Number 7: for the week of March 4, 2010

My dear readers,

The main idea I encounter in this week's readings is the idea of audience. What is an audience in terms of writing? How should it be addressed? What are the consequences of addressing it in certain ways and not in others? So I found each of the articles for this week interesting and informative, I also found them contradictory and on first reading confusing. Maybe that is emblematic of the idea of audience in thought concerning composition studies of late.
I agree with Lunsford that the "audience response model" put forth by Mitchell and Taylor is a good try but doesn't cover everything. I could see her point that they tried to play up the strength of their argument while ignoring the weaknesses. Though the way the article was written it was difficult for me to tell which was which. Other that is in the idea that there is not nearly as much consensus about what features constitute "good writing" as many teachers of composition might think. Such disagreement can lead to the fixation on surface correctness we have read about previously in the course.

I have to agree with the idea behind "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction". That is, that even though you have to have something or someone on which to focus your writing purpose you're always just guessing. I love the reference to Henry James since I do believe that in most of his fiction he had in mind a reader who was not me. When we say writers write for an audience what we really mean I think is that they have a focus group in mind. In other words there are people they specifically want to reach, and as long as they reach them anyone else they also impact is just a bonus. I would be willing to bet (and not just because I do it myself in my own writing) that most writers imagine their ideal audience is composed of people very much like themselves. I'm reminded of the ancient Egyptians, who, when they created their ancient hieroglyphics had in mind a future audience that they thought would be able to easily understand them. The fact that it took the Rosetta Stone for us to make any headway in the department shows that imagining one's audience is an inexact science.

Moreover so are the often conflicting contradictory ideas of collaboration and originality. On the one hand in the opening of the article by Porter we see an offshoot of collaboration, a sort of intertextuality with the monk gathering up the remnants of previously larger texts. There is no real indication whether he has any idea who wrote the pieces he is scooping up. Now, by modern standards, if he did any kind of compiling without citing the author (and in some cases even that isn't enough) then he is a plagiarist. But, keep in mind that era of history would not have seen him that way. The whole idea of originality as we know it today mostly comes out of Romanticism. Up until just a couple of hundred years ago, it was expected that a writer will work very closely with established models and would show his or her skill by adapting those models to the conditions of the time. Think about it, if modern standards of plagiarism had existed throughout history many of the greatest writers and thinkers would probably have been kicked out of school. I'm thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson, and William Shakespeare among many others. None of them did what they did exclusively by themselves they all borrowed from and learned from what came before them. Now, don't misunderstand me if I write something that becomes famous I want to receive the credit. However, I have always believed that good thought will breed more good thought. That is the point of so many of these articles we have encountered. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Therefore, why then do we expect our students to produce writing in a vacuum (that is, writing that is supposedly entirely original) when we know such things do not really happening in other areas of life? The article by Johnson essentially says that the only place we still seem to think in terms of the lone genius is in student writing when searching for plagiarism. That strikes me as strange.
Concerning the article "collaborative learning and the conversation of mankind", I can identify with the idea stated on page 417 that many students refused tutoring help when it was offered. I actually lived the situation though not in literature. I initially refused to take advantage of tutoring services in math 120. This is even though I knew I needed the help. I am not stupid. So why would I do this? Simply because I saw having to ask for help as a sign of weakness, of academic unworthiness. Moreover, I remembered the trouble I had had trying to graduate from high school after having been in special education as a child. I did not want to be tutored and then have someone, somewhere along the line trying to withhold my bachelor’s degree simply because I had "broken down" and gotten tutoring.

The fear I've just described may sound stupid but please remember when the situation arose where I needed to ring as a freshman the scenario was still very real in my mind. This is especially true since at the time I had no idea how UNLV's administrative procedures work at all. More generally speaking I find that many students are reluctant to work together even in peer review until they know precisely how and to whom credit will be distributed. That is how nervous many of them are that something they may share with someone else might be called academic misconduct.

Thank you so much for your time,

James Altman