AnnoBib -- “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing”

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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), including explaining the conventions and expectations of the academic discourse community. Outer-directed theory can shore up the Flower-Hayes model (lacking the ability to advise students in practice) by providing planning and translating strategies. Here, Bizzell introduces Vygotsky's characterization of “verbal thought” and suggests that his analysis would not separate planning and translation, but conditioned by social context.
    Bizzell strongly criticizes the Flower-Hayes model because it neglects the role of knowledge during composition, and fails to see convention's generative power in poor writers. Bizzell feels that poor writers are simply unfamiliar with the academic discourse community with limited experience and lack awareness of community conventions. Criticizes the inner-directed theorists as a simplistic and emotionally reactive approach that is “likely to satisfy complaining faculty and administrators, and because its claim to a basis in universals assures us … we aren't touching the student's own culture but merely giving them away around it” (384).
    Though Bizzell claims that the purpose of her critique of Flower and Hayes' work is "not to delegitimate" it, and though she says we should value the both the outer-directed and inner-directed theories, it certainly seems like she's siding pretty heavily with the outer-directed camp. She certainly doesn't spend much time talking about what's right about them.

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