The Composition and Rhetoric Field

Composition and Rhetoric (a.k.a. Writing Studies): A Flexible Field

In his essay, "Teach Writing as a Process not a Product," Donald Murray outlines the major difference between the traditional pedagogy that directed the teaching of writing in the past and his newly hailed model. Traditionally, Murray explains, English teachers were taught to teach and evaluate students' writing as if it was a finished product of literature when, as he has discovered, students learn better if they're taught that writing is a process. For Murray, once teachers regard writing as a process, a student-centered, or writer-centered, curriculum falls into place. Rules for writing fall by the way side as writers work at their own pace to see what works best for them.

While Murray emphasizes the emancipating affect that a process-oriented curriculum has on students, Andrea Lunsford explains how the process approach to writing--adopted by and aligned with the field of Composition and Rhetoric--frees not only students, but teachers and scholars as well. Theories governing Composition and Rhetoric break down boundaries "between disciplines, between the genres of reading, writing and speaking, between the theory and practice, between research and teaching." Janice M. Lauer and Andrea Lunsford similarly point out the cross-disciplinary nature of Composition and Rhetoric and how this creates and directs scholarship in the field.

In their short essay, "The Place of Rhetoric and Composition in Doctoral Studies," Janice Lauer and Andrea Lunsford argue that flexibility and boundary crossing is inherent to research in the field of Composition and Rhetoric as well. In an effort to respond to the many issues that stem from the study of language and its use in ...

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...re within which writing is created, evaluated and taught.

Works Cited

Faigley, Lester. "Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal. College English. Vol. 48: 6 (1986).

Lauer, Janice M. and Andrea Lunsford. "The Place of Rhetoric and Composition in Doctoral Studies." Ed. Andrea Lunsford, Helene Moglen and James F. Slevin. The Future of Doctoral Studies in English. New York: Modern Language Association, 1989. 106-110

Lunsford, Andrea A. "Rhetoric and Composition." Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literature. Ed.Joseph Gibaldi. New York: Modern Language Association, 1992.

Miller, Susan. Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.

Murray, Donald M. Rhetoric and Composition: A Sourcebook for Teachers. Ed. Richard L. Graves. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton Cook, 1984. 89-94.