Topic
Composition studies
About: Composition studies is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 618 publications have been published within this topic receiving 14522 citations. The topic is also known as: composition & writing studies.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
Book•
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that writing is an act of identity in which people align themselves with socio-culturally shaped subject positions, and thereby play their part in reproducing or challenging dominant practices and discourses, and the values, beliefs and interests which they embody.
Abstract: Writing is not just about conveying ‘content’ but also about the representation of self. (One of the reasons people find writing difficult is that they do not feel comfortable with the ‘me’ they are portraying in their writing. Academic writing in particular often poses a conflict of identity for students in higher education, because the ‘self’ which is inscribed in academic discourse feels alien to them.) The main claim of this book is that writing is an act of identity in which people align themselves with socio-culturally shaped subject positions, and thereby play their part in reproducing or challenging dominant practices and discourses, and the values, beliefs and interests which they embody. The first part of the book reviews recent understandings of social identity, of the discoursal construction of identity, of literacy and identity, and of issues of identity in research on academic writing. The main part of the book is based on a collaborative research project about writing and identity with mature-age students, providing: a case study of one writer’s dilemmas over the presentation of self; a discussion of the way in which writers’ life histories shape their presentation of self in writing; an interview-based study of issues of ownership, and of accommodation and resistance to conventions for the presentation of self; linguistic analysis of the ways in which multiple, often contradictory, interests, values, beliefs and practices are inscribed in discourse conventions, which set up a range of possibilities for self-hood for writers. The book ends with implications of the study for research on writing and identity, and for the learning and teaching of academic writing. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of social identity, literacy, discourse analysis, rhetoric and composition studies, and to all those concerned to understand what is involved in academic writing in order to provide wider access to higher education.
1,359 citations
TL;DR: The authors describe the textual strategies of Tanya, a student who in traditional pedagogy might be labeled "remedial," describe her patchwriting as a valuable stage toward becoming an authoritative academic writer: "we depend upon membership in a community for our language, our voices, our very arguments".
Abstract: n composition studies, most published discussions of student plagiarism proceed from the assumption that plagiarism occurs as a result of one of two possible motivations: an absence of ethics or an ignorance of citation conventions. Some students don't appreciate academic textual values and therefore deliberately submit work that is not their own; others don't understand academic citation conventions and therefore plagiarize inadvertently. Both of these are negative interpretations, postulating an absence-of either ethics or knowledge-in the plagiarist. A few recent studies, though, identify positive motivations for patchwriting, a textual strategy that has traditionally been classified as plagiarism. Patchwriting involves "copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes" (Howard 233). Describing the textual strategies of Tanya, a student who in traditional pedagogy might be labeled "remedial," Glynda Hull and Mike Rose celebrate her patchwriting as a valuable stage toward becoming an authoritative academic writer: "we depend upon membership in a community for our language, our voices, our very arguments. We forget that we, like Tanya, continually appropriate each other's language to establish group membership, to grow, and to define ourselves in new ways, and that such appropriation is a fundamental part of language use, even as the appearance of our texts belies it" (152). These and other studies describe patchwriting as a pedagogical opportunity, not a juridical problem. They recommend that teachers treat it as an important transitional strategy in the student's progress toward membership in a discourse community. To treat it negatively, as a "problem" to be "cured" or punished, would
483 citations
TL;DR: For instance, social construction has a venerable history in twentieth-century thought and although writers in a number of fields are engaged in an effort to develop the disciplinary implications of a nonfoundational social constructionist understanding of knowledge, that history remains largely unacknowledged and the effort fragmented as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Until a very few years ago, I had never heard the term "social construction." Much less had I become acquainted with its implications for scholars and instructors of literature and composition, or its implications for those of us interested in broader educational issues such as the future of humanistic studies and liberal education in general. During the past three or four years, pursuing some of these implications, I discovered that social constructionist thought can positively affect the way we address professional issues that increasingly interest many of us today. But I also discovered that attempts to address these issues in this way are limited because many of us-myself included-have not yet read deeply enough the relevant scholarly literature. In this respect we are not alone. Although social construction has a venerable history in twentieth-century thought and although writers in a number of fields are engaged in an effort to develop the disciplinary implications of a nonfoundational social constructionist understanding of knowledge, that history remains largely unacknowledged and the effort fragmented. Terminology proliferates. The result is that in some cases positions not only similar but mutually supportive seem alien to one another. Writers find it difficult to draw upon each other's work to pursue their own more effectively. Many of the most sophisticated and knowledgeable texts that I discuss in this essay-not only work in literary criticism and composition studies but in philosophy and the social sciences-evidence a lack of awareness of fertile, suggestive, parallel work in other fields. One cause of this situation is that there seems to exist no bibliographical guide that brings social constructionist texts together in one place, presents them as a coherent school of thought, and offers guidance to readers wending their way through unfamiliar territory. This is the need I hope this essay will fill.
474 citations
Book•
1 Jan 1992
TL;DR: The authors traces the attempts of one writing teacher to understand theoretically - and to respond pedagogically - to what happens when students from diverse backgrounds learn to use language in college, starting from the assumption that democratic education requires us to attempt to educate all students, including those whose social or ethnic backgrounds may have offered them little experience with academic discourse.
Abstract: This collection of essays traces the attempts of one writing teacher to understand theoretically - and to respond pedagogically - to what happens when students from diverse backgrounds learn to use language in college. Bizzell begins from the assumption that democratic education requires us to attempt to educate all students, including those whose social or ethnic backgrounds may have offered them little experience with academic discourse. Over the 10 year period chronicled in these essays, she has seen herself primarily as an advocate for such students, sometimes called "basic writers". Her early work rejects the assignment of language deficits or cognitive deficiencies to basic writers. Instead, she calls attention to the social circumstances that unequally condition students' experience of, and proficiency with, academic discourse. She conceived and promoted the concept of "discourse community", now widely influential in composition studies, to highlight the social, cultural and political elements present in any instance of language use. Bizzell's views on education for "critical consciousness" are represented in most of the essays in this volume. But in the last few chapters, and in the intellectual autobiography written as the introduction to the volume, she calls her previous work into question on the grounds that her self-appointment as an advocate for basic writers may have been presumptuous, and her hopes for the politically liberating effects of academic discourse displaced. She concludes by calling for a theory of discourse that acknowledges the need to argue for values and a pedagogy that can assist these arguments to proceed more inclusively than ever before. Organised chronologically, the essays in this volume present a picture of how the author has grappled with the major issues in composition studies over the past decade. In the process, she sketches a trajectory for the development of composition studies as an academic discipline.
388 citations
Book•
1 Jan 2002
TL;DR: In this paper, Huot argues that assessment has been used as an interested social mechanism for reinscribing current power relations and class systems, and argues that what is not valued is not assessed; it tends to disappear from the curriculum.
Abstract: Brian Huot's aim for this book is both ambitious and provocative. He wants to reorient composition studies' view of writing assessment. To accomplish this, he not only has to inspire the field to perceive assessment--generally not the most appreciated area of study--as deeply significant to theory and pedagogy, he also has to counter some common misconceptions about the history of assessment in writing. In (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment, Huot advocates a new understanding, a more optimistic and productive one than we have seen in composition for a very long time. Assessment, as Huot points out, defines what is valued by a teacher or a society. What isn't valued isn't assessed; it tends to disappear from the curriculum. The dark side of this truth is what many teachers find troubling about large scale assessments, as standardized tests don't grant attention or merit to all they should. Instead, assessment has been used as an interested social mechanism for reinscribing current power relations and class systems.
358 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 1 |
| 2023 | 3 |
| 2022 | 5 |
| 2021 | 9 |
| 2020 | 4 |
| 2019 | 7 |