Concept 3

Situating this TC into some of the language of Russell's Activity Systems theory might help to make it more clear and useful. If we understand writing as a tool used and continually evolving in activity, then it makes sense that such a changing tool could have the ability both to "enact" or bring into this activity identities (who we are) and ideologies "a system of ideas and beliefs that together constitute a comprehensive worldview," and also to "create" or bring into existence these forms as a result of the activity (Scott, NWWK, p. 48). The user of writing selects and interacts with the writing-as-tool to accomplish a purpose; the user, the tool, and the purpose are all mediated and come into existence based on social structures, habits, and material constraints. As a user of writing, I then understand that to be a better user of writing, I need varied experience to get better at selecting the best tool, recognizing purpose to make the best choices of and with said tool, and studying the social bases for such choices. As Scott further points out, though in paradox, "writers are not separate from their writing and they don't just quickly and seamlessly adapt to new situations. Rather, writers are socialized, changed, through their writing in new environments, and these changes can have deep implications" (p. 49). Although indeed text exists as an object outside of oneself that can be improved (also a TC), its improvement is still contextualized in activity and our relationship with it as users of writing.

I had many opportunities to enter novel situations as a user of writing during my MA degree, including such experiences as the Conversation Analysis project I completed in Dr. Lee's Sociolinguistics course. I recorded approximately one hour each of naturally-occurring conversation between young adult couples (aged mid-twenties) of similar socioeconomic and racial background, which I then transcribed and analyzed to uncover patterns between male and female interactions. This required an admittedly distant analysis of the three respective recordings of conversation, and I had to consider my role as analyst in determining what patterns I saw in the transcriptions. I had to make many assumptions, one being about the purpose for each participant within each respective conversation. Why would the male speak to the female in this way to accomplish what goal, and vice versa? This required some consideration about situational factors--what social events or material constraints were affecting how one made choices to talk to another? Further, I had to ponder how these gendered selves might use writing/linguistic forms both to define their identities and enact/negotiate the ideologies which bring these selves into existence. Even when studying something as seemingly simple as conversation, I was pushed to think in terms of situation.

In Dr. Salter's nineteenth-century American literature course, we quickly became aware of how writing acts "as a means of engaging with the possibilities for selfhood available in a given community" and through activity invites users of writing with choices as "to whether they can see themselves as participants in a particular community," which promotes the notion that indeed research is discovery and exploration (Roozen, p. 50, 51). My experience with the "Keyword Presentations" assignment was indicative of this TC in many ways. I was assigned to research and present my findings on the term "queer form," and quickly I found that the term and its constituent parts found very different meanings depending on the spaces it entered and purposes it was used to achieve. As Villanueva suggests, "we carry many identities, choosing to foreground on (or some) over others depending on the context, the audience, and the rhetorical task at hand," and similarly we carry many versions of a writing-as-tool (p. 57). Although we like to center ourselves as the primary agents in activity, simply seeing ourselves as tool users who act upon each other and inanimate things in the world, we are indeed affected by tools such as writing and our interactions with those tools, as well as the material world which constrains and contextualizes our tool uses. When I researched "queer form," I found that I was discovering all of these aspects as they entered different spaces in time. "Queer form" for contemporary literary scholars involves, among other things, an attempt to reconstruct the histories of alternative forms of consciousness that have been erased or marginalized due to the naturalization of dominant forms, or the habitus of particular writing-as-tools. And because these alternative forms (nor the dominant ones) are not to be essentialized and mistaken as ideologically-free and identity-free tools, these scholars understand that to study these forms means to contextualize them and study them as they were used in activity, and as they continue to change and be used today. Similar to my experience in Dr. Lee's course in Sociolinguistics, I was invited in Dr. Salter's class to investigate assumptions that guide the employment of particular linguistic tools in activity, and so TC 3 was certainly underlying much of my research.

So what did I learn in my MA English program, one might ask? A more interesting question might be: What didn't I learn, and what more can/should I learn, and how do I know I need to learn it? TC 4 addresses this idea, that "all writers have more to learn," and you can see how I grappled with this TC during my experience in the program by clicking here, or by accessing the drop-down menu above.