Alan Jackson

The study of composition has passed through many phases and resulted in an assortment of teaching styles and approaches. Yet, after the thousands of books and tens of thousands of essays written in the field (and hundreds of thousands of students with college credit in composition courses), certain essential questions remain unanswered and seldom addressed:

In short, what do we really know about writers?

The sad truth is that Composition Studies has focused far too much on ourselves, a narcissistic act that has left our students with no better writing instruction than thirty years ago while we stare at our reflection in a pool. Evidence of this can be found in two areas: first, on our concern for texts rather than process, a holdover from literature departments where, unfortunately, composition remains; second, in our handwringing over the politics of academia, a silly exercise that has accomplished nothing toward the goal of understanding where and how writers produce their texts.

Many experts on basic and freshman writers, from Rose to Bartholomae, talk about the need to introduce students to academic discourse or academic writing. But what is academic writing or discourse? The academic community as I know it does not have one single style or voice or language. Consider the field of composition: James Berlin, Linda Flower, and Victor Villanueva all hold a place in the academic discourse of composition, yet no one would suggest that these three write with the same rhetorical style, same purposes, or same assumptions. In fact, these three, as well as many others, engage in academic discourse without ever imitating the other.

Moreover, scholars such as Mike Rose, though advancing proposed changes that lead toward academic writing courses, acknowledge that academic writing can be alienating, limiting, and confusing. Often, the abundance of jargon, along with a series of assumptions that the reader will discover the meaning and recognize the veiled references, prevent many insiders, not to mention the outsiders, from gleaning the text's value. One might wonder why anyone would direct his or her students to such restrictive discourse. The paradox lies in an academy that does not seek to embrace its apprentices or expand its scope, or clarify its ideas, yet demands that others pass through its labyrinth and pass by its Minotaur in order to acquire a discourse that owns so many oppressive qualities. Rose may not like the discourse, but he knows that a certain social, political, and economic acceptance awaits those who can use it.

But the solution to helping writers enter the academy and use the academy's discourse should not be in recruiting writers into an elitist, oppressive band, especially if the student merely wants an undergraduate degree that leads him or her to a nice career and one step up the socioeconomic ladder, but not into the world of the academy. Instead, the academy should change by recognizing that our discourse is often embracing, expansive, and clear, and that most composition scholars and teachers prefer this kind of writing. After all, no writing course, basic or other, immediately awards membership to the academic community to students who pass through it, but it can let them see the borders and visit the residents on the edges ( Murray, Carl Sagan, and Stephen Gould). When the time comes to read and synthesize the alienating, limiting, and confusing texts of academic discourse, the students can move into the particular academic neighborhood he or she wishes to know.

This problem, then, for students results in confusion over what style they are to imitate. As Bartholomae points out in "The Study of Error," errors may result from a student's attempt to imitate the perceived academic discourse he or she wishes to enter; however, because no one has defined academic writing or discourse, the student may well imitate a form that represents a small, narrow, and devalued academic style. Not surprisingly, the problem for teachers of basic writers is no less complicated. For teachers, defining academic discourse is quite difficult because we interact daily with its different levels, styles, and content.

We may know what it is, but we often cannot define it or communicate it to our students. Unfortunately, unless we can articulate some definition for academic writing, few of our students, especially those in first-year writing courses, will acquire the skills needed to enter the academic world. Without some ability to illustrate academic writing standards, academic discourse becomes as intangible as our concepts of learning and teaching. Nevertheless, we must arrive at some basic definition or means to introduce academic discourse into our classrooms if we intend to demand it of our students.

In fact, the academy itself has not decided upon what the academic discourse should include. Even in our field of Composition, scholars argue about what academic discourse entails. Consider the infamous issues of College English, which pitted Maxine Hairston and John Trimbur in a discussion over recent articles (discourse) in College English. Maxine Hairston asserts that many recent articles do not have a place in a major writing journal. She says:

I find the magazine dominated by name-dropping, unreadable, fashionably radical articles that I feel have little to do with the concerns of most college English teachers . . . I'm also concerned about the image of the profession I think the magazine would convey to the public if they read it (thank goodness they don't!): that of low-risk Marxists who write very badly, are politically naive, and seem more concerned about converting their students from capitalism than in helping them to enjoy writing and reading. (695)

She goes on to lament the recent articles to be "as opaque and dull as anything in PMLA or Critical Inquiry." (Obviously, the problem that Mike Rose finds in academic discourse is not merely confined to any single academic source.) All this shows a real problem within one academic field, notably the one field most interested in and diverse in its approach to writing. If Hairston is right, then the alienation begins at the top, with publishers and publishing scholars, then filters down to "the writing and thinking of graduate students who then teach freshman English"(696). In addition, if she is right, bad writing is given a revered place and becomes the standard to which our composition students should aspire. As Hairston says, "It's not a happy prospect." And, whether she is right or not about the clarity and quality of those articles, her protest against them proves that we in composition have yet to determine our own scholarly boundaries for academic discourse. If we cannot draw the borders, how can we expect to point our students to an academic writing style that will be embraced by the academy?

Trimbur, in his response to Hairston, complicates the issue of academic discourse even further when he says, "What this means, moreover, is that the 'mainstream' Maxine refers to isn't quite there anymore . . .

 Composition studies have grown, have discovered new lines of intellectual affiliation, and have differentiated internally" (700). In essence, Trimbur has placed most of academic discourse on the fringes in pockets of like-minded thinkers. However right he is, the problem for freshman composition teachers is magnified. Which pocket on which fringe do we direct our students? What models do we choose for them? If we choose the mainstream, will our students not be entering academic discourse? More important, if there is no mainstream, only a series of stagnant pools, is a real academic discourse, an exchange of ideas taking place, or are we merely talking to our own kind? If we are, then our students (not to say ourselves) are doomed to failure in entering the kingdom of academic discourse and writing.

(RE)SOLVING COMPOSITIONS' CULTURE(S)

Although the debate between Hairston and Trimbur began ten years ago, it has never been resolved; nonetheless, it stands as a seminal moment in composition studies when narcissistic self-interest, not student-writers, became the dominant force in scholarship. We had, as composition professionals, become more concerned with ourselves than our students, with our politics than our teaching responsibilities. Yet, our composition courses remain divided between vague notions of academic discourse and cultural studies.

Cultural Studies seems to breed the worse of this self-interest and to advocate the least-desirable learning environments. None of this would seem harmful if its proponents wanted to situate their studies in advanced specialty courses, not in a compulsory skills course like first-year composition. Yet, composition courses are where many want to teachers "to resist pragmatism and commodity capitalism and commit themselves to neo-Marxism and cultural materialism" (Severino 74). Instead of discussion about invention and audience, style, language, organization, one finds conversations (monologues?) about writing as "an active means to transform the existing social inequities of commodity capitalism" ( France 2) or as a way "to bring about more personally humane and socially equitable economic and political arrangements" ( Berlin 50). In nearly every example one finds of cultural studies and composition, the professors' desires for change, not the students' are addressed and, more important, the intellectual questions of student-writers are discarded in order to provide answers to narrow political concerns.

Furthermore, students do not have problems of issues of power--they don't have much and they know it. They also know that to succeed in the endeavors they choose, which is rarely the life of a Marxist college professor, their discourse must be adaptable--one will not last long as a worker (or a student) if one merely resists the powerful employer (or professor). And students also recognize that cultural hierarchies exist and want to know what they are in order to find acceptance among whatever group they join. To accept the idea of Henry Giroux, that teachers should "abandon the goal of giving students access to that which represents a culture" (478), is to deprive students of essential cultural information.

What students do want is to learn how to write better in order to achieve their goals and to negotiate the world. Students, by the time they arrive in a college classroom, understand that writing and speaking ability will gain them access to places they wish to enter; what they need to learn is how to expand the knowledge and skills that will make them better writers in order to succeed in academics and beyond.  

Where Cultural Studies goes wrong is in its desire to impose views on students, or at least a view of the world that is not theirs, and in reading most cultural studies advocates, a view held by a small group of people. But culture is important and we can include the study of culture in composition classes, but we must keep the focus on student-writers.

A better approach is to encourage students to observe both the general culture from which they come and the academic culture into which they have entered. The academic world is complicated enough for many students who are first-generation college students, but by encouraging students to pay attention to that which anthropologists define as culture's primary components--tools, customs, institutions, beliefs, rituals, games, works of art, and language--and to recognize that their own learning has been shaped by a myriad of sources in infinite ways, they should begin to understand how culture works and how language represents culture. Such an approach should also allow them to negotiate, even though they may not fully understand or want to become a member, the academic culture, and one hopes the larger culture.

Teachers, at the same time, should bring ethnographic methodology to study students and the classroom. In some ways, composition has done this in studies of writers ( Emig, Shaughnessy, Rose) and in essays laced with anecdotal evidence; however, we have not done enough to investigate what assumptions students make about writing before they compose.

How do our students write? In what environments do they write best? How do classroom social, intellectual, and cultural interactions influence students and their texts? We need to study our students in order to identify their cultures, both their personal and academic ones. We need to recognize that our academic culture and discourse as instructors is not theirs--they are outsiders in our academic world and we are outsiders in their academic world. And we need to learn how student assumptions about writing instructors and about writing instruction impact their discourse. The composition classroom must become a place of study about writing and about writers. We have not seriously addressed these vital issues. Nor have composition professionals acknowledged the vast differences in students' background and in academic cultures.

In the Atlanta area, where I live, different academic cultures abound. I teach at a multi-campus two-year college with many older, working students, all of whom commute to the college. Within thirty miles of my college, one can find a small, elite college in Emory University; a large, urban, mostly commuter university in Georgia State; a selective, state university in Georgia Tech; several black colleges in Spelman (all-female), Morehouse (all-male), and Clark Atlanta; and several commuter state four-year institutions. To suggest that these schools are alike is folly; not only do they serve different student populations, they vary greatly in budgets, missions, and histories.

For the most part, students in classrooms at these colleges share some common culture, but even individual classrooms place students with different backgrounds together. Nontraditional students, often with full-time jobs and families, may never really enter the academic world, only play at its margins--college education is a luxury, a way to better the life they currently have, not a transformational experience. These students also alter the dynamics of classroom activities because of their age, experiences, and view of the world. At present, we have no tools to ensure that each student gets what he or she wants.

COGNITION REVISITED

Another area where composition can refocus attention on the student-writer is to reawaken our study of cognition. Beginning in the early 1970s, composition professionals began to incorporate cognitive psychology into writing instruction. Janice Lauer and Richard Larson found in cognitive psychology a strong connection with invention and the creative process. From their work, particularly Lauer who bore the brunt of much of the early criticism, came an onslaught of interest in cognition. The work of Linda Flower and John Hayes, Sondra Perl, Mina Shaughnessy, and Nancy Sommers brought a serious investigation of the behavior of writers and the benefits for student-writers who learned problemsolving strategies as part of their writing processes.

And others offered vital studies to the relationship of cognition and composition. James Britton and James Moffett recognized the importance of cognition to language development. Barry Kroll designed a different way of looking at audience. Mike Rose gave valuable insight into writer's block. David Bartholomae provided a better understanding of errors.

By the late- 1980s, cognition held a popular, if not always respected, place in composition studies. Yet even in the heydey of the union of cognitive psychology and composition, the relationship for teachers was often covert and misunderstood and for scholars focused more on the production of text than on the intellectual development of the student. By this time, much of the scholarly interest in cognition investigated text-production, as found in the work of Lester Faigley, Joseph Williams, and Lee Odell, along with a host of other scholars.

Ten years later, cognitive studies have diminished--in part because of the attacks by anti-empiricists and in part because cognitive studies has relied upon the same old ideas of cognition. Cognition began to become associated only with problem-solving, as if cognition is a method (i.e., mapping) rather than a subject to be studied. Also, the rise of cultural studies in composition usurped much of the role of cognition as a means to understand student-writers and their behavior. So too, many of the most influential cognition and composition scholars--Linda Flower, James Moffett, Mike Rose--have faded away from college composition journals and/or moved on to other matters, which left a void that has not been filled.

One area that does seem to hold great promise in reviving cognition in Composition Studies is "emergents." Emergents, as defined by Duane Rumbaugh, are "novel patterns of responding or choosing between alternatives" that cannot be predicted by and often appear "with some element of surprise to the observer" (7). Emergents are complex and the choices one makes indicate hierarchical integration and creativity, not merely random or trained responses.

This new category in psychological research, which connects the behavioral and cognitivist camps, could prove quite valuable when applied to the study of student-writers for several reasons. First, emergents researchers have discovered that one "might progress with no obvious manifestation," then exhibit one's new knowledge in complex ways in new contexts (3), which would explain how and why student-writers seem to develop in spurts. Second, the choices one makes are not simply experiential or taught, but "reflect upon past experiences and events projected in the future" (2), which offers us a chance to learn more about how expectations alter student writing.

If applied to writing, the study of emergents may help us answer Britton's speculation about student-writers shaping at the point of utterance. We can begin to understand the deep sources that influence the choices student-writers make about words and phrases, about organization, about invention and audience, even about errors.

The most important contribution emergents can make to composition is to remind us to focus our attention on the individual student. Student experiences inside and out of academics have a great influence on their writing. Student experiences, knowledge (perhaps knowledge he or she has yet to manifest in his or her writing), and expectations influence all the choices student-writers make. Rather than dwell on generic assumptions about academic discourse and writing instruction, writing instructors must concentrate on the student's individual progress. Rather than expect particular responses to instruction, instructors must accept that some lessons are learned but not reflected immediately. And rather than think only in terms of instructional strategy, we must address learning strategies.

By moving away from the generic perspective on student-writers and to the individual understanding of each student-writer, instructors will be able to design courses that allow for personal progress, to offer new and novel assignments that encourage emergent responses, and to bring to students greater awareness of their own learning processes. Emergents, unlike traditional concepts of cognition, lead to a closer relationship between culture and cognition. As emergents researchers have shown, choices are influenced by "silent learning," which would include the components of culture. Both the larger culture and the academic one will play a role in the student-writers cognitive development. So too, an investigation of a subculture like academics would focus on cognitive advances, since they are a central feature of academic culture. Until now, we have separated the inner and outer world of the student-writer by continuing to define cognition and culture as incompatible, but, with emergents, we can join cognition and culture to gain more insight than ever into the student-writer.

CONCLUSION

By incorporating cognition and culture into the way we answer questions about student writers, composition professionals will focus more attention on the student writer, where it belongs, and less on ourselves. We do not need to buy into new theories--composition is cluttered with theoretical junk--or dwell on interdisciplinary matters--composition is a disciplinary mongrel; instead, we need to study our students, their writing processes, their cultural influences, and their cognitive changes.

The narcissism of the past decade must end. We cannot simply define academic or nonacademic discourse to suit ourselves and we cannot force a cultural view on students to satisfy narrow political agendas. We must become the ethnographers of the academic culture to truly understand how students learn about writing and about discourse communities. And we must become the observers of their cognitive development to maximize their learning processes. As I noted in the beginning, we have seen many years pass and many thousands of students exit our composition courses without knowing if or how we made them better writers.