Welcome to Introduction to Writing Studies, a course geared towards examining the dynamism of writing. In today's hyper-connective world with continuously evolving technologies, the demands of communication continue to grow and transform as the writing spaces we inhabit continue to develop and shift. Beyond our examination of the ways emerging technologies and web based writing spaces transform writing and communication, we will also examine the discipline of rhetoric. We will examine how communities of practice (also known as discourse communities) shape writing practices, utilize genres, and communicate in intricate ways to achieve goals. Our exploration will also examine the constructedness of writing to better understand how writers construct texts, how readers construct meaning from texts, and how misconceptions of writing practices emerge. Additionally, we will look at how our perceptions of writing are shaped by past experiences and explore how our writing processes work (or at times do not work).
No one can be certain of how modes and ways of communication will transform and develop over the next few decades, but if recent developments in connectivity and information exchange are any indication of the road ahead, we should expect the evolution of how communication happens to transform with increasing rapidity. What kinds of communication and writing will you be doing in ten years? How will the communities within which you participate shape modes of communication? What kinds of identities will you assume as you write and communicate in new and more highly sophisticated ways?
The aforementioned questions are tough to answer, and even the brightest minds of today have trouble predicting exactly what to expect. Though no one is certain of what the future will hold, this course is geared towards preparing you for a new world of hyper-interactive communication. In many ways we are already living in a world of hyper-communication. With text messages, tweets, status updates, blogs, chat rooms, online games, Skype, and other genres, we are communicating in complex ways that were considered science-fiction just two decades ago.
Since we are now living and engaging in hyper digitized world, the major project for this course calls you to do an ethnographic study of a web based discourse community. According to Roger Sanjek, and author and contributor to the Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, "As a written account, an ethnography focuses on a particular population, place and time with the deliberate goal of describing it to others" (qtd. in American Ethnography Quasimonthly).
Many people are already part of online communities such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube, and on some level those digital communication spaces are mediating how communication happens. On the surface we use these modes of communication often, but for the final assignment of this course, your goal is to closely examine the community to understand the subtle intricacies of the community and how those impact communication. What types of identities are developed within the community you are studying? How is power brokered in the community? What is communication supposed to do in the community?
From the beginning of the term, you should collect moments of communication that occur within a digital community you are a part of. For example, if you are a part of an online gaming community, you might take screenshots of a chat room or record and transcribe some conversations about game strategy or tactics. If you're an avid user of Facebook, you might copy and paste your status updates and those updates from some close friends into a word document. What's important though is this- as the term moves forward, you should amass many examples of communication that occur in an online community you are a part of. If you are not an active member in an online community, you should gain access to a community so you can engage in this semester long project. Since the major paper for this course involves a close critical examination of how digital spaces impact and procure communication, we will look at how identity develops in online spaces, how gender emerges and is re-imagined in online communication, how digital communities broker power, and how online mediums constrain communication.
Unit 1: A study of your psychology of literacy: Where are you going, Where have you been?
The first unit of the course examines your literate past and how you became the reader and writer you are today. Unit one calls you to to think critically about past moments, experiences, and relationships that impacted your literacy development. Who were the people who shaped your conception of what good writing is? How have your reading and writing habits been influenced by people or institutions?
Unit 2: A study of your cognition of writing processes: What is it that you do when you compose?
The second unit explores writing processes and calls you to examine how you think while writing. Are there triggers that block or impede the progress of a draft? How do you define the stages of your writing process? Through our study in unit two, you should come to a new understanding regarding your writing practice.
Unit 3: Deconstructing the bridge to nowhere: Exploring how writing is constructed and how writing constructs develop
The third unit explores how language and writing are constructed and examines writing conventions across different contexts. For many years of high school, middle school, and even grade school, students are inundated with 'rules' that are set up to produce better writers. However, there often isn't enough attention focused on why conventions develop as they do. Unit three explores the constructedness of writing from two perspectives:
1. How the development of conventions shape writing rules
2. How discourse communities, rhetorical situation, and context impact the constructedness of writing
Unit 4: Contextualizing digital writing spaces: an examination of how online communities communicate
The final unit explores how discourse communities impact writing (and our focus will be on how communication happens in online discourse communities). How are we communicating in digital spaces? What new conventions are emerging to suit the goals of online communities? How do relationships develop in online spaces?
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The four units we cover intend to meet the following course outcomes, and at the commencement of the term, students should:
1. demonstrate awareness of rhetoric and an understanding of the constituents of rhetoric
2. demonstrate understanding of one's own writing process from both cognitive and psychological perspectives
3. ascertain an understanding of how discourse communities in online environments shape, mediate, and otherwise influence writing and reading practices
4. demonstrate an improved ability to understand complex texts
5. demonstrate an ability to examine and synthesize data
6. recognize various inclinations of what literacy is
7. understand ways in which genres enable discourse
8. demonstrate an ability to utilize evidence to support arguments
References
Hoyem, Martin. "Ethnography". Sanjek, Roger. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Barnard, Alan & Spencer, Jonathan Eds. American Ethnography Quasimonthly. Web. Accessed Aug. 07, 2012.
