An institutional critique of writing process
Helen Foster
- School: Purdue University (0183)
- Degree: Ph.D.
- Date: 2001 pp: 261
- Advisor: Lauer, Janice M.
- Source: DAI-A 62/12, p. 4150, Jun 2002
- Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition (0681)
- ProQuest Document Number:
- ISBN: 0-493-51015-X
- UMI Number: AAT 3037565
Abstract:
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James Berlin has posited that teachers ought to be able to recognize and justify their
own versions of writing process, along with all its significance. So far, what teachers
have to accomplish this challenge are varied classification systems such as expressivist,
cognitive, and social epistemic. But, enacted versions of writing process are not often
so neatly discriminated in the classroom, where instead there are conflations of process
types. I maintain that the classification systems, to date, do not offer teachers a
sufficiently theoretically articulated tool with which to choose and justify their
choices of writing process, particularly, as they relate to broad, cultural considerations.
Using institutional critique, I map a cultural field of relations, a rhetorical subjectivity
model, with which any writing process is imbricated and I suggest how the model might
be particularized to specific teaching contexts. I position on this map the instantiated
writing process of the first-year composition textbook, Writing With A Purpose
(twelfth edition), to illustrate a specific evaluation of how the articulated elements
in the rhetorical subjectivity model might be applied, as well as to imply a general
critique of the state of contemporary conceptualizations and applications of writing
process. Last, I expand my institutional critique of the writing process field of relations
through an analysis of a specific university writing program. Ultimately, I argue that
the rhetorical subjectivity model aids teachers in exercising reflexive evaluations of
their writing process choices, while also serving as a tool by which to guide future
writing process decisions.
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