Concept 5

If we consider "writing" as the use of tools in activity, tools that are malleable and selected based on recognition of situation, then we understand that our very recognition of that situation changes based on continual inquiry and tool interchange, as well as from the neurophysiological sensory data--pathways of habit as well as new ones being created--received from our interactions with the material world. When this TC defines writing as a cognitive activity, it's not making a reductive claim that writing happens in closed minds and is transmitted to the world. Instead, this TC makes the case that "writing" does indeed happen in our individual heads, but that its activity is immediately connected to our bodies and to our material world.

In Dr. Etheridge's Rhetoric course, I had the opportunity to return to some of my undergraduate research on the relationship between Peirce's and Bakhtin's theories of language, and contemporary studies in neurolinguistics and biosemiotics. Some readings in Etheridge's course that influenced my final project included Aristotle, Quintilian, Bakhtin, Burke, Toulmin, and Anzaldua. I found that these theorists shared many ideas on writing as a cognitive activity, but none of them conceived of writing as isolated. Aristotle's definition of rhetoric--finding in any given situation the means of persuasion--as well as his triadic schema of appeals--logos, pathos, and ethos--is at first glance indicative of an atomistic psychologism, and his classical canons of rhetoric--invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery--seem in many ways to indicate an individualist cognitive theory. Yet in none of Aristotle's theories does he suggest that the rhetor can be successful without audience feedback, an understanding of the material world and its contextualizing elements in a given situation, and the building of habits--though avoiding entrenchment--by engaging in varying rhetorical situations. As Dryer points out, "although neuroplasticity (the capacity of the brain to create and reinforce new neural connections through learning and use) is only now becoming part of the conversation in US writing studies, our most progressive composition pedagogies have long emphasized metacognition and reflection for just this reason" (p. 73). Constructing and further developing theories of writing that can account for novel writing situations is akin to the building of neural pathways that have the greatest branching potential. In my final project for Etheridge, I reconsidered Toulmin's model as a heuristic tool in reconstructing complex rhetorical situations under study, and in this way I conceived of Toulmin's model cognitively as a useful generative tool for writing, both in studying how in a past situation writing was used to achieve a purpose, but also in a current situation.

Anson (2015), however, says that "repeated practice of the same mental task or activity can lead to what psychologists call automaticity or unconcious competence, the application of a process or the retrieval of information that doesn't require conscious attention," which can lead to what he later calls entrenchment, the idea that one process or habituated practice is universally applicable (p. 77). Surely I found value in Dr. Salter's monthly Close Reading Analysis assignments, or Dr. Lee's weekly reading responses, or Dr. Etheridge's weekly readers, etc. Yet once I had discovered a workable formula for these assignments, I found that sometimes what I was using writing to do became what I was writing to submit. It was in multimodal writing assignments that I broke free from the automaticity of another reading response.

Anson's (2015) example of the automaticity of someone shifting gears is problematic, I think, as there's indeed a great complexity to shifting gears that automaticity might not recognize. Surely habituated practice of throttle and clutch engagement and release can make one shift at "correct" moments, but there's many variations of what constitutes "proper" shifting, depending on purpose. Does the driver want better gas mileage? There's a shifting strategy for that. Does the driver what to get to their destination as fast as possible in dense highway traffic? A different shifting strategy is needed. And so on.

But how does one escape entrenchment and move out of such automaticity? I think the problem with automaticity is its inherent lack of reflection and projection for purposeful change. As Taczak (2015) puts it, "reflection is a mode of inquiry: a deliberate way of systematically recalling writing experiences to reframe the current writing situation" (p. 78). Reflection, contrary to common belief, can happen during the action, both cognitively and metacognitively. In Dr. Blalock's courses, I found that he centered reflection and refused to attribute reflection as something done after writing. I found myself, at first, engaging in short "reflection" documents, but in time these documents became ongoing "reflecting" pieces that oftentimes generated real solutions based on my metacognitive study of my choices in using writing for a particular writing situation.

With that, you've read through some of my interactions with the Threshold Concepts during my coursework in the MA English program, and I invite you to click here to see some final connections/conclusions from this portfolioing and reflecting, or access the page from the drop-down menu above.