IX. Response to Ede & Lunsford’s “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy”

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Critical Arguments

Ede and Lunsford argue that understanding the audience as strictly addressed or invoked by writing—the two prevailing perspectives in teaching composition—does not account for the varied nature of rhetorical situations. Approaching composition as if the audience is addressed, Ede and Lunsford argue, overemphasizes the audience and its power, stripping much of the writer’s ability to assess their own work. When the audience is invoked, the text establishes the role of the reader in its language; consequently, the power of the writer to set roles for the reader is overemphasized. Ede and Lunsford finally suggest a model for understanding rhetorical situations and the audience, one in which the audience, message, universe, and writer interact with each other.

Quotations

“Those who envision audience as addressed emphasize the concrete reality of the writer’s audience; they also share the assumption that knowledge of this audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and expectations is not only possible (via [observation] and analysis) but essential. Questions concerning the degree to which this audience is ‘real’ or imagined, and the ways it differs from the speaker’s audience, are generally either ignored or subordinated to a sense of the [audience’s] powerful.” (156)

“Ironically, however, their own emphasis on audience leads to a similar distortion. In their model, the audience has the sole power of evaluating writing, the success of which ‘will be judged by the audience’s reaction: “good” translates into “effective,” “bad’ into “ineffective.”‘ Mitchell and Taylor go on to note that ‘the audience not only judges writing; it also motivates it’ (p. 250),10 thus suggesting that the writer has less control than the audience over both evaluation and motivation.” (158)

“They do not, of course, deny the physical reality of readers, but they argue that writers simply cannot know this reality in the way that speakers can. The central task of the writer, then, is not to analyze an audience and adapt [discourse] to meet its needs. Rather, the writer uses the semantic and syntactic resources of language to provide cues for the reader–cues which help to define the role or roles the writer wishes the reader to adopt in responding to the text.” (160)

“Another weakness of research based on the concept of audience as [invoked] is that it distorts the processes of writing and reading by [overemphasizing] the power of the writer and undervaluing that of the reader….Ong fails adequately to recognize the [constraints] placed on the writer, in certain situations, by the audience.” (165)

“A fully elaborated view of audience, then, must balance the creativity of the writer with the different, but equally important, creativity of the reader. It must account for a wide and shifting range of roles for both addressed and invoked audiences. And, finally, it must relate the matrix created by the intricate relationship of writer and audience to all elements in the rhetorical situation. Such an enriched conception of audience can help us better [understand] the complex act we call composing.” (169-170)

Theories & Methods

Ede and Lunsford identify the two camps of thought which they work against using Mitchell and Taylor’s work for “audience addressed” and Long’s work for “audience invoked.” The article also utilizes Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience Is Always Fiction” to suggest that the foundation Long’s pedagogy may be a misapplication of a fiction-writing strategy. Ede and Lunsford are able to construct and put forth their own rhetorical model based on the limitations of the others.

Reflection & Connection

Recalling my own writing experiences, the audience seems to have played an insignificant role in my writing process. I am thinking of literature classes in particular now, often in which the context and content define the purpose of the writing and, in turn, the audience. If the teacher was to mention the audience in lieu of an assignment, I can only remember the suggestion that we write knowing the reader has read the text in question. When, then, was I taught to write for with an audience in mind? Was I taught? Perhaps, as Ede and Lunsford begin to suggest with their hypothetical student, we have internalized processes of handling the audience—we have natural ways of dealing with different rhetorical situations. This sort of code switching comes naturally in speech; that is, we adapt to the codes of different social or rhetorical situations. A writer’s ability to make sense of the rhetorical situation at hand may come, at least in part, naturally. The audience is also likely to be aware of the codes given the message’s context. For Ede and Lunsford, this is the communicative nature of writing that both the audience addressed and audience invoked models leave unconsidered. 

At this point, Ede and Lunsford article somehow appears to bring up the question: what is writing studies? Should it encompass literature studies with its specific rhetorical situations? What about creative writing? These two fields lend much of their content to writing studies, but they seem to have established identities of their own. Things certainly seem to be moving in the direction of separation to some extent. For instance, the separation—albeit not a drastic one—of the literature studies and rhetoric and composition tracks in the English major.

A Question

How does a writing course successfully instruct student to “balance the creativity of the writer with the different, but equally important, creativity of the reader” (169)? It seems that the two prevailing pedagogical approaches to composition may have risen out of the want to teach something concrete–the audience is either addressed or invoked and all you need to do is choose one.

X. Response to Yancey’s “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key”

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Critical Arguments

Yancey considers the intense amount of writing and reading that happens outside of a school setting—a product of technology, this digital writing does not need encouragement or instruction. Why then, Yancey questions, are English departments either vanishing or outputting less majors when writing is used as a social tool daily? Because writing holds a specific value in “gate-keeping” education and academia, Yancey proposes that writing and composition studies must take up the developing world of digital writing. Composition studies should also adopt new pedagogies which move beyond the “one-to-one tutorial model” (310) by asking students to consider rhetorical situations and, ultimately, prepare them for the writing public. The new spaces created by technology open a new territory which Yancey argues is fit for its own major.

Quotations

“Don’t you wish that the energy and the motivation that students bring to some of these other genres they would bring to our assignments? How is it that we teach and what we test can be so different from what our students know as writing? What is writing, really?” (298)

“Like 19th-century readers creating their own social contexts for readings in reading circles, writers in the 21st-century self-organize into what seem to be overlapping technologically driven writing circles, what we might call a series of newly imagined communities, communities that cross borders of all kinds–nation state, class, gender, ethnicity. ” (301)

“…it becomes pretty clear that we already inhabit a model of [communication] practices incorporating multiple genres related to each other, those multiple genres remediated across contexts of time and space, linked one to the next, circulating across and around rhetorical situations both inside and outside school. This is composition–and this is the content of composition. If we cannot go home again to the days when print was the sole medium, what will the new curricular home for composition look like?” (308)

“If we continue to partition it [technology] off as just something technical, or outside the parameters governing composing, or limit it to the screen of the course management system, or to think of it in terms of the bells and whistles and templates of the PowerPoint screen, students in our classes learn only to fill up those templates and fill in those electric boxes–which, in their [ability] to invite intellectual work, are the moral equivalent of the dots on a multiple choice test.” (320)

“In helping create writing publics, we also foster the development of citizens who vote, of citizens whose civic literacy is global in its sensibility and its communicative potential, and whose commitment to humanity is characterized by consistency and generosity as well as the ability to write for purposes that are unconstrained and audiences that are nearly unlimited.” (321)

Theories & Methods

Yancey uses examples of digital writing based in reality, blogs for social activism or organization, to make an argument for their inclusion in English or a new major. Detailing blogs and other digital modes of composition reveals how writing and composition studies are already involved in multimodal processes, making the new (then) writing context of the digital seem appropriate in an academic setting. 

Reflection & Connection

Fifteen and some years ago, Yancey was contending with the nature of writing in universities. In my time in the English department on campus, the writing that Yancey argues for including, which I suppose is now umbrellaed by “technical writing,” still seems to be struggling with questions of evaluation. The delineation of two tracks in the major, I suppose, suggests a move towards two separate areas of study. Nonetheless, I can’t help but think that this is not quite what Yancey imagined. Where is the major which Yancey proposes in the article? Wherever it may live, the English department or otherwise, Yancey argues that there should exist a major that is concerned with a sort of technical writing, specifically with the horizon of writing practices—the digital modes of composition. Although she admits to the difficulties of changes like this, the difficulties seem to remain at a rolling boil. Often, this seems to come down to conceiving English as territorias literati. 

What interests me most about Yancey’s argument for this still developing major is the appropriation of public writing. Often in an academic writing setting, the genre comes into existence for the student as they enter a course. That is, before I entered a Shakespeare course, the discourse and critical tradition were not something I considered. In general, academic writing is not a genre I engaged in before stepping into the English department. But for Yancey, the writing public is informing the academic world. Writing which students are familiar with passes into the academic sphere and is wrought by new, and I suppose “outside,” eyes. If this is part of what we now are calling technical writing, Yancey’s model also works against the conception of technical writing as devoid of the writer. Because there is a demonstrable social and rhetorical value to this writing, the writer itself becomes empowered by learning and understanding technical writing.

A Question

What new forms of writing–for Yancey it was writing encompassed by the advent of the digital realm–does the English department have to quarrel with? Are there newly developed modes of communication that students engage with that have not entered the academic sphere yet? And where does multimedia communication fit into this conversation?

XI. Response to Connors’ “The Rise of Technical Writing Instruction in America”

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Critical Arguments

Connors describes the rise of the university after the Civil War—a time in which curricula expanded and the humanities supplemented specialized studies like engineering—and the subsequent decline of the humanities presence in specialized fields during the industrial growth of the 1870’s. Throughout this decline, Connors argues that the linguistic nature of engineering was ignored to the point of producing near illiterate engineers. The need for technical composition instruction crept into universities around the turn of the century; Connors argues the establishment of English departments in engineering schools laid the framework for a growing discipline, especially by producing the first textbooks. Technical writing courses, however, still lacked because English scholars, understanding literature to be the highest form, looked down on engineering and technical writing in general. It wasn’t until World War II that technical writing found its place as a profession, often employed by companies like General Motors. The seventies saw the reimagination of technical writing as a rhetorical process as well as the growth in popularity among students and professionals. 

Quotations

“For as long as men have used tools and have needed to communicate with each other about them, technical discourse has existed.” (4)

“These specialized upper-level courses in writing, however, hardly existed during the nineteenth century, and this rarity is explained by the manner in which engineering schools developed in America….Before 1870 an engineer graduated with a good bit of knowledge of the ‘humane subjects.’ But the engineering discipline was rapidly being awakened by the fantastically rapid industrial development of the Gilded Age….During the 1870’s, courses in the humanities dropped almost completely out of sight in engineering schools.” (5)

“Beginning around 1899, a number of engineering schools established separate English departments within themselves in order to serve the special needs of engineering students….Initially these inhouse English departments taught only a specialized freshman and sophomore sequence, but they provided a natural climate for upper-level courses in specialized composition. This activity was not long in producing prototypical technical writing materials.” (6)

“The fact that technical writing courses were seen by English departments as second-rate and often staffed with younger faculty members or departmental fringe people meant that there was no glory and no real chance for professional advancement in technical writing. Thus the quality of technical writing courses was often low in the early days as departments rotated unwilling and uninterested teachers through them.” (8)

“Technical writers were in great demand during the war, for each new airplane, gun, bomb, and machine needed a new manual written for it, and the centrality of the lucid explicator was obvious as never before….For the first time, technical writing was more than an adjunct function of some other activity–it was a job in itself. After the end of the war, technical writing finally became a genuine profession as wartime technologies were translated into peacetime uses. The giant technology corporations…opened separate departments of technical writing after finding that it was no longer cost-effective to pay engineers both to design and write.” (12)

“As Walter explained in 1973, two of the most important assumptions that he and Mills had gleaned from their survey had been these: 1. A rhetorical approach rather than the rigid ‘types of reports’ approach that most texts used was best….2. The only good criterion for technical writing is ‘does it work?’ This indicates that in technical writing as well as in rhetorical forms, the writer-reader relationship is most important.” (13)

Theories & Methods

Connors looks at the publication of technical writing textbooks to determine eras of growth and decline within the discipline. Textbook authors and composition scholars are also looked to in order to determine the perceived function of technical writing both in universities and businesses. Connors examination of technical writing also relies on a simultaneous examination of historical events like the Depression and WWII. 

Reflection & Connection

In a number of reflections on other articles, I have noted the tensions between literary studies and technical composition studies. Connors’ article provides some rather useful historical insights into understanding the nature of this almost rivalry. In getting to a fuller understanding, I think Miller’s work connects particularly well with the historical background drawn by Connors insomuch that we see that the a-rhetorical perception of the sciences, especially the applied sciences like engineering, is deeply rooted within the world of academia. After reading these articles which make clear arguments for technical writing as a worthy, humanistic, and important field of study, I am beginning to get curious as to how contrarian scholars would make an argument against the value or inclusion of technical writing. Is it just the persistence of a positivist view of science throughout the humanities that continues the tension between literary studies and technical composition? I would argue that this plays, at least, some part being that technical writing arose from needs of engineering—technical writing exists in some place between the two big disciplines. 

The clash of literary studies and technical writing, then, seems to be a reflection of the larger clash between science and the humanities. On this institutional level, I am reminded of Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos, a book which explores neoliberalism’s effect on all spheres of life, but specifically explores the negative impact of conceptualizing life (esp. the academic sphere) in terms of the market. That is, by evaluating education through a return-on-investment schema, Brown argues that the question becomes: What kind of education will output the highest capital? Education, then, has become a means of developing “human capital.” Consequently, Brown argues that interest in the humanities has declined because of a perceived lack of capital return. It seems to me that, because of this, the humanities and sciences are often pitted against one another.

A Question

All of the readings up to this point have demonstrated the value (rhetorical or humanistic) of technical writing. How would the someone argue for the contrary? Are there scholars who have or do publish writings to argue against technical writing as a valuable constituent of the English department? Or do these sentiments just survive within the walls of the English department?

XII. Response to Miller’s “Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing”

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Critical Arguments

Miller calls into question the understanding of technical writing as a skill-based practice, one devoid of any significant humanistic value. The positivist view, which Miller suggests creates a binary between science or technical thought and rhetorical, supposes that truth exists and science must find it. Language and rhetoric, on the other hand, muddle this discovery process. Despite this positivist view, Miller argues that science is nonetheless a “communal enterprise” (616) in which scientific truth does not exist within the material world, but is constructed with other people. That is, science itself is a rhetorical effort. In turn, Miller finally suggests that technical writing is humanistic as it teaches participating in different epistemic communities. 

Quotations

“I wish to argue that the common opinion that the undergraduate technical writing course is a ‘skills’ course with little or no humanistic value is the result of a lingering but pervasive positivist view of science. In this view, human knowledge, of which we may take science to be a model, is a matter of getting closer to the material things of reality and farther away from the confusing and untrustworthy imperfections of words and minds.” (610)

“Reality doesn’t come in packages clearly marked “technical” or “nontechnical.” But perhaps any aspect of reality might be treated in a technical or nontechnical manner. To return to the windowpane analogy, definition in terms of the window itself may be more promising than definition in terms of what is outside. Such definitions often take the form of an appeal to absolute clarity, but clarity is a more elusive and less useful criterion than we have believed.” (613)

“The whole idea of invention is heresy to positivist science-science does not invent, it discovers. Form and style become techniques for increasingly accurate transmission of logical processes or of sensory observations….If we take this approach to form and style very seriously, there is not very much to teach in a technical writing class. Form and style become, in theory, as self-evident as content. No wonder that technical writing is a course that anyone can teach and no one wants to teach. But why is it that students have difficulty writing effective prose if all they are doing is transmitting a reality about which they know more than the technical writing teacher?” (614)

“Science, then, is not concerned directly with material things, but with these human constructions, with symbols and arguments. Scientific observation relies on tacit conceptual theories, which may be said to ‘argue for’ a way of seeing the world. Scientific verification requires the persuasion of an audience that what has been ‘observed’ is replicable and relevant. And logical procedure, as Thomas Kuhn has shown, is inadequate to account for scientific growth and change. Science is, above all, a communal enterprise…” (616)

“If we pretend for a minute that technical writing is objective, we have passed off a particular political ideology as privileged truth.” (616)

Theories & Methods

Miller frames this article with an institutional questioning of the humanistic value of technical writing. He then examines the positivist view of science in order to work against understood notions of science. Miller deconstructs the positivist view, revealing the interplay between rhetorical processes and science ones. Technical writing pedagogies are then reexamined to unveil humanistic value. 

Reflection & Connection

There seems to be an existing tension between literature focused courses and technical writing in the field of English. I think we have seen this sentiment in other articles, particularly Bartholomae’s, in which the value of writing studies is called into question. Should writing studies lean towards the social utility or the mechanical process? Technical writing, however, seems to be more often observed as serving the mechanical studies. This is where Miller’s examination of the positivist view of science is crucial in reimagining technical writing—and science itself—as a rhetorical process. 

In my own educational experiences, science and the humanities were presented as two distinct fields with little to no relation. Science deals with reality whereas the humanities are generally involved with the abstract. I would bet that this sentiment prevails on campus. Because of Miller, I now see how a positivist view of science is pervasive in academia.The best evidence I can think of is the Honors College. The College, which is directly interested in the humanities, often loses science majors who question its value to their education. Within the first year of school, I heard many a science major say something like, “This doesn’t apply to my studies so why am I doing it?” Miller’s ability to argue for the humanistic value of technical writing, perceived as a scientific process, rests on his examination and deconstruction of the prevailing understanding of what science does and what humanities do.

A Question

Are there other places, perhaps within education or academia, where the humanistic value of a field of study is diminished by a positivist view of science? In what ways might our understanding of what science does be challenged by acknowledging the rhetorical action that it participates in?