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Mapping the Turn to Disciplinarity
A Historical Analysis of Compositionâs Trajectory and Its Current Moment
Kathleen Blake Yancey
We have made ourselves a new discipline. . . .
âRobert J. Connors
One way of thinking about both the history of Rhetoric and its current moment, especially in the context of disciplinarity, is provided through the metaphor of turns. The oft-cited social turn (Trimbur 1994) marks a shift from a more individually located composing to a sociocultural model, while other turnsâthe public (Farmer 2013); the queer (Alexander and Wallace 2009); the archival (Yancey 2004); and the global (Composition Studies)âcontinue to compete for attention. Of course, the expression the âx turnâ is often employed simply as a quick reference, as a way of indicating that a new practice or theoretical orientation is gaining ground. Other times, however, the expression is used to articulate a shift of the Trimburian kind, that is, of a historical demarcation of the field. Paul Lynch (2014), for instance, has recently theorized what he understands as a(nother) new turn, that of the apocalyptic:
Lynchâs move here, much like John Trimburâs before him, is to stake a claim on the grounds of synthesis: in this logic, given the work of certain leading scholars all raising similar concerns, we can identify a turn, a shift to something new that provides a provocative and different trajectory than had been anticipated. The intent of a proposal like Lynchâs, like Trimburâs before him, is in part to raise (and answer) important questions occupying the center of the field, ones that can help us move forwardâand in equal part to write the history of the field as it develops.
John Trimburâs (1994) articulation of the social turn was expressed in a review essay for College Composition and Communication, âTaking the Social Turn: Teaching Writing Post-Process,â where he contextualized and reviewed three books relative to the fieldâs history and, more particularly, to the particular historical moment of the review. If we have experienced a social turn, he asks, what precisely is it, and what does it tell us about the field and its theories and practices? As Trimburâs example illustrates, establishing that we are in the midst of a turn, or have experienced a turn, is no small achievement: weaving the work of others into a coherent account that both looks back and looks forward, the writer is able to characterize previous scholarship, theories, and practices, and motivate new work in line with the turn just defined. Put succinctly, the rhetoric of such a turn can change both the forward movement of the field as well as our perception of its progression.
My aim in this chapter is to do likewise: working in a manner somewhat similar to Trimburâs, I trace here what I see as the fieldâs turn to disciplinarity, not, however, based principally on what has already occurred, but rather on what is occurring in the current moment. Of course, whatâs happening in the current moment of the field is considerableâfrom continued interest in pedagogy to a resurgence of research into questions of continuing interest to the field (e.g., how students compose) and the development of new research activity (e.g., drawing from archives, analyzing big data). Itâs also worth noting my own usage here in referring to us as a field.1 By most accounts we are a field at least; in terms of categorization, itâs easier to call ourselves a field precisely because field-ness requires a lower threshold than a discipline does. We might pursue a field of interest without the methodology of a discipline, for example, and of course the two terms are also related, as Kristine Hansen suggests (this volume), to the idea of a profession. My focus here is on the more contentious issue of disciplinarity, my argument that we are making a disciplinary turn, shifting from field to disciplinarity, as four recurring themes collectively demonstrate. Here, then, after providing a brief account of the fieldâs recent history, I more fully analyze the rhetoric of the social turn as a context for our current disciplinary turn; demonstrate that without our being very aware of it, we have begun to see the field as a discipline; and identify four trends in particular influencing this movement toward a recognition and embrace of disciplinarity: (1) a renewed research agenda, including continuing research into and theory about transfer of writing knowledge and practice; (2) the development of projects consolidating what the field has established as knowledge; (3) the continuing development of the major in Rhetoric and Composition; and (4) the changing location of Writing Studies within institutional structures. Based on this analysis, I conclude with several questions intended, first, to guide the reading of this volume speaking to Rhetoric and Compositionâs disciplinarity and, second, to frame the fieldâs way forward.
A(nother) History of Rhetoric and Composition and the Significance of a Turn
A very simple narrative of the discipline can be divided into five episodes.2 A first episode: In the middle of the twentieth century in the United States, teachers of composition, in the midst of teaching a group of students new to the academy, banded together to share knowledge about how to teach writing. Their subject matter was language, their role teaching, their practice enhanced by borrowings from linguistics, itself a discipline eager to be applied. In the second episode of this narrative, Composition focused on another subject matter, the composing process, which provided a focus both for researchers attempting to develop models of composing and for teachers helping students develop as writers. Process, in other words, became the new content, studied by teachers who were also scholars, and the dual identity of teacher-scholar became something of an idealized model for the communityâs members. In the third episode of this narrative, the field took what has become a trope for it, a turn, in this case a turn to cultural theory influenced by revolutionaries such as Paulo Freire, by Marxist critics such as Terry Eagleton, and by streetwise literacy researchers such as Alan Luke. In this episode, theory displaced research while underscoring the fieldâs commitment to students and making the field look more like its literary cousins. ...
