Assignments across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing

4. Each Course Is a Community: The Discourse Communities of College Writing

DOI: 10.7330/9780874219401.c004 4 e Ac h c o u r s e i s A c o m m u n i t Y The Discourse Communities of College Writing In the discussion of genre in chapter 3, I expanded my analy­ sis of the writing assignments in my study beyond just the rhe­ torical situation of purpose and audience, and considered the social action of typified rhetorical situations—the genres of college writing. But a complete analysis of writing genres must move into even broader contexts for making meaning in the disciplines. In college writing, genres do not stand in isolation, apart from the context of wider disciplines and sub­disciplines. Genre theorists argue that genres are constituted by and, at the same time, help to constitute discourse communities (Bawarshi 2000; Miller 1994; Swales 1990). As Swales says, “genres belong to discourse communities, not to individuals” (9). In this chap­ ter, then, I move beyond genre and discuss what the writing assignments in my research reveal about the discourse commu­ nities of academic disciplines as well as the broader discourse community of academic writing in the United States. I explore two primary questions: Is there such a thing as “academic writ­ ing”? And in what ways are expectations for writing similar and different across courses in the same discipline? To define the concept “discourse community,” I rely on the seminal work of John Swales (1990), who posits that a discourse community has the following qualities: • A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. 54 DAN mELzER • A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunica­ tion among its members. • A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms pri­ marily to provide information and feedback. • A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. • In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis. • A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal experience. (24–27) With Swales’s definition in mind, I ask of the assignments in my research: Is there a broadly shared set of goals across all the assignments, or within specific disciplines? Are there shared academic genres across and/or within disciplines? What discoursal experience is needed to be a successful aca­ demic writer? These are some of the questions I explore in this chapter. “the Formal essay”: aCaD em i C DisCoUrse as g en eri C Judy Gill feels that “there in fact exists something we can call generic academic writing standards and expectations that are cross­ or trans­disciplinary” (Gill 1996, 166). A number of schol­ ars have posited, like Gill, that it’s possible to broadly define the values and expectations of college writing. Michael Pemberton, reflecting upon academic writing and the role of the writing center, argues that some ‘transdisciplinary’ textual or rhetorical features also exist, features that might be addressed successfully by tutors in a writing center. The need to support generalizations with spe­ cific evidence, for example, may display some subtle variations depending upon the discipline and audience addressed in par­ ticular texts, but the fact that there must be some relationship between generalizations made and evidence offered in support is a feature common to virtually all academic writing. (Pemberton 1995, 118) Each Course Is a Community 55 Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki echo Gill and Pemberton’s assertion that transdisciplinary academic writing features do exist on a broad level (2006). In their research into aca­ demic writing at George Mason University, Thaiss and Zawacki found that, for both students and faculty, there are features of academic writing that cut across disciplines. These features include, “clear evidence in writing that the writer(s) have been persistent, open­minded, and disciplined in study,” “the domi­ nance of reason over emotion or sensual perception,” and “an imagined reader who is coolly rational, reading for information, and intending to formulate a reasoned response” (5–7). Thaiss and Zawacki also found “an overwhelming amount of common­ ness of an array of terms such as ‘evidence,’ ‘organized,’ and ‘grammar’” (88). Qualities such as rational inquiry, evidence from research, and clear and grammatically correct writing are presented as features of college writing throughout Patrick Sullivan and Howard Tinberg’s What is “College-Level” Writing? In the first chapter of the book, Sullivan defines academic writing as: • A...