Phillips 540: Week Seven Discussion Facilitation with Irina

Hi all!

Below are question sets for the Horner et al. and Michael-Luna & Canagarajah articles. Some of the questions pertain to the CCCC and TEOSOL statements as well as other readings we have engaged with thus far.

Please take a look at them if you have time, so you know some points Irina and I may bring up during our discussion facilitation. :)

Thanks!

 Lisa and Irina’s Discussion Heuristics & Subsequent Question Guide for Horner et al.

1. Exploratory: Probe for facts and basic knowledge.

Is the Horner et al. article a manifesto? If so, who/what are they protesting against? Aren’t they preaching to the choir? OR, are they indirectly addressing some other audience? If so, who/what/why?

2. Challenge: Examine assumptions, conclusions, and interpretations.

Why is this article deemed an “opinion,” versus say an “argument,” or, for that matter, a “petition” for a translingual shift addressed to politicians?

3. Relational: Ask for comparisons of themes, ideas, or issues.

How is Horner’s pursuit of a translingual approach different from the CCCC second language writing statement or the TESOL statement? Are the issues at stake different for each of the stakeholders?

4. Diagnostic: Probe motives or causes.

Why does Horner et al. preface their resource bibliography with a call-and-response Q&A set?

5. Action: Call for a conclusion or action.

What do you think Horner et al. want readers to change about themselves after reading the article? Are they making a reasonable request given the political and economic climate that envelops public education?

6. Cause-and-Effect: As for a causal relationship between ideas, actions, or events.

Why does the Horner article include a list of “seconds,” or signers-on to the translingual approach?

7. Extension: Expand the discussion.

How does Horner’s Q&A comments relate to our discussion of World Englishes and hip-hop posed by Pennycook?

8. Hypothetical: Pose a change in the facts or issues.

Suppose Horner had not included the “petition” aspect of the article—would the article convey less support for the translingual approach? OR, does the inclusion suggest an exclusionary edict? That is, does Horner’s inclusion of names suggest a “you’re either with us or against us” approach?

9. Priority: Seek to identify the most important issue.

What to you is the most important thing to learn from, or from reading, Horner’s article?

10. Summary: Elicit syntheses.

What interesting points have been brought to the table by the CCCC and TESOL language statements? What are those documents a response to in your opinion?

Lisa and Irina’s Discussion Heuristics & Question Guide for Michael-Luna & Canagarajah

1. Exploratory: Probe for facts and basic knowledge.

Does the article oversimplify the HE setting by equating it to an elementary education setting? If so, what are the emotional consequences to HE students who might feel denigrated by the suggestion?

2. Challenge: Examine assumptions, conclusions, and interpretations.

Does this article address the complex political consequences of code meshing adequately to your mind? If not, are there ways in which that conversation might take place, and how would go about that task?

3. Relational: Ask for comparisons of themes, ideas, or issues.

How is the authors’ pursuit of a code meshing approach different from the TESOL second language writing statement or the CCCC statement? What issues are at stake different for the different stakeholders: teachers, learners, policy makers?

4. Diagnostic: Probe motives or causes.

Do you think that Michael-Luna and Canagarajah select Spanish-to-English language learners for the elementary education code meshing example for politically motivated reasons? If so, does the suggestion that higher education pedagogues adopt the elementary education model devalue (or privilege) Spanish over other languages?

5. Action: Call for a conclusion or action.

What, if anything, do you plan to change about yourself after reading the article? Do you think the authors are making reasonable requests given the complex realities of our own classroom spaces and time constraints as people in a liminal space—i.e. between teacher and graduate student?

6. Cause-and-Effect: As for a causal relationship between ideas, actions, or events.

Why do the authors exclude, or at least elide, gender variables in their discussion of code meshing?

7. Extension: Expand the discussion.

How do the authors’ observations about code meshing relate to our discussion of Li’s yin/yang principle in a way that helps us understand cultural comparisons? That is, how does Li’s idea that languages and cultures “are intertwined, curving into each other’s sphere” work toward or against a code meshing pedagogy (Li 16)?

8. Hypothetical: Pose a change in the facts or issues.

Suppose the authors had not included the elementary education aspect of the article—would the article convey less support for a code meshing approach?

9. Priority: Seek to identify the most important issue.

What, for you, is the most important take away from the article for your pedagogy chapter in your dissertation? Is the reading relevant to your own goals?

10. Summary: Elicit syntheses.

What interesting points have been brought to the table by juxtaposition of code switching versus code meshing?

Phillips: English 540 Week Six Response

For this post I have opted to do what I did in week two: post some key points for consideration that I engaged with during my reading. Because I focused heavily on Connor’s Contrastive Rhetoric book last week, I decided to focus on the articles from this week. I appreciated some of the research methods suggested by Li’s article and Connor’s 2004 essay. Kubota’s questions struck me as particularly useful.

Li’s Key Points for Lisa:

Contextual quote: “It was no accident that classical rhetoric, the study of effective argument, was born in an ancient democracy, not in a dynasty. The world is not as free-flowing as postmodernists would like us to believe” (16).

Li proposes a yin/yang principle as an approach to contrastive rhetoric. That is, we can come to understand that cultures “are intertwined, [and curve] into each other’s sphere”(16). This makes a great deal of sense to me. Cultures circumambulate one another in a complicated dance. Languages, groups, and individuals do likewise.

Li asks us to consider two issues pertinent to an ESL writing context: (1) How to determine when cultural influences appear in student writing, and (2) what “culture-specific templates” consciously or unconsciously form a student’s antecedent genre knowledge (17). The guiding idea here is that Li wants us to avoid “omniscient” cultural explanations that essentialize students.

As a rhetorician, I appreciated Li’s discussion of George Kennedy’s “comparative rhetoric” vis-à-vis contrastive rhetoric. In other contexts, I have misunderstood that they were two distinct “fields.” I didn’t realize in what way they where different until I read Li’s explanation. I had a “well, duh,” moment or two. Moreover, Kennedy has a number of critics within classic rhetorical circles who prefer the term “Alternative Rhetorics” to include other culturally and historically situated ancient rhetorical traditions not all of which were “born in an ancient democracy”(Lipson and Binkley 3; Li 16).  Clearly, linguists are not unique in their disciplinary disputes about whose cultural model is whose and whose gets top “billing” in studies of culturally influenced writing patterns.

Li suggests that contrastive rhetoric is social not “political”(19). I cannot agree with Li on this, contrastive rhetoric is always already political as is pedagogy. I do not understand how Li can imply that CR is not “political.” What am I missing here??

Kubota’s Key Points for Lisa:

Contextual quote: Traditional contrastive rhetoric “reinforce[s] a cultural deficit view in which certain groups are seen as innately deficient because of their cultural and linguistic background[s]” (15).

Kubota makes a move toward “critical contrastive rhetoric” the aim of which is “political” to create “oppositional language against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of injustice” (16). {Perhaps Kubota’s point here answers my “What am I missing here?” question about Li’s article, but I still don’t fully understand how CR could be apolitical.} Is Kubota’s point to show that CCR is explicitly political in opposition to CR? Probably.

I found Kubota’s explication of Whorf particularly useful as she situates his work philosophically parallel to Baktinian notions about reflexivity and plurality and juxtaposes these two with Kaplan’s hierarchical cultural “Doodles.”

Finally, Kubota’s queries (page 17) offer us some useful research questions to ponder as we begin to consider our own projects. She asks:

• How have we come to believe that a certain cultural difference is true?
•   What political purposes have motivated the construction of particular beliefs about cultural difference?
• What alternative understandings of cultural difference, or counter-discourses, are available to transform our taken-for-granted knowledge? (17)

She answers that a critical contrastive rhetoric pedagogy “is self-reflexive” at the core (23).

Connor (2004) Key Points for Lisa:

Connor offers some useful research methodologies that may inform some of our work. Connor’s literature review featured Flowerdew’s four types of methodological categories: (1) genre analysis, (2) corpus-based studies, (3) contrastive rhetoric specific to academic discourse, and (4) ethnographic/naturalistic approaches (263). Connor’s explanation of these was concise and useful. Also useful was Connor’s definition of the “three schools of text analysis,” which are: (1) The Prague School’s “theme” and “rheme” analysis, (2) Systemic Linguistics developed by Halliday, and (3) A “New School” of discourse analysis that is interdisciplinary and applied (295).

My favorite word is “miniethnographics” posed by Louhiala-Salminen (Connor quoting L-S 301). This research method, according to Connor, “generate[s] descriptions of ‘slices of life’…of discourse in different cultures. After the descriptions were generated, comparisons of discourses and of how to get things done using discourses could be conducted” (301). I love this idea because I connect it to Foucault’s notion of “heterochronies” or “slices of time” in his Of Other Spaces. I have been seeking a way to think about how to conduct research on the senses and “miniethnographics” make a lot of sense to me. Thank you, Connor!

Outside sources referenced:

Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics. Trans. Jay Miskowiec. Vol. 16:1 (Spring 1986):22-27. Print.

Lipson, Carol S. and Roberta A. Binkley, eds. Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks. Albany: SUNY Press, 2004. Print.

Phillips: English 540 Week Five Response

 A Little CR History Lesson: Who Said What, When, & Why

In the following post, I offer my necessarily reductive "drive-by" of more than thirty years of Contrastive Rhetoric, a field now named "Intercultural Rhetoric" for those in the know. The field is new to me, so I hope my summation is simple enough to be useful to a fellow novice, and sufficiently complex enough not to put a linguist to sleep. For that you'll have to listen to The Great Noam talk about 50 years of linguistic history. ;0)

Ulla Connor (1996) writes: “Contrastive rhetoric is an area of research in second language acquisition that identifies problems in composition encountered by second language writers, and by referring to rhetorical strategies of the first language, attempts to explain them” (5). Connor notes that Kaplan’s “Doodles” article (1966) is the grandfather of the CR field (2002, 495). Connor’s 2002 article exposes critical controversy within Kaplan’s methodology and the origins of his CR “notion.” For example, Ying and Matsuda assert that Kaplan draws from a problematic Germanic “linguistic determinism” that belies the complexity of social, historical, political, and cultural ideologies that are embedded in language acquisition (2002, 495).

In the 1996 work, Connor explains her intent: “I will argue in this book that a different contrastive model is needed for the description of cross-cultural writing in academic and professional situations” (9). Ultimately, Connor poses three purposes for her book: (1) to assert the general value of CR for applied linguistics, (2) to suggest practical applications for teachers and researchers, and (3) to define an emerging CR discipline that is interdisciplinary in nature (7).

Basically, Connor’s book serves as an introduction to the field of Contrastive Rhetoric. Practitioners of CR seek to study the ways in which language learners’ cultures impact their writing in multiple contexts. Connor’s definition is more narrow in the 1996 work than it is in 2002. The 2002 article demonstrates a very broad definition of CR. Connor writes: “Contrastive rhetoric examines differences and similarities in writing across cultures” (493). I find that definition to be of little use value because it is so vague.

Clearly, Connor is reacting to criticisms of CR as a field, criticisms demonstrated in Kubota’s article about essentialized notions of Japanese writers of English as a Second Language. Of her own article, Kubota writes: “This article takes Japanese culture as an example and, after summarizing the characteristics of Japanese culture that appear in the applied linguistics literature, critiques the essentialized representations of culture found in discussions of teaching writing and critical thinking to ESL students” (9). Kubota is obviously taking issue with stereotypical representations of Japanese peoples as “group oriented” or “exotic Other” (11). She is also taking issue with the “West-East cultural dichotomy” (9; 30).

Connor creates a reflexive response to the controversies developing with in the CR discourse community. She forwards Sarangi’s term “intercultural” to move past the binary divisiveness suggested by Contrastive Rhetoric (504).

Connor’s most recent publication (2011) {an optional reading for Week Seven} is entitled: Intercultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom. In the series forward, by Diane Belcher and Jun Liu, intercultural rhetoric is “under fire ever since it first emerged as an area of research and pedagogical interest” (Forward, i). Belcher and Liu ask: (1) “Can the rhetorical conventions of any culture be described without over-simplification? “(2) “Can cultures be discussed without essentializing them?” (3) “Can we even come to consensus on what the term culture means?” (Forward i). These questions are questions we can ask as we think about the kinds of projects we will engage with as the semester progresses. To my mind, the answer to all of these questions is: “No,” but we can attempt to do as Connor’s interlocutors suggest and build “…[a] more extensive and sophisticated … culturally contextualized study…” of intercultural rhetorics (Forward i).

Phillips: English 540 Week Four Response

Academic Voiceover: Canagarajah’s Contribution Re-Writes a Commonplace Assumption

In my last two posts, I chose to bring my outside interests to bear on the texts we were reading for class.  I depart from that in this post because I wish to focus on one article in particular, for it challenged some of my assumptions in productive ways.

Canagarajah’s A Somewhat Legitimate and Very Peripheral Participation zeros in on a compelling problem in the academy and elsewhere. Whose voice gets heard, by whom, and for what purpose and/or audience? By extension, as a neophyte “n00bity” in the academic publishing arena myself, I always wonder, how professional scholars get articles and monographs published. {You know, the back-story, like Canagarajah gives us.} Canagarajah narrates what can happen when people migrate to the United States for an advanced degree and then return to their country of origin (or choice as the case may be different depending upon the context).

In many ways and for various reasons, we all need to know the inside-scoop as we think about professionalization and by implication the “publish or perish” paradigm we will likely face should we be fortunate enough to find gainful employment as scholars and teachers. If that employment is not stateside, there are additional constraints. In a clever twist, Canagarajah turns those constraints into assets. That is, on the one hand, he notes that limited access to academic journals means that one has to focus on the top journals—at least in Canagarajah’s instance. Necessarily, then, one’s attention is directed to specific criteria. On the other hand, lack of access to up-to-date, hi-tech equipment facilitates longer-term qualitative studies and subsequent monographs.

I found Canagarajah’s article absolutely fascinating for a number of reasons. First, to my knowledge, Canagarajah is right: academics don’t usually discuss their processes of reading, writing, research, and publication efforts. Second, that the idea of technological determinism so prevalent in the U.S. academic context would lead to more monographs in Canagarajah’s opinion shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. The sustained effort necessary for an individual monograph suggests to me long-term institutional support. Clearly, Canagarajah disrupted a commonplace assumption that I did not realize I had. {That’s just cool and I love when that happens!} Third, I have a new interpretation of secondary or tertiary source citations. I often wondered why academics chose not to go to primary source materials in certain situations. Confirmation bias on my part assumed it was a kind of academic hastiness or laziness that made people stray from the primary path to the secondary sources. Sometimes, I know this is still the case, but Canagarajah posits another reason: access to the sources due to limited resources. Of course, I have had a good understanding of this as a non-traditional female student, but Canagarajah builds greater depth perception into my field of view by explaining his experiences as a researcher in Sri Lanka.  What one does, or does not do, with the access one has is telling.

The book that Canagarajah’s chapter is a part of looks promising for other reasons as well. I’ve posted the cover here for anyone interested in giving it a more thorough read.

Click below for the table of contents and more information.

http://books.google.com/books?id=RuF6HSqAelkC&printsec=frontcover - v=onepage&q&f=false