Composition Studies

Composition Studies (also referred to as "Composition and Rhetoric," "Rhetoric and Composition," "College Composition," "Writing Studies," or simply "Composition") is the professional field of writing research and instruction, focusing especially on writing at the college level in the United States. In many American colleges and universities, undergraduate students must take freshman ? sometimes even higher ? composition courses. For example, in California, all public colleges and universities have freshman and sophomore composition courses as requirements.

Many composition scholars study not only the theory and practice of post-secondary writing instruction, but also the influence of different writing conventions and genres on writers' composing processes. As written conventions and genres change over time, compositionists continue to learn how these changes influence writers and how writers work to change the conventions within which they work.

The term discourse community links the terms discourse, a concept describing all forms of communication that contribute to a particular, institutionalized way of thinking; and community, which in this case refers to the people who use, and therefore help create, a particular discourse.

Some examples of a discourse community might be those who read and/or contribute to a particular academic journal, or members of an email list for Madonna fans. Each discourse community has its own unwritten rules about what can be said and how it can be said: for instance, the journal will not accept an article with the claim that ?Discourse is the coolest concept?; on the other hand, members of the email list may or may not appreciate a Freudian analysis of Madonna's latest single. Most people move within and between different discourse communities every day.

Since the discourse community itself is intangible, it is easier to imagine discourse communities in terms of the fora in which they operate. The hypothetical journal and email list can each be seen as an example of a forum, or a "concrete, local manifestation of the operation of the discourse community".Porter, J. (1992). Audience and Rhetoric: An Archaeological Composition of the Discourse Community. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

The term was first used by sociolinguist Martin Nystrand in 1982,Nystrand, M. (1982) What Writers Know: The Language, Process, and Structure of Written Discourse. New York: Academic and further developed by American linguist John Swales.Swales, J. M. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Writing about the acquisition of academic writing styles of those who are learning English as an additional language, Swales presents six defining characteristics:

:A discourse community:

:# has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.

:# has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.

:# uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.

:# utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.

:# in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis.

:# has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

James Porter defined the discourse community as: ?a local and temporary constraining system, defined by a body of texts (or more generally, practices) that are unified by a common focus. A discourse community is a textual system with stated and unstated conventions, a vital history, mechanisms for wielding power, institutional hierarchies, vested interests, and so on.?

Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyceta offer the following statement on the conditioned nature of all discourse, which has applicability to the concept of discourse community: "All language is the language of community, be this a community bound by biological ties, or by the practice of a common discipline or technique. The terms used, their meaning, their definition, can only be understood in the context of the habits, ways of thought, methods, external circumstances, and tradition known to the users of those terms. A deviation from usage requires justification ..." Perelman, Chaim and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyceta (1969) The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver.

"Producing text within a discourse community," according to Patricia Bizzell, "cannot take place unless the writer can define her goals in terms of the community's interpretive conventions."Bizzell, P. (1992) Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. In other words, one cannot simply produce any text ? it must fit the standards of the discourse community to which it is appealing. If one wants to become a member of a certain discourse community, it requires more than learning the lingo. It requires understanding concepts and expectations set up within that community.

The language used by discourse communities can be described as a register or diatype, and members generally join a discourse community through training or personal persuasion. This is in contrast to the speech community (or the 'native discourse community', to use Patricia Bizzell's term), who speak a language or dialect inherited by birth or adoption.

Writing process is a pedagogical term that appears in the research of Janet Emig who published The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders in 1971. The term marks a shift from examining the products of writing to the composing process of writers. This focus on process encourages composition students to see writing as an ongoing, recursive process from conception of the idea through publication. It asserts that all writing serves a purpose, and that writing passes through some or all of several clear steps. It was part of the general whole language approach, championed most prominently in Australia, New Zealand and the United States K-12 educational system.

Generally the writing process is seen as consisting of six steps:

* Prewriting: planning, research, outlining, diagramming, storyboarding or clustering (for a technique similar to clustering, see mindmapping)

* Draft: initial composition in prose form

* Revision: review, modification and organization (by the writer)

* Editing: proofreading for clarity, conventions, style (preferably by another writer)

* Evaluation: By peers, teachers, and others.

* Publication: sharing the writing: possibly through performance, printing, or distribution of written materialThe Writing Process Notebook.[http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/writing/writingprocess/menu.html Ideas for Teaching the Writing Process. Kim's Korner for Teacher Talk]Writing Process.The Writing Process.

These steps simplified for younger students, the above process is for secondary (and higher). The steps are performed in order, traditionally. Though this is not always the case with advanced writers. For example, the skills used in the prewriting process can be applied any time by writers seeking ideas throughout the process. It is not necessary to go through each step for every writing project attempted. The steps make up a recursive process.The Writing Process. MIT Online Writing and Communication Center. 1999.

The instructional theory behind the model is similar to new product development and life cycle theory, adapted to written works. By breaking the writing cycle into discrete stages and focusing on strategies at each stage, it is hoped that writers will develop an appreciation for the process of seeing an idea through to successful completion in a logical way. Rather than presenting written works as acts of genius that emerge fully formed, they are shown as the result of several distinct and learnable skills.