The Teaching of Writing

Taxonomizers of the field of composition and rhetoric often speak in valorizing terms of "social epistemic rhetoric," referring to a group of scholarresearchers who argue for the social nature of knowledge in general and of writing and reading in particular. While some in composition and rhetoric indeed are taking a rhetorical turn to social construction, a careful look at the dominant writing pedagogies in the United States suggests that these claims may be exaggerated. Three constructions have dominated the scenes for writing throughout our history, scenes in which writing is constructed {1} as acolyte to great literature, {2) as a key to unique inner truths, or {3} as a means of representing cognitive or mental processes. If "social epistemic" rhetoric is to realize any of its potential, it must create a new pedagogy, a new scene for writing, that will resist unexamined masculinist assumptions; that will construct new academic forms of selfhood and intellectual property; and that will bring students to interrogate any status quo including that with which they are most comfortable. Carrying out these goals will mean nothing less, however, than challenging the entire academic hierarchy, from the administration 's placing of first-year students, to the means of testing and advancing students, to the tenure and promotion system. To speak of scene is immediately to invoke context, and thus I wish to begin by contextualizing, setting the scene, for my remarks today and, given the theme of this conference, by doing so Andrea Lunsford is professor of English and vice chair for Rhetoric and Composition at The Ohio State University. She has coauthored The St. Martin's Handbook, 2nd ed., Four Worlds of Writing, Preface to Critical Reading, Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse, The 1987 English Coalition Conference: Democracy through Language, Singular Texts/Plural Authors: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Writing, The Future of Doctoral Studies in English, and The Right to Literacy. The recipient with Lisa Ede of the Richard Braddock Award for the best article published in College Composition and Communication {1984} and with Lisa Ede and Robert Connors of the MLA Mina Shaughnessy Award for the best book on the teaching of language and literature {1985}-she is currently editing Reclaiming Rhetorica, a collection of essays on women and rhetoric. A version of this paper was presented as the keynote address at the Conference of The City University of New York Association of Writing Supervisors (CAWS) in October 1991. © Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 11, No.2, 1992