Bruce McComiskey

The term post-process has recently gained some currency in composition studies, yet its meaning remains unclear. Reactions among writing teachers to the term post-process are often as strong as reactions have been among literary theorists to the term postmodern. One of the reasons for such reactions to these terms is that in each idiomatic usage the "post" means something different, ranging anywhere from a "radical rejection" to a "complex extension" of what came before. In this chapter, I argue that the most fruitful meaning for the "post" in post-process is "extension," not "rejection" and I offer social-process rhetorical inquiry as a pedagogical method for extending our present view of the composing process into the social world of discourse.

THE WRITING PROCESS MOVEMENT

As Lester Faigley, James Berlin, and others have argued, the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a new historical moment in composition studies, a moment marked by social revolution and educational reform. During these foundational decades, writing teachers as diverse as Peter Elbow, Janet Emig, Linda Flower, Janice Lauer, James Moffett, and many others began to examine carefully and act upon Donald Murray's famous call to educational arms, "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product." Reacting against the rigid rules that governed student writing before the Vietnam War, these disparate scholars all agreed that the best way to teach writing was to throw away mode-based literary and nonfiction readers (which functioned as illusive manifestations of our grading standards) and focus instead on what happens when individuals write, and they defined their own educational space in opposition to the space occupied by current-traditional rhetoric.

During its tenure in college composition studies, the writing process movement shifted from a negative dialectic against the evils of the current-traditional rhetoric to a more positive articulation of its own goals and strategies. And in this shift, the writing process movement became more and more associated with expressivist approaches to teaching composition. Lad Tobin, for example, suggests, "Though there is not a necessary connection between process pedagogy and personal writing . . . the two have often been linked in practice and perception" ( 6 ), and Robert Yagelski laments that the terms "process" and "expressivism" are often used synonymously ( 206 ). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, this burgeoning expressivist writing process movement took hold of the college composition studies scene and became the "standard" for effective writing instruction, especially at certain influential institutions such as the University of Massachusetts and the University of New Hampshire. Through a variety of invention strategies (freewriting, clustering, journaling, brainstorming, and so on), students accessed their inner speech, harnessed the multiplicities of meanings that were found within themselves, outside the limiting confines of institutional discourses; and through re-vision, students were encouraged to look and look again at their own identities in a variety of personalized contexts.

This is not to say, of course, that approaches to writing instruction other than expressivism did not exist in the 1970s and 1980s. They did. But many, such as those arising out of cognitive psychology, were co-opted by expressivism, and with very little effort indeed. Most of us would acknowledge that the early rhetoric of cognitive psychology, articulated in landmark studies by Janet Emig and Linda Flower, among others, is "transactional" (to borrow a term from James Berlin's Rhetoric and Reality), engaging more than one element in the traditional rhetorical triangle. In this respect cognitivist rhetories are distinct from mostly subjective rhetorics such as expressivism. Yet these early cognitivist rhetorics, despite having certain transactional qualities, still focused on the "psychology of the individual" ( Berlin, Rhetoric159). For example, while. Linda Flower recommended that writers convert writer-based prose into reader-based prose (a transactional move), she still encouraged novice students to begin with writer-based prose, a claim Peter Elbow would also make in "Closing My Eyes as I Speak' a few years after Flower's landmark essays on cognitive problem solving. It was easy, really: expressivists simply used Flower's innovative strategies for inventing writer-based prose, and they stopped there.

But all of this has been utterly problematized in the 1990s. In The Construction of Negotiated Meaning, for example, Flower articulates a "socialcognitive" approach to literacy and composing, negotiating in the process a position between expressivist and social epistemic rhetoric. Although Flower admits, "I guess I am a bit of a conventionalist, brought up on the language of expressive writing" (293), she nevertheless seeks "an integrated vision of literacy that recognizes that writers need to know discourse conventions as well as strategies, to belong to a community and still take independent journeys of the mind" (292). Also, in Romancing Rhetorics, Sherrie Gradin argues for a "social-expressivist" view of composing in which writers are both constructed and free agents. It is not very long ago that the hyphenated adjectives "social-cognitivist" and "socialexpressivist" would have been considered oxymorons, yet they have recently become commonplace. These kinds of negotiations articulate an aporia between traditional oppositions such as social versus expressivist and social versus cognitivist approaches to teaching writing. And it is just this sort of impulse to negotiate that I believe forms both the theoretical and pragmatic foundation of a "post-process" composition studies that extends (rather than rejects) its own history.

POST-PROCESS COMPOSITION: REJECTING THE WRITING PROCESS MOVEMENT

Let me begin my discussion of the recent "post" responses to the writing process movement with a conception of post-process composition that I believe has limited value in classroom practice, the idea that the post-process movement constitutes a radical break with the concerns of the writing process movement. Thomas Kent, the foremost advocate of this "anti-process" version of postprocess composition, argues against what he calls "systemic rhetoric" that "treats discourse production and discourse analysis as codifiable processes" ( "Beyond" 492). In composition studies, Kent describes three different manifestations of systemic rhetoric--expressivist, empirical, and social constructionist--that, though different in some ways, all "assume that discourse production and analysis can be reduced to systemic processes and taught in classrooms in some codified manner" ( "Paralogic"25). Kent argues, however, that "discourse production and analysis refute systematization," and so "we cannot codify our interpretive acts and then arrange them in any sort of systemic metalanguage" ( 35 ). Thus, Kent continues, "With this process approach to writing instruction . . . we assume that the writer can discover, in some predictable way, what it is she wants to say and how to say it: we mistakenly assume that a fit, link, or convention exists between the different hermeneutic strategies employed by both the writer and the reader" ( 36 ). Writing, then, is not a codified process of discovering ideas but a hermeneutic exploration of different interpretive strategies, and writing teachers, then, become paralogic participants in a classroom dialogue rather than masters of some desired discourse ( 37 ).

While I agree with Kent that language is much too unstable to be codified into universal principles for generating discourse, I do not believe that this is what the writing process movement in composition has done. Language, as Kent describes it, is inherently unstable and fraught with contradiction, and on this point we concur. However, invention and revision strategies, as I understand and teach them, do not assume a stable and predictable linguistic system for generating universal meaning; their function is, instead, to harness the polyphonic character of language in communities, to develop rather than constrict a writer's sense of purpose. When I teach my composition students about language, I tell them that it is unstable, that meaning resides in the communication context and in each person's interpretation of the very words we use. But I also tell them that writing well transforms this unstable language into discourse that can accomplish real purposes. And while we are not able to predict with absolute certainty the hermeneutic strategies readers might use in the interpretation of a text, the writer of that text can, I believe, invoke in a reader certain hermeneutic strategies over others. Just as an audience might be invoked into particular relational roles by the linguistic qualities of a text, so too can readers be invoked into particular interpretive stances by the linguistic qualities of a text. We have, of course, learned this lesson well from Walter Ong, Douglas Park, Lisa Ede, and Andrea Lunsford, among others.

My most pressing concern with Kent's "anti-process" version of post-process theory, however, is that it constructs for composition studies yet another version of its most common and most destructive binary opposition--theory versus practice. In Constructing Knowledges, Sidney Dobrin suggests that Kent's postprocess theory "has been intruded upon by composition's pedagogical imperative" ( 63 ) in two ways: first, it has been critiqued for its lack of attention to classroom practice, and, second, it has been subjected too soon to the development of pedagogical strategies. Dobrin contends that the "post-process" movement in composition studies should remain, at least for now, a purely theoretical enterprise, and it should consequently not yet fall victim to this pedagogical imperative ( 64 ). Yet Dobrin's desire to limit the discourse about post-process composition, first, violates the very principles of paralogy upon which this anti-process version of the post-process movement is based, and, second, privileges theoretical "discourse" over pedagogical "strategies," denying that theory and pedagogy both construct knowledges in a dialectical process. Post-process theory, as Dobrin and Kent describe it, received its very generative impulse as a paralogic and oppositional reaction against what is arguably composition studies most valued pedagogical strategy--teaching the composing process--yet post-process theory offers no pedagogical strategy of its own; regarding actual writing instruction, then, it is purely a negative dialectic.

POST-PROCESS COMPOSITION: EXTENDING THE WRITING PROCESS MOVEMENT

Although I argue in this chapter that the "post" in post-process should not represent a radical break with the composing process movement, this "post" does indeed signify at least a certain degree of anxiety. As I have already indicated, the writing process movement gained prominence in the college composition scene during the 1970s and retained its prominence for nearly two decades, and, according to Faigley, "it was not until the later 1980s that expressions of general disillusionment with writing as process began to be heard" ( 67 - 68 ). Further, John Trimbur suggests that the recent "social turn" in composition studies is the result of a "crisis within the process paradigm and a growing disillusion with its limits and pressures," and he argues that this disillusionment has generated a "post-process" approach to writing instruction that views "literacy as an ideological arena and composing as a cultural activity by which writers position and reposition themselves in relation to their own and others' subjectivities, discourse, practices, and institutions" ( 109 ). Those who have articulated expressions of disillusionment (though not utter despair) have critiqued the writing process movement as an expressivist and cognitivist obsession with the individual writer.

Numerous scholars, including James Berlin, Patricia Bizzell, James Clifford, Lester Faigley, and Susan Miller, among many others, argue that the individualist ideologies associated with expressivist and cognitivist approaches to composing assume a modernist conception of student writers as ultimately sovereign subjects, able to "rise above" the debilitating pressures culture and society place on the production of discourse. Yet these scholars believe that no such social subject exists. Instead, student writers must address rather than ignore, critique rather than dodge, the very social forces that pressure them to behave in certain institutionally advantageous ways, and they must learn to address and critique culture in social and collective ways rather than individual ways.

It is a common perception that with this social critique of the expressivist and cognitivist writing process movement comes a necessary rejection of the composing process in general and of invention in particular, but this is simply not the case. As James Berlin, Lester Faigley, Karen Burke LeFevre, and Robert Yagelski have all pointed out, social approaches to writing instruction view composing as a process (no less than expressivist and cognitivist approaches do), yet the difference is that these approaches define composing as a social (not individual) process. In Invention as a Social Act, for example, Karen Burke LeFevre argues that although theories of invention are commonly based on a conception of the creative individual writer, "rhetorical invention is better understood as a social act" ( 1 ). Invention methods themselves, in other words, are neither individualistic nor social; according to LeFevre, "what matters is the way the scheme is interpreted and used" ( 51 ). Thus, "the writing process," as a rubric for studying and teaching composition, is not the sole province of expressivist and cognitivist rhetorics, and the "social turn" in composition studies, which Trimbur labels "post-process," does not constitute, in practice or theory, a rejection of the process movement, but rather its extension into the social world of discourse.

Yet the problem is more complex than I have represented it so far. With the rejection of expressivist and cognitivist rhetorics from social, post-process perspectives has also come a renewed interest in "written" products, cultural "texts" from a variety of verbal and visual media. While students' own texts remain a focus in post-process composition classes, many post-process teachers believe that only using student texts in writing classes neglects fully half of the composing process, the process of reading cultural discourse as a form of composing. Doug Brent, for example, argues that reading is generative and forms the exigencies of future texts. M. Jimmie Killingsworth contends that new communication technologies have reintroduced "texts" into the composing process. David Bartholomae suggests, "it is the product and not the plan for writing that locates a writer on the page" ( 144 ) and situates a writer within social institutions. And Louise Weatherby Phelps urges compositionists to deconstruct the process/product opposition and reconstruct discourse structure itself as a process, an event, a dance. While Brent, Killingsworth, Bartholomae, and Phelps offer very different perspectives on the issue, all agree that a renewed attention to texts in the teaching of writing enhances students' abilities to succeed in both the production and reception of discourse. Whether we call them "discursive practices" ( Brodkey) or "signifying practices" ( Berlin, Rhetorics, Poetics), strategies for both reading and writing cultural texts have become a prominent focus in postprocess composition classrooms.

But this renewed interest in texts by no means represents a reassertion of current-traditional ideologies into composition studies. Whereas current-traditional writing teachers introduced ideal texts to their students as models to be imitated, post-process writing teachers, on the other hand, introduce cultural texts to their students as objects of critique, as representations of social values that institutions would impose on their readers, as generative forces that comprise exigencies for writing that has meaning both inside and outside the confines of the composition class. There is little value in imitation-based, current-traditional, "read-this-essay-and-do-what-the-author-did" pedagogical strategies, and the post-process movement in composition studies avoids this simplistic use of texts. Even so, many composition teachers who were involved in the early process versus product wars are reluctant now to acknowledge most potential uses for texts (other than those their students write) in their composition classes. While I agree that a piece of writing is "never finished," I also believe that, finished or not, most writing is read, is intended to be read, so writers must then be able to account for the ways in which texts are not only produced but also distributed and consumed within specific communities. As a means to accomplish these complicated rhetorical tasks with both the processes and products of discourse, I offer social-process rhetorical inquiry.

SOCIAL-PROCESS RHETORICAL INQUIRY

Social-process rhetorical inquiry is a method of invention that usually manifests itself in composition classes as a set of heuristic questions based on the cycle of cultural production, contextual distribution, and critical consumption. First, heuristics based on this cycle direct students' attention to the ways in which texts and their contexts promote cultural and social values, leading readers toward frameworks of judgment that favor certain preferred values over others. Second, these heuristics encourage students to adopt a critical stance toward encoded values, determining from their own perspectives the veracity of the cultural and social values promoted in target texts, and accommodating ethical values, resisting unethical values, and negotiating values that have some worth within certain alternative contexts. Finally, this social-process cycle of rhetorical inquiry is not complete until students produce their own discourses, their own texts, based on the critical knowledge they have gained and in response to the problems they have identified through the inquiry process. While composition studies, I believe, has extensively explored the cognitive and social processes by which discourse is produced, the processes of distribution and consumption (and the entire cyclical process of production, distribution, and consumption) have been largely neglected. The integration of these rhetorical processes is the very function of social-process rhetorical inquiry.

Those who practice social-process rhetorical inquiry understand all communication as "discursive practice," as strategic participation in the "flow" of discourse. Discourse pre-exists the physical act of writing, and writing enters the con/texts of discourse. In order to understand how this "flow" of discourse operates, we need to engage the cycle of production, distribution, and consumption as an analytical and generative heuristic at least twice--first to understand how particular discursive formations operate (how their members produce, distribute, and consume discourse), and second to enter these discursive formations with new rhetorical interventions.

The most common "discursive formations" manifest themselves as "institutions." Norman Fairclough, in Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of language, suggests that "Social actions tend very much to cluster in terms of institutions; when we witness a social event (e.g., a verbal interaction), we normally have no difficulty identifying it in institutional terms, i.e., as appertaining to the family, the school, the workplace, church, the courts, some department of government, or some other institution" ( 37 ). This is because institutions, more than any other communicative contexts, produce and structure social interactions, thereby both enabling and restricting discourse. We must, Fairclough continues, view "the institution as simultaneously facilitating and constraining the social action (here, specifically, verbal interaction) of its members: it provides them with a frame for action, without which they could not act, but it thereby constrains them to act within that frame" ( 38 ). Yet this "frame" also has much more profound consequences, for "in the process of acquiring the ways of talking which are normatively associated with [an institutionalized] subject position, one necessarily acquires also its ways of seeing, or ideological norms. And just as one is typically unaware of one's ways of talking unless for some reason they are subjected to conscious scrutiny, so also is one typically unaware of what ways of seeing, what ideological representations, underlie one's talk" ( 39 - 40 ). But institutions are by no means ideological monoliths: while there is often a dominant discourse promoted by high-ranking members of an institution, there are also, just as often, competing discourses that vie for sub(versive)-dominance at lower levels of the hierarchy. Yet these discourses usually remain unknown or suppressed. According to Fairclough, "Naturalization gives to particular ideological representations the status of common sense, and thereby makes them opaque, i.e., no longer visible as ideologies" ( 42 ).

It is the purpose of social-process rhetorical inquiry to make visible these opaque institutional ideologies, to de-naturalize ideologies through writing, thereby helping students reconstruct perspectives on institutions that work toward more inclusive ethics. This is not to say, however, that students are completely blind to the workings of institutions, as Joseph Harris points out; most are, for example, keenly aware of the ways in which schooling encourages certain subjectivities over others. Yet social-process rhetorical inquiry can provide for students fresh perspectives from which to observe and critique the inner workings of institutionalized socialization, enhancing the critical powers they already possess.

I prefer to focus my students' rhetorical attention through social-process rhetorical inquiry on the discourses and institutions that most profoundly impact their own lives, institutions like school, work, media, and government. In one particular assignment, my students write about the ways in which specific workplaces promote certain cultural values over others. Appendix A contains the handout students receive that guides them through the critical process of examining the cultural production, contextual distribution, and critical consumption of discourse in a workplace of their choice. It should come as no surprise that students write best about subjects that impact their lives everyday, and work has always been a generative subject for my students, whether they interrogate their own work experience or the experience of someone else in a job they would eventually like to have.

Yet I want my students to understand their (and others') work experiences in critical not personal ways, discursive not experiential ways, institutional not individual ways. And in order to encourage these critical, discursive, and institutional interpretations of students' work experiences, I provide them with a complex invention heuristic that guides them through the cycle of social-process rhetorical inquiry, and I have reproduced this heuristic in Appendix B. Using the invention heuristic as a guide, students generate material for their critical and practical essays. But the heuristic is only a guide and students should not feel obliged to answer all of the questions in equal depth. Some of the questions are simply not going to be relevant for every workplace and others will yield a great deal of information. For example, I have had some students write several pages of notes on "Employee Relations" and completely ignore "Geographical Layout," whereas others find that "Geographical Layout" is crucial to their understanding of various aspects of their work experience. In the pages that follow, I examine a student's response to the heuristic invention and the resulting critical and practical essay. I hope to demonstrate the important connections among the exploratory invention notes and the eventual essays, and I also hope to demonstrate the importance of encouraging students to move beyond personal narrative to institutional critique.

The following is an excerpt from Kelly Mount's invention notes on her work experience at Gapkids:

Cultural Production: Cultural values at Gapkids include: the ideal sales associate should always be at work on time, greet every customer within three minutes, offer to do anything for the customer, always sell more than one item at a time, say "thank you" and "come again," smile, answer the telephone in a cheerful voice, keep the store clean, follow the dress code.

Contextual Distribution: Methods used to reinforce the cultural values include: you have to wear Gap clothes, sales techniques are reinforced at staff meetings and in company memos, training sessions on the latest selling and display techniques. Sales are important, so we also learned how to make the store appear neat so that the clothes would be more appealing. We often worked long hours after the mall closed, cleaning and straightening the merchandise for the next day's sales.

Critical Consumption: I always followed the dress code and wore the right (Gap) clothes, greeted the customers, and tried to sell lots of items; however, I did not always feel comfortable with these requirements. What I especially hated was walking out to my car after closing. We would usually keep cleaning the store until nobody else was around. It was frightening walking to my car alone at the back of the dark parking lot.

These invention notes (excerpted here) led Kelly to explore her experience working at Gapkids in critical ways, moving beyond her own personal experience with this workplace to an institutional critique of the cultural production, contextual distribution, and critical consumption of cultural values. Under "cultural production," Kelly explores what Gapkids considers to be essential qualities of the ideal sales associate. These qualities/values are written from Gapkids' perspective, not Kelly's, and her goal here is simply to understand and describe Gapkids' ideal worker. Under "contextual distribution," Kelly describes specific ways in which Gapkids encourages its sales associates to strive for these ideals. Company memos, staff meetings, and employee training sessions are just a few of the "distribution" methods Gapkids uses to promote their image of the ideal sales associate. While students' notes under "cultural production" and "contextual distribution" are often brainstorming lists, their notes under "critical consumption" usually begin to acquire a center of gravity. Following her invention process, hard-sell techniques and the dangers of a dark parking lot were two ideas about which Kelly knew she would be able to write well.

Based on these invention notes, Kelly chose a few of the most important cultural values, with their attending modes of distribution and her own critique of these values and modes, and she developed them into a full critical essay. The following is one complete section of Kelly's critical essay in which she critiques the cultural value "The ideal Gapkids employee should keep the store as neat and clean as possible":

Nothing is more irritating than walking into a clothing store with a dirty floor and tables filled with unfolded, disorganized clothes. A store with this appearance does not leave a good first impression on the customer. The store seems overwhelming because you have no idea where to begin looking for a certain size or color. Shopping becomes more like a chore than a pleasurable activity. But Gapkids stores are always immaculate. When I began working at Gapkids, I was extremely surprised at how much time and effort was put into cleaning, folding clothes, and straightening the store. I recall one evening when my manager asked me to fold a stack of button-down shirts and make sure that the buttons were lined up and even. At first, I thought she was just being picky, but I soon learned that every Gapkids store expects attention paid to even the smallest details. I also remember being asked to vacuum the air vents in the ceiling one night after the store and the rest of the mall had already closed. In fact, every night after closing time, we spent an hour or two folding clothes and taking out the trash.

All of this effort put into the appearance of the store paid off economically. It created a great first impression for our customers and helped us show them the right sizes and colors without having to search the sales floor. However, all of this work did have some negative effects. Since we always had to stay for an hour or two each night after the store and mall had closed, we were usually the last people to leave the mall. This was dangerous because we were left to walk to our cars in the dark either alone or with one other worker. I think it would be better if Gapkids employees could come in an hour or two before the store opens and clean from the previous day. This would eliminate the need for sales associates to walk to their cars late at night.

Kelly structured this section of her essay into two paragraphs, each with a distinct rhetorical purpose. In the first paragraph, Kelly describes the values associated with keeping Gapkids stores neat and clean, and she does so largely from Gapkids' perspective.

The ideal sales associate is, of course, charged with this important responsibility (maintaining a proper appearance) and must adopt behaviors consistent with it (vacuuming air vents, lining up buttons, etc.). Kelly plays the role in this paragraph of an advocate, describing a single value (or complex of related values) and its modes of institutional distribution, and explaining its importance in the context of Gapkids. There is no sense, yet, of critique, of evaluation, of the accommodation of worthy values, the resistance to unworthy values, or the negotiation of values that might gain some importance in alternative contexts. These are rhetorical goals that Kelly reserves for the second paragraph where she plays the role of a critic.

In her second paragraph, Kelly begins by describing and accommodating the positive aspects of the values described above (economic success, appealing to customers), and she then describes and resists some problems with these values (walking alone in a dark parking lot). Finally, Kelly negotiates a compromise (cleaning before opening rather than after closing) that retains the cultural values in question (neatness, etc.) and Gapkids'methods for promoting them (memos and meetings). In these two brief paragraphs, Kelly accomplishes a purpose that I believe has powerful significance for improving institutional discursive practices. Negotiation, the process of harnessing competing discourses (in Kelly's case, Gapkids' economic success versus employees' safety), acknowledges the importance of existing institutional values, yet it introduces other values into the mix and calls for a compromise that maintains both the established and new values. Knee-jerk resistance results in oppositional audience responses and rarely accomplishes real rhetorical purposes. Ambivalent accommodation affirms the status quo. But measured negotiation enables change through compromise.

Thus far in the assignment series, Kelly has explored and critiqued the cultural production, contextual distribution, and critical consumption of institutional values promoted by Gapkids. Exploration and critique are, of course, valuable pursuits, but they should not be rhetorical ends in themselves. Richard Johnson, founding member and former director of the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, suggests that "Critique involves stealing away the more useful elements and rejecting the rest. From this point of view cultural studies is a process, a kind of alchemy for producing useful knowledge" (38). Through social-process rhetorical inquiry, Kelly has produced useful knowledge regarding some of the institutional practices at Gapkids; however, she has yet to use this knowledge. Thus, following this critical analysis of her work experience at Gapkids, Kelly was faced with a different rhetorical task, a more practical task, that of using her critical knowledge to write a letter that describes and solves a problem in the workplace. Kelly chose to write to the manager of the store she worked in. The following is an excerpt from that letter (which originally also addressed the problem of high-pressure sales tactics):

Dear Ms. Doughton:

I have worked with you at Gapkids for over two years now, and I have really enjoyed my position as a sales associate. But there is something you might not be aware of that puts some of us in danger. Several sales associates and I feel uncomfortable walking to our cars in the empty mall parking lot at 11:30 p.m. every night. I remember last week you said you were also nervous about it. I know how important it is to keep our store looking great, but there may be another way to accomplish the goal. I've been thinking that we could schedule two employees to come in at 8:30 to clean the floors and straighten the clothes for an hour and a half before the customers arrive. This way, everybody working the night shift could leave at 10:00 p.m. when a lot of people are still around the parking lot area. I know you have always been concerned about the welfare of your workers. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help you solve this problem.

Sincerely,
Kelly Mount

In this letter, Kelly is careful to acknowledge the importance of the cultural values she has observed at Gapkids (e.g., keeping the store "looking great"), yet she also introduces problems that these values cause (e.g., dangerous nighttime walks in the parking lot). While much of her rhetorical efforts until this point were spent engaged in detailed exploration and critique, it is interesting to note that Kelly spends little time in her letter recounting the knowledge she generated during social-process rhetorical inquiry. Kelly knows that such critical pursuits are only appropriate in academic discourse, and the way to accomplish rhetorical goals in workplace settings is to avoid repeating information that is known or assumed and move quickly to the point of negotiation (i.e., cleaning before the store opens). Yet we must remember that this point of negotiation arises out of the critical explorations resulting from social-process rhetorical inquiry.

Throughout this assignment series, Kelly has engaged the entire cycle of cultural production, contextual distribution, and critical consumption, first to explore and critique the cultural values promoted at Gapkids, and second to enter the flow of discourse and enable institutional change. Whether or not students actually send the letters they write is up to them; but even if the letters are not actually sent, even if they are not distributed and consumed in their target communities, students nevertheless learn valuable rhetorical strategies for future situations.

CONCLUSION