Two Feet In | Writing and the Institution

Phillips, Donna Burns, Ruth Greenburg, and Sharon Gibson. “College Composition and Communication: Chronicling a Discipline's Genesis.” College Composition and Communication 44.4 (December 1993): 443-465. Print.     Describes and analyzes the genesis and history of the academic journal, College Composition and Communication. Considers the authors and the subject matter discussed over a period of four decades. Notes that the discussion of cognition in the 1980s was the most discussed topic for that period in this journal.

Petrosky, Anthony R. Rev. of Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing, by Linda Flower. College Composition and Communication 34.2 (May 1983): 233-235. Print.     First finds that the Flower's text book offers nothing new than others, but then spends extensive space in critiquing apparent insufficiencies of cognitive theory in communication – it overlooks “reflective, associative, metaphoric, intuitive, and imaginative thinking because … they are not easily represented as aspects of conscious, goal-directed problem-solving” (233). Criticizes Flower's use of collaborative groups: she overlooks the likely misreadings of students as a reflection of different personal paradigms. Claims that Flowers does not appreciate “writing to learn” as part of the composition process. Completely dismisses cognitive as only a mechanical problem-solving and systems analysis methodology. Petrosky is “deeply disturbed” that the text reinterprets traditional composition theory in “logical posi...

Lauer, Janice. “Response to Anne E. Berthoff, 'The Problem of Problem Solving.'” College Composition and Communication 23.2 (May 1972): 208-210. Print.     Suggests that Berthoff is reductionist in equating Lauer's sense of heuristics to problem-solving. Defends her “Heuristics” paper by claiming that Berthhoff interpreted “heuristics” as “problem solving,” and then uses that term too narrowly, only from educational psychology. Re-emphasizes (clarifies) that problem solving within the realm of creativity seeks “reasonable answers and is open-ended” and is not bound by rules, but can use heuristics as “flexible guides to effective guessing” (209). Much of this article directly attacks Berthoff's assumptions and claims, Lauer herself arguing that Berthoff misrepresents the original bibliography, quotations from Jerome Bruner, and terminology both in Lauer's article and in the field of psychology itself.

Lauer, Janice. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2004. Print. Examines historical and contemporary theories and pedagogies of rhetorical invention, citing a wide array of positions on these issues in both primary rhetorical texts and secondary interpretations. Presents theoretical disagreements over the nature, purpose, and epistemology of invention and pedagogical debates. After a discussion of treatments of invention from the Sophists to the nineteenth century, introduces a range of early twentieth-century multidisciplinary theories. It then showcases inventional theories and pedagogies that have emerged in the field of Rhetoric and Composition over the last four decades, including the ensuing research, critiques, and implementations. As a reference guide, the text offers a glossary of terms, an annotated bibliography of selected texts, and an extensive bibliography.     Useful in reviewing the debates, including her own with Be...

Lauer, Janice. “Heuristics and Composition.” College Composition and Communication 21.5 (Dec 1970): 396-404. Print.     A bibliography of 194 citations of psychology in the area of heuristics. “Freshman English will never reach the status of a respectable intellectual discipline unless both its theorizers and its practitioners break out of the ghetto” (396). Heuristics, are "rules of discovery and invention" (396) that guide the "experience of creativity." Those in rhetoric and composition working on theories of invention would, Lauer contends, find her collection of resources from psychology to be of tremendous  significance as they work through matters of heuristics and problem solving. Also calls for a metatheory of rhetoric that would specify what methods of discovery the field must used. Important, because this is one of the first calls to refer to theoretical fields other than English to reinstate rhetoric.         Strongly crit...

Lauer, Janice. “Heuristics.” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print. Brief encyclopedia article that explains how heuristics can be viewed as a modern version of the historical techné or art. Heuristics turn knowledge about discourse into procedural plans, avoiding trial and error efforts; allows for intuition and complexity of ideas. Working in tandem with intuition, heuristic thinking prompts conscious activity. Acknowledges criticism that fear heuristics means rules and formulas, mechanizing the composition process.

Flower, Linda and John R. Hayes. “The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem.” Composition and Communication 31.1 (February 1980): 21-32. Print. Critiques the metaphor of “discovery” in writing as the metaphor implies discovery, while writing is largely a creative act. As a response to a self-defined problem or goal, the authors investigate how writers represent rhetorical problems to themselves, if spending more time developing the problem's representation helps generate ideas, and if there are significant differences in the way good and poor writers approach the problem. The authors review transcripts of thinking-aloud case studies at the local writing center using protocol analysis     A significant differences between good and poor writers was the degree to which they created a unique, fully-developed representation of their unique rhetorical problem. Effective writers examine and reexamine the rhetorical situation, often drawing on experience and se...

Flower, Linda and John R. Hayes. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” Composition and Communication 32.4 (December 1981): 365-387. Print. Authors see composing as a kind of problem-solving activity; discuss “invariant” thought processes used when one is confronted with a writing task. Assume that although each writing task will have its own environment of purposes and constraints, the mental activity involved in juggling those constraints while moving to accomplish one's purposes does not change from task to task. Cognitive process is a social one, triggered by the imposition of a particular writing task. The process may also be shaped by attitudes absorbed in the social situation and modified in light of success or failure in problem-solving of the writing situation (audience, language, purpose). Cognitive processes are often individualized and are not generalized and some processes are more successful than others; one's process can be consciously or unconsciously modifi...

Flower, Linda. The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of Writing. Carbondale and Edwardsville IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1994. Print.     Defines writing in terms of an interactive social and cognitive process and proposes a convincing and compelling theory of the construction of negotiated meaning. Supported by social and cognitive research in rhetoric, education, and psychology, she portrays meaning making as a literate act and a constructive process. The social cognitive process is a source of tension and conflict among the multiple forces that shape meaning: the social and cultural context, the demands of discourse, and the writer’s own goals and knowledge. Discusses a generative theory of conflict. With this conflict central to her theory of the construction of negotiated meaning, she examines negotiation as an alternative to the metaphors of reproduction and conversation. Through negotiation, social expectations, discourse conventions, an...

Flower, Linda. “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing.” College English 41.1 (September 1979): 19-37. Print. “Writer-based” prose is adequate for personal writing, but falls short in academic and professional writing because it fails to transform the internal expressions of the author, fails to transform private thought into reader-based expression. In contrast, reader-based prose deliberately attempts to communicate to a reader. Reader-based prose reflects purpose, while writer-based reflects process. Effective prose, then, requires a cognitively demanding transformation of private expression into structure and style adapted to the reader. Flower reviews Piaget's and Vygotsky's ideas of egocentric and inner speech of children to show how limitations of seeing objects as complexes compared to seeing the more value of using abstractions and concepts critical to expository writing. Writing is often dictated by information, not intention. Most writers begi...

Flower, Linda “Studying Cognition in Context: Introduction to the Study (Reading to Write Report No. 1). Technical Report No. 21.” (May 1989). Print.     Examining the cognitive processes of reading-to-write as they are embedded in the social context of a college course, this introduction to and overview of an eleven-part Reading-to-Write Project study focuses on the study as a whole by sketching the reading-to-write task as one of practical importance, as a window on how students integrate reading and writing, and as a rhetorical act occurring in the charged context of entering college. Research was organized into two phases – exploratory and teaching. The teaching study involved four sections of a freshman course called Reading-to-Write, with a total of 72 students. Procedures are described in terms of five questions the research hoped to answer. Also traces the history of the collaborative research project, reflecting on the process of research itself and sharing some...

Flower, Linda “Response to Anthony Petrosky, Review of Linda Flower, Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing.” College Composition and Communication 35.1 (February 1983): 96-97. Print.     Takes Petrosky (“Review”) to task for misreading her text book. Defends her work as “fostering the experience of discovery, of listening to readers, of reseeing one's own ideas” for a more self-conscious, problem-solving approach to writing (96). Recommits to heuristics in that writing is not a rule-governed act. Sees her cognitive approach as  a strategic approach to writing, one offers writers “power” that comes from an awareness of one's own thinking processes and a sense of options.         Not necessarily useful for this paper, but interesting as she defends herself against the most vocal attack on her first textbook utilizing this cognitive approach.

Flower, Linda. Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing.4th ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace Pub., 1993. Print. A textbook of thirteen chapters, covering topics as understanding the author's personal writing process, planning,generating and organizing ideas, analyzing problems, writing to the reader's expectations, and several case studies. With few visuals or graphics, the text emphasizes the rhetorical situation as an event between writer and reader, and so generating, style, editing, etc. are to be performed with the reader in mind. Uses research on problem-solving (and makes overt references to this research within the conversation of the text, expecting the student to continue her own research into the model) as the model to compose. The student is expected to look at the process of composing, not the product. Writing is seen not only as a problem that needs to be solved, but also as a means to approaching and understanding other problems. Emphasizes (and uses the terminology)...

Flower, Linda and John R. Hayes. “Problem-Solving Strategies and the Writing Process.” College English 39.4 (December 1977): 449-61. Print. Discusses problem-solving as a means to explain to emerging writers, using cognitive psychology's experimental method with Aristotelian heuristics. Heuristics defined as methods which often formalize the efficient procedures others use unconsciously. Because they make an intuitive method explicit, heuristics open complex processes up to the possibility of rational choice. Authors use protocol analysis of writers' verbal explanation during their writing processes; inexperienced writers often have limited repertory of thinking techniques when confronted with obstacles. Creativity is divided into two complementary but semi-autonomous processes: generating versus constructing on one level and playing versus pushing on another. Generating/planning involves determining goals and finding “operators.” Putting ideas into words then involves thought...

Flower, Linda. “Cognition, Context, and Theory Building.” Composition and Communication 40.3 (October 1989): 282-311. Print. Flower tries to bridge the gap between cognition and context - whether the composing act is more influenced by either individual cognition and personal values or social forces and cultural context - by suggesting that the two are always interconnected and informing one another. Claims that moving beyond the debate between the two camps would help scholars understand more deeply how writing happens and help teachers guide their students through the hurdles, both personal and social, they face while writing. Flower offers three principles that show that cognition and context not only influence each other, but construct one another: that context provides cues to the individual writer, that context is always mediated by the individual writer, and that a writer's purpose, though constrained and bounded, is always a meaningful rhetorical act. The article goes on ...

Bizzell, Patricia. “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing.” PRE/TEXT 3.3 (1982): 212-243. Rpt. in Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. 365-389. Print. Claims that the “writing problem” is actually a “thinking problem,” that R/C instruction had previously presumed only to help thinkers put their ideas on paper with style and mechanics. Distinguishes between inner-directed (language-learning and thinking processes prior to social influence) and outer-directed (social, communal) cognitive processes. Bizzell's description of discourse communities seems Vygotskian, though she does not mention his work here (369). Outer-directed theorists believe that students can't think or use language we want them to because of lack of exposure, and that instructors should be looking for ways to explain or analyze discourse communities (areas of experience), includ...

Best, Linda. “A Critique of Cognitive Research on Writing from Three Critical Perspectives: Theoretical, Methodological, and Practical.” Union NJ: Kean College, 1995. ERIC. Web. 14 March 2010.     Flower and Hayes' cognitive model of the composing process captures the recursive nature of writing and is as complex as the writing process itself. Flower and Hayes focused on three subprocesses critical to composing: planning, translating, and reviewing. However, the model does not account for external factors which may influence the composing process. The unique methodology of cognitive research, protocol analysis, has led to understanding the composing process, which has reinforced the power of the tool itself. The descriptions protocol analysis offers and the small samples it studies may appear less rigorous than conventional techniques, yet they are both necessary and effective in achieving an understanding of the writing process. Cognitive research's unders...

Berthoff, Ann E. “The Problem of Problem Solving.” College Composition and Communications 22.3 (October 1971): 237-242. Print.     Berthoff presents a polemical critique of "problem-solving" and of the singling out of psychological (see Lauer, “Heuristics and Composition”) or political matters (referring to Louis Kampf; not listed here) as relates to the teaching of writing. Sees divergences to/in psychology as a dead-end attempt to help in writing; criticizes the Dartmouth Conference because of internal philosophical differences (communication vs. expression). Sees psychology (and linguistics) as not much help outside their own “field of their competence” (238) and “English teachers should dare to raise their own questions about the nature of learning and knowing and should dare, furthermore, to answer some of those questions which have been thought to lie in the province of the problem-solvers, that protectorate of educational psychology" (239) and that ...

Berkenkotter, Carol. “Paradigm Debates, Turf Wars, and the Conduct of Sociocognitive Inquiry in Composition.” College Composition and Communication 42 2 (May 1991): 151-169. Print. Examines the roots of some disciplinary quarrels (cognitive versus social perspectives and quantitative versus qualitative research methods) that polarize thinking in composition studies. Notes that these quarrels act as obstacles to reading and evaluating research and to training graduate students to conduct multimodal inquiry. Claims that part of the problem in the debate between social and cognitive perspectives may be one of methodology – social approaches tend to use naturalistic methods, while cognitive tend to use empirical ones, that the cognitive versus social perspectives and qualitative versus quantitative research methods reflects a schism that is historically situated in the conditions within academic culture. “Hybrid” disciplines such as that of composition reflect power struggle...

Bereiter, Carl and Marlene Scardamalia. The Psychology of Written Composition. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Pub., 1987. Print. Explores the notion that various writing strategies involve different kinds of thinking, which ultimately affect the written product. Five parts: first part presents concepts central to the writing process, including two models, an integrative schema for studying the process, and a discussion of the transition from conversation to composition. The second section addresses the basic cognitive factors in composition, including the role of production factors in writing ability, the information processing load of composition, and how children cope with the processing demands of coordinating ideas in writing. The third section presents perspectives on the composing strategies of immature writers, including knowledge telling and the problem of "inert knowledge," the development of planning in writing, and links between com...

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” When a Writer Can't Write: Studies in Writer's Block and Other Composing Problems. Ed. Mike Rose. New York:Guilford, 1985: 134-65. Rpt. in Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. 589-620. Print. Deep within this canonical essay, Bartholomae addresses Flower's assumptions that struggling writers are not engulfed within “writer-based” prose or are egocentric; instead, such writers simply are not initiated or are comfortable with academic discourse. Whereas Flower sees the struggling student as having difficulties negotiating writer-based and reader-based prose, Bartholomae sees the student as shut out from the privileged languages of public life. As students navigate their way through the university, they essentially have to pretend they know how to do the writing they are being asked to do, before they actually know how to do it. St...

Braddock, Richard, Richard Lloyd-Jones, and Lowell Schoer. Research in Written Composition . Champaign, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English. 1963. Print. Section II details several considerations in measuring, administrating, and evaluating research into composition.

Committee on CCCC Language. “Background Statement.” College Composition and Communication 25.3 (Autumn 1974): 1-18. Print. Written during the nation's reevaluation of self and identity, the Student's Rights Resolution (1973) declares that each speaker, and certainly each student, has an inalienable right to his own dialect. The background essay discusses the myth of a standard American English as well as the differences between spoken and written language. The larger question posed is whether an accepted dialect is in fact an attempt at creating and maintaining power over another – power because of race, class or economics, for example. The essay provides background on definitions and academic use of “dialect”; how regionalism, education, and class affect dialect; how children acquire dialect; and why some dialects are seemingly more prestigious than others. Variance in dialect, however, does not necessarily lead to difficulties in reading, because of natural men...

Mishler, Elliot. “Meaning in Context: Is There any Other Kind?” Harvard Educational Review 49.1 (February 1979): 1-19. Print. Discusses the limitations of the scientific model for some study and discussion; though positivism and the scientific model can work for the natural and biological sciences, the fact that results in “ecological psychology” fields, such as education, are difficult to duplicate and generalize in different contexts indicate that other methods are needed. Defines and explains the usefulness of phenomenology, sociolinguistics, and ethnomethodology. Mishler shows phenomenology as the perspective of observer intertwined with the phenomenon, with multiple truths that shift with perspective, method, or purpose (9, 10). Sociolinguistics emphasizes syntax and pragmatics functioning on intent and meaning (12), though studies show context judgments are often subjective. Ethnomethodology sees a relationship between actors and rules and “reflexive” production (15). Mishler is...

Per Jake R: SCHOLARLY WORKS: * Paige Reynolds: “Irish Audiences” * David Lloyd: “Nationalisms Against the State” * Avery Gordon: “Ghostly Matters” * Luke Gibbons: The Irish Gothic * Joep Leerssen: Hidden Ireland, Public Sphere * Margot Backus: The Gothic Family Romance THE LITERATURE: * Friel: Dancing at Lugnasa, Translations * McGuinness: Carthaginians; Observe the Sons of Ulster * Colin McPherson: “The Seafarer;” “The Weir” * Yeats: Purgatory * O’Neill: Long Day’s Journey Into Night * Marina Carr: Portia Coughlin; Woman and Scarecrow