I'm still having some trouble defining the following terms:
- deconstruction -- I think this is being used differently in composition than it is in literature, maybe. In the notes, someone has written "Derrida - valuing differences and addressing social constructs." In literature, I understand deconstructionism to mean analysis to tease out ways in which the text contradicts itself. So this is slightly different here.
- expressive discourse - I understand expressive writing and I understand discourse. Not positive how they fit together.
- genre theory -- I know that we're focusing on the academic essay as a genre here, and that there are many other genres available to us in composition, but I'm not sure of the theoretical underpinnings.
- pentad -- I understand this is a visual representation of Burke's dramatism. But, as I understand it, it seems little more than a relic.
- Several authors here: Joseph Harris, Lester Faigley, etc.
I am simply amazed by the work done in the keyword document and I hope to contribute.
Hi Nancy. Regarding genre theory, it seems that it is the theory that describes the effect of genre on writing. It says that genre clarifies but it also constrains. The idea, I think, is that if you're writing in a specific genre then you know what sort of thing you should be writing, which can be good as well as bad. I'm sure you've heard people discussing the idea of the Iowa Workshop Story- that they're all the same in important ways. Whether or not that's true I don't know, but genre theory would say that writers there are writing to fill a specific genre. You're unlikely to find a story coming out of a workshop that ends in everyone living happily ever after. You're very likely to find disillusioned characters with unhappy pasts. Our Keywords book cite Freadman as having said that “To understand the rules of the genre is to know when and where it is appropriate to do and say certain things, and to know that to say and do them at inappropriate places and times is to run the risk of having them ruled out” (Freadman 1994, 59). I hope this explanation helps some!
ReplyDeleteExpressive discourse is a form of writing or speech that focuses on the writer or speaker's identity and experiences. Examples of an expressive discourse includes a personal narrative. Expressive discourse can function as a means of generating ideas, yet Jeanette Harris argued in her 1989 book "Expressive Discourse" that the term is so poorly defined that examples classified under expressive discourse could be identified as more precise and accurate terms.
ReplyDeleteConcerning your fifth note, I'd like to treat the two names as separate keywords.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Harris: Duke University; Monographs, Teaching writing using a variety of media (film, text, etc.) http://josephharris.me/cv/
Lester Faigley: UT Austin; Impacts of digital technologies on writing, Visual rhetoric, Written argument, Travel literature; http://www.utexas.edu/cola/rhetoric/faculty/faigley
Deconstruction
ReplyDeleteDeconstruction can be likened to analysis or viewed as a process of analysis wherein a text is broken down to understand how its various parts contribute to the text (or effect of the text) as a whole. Can be thought of as a process of “reverse engineering,” pulling something apart to see how it works. “Deconstruction” is not a synonym for “destruction.” Deconstruction includes “reading against the grain,” which is a process of taking a text and using its own reasoning against itself, to see how its own reasoning might undermine itself. Deconstructive readers are interested in errors, gaps, ironies, silences, paradoxes, shifts or breaks, contradictions, conflicts, fissures, digressions, ambiguities, multiple meanings, linguistic quirks, intertextuality, corruptions. Deconstructive readers look at the ways a text says something different from what it intends to mean or the ways texts don’t always mean what the say.