Page 37:
The use of first-person rather than the more formal third-person, of course, is not an absolute negative indicator of academic voice. As James C. Raymond pointed in “I-Dropping and Androgyny: The Authorial I in Scholarly Writing,” use of the first person pronoun is often appropriate. For basic writers, however, the problem is in “those uses of I that presume the reader’s interest in the author as observer or the author as authority or even the author as a person” (479). The use of “I” must be “earned” and “effective” (482); a difficult assignment for most basic writers. Sheree L. Meyer echoes Raymond’s concerns, saying if instructors “insist that [students] pose as ‘acknowledged authorities,’ then [they] have contributed not to their learning but to their imposter complex” (47).
First, is that semicolon used appropriately?
Second, I want to read Raymond’s and Meyer’s essays.
Page 38:
In “Rhetorics of the Self,” Mary Louise Buley-Meissner considers what speaking with authority entails. Students must not only understand the writings of others, but must also enter the “dialogue essential to progressive education” (54). Encouraging students to cultivate their own voices will lead education into being “a process of self-affirmation, engaging students in making connections – between the personal and the academic, between who they are and who they are becoming – that could strengthen their ability to succeed at whatever ‘project’ they might choose to undertake” (54).
Page 39: Meyer calls academic discourse “aggressively combative and competetive” (52)
Pages 39-40:
Richard Courage discusses the pros and cons of having an academic discourse in “The Interaction of Public and Private Literacies.” Some suggest that academic literacy “constrain[s] plain speaking and passionate advocacy and that it privelges…cultural expressions of the dominant social classes” (484). Others see academic literacy as the “central component” to “cultural capital and credentialing” (485).
Pages 44-45:
Thomas J. Farrell, in “The Female and Male Modes of Rhetoric,” points to certain characteristics which differ by gender. Farrell cites Sarah D’Eloia’s suggestion that males are more liekly to clearly state their conclusions at the start of their papers, then through the essay offer support to validate their position. On the other hand, women often use “indirection” or “holding off the conclusion until they have made it almost impossible to rject the validity – emotional or logical – of what they say” (909). Women, according to Farrell, often write in a manner which seems less controlled, more open-ended, and with more of a relationship with the audience than do men. Men seem more openly antagonistic in their writing, using this as a persuasive technique. The “female mode appears to be more sincere…generally supportive, conciliatory, and potentially integrative” (917).
Pages 45-46:
Bringing the conversation to university students, Elizabeth A. Flynn considered how differences in writing manisfest themselves in student wrting. Flynn found that “narratives of the female students are stories of interaction, of connection, or of frustrated connection. The narratives of the male students are stories of achievement, of separation, or of frustrated achievement” (300). Female students wrote in more personal terms than the males, which can have a negative effect on being perceived as academic writers. Flynn suggests that the “questions raised by feminist researchers and theorists do have a bearing on composition studies and should be pursued” (304).
CHECK THESE SOURCES OUT:
Buly-Meissner, Mary Louise. “Rhetorics of the Self.” Journal of Education 172.1 (1990): 47-64.
Courage, Richard. “The Interaction of Public and Private Literacies.” College Composition and Communication 44.4 (1993): 484-496.
Farrell, Thomas J. “The Female and Male Models of Rhetoric.” College English 40.8 (1979): 909-921.
Flynn, Elizabeth. “Composing as a Woman.” College Composition and Communication 39 (1988): 423-435. Rpt. in Rhetoric and Composition: A Sourcebook for Teachers of Writers. Ed. Richard L. Graves. 3rd ed. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1990. 196-309.
Meyer, Sheree L. “Refusing to Play the Confidence Game: The Illusion of Mastery in the Reading/Writing of Texts.” College English 55.1 (1993): 46-63.
Raymond, James C. “I-Dropping and Androgyny: The Authorial I in Scholarly Writing.” College Composition and Communication 44.4 (1993): 478-483.
