears and threat perception” whereby speeches are needed to “communicate reassurances” (160).

Barbara Biesecker offers a different position surrounding rhetorical situation, while drawing from Vatz and Bitzer, but counters the historical “exchange of influence” aspect of the rhetorical situation, focused on speaker and audience. Biesecker writes that a “rethinking “ is necessary as only seeing discourse as situation-exigence through influence or its “historical character,” or even through an “exchange between individuals” tied to an event is limiting. By reexamining symbolic action (the text) and subject (audience) using Derrida’s Différance, the rhetorical situation can be rethought as articulation. Through a lens of deconstruction, the “rhetoricity of all texts [can be taken] seriously” (111) by offering “a way of reading that seeks to come to terms with the way in which the language of any given text signifies the complicated attempt to form a unity out of a division” (112).

For Biesecker, audience is a part of the rhetorical situation as an “effect of différance and not the realization of identities” providing governance by a “logic of articulation” over influence. Rather than see situation or speaker as the point of origin and thereby forcing a who is right or wrong, viewed through différance, that “division within as well as between distinct elements” (115) can focus instead on the interrelatedness of signs

 …this interweaving, this textile, is the text produced only in the transformation of another text. Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces. (Derrida, “Semiology and Grammatology,” Positions, 26).

Through the middle spaces, those that may be considered voids – the folds, are the places where meaning can be made. This stress on avoiding dichotomies or binaries also for me, is reflective of later affect and critical theory, as layered understandings and recognizing multiple voices and narratives replaces a strict hierarchy of either/or interpretations. In looking at a text from reception instead of production, the audience, while always a part of the rhetorical situation, often “receives little critical attention . . . simply named, identified as the target of discursive practice, and then dropped” (122). Audience within différance is viewed as an aspect of production or effect-structure (125). As the subject is destabilized, then the rhetoric becomes shifting and uncentered, constructing and reconstructing the linkages (126).

Biesecker’s article will take more time and application for me to really see its potentiality. Thinking about rhetorical situations through difference caught my interest as I like the idea of making meaning in the middle, rather than being directed by situation, but my understanding as she delved deeper into articulation remains a bit murky.

Thomas Rickert’s article draws from Bruno Latour, another new theorist for me, so as with Derrida and différance, on first read, clarity was not offering itself up. Rickert uses the example of wine tasting to illustrate how context can be elevated over the object, based on perceptions of what is thought about the object over the actual properties of the object itself. Latour, Rickert points out is critical of context, as he would rather look at the “things and objects—that make up an assembled entity” (135). Rickert applies Latour in looking at how context (what he notes is irrepressible) emerges “as an assemblage of complexly interactive variables (or actants)” (136). Latour uses dingpolitik— a politic of things—as he points to politics as rhetorical, with the social as “inseparable from its material infrastructure” (136). Rickert recognizes the benefits of Latour’s approach, but also points out its shortcomings, such as assemblage and how persuasion comes into play, as well as context, looked at as a “holistic notion of the ‘as a whole’” (137). Rickert argues that “context retains its holistic dimension but that this scope is neither stable nor the sole result of human doing” (137). Latour stresses writing and describing over context, but Rickert questions Latour’s criticism of context, viewing it instead as both a boundary and an element (141), rethinking context as “having a dual role” within two dimensions of 1) a holistic, material ecology; and 2) the relation of relations that looks at the “howness” of things.

Comparisons:

Bitzer Vatz Biesecker (Derrida) Rickert (Latour)
Rhetoric is situational Situations are rhetorical Articulation over influence Objects become rhetorical as they are inseparable from what engage us
Exigence invites utterance Utterances invite exigence Rhetoricity in all texts through différance Dingpolitik – politic of things. Persuasion achieved through an assembly of actants (136)
The situation controls the rhetorical response The rhetoric controls the situational response Différance makes signification possible Latour critical of context / Rickert offers holism
Obtains its character as rhetoric from the situation which generates it Situations obtain their character from the rhetoric which surrounds them Différance is the nonfull, nonsimple “origin”; it is the structured and differing origin of differences (117) Rickert – holistic aspect as “howness” of things through assemblage

How Stuff Works is useful website as a reference tool. I tend to think of it as a technology information site, but in looking at its “About” page, it reflects a much broader range of how “the world” works – so definitely a source for me to remember as students are looking for quick and clear explanations.

Image of human brain with computer interior parts

Human and computer brain from http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/workspace/university-building-human-brain-model-33719

My topic for reading is “Memory.” I first went into the main Memory topic, which focused on human memory and brain science. Once I went back and realized it was only the technology “Memory” section I was to read and comment on, I was actually glad to have read the others first, as I saw connections and a number of similarities in how both human memory and computer memory can be similar and also relate to teach other. Both can easily be viewed as networks – with the brain as part of the body’s network of organs, or even just within the brain, the network of thought and mind. Computers run on a network of individual pieces that come together to make things happen, but also are pieces of larger entities, as most home computers are now networked within a house, hooked to printers, each other, and the larger world through Internet connections. As I start to really think about the interactivity of how one piece of something interacts and affects the other pieces, the idea of assemblage (Rickert) and stepping away to see a holistic picture is intriguing.

Most gadgets in the 21st century have some form of memory. Memory can be either short or long-term, much like human memory. In a computer, it often refers to the amount of quick access storage available that includes RAM, virtual and caching. It is considered a form of temporary storage, but is one of the most important aspects in computer performance, especially for high graphics and gaming. As part of the “team” that runs a computer, it is a form of network, as it relies of the different parts to communicate, react and provides successful computing experience.

Computers can use both static and removable storage. ROM is a form of static storage, while floppy discs were the first removable storage. Today, storage can come from hard-drives, flash memory or light. Light has been a form of storing and reading data since compact disc (CD) technology—over thirty years ago. A CD Digital versatile disc (DVD) improved on this in the 1990s allowing for much greater density of storage.

Image of human brain memory

Mapping Memory from http://designcanes.com/

Holographic memory storage is the newest form, poised to improve optical storage by enabling 3D volume storage that goes beyond the current surface storage on CDs or DVDs. For size comparison, 1 TB (terabyte) could be stored on a crystal the size of a sugar cube in holographic memory, the contents of 1,000 CDs. Form of storage was first discovered by Pieter van Heerden, a Poloroid scientist, in the 1960s. While early on touted as the next storage breakthrough, it has not become popular, despite continuing research and testing. Online tech blogger, Sarishti Saha writes, “[a]lthough the technology boasts of revolutionary changes in the data-storage industry, a few more than one Achilles’ heels have always let it down in the past endeavors. We could only hope that if it shows up next time, it stays in the market for keeps.”

For the human brain, memory is the process of bringing what is learned and retained into the conscious mind. It is measured in two ways: recall and recognition and classified though either short-term—quickly forgotten, insignificant items that may be forgotten in a few seconds, or long-term memory, important items that may last through years or a lifetime. Skills are identified as memories that utilize motor responses.

Remembering is more effective if a person cares about the subject, can apply it to what is already known, and learns in small chunks with frequent breaks and recall sessions. Mnemonics can be helpful in remembering, as well as familiar stimulus, such as identifying a place with a song or smell. Retroactive inhibition—items too similar to previous memories, repression—exclusion from the conscious due to conflict and distortion—false or changed perceptions based on a possibly traumatic event are all barriers to remembering. People are much more likely to remember events in detail that are emotionally disturbing, as emotion and memory are connected in the brain. Fear is part of the amygdala and is a key facet of core memories. While people may not remember good memories as well, their recall can be beneficial as they release dopamine, a “feel good” neurotransmitter.

Brain image - girl with areas of brain highlighted

Brain memory from http://www.technology.org/2014/09/23/brain-encodes-time-place-taste-memory/

While some people may find it easier to not be as affected by negative emotions, others seem to intensify the negative. Clinicians can help to teach techniques for better dealing with emotions, while there are also individual ways people can manage difficult memories, including relaxation, writing down feelings, or using positive imagery. Strengthening positive memory recall can be done by focusing on them while they are occurring or to think more about them after they are over.

Memory begins to decline with age, but there are ways to help retain and improve memory:

  1. Foods rich in antioxidants, B12, omega 3 fatty acids, such as berries, walnuts, fish, dark leafy greens, turmeric, spinach and orange juice.
  2. Heart health, including no smoking, exercise, low blood pressure, less salt, sugar and alcohol.
  3. Sunlight each day.
  4. Plenty of rest and early rising, as part of a 6-8 hour restful night of sleep.
  5. Memory practice that can include visualization and writing down important lists or items.

Types of unusual memory include eidetic (photographic), hypermnesia (exaggerated detail), and amnesia (complete loss or repressed) usually due to a trauma or emotional event. The cerebral cortex houses the higher level intellectual processes. Within this is the lateral area that contains the hippocampus (places and facts) and amygdala (emotions and skills) that retain different types of memories. Learning is dependent on synapses in the brain that are strengthened by glutamates—chemicals that activate NMDAs neurons to boost memory. Yet, exactly how memory works and in what capacity people remember is not fully understood.

In looking at connections between the readings, Rickert’s example showing people’s gullibility and the unreliability in ascertaining an object and quality within different contexts is also frequently applied to memory and how time and situation – dependent on the intensity of the situation can affect how people remember events.

  Pre & Week 1 Readings

 Biesecker, Barbara A. “Rethinking the Theoretical Situation from within the Thematic of ‘Différance.’” Philosophy & Rhetoric 22.2 (1989): 110-130.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 1.1 (1968): 1-14.

Bonsor, Kevin. “How Holographic Memory Will Work” 8 November 2000. HowStuffWorks.com.

Cancio, Colleen. “Do we remember bad times better than good?” 4 October 2011. HowStuffWorks.com.

Crawford, Stephanie. “How Secure Digital Memory Cards Work” 17 October 2011. HowStuffWorks.com.

“Memory.” 05 October 2009. HowStuffWorks.com.

Rickert, Thomas. “The Whole of the Moon: Latour, Context, and the Problem of Holism.” [Ch. 8]. Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition. Eds. Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers. Chicago: Southern Ill. UP, 2015. 1435-150.

Saha, Sarishti. “Holographic Digital Data Storage: A Fad or Here to Stay?” 15 June 2015. Yaabot.

Tyson , Jeff. “How Virtual Memory Works” 28 August 2000. HowStuffWorks.com.

Tyson, Jeff, and Dave Coustan. “How RAM Works” 25 August 2000. HowStuffWorks.com.

Tyson, Jeff. “How Computer Memory Works” 23 August 2000. HowStuffWorks.com.

Vann, Madeline Roberts. “5 Memory Boosters” 10 September 2008. HowStuffWorks.com.

Vatz, Richard E. “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 6.3 (1973): 154-161.

Paper #5 Epistemological Alignment

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), Papers (810)

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

composition, English studies, epistemologies, genre, matsuda, methodology, Objects of Study, second-language, second-language writing, theory

Faced with questions as I started to think about paper #5, I realized this paper has the potential to be my stream of consciousness post. It is not only about who I am and where I align myself within the field of English Studies, but also about what I am learning and what is out there in 2015 — the possibilities for scholarship, for aligning my various personal and professional objectives. As such, this paper will directly lead into my last Paper #6: Being a Scholar of . . .

How do I align myself theoretically and etymologically? This term, I have focused on second-language writing within composition studies for all of my readings and posts.  I did this because it was an area I was interested in, but knew nothing about.  I am only just beginning to explore how it aligns with who I am as a student, scholar, librarian and teacher. First, I need to explain the largest part of who I am as a professional librarian and educator for the past 25 years. I do this by providing background on my specialty area within information literacy, as this concept and its accompanying standards are the methodologies by which academic librarians base the majority of their epistemology related to library instruction. Within the library profession, the Information Literacy Competency Standards are the equivalent of the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Outcomes Statement. Used as both a theoretical foundation and guide for practice within librarian instruction, the IL Standards were first adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in 2000.

Julian’s Bower, Lincolnshire

Julian’s Bower, Lincolnshire

Now in the midst of a major revision, to be renamed the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, Information Literacy is defined by ACRL in this revised Framework as “a spectrum of abilities, practices, and habits of mind that extends and deepens learning through engagement with the information ecosystem. It includes

  •  understanding essential concepts about that ecosystem;
  • engaging in creative inquiry and critical reflection to develop questions and to find, evaluate, and manage information through an iterative process;
  • creating new knowledge through ethical participation in communities of learning, scholarship, and civic purpose; and
  • adopting a strategic view of the interests, biases, and assumptions present in the information ecosystem.

The Standards will be referred to in the revision as a Framework, as they will be “based on a cluster of interconnected core concepts, with flexible options for implementation” (1). In this revision, threshold concepts are introduced as those ideas within a discipline that are “passageways or portals to enlarged understanding of ways of thinking and practicing within that discipline.  Six are identified within the Framework[1]

  • Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
  • Information Creation as a Process
  • Information Has Value
  • Research as Inquiry
  • Scholarship Is a Conversation
  • Searching Is Strategic

Added to these are knowledge practices, “demonstrations of ways in which learners can increase their understanding” of information literacy concepts, and dispositions, “ways in which to address the affective, attitudinal, or valuing dimension of learning.” Finally metaliteracies are to be included as they offer “a renewed vision of information literacy as an overarching set of abilities in which students are both consumers and creators of information who can participate successfully in collaborative spaces” (ACRL 1).

How I align all of this with my growing interest and scholarship in First-Year and Second-Language  Writing are the current balls in the air. As I look to my posts and readings from the term, I see connecting threads amidst my interests, goals, and seeds…points I identify as areas for future study.

From PAB #1, I described how I came to my focus area of second-language writing for this term:

At my own university, as in many without a composition sequence in the first year, students all take first-year seminars and second-language students often face writing challenges during their first year, but only a small percentage of second-language students are enrolled in an additional course to support their second-language needs.

Much of the second-language writing research I have read so far is over 10 years old, but as I have no background in this area, it is informative to research and learn the history of the field, its relationship to composition studies and how best I can align myself within these two areas for my future research and study.

In PAB #3 and #4, the grammar debate both in L1 and L2 scholarship is of interest to me, as I began teaching English in 1985 as a staunch current-traditionalist amidst process composition frameworks.  I didn’t know that was what I was, but over the years, my focus on grammar, “correct” writing and formalist traditions now make me cringe as I see how much scholarship and pedagogy has been focused on alternatives…ouch.

With the death of George Hillocks this week, my post discussing his 1984 article that Janice Lauer argued “discredited the full-frontal teaching of grammar” (128) begs for a reread in his memory.

How do my identified objects of study fit in? Moving to PAB #5 and #6, I identified students as objects of study within second-language writing. Looking ahead, I plan to expand to both second-language and L1 students, examining how they approach writing from sources and move into research-based writing.

I looked to the section I wrote on students’ identities – how they are

“negotiated in text formation,” citing additional scholarship[2] on language use within “situated context and community” and “notions of imagined community”– all of which lead to students “affective roles of investment and belongingness in generating writing characteristic[s] of discourse communities” [my emphases] (114). There are very different student reactions to writing, research and citing conventions in Western academic writing, and students’ first-language knowledge is often at odds with academic English.

As I thought about my own agendas and professional/personal objectives, I looked to  PAB #7 and #8 and my reading in Process, Post-Process, Translingualism and Genre Theories within writing studies as these opened up yet more areas for potential exploration. Genre theory, as Hyland’s 2003 article points out, can align itself with social contexts and “complement process views” even as post-process theories have now displaced the areas of process-based pedagogies,

While process methods in writing have had “a major impact,” Hyland maintains that they have not resulted in improved writing due to approaches “rich amalgam of methods [that] collect around a discovery-oriented, ego-centered core which lacks a well-formulated theory of how language works in human interaction” (17).

There are also many trans- theories I potentially see myself aligned with.

  • Transdisciplinary–Matsuda’s call moving second-language learning from an interdisciplinary area of concentration.
  • Transfer—looking at how writing and first-year skills can be better aligned to demonstrate movement from the first-year to subsequent classes and learning. This can include both the WID (Writing in the Disciplines) and WAC (Writing across the Curriculum) movements.
  • Translingualism – the move from multilingual to a wider acceptance of the diversity in languages is a rising area of scholarship; but I am more interested in watching this – as Dr. DePew said – to see how it all plays out in practice.

In reading Matsuda and Horner et al for PAB #8, I realized how translingual approaches can provide me with ways to think differently about the writing classroom, tying together my growing discomfort for how Standardized English and its accompanying rules privilege a minority of students in the 21st century educational environment.

By arguing for the fluidity of languages, translingual approaches “question language practices,” asking “what produces the appearance of conformity, as well as what that appearance might and might not do, for whom, and how” (Horner et al. 304). With translingualism, there is no “standard” English, described as a “bankrupt concept” by the authors. Rather the varieties of English, as well as other languages, are looked at by way of what “writers are doing with language and why” (Horner et al. 305).

I find that the more I read Matsuda’s scholarship, the more I am interested in aligning my professional work as a librarian and teacher, with continued scholarship and study in the field of second-language writing, concurring with Matsuda as he recommends that scholars learn “more about language—its nature, structure, and function as well as users and uses” and to “develop a broader understanding of various conversations that are taking place—inside and outside the field” (483).

library palace

William Randolph Heart’s San Simeon Library

As I continue to review my posts and readings for the term, thinking about these last few weeks of class and how I might align myself within the discipline, I return  to Fulkerson’s, “Four Philosophies of Composition” (1979),  and “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century” (2005).  He discusses the landscape of composition theory, in what he refers to as his “every ten years frustration” in trying to make sense of where composition studies has been, but also where it is going. Throughout his 2005 article, he looks at the “social turn” of composition (655) and I see myself most aligned with this latest social-constructivist approach to pedagogy and teaching as I move forward. The text that I have begun to look more closely at A Guide to Composition Pedagogies is helping me more clearly delineate the varied areas of focus within the field. I am really just beginning to return to this area of scholarship, since first teaching in the mid-1980s, having aligned myself with library research and instruction until this past year.  Much has happened in the last 30 years! guide to composition pedagogies book cover A Guide to Composition Pedagogies

Lingering questions of alignment to be explored in Paper #6…

  •  Composition Theories – Am I a latent current-traditionalist or have I moved to post-process? What is next?
  • Social Constructivism – The social turn in composition (Bizzell, Bartholomae, Berlin, Harris) appeals in some ways to me, as to how the language and mind work together to construct meaning – and how the various discourse communities align with my current teaching methods.
  • Critical pedagogy – The ideas surrounding power in the classroom (Delpit, Freire) – the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of students and teachers – how does this apply to my beliefs and teaching style?
  • Post-structuralism – Bringing rhetoric back into composition and exploring how invention can persuade within an argument (Crowley). How can I apply this to my own teaching and scholarship?

While Matsuda’s work in 2L scholarship has opened up my eyes and interest to continue exploring in this area, I have three paths that are converging – first year writing (including how these skills transfer – and the connections to writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines), how students research and use sources (which includes the ugly P word, plagiarism), and from the library instruction and critical literacy lens, I include issues of English as a second language in writing/research in the first year. How these will ultimately align and play themselves out in my study and scholarship, I honestly have no idea at this point.  I will look at this more in Paper #6 as I examine how I can contribute to the Major Debates in English and Library/Information Literacy Studies, as I plan to keep moving all three paths forward, adding theory, scholarship, new insights and knowledge.  I am  in a collection/learning mode for a little while more.

 §

Notes:

[1] Threshold Concept Theory is noted by Ann Johns as “a relatively new framework that deepens our understanding of critical learning experiences.  The theory provides a framework of characteristics for identifying crucial conceptual knowledge that represents learning portals within a subject area of discipline” (150).

Jan Meyer and Ray Land’s Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (2006) and Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines (2008) provide additional background and establish their Meyer and Land’s ground-breaking scholarship in this area.

 §

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Tony DiTerlizzi | Digital Artwork |Books Gallery

Works Cited & Further Reading

A Work in Progress…Staring at the Labyrinth

 As I start looking through all of my accumulated articles related to my posts, as well as those I have identified as “must reads,” I put them here in my blog as my growing learning path…

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Accessed: November 18, 2014.

Adams, Katherine H., and John L. Adams. “The Paradox Within: Origins of the Current-Traditional Paradigm.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 17.4 (1987): 421-31.

Baca, Damián. “Rethinking Composition, Five Hundred Years Later.” JAC 29.1/2 (2009): 229-42.

Baer, Andrea. “Why Do I Have to Write That?: Compositionists Identify Disconnects between Student and Instructor Conceptions of Research Writing that Can Inform Teaching.” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 9.2 (2014): 37-44.

Bartholomae, David, and John Schlib. “Reconsiderations: ‘Inventing the University’ at 25: An Interview with David Bartholomae.” College English 73.3 (2011): 260-82.

Beam, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review 27.1 (2008): 72-86.

Berlin, James. “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class.” College English 50.5 (1988): 477-94

Bewick, Laura, and Sheila Corrall. “Developing Librarians as Teachers: A Study of Their Pedagogical Knowledge.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 42.2 (2010): 97-110.

Brent, Doug. “The Research Paper, and Why We Should Still Care.” Writing Program Administration 37.1 (Fall 2013: 33-53.

—.“Transfer, Transformation, and Rhetorical Knowledge: Insights from Transfer Theory.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 25.4 (2011): 396-420. DOI: 10.1177/1050651911410951

—. “Reinventing WAC (Again): The First-Year Seminar and Academic Literacy.” College Composition and Communication 57.2 (2005): 253-276.

Carr, Jean F. “Composition, English, and the University.” PMLA 129.3 (2014): 435-41.

The Citation Project: Preventing Plagiarism, Teaching Writing. Accessed:  November 18, 2014.

Costino, Kimberly A., and Sunny Hyon. “Sidestepping Our ‘Scare Words’: Genre as a Possible Bridge between L1 and L2 Compositionists.” Journal of Second Language Writing 20.1 (2011): 24-44.

Dean, Deborah. “Shifting Perspectives about Grammar: Changing What and How We Teach.” English Journal 100.4 (2011): 20-26.

Dirk, Kerry. “‘The “Research Paper” Prompt: A Dialogic Opportunity for Transfer.’” Composition Forum 25 (2012).

Downs, Douglas and Elizabeth Wardle. “Teaching About Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies.'” College Composition and Communication 58.4 (2007): 552–84.

Drabinski, Emily. “Toward a Kairos of Library Instruction.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 40.5 (2014): 480-85.

Elbow, Peter. “Inviting the Mother Tongue: Beyond “Mistakes,” “Bad English,” and “Wrong Language”” JAC 19.3 (1999): 359-88.

Elmborg, James. “Critical Information Literacy: Implications for Instructional Practice.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 32.2 (2006): 192-199.

Faigley, Lester. “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal.” College English 48.6 (1986): 527-42.

Fister, Barbara. “The Library’s Role in Learning: Information Literacy Revisited.” Library Issues 33.4 (2013).

Flower, Linda. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 32.4 (1981): 365-87.

Hofer, Amy R., Lori Townsend, and Korey Brunetti. “Troublesome Concepts and Information Literacy: Investigating Threshold Concepts for Il Instruction.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 12.4 (2012): 387-405.

Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. “Opinion: Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach.” College English 73.3 (2011): 303-321.

Howard, Rebecca Moore, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue. “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences.” Writing & Pedagogy 2.2 (2010): 177-92.

Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty.” College English 57.7 (1995): 788-806.

Imai, Junko. “Review: Practicing Theory in Second Language Writing.” TESOL Quarterly 46.2 (2012): 430-33.

Jacobs, Heidi L. M. “Information Literacy and Reflective Pedagogical Praxis.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 34.3 (2008): 256-62.

Jacobson, Trudi E., and Thomas P. Mackey. “Proposing a Metaliteracy Model to Redefine Information Literacy.” Communications in Information Literacy 7.2 (2013): 84–91.

Johns, Ann  M.  “The Future of Genre in L2 Writing: Fundamental, but Contested, Instructional Decisions.” Journal of Second Language Writing 20.1 (2011): 56-68.

–. “Genre Awareness for the Novice Academic Student: An Ongoing Quest.” Language Teaching 41.2 (2008): 237-252.

Johnson, J. Paul, and Ethan Krase. “Coming to Learn: From First-Year Composition to Writing in the Disciplines.” Across the Disciplines 8 (2011): 1-30.

Keck, Casey. “Copying, Paraphrasing, and Academic Writing Development: A Re-Examination of L1 and L2 Summarization Practices.” Journal of Second Language Writing 25 (2014): 4-22. Kell, Catherine. “Ariadne’s Thread: Literacy, Scale and Meaning Making Across Space and Time.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 81 (2013): 1-24.

Kolb, Kenneth H., Kyle C. Longest, and Mollie J. Jensen. “Assessing the Writing Process: Do Writing-Intensive First-Year Seminars Change How Students Write?” Teaching Sociology 41.1 (2012): 20-31. Krashen, Stephen. “The Composing Process.” Research Journal: Ecolint Institute of Teaching and Learning. International School of Geneva 2 (2014): 20-30. Web.

Lauer, Janice M. “Rhetoric and Composition.” English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s). Ed. Bruce McComiskey. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006. 106-52

Li, Yongyan. “Academic Staff’s Perspective upon Student Plagiarism: A Case Study at a University in Hong Kong.” Asia Pacific Journal of Education (2013): 1-14.

Li, Yongyan, and Christine Pearson Casanave. “Two First-Year Students’ Strategies for Writing from Sources: Patchwriting or Plagiarism?” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 165-80. Li, Yongyan. “First Year ESL Students Developing Critical Thinking: Challenging the Stereotypes.” Journal of Education and Training Studies 1.2 (2013): 186-96.

Li, Yongyan. “Undergraduate Students Searching and Reading Web Sources for Writing.” Educational Media International 49.3 (2012): 201-15.

Löfström, Erika and Pauliina Kupila. “The Instructional Challenges of Student Plagiarism.” Journal of Academic Ethics 11 (2013): 231-242.

Mackey, Thomas P., and Trudi E. Jacobson. Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners. Chicago: Neal-Schuman, 2014.

Martin, Justine. “Refreshing Information Literacy.” Communications in Information Literacy 7.2 (2013): 114–27.

Matsuda, Paul K. “The Lure of Translingual Writing.” PMLA 129.3 (2014): 478-483.

McClure, Randall. “WritingResearchWriting: The Semantic Web and the Future of the Research Project.” Computers and Composition 28.4 (2011): 315–326.

McClure, Randall, and Kellian Clink. “How Do You Know That? An Investigation of Student Research Practices in the Digital Age.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 9.1 (2009): 115-132.

McCulloch, Sharon. “Citations in Search of a Purpose: Source Use and Authorial Voice in L2 Student Writing.” International Journal of Educational Integrity 8.1 (2012): 55-69.

Matalene, Carolyn. “Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China.” College English 47.8 (1985): 789-808.

Meyer, Jan H.F., and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. New York: Routledge. 2006.

Murray, Donald M. “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product.” Ed. Victor Villanueva. Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997.

Nutefall, Jennifer E, and Phyllis Mentzell Ryder. “The Timing of the Research Question: First-Year Writing Faculty and Instruction Librarians’ Differing Perspectives.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 10.4 (2010): 437–449.

Oakleaf, Megan. “A Roadmap for Assessing Student Learning Using the New Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 40.5 (September 2014): 510–4.

Otto, Peter. “Librarians, Libraries, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” New Directions for Teaching and Learning 2014.139 (2014): 77-93.

Panetta, Clayann Gilliam, ed. Contrastive Rhetoric Revisited and Redefined. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrece Erlbaum Assoc., 2000.

Pecorari, Diane, and Bojana Petric. “Plagiarism in Second-Language Writing.” Language Teaching 47.3 (2014): 269-302. Web.

Pecorari, Diane. “Good and Original: Plagiarism and Patchwriting in Academic Second-Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 12.4 (2003): 317-45.

Petrić, Bojana. “Legitimate Textual Borrowing: Direct Quotation in L2 Student Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 102-17.

Pierstorff, Don K. “Response to Linda Flower and John R. Hayes, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing”” College Composition and Communication 34.2 (1983): 217.

Plakans, Lia, and Atta Gebril. “A Close Investigation into Source Use in Integrated Second Language Writing Tasks.” Assessing Writing 17.1 (2012): 18-34.

Polio, Charlene, and Ling Shi. “Perceptions and Beliefs about Textual Appropriation and Source Use in Second Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 95-101.

Purdy, James P., and Joyce R. Walker. “Liminal Spaces and Research Identity: The Construction of Introductory Composition Students as Researchers.” Pedagogy 13.1 (2013): 9–41.

Romova, Zina, and Martin Andrew. “Teaching and Assessing Academic Writing via the Portfolio: Benefits for Learners of English as an Additional Language.” Assessing Writing 16.2 (2011): 111-22.

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Shi, Ling. “Rewriting and Paraphrasing Source Texts in Second Language Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 21.2 (2012): 134-48.

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Thompson, Celia, Janne Morton, and Neomy Storch. “Where From, Who, Why and How? A Study of the Use of Sources by First Year L2 University Students.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 12.2 (2013): 99-109.

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Townsend, Lori, Korey Brunetti, and Amy R. Hofer. “Threshold Concepts and Information Literacy.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 11.3 (2011): 853-69.

Tucker, Virginia, Christine Bruce, Sylvia Edwards, and Judith Weedman. “Learning Portals: Analyzing Threshold Concept Theory for LIS Education.” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 55.2 (2014): 150–65.

Van Beuningen, Catherine G, Nivja H De Jong, and Folkert Kuiken. “Evidence on the Effectiveness of Comprehensive Error Correction in Second Language Writing.” Language Learning 62.1 (2012): 1-41.

Welch, Barbara. “A Comment on “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty”” College English 58.7 (1996): 855-58.

Yamagata-Lynch, Lisa C. “Chapter 2: Understanding Cultural Historical Activity Theory.” Activity Systems Analysis Methods: Understanding Complex Learning Environments. New York: Springer, 2010. 13-26.

Zorn, Jeffrey. “English Compositionism as Fraud and Failure.” Academic Questions 26.3 (2013): 270-84.

PAB #7/#8: Theories in Second-Language Writing: Genre, Process (or is it Post-Process now), and Translingualism  

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), PAB, Papers (810)

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2L, genre, second-language writing, theory, translingual, writing

translingual

The world and language

My digression for the week and apology for the length – but as with all topics this term, both new and interesting are a lethal combination and I want my blog to continue to be useful to me in my studies…thus a bit more verbose than even previous posts.  Selecting articles for this week’s theories in second-language writing was the most difficult of the term as it was a bit like falling into a rabbit hole. Every article led to two more that “had” to be included, with names, terms and references that were all aha moments.  All looked important, but all could not be covered in these last two PAB posts.  I am going to miss these posts!  I have had the chance to explore second-language writing without having to commit to a narrow research focus – perusing the literature and amassing an entire folder (bordering on hoarding) of “must reads.” But alas, just like Alice, I did have to return to real life and settle on this week’s articles – albeit, four articles, but identified within two theories: genre and translingualism…well, actually genre by way of process and post-process.

℘

 Hyland, Ken. “Genre-based Pedagogies: A Social Response to Process.” Journal of Second Language Writing 12.1 (2003): 17-29.

Hyland, Ken. “Genre Pedagogy: Language, Literacy and L2 Writing Instruction.” Journal of Second Language Writing 16 (2007): 148-164. doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2007.07.005

Hyland and Genre Theory

“Genre refers to abstract, socially recognized ways of using language. It is based on the assumptions that the features of a similar group of texts depend on the social context of their creation and use, and that those features can be described in a way that relates a text to others like it and to the choices and constraints acting on text producers” (21).

“Genre theory seeks to (i) understand the ways individuals use language to orient to and interpret particular communicative situations, and (ii) employ this knowledge for literacy education” (22).

Ken Hyland’s articles on genre pedagogy in 2003 and 2007 reflect his even longer publication history, with over 10 published articles on just this topic.[1] In his 2003 article, “Genre-based Pedagogies: A Social Response to Process,” he outlines how genre theory can “complement process views” in second-language writing “by emphasizing the role of language in written communication” (17). He posits that genre theory offers “explicit and systematic explanations of the ways language functions in social context” that “represent the most theoretically developed and fruitful response to process orthodoxies.” While process methods in writing have had “a major impact,” Hyland maintains that they have not resulted in improved writing due to approaches “rich amalgam of methods [that] collect around a discovery-oriented, ego-centered core which lacks a well-formulated theory of how language works in human interaction” (17).

Throughout the article, genre theory and approaches are offered as not just complements to process, but as ways to save writing from it.  Process is offered as “decontextualized skill” with “little systematic understanding of the ways language is patterned in particular domains” that “disempower teachers and cast them in the role of well-meaning bystanders” (19-21). While Hyland stresses that he is not out to “condemn process approaches,” it is evident from this article, that he favors genre theory in the writing classroom for the ways it offers a “socially informed theory of language and an authoritative pedagogy grounded in research of texts and contexts” (18). With processes approaches, inherently lacking as a complete theoretically-sound writing pedagogy, genre is its “social response” (27).

Hyland points to three schools of genre theory: 1) New Rhetoric Approach, influenced by post-structuralism, rhetoric and first language composition; focusing on the “relationship between text type and rhetorical situation.” 2) ESP Approach, that looks at genre as “a class of structured communicative events” within discourse communities and a shared purpose. 3) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), known as the “Sydney School,” this approach “stresses the purposeful, interactive, and sequential character of different genres” through lexico-grammatical patterns and rhetorical features (21-22).

Assumptions and concepts Hyland points as essential to genre theory are that “writing is dialogic,” discourse community is a “powerful metaphor” central to “joining writers, texts and readers in a particular discursive space” and are not “overbearing structures which impose uniformity of users” (23).

While most of Hyland’s article focuses on the broader understandings of genre theory, he does connect it specifically to second-language writing as a way to “acknowledge that literacies are situated and multiple” whereby “writing cannot be distilled down to a set of cognitive processes.” For second-language writers this allows for them to “gain access to ways of communicating that have accrued cultural capital” and make “the genres of power visible and attainable” (24).  Addressing critics to genre theory in second-language writing, Hyland offers that failure “to provide learners with what we know about how language works as communication denies them both the means of communicating effectively in writing and of analyzing texts critically” (25).

In practice, genre can offer practices as well as views about writing, with a more supportive structure for teaching. Hyland notes that the theoretical basis for pedagogy using a genre approach is from Vygotsky, who emphasized “interactive collaboration between teacher and student” and a supportive environment that utilized scaffolding, with the teacher as an authority (26).

Hyland (2007) outlines key principles of genre-based theoretical teaching:

  • Writing is a social activity
  • Learning to write is needs-based
  • Learning to write requires explicit outcomes and expectations
  • Learning to write is a social activity
  • Learning to write involves learning to use language

℘ 

Map of World

Map of World

Horner, Matsuda and Translingual Writing

Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and John Trimbur. “Opinion: Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach.” College English 73.3 (2011): 303-321.

Matsuda, Paul K. “The Lure of Translingual Writing.” PMLA 129.3 (2014): 478-483.

Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster and John Trimbur are current scholars within the field of translingual writing. In their 2011 opinion article, they outline an alternative to the inadequacies they see in the “traditional ways of understanding and responding to language differences.” With a translingual approach, the focus shifts from “barrier to overcome” in language differences, to “resource for producing meaning” (303).

They point to other scholars and the CCCC declaration of “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” for the rights of students to use their own “varieties of English” (discussed earlier in Paper 2). In recognizing a translingual approach, they acknowledge that it is an ongoing discussion, one these authors started at a 2009 Symposium at the University of Louisville.  They note that this article,

“is neither all-inclusive on the issues it does address, nor the final word. We have developed this piece because we believe it is far past time for the issues it addresses to be engaged more aggressively in our field, and we hope to open a much-needed conversation that will be continued in many places, in many genres and forums, from many different points of view—with an eye toward change in the conceptual, analytical, and pedagogical frameworks that we use here” (315).

By arguing for the fluidity of languages, translingual approaches “questions language practices,” asking “what produces the appearance of conformity, as well as what that appearance might and might not do, for whom, and how” (304). With translingualism, there is no “standard” English, described as a “bankrupt concept” by the authors. Rather the varieties of English, as well as other languages, are looked at by way of what “writers are doing with language and why” (305).

“Traditional approaches to writing in the United States are at odds with these facts. They take as the norm a linguistically homogeneous situation: one where writers, speakers, and readers are expected to use Standard English or Edited American English—imagined ideally as uniform—to the exclusion of other languages and language variations” (303).

Power, and “dominant ideology” are mentioned throughout by Horner et al. as writers using a translingual approach would “negotiate standardized rules in light of the contexts of specific instances of writing” (305). The authors list three points that translingualism argues for:

1) honoring the power of all language users to shape language to specific ends

2) recognizing the linguistic heterogeneity of all users of language both within the United States and globally

3) directly confronting English monolingualist expectations by researching and teaching how writers can work with and against, not simply within, these expectations. (305)

Set against two historical approaches to teaching language differences, 1) the traditional approach – that seeks “to eradicate difference in the name of achieving correctness” and 2) tolerance—distanced from the first by “codifying” changes in language and “granting individuals a right to them.” Horner et al points to this as more tolerant on the surface, but segmenting language use to “assigned social sphere[s]” (306).

“A translingual approach requires that common notions of fluency, proficiency, and even competence with language be redefined” (307).

“A translingual approach rejects as both unrealistic and discriminatory those language policies that reject the human right to speak the language of one’s choice” (308).

“Taking a translingual approach goes against the grain of many of the assumptions of our field and, indeed, of dominant culture. At the same time, it is in close alignment with people’s everyday language practices” (313).

℘

 “It seems that translingual writing has established itself as an intellectual movement” (Matsuda 478).

Following Horner et al’s article text is a list of teacher-scholars who “have seconded the project outlined,” and while Matsuda’s name appears on the list; in subsequent articles, he has questioned a translingual approach.  For Matsuda, translingual writing theory “refers to loosely related sets of ideas and practices that have been articulated by scholars”[2] and in his most recent article on the topic, he interrogates the movement’s tendency for “linguistic tourism,” stressing that for it to move from the current “rage among scholars,” that it needs to move beyond “intellectual curiosity” and that the field of writing studies as a whole needs to “recognize the problem and to engage with issues surrounding language differences more critically” (483). Matsuda recommends learning “more about language—its nature, structure, and function as well as users and uses” and to “develop a broader understanding of various conversations that are taking place—inside and outside the field” (483).

“I am happy to see the enthusiasm. At the same time, I am often puzzled by the zeal with which some scholars and teachers approach a concept that they do not fully understand. More problematically, some scholars seem to use translingual writing not for its intellectual value but for its valorized status” (Matsuda 479).

“Graduate programs in rhetoric and composition need to take more seriously, and be more ambitious in making use of, what is now all too often treated as a token second language requirement of its graduates” (Horner 308).

[1] Xiaoli Fu and Ken Hyland (2014) “Interaction in two journalistic genres: a study of interactional metadiscourse;” (2013) “Genre and Discourse Analysis in Language for Specific Purposes;”  (2011) “Genre in teaching and research: an approach to EAP writing instruction;” (2009)  “Genre analysis;” (2008) “Genre and academic writing in the disciplines;” (2002)  “6. Genre: language, context and literacy; (1992) “Genre Analysis: Just another fad?;” (1990) “A genre description of the argumentative essay.”

[2] The scholars Matsuda points to within his article as current voices in translingual scholarship are A. Suresh Canagarajah, Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Jackie Jones Royster and John Trimbur, and Vershawn Ashanti Young. Matsuda acknowledges that while he has been “implicated in this movement,” he considers it to be a “work in progress” (478-479).

PAB – ENG 810: #1: Selections from Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Carol in ENG 810 Major Debates (Fall 2014), PAB

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

composition, history, interdisciplinary, linguistics, lore, meta-disciplinary discourse, methodology, phonetics, praxis, research, second-language writing, teacher-lore, theory

[Take my Survey]

Paul Kei Matsuda, a Professor of English at Arizona State University, in his widely anthologized article, “Second-Language Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Situated Historical Perspective,”[1] examines how second-language studies[2] developed as part of an interdisciplinary relationship within composition studies. Noting that “composition scholarship overall has been rather slow to reflect the influx of second-language writers in composition classroom” (2), he points out that while histories of second-language writing appeared in the 1960s, it was not until the 1990s that second-language writing recognition “emerged as an interdisciplinary field situated at the crossroads between second-language acquisition and composition studies” (7).

Part of what Matsuda cites as a “disciplinary division of labor” (1999), he sees “disciplinary gaps” between composition and second-language learning in their historical perspectives, as well as in how students have been labeled and divided within composition classrooms (8). Matsuda outlines how early second-language instruction focused on speech, using the applied linguistic theories of phoneticians Henry Sweet and Paul Passy, based on the belief that “phonetics should be the basis of both theoretical and practical studies of language” and “take precedence over the written form.”

Matsuda writes that it was in the late 1950s that second-language studies began to become professionalized as second-language writing started to move away from composition (16). Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) was formed in 1966 and Matsuda points to this time as when the disciplines divided the labor of teaching L1 and L2 students. It was later, through need that second-language writing courses became a “sub-discipline” of TESL (Matsuda 21).

Drawing on Stephen North’s use of “teacher lore,” as did Louise Wetherbee Phelps in our reading from last week (“Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition,” 1991), Matsuda echoes Phelps’ concerns with how theory does (or often does not) provide adequate or timely connections with practice. Recognizing that both fields are multidisciplinary in nature –echoing in this instance, our reading for this week as the many theories and disciplines come together within English Studies (“Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline,” Lauer, 1984). By 2000, research areas and programs grew as second-language writing was “recognized as a legitimate field” (Matsuda 23). Matsuda closes his article stressing that interdisciplinarity is a must and that “second-language writing should be seen as a symbiotic field” (26).

From this article, I have a number of questions and areas to explore further. What are the current pedagogical methods used in composition for second-language writers? At my own university, as in many without a composition sequence in the first year, students all take first-year seminars and second-language students often face writing challenges during their first year, but only a small percentage of second-language students are enrolled in an additional course to support their second-language needs.

Much of the second-language writing research I have read so far is over 10 years old, but as I have no background in this area, it is informative to research and learn the history of the field, its relationship to composition studies and how best I can align myself within these two areas for my future research and study.

*

šWorks Cited:

Matsuda, Paul K., Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, eds. Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 14-30.

Selected Readings from text for PAB #1:

“CCCC Statement on Second-Language Writing and Writers.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Paul K. Matsuda, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 10-13.

“Introduction.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Paul K. Matsuda, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 1-4.

Matsuda, Paul K. “Second-Language Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Situated Historical Perspective.” Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Paul K. Matsuda, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2006. 14-30.

————————

[1] This article appears not only in the text I have cited, but in numerous other second-language texts, as a single article, and reflects his dissertation focus, ESL Writing in Twentieth-Century US higher Education: The Formation of an Interdisciplinary Field (2000).

[2] Matsuda lists a number of terms used to describe second-language writers and learners, but uses these two terms as they are used within the “CCCC Statement on Second-Language Writing and Writers.”

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