Week of 3/4

This week’s readings focus on the writer’s “audience.” As a composition instructor, I was eager to read these articles because it seems as though we are told from day one that we must write to our audience. Thus, as instructors, we naturally tell our students to write to an audience. But what does that mean? I will start with Ong’s article The Writer’s Audience Is Always Fiction. Ong argues that the writer’s audience is in fact not so much fiction in the original sense, but more of a creation that that allows writers to write to these creations. Essentially, writers must construct an audience that belongs to a specific role established by the writer. On the other end of that coin, however, the writer’s audience must act or behave in the role that has been established by the writer. It seems both of these functions are quite daunting tasks, especially on the part of beginning writers. But how do we, instructors, go about teaching students to develop an audience that play a specific role? Additionally, how will they know if the audience they have developed will take on this role? Again, it seems we must deal with the issue of the “writing for the professor” constraints. However, despite these questions, it almost seems natural for writers to develop a fictitious audience anyway. I believe with beginning writers, it needs to be a process more refined, perhaps a separate course on creating your fictitious audience. Just kidding. While I was reading this article, I was constantly thinking of the concept of intertextuality (I read that article first) in regards to discourse community. Should we be teaching our students to write to a specific discourse community? Would it make it easier for them to develop a more authentic fictional audience (if that even exists)? Perhaps I am just trying to pin point the best way I could communicate the notion of audience to my students.

The Ede and Lunsford article focuses too on audience. Ede and Lunsford emphasize the importance of acknowledging the many roles that exist both for the audience that is addressed and the audience that is invoked. Additionally, the authors suggest that when considering the audience, the writer must consider the rhetorical situation, or as Ede and Lunsford point out in Corbett’s model, the “The Rhetorical Interrelationships.” The model represented stresses the notion that interrelationship in writing naturally exists; therefore, writers must acknowledge this. One salient point made by Ede and Lunsford is without readers for writers we would not have communication.

Porter’s article on intertextuality was very enlightening for me and I rather enjoyed it. As I was reading the article, I couldn’t help but constantly think about how the concept that Porter presents is not plagiarism. However, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Then, as my mind constantly tries to make connections, I went back to the argument of is writing a science or an art. In the context of this piece, Porter certainly makes it clear (whether he intended to or not) it is quite artistic, or so at least I think. Porter explains how intertextuality transitions from the writer as an individual to the writer writing is all about craft and the ability to focus more on the “social contexts from which the writer’s discourse arises.” (35) Porter discusses intertextuality as discourse that is developed of various pieces of other texts that help determine its meaning. He provides the example of the Declaration of Independence and how it was constructed based on this exact notion. He moves on to discuss discourse community. Essentially, text is only acceptable if it “belongs” within the specific discourse community. Lastly, Porter discusses intertextuality and the relationship with pedagogy. Porter suggests that the goal of writing instructors is to not so much focus on brining out of the “within”, but rather teaching students how to communicate socially with writing. My first question was how can we accomplish this task? Porter offers some suggestions for assignments and I particularly favored the research assignment. This makes writing not only real to students, but socially involved, and within a discourse community.

To build on the latter point, Bruffee addresses the collaborative learning model. Bruffee suggests that in order for students to become a real part of academia, it is important to be able to communicate. Bruffe argues that collaborative learning creates an environment that would allow students to realize that writing is not so much of an individual task, but more of a social context. As a doctoral student of education, collaborative learning is a method that I constantly work with. Typically, however, collaborative learning is often utilized in the literature classroom, usually through discussion circle or literature groups (so many names). However, collaborative learning in a composition classroom is typically identified as workshops or peer editing. This notion, as Bruffee points out, can potentially have negative effects. What is it exactly are they doing when they are peer editing? Just to add, Trimbur also discussed the negative effects of collaborative effort. Just like in any cooperative effort, an organizational structure no doubt exists and within these structures certain roles are assumed whether it is known or not. Thus, as Trimbur points out, voices may be silenced by fear or rejection. Bruffee suggests in order for collaborative learning to be effective an environment needs to exist to support it. As Director of the tutoring center, I try to create this environment with my writing tutors and the students that visit with them. I still have to figure out if it’s working :)