Exploring multimodality and transfer from the perspective of transduction (a multidisciplinary term that describes a change in form as something moves from one state to another) reveals conceptual overlap between the two concepts. Transfer is fundamentally multimodal because anything moving from one "place" to the next must change its…

Since Fall 2004, the Undergraduate Catalog at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville has listed a two-part "Communicating through Writing" (WC) requirement, which includes two first-year composition courses and an upper-division course in one of thirty-five majors. Most students fulfill the former by enrolling in English 101 and 102, a…

This article presents a written version of the address the author gave at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) meeting in San Francisco on March 12, 2009. In this address, the author talks about the wonder of writing and discusses how writing has been considered sacred. Reading and writing are associated with inwardness…

Argues that the metaphor of writing as a tool is still used because the ideas of Kenneth Burke have not been applied comprehensively. Argues further that Burke's "A Grammar of Motives" implies a radical change in what it means to teach students to analyze and produce texts--a change leading up to and beyond Freireian pedagogy. (RS)

Examines the pitfalls of teaching and conceiving of writing in terms of content and form. Suggests that writing instructors and their students should think in rhetorical terms: how discourse responds to other discourse or to its audience, i.e., how it most effectively gets the job done. (TB)

Notes that the most pressing question occupying scholars in rhetoric and composition involves defining the relationship between the writing classroom and public discourse. Claims I. Young's notion of the ideal city, developed in her 1990 book "Justice and the Politics of Difference," can serve as a model to help theorize the connections…

Through the art of the essay, as conceived by E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and others, college readers and writers can play a role in the continual weaving of the fabric of civilization--not by delivering lessons, or sermons, or polemical arguments, but by participating in the essayistic dialogue about what comprises a healthy human community…

This paper suggests that, based on certain rhetorical theories and on one instructor's experience, writing structures--both deep and surface--potentially serve three positive purposes: facilitation of thought, foundation for growth, and voice validation. The paper contends that the ultimate effect of these attributes is freedom. Concerns of some…

Describes the author's personal difficulties in trying to write this essay. Discusses David Bartholomae's review of the author's book, "The Making of Knowledge in Composition," and the author's correspondence with Bartholomae regarding professional ethos and the definition of common sense. (PRA)

There is something unfortunate occurring in the discourse of writing instruction--something that requires scholars to present themselves as teachers who have found the answer and have students to prove it. Typically, the paper written by the composition scholar stakes a claim about the teaching of writing; compares that claim with others of…

Argues that, during writing instruction, students must be given the opportunity to go public with their composing processes. Discusses the theoretical structure of Robert Zoellner's pedagogy, and recommends its use for teaching the writing process. (PRA)

Examines Robert Zoellner's talk-write pedagogy in the context of what composition researchers and theorists are saying, with the aim of showing the cogency of Zoellner's ideas. Examines his application of the tenets of behavioral science as the basis for his talk-write pedagogy. Discusses modeling and the question-and-answer of the pedagogy. (PRA)

Explains how the Sophistic tradition, an alternative to the Platonic-Aristotelian rhetorical tradition, provides the historical foundation for a paralogic rhetoric that treats discourse production and analysis as open-ended dialogic activities and not as a codifiable system. Argues that teachers must examine the powerful paralogic/hermeneutic…

Asserts that there is a need for writing teachers to reevaluate the metaphors they use to think about composition. Retraces the steps taken by Robert Zoellner in 1969 to reconsider the instrumental metaphors used by composition theories in the 1990s. Offers a criticism of the writing process model proposed by Linda Flower and John Hayes. (PRA)

Suggests that technical writers should emphasize similarities rather than differences between oral and written discourse. Argues that implicit rules of conversation have much to offer the technical writer. Illustrates how the principles of conversation can be applied to the process of writing instructions. (KEH)