From the Editors
(Vol. 12, no. 1)
The authors in this issue address topics current, perennial, and canonical. In regard to the current, Victor Villaneuva talks about how the personal can become a rhetorically effective part of academic writing and how issues of race and ethnicity can be brought into the composition classroom. We talked to Villanueva first about his experiences as composition director and his less-than-completely-successful attempt to introduce a critical pedagogy of race and racism into the curriculum. He speaks candidly of what happens when ideals and good intentions meet the resistance of both students and teachers. We also discussed how students find their own written voice and the inherent contradiction between the home varieties of English that many of today’s students bring to the classroom and the potentially alienating discourse of academia. Villanueva suggests that allowing students to develop the personal in their writing as well as to apply the different kinds of logic that they bring with them from their own discourse communities can go far to overcome this contradiction.
The perennial issue concerns grammar. In an original twist on the age-old debate of whether grammar instruction does or does not lead to better writing, Susan Marquardt Blystone, in Caught in the Grammar Cross Fire: One Student’s Plea and Plan for Peace, argues that the question is moot. Since the public continues to equate “good grammar” with good writing and therefore demands that writing instructors teach “grammar,” educators need to show the public that they do indeed address questions of usage and mechanics. Blystone points out that the disagreement between writing educators and the general public mainly hinges upon greatly differing definitions of what the terms “grammar” and “grammar instruction” really mean. She points out that if “grammar instruction” is defined as the kind of contextualized discussion and practice of good usage that takes place in most writing classrooms today and this definition is promulgated to the general public, much of the debate will die down. She encourages educators and departments to “tell their outspoken critics that grammar is important to the writing process,” that it “is being taught,” and that these “teaching methods work.”
In A Classical Framework for a New “Visual
Renaissance”: Bridging the Divide between the Written and the Visual in
Computer-Based Composition, Andrea Deacon mixes the canonical and the
current. She takes the ancient rhetorical canons of invention, arrangement,
style, memory, and delivery and applies them to the composing process of
computer-generated texts and hypertexts. Thanks to the computer, she argues,
the visual characteristics of text have become more rhetorically powerful than
in the past. In her words, “Visual processes of invention, arrangement, and
style work alongside of and often radically alter similar processes of written
composition.” Although it might seem strange to utilize a rhetorical canon
nearly 2500 years old as a heuristic for teaching the written and visual
elements of computer-based composition, Deacon points out that these canons
grew out of a primarily oral culture in which public speaking, not writing, was
the predominant form of public communication. Hence, the performative
orientation of the canons suits the more aural and visual orientation of
computer-generated, internet-connected texts of today.
The nine reviews in this issue cover books written on a topics ranging from academic writing, to composition pedagogy, to applied linguistics, to textbook reviews. Deborah Anne Hooker’s review of Keith Hjortshoj’s Understanding Writing Blocks is an extended analysis of writer’s block in scholarly contexts. Also, Jennifer Mattix discusses Christine Farris and Chris M. Anson’s collection of essays on how theory, research, and practical application all inform one another. The book, Under Construction: Working at the Intersections of Composition Theory, Research, and Practice, is, according to Mattix in her detailed critique, “a valuable resource for the composition teacher.”
On the topic of pedagogy, three books are reviewed. Alvin H.F. Smith has written a long review of Karen Surman Paley’s I-Writing: The Politics and Practice of Teaching First-Person Writing, a defense of first-person writing in the composition classroom. C. M. Tremonte discusses Linda Flower et al.’s Learning to Rival: A Literate Practice for Intercultural Inquiry. Tremonte explains how the authors’ rival hypothesis thinking is a viable and interesting approach to promoting critical thinking and composition skills in multicultural classrooms. Finally, also on the topic of pedagogy, James H. Wilson reviews David Cooper’s Electronic Writing Centers: Computing the Field of Composition that applies Bahktin’s “dialogic theory” to argue the benefits of on-line writing centers.
There are also two books reviewed from the field of applied linguistics. One is a short book that argues in detail for the equality of all varieties of English. The book, by John McWhorter, Spreading the Word: Language and Dialect in America, is reviewed by Elaine E. Whitaker. The second book, Writing Across Languages is a collection of essays written by a host of international authors on the teaching of second language composition. The reviewer, Susan H. McLeod, finds it a “good and useful book.”
The last category includes business and technical writing textbooks. Cezar M. Ornatowski reviews Jim Henry’s Writing Workplace Cultures: An Archaeology of Professional Writing, a collection of ethnographic studies of professional writers and an argument for more “interpenetration” between professional writing cultures and the culture of the academic writing classroom. David Alan Sapp finds the other textbook reviewed here, Laura J. Gurak and John M. Lannon’s A Concise Guide to Technical Communication, an overall helpful and informative resource.
This issue is also the final one for our Reviews Editors, Cynthia Haller and Susan Katz. Since joining IW in 1997, they have worked hard to find able reviewers from many parts of the country and select the right books to review for a diverse readership that defies narrow specialization. We warmly thank them for their service and wish them well in their future endeavors. At the same time, we are very happy to welcome our new Reviews Editor, Karen Weathermon from Washington State University. As the Reviews “office” makes its way across the continent from the East to the West Coast, we look forward to Karen carrying on the fine tradition that Cynthia and Susan pass on to her.—M.B.
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Issues in Writing Last updated 22
February 2002. |
