A DISCOURSE GROUNDED APPROACH TO IMPROVI

Abstract

This thesis integrates insights from linguistics and rhetoric/ composition studies to create and test the effectiveness of a writing guide, designed for independent use by composition students, that is aimed at improving the global text quality of argumentative essays by helping students consider the “rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 1968) as a communicative context that motivates the deployment of features of well-formed written discourse (Berman 2008). The guide attempts to make pedagogical use of Berman’s descriptive framework of facets of discourse—global level principles, categories of referential content […] and overall discourse stance” which stem from a large scale cross-linguistic research project on the development of discourse abilities (Berman 2008: 735). The student writing guide, created by building this discourse framework upon the groundwork of rhetoric and composition theory, was tested for its effectiveness to improve drafts of writing by using online data collection methods.

A group of advanced-placed ELL students wrote first drafts of argumentative essays. After reading and understanding the writing guide, participants then used it to write second drafts by revising their first drafts. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed to ascertain the extent to which the second drafts showed improvement in global text quality. While most of the second drafts showed little change in their levels of global text quality, all of the revised drafts indicated an increase in the usage of discourse features involved in global text quality and rhetorical effectiveness. Despite minor difficulties participants had with some the content of the guide, participants overall understood and were able to use the writing guide to revise their drafts and imagine a communicative context (rhetorical situation) for their written discourse.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express the sincerest gratitude to the faculty of the department of Linguistics at Northeastern Illinois University, particularly to Dr. Shahrzad Mahootian, my graduate thesis advisor, as well as to thesis committee members Dr. Judith Kaplan- Weinger and Dr. Lewis Gebhardt, for the invaluable direction, instruction, and inspiration they have provided, not only for the completion of this thesis, but also for a substantial amount of my academic and professional formation. Dr. Bridget O’Rourke, of the department of English at Elmhurst College, who sparked my interest in composition studies, allowed me to collaborate with her in composition research and pedagogy, and sponsored my first conference presentation on composition, is acknowledged with the most heartfelt appreciation for how she mentored, supported, and believed in me. My enthusiastic, supportive, and good-humored wife, Mercy Turner, who has borne with me through the innumerable hours of the preparation of this manuscript, was an invaluable source of encouragement. The highest gratitude is ultimately and exceedingly directed to God, who not only gave me life, breath and time to complete the present work, but also granted direction, inspiration, and perseverance to that end. Soli Deo Gloria.

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List of tables

TABLE I: I NFORMATION UNITS IN DRAFT 1 .................................................................................. 59 TABLE II: I NFORMATION UNITS IN DRAFT 1 ................................................................................. 60 TABLE III: D ISCOURSE FEATURES IN DRAFTS 1-2 ........................................................................ 61 TABLE IV: P ERCENTAGE OF INCREASE OF DISCOURSE FEATURES FROM DRAFT 1 TO DRAFT 2 ... 64 TABLE V: L EVELS OF GLOBAL TEXT QUALITY IN DRAFTS 1-2 ..................................................... 64 TABLE VI: P ARTICIPANTS ’ RESPONSES TO QUESTIONNAIRE 1 ..................................................... 66 TABLE VII: P ARTICIPANTS ’ RESPONSES TO QUESTIONNAIRE 2 ................................................... 67

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1. Introduction: Composition theory, linguistics, and improving student writing

This thesis, in integrating theory from rhetoric/composition and linguistics, attempts to merge insights from two fields that, surprisingly, are not often intermingled.

A field that is devoted to the study of written communication ought to be closely associated with a field that attempts to answer the most fundamental questions about the forms and functions of human language. Granted, it seems that the fields of linguistics and composition have been gradually benefiting mutually from one another, as evident by the creation of Linguistics, Composition and Rhetoric departments in some universities, but composition studies and linguistics have often been in “complementary distribution,” as it were, in the literature. This was not always the situation, Faigley (1989) points out, as “in earlier decades of the CCCC” (the major conference for composition studies), linguists had been seriously involved in composition studies, and that, “in the 1950s, linguists published articles frequently in CCC and held major offices in the organization” (1989: 241). “In the 1960s,” Faigley continues, “when rhetoric and composition blossomed as a discipline, [some] saw English teachers' awareness of linguistics as the most important development of the first two decades of the CCCC, and [others] proposed linguistics as the basis of a modern theory of rhetoric” causing the 1960’s to be known as “the decade of language study and rhetorical theory” (1989: 241).

However, the 1970’s saw a gradual decline of linguists working in the field of composition and rhetoric that was attributable to a movement in the social sciences called the cognitive turn. The cognitive turn took shape in composition studies in the form of a new approach to writing—process theory—that re-envisioned writing as a structured process of discrete operations which could be described and analyzed rigorously. Thus, However, the 1970’s saw a gradual decline of linguists working in the field of composition and rhetoric that was attributable to a movement in the social sciences called the cognitive turn. The cognitive turn took shape in composition studies in the form of a new approach to writing—process theory—that re-envisioned writing as a structured process of discrete operations which could be described and analyzed rigorously. Thus,

“Chomsky's theory of transformational-generative grammar influenced the study of language in North America as no other theory had in the past […] Language could be orderly only if it were idealized. If actual language was used as data, the orderliness of language predicted by generative grammar soon disintegrated. Chomsky insisted that language be viewed as abstract, formal, intuitive, and acontextual. His goal for a theory of language was describing a human's innate capacity for language, not how people actually use language. When asked what relevance the study of linguistics had for education, Chomsky answered absolutely none. Gradually, those interested in studying discourse came to heed Chomsky's warnings” (1989: 241-42).

Chomsky’s influence, Faigley suggests, was detrimental for those wishing to study discourse as it “accelerated the formation and growth of separate linguistics departments committed to the theoretical study of formal structure in language,” and up until now, theoretical linguists “have tended to dismiss as ‘uninteresting’ any applied questions about language, such as the educational implications of language theory,” asking only “‘interesting’ questions about abstract universals underlying language” (1989: 242). Faigley speculates that “had Chomsky's influence been restricted to language theory, linguists in North America might have remained more active in the study of writing”— Chomsky’s influence, Faigley suggests, was detrimental for those wishing to study discourse as it “accelerated the formation and growth of separate linguistics departments committed to the theoretical study of formal structure in language,” and up until now, theoretical linguists “have tended to dismiss as ‘uninteresting’ any applied questions about language, such as the educational implications of language theory,” asking only “‘interesting’ questions about abstract universals underlying language” (1989: 242). Faigley speculates that “had Chomsky's influence been restricted to language theory, linguists in North America might have remained more active in the study of writing”—

Constructing a student writing guide grounded in findings on discourse development and built upon the foundation of principles of rhetoric/composition demonstrates how linguistics and composition theory can work harmoniously in concert. Linguistic findings on discourse and rhetoric/ composition theories can be mutually forged into a pedagogically-aimed tool to address the difficulties developing student- writers face when they sit down to write. To bring together insights from both of these fields in a useful way, constructing a guide for developing student-writers, is covertly aimed at satisfying this stark lacuna that demands filling.

Another aim underlying this thesis is to give writing-students a perspective and a grasp on their own written communication that traditional composition pedagogy has often denied them. Composition is a difficult exercise because it is “a highly abstract cognitive process” and an awkward communicative exercise because communication across the medium of paper seems to be heavily decontextualized from the rhetorical situation, stripped of the components that usually accompany real-life communication (Cheng & Steffensen 1996: 150). The challenge of composition may lie in the fact that discourse abstracted away form the contexts that gave it birth is less-readily meaningful and coherent to its speaker-writers. A piece of notebook paper, the screen of a computer, or whatever other silent medium a writer happens to use, de-contextualizes the communicative moves that student writers are one the one hand used to deploying in real communicative (social) contexts, but on the other hand must now make in an artificial, abstracted dimension. The discourse of an academic paper is removed from the audible,

real-life exigence (occasion) that usually gives it birth. The argumentation engaged in by able-students in public contexts, among colleagues, must, in composition, take place on a piece of paper. When “we hear naturally spoken language […] the music of prosody enacts some of the meaning so that we ‘hear’ it […] as though the meaning comes to us rather than us having to go after it” (Elbow 2006: 643). Audibility, which “tends to draw [an audience] into and through the words, increasing our experience of energy,” is often stripped away during the writing process (Elbow 2006: 643). This lack of audible, real- life context in writing diminishes the communicative energy that is so essential to verbal thought, creating roadblocks for students in the brainstorming and composing process. Despite the good intentions of many teachers of composition, traditional writing pedagogy seems often to stifle rather than to evoke the kind of dialogue that fosters a sense of the rhetorical situation used in writing. It seems that much of traditional writing pedagogy has not helped student-writers breathe communicative energy from real-life social contexts back into their writing.

Cheng & Steffensen (1996) aptly point out that many students of writing are often unable to consider a rhetorical audience in their writing because “most composition classrooms” fail “to develop into forums or discourse communities” which can “evoke a sense of audience in student writers” (1996: 152). Writing without consideration of the rhetorical situation results in a kind of artificial discourse produced in response to no other exigence, or set of motivating factors, than to produce a written product for the sake of producing a written product. This kind of artificial discourse is aimed at and motivated by satisfying the demands of a writing teacher. Bartholomae (1985) calls such discourse a “bastard discourse” produced by “students who are good at it and have learned to cope Cheng & Steffensen (1996) aptly point out that many students of writing are often unable to consider a rhetorical audience in their writing because “most composition classrooms” fail “to develop into forums or discourse communities” which can “evoke a sense of audience in student writers” (1996: 152). Writing without consideration of the rhetorical situation results in a kind of artificial discourse produced in response to no other exigence, or set of motivating factors, than to produce a written product for the sake of producing a written product. This kind of artificial discourse is aimed at and motivated by satisfying the demands of a writing teacher. Bartholomae (1985) calls such discourse a “bastard discourse” produced by “students who are good at it and have learned to cope

Part of the solution to this problem may lie in the use of the imagination to compensate for the absence of the audibility of real discourse contexts, to essentially re- imagine a rhetorical or discourse situation, to breathe context back into (re-inspire) student writing. The artificiality that characterizes many developing writers’ essays seems to be largely due to a lack of a sense of context that their written discourse ought to

be couched in: the situation out of which their writing ought to flow and to which their writing ought to respond. Therefore, the final aim of this thesis it to produce and test a student writing guide to help students re-imagine a discourse (writing) situation and to deploy facets of well-formed discourse toward the (imagined) communicative ends in their (imagined) writing situations. After constructing the SWG by integrating insight from rhetoric/ composition studies and findings from empirical research on the development of well-formed discourse, the SWG will be assessed for its effect on drafts of argumentative essays that student-writers used to revise them.

In the following sections, I first provide a review of literature (section 2) in which

I outline major trends in the field of composition studies (2.1-2.3), highlight relevant background material from literary and rhetorical studies (2.4-2.5), and then review findings from Berman’s cross-linguistic research about the development of discourse, focusing on three of Berman’s five facets of discourse development (2.6-2.7). The review informs a student writing guide (Appendix I) intended to aid freshman (level) I outline major trends in the field of composition studies (2.1-2.3), highlight relevant background material from literary and rhetorical studies (2.4-2.5), and then review findings from Berman’s cross-linguistic research about the development of discourse, focusing on three of Berman’s five facets of discourse development (2.6-2.7). The review informs a student writing guide (Appendix I) intended to aid freshman (level)

2. Review of approaches in composition studies

The field of rhetoric/composition studies (or, simply composition studies) is represented by teachers and theorists who seek to study, contribute to, and enhance the theory and practice of writing pedagogy and whose articles often appear in journals such as College Composition and Communication and College English. Composition studies is a highly interdisciplinary and theoretically diverse field comprised of scholars who often represent views of writing theory and pedagogy that are based on varying epistemologies and ideologies. To characterize this, Berlin (1988) reviewed three major, differing approaches to composition and writing pedagogy in composition studies, pointing out that “a way of teaching is never innocent [and] pedagogy is imbricated in ideology, in a set of tacit assumptions about what is real, what is good, what is possible, and how power ought to be distributed” (492). For Berlin, no discourse or practice is free from ideology. Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive definition of ideology seems to be the most illustrative:

“[ideologies are] basic frameworks of social cognition, shared by members of social groups, constituted by relevant selections of sociocultural values, and organized by an ideological schema that represents the self-definition of a group [that sustain] the interests of groups [and] have the cognitive function of organizing the social representations (attitudes, knowledge) of the group, and thus “[ideologies are] basic frameworks of social cognition, shared by members of social groups, constituted by relevant selections of sociocultural values, and organized by an ideological schema that represents the self-definition of a group [that sustain] the interests of groups [and] have the cognitive function of organizing the social representations (attitudes, knowledge) of the group, and thus

If ideology is inscribed deeply on the way composition scholars/teachers approach their object of inquiry, then ways of teaching—including the text and talk used to deploy teaching methods—apparently are trapped, as it were, in an inescapable ideological circle. Certainly, even a cursory glance at the literature shows fierce, seemingly unresolvable debates in composition studies, which rage in public discourse; one particular instance of this is as a several-year long debate that took place about politics in the writing classroom that intensified to the point of professional friendships becoming "dissolved in the heat of the argument," as Hariston put it (1993: 255). The underlying ideologies that composition teachers and theorists subscribe to are clearly a matter of great consequence.

What follows is a brief review of three major perspectives in composition studies—cognitive, expressionist, and social-epistemic approaches—that represent different ideologies and epistemologies. In addition to these perspectives, the concept of multi-voicedness, which has important applications in writing pedagogy, will be discussed. Then, I discuss literature pertaining to the “rhetorical situation,” which characterizes the context of written discourse. Finally, I review three of Berman’s (2008) five facets of discourse production, focusing on features of well-formed discourse which will later be integrated into the SWG.

2.1 The cognitivist approach

A cognitivist approach, recognized by many as the most traditional approach, is grounded in cognitive psychology and under-girded by an Aristotelian epistemology that A cognitivist approach, recognized by many as the most traditional approach, is grounded in cognitive psychology and under-girded by an Aristotelian epistemology that

“as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing [and which] have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any given process can be embedded within any other” (Flower & Hayes 1981: 366).

Cognitive rhetoric, therefore, brakes up the writing process into discrete, identifiable and logical steps in the sequence of pre-writing (planning), writing (translating), and rewriting (reviewing). A key assumption that cognitivists hold is that universal laws that underlie the writing process are discoverable; that the “features of composing” are analyzable “into discrete units” expressible in “linear, hierarchical terms;” and that a writer’s mind is like a computer processor that moves logically through operations in order to generate writing; and that each step of the writing process creates “a hierarchical network of goals [which] in turn guide the writing process” (Berlin 1988: 481-82, Faigley 1986: 533).

Thus, writing pedagogy with a cognitivist bent would not only stress mastery of form, convention, and logical arrangement of the content of a written work, but would also stress competence in a sequenced writing process—prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Students might be measured against explicit, pre-set standards of each step in the writing process on, perhaps, a rubric or guide of writing protocols. Instructors may Thus, writing pedagogy with a cognitivist bent would not only stress mastery of form, convention, and logical arrangement of the content of a written work, but would also stress competence in a sequenced writing process—prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Students might be measured against explicit, pre-set standards of each step in the writing process on, perhaps, a rubric or guide of writing protocols. Instructors may

2.2 The expressionist approach

An expressionist approach draws from a Platonic epistemology that sees truth and reality as knowable only subjectively; that is, in order to know, the thinker must know him- or herself. Since it is not possible to know objectively, knowledge is therefore not communicable from person to person. Berlin (1988) notes that the psychology of Rousseau, which considers the individual as inherently good, and the literary movement of romanticism, are major resources for expressionist thought, which recoils from “the urban horrors created by nineteenth century capitalism,” while promoting nature, emotionalism, and the imagination as preeminent over rationality and modern civilization (Berlin 1988: 484). He traces the roots of expressionist rhetoric to a reaction against the “elitist rhetoric of liberal culture” whose scheme argued “for writing as a gift of genius, an art accessible only to a few” (484). In expressionist rhetoric, writing is an inherent ability of all people. This proposition is at the heart of Elbow's book of writing theory, entitled “Everyone can write” (2000). Berlin notes that expressionists like Elbow would view writing as a creative, artistic “paradigmatic instance” of “locating the individual’s authentic nature” or discovering one’s true self, and drawing upon the “reality of the material, the social, and the linguistic […] insofar as they serve the needs of the individual” (Berlin 1988: 484).

Expressionism has been no stranger to writing pedagogy. Berlin (1988) observes that an expressionist version of rhetoric “continues to thrive in high schools and at a Expressionism has been no stranger to writing pedagogy. Berlin (1988) observes that an expressionist version of rhetoric “continues to thrive in high schools and at a

2.3 The social-epistemic approach

Social-Epistemic rhetoric holds that the material world, knowledge, communities, and even selves are all socially constructed. A wide range of scholars, such as Bruffee, Faigley, Trimbur and Bizzel are associated with social-epistemic rhetoric (or social constructionism). Among social-constructionists, Berlin points out, there are “as many conflicts […] as there are harmonies [but that they] share a notion of rhetoric as a political act involving a dialectical interaction engaging the material, the social, and the individual writer, with language as the agency of mediation” (1988: 488). Knowledge is a social construct, a product of a dialectical interaction between the individual, the discourse community, and the material conditions the individual exists in, which implies that knowledge and (versions of) reality are continually negotiable. Language constructs/distributes versions of external reality but is itself constructed by the language- using “observer, the discourse community, and the material conditions of existence [which are also] verbal constructs” (Berlin 1988: 488). Even, the individual (subject) is

constructed socially, linguistically engendered by the linguistically-confined interplay between the “individual, the community, and the material world” implying that there are no coherent, unique individuals, but rather, all selves are products of historical and cultural moments and—although individuals have independent agency—their freedom is limited insofar as the ways of conformity and dissent are pre-circumscribed by socially constructed categories (Berlin 1988: 489). For social-constructionists, therefore, experience is prescribed by “socially-devised definitions [and] by the community in which the subject lives”—resulting in an all-enveloping “hermeneutic circle” that limits the possibilities of how we can even interpret the world so that no perception is free from self-interest and ideology (Berlin 1988: 489).

Naturally, social-epistemic rhetoric would be the most difficult to implement in the classroom because it “attempts to place the question of ideology at the center of the teaching of writing,” offering “both a detailed analysis of dehumanizing social experience and a self-critical and overtly historicized alternative based on democratic practices in the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres” (Berlin 1989: 491). In social-epistemic rhetoric, students “must be taught to identify the ways in which control over their own lives has been denied them, and denied in such a way that they have blamed themselves for their powerlessness” (Berlin 1989: 490). In such a classroom, students would be encouraged to engage in critical discourse about the established social structure and to explore the ways in which hegemonic powers has imposed itself on them and has shaped their identity and mindsets. Instructors would engage in liberator pedagogy, to invoke Frère, helping students free themselves from the socially-sanctioned ideologies that seek Naturally, social-epistemic rhetoric would be the most difficult to implement in the classroom because it “attempts to place the question of ideology at the center of the teaching of writing,” offering “both a detailed analysis of dehumanizing social experience and a self-critical and overtly historicized alternative based on democratic practices in the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres” (Berlin 1989: 491). In social-epistemic rhetoric, students “must be taught to identify the ways in which control over their own lives has been denied them, and denied in such a way that they have blamed themselves for their powerlessness” (Berlin 1989: 490). In such a classroom, students would be encouraged to engage in critical discourse about the established social structure and to explore the ways in which hegemonic powers has imposed itself on them and has shaped their identity and mindsets. Instructors would engage in liberator pedagogy, to invoke Frère, helping students free themselves from the socially-sanctioned ideologies that seek

2.4 Multiculturalism, the contact zone, and Bakhtin’s heterogeneity of voices

As Edelstein (2005) suggests, social-constructionism has also led to a revolution in literary studies called multicultural studies—a set of critical theories that rethinks the “Other,” the marginalized, and the oppressed and that serves as a critique of assimilationist discourse. This literary movement (with its off-branching Postcolonial studies) came into being largely through the political movements of the 1950s and the subsequent civil rights movements of the late 1960s and early 70s which called for the end of the Vietnam War and the inclusion of Ethnic and Women’s studies in universities (Edelstein 2005: 19). In literary studies, multiculturalism promotes “an awareness of the otherness of the self to itself […] that we are all both someone’s other and ‘strangers to ourselves,’” an awareness that can “positively transform our relations to ‘others’” (Kristeva 1991, in Edelstein 2005: 35). A theory that seems to have had great influence in composition studies, and that emerged form multiculturalism, is Pratt’s (1991) notion of the contact zone.

The concept of a contact zone theoretically captures instances of contact between and among selves, communities, and cultures—and the conflicting values, assumptions, and ideology that language users bring to a text. Pratt (1991) coined the term contact zone in thinking about the “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (1991:

33-40). Writing that comes out of contact zones, according to Pratt, can be both perilous, and artistic (1991: 4). In contact situations where one ideology is imposed on another, the perils of writing in the contact zone could be “miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, [and] absolute heterogeneity of meaning,” whereas in situations where different cultures grapple but are equal in power, artistic production can result, such as “Autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, [and] vernacular expression ” (Pratt 1991: 4).

The concept of the contact zone is also extendible to the individual consciousness, where the very self is the site of conflict. Multiculturalism’s revision of the other as being located within oneself means that the self can be a stranger to oneself. A person’s inner life could be seen as a contact zone between competing selves—perhaps a struggle between the three categories of selves from identity studies: the interactional, relational, and communal selves—or between nationalized or imagined selves. Following this view, the inner self becomes, in essence, “a heterogeneity of voices,” illuminating Bakhtin (1981) and Vygotsky’s (1962) views of the dialogic nature of the mind. Bakhtin (1981) holds that language in the speaker-writer’s mind is a polyphony of competing voices so that for "any individual consciousness living in it […] language is not an abstract system of normative forms but rather […] language for the speaker exists in the form of particular utterances from particular others”—that is, inner verbal thought is constituted by a “plurality of languages” (1981: 293, in Trimbur 1987: 219). Language is not “a unified abstraction [but] an ideological field, a social horizon, a struggle of voices” (1987: 219). For Bakhtin, “all words have the 'taste' of a profession, a genre, a tendency,

a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour” and each word “tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life" (1981: 293, in Trimbur 1987: 219). Our choice of words in a composition, therefore, are never neutral in force, but are laden with meanings and associations that our inner voice ascribes to them and are, as Bakhtin says, "permeated with intentions” that carry the residual “aspirations and evaluations” of the others who spoke them (Todorov 1984: 202; cited in Trimbur 1987: 219). A single, unified authentic voice becomes so difficult to identify, that writing entails searching for the writer “within the social network these voices compose” and negotiating the “conflicting claims these voices make in the writer's inner speech” (1987: 219). Producing written discourse, therefore, is not an individual effort, but an appropriation of all of the past and present discourses that make up a writer’s consciousness, and engaging with and responding to that world of discourse (Bakhtin 1981: 354-55).

Trimbur makes an application along these lines to composition, pointing out that “the language of inner speech condenses and internalizes the language of our conversations and relations with others” so that “the outer world of public discourse has already entered as a constitutive element into the inner world of verbal thought” (Trimbur 1987: 215). Verbal thought that generates writing is internalized social experience and constitutes “the language of inner speech” which is “saturated with sense [and] the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word” (Vygotsky 1962: 146, in Trimbur 1987: 217). The thoughts that eventually get transferred to paper, therefore, are others’ voices that we have gleaned from social experience that coalesce and make up what seems to us as our own inner voice so that “the words we think of and

experience as private thought are in fact constituted through the voices of others that echo in our verbal thought” (Trimbur, 1987: 217). Language is, therefore, already and simultaneously inside (the imagination) and outside its users, “so that there can be no distinction between private thought and public discourse” (1987: 219). Trimbur concludes that the goal of the writing process should no longer be considered merely as producing discourse (as cognitivists might say), for discourse already exists as the writer’s inner verbal thought. Internalized discourse is the raw material, as it were, out of which writers must “forge a voice and way of speaking from the conflicting social forces and the polyphony of voices that converge in their mental experience [and] individuate their verbal thought and expression” (1987: 220).

2.5 The context of written discourse: The rhetorical situation

Now that perspectives from composition and literary studies have been outlined, relevant background material on the situation or context of (written) discourse will be provided. The rhetorical situation is assumed to be the gene pool, as it were, for the written composition that grows out of it. It seems useful to think in terms of a communicative situation (context) in which communicative functions (ends) are achieved by means of linguistic forms (means). The emphasis on communicative function I take is positioned in the assumption that traditional writing pedagogy has largely stripped student writing of its natural context by emphasizing conventions and forms aimed at fabricating written products, while leaving out clear emphases on the communicative functions of those forms. Therefore, I will outline what I take to be the context of written discourse, without entertaining debates that have taken place about whether written Now that perspectives from composition and literary studies have been outlined, relevant background material on the situation or context of (written) discourse will be provided. The rhetorical situation is assumed to be the gene pool, as it were, for the written composition that grows out of it. It seems useful to think in terms of a communicative situation (context) in which communicative functions (ends) are achieved by means of linguistic forms (means). The emphasis on communicative function I take is positioned in the assumption that traditional writing pedagogy has largely stripped student writing of its natural context by emphasizing conventions and forms aimed at fabricating written products, while leaving out clear emphases on the communicative functions of those forms. Therefore, I will outline what I take to be the context of written discourse, without entertaining debates that have taken place about whether written

Composition theorists seem to largely agree that Bitzer’s (1968) definition of “the rhetorical situation” is an appropriate departure point for discussion of the context of discourse. Bitzer’s definition of the rhetorical situation as the necessary and sufficient condition for discourse has been widely discussed in rhetoric and composition studies (Gorrell 1997: 395). Bitzer wanted to define and characterize “the nature of those contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse,” and elaborate on its components (1968: 1). It was his view that discourse does not give existence to its situation, but rather, that “it is the situation which calls discourse into existence,” discourse being a response to the situation (1968: 2). “Rhetorical situation” says Bitzer, is “the very ground of rhetorical activity,” “a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance” and which amounts to “an imperative stimulus” (1968: 5). The “three constituents of any rhetorical situation” that Bitzer posited, are 1) an exigence, “an imperfection marked by urgency”—say, a problem needing addressing—that motivates discourse, 2) an audience, “persons who function as the mediators of [positive] change,” real or imagined, and 3) a set of constraints, “made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence,” say, for instance, the speaker-writer’s character, logical argument, and style (1968: 6-8).

My own model of the rhetorical situation takes Bitzer’s configuration as a departure point, and adopts some of the modifications that Grant-Davie (1997) makes, My own model of the rhetorical situation takes Bitzer’s configuration as a departure point, and adopts some of the modifications that Grant-Davie (1997) makes,

The student writing guide (SWG) must help students see the significance of the context and situation that drives and motivates written discourse before plunging them into analysis and production of the linguistic features of a well-formed text. That is, writing needs to be re-characterized as communicative functions (ends) deployed by the use of linguistic forms (means). It is no longer sufficient to speak only in terms of the written product and the linguistic forms that comprise it. Much less is it appropriate to reduce the writing process to an act that merely meets the goals that a writing instructor prescribes. Rather, the act of producing written discourse is reconsidered as a reflex, a natural outflow of a writing situation. This means that a large part of students’ writing process involves re-imagining the writing situation of their text-in-process—not as an assignment that must be written for a teacher—but as a(n) (imagined) set of discourse moves that meets the ends of an imagined writing situation comprised of the exigence, the audience, and the voice of the speaker-writer.

1. Exigence: The occasion and motivation for speaking/writing

Exigence is “the matter and motivation of the discourse,” the speaker-writer’s sense “that a situation both calls for discourse and might be resolved by discourse” (Grant-Davie, 1997: 266). According to Grant-Davie, the exigence of a discourse is addressed by considering 1) what the discourse is about, 2) why the discourse is needed, and 3) what the discourse should accomplish. These three considerations represent, for Grant-Davie, a more comprehensive undertaking of discourse exigence than by solely asking why the discourse is needed, as Bitzer (1968) does.

a. What the discourse is about

Going beyond simply asking what the topic of the discourse is, Grant-Davie advocates a more comprehensive frame by asking what underlying fundamental issues the topic of the discourse represents—what “larger issues, values, or principles” are involved or at stake that “motivate people and can be invoked to lead audiences in certain directions on more specific topics” (267). Therefore, the exigence of discourse involves what more fundamental issues are at the heart of the specific topic being discussed—what implications the topic being discussed has for larger, fundamental issues, sets of social values, and so on. In other words, the exigence of discourse involves considering what deeper, underlying issue does the obvious, superficial topic instantiate.

b. Why the discourse is needed

Exigence also considers why the discourse is needed, what prompted the discourse at the time it was written/spoken; what caused it and why at that time, which evokes the notion of kairos, the optimal time-conditions or finest hour to speak/write. The optimal time conditions and the causes that prompt discourse give it exigence. A Exigence also considers why the discourse is needed, what prompted the discourse at the time it was written/spoken; what caused it and why at that time, which evokes the notion of kairos, the optimal time-conditions or finest hour to speak/write. The optimal time conditions and the causes that prompt discourse give it exigence. A

c. What the discourse is trying to accomplish

The exigence of discourse also involves the goals or outcomes of the speaking/writing, e.g, how the audience should react to the discourse. Grant-Davie includes “objectives as part of the exigence for a discourse because resolving the exigence provides powerful motivation for the” speaker-writer (1997: 269). The objectives of a text may be aimed at persuading an audience about one of the many topics or components a larger issue may have, so that discourse can have multiple, hierarchical, objectives at once. Grant-Davie gives an example of a presidential candidate’s speech aimed (immediately) at rebutting the accusations of an opponent, while aimed (ultimately) at persuading an audience to cast votes in the candidate’s favor (1997: 269).

d. They say/ I say

A writer’s exigence provides an urgency, purpose and occasion for the discourse, as Graff and Birkenstein (2006) continually emphasize in their academic writing guide, They Say/ I Say: Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. In fact, Graff and Birkenstein base their entire tutorial of academic writing on the controlling idea that successful writers “state [their] ideas as a response to others,” that a statement/response dynamic is the core feature of good academic writing, just as “in the real world we don’t make

arguments without being provoked.” (3). In saying this, they implicitly pick up on the importance of considering the exigence of the rhetorical situation, insisting that “what you are saying may be clear to your audience, but why you are saying it won’t be [because] it is what others are saying and thinking that motivates our writing and gives it reason for being” (Graff and Birkenstein, 2006: 4). What Graff and Birkenstein (2006) seem to be promoting, in essence, is a re-contextualization of written discourse as an outflow of the larger rhetorical situation. They highlight the fact that written discourse must not be produced as if it were merely a bundle of written form stripped of its context, but rather that, “the best academic writing has one underlying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other people’s views” and does not consist of “saying ‘true’ or ‘smart’ things in a vacuum, as if it were possible to argue effectively without being in conversation with someone else” (3).

2. Audience: Who are you speaking-writing to?

After the exigence for writing is firmly set in place, student writers should consider an audience to whom the exigence of the discourse is relevant. The audience of

a rhetorical situation is comprised of real or imagined persons “with whom [speaker- writers] negotiate through discourse to achieve the rhetorical objectives” (Grant-Davie, 1997: 270). Grant-Davie takes audience to mean four different sets of people: 1) any real people who happen incidentally to hear or read the discourse, 2) the real people that the discourse was intended to be read by, 3) the audience that the speaker-writer has in mind, and 4) the audience that the discourse itself suggests (Grant-Davie, 1997: 270). The roles of speaker-writers and hearer/hearers, however, “Are dynamic and interdependent” so that “readers can play a variety of roles during the act of reading a discourse,” roles that a rhetorical situation is comprised of real or imagined persons “with whom [speaker- writers] negotiate through discourse to achieve the rhetorical objectives” (Grant-Davie, 1997: 270). Grant-Davie takes audience to mean four different sets of people: 1) any real people who happen incidentally to hear or read the discourse, 2) the real people that the discourse was intended to be read by, 3) the audience that the speaker-writer has in mind, and 4) the audience that the discourse itself suggests (Grant-Davie, 1997: 270). The roles of speaker-writers and hearer/hearers, however, “Are dynamic and interdependent” so that “readers can play a variety of roles during the act of reading a discourse,” roles that

a. Imagining an audience

Bartholomae (1985) also discusses the importance of students writing “initially with a reader in mind,” imagining a reader, anticipating possible responses (1985: 627). For the student writer, the challenge is to imagine a rhetorical situation and to make communicative moves within a context that (often) does not exist. The “difficulty of this act of imagination and the burden of such conformity” to the aims of the writing pedagogy is “so much at the heart of the problem” (1985: 627). In fictionalizing their audience, writers “have to anticipate and acknowledge the readers’ assumptions and biases,” and in doing so, hopefully to detect their own assumptions and biases (Bartholomae 1985: 628).

Among the writer’s most important objectives is to imagine an audience that hears his or her response to an exigence, and to try on a variety of voices/identities in response to this rhetorical situation. Ong (1975) holds that, rather than responding to actual people in writing, a skillful writer will “construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely, an audience cast in some sort of role, entertainment seekers, reflective sharers of research” (1975: 60). Ong elaborates that:

“The problem is not simply what to say but also whom to say it to. Say? The student is not talking. He is writing. No one is listening. There is no feedback.

Where does he find his "audience"? He has to make his readers up, fictionalize them” (Ong 1975: 59).

In case one wants to make the intuitive proposal that the writing instructor is a sufficient audience, Ong asserts, “there is no conceivable setting in which [the student writer] could imagine telling his teacher how he spent his summer vacation other than in writing this paper, so that writing for the teacher does not solve his problems but only restates them” (59). Students instead must fictionalize both their attending audiences and their responding voices.

To aid in the fictionalization of audience, Ong (1975) points out that writing students can draw from “what [a] book felt like, how the voice in it addressed its readers, how the narrator hinted to his readers that they were related to him and he to them [and can] pick up that voice and, with it, its audience” (1975: 59-60). His point is that successful writers owe much of their coherence and vividness to the fictionalization of their audiences that otherwise would be impossible to invoke without the model of “earlier writers who were fictionalizing in their imagination audiences they learned to know in still earlier writers, and so on back to the dawn of written narrative” (Ong 1975: 60). Implicit in this view is something that Berman (2008) has found in her research: that previous literary education has a direct influence on students’ ability to produce well- formed academic discourse (2008). The fact that previous literary education is a major factor in whether students successfully participate in the rhetorical situation (in this case conceiving of audiences) is connected with Bakhtin’s contention that characters in novels embody a multiplicity of voices that access the reader’s participation and, subsequently, To aid in the fictionalization of audience, Ong (1975) points out that writing students can draw from “what [a] book felt like, how the voice in it addressed its readers, how the narrator hinted to his readers that they were related to him and he to them [and can] pick up that voice and, with it, its audience” (1975: 59-60). His point is that successful writers owe much of their coherence and vividness to the fictionalization of their audiences that otherwise would be impossible to invoke without the model of “earlier writers who were fictionalizing in their imagination audiences they learned to know in still earlier writers, and so on back to the dawn of written narrative” (Ong 1975: 60). Implicit in this view is something that Berman (2008) has found in her research: that previous literary education has a direct influence on students’ ability to produce well- formed academic discourse (2008). The fact that previous literary education is a major factor in whether students successfully participate in the rhetorical situation (in this case conceiving of audiences) is connected with Bakhtin’s contention that characters in novels embody a multiplicity of voices that access the reader’s participation and, subsequently,

b. Connecting with an audience using meta‐discourse markers

Having an audience in mind is related to several communicative components (functions) of successful writing. Cheng & Steffensen (1996) provide seven criteria for successful writing, out of which the “text-centered standard of coherence, and the user- centered standards of acceptability, situationality, and informativity” are “clearly related to concepts of audience” (1996: 150-151). Audience is something that writing students “rarely have a clear sense of”—and when students do involve a rhetorical audience, “it is

a real person who gives a perceptible response - a teacher who provides a grade, not someone with whom to create a dialogue” (1996: 152). The standard of coherence refers to “the knowledge that provides the conceptual undergirding of a text” which “must be accessible to both the writer and the reader” and calls to attention the fact that “no text is completely explicit” and that readers must “share enough back-ground knowledge to be able to make successful inferences and fill gaps” (Cheng & Steffensen 1996: 151). The standard of acceptability “capture[s] the fact that […] the reader must accept the text as cohesive, coherent, and directed toward” the writer’s goals (1996: 151). “Situationality,” another user-centered standard for successful writing, “refers to the match between a text and the context for which it is intended;” and finally “informativity, […] captures the fact that “writers must be able to anticipate the amount of information shared by their readers” (1996: 152).