Naming What We Know

Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies

Linda Adler-Kassner, Elizabeth Wardle

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780874219906
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Naming What We Know examines the core principles of knowledge in the discipline of writing studies using the lens of "threshold concepts"—concepts that are critical for epistemological participation in a discipline. The first part of the book defines and describes thirty-seven threshold concepts of the discipline in entries written by some of the field's most active researchers and teachers, all of whom participated in a collaborative wiki discussion guided by the editors. These entries are clear and accessible, written for an audience of writing scholars, students, and colleagues in other disciplines and policy makers outside the academy. Contributors describe the conceptual background of the field and the principles that run throughout practice, whether in research, teaching, assessment, or public work around writing. Chapters in the second part of the book describe the benefits and challenges of using threshold concepts in specific sites—first-year writing programs, WAC/WID programs, writing centers, writing majors—and for professional development to present this framework in action. Naming What We Know opens a dialogue about the concepts that writing scholars and teachers agree are critical and about why those concepts should and do matter to people outside the field.

Part 1

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Threshold Concepts of Writing

Metaconcept

Writing Is an Activity and a Subject of Study

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ELIZABETH WARDLE AND LINDA ADLER-KASSNER

Writing is created, produced, distributed, and used for a variety of purposes. In this sense, it is an activity in which individuals and groups engage. However, the production, consumption, circulation, distribution, and use of writing are also areas of inquiry. Researchers in a number of fields (including, but not limited to, rhetoric and composition, linguistics, and literacy studies) investigate questions about writing. These include:

• How have forms of writing developed over time?

• What conceptions of writing do people have, and what values are suggested by these conceptions? What writing practices and processes are encouraged by these conceptions? Where do these conceptions come from?

• How is writing produced by individuals and groups, for what purposes, and with what implications or consequences?

• How are attitudes toward the production and uses of writing shaped by individuals and groups within specific contexts?

• How have different approaches to shaping the production of writing taken form, with what motivations, and to what ends?

• How is writing a technology, and how do writing technologies impact how writing happens and what can be done with writing?

Outside of scholars involved in the study of writing, the idea that writing is not only an activity in which people engage but also a subject of study often comes as a surprise, partially because people tend to experience writing as a finished product that represents ideas in seemingly rigid forms but also because writing is often seen as a “basic skill” that a person can learn once and for all and not think about again.

Research in writing and rhetoric has demonstrated that these ideas about writing do not match the ways that writing actually works and happens, but this more complex view of writing is not one that is widely shared or understood beyond the field. In fact, to be considered “successful,” all writers must learn to study expectations for writing within specific contexts and participate in those to some degree.

The threshold concept that writing is a subject of study as well as an activity is troublesome because it contravenes popular conceptions of writing as a basic, ideology-free skill. When teachers and learners recognize writing as complex enough to require study, and recognize that the study of writing suggests they should approach, learn, and teach writing differently, they are then invited to behave differently and to change their conceptions of what writing is and their practices around writing that extend from those conceptions.

Concept 1

Writing Is a Social and Rhetorical Activity

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1.0

Writing Is a Social and Rhetorical Activity

KEVIN ROOZEN

It is common for us to talk about writing in terms of the particular text we are working on. Consider, for example, how often writers describe what they are doing by saying “I am writing an email” or “I’m writing a report” or “I’m writing a note.” These shorthand descriptions tend to collapse the activity of writing into the act of single writer inscribing a text. In doing so, they obscure two foundational and closely related notions of writing: writers are engaged in the work of making meaning for particular audiences and purposes, and writers are always connected to other people.

Writers are always doing the rhetorical work of addressing the needs and interests of a particular audience, even if unconsciously. The technical writers at a pharmaceutical company work to provide consumers of medications with information they need about dosages and potential side effects. The father writing a few comments on a birthday card to his daughter crafts statements intended to communicate his love for her. Sometimes, the audience for an act of writing might be the writer himself. A young man jotting in his diary, for example, might be documenting life events in order to better understand his feelings about them. A child scribbling a phrase on the palm of her hand might do so as a way of reminding herself to feed the family pets, clean her room, or finish her homework. Writing, then, is always an attempt to address the needs of an audience.

In working to accomplish their purposes and address an audience’s needs, writers draw upon many other people. No matter how isolated a writer may seem as she sits at her computer, types on the touchpad of her smartphone, or makes notes on a legal pad, she is always drawing upon the ideas and experiences of countless others. The technical writers at a pharmaceutical company draw collaboratively upon the ideas of others they work with as they read their colleagues’ earlier versions of the information that will appear on the label. They also connect themselves to others as they engage with the laws about their products written by legislatures and the decisions of lawsuits associated with medications that have been settled or may be pending. The father crafting birthday wishes to his daughter might recall and consciously or unconsciously restate comments that his own parents included on the birthday cards he received as a child. As I work to craft this explanation of writing as a social and rhetorical activity, I am implicitly and explicitly responding to and being influenced by the many people involved in this project, those with whom I have shared earlier drafts, and even those whose scholarship I have read over the past thirteen years.

Writing puts the writer in contact with other people, but the social nature of writing goes beyond the people writers draw upon and think about. It also encompasses the countless people who have shaped the genres, tools, artifacts, technologies, and places writers act with as they address the needs of their audiences. The genres of medication labels, birthday wishes, and diary entries writers use have undergone countless changes as they have been shaped by writers in various times and places. The technologies with which writers act—including computer hardware and software; the QWERTY keyboard; ballpoint pens and lead pencils; and legal pads, journals, and Post-It notes—have also been shaped by many people across time and place. All of these available means of persuasion we take up when we write have been shaped by and through the use of many others who have left their traces on and inform our uses of those tools, even if we are not aware of it.

Because it conflicts with the shorthand descriptions we use to talk and think about writing, understanding writing as a social and rhetorical activity can be troublesome in its complexity. We say “I am writing an email” or “I am writing a note,” suggesting that we are composing alone and with complete autonomy, when, in fact, writing can never be anything but a social and rhetorical act, connecting us to other people across time and space in an attempt to respond adequately to the needs of an audience.

While this concept may be troublesome, understanding it has a variety of benefits. If teachers can help students consider their potential audiences and purposes, they can better help them understand what makes a text effective or not, what it accomplishes, and what it falls short of accomplishing. Considering writing as rhetorical helps learners understand the needs of an audience, what the audience knows and does not know, why audience members might need certain kinds of information, what the audience finds persuasive (or not), and so on. Understanding the rhetorical work of writing is essential if writers are to make informed, productive decisions about which genres to employ, which languages to act with, which texts to reference, and so on. Recognizing the deeply social and rhetorical dimensions of writing can help admin...