AnnoBib -- “Paradigm Debates, Turf Wars, and the Conduct of Sociocognitive Inquiry in Composition”

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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 struggles within academic culture over turf, as well as the debate that has been raging in the social sciences and elsewhere over just what constitutes a human science (152).
Berkenkotter's essay is useful in that it repositions some of the controversy of cognitive process theory in terms of orientation, and not necessarily results.

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