Function and Motivation

preterite Composition Theory

A question for comp folks: in what (likely various) ways do we understand the link between the function of writing and the motivation for writing? How do we connect what a piece of writing does to why the author wrote it?

As you can probably guess, this is a question that evolved in the discussion during my defense yesterday, and I’m still trying to find ways into it.

The later portions of my dissertation rely heavily on the diverse motivations Yochai Benkler charts for engaging in commons-based informational production: intrinsic hedonic rewards (i.e., pleasure), market-based rewards (i.e., material gain), and social-psychological rewards (i.e., recognition and/or affirmation). I think we can apply those motivations to writing, as well: people write for pleasure, for gain, for recognition, and for affirmation. But during my defense yesterday, one of my committee members suggested that there are also what she called “performative political” motivations for writing: one can write in order to perform and enact political change. (The performance is in getting other people to see you do it and prompt an enacted reaction from them; the enactment is the work of actually doing it.) And I totally agree: one reason to write is to change the world around you.

I’ve also tried to synthesize some of the work of Mariolina Salvatori, Peter Elbow, James Britton, and Janet Emig to try and talk about the diverse functions of writing. Britton talks about the expressive function, writing that is close to the self and does something for the self; the transactional function, writing that works to get things done; and the poetic function, writing that is essentially belletristic. I don’t think Britton’s taxonomy is adequate either in completeness or specificity, but Emig adds in the notion of writing to learn, which seems to carve out a space between the transactional and the expressive. And we could probably even throw Aristotle into the mix here, and talk about writing to determine future action, ascertain or prove the nature of past action, and engage in present-tense praise or blame, all perhaps as sub-categories of the transactional. So, yes, the notion of function could certainly use some sorting-out and taxonomizing.

But there are two big questions here:

  1. How do we express the link — if there is one — between motivation and function? (Would constructing a rigorous denial of that link open up interesting possibilities?)
  2. Can writing ever be done entirely for its own sake? What would that mean, and what would that look like? What motivation might one have for engaging in writing for its own sake?

I’d especially welcome examples folks might come up with.

The Edwards Boys

preterite Asides

Today was a big day for the Edwards boys.

David finally had his parole hearing in front of the hearing examiner this afternoon, who will report to the parole commissioner, who will put his findings before the parole board. I was naïve in thinking there’d be some news today — no such luck. Still, it sounds as if the parole commissioner has taken an active interest, and that’s a good sign.

So I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him. He began his time in prison about when I began my time in grad school, and I hope he’s close to finishing it.

Which brings me to my other news.

I was totally nervous at first, in giving that introductory 10-minute statement, and I know it showed. It didn’t help that it was hot in the room, and that I was in suit and tie: if you’re going to do it, I figured, might as well do it right. Cuff links, even, for the reason that they were the ones that my dad’s father, M. R., wore at his college graduation. He was the first one in his family to go to college, and Aunt Ida, the only one in his family to come and see him graduate, gave him those cuff links.

And I bet M. R. wasn’t ever as flushed or shaky as I was.

But I got through that 10-minute intro, and — in what I felt was a moment of glory — managed to work in a reference to Gilligan’s Island. After that, the rhythm took some getting used to, me finding my footing with my outside reader first, who was a generous questioner, and who at the same time made me question some vital connections I hadn’t considered. Her questions weren’t easy, but in the way she both made me re-state some of the arguments I was making and made me extend them, she got me to pin down, out loud, concrete points of reference for the defense, and in so doing opened up directions of investigation.

After that initial moment, I felt like I found my rhythm, made the connections, followed through on trains of thought. And felt secure enough, in several instances, to say, “I don’t know how I would do that,” or, “I don’t know how I might predict that.” Because I do know this stuff — this topic of my dissertation — better than anybody else, which also means that I know the bounds and limits of my knowledge. And I had those bounds and limits pressed at and tested today.

And I passed.

And to everybody who showed up or offered their support, at the defense or in the halls or on the blog or elsewhere, thank you. Y’all so rock.

The Doctor, as they say, Is In.

Let Us Now Praise

preterite Asides

Furniture.

After two days in a house without any, save for an air mattress, one really develops an appreciation for things that can be sat upon. Or tabled upon. And such.

The contractor and his workers have come, and they are tearing out ugly wood paneling and ugly cardboard tiled ceilings and the bad plaster and lath beneath. The phone technician has come and gone, and — after asking me, “You Army?” and smiling and nodding at my answer — has done some kindnesses, including installing the DSL jack in precisely the right place.

And last night, I climbed out the bathroom window and watched the fireworks for the Highland Falls 100th Centennial celebration (established 1906) from the roof of the house that will soon be both my most significant investment ever and the place where I live.

Which is a fifteen-minute walk from my new office at that 204-year-old home of The Long Gray Line.

Comp’s Hank

preterite Composition Theory

(Warning: this post contains a really awkward segue, for which I apologize in advance.)

The cats are out back with me as I write, sprawled on their sides, too lazy even to fuss at the birds in the maple tree above. Nothing quite like a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon on the deck with some Hank Williams Senior and a cold beer. References to Hank Senior are a prominent trope in country music, to the point where his influence pervades nearly every country song written today, whether it’s acknowledged or not.

Which sets me to thinking: does composition have a Hank Senior? While country existed before Hank, and has flourished in the years since his death in 1953, I think it’s fair to say that country wouldn’t exist as it does today without Hank. Hank, in many ways, is country music. So does our discipline have a figure like Hank? For classical rhetoric, it’s Aristotle; for contemporary rhetoric, it’s Kenneth Burke. But what about comp?

Albert Kitzhaber’s 1953 dissertation is widely cited in histories of composition, but it’s a historical document itself, and I’m not sure it really has the pervasive disciplinary influence that might grant Kitzhaber a contemporary status in composition similar to the stature Hank Williams holds in country music — although his CCC article ten years later does, I think, continue to shape our practice in important ways. James Kinneavy’s work is certainly monumental, but for me, it seems to belong more on the rhetoric side of rhetoric and composition. And given the ways in which my graduate education and institutional affiliations have shaped my perspective, my view of Donald Murray’s disciplinary prominence may not be shared by others.

So I’m thinking that if there is one figure who holds a stature in composition similar to that of Hank Williams in country music, more than anyone else, it’s probably Janet Emig. While other scholars (including Murray) are associated with the process-not-product philosophy, Emig was instrumental in the development of that philosophy, which — along with her write-to-learn ideas — pervades nearly all scholarship in composition today.

What do you think?

Dissertation Debris

preterite Asides

Friday cat blogging:

orange cat on desk

Night. In my work area, Tink knows where to recline: atop 222 pages of committee-submitted dissertation. She’s idly pawing at the thumb drive that holds my backup copy.

2 cats under skylight

Day. The other side of the office. Again, Tink’s got the paw out. Zeugma grooms herself between my empty reading rack, my full to-do file, and some photocopied essays on class, along with Benkler’s “Coase’s Penguin” and Gibson-Graham’s A Postcapitalist Politics.

Form, Space, and Synchronicity

preterite Composition Pedagogy, Composition Theory

Shelly at UFO recently raised some really interesting points about length and form and how we manage/regulate information and attention in texts. As powerful a template as the five-paragraph theme may be, Shelly suggests that it’s only useful up to a certain length, and I’m inclined to agree. As a template for writers, the five-paragraph theme makes the question of form-as-organization one less thing a struggling writer has to worry about. But for readers, once you get up over 800 or 900 words, the five paragraph theme no longer offers much help navigating the essay’s form-as-coherence.

A couple days later, Spencer pointed out a discussion of the relation between coherence, the form of the five-paragraph theme, and students’ attention to other aspects of writing. And again, the implicit argument in the passage Spencer points to seems to be that the five-paragraph theme is a tool for managing the resources of attention. For me, seeing Shelly’s and Spencer’s posts within the space of two days was an interesting bit of synchronicity that got even more interesting when I read Peter Elbow’s latest (June 2006) CCC essay on “The Music of Form: Rethinking Organization in Writing” in conjunction with the preface to Richard Lanham’s 2006 The Economics of Attention. For one thing, you’ve got to love Peter’s reference to the five-paragraph theme as “a kind of ‘slam bam thank you ma’am’ organization” (632). But to be a bit more serious: in The Economics of Attention, Richard Lanham begins with the assertion that “information is not in short supply in the new information economy” (xi). Rather, “what we lack is the human attention to make sense of it all” (xi). We don’t have enough time to devote to all this information and sort it out. Like our students, we as teachers “are short of time” (Elbow 631). And time and attention are central concerns for Elbow.

Now: one more connection to add to the pile. According to Elbow, “the most common way that writers bind words and pull readers through a text” is in narrative (634).

In 2001, I wrote a review essay called “The Ends of Narrative Inquiry” for a methods seminar and wound up being entirely too proud of myself for what I saw as my own stylistic

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On Error

preterite Composition Theory

I’m looking for good sources on student error in writing to share with a colleague. Joseph Williams on “The Phenomenology of Error” is an obvious choice, but I’d also like to share a piece that condenses Mina Shaugnessy’s extended point in Errors and Expectations about how the incidence of error goes up as students learn new concepts — in other words, how error itself can be an indication of learning. I remember reading a shorter piece (was it one of Bartholomae’s, maybe?) that made this argument, with some data to back it up, but don’t recall what it was. Help me out?

3 Years and 12 Days

preterite Metadissertating

I started this weblog with the explicit intent of using it to help me write through my dissertation. Three years and twelve days later, I’m just about there, having gone through multiple revisions of Chapters 1-5 with my advisor and finally, today, having given the other two committee members their first full look at the results of those revisions. No, it’s not done yet, but aside from one more go-through with my advisor on Chapter 5 and the suggestions the other two committee members give me, I’m almost there. And given the nature of the comments I’ve already seen from those members on Chapters 1-3, it feels like my advisor’s a pretty good judge of when something’s ready to go.

Another good sign is that I met with my outside reader today and she was enthusiastic about Chapters 1-3, with some extremely useful and informative suggestions. And in the middle of the meeting, she noted that the very recent work by scholar X would seem to be the logical next step in helping me to extend my own research, and of course scholar X’s very recent work is right at the top of my post-defense summer reading pile. (The book is my reward to myself for getting through this, and it’s a nice sign to me that a prominent scholar in another discipline would share my impulse about who my work aligns me with.)

And, finally, I have a strong and definite plan for what my next three essay-length publication projects are after the defense, taking me into late spring of next year, and loose ideas for two projects after that. So yeah. Stuff’s coming together.

Now I just gotta get through buying that house and moving. . .

My Date

preterite Metadissertating

July 7, 2006, at 2:30 in the afternoon. 316 Bartlett Hall.

(Click on the image for a bigger version.)

And yes, that would be me in the stainless-steel boob-cups.

So yeah, it’s a wig. Big deal. I mean, you know me, right? You know I’m bald. Can I be not embarassed now and just admit that, you know, sometimes I like to have hair?