Mortensen’s “Analyzing Talk about Writing”

Published February 12, 2012 CCR , Reading notes , Teaching 2 Comments
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I was going to do a detailed summary of Bazerman’s “Theories of the Middle Range in Historical Studies” (Written Communication, 2008), the most fab read for CCR 635 this week, but hot damn if Tim didn’t knock this out of the park already. Instead, I’d like to focus on the piece Tim and my fellow bloggers didn’t address in their posts this week (being late to the game affords me such perspective): Peter Mortensen’s “Analyzing Talk About Writing,” one of five selections we read from Kirsch & Sullivan’s landmark 1992 book, Methods and Methodology in Composition Research. The piece is worth revisiting because (a) it’s a bit of messy read, and (2) its arguments have important outcomes for writing instruction (as opposed to curricula or assessment), including writing centers.

Mortensen’s chapter aims to provide an complicated exploration and critique of the methodologies of discourse analysis in composition studies. For Mortensen, talk about writing, or “conversation in which speakers attend to text or the processes of creating text” (105), is limited because any representation of such talk about writing in research “cannot begin to capture the texture of what people say when they discuss a piece of writing in progress” (106). Thus, inquiries into talk about writing fundamentally lead to a rhetoric about how talk about writing works within any given site. This sets up Mortensen’s own methodology — rhetorically analyzing various studies of discourse analysis to see which arguments are un/persuasive and why.

He begins by identifying three ways of analyzing talk: conversation, pragmatic, and functional analyses. With conversation analysis, researchers “attempt to make sense of talk from the perspective of its participants.” And yet those perspectives are complicated by something called “intersubjective understandings,” meanings negotiated between subjects that extend beyond the immediate talk observed by the researcher. In some cases the researcher knows the context; in some cases, not. But because of intersubjectivity, it is important for researchers to be explicit to readers about their level of familiarity with the subjects: the extent to which they knew why the subjects were speaking, their communicative goals, etc. Mortensen then analyzes a study 1987 by Freedman and Katz (from this edited collection) that looked at talk in writing conferences. From this study, Mortensen identifies two methodological problems with conversation analysis. First, conversational analyses have the burden of identifying who defines “normal” in a conversation — the participants? the researcher? If it is the participants, then the researcher should develop a method to triangulate findings. In the Freedman and Katz example, Mortensen suggests gathering the teacher and students’ interpretations of the conversation, which would have validated or challenged the researchers’ analysis. This would also insure that they “respect the agency of their subjects and not cast them as purely ‘resources’” an argument he makes later in the chapter.

A second problem Mortensen raises is that a strict structural analysis of turn-taking (looking at adjacency pairs, for example) isn’t valid without taking the conversation’s context into account. He cites Irene Wong’s examination of the negotiability of content per topic in a given conversation. (She found, for example, that in tech writing courses teachers were more willing to negotiate certain genres that were more alien to them, but asserted authority when they were more confident with content.) While Mortensen reasserts that “it impossible to render an accurate transcription of a conversational exchange” (111), detailed transcriptions of conversations, complete with nonverbal utterances, is essential to conversational analyses.

While conversational analyses examines how meaning is negotiated by participants through conversation, other methods of analyzing talking — pragmatic analysis and functional analysis — suggest a more taxonomic approach where conversational codes and rules are prescribed prior to conversation. Specifically, pragmatic analysis prescribes rules for “what normal conversation ought to be” (112) and is influenced by H.P. Grice’s “cooperative principle” which provides a rubric of sorts as to how conversation can be “maximally efficient, rational, and cooperative.” Although Grice’s principles prescribe behavior, pragmatic principles are useful for describing utterances (and apparently folks like Marilyn Cooper have used them with student papers). The difference between pragmatic analysis and conversational analysis is that the latter is “far more circumspect, and sensitive to local ethnological norms of talk, in their formulations” (Toolan qtd. in Mortensen 113).

But Mortensen doesn’t discount an approach that is “constitutive and prescriptive,” one that “assumes that conversations appear orderly and coherent because speakers are predisposed to agree on the rules that govern what units can be combined to make well-formed utterances” (113). Functional approaches ignore negotiation and assume an ideal conversational experience where participants share the rules for discourse to the extent that they “strike simultaneously the same mental chord in their listeners’ mind and their own (114). While Mortensen’s definitions aren’t very clear to me, his example of Gere and Abbott’s study of high school conversation groups is illustrative of functional analyses’ methods. In their study they use a taxonomy of utterances based on function that allow them to quantify talk. While “meaning is not openly negotiated,” with a functional analysis, context needs to be accounted for in exchanges.

In addition to providing sketches of these three approaches to discourse analysis, Mortensen outlines poststructural perspectives from Derrida, Phelps, and Susan Miller. Interrogating both the primacy of writing (over speech) and prior conceptions of subjectivity, “the writing subject demands that we attend not only to inscription, or to the moment of inscription, but also to the panorama of human activities that condition intention and interpretation” (118, emphasis mine). Mortensen argues that we can address such panoramas by viewing dialogues as intertextual and intersubjective. Intertextuality is the notion that “all texts are related through the references they make to one another, whether subtle or obvious” (118). Intersubjectivity seems to suggest that social worlds are co-created through communication, through language. As Mortensen puts it “the social structures that shape human relationships are held to be prior to the construction of individual minds” (in other words there is no “self” prior to others) (120).

Mortensen ends the the piece by highlighting some of the gaps in research in talk about writing, Namely:

  • Many studies of talk about writing have acknowledged intersubjectivity since negotiation in conversation is proof that we are endlessly working through social structures (Seinfeld immediately comes to mind). These studies have looked at how people talk about writing. However, fewer studies have looked at “the influence of talk on a particular piece of writing, and vice versa” (121, emphasis original). The few studies that have been done on this question, argues Mortensen, are interesting because they “yield unexpected findings” (note that “unexpected findings” seems to be the golden standard when it comes to research goals — see Bazerman this week).
  • Research on talk about writing have been limited to school settings — primarily secondary and post-secondary classrooms. Research at workplace sites or in other settings might yield interesting (unexpected?) findings.
  • Sociocultural factors like race, class, gender, etc. haven’t been satisfactorily accounted for in studies of talk. Marginalized subjects, in particular, will require new methods since researchers, according to Mortensen, obviously “identity with the dominant culture” (123) and will distort findings.

Mortensen concludes by arguing that any “research on talk about writing creates ‘fictions’ that relate the researcher’s experience of the phenomenon under study” (123). To make such fictions ethical, then, Mortensen argues that subjects should play an active role with respect to the research (hence his criticism that Freeman and Katz do not ask their subjects to weigh in on their conversational analysis). Although Mortensen doesn’t mention it, this perspective seems to be an illustration of the reflexive feminist research methods Sullivan, Schell and others have argued for (and Barton critiques). He leans on Haraway to legitimize the argument that “researchers must respect the agency of their subjects and not cast them as purely ‘resources’ from which to approximate knowledge for reproduction” (124).

Looking back more closely at Mortensen, seeing how he calls all studies fictions, I now wonder if he believes that empirical studies are even possible. He gives pragmatic and functional analyses praise, so I think he deems them worthy pursuits, yet his critique at the end of this piece makes me wonder how serious he would take empirical (more positivistic) studies.

He also doesn’t seem to address how a better understanding of talk about writing might affect pedagogy. For me, talk seems to be one of the most important — if not thee most important — means to improving writing instruction. And yet studies of talk about writing don’t seem to get taken up in CCC (I admit this is shaky assessment on my part). Have we adequately focused on instruction (as opposed to assessment or curriculum)? When we talked about writing pedagogy last semester in CCR 632, it seemed like we focused an awful lot on the “what” of the classroom and not so much the why or how. How do we structure our class discussions, for example, so that we break the initiate-respond-evaluate triplet Hugh Mehan found in 1979 and that still dominates our classrooms? What studies have we published on the affect of student-led discussion on their writing? I ask this because in WRT 205, I’ve long tried to use principles of academic writing to teach students how to write discussion questions. (See handout below.)

Writing discussion clusters

Perhaps this also interests me because in its rawest form, writing centers only have talk, they only have instruction to work on in their ongoing development. Consultants don’t design assignments, syllabi, or curricula and they certainly don’t assess writers. How does the writing center site affect talk about writing?

Thurston Moore delivers a moment

Published February 8, 2012 Music , Reflections Leave a Comment
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One of my favorite records from 2010 is The Radio Dept’s Clinging to a Scheme. Even thought the Swedish indie band has been around since 2003, that record was my intro to them (they subsequently released a singles collection last year that’s provides a nice overview). Anyway, there’s this great sample playing at the beginning of track 2 of Clinging to a Scheme [see below] while the band plays the harpsichordy intro. It’s the voice of a serious-sounding, academic who says, “People see rock-and-roll as youth culture and when youth culture becomes monopolized by big business what are the youth to do?  Do you have any idea? I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture.” Cue poppy, jiggling guitar.

It’s not quite as powerful as the Iggy Pop sample at the beginning of Mogwai’s “Punk Rock.” but I always got behind it and figured it serious.

So the other night I’m watching 1991: The Year Punk Broke, which is a real trip down memory lane. The last time I saw it, it was played on an 1980 RCA VHS machine, I was just entering high school, couldn’t drive, and imagine I was scheming for a way to get my parents to drive me to Toronto to catch Lollapalooza 1993. All could recall from it is that there’s tons of raw footage of mostly Sonic Youth and Nirvana (and occasionally Dinosaur Jr. and other sludgy grunge acts) playing and goofing during an early 90s tour of Europe. Nirvana was about to release Nevermind and Sonic Youth was between Goo and Dirty (judging from the songs played on film, it looks like they barely started writing Dirty if they started it at all). Anyway, relatively early in the film there are plenty of random shots of Thurston Moore yelling into the mic, goofing around on the streets of Ireland or Germany, and apparently riffing on Madonna’s tour documentary, Truth or Dare.  And this happens:

The sample! It was fucking Thurston Moore? Although he criticizes record companies at the end of the clip (omitted from the Radio Dept song), SY had just released Goo on Geffen (now owned by Universal Music) a year earlier and would go on to release many more (along with labelmates, Nirvana).

I had moments like these throughout my listening life, usually when I listened to hip-hop. It would start with something from NWA, and then years later I’d be listening to Gang Starr or James Brown or the Beasties and have that moment of realization of the original source. While not entirely profound, the moment reminds me of how there is still an aura, even in a copy. It also reminds me that context is essential to meaning. Tracing, tracking a sample’s ecology raises questions, too. Is Moore just fucking around? Is he serious? Can it be both? No doubt folks who know SY’s history better than me will have interpretations here, but I thought about that moment and wondered if they happen more frequently in a remix culture, or since originality is always suspect, those moments have always happened, just differently.

Emig’s The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders

Published January 28, 2012 Reading notes , Teaching 2 Comments
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Last week in CCR 635, Advanced Research Methods, we read and discussed a few frames in which to view empirical research in the social sciences (and in particular, writing studies). As I mentioned here last week, Smagorinsky’s Written Communication piece (2009) on the Method section and Hayes, et al’s second chapter from Reading Empirical Research Studies (1992) were particularly grounded. Before discussing Emig, then, I wanted to jump back and outline some of the definitions that Hayes, et al use in Section B of their second chapter on types of empirical studies. I used Bubbl.us here to help break this down (see image).

Types of Empirical Studies from Hayes, et al.

It doesn’t take a masters degree to figure out that Emig’s The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders is a case study, a kind of descriptive study, but what’s interesting about it is why it had to be one. According to Hayes, et al, it’s because descriptive studies are necessary when “the researcher does not have specific hypotheses to test” because “the domain is not yet well explored” (23). As Nystrand points out in “The Social and Historical Context for Writing Research,” Emig’s study is often the first plot in sketching a history of composition research in North America, even though it wasn’t necessarily the first empirical study. In the preface to Composing Earl Buxton of NCTE notes that Emig’s method emerged from an “adaptation of the case-study method” from Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer’s Research in Written Composition. What seems significant about “Composing,” however, is such studies continued sponsorship from NCTE. As Nystrand argues, previous studies “were isolated and unsupported by professional networks and support systems, including doctoral programs training writing researchers and overseeing dissertation studies, as well as refereed research journals and professional organization special interest groups devoted to such research” (11). Both Research in Written Composition (1963) and The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders (1971) were published by NCTE.

If the “characteristic outcome” of descriptive studies is to “formulate hypotheses,” (Hayes, et al) it would explain why Emig lists four “hypotheses” in the introduction to the study. At first I interpreted “hypotheses” as a traditional definition: as theories as to how these writers might compose going into the study (pre-data collection). However, as I read on (and revisited Hayes, et al), I understood them more as outcomes of the study, formulations for further research. So if I’m reading this correctly, then, the idea is that future researchers might conduct additional descriptive correlational or experimental studies to follow up on some of Emig’s findings. Like what?

In Chapter 7: Implications, Emig outlines some of the possibilities, including a similar study with a larger sample size and wider range of abilities (one of the weaknesses of this study is that all but two writers are good to exceptional — see bottom of page 29); a study comparing the composing processes of high school writers versus adults, longitudinal studies throughout a sample’s schooling, cross-cultural studies and others. But according to her, “the most promising aspect” of the study is the composing aloud protocol, the 6th dimension of a more or less linear process she uses as her mode of analysis throughout the study (a dimension that is, interestingly, “recursive”). On this dimension she argues for techniques that would allow for “finer calibration,” including the use of time-lapse photography or a stylus to track the starting and stopping motions throughout a writer’s process (96). Emig’s wish to use other technologies to mark the nonverbal actions of the writer to better measure this dimension of the process speaks to the difficulty of relying on such data (as a classmate mentioned last week, composing aloud is hard). It made we wonder if other studies have been done with cameras and electronic devices since this one to see how writers compose. (I imagine so.) It also made me wonder if anyone has captured data with eye-tracking devices used in usability testing.

Having the chance to read Emig’s study after all these years of secondary and post-secondary teaching and training made me realize the effect this study had on the process movement, whose theories have dominated 2 of the 3 institutions I’ve taught at (can you guess which one isn’t included?). See the table there for a summary of findings.

Summary of Emig's findings

If there’s a weakness to these findings it’s the linearity of the modes and the binary of school v self (as Nystrand notes, “the social 80s” shed light on the weakness of cognitive models and their inability to conceptualize audience with any complexity).

Finally, I have to say I was relatively shocked by the tone of condemnation Emig takes toward teachers throughout the study and especially in the last section. For example, in the chapter about Lynn (her primo sample subject), she writes “there is the inescapable impression that Lynn is more sophisticated than her teachers, both as to the level of her stylistic concerns and to the accuracy and profundity of her analysis of herself as a writer” (73). On page 98 in the Implications chapter she also argues that a pervasive “teacher illiteracy” exists: that teachers don’t read contemporary work (a bunch of white dudes, plus Gloria Steinem is in her list), don’t write compositions, and, as a result, show students anachronistic models of writing and “truncate the process of composing”; teaching composition in America in the late 60s/early 70s “is essentially a neurotic activity” (99). As a result of this assessment, Emig argues for more reflexive (as opposed to extensive) writing, offering more generous opportunities for students to compose so that they spend more time prewriting and planning, reformulating, and talking with one another about their work. The implications, it seems, could be rewritten as tenets for the process movement.

 

Works Cited

Emig, Janet A. The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders. NCTE, 1971. Print.

Nystrand, Martin. “The Social and Historical Context for Writing Research.” Handbook of Writing Research. Ed. Charles A. MacArthur, Steve Graham, & Jill Fitzgerald. New York: Guilford Press, 2008. 11-27. Print.

Intro to empirical research

Published January 23, 2012 CCR , Reading notes Leave a Comment
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We’re kicking off CCR 635 with articles and book sections that provide invigorating overviews of empirical research, the methods section, and a review of recent texts in comp/rhet that attempt to capture the field’s seminal research. They are:

Anson, Chris. “Review Essay: A Field at Sixty-Something.” College Composition and Communication. 62.1 (2010): 216-228. Print.

Smagorinsky, Peter. “The Method Section as Conceptual Epicenter in Constructing Social Science Research Reports.” Written Communication. 25.3 (2008): 389-411. 23 Jan. 2012.

Young, Richard E. “Reading Research Papers.” Reading Empirical Research Studies: The Rhetoric of Research. Ed. Richard E. Young et al. Routledge, 1992. 11-40. Print.

Anson reviews the following tomes that were published in the latter half of the aughts based on their “historical reach,” “(inter)disciplinary breadth,” “international research,” and their ability to “take stock” of the field through reflective practice/observation:

Handbook of Research on Writing: History, Society, School, Individual, Text
Charles Bazerman, editor New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2008. 652 pp.

Handbook of Writing Research
Charles A. MacArthur, Steve Graham, and Jill Fitzgerald, editors New York: Guilford, 2006. 468 pp.

The Norton Book of Composition Studies
Susan Miller, editor New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. 1,760 pp.

Research on Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Two Decades of Change
 Peter Smagorinsky, editor New York: Teachers College Press, 2006. 308 pp.

I know this sounds sophomoric, but I can’t help it: as I skimmed Anson’s review I was impressed at both the sheer amount of reading/refreshing he had to do to write such a short review and the disciplinary knowledge required to begin.

But the more practical pieces we read this week were Hayes, et al’s introduction (“Reading Research Reports”) to the terms and taxonomies of empirical studies and Smagorinsky’s argument for a more careful consideration of the methods section. Hayes et al breaks up their chapter into four handy sections:

  1. the format for the research report (abstract, intro, methods, results, discussion),
  2. types of empirical studies: hypothesis-testing studies (correlational and experimental) v descriptive studies (case study analysis, participant observation, and protocol analysis)
  3. modes of thought and argument in empirical research (including “common sources of alternative interpretations” re: stability, bias, researcher/participant effects, confounding factors, and faulty inferences)
  4. commonly used empirical measures (central tendency, variability, and correlation).

Because this chapter is rigid and loaded with relational terms (a rarity in a a theoretical program!), I’d really like to sketch these ideas and terms visually with bubbl.us sometime this week and repost.

Smagorinsky’s article, a wonderfully accessible essay which I had been hearing about for quite some time from J Lew, argues that greater care should be put toward the Method section of social science research (especially w/r/t the fields of literacy, education and comp/rhet). It should be essential to not only the product of the scholarship (in the sense that it would be publishable, replicable, or persuasive to its peers) but also its production (the process of its making). Smagorinsky, as former editor of RTE and and reviewer for nearly 30 different journals, finds a “lack of alignment” throughout most papers submitted to him to review. That is, the paper’s major sections — theory/literature, results, discussion — don’t add up. The Method section is the best place to start when it comes to research writing, argues Smagorinsky, because it is “the vehicle through which alignment” can be “systematically attempted” (405). “In particular,” he argues, “the outline of the analytic approach — for me, usually the articulation of a coding system — sets the terms for what I need to talk about means elsewhere in the manuscript” (406).

The short, short update

Published January 23, 2012 Reflections 1 Comment

Returned from FL, got a super virus, watched a lot of Breaking Bad to recoup, started spring semester. Speaking of which, I had a great first week back. I’m taking an elective literacy class with Bx Howard (with emphasis on IP literacy) and a advanced research methods class with Iswari Pandey. Super jazzed about both syllabi. And after spending a whole semester reflecting on it, I’m teaching a WRT 205 course with a remix theme and digital writing “accent.” This semester should be much easier on the fam than last. In the fall Em was teaching a 5 load at 3 different colleges and I was teaching 2 sections myself (as opposed to 1 this semester). No terrible, but we had our hands full.

And speaking of that, and we’re especially pumped about the announcement that our second kiddo is incubating and due in late June. Huzzah!

Magic Simulacra

Published January 4, 2012 Reflections , travel Leave a Comment
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Despite being educated about the evils of the Disney corporation in my post-adolescent years, the family and I had a memorable day at Magic Kingdom yesterday thanks to AM’s Papa and Nana (no way could we afford such fun on GA or contingent faculty $). We were there briefly in May, but we packed in a whole lot more yesterday: photos with characters, three parades, several rides (i.e. Small World, Mad Tea Party, Tomorrowland Speedway, Dumbo, Peter Pan’s Flight Swiss, and Jungle Cruise) and and handful of shows and evening fireworks.

Fam with Mickey and Minnie

Having been to Disney World a few times as a kid (4th grade was thee trip I remember most) I think what I found most remarkable about visiting the park as an adult and with my 2-y.o., is how classic everything is. Many of the attractions — Small World, the Tea Party, Dumbo, Peter Pan, the Treehouse, Jungle Cruise — haven’t changed at all (or perhaps more honestly, I don’t remember them differently). I still have an LP of music from the park from the early 80s (so used and scratched up it barely plays) and the music for the Electrical Parade and the Tiki Room were instantly recognizable (the wiki for the Electrical Parade sketches its history in more detail than you can possibly imagine). It’s not that there haven’t been upgrades: the fireworks were preceded by a mega-tech, dizzying program of mashed up photos and animations that were projected on the castle. And they’re developing an entirely new Fantasyland for 2012. And while I imagine my impressions have more to do with desire, nostalgia, and my daughter than anything actual or material, many of the rides looked and felt as new as they did before 1987: a powerful display of simulacra upon simulacra.

Emily and AM on Dumbo

Aside from all this wow, I have to say that the staff and services were impressive. Unlike Seaworld, where you could feel yourself being shaken down at the turn of every park corner, one could imagine that bacon bringers might feel like they actually got something for their money: a clean park, happy children, and accommodating, professional staff everywhere. Since my dad shattered his heal in September, he had to use an ECV all day; surprisingly, we found most attractions accessible and the employees accommodating (designated HC spaces for parades, separate lines for rides, etc.). The only problem were the fellow tourists who would rarely give way or acknowledge his scooter (which closed in on their ankles).

Disney is obviously abominable in a number of ways (in fact, my students and I will look at the company’s ugly, aggressive, hypocritical stance toward intellectual property in WRT 205 this spring), and the park is unfortunately prohibitively expensive for most, but I was fortunate to have a great day with my family, and for that I am thankful.

Sick on vacation

Published December 28, 2011 Reflections Leave a Comment

Is there a crueler irony than being sick on vacation? Emily and AM had it so of course it gets passed along to me. First it was piss eye (second xmas in a row that I’ve been sick!), now swollen throat and aches. Hoping to avoid infecting my parents, I’ve quarantined myself in my their guest room today, freeing myself for the occasional meal and a Super 8 viewing (not worth it, honestly). The only good to come out of it is that I’m screening my own, private Breaking Bad marathon on Netflix (which is worth it) and reading a few novels on the year-end best ofs, including Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson and Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (both great so far). Also getting into some of the odds and sods I missed out on in 2011 — ASAP and Clams Casino, The Horrors, and Coud Nothings — worrying that I really messed up my year-end list in the previous post.

Top 5 Records of 2011

Published December 26, 2011 Music , Reflections Leave a Comment
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I don’t have much time to seek new stuff out so I’m the first to admit that I rely on friends and Pitchforks for music recs. That said, I did spin some records more than others this year so here’s a list.

Bill Callahan, one bad MF.

1. Bill Callahan - Apocalypse. I’ve been a fan of Smog since my best friend dubbed me a copy of Julius Caesar in 11th grade, so speaking as a 15-year+ fan, I have to say — without qualification — that this is Callahan’s best yet. You’ve seen the video for “America,” haven’t you?

2. Bon Iver - s/t . While I find Justin Vernon’s stardom ethos absolutely nauseating (Best Buy exclusive releases, town parades and all that bullshit) and supposed bravado of “Beth/Rest” still puzzles me, it’s hard to deny the reach of this record. I can’t get enough of the other nine tracks.

3. Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972. Perhaps the only ambient record that will ever make a year end top 5 in my lifetime. Thanks, Tim, for helping me through the reading load of my first semester of the grad grind. Drop that piano, IHML.

4. Eleanor Friedberger – Last Summer. Better than anything the FF’s ever put out. Ditch the bro, sis. “My Mistakes” is/was pure summer gold.

5. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo. An trashy, emotional ride from a songwriter who can somehow make the last scene in S2 of Eastbound and Down feel genuinely romantic.

Others: Atlas Sound – Parallax, PJ Harvey – Let England Shake, Wye Oak – Civilian, Why the Wires – Telegraph Flats, Roger Bryan and the Orphans – 37, Races – Big Broom EP, Widowspeak – s/t

Finally in FL

Published December 21, 2011 Reflections Leave a Comment
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Still have a pile of student work to read and half the fam is sick (srsly, pink eye now?), but we made it out of NY this morning. Looking forward to spending time with everyone after a mega stressful end to the semester. Will try to keep things current on here and make better use of the WP mobile app.

t+1: a reflection on blogging

Published December 15, 2011 CCR , Reflections , study skillz 2 Comments
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When I booted up Taxomania! last June I set three simple (perhaps unsurprising) goals for maintaining a blog: to professionalize and establish an scholarly identity, to practice composing and tinkering, and to connect with other folks. While I was blogging fairly regularly over the summer, the real question, I thought, would be how I’d sustain it when the semester workload kicked in. “Will I be able to keep up on my writing between doctoral classes, teaching, and being a dad?” I asked, “or will Taxomania! go the same way as my jogging shoes?”

Strangely enough, those jogging shoes have actually gotten some use this fall. Since school started in August, I’ve managed to run several times per week. Part of the reason I’ve been able to sustain the regimen (not to mention a better diet) has to do with a shift in my material conditions. After (finally) rejecting a 12-month, 9-5 routine that increasingly depressed me, I can now schedule runs when my body best responds to them, which is typically early or mid-afternoon. More honestly, though, the change in my routine has served as an occasion to re-imagine my values. I’ve tried to jettison the unhealthy parts and account for those that have been missing since moving to Syracuse more than six years ago. And part of what’s been missing is time to write.


Incidentally, I’ve self-published in one form or another for 20 years, but only when I’ve been in school. When I produced eight issues of my print zine, Mud, I was in high school and college. Later, when I edited the webzine The Onanist, I was working on my MA in Nevada. And although I started each project myself, they have always fairly quickly evolved into a collaborative. So the idea of putting my shit out there isn’t as intimidating as the invention process itself (which, I admit, has always been an issue for me). What should I write about? What do I have to say? Should posts be about academe only, or any facet of my life that I feeling like writing about? How long should they be? How often should I be posting? No doubt I have struggled and continue to struggle with these questions.

And yet another part of the trouble is working within a form that so closely braids authorship to identity. There’s something about blogging that feels like the perzine’s digital doppelgänger. The blog is me | glob eht ma I. Some writers have handled this by distributing their work among various spaces: a blog for academe, another for cooking, one for travel, etc. I imagine this works well for invention and for audience. If a blog has a specific function, then there is probably less existential crisis when it comes to writing. You made French lentil soup last week? Post the recipe on the food blog. You went to NYC? Post your adventures on the travel blog. You read Derrida? Post your summary on the doc blog. I know my friends would appreciate such compartmentalization; I could spare them my arguments on multimodal writing and they could just read about my weekend in Ithaca, or my thoughts on parenting.

Another strength to that approach is that it permits the author to treat a project as contingent — product as process — instead of permanent (product only). As Jason Jones argued a few weeks ago on ProfHacker, perhaps the blog’s vulnerability is actually it’s key affordance, a reminder of the tenuous moves writers go through as they work on a project or line of inquiry. “When folks blog about their research or their teaching,” he writes, “they can make that work visible, even if it’s work they either can’t or don’t intend to sustain forever. To at least some extent, then, even abandoned blogs are sometimes a perverse illustration of the platform’s strengths.” That partially explains why so many bloggers write earnestly in graduate school, but abandon their blogs once they enter the professoriate.

Ernesto Priego and others blame the failure of the professor’s blog on a lack of recognition in tenure and promotion. The genre and the work are not valued. On one hand, I have a hard time understanding this; if a professor is given sponsored (i.e. given time and space to conduct research), what is so difficult about making the blog part of that process? That is, how do these authors get from the kernel of an idea to a monograph? Why isn’t that work-in-process made more transparent? Some scholars, such as Kathleen Fitzpatrick, seem to make this her mission alongside fighting for more recognition for online publication among MLA and T&P committees. She has argued persuasively in Planned Obsolescence that the culture of academe has constructed the author as someone who both researches, reads and tests ideas in physical and virtual isolation. The only thing rewarded is the product. Nothing else matters.

So I give my blog permission (admission?) to be temporary — and wrong. And even though I struggle with the authorship/identity thrust of the blog, I appreciate the challenge to balance it all here. Lord knows I’ve failed at it (porridge, anyone?), but at this point in my life not only could I not sustain more than one blog, but the blog has to be more than a cookbook, travel journal, or a database; it has to allow for a space to practice the hard part of being an academic: summarizing, synthesizing and translating complex ideas while maintaining a healthy work/life balance. In short, the blog is exercise for the day-to-day need to think like a writer. As Derek Mueller and Krista Kennedy have also argued, the blog is a laboratory (see “Every Mad Scientist Needs a Tower, a Monster, and a Telegraph Wire”). And having accountability to this laboratory means forcing myself to regularly wrestle with rhetorical choices with respect to invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

Finally, because a reflection should be about looking forward as much as it looks back, I want to establish as few goals for the blog next semester:

  • Get in a rhythm. At one point this semester I went a month without writing. It was at that point when I picked up Paul Silva’s How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, a breezy, helpful approach to writing. In chapter 1 he writes about allotting time to write (Kennedy & Mueller also talk about as “mak[ing] a commitment to rhythm”). I’d like to commit to that rhythm — and to finishing Silva’s book.
  • Write more. Speaking of regularity, this semester I wrote 20 entries, or an average of 1.3 per week. Since I have a lighter teaching load next semester, I think it’s reasonable to write 2-3 per week, or aim for 30-40 total. I’ll also blog during the break.
  • Write shorter pieces. I recognized (and thanks to Collin for this) that when I take it upon myself to write longish pieces they would either: (1) take too much time to post or (2) prevent me from write soon after (this principle also applies to jogging). The other problem with this approach is that it didn’t respect the medium: I’d write, encounter something that would impact that composition, then revise.  If the purpose of an academic blog is to track the evolution of an idea, it’s probably better to write in shorter bursts that add up to something bigger.
  • Design assignments. Speaking of short bursts, I’d like to think of some short, simple prompts or memes to revisit when I’m feeling bullied by the white space. Threat + Constraint has always been great at this.
  • Network. Thanks for Google Analytics, I know you’re reading this. I can’t tell who you are, per se, but I know you’re there. That said, there isn’t as much conversation happening here as I’d like and from what I remember in the zine days: if you give love, you receive love. So in addition to writing more on my own blog, I’ll also try to write on other folks’ blogs as well.

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About me

For six years I administered the Syracuse U Writing Center. I made the switch this fall to full-time doctoral student. This space helps me understand why. Email me at jwluther at gmail dot com. Or follow at:
 

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