Concept 1

What do we mean when we say writing is social, and what do we mean when we say writing is rhetorical? Aren't they the same thing? I'd say they aren't the same thing, but that does not necessarily mean they are separate. In defining these terms, we're calling upon past voices and a history of composed knowledge. This involves consultation with other scholars, current and past, to come to agreement of meaning in the present for a particular audience and purpose. This investigation of definition is, it turns out, an enactment of this threshold concept itself. Hence the "activity" that users of writing are engaged in which happens to be both social (contacting with others) and rhetorical (audience-oriented and purposeful).

In Etheridge's class, early on I was assigned to read Aristotle's Rhetoric, and like all things Aristotle, it always seems to stay relevant. In this work, Aristotle defines rhetoric as "in any given situation, to find the available means of persuasion." I agree with the "situation" part, in light of current writing studies theory that complicates the term, though Burke and others trouble the reduction of all rhetoric to persuasion. But as you can see, in attempting to define "rhetoric" myself, I consider Aristotle and Burke and Bakhtin and Quintillian and many others (social) in order to arrive at meaning that is useful in the present to achieve some purpose (rhetorical) in activity. Definition is not the only way to engage in such learning activity, but it acts as a useful heuristic.

And this is important for me as a prospective writing educator. Roozen (2015) suggests that "understanding the rhetorical work of writing is essential if writers are to make informed, productive decisions about which genres to employ, which languages to act with, which texts to reference, and so on. Recognizing the deeply social and rhetorical dimensions of writing can help administrators and other stakeholders make better decisions about curricula and assessment" (p. 19).

If we understand writing as social and rhetorical, we begin to recognize (Burke) with students, faculty, administrators in more ethical ways (see Duffy's TC 1.8), and we reconstruct our approaches to engaging students as purpose, audience, exigencies of emergent activity reveal themselves to our inquiring selves. This is something Blalock's teaching practicum, CBWP SI, and Theory and Practice courses helped me to realize as I continue to work on finishing my graduate studies and enter teaching positions at the community college level. The CBWP allowed me an opportunity to revise and revise and revise a "facilitating" activity for the fellow educators and users of writing in our class, as I continued to use writing in different ways to design interactions that would be most useful for my audience. In the end, I found that the creative-centered activities were the most successful, which calls upon Estrem's (2015) claim that "writers use writing to generate knowledge that they didn't have before," and that "the act of creating ideas, not finding them, is at the heart of significant writing" (p. 19; qtd. from Flower and Hayes 1980, p. 22). This and some research-as-exploration eventually led me to work on my capstone experience and exam materials during Blalock's Theory and Practice class; both projects foreground creative thinking in FY curricular design.

Blalock's courses also stressed the importance of reflecting and metacognition. Previously, I thought prewriting, note-taking, and the like were not "real writing," and that "writing" was all about production of a final deliverable. Why? Because I did not yet consider how writing might be a social and rhetorical activity, and that the seemingly isolated aforementioned writing is not so removed from the voices or needs of others. However, Yancey's "On Reflection" (1998) argues for the centrality of reflection in any writing course, and Estrem (2015) posits that "through making the knowledge-making role of writing more visible, people gain experience and often-informal aspects of writing are critical to their development and growth" (p. 20). In making reflective writing central to learning about writing in curricular design for FY students, I think it continues to allow students to engage for themselves in their learning and make informed decisions without relying on the "right" way dictated by the sage teacher.

I also engaged with this TC even in literature, linguistic, and creative writing courses. Because TCs encourage further development and application of theories of writing across situations, I found that TCs such as TC 1 pressed me toward heuristics when engaging with assignments and readings in any course. For example, in Sorensen's feminist theory class I knew from the beginning that I would need to defer my male-meaning and value tendencies in order to identify (Burke) with the motives and concerns of female and minority writers. When I engaged in a fictional dialogue with feminist theorists, I used writing socially and rhetorically, meanwhile creating a position that addressed the purposes of the present. As I did similarly in Etheridge's course, I put Anzaldua, Peirce, and Bakhtin in conversation about semiotics, liminality, and ideology, and in such a way that addresses current feminist concerns as evident in contemporary literary texts such as The Handmaid's Tale. Had I not recognized TC 1, I may not have put these thinkers in conversation with each other, nor would I have understood the audience or purpose for my uses of writing.

In addition to writing being a social and rhetorical activity, the framing that writing does as a recognizable form--TC 2-- has also been crucial as I continue to develop and apply my theories of writing and learning in my graduate studies. To see my learning with TC 2, you can access the drop-down menu above or click here.