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1404 articlesMarch 2015
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Reasons for Using English or the Local Language in the Genre of Job Advertisements: Insights From Interviews With Dutch Job Ad Designers ↗
Abstract
Research problem: This study provides insight into practitioners' reasons for choosing a particular language (English versus the local language) in the genre of job ads in countries where English is a foreign language (EFL countries). Scholarly publications and public discourse have suggested reasons for language choice, but these were not based on the perspectives of practitioners. Research questions: (1) What reasons do Dutch job ad writers give for using all-English, all-Dutch, or partly English ads and what genre factors inform these reasons? (2) To what extent do the reasons given by Dutch job ad makers for using all-English,P all-Dutch, or partly English ads complement reasons mentioned in publications on job ads? Literature review: Genre theory identifies three factors as important determinants of genre: contextual factors (such as characteristics of the organization and the sector in which the genre is produced), reader-writer factors (characteristics of the genre's target audience and author), and textual factors (the genre's content, structure, and wording). The reasons mentioned for the use of all-English job ads are that English is the organization's corporate language and that the organization is looking for English-speaking candidates. The reasons given for the use of job ads in the local language are that English is less clear than the local language and that English words are strange and exaggerated compared to equivalents in the local language. Among the reasons mentioned for the use of partly English job ads are that English words attract more attention than equivalents in the local language and that English job titles sound more modern and have more status than equivalent job titles in the local language. Methodology: In this qualitative study, we conducted 25 interviews with practitioners who designed job ads in the Netherlands, selected because they had recently placed an all-English, an all-Dutch, or a partly English job ad in a Dutch newspaper. They were asked an open-ended question about their reasons behind the language used in the job ad they placed. Interview data were labelled and categorized; subsequently, patterns were identified across categories. Results and conclusions: The interviews showed that all three types of genre factors-contextual, reader-writer, and textual-underlie practitioners' language choices. Practitioners mentioned the same types of factors that were mentioned in publications on job ads, but gave a greater variety of reasons for language choice. Of the reasons mentioned by the practitioners, the large majority were not given in publications. These findings underline the importance of obtaining text producers' perspectives and can be used to sensitize both novice and experienced professional Human Resources writers to the relevance of genre factors in language choice. A limitation of the present study is that the desired effects of language choice mentioned by the respondents were not verified with the target group of the job ads. Therefore, future research on language choice in workplace writing should test whether particular language choices in job ads actually achieve the recruitment effects Human Resource Manager professionals expect.
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Research problem: Examines how Korean entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurship program revised their English-language slide decks for their competitive presentations (“pitches”) by reusing content from professional communication genres, including their own documents and feedback from potential stakeholders in their target markets. Research question: As entrepreneurs learn to pitch ideas to unfamiliar markets, how do they revise their slide decks by reusing content from other professional communication genres? Specifically, what strategies do they follow when reusing content? Literature review: The professional communication literature demonstrates that reuse tends to take place in documentation cycles where documents are set in interaction with each other and that reuse itself involves rhetorical choices. Yet such reuse strategies have not been examined in existing studies of entrepreneurial pitches in marketing and technology commercialization. Methodology: In an exploratory qualitative study, researchers textually analyzed 14 sets of five related document genres in the archives of an entrepreneurship program. These genres represented a full cycle of activity: application to the program, initial pitches, initial feedback from program personnel, detailed feedback from representative stakeholders in the target market, and revised pitches. Interviews and surveys of program personnel further contextualize the data. Results and conclusions: Entrepreneurs reused content from professional communication genres, including those that they had generated as well as those generated by market stakeholders. However, reuse went simply beyond accepting and copying feedback; as they learned to make their pitch arguments, these entrepreneurs had to weigh this feedback and engage with it critically. This reuse can be characterized as Accepting (repeating verbatim or in close paraphrase); Continuing (extending lines of argument); and Resisting (rebutting lines of argument). These findings suggest that entrepreneurs need all three strategies as they refine their pitches for their target markets.
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Abstract
This research aims to analyse the situation of the multiliteracy of natural sciences students in their academic writing in the German university context and to identify students' awareness and applications of their multilingual writing competence as well as how they make use or not of it in their academic writing process. English has the status of lingua franca in this context and German is used in informal settings. Minutes, reports, reviews, Bachelor or Master theses have to be written either in English or German, depending on the study programme. As Canagarajah (2013) has pointed out, multilingual scholarship offers huge resources in terms of diversity of thinking because language carries with it a system of knowledge and thinking from which both their representatives and the writing scientific community can benefit. The empirical, qualitative study of this paper is based on interviews conducted with participants of the course 'Akademisches Schreiben fur Naturwissenschaftler/innen' (Academic Writing for Natural Sciences Students) offered by the International Writing Centre at Göttingen University. The qualitative content analysis is based on portfolio activities and interviews conducted with students. This paper presents the first results of our data analysis.
February 2015
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Examining Emotional Rules in the English Classroom: A Critical Discourse Analysis of One Student’s Literary Responses in Two Academic Contexts ↗
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Current research suggests that emotional investment is essential for helping students critically engage in learning in the English language arts classroom. Yet, scholarship on the role of emotion in literary response has been limited, focusing chiefly on considerations of the merits of personal response—a focus that reflects dominant theories of emotion as located in the individual. Tethered to the personal, emotion has been conceptualized as a peripheral part of literary engagement—as something to be ignored, leveraged, or gotten beyond in an effort to move students toward more substantial textual engagement. This paper proposes that a sociocultural theory of emotion provides a new lens for considering how emotion engages students in literature learning. In this view, emotion is in the fabric of every classroom context, manifesting as “emotional rules” that have material implications for learning. Constructed using methods from Critical Discourse Analysis, the case study outlined in this paper demonstrates how emotional rules were perceived, taken up, and even transformed by one student, Nina, in two discussion contexts—a seminar circle and a literature circle—playing a central role in the work of literature learning in each context. Our findings advance scholarship on the relationship between response and emotion by suggesting that emotion cannot simply be invited in or left out of the literature classroom in the interest of moving students toward literary engagement, but instead is already fundamentally a part of literary engagement and must be noticed, interrogated, and sometimes disrupted in the interest of expanding interpretive possibilities.
January 2015
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Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook and The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers: Matthew B. Miles, A. Michael Huberman, and Johnny Saldaña. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014. 381 pp. Johnny Saldaña. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2013. 303 pp. ↗
Abstract
Johnny Saldana and his late coauthors, Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman, accomplish at least two ambitious goals in Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook and The Coding Manual for...
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Introducing Agile Project Management Strategies in Technical and Professional Communication Courses ↗
Abstract
Technical and professional communicators spend a good deal of time managing teams and documentation projects, and their organizations are increasingly introducing new project management practices. This article introduces Agile project management strategies that were created in software development environments, exploring how these iterative strategies can complement the traditional linear project management approaches that are taught in technical and professional communication (TPC) programs. To do so, the author presents a brief history of Agile, a case study of how the author applied specific Agile strategies in a grant writing course, and a comprehensive set of tips for implementing Agile in other TPC courses.
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Science reporting in the media often involves contested issues, such as, for example, biotechnology, climate change, and, more recently, geoengineering. The reporter’s framing of the issue is likely to influence readers’ perception of it. The notion of framing is related to how individuals and groups perceive and communicate about the world. Framing is typically studied by means of content analysis, focusing primarily on the “stories” told about the issue. The current article, on the other hand, springs from an interest in writer behavior. I wish to investigate how news writers strategically exploit their rhetorical competence when reporting on contested issues, and I argue that text linguistics represents a fruitful approach to studying this process. It is suggested that genre features may serve as a basis for identifying key framing locations in the text, and that the notion of evaluation plays an important part in writers’ framing activity. I discuss these aspects through a case study involving six news reports on a geoengineering experiment.
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Baby, We Were Born to Tweet: Springsteen Fans, The Writing Practices of In Situ Tweeting, and the Research Possibilities for Twitter ↗
Abstract
[M]y goal is not to attempt to show uniqueness in fan tweets; even those that might be considered run-of-the-mill fan-type writings that express fan-type adoration are important and meaningful. Rather, I present composing practices as suggested by a grounded theory approach so fan writing on Twitter may begin to be understood on its own terms and not through pre-conceived (and often incorrect) notions about fans, fan writing, and writing on Twitter.
2015
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Abstract
In this participatory article (with suggested activities, check-ins with the body, and freewriting), we use collaborative narrative inquiry to unpack considerations that underlie the planning, facilitation, and processing of a series of movement-based workshops. Critiquing liberal multiculturalist approaches in writing centers, we argue against the all-too-common flattening of differences and think through how embodiment helps us "work the hyphens" (Fine, 1998) or find "third ways" In contrast to role-playing scenarios that characterize many tutor education practices, we suggest that centering the body through movement allows for an alternative and more generative way to interrogate and restructure racial power. In total, we argue for attention to the body and embodied practice to engage tutors (and all writing center staff, directors included) in developing critical praxis for racial justice. For us, praxis comes in the form we call "critical tutor education," which is essential for writing centers committed to more equitable relations and practices, as we continue to strive for the "ought to be" (Horton as cited in Branch, 2007).
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This article presents and illustrates a qualitative research methodology for studies of uptake. It does so by articulating a theoretical framework for qualitative investigations of uptake and detailing a research study designed to invoke and capture students’ uptakes in a first-year writing classroom. The research design sought to make uptake visible by disrupting habitual uptakes and encouraging students to design their own uptakes. The study employed the qualitative research methods of observation, survey, interview, and text analysis to uncover uptake processes and influential factors that inform them. Ultimately, this article argues that a disruptive methodology can provide much needed insight into how individuals take up texts and make use of their discursive resources.
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In this article, I challenge the scholarly consensus that suggests students only rarely forge meaningful connections between the genres they compose in different domains of writing (Reiff and Bawashi; Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak). I argue that the genre and domain categories composition researchers have imposed through data collection and analysis account for at least some of what has been identified as students’ inability to articulate how they transfer prior knowledge. When four focus groups and ten college juniors and seniors were interviewed and prompted to compare and contrast their own writing from various contexts, they forged idiosyncratic, action-oriented metageneric connections that are not limited by domains. My data, illustrated here by close discussions of four of these students, suggests that this student-driven metagenre-invention process may have three benefits for students, teachers, and researchers: it enables students to access prior genre knowledge that they may not have otherwise considered relevant; it enables students to re-envision their goals as writers; and it offers researchers and teachers insight into ways we might foster transfer by attending to students’ idiosyncratic metageneric connections.
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This article situates one possible future for rhetorical genre studies (RGS) in the translingual, multimodal composing practices of linguistically diverse composition students. Using focus group data collected with L1 (English as a first language) and L2 (English as a second language) students at two large public state universities, the researcher examines connections between students’ linguistic repertoires and their respective approaches to multimodal composition. Students at both universities took composition courses that incorporate rhetorical genre studies approaches to teaching writing in conventional print and multimodal forms. Findings suggest L2 students exhibit advanced expertise and rhetorical sensitivity when layering meaning through multimodal composition. This expertise comes in part from L2 students’ experiences combining and crossing various modes when they cannot exclusively rely on words to communicate in English. Through this evidence, the researcher argues the translingual practices of L2 students can bridge connections and help develop pedagogical applications of multimodality and RGS, primarily by helping writing instructors teach genres as fluid and socially situated. In addition, the researcher presents a methodology for analyzing the embodied practices of composition students, which can further expand how genres are theorized and taught in composition courses.
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Abstract
The Virtual Workplace Ethnography is a first-year composition assignment that positions students as knowledge makers by requiring them to apply a theoretical lens (“Working Knowledge”) to a video representation of a workplace. The lens provides multiple terms for analysis of workplace behaviors in context, providing a scaffolding for apprentice ethnographers that allows them to take an informed stance on their research. The “virtual” aspect addresses the complex ethical issues raised by ethnography by substituting a fictitious setting for an actual site. The essay explores the challenges of the assignment, offering examples of student texts and student metacommentaries on the work. The essay argues that this assignment addresses longstanding concerns about the challenges of making meaningful writing assignments in FYC and concludes by exploring the potential of the assignment in distance education.
December 2014
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The Impact of Social Networking and a Multiliteracies Pedagogy on English Language Learners’ Writer Identities ↗
Abstract
This study examined the impact of using a multiliteracies pedagogy and the social networking site (SNS), Ning, to help 6th grade English language learners (ELLs) develop their writer identities, with the purpose of increasing the students’ confidence, sense of self, and language and literacy skills. To this end, we were interested in whether and how the development of a writer identity and an increase in social presence on the Ning would translate into face-to-face connections in the physical classroom and an induction into the academic learning community – a space in which the students may have previously felt intimidated. In doing this, we employed a qualitative case study analysis to investigate the experiences of two ELLs at an elementary school in Toronto, Canada. Our study found that incorporating multimodal tools and an SNS allowed the students to more freely express themselves; to share their work and their personalities with peers, which made the writing assignments more meaningful and engaging; and provided a platform for students to negotiate their values and beliefs. Ultimately, the increased interactions with peers online and the development of this new English-language literate identity translated into the development of students’ individual voices, a sense of ownership of English, and an increased social presence in the classroom.
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Where Did We Come From and Where Are We Going? Examining Authorship Characteristics in Technical Communication Research ↗
Abstract
This study explores the characteristics of authors who have published in technical communication journals between 2008 and 2012 to generate insights into who is actively contributing to scholarship in the field. These insights drive a broader discussion regarding programmatic implications and interdisciplinary approaches to research. Research questions: (1) Who is publishing in technical communication journals? In which departments are they housed and in which departments did they receive their Ph.D. training? (2) What relationship exists between an author's departments (current and Ph.D.) and the publication venues he or she chooses? (3) What relationship exists between an author's department (current and Ph.D.) and the type of research he or she produces? (4) What relationship exists between an author's department (current and Ph.D.) and collaboratively authored articles? Also, is there a relationship between doctoral training outside the US and collaboratively authored articles? (5) Among authors with Ph.D.'s in technical communication, is there a relationship between doctoral program and research output (collaboratively authored articles and research method)? Literature review: All disciplines, especially maturing disciplines, must examine and evaluate the research its scholars produce in order to identify trends that signal growth and areas that require additional growth. Previous research indicates that departments in which people trained and where they work influence the research profiles of individuals, and by extension, the field. This is particularly true in technical communication, whose research features a plurality of methods, a positive attribute of the field. However, an uneven distribution of research methods used in the field also presents potential areas for growth. Methodology: A data set of 674 authors who have published in the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (TPC), Technical Communication Quarterly, and Journal of Business and Technical Communication (JBTC), between 2008 and 2012 was coded for current department, Ph.D. department, department with a technical communication degree program, research method, and collaboratively authored articles. Data were analyzed using contingency table analysis and correspondence analysis. Results and discussion: Authors from English departments constitute nearly 30% of the sample; authors from information systems and technology departments and management, business, and economics departments made up more than 20% of the total sample. A little over 20% of the sample received a Ph.D. degree in technical communication. Authors from information systems and technology departments and management, business, and economics departments are highly associated with TPC. Authors from English departments and writing departments were associated with TCQ and JBTC. TC is associated with authors from education departments and human-centered design departments. Authors from information systems and technology departments and management, business, and economics departments were associated with surveys and experiments. Authors from English departments were associated with case study and mixed methods research. Non-US authors and ones from engineering, computer science, linguistics, information systems and technology, and management, business, and economics departments were all highly associated with collaboratively authored articles. These results provide insights into which disciplines are most influential and opportunities to consider the approaches and training of our diverse population of scholars in an effort to build a cohesive body of research. The results are limited by the time frame of the study, and future studies could examine a more extensive sample to examine shifts in authorship characteristics over time.
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Factors That Enable and Challenge International Engineering Communication: A Case Study of a United States/British Design Team ↗
Abstract
Research problem: In recent years, many businesses have become involved in internationalized projects, yet understanding the dynamics of engineering communication in virtual dispersed teams is limited. Research questions: How do the factors mentioned in the literature function in an international engineering project? Are there factors that enhance or constrain the work in an engineering setting that are not mentioned in previous studies? Literature review: Existing knowledge on the contextual factors that affect virtual international professional communication is mainly built on the study of the communication practices of students or business professionals who are not engineers. Results of that literature have identified factors that enhance communication for dispersed virtual teams (which include cross-cultural training, using appropriate communication technology, face-to-face communication opportunities, respect for partners, regularly scheduled meetings, a common language, a common discipline, and cross-cultural understandings though popular media). There are factors that challenge communication for dispersed virtual teams (which include differing cultural assumptions, differing cultural communication styles, US Government export control regulations, proximity and time issues, and differing levels of perceived power and influence). Methodology: This study involved observing international engineer meetings in the US and the UK and interviewing 19 engineers leading an international design team. The participants worked for the same international company with about half from the US and half in Great Britain. Results and discussion: Many of the factors identified in general professional communication studies held true for this context. But some features were unique to an engineering environment that the literature had not previously mentioned, including iplanning for and working with intercultural dispersed virtual engineering teams and that people need to consider many complexities of culture that affect communication practices. Because this study observed one team in the context of only two cultures, future research may determine whether these factors are more widely found in other teams, workplaces, and cultures. Future research may also determine the relative levels of influence of the contextual factors on international dispersed virtual engineering teams. In addition, the study of engineers learning to communicate in international settings may be illuminating.
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Abstract
In this article, we describe a project in which undergraduate business seniors at a university in the Arabian Gulf created or evaluated the chapters of an iBook as part of their final course in business communication. Students were surveyed throughout the project, and they also participated in a focus group discussion at the end. The aim was to evaluate their experience with learning from a peer-generated iBook and to identify any motivating factors behind it. The study showed that incorporating mobile learning into the business communication classroom was highly meaningful for the students involved for a range of different reasons.
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This article explores how rhetorical myth can be used as a tool for persuading employees to accept change and to maintain consensus during the process. It defines rhetorical myth using three concepts: chronographia (a rhetorical interpretation of history), epideictic prediction (defining a present action by assigning praise and blame to both past and future), and communal markers (using Burkean identification and rhetorically defined boundary objects to define a community). The article reports on a 3-year ethnographic study that documents the development of a rhetorical myth at Iowa State University’s Printing Services department as it underwent changes to its central software system.
November 2014
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Abstract
This November issue of RTE once again contains the annual “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” This bibliography includes abstracts of selected empirical research studies as well as titles of other related studies and books published between June 2013 and May 2014. Abstracts are only written for research studies that employed systematic analysis of phenomena using experimental, qualitative, ethnographic, discourse analysis, literary critical, content analysis, or linguistic analysis methods. Priority is given to research most directly related to the teaching of English language arts. Citations in the “Other Related Research” sections include additional important research studies in the field, position papers from leading organizations, or comprehensive handbooks.
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Although current research and professional development on teaching of argumentative writing focus on “best practices,” we offer the construct of argumentative epistemologies to consider how English language arts teachers approach teaching and how they understand their students’ capacity for and interest in argumentation. Drawing on historical emphases in writing theory, we describe and illustrate three argumentative epistemologies: structural, ideational, and social practice. In an observational study of 31 high school English language arts classrooms, teachers’ enacted writing instruction foregrounded either formal elements of students’ arguments, the ideas and content of students’ arguments, or consideration of the complexity and variability of social contexts within which students wrote arguments. Case study analysis of three teachers illustrates the three argumentative epistemologies, how these epistemologies were socially constructed during instructional conversations, and how they were made visible through language use in and about classroom literacy events. These argumentative epistemologies have significance for teacher education, school writing research, and professional development, furthering our understanding of how and why teachers choose to adopt particular approaches to argumentative writing.
October 2014
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Poetic Signs of Third Place: A Case Study of Studentdriven Imitation in a Shelter for Young Homeless People in Copenhagen ↗
Abstract
During a series of writing workshops at a shelter for young homeless people in Copenhagen, I examined to what extent the literary practice of student-driven imitation with its emphasis on self-governance and a dialogical approach can engage marginalized learners in reading and writing. I found that studentdriven imitation had the potential to engage different kinds of writers and that they adopted the practice with ease and confidence. In addition, I experienced that the residents’ preferred genre was poetry and that they generally sought a neutral space with low attention to social status, characterized by dialogue and a homely feel. This space is comparable to Oldenburg’s third place, and I suggest that poetry is a textual marker of this space. Reading, however, is free. —Quintilian (X.I.19)
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Abstract
A case study of a graduate-level community literacy seminar that involved a tutoring project with adult digital literacy learners, this essay illustrates the value of community outreach and service-learning for graduate students in writing studies. Presenting multiple perspectives through critical reflection, student authors describe how their experiences contextualized, enhanced, and complicated their theoretical knowledge of public rhetoric and community literacy. Inspired by her students’ reflections, the faculty co-author issues a call to graduate programs in writing, rhetoric, literacy studies, and technical communication to develop a conscious commitment to graduate students’ civic engagement by supporting opportunities to learn, teach, and research with community partners.
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Abstract
This article describes protocological rhetoric as a conceptual tool for exploring and changing institutions. Protocological rhetoric is an extension of two lines of thought: Porter, Sullivan, Blythe, Grabill, and Miles's institutional critique and Science & Technology Studies's (STS) concept of information infrastructure. As a result, protocological rhetoric imagines institutions as networked information infrastructures. This article describes the method and provides an example through historical case study. I suggest that the approach provides methods for actively transforming institutions.
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Abstract
Visual sign systems have become an essential means of communication in places where large numbers of people of different nationalities gather, such as at international airports and the Olympic Games. That they can effectively increase accessibility among users not necessarily sharing a common language speaks to their potential usefulness in other situations. A homeless shelter in a western North Carolina community received funding to build a new facility. With the clientele's widely diverse communication abilities, including those who are illiterate or have limited reading skills, those who are non-native speakers knowing little to no English, and those who are coming from different cultural contexts, a visual sign system was designed to facilitate navigation for all visitors. Using Peirce's theory of signs, Neurath's ISOTYPE, and the least action principle borrowed from physics as a framework, this case study shows how the signs were designed and usability tested to ensure increased accessibility.
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This article examines the challenges resulting from the regulation of written discourse on food packages. It uses as a case study Hong Kong’s strict new food-labeling law that requires distributers and retailers to remove certain nutritional claims from packages of imported food before they sell them. This practice of redacting unlawful text on packages requires that distributers and retailers engage in complex processes of discursive reasoning, and it sometimes results in packages that are difficult for customers to interpret. The case study highlights important issues in the regulation of commercial texts concerning collaboration, intertextuality, and the conflicts that can arise when the principals, authors, and animators of such texts have different agendas.
September 2014
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Abstract
Studies of peer review in ESL classes typically focus on student attitudes and experiences. In contrast, teachers’ perceptions of and experiences with peer review have not been the focus of much scholarly attention. This case study explored one experienced teacher’s perspectives on peer review sessions in ESL classes. The study was conducted in the English language institute at a large urban university in the southeastern United States between Fall 2009 and Summer 2010. Shelley, the focal ESL instructor, was selected purposefully for her extensive use of peer review sessions in academic reading and writing classes. Classroom observations and interviews were subsequently analyzed using direct interpretation method (Creswell, 2007). The findings of the study shed light on the process of peer review sessions and their advantages and disadvantages from an experienced teacher’s point of view. Triangulation of the data, thick description of the context and procedures, a detailed discussion of the results, and the researchers’ reflexivity contribute to the reliability and validity of the findings. With its focus on the teacher’s perspective and experiences, the findings of this study may inform educators about the process of peer review and its pros and cons in ESL classes.
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Abstract
Research problem: The question: How Korean entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurship program revised their slide decks for their presentations (“pitches”) in response to professional communication genres representing feedback from potential stakeholders in their target markets is examined. Research questions: As entrepreneurs learn to pitch ideas to unfamiliar markets, how do they revise their slide decks for their pitches when interacting with other professional communication genres that represent the concerns of market stakeholders? Specifically, what changes do entrepreneurs make to the claims, evidence, and complexity of arguments in their pitches? Literature review: The professional communication literature demonstrates that the revision process tends to take place in documentation cycles where documents are set in interaction with each other. Yet such revision processes are not studied in detail in existing studies of entrepreneurial pitches in marketing and technology commercialization. Methodology: In this exploratory qualitative study, researchers textually analyzed 14 sets of five related document genres in the archives of an entrepreneurship program. These genres represented a full cycle of activity: application to the program, initial pitches, initial feedback from program personnel, detailed feedback from representative stakeholders in the target market, and revised pitches. Interviews and surveys of program personnel further contextualize the data. Results and conclusions: Entrepreneurs revised their claims and evidence based on their dialogue with their target market. Some of the entrepreneurs altered their slides to make more complex arguments rebutting stakeholders' concerns. These findings suggest that entrepreneurs engage in dialogue with their target markets, but their engagement tends to be guided by tacit, situated experience rather than through an explicit, systematized approach.
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Abstract
Reviews 417 many ways, but it confirmed for me the distance between Letters to Power and Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals. To be sure, I want all of what McCormick has to offer: I want the letter to help us rethink rhetorical history, and I want the weapons of the weak to supply learned advocacy. I'm unsure, however, that we need to Hold these projects in tandem. Dave Tell The University of Kansas Ben McCorkle, Rhetorical Delivery as Technological Discourse: A CrossHistorical Study. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Uni versity Press, 2012, xiii, 207 pp.: black and white illustration. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-8093-3067-6 At a time when media platforms for content delivery proliferate so we can stay abreast of the latest iLife gadgetry; many scholars in both rhetorical studies and new media studies have been tracking the resurgence of interest in "delivery"-both in terms of the technical apparatuses that deliver content and in the rhetorical affordances of such platforms. Rhetoricians as diverse as James Porter and Kathleen Welch tout a new era of delivery, even the ascendancy of delivery as the rhetorical canon needing attention and study in the digital age. Such, at least, is the opening premise of rhet/comp and new media scholar Ben McCorkle's first book, Rhetorical Delivery as Technological Dis course: A Cross-Historical Study, which takes stock of this "revived" interest in delivery and notes how it has assumed a position as the "central element of the rhetorical process" (xi). But McCorke's interest in delivery is not just to help assert its current eminence; rather, he seeks to examine "the dynamic that has historically existed between rhetorical delivery and...technological shifts in our society" (2). More bluntly, he argues throughout the pages of this ambitious and wide-ranging book that "delivery's status can be read as an indicator of Western culture's attempts to come to terms with newly emerging technics, media forms, and technologies" (2). To demonstrate how delivery has been key to navigating shifts in literacy and the acquisition of new communications tools and platforms, McCorkle takes a broad view, examining over 2500 years of technological innovation in writing and composing across media. We move quickly through the shift from orality to alphabetic literacy in ancient Greece, to the Ramist rhetorics of the latel5th and early 16th centuries and the birth of European printing, to the belletristic and elocutionary movements of the 18th and 19th centuries and the rise in mass printing and literacy, to the advent of mass and digital media in the early and late 20th century respectively. Each historical moment becomes a "case study" of a technological innovation in writing or literacy that McCorkle invites us to re-imagine as an example of how the 418 RHETORICA canon of delivery comes to the fore to help navigate the transition. In the process, McCorke redefines delivery as a "technological discourse" in that "theories of delivery have historically helped to foster the cultural reception of emergent technologies of writing and communication by prescribing rules or by examining and privileging tendencies that cause old and new media forms to resemble one another" (5). Take the emergence of textual literacies in ancient Greece as an exam ple. Writing about Plato's dialogues, McCorkle notes how they "are not faithful transcriptions of oral events"; rather, any given dialogue comprises a "conceptual remediation of an oral discursive practice that functions by borrowing the generic conventions of a prior mode of communication, ac complishing the dual task of making writing appear more like speech and speech more like writing" (61). While the move to print literacies might have coincided with a declining overt interest in oral delivery, those modes of delivery were nonetheless recaptured in the new technology of writing. In this fashion, McCorkle's analysis avoids technological determinism by emphasizing the interplay of older modes of delivery with newer technolo gies. For instance, when analyzing the rise of the elocutionary movement with the spread of mass printing and increasing literacy in the nineteenth century, he describes how oral delivery and printing conventions began to resemble one another: "Yet another mechanism of remediation, the elocu tionary movements advocated...
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Abstract
Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and census and economic data, this article examines the value of the GED for students at a community-based urban literacy center. After exploring assumptions about literacy implicit in the GED writing test, the article assesses the economic and noneconomic impacts of the GED, a test taken by over 700,000 adults in 2012. Because the students at this literacy center differ significantly from the national pool of GED test takers—being all women, older, and largely immigrants—the study provides information about the value of the GED for those who are particularly disadvantaged in seeking this credential.
August 2014
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Abstract
While research in L2 language and literacy in academic contexts has shed light on learning language per se (e.g., students’ development of syntactic complexity), classroom situations, in which ESL students engage in English and make it meaningful to them, have received far less attention. With a sociocultural perspective, this qualitative case study examined the discursive practices of a face-to-face community college ESL classroom and of its online discussion forums. We found that the discourse in the face-to-face classroom tended to prioritize shaping students’ academic knowledge and identity, pushing aside knowledge and identities that were peer- or life-worldbased. In contrast, the online forums afforded discourses through which students displayed peer-based, life-world, and academic knowledge and identities, while negotiating responses to academic assignments. The study suggests that classroom-based online forums can provide a space for the legitimate display of students’ nonacademic discourses in the service of academic work.
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Reconceptualizing Cosmopolitanism in Language and Literacy Education: Insights from a Singapore School ↗
Abstract
By examining how a student from Vietnam used English to interact with her peers in an English-medium secondary school in Singapore, this paper argues for an examination of language and literacy development through a cosmopolitan lens. Building on earlier research on cosmopolitanism (e.g., Campano & Ghiso, 2011; Canagarajah, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Hansen, 2010; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2010), I illustrate how a broader understanding of cosmopolitanism in language and literacy education is timely in the wake of contemporary transcultural flows that characterize globalization, the emergence of a neoliberal order in education, and a pressing need to address educational inequities encountered by the growing number of immigrant learners whose home languages may not be valued in classrooms. The data in this paper, which include politicalspeeches, school documents, and classroom interactions, are part of a larger, yearlong critical ethnographic study and are subjected to microethnographic discourse analysis (Bloome & Carter, 2014). Through investigating how local interactional events are linked to broader events in wider Singapore society, I demonstrate how my Vietnamese focal student and her Singaporean peers were able to enact and develop a cosmopolitan outlook. Implications on language and literacy development are also discussed.
July 2014
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A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch, and the Educated Vote ↗
Abstract
ABSTRACT Recently, scholars have explored the empowering potential of epistemic privilege, a concept that refers to knowledge acquired through oppression as a privilege. Advancing these conversations, this article considers epistemic privilege as a rhetorical strategy. To explore the strategy’s potential and limits, this article turns to public letters exchanged between suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, in which the mother–daughter pair deliberated over the voting rights of the immigrant and working classes. Through this case study, this article finds that a rhetoric of epistemic privilege can work to empower multiple oppressed groups and yet reify power relationships.
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Abstract
Professional identity is oft explored in the field, but such identities usually reside institutionally and may exclude women who engage in professional communication from the workplace of the home. One instantiation of this extra-institutional professionalism is mom blogs, the authors of which create content, find sponsors, and address issues important to mothers. Yet the women lack legitimacy as professionals because of the title “mommy blogger” and because of the notion that blogging is a hobby. My qualitative study explores how mom bloggers claim a professional space in communication. I interviewed 22 mom bloggers, using Faber's (2002, [18]) theory of professionalism and Durack's (1997, [17]) ideas of redefining terms, such as “workplace,” to include women. My findings show that mom bloggers engage in the characteristics of professional communicators, model egalitarian professionalism, employ an ethic of care that combats elitism, and challenge the field to include their work, from the home and through new media, as professional.
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Situating Transnational Genre Knowledge: A Genre Trajectory Analysis of One Student’s Personal and Academic Writing ↗
Abstract
Scholars have recently begun to conceive of literacy practices as drawing from resources that are simultaneously situated and extracontextual. In particular, studies of transnational literacy affirm the importance of both locality and movement in literacy studies. Continuing this inquiry into the situated and dispersed nature of transnational literacy, the author investigates the distinct effects that shuttling between national contexts have on the accumulation and use of genre knowledge. Specifically, through a case study of one Third Culture Kid student writer, the author reports on how her genre knowledge develops in response to transnational relocations between Italy and the United States and the way this transnational genre knowledge informs her writing of a high-stakes in-school genre. This case illustrates the value of rhetorical genre studies for understanding the situated and dispersed nature of transnational literacy and begins to outline the distinctiveness of transnational boundary-crossing practices.
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Abstract
On February 8, 2010, eleven student activists at the University of California–Irvine protested a speech by Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. The disruptive nature of the protest by these students—advocates of Palestinian de-occupation and members of the Muslim Student Union—led to disciplinary action against their student organization and criminal prosecution in the local county court for disturbing the peace. This essay offers the results of an interview-based study exploring the rhetorical education of five of these college activists. The interviews reveal the powerful influence of family histories of activism and thoughtful reflections on the rhetorical dynamics of the Middle East conflict within local, national, and international publics. They also show student awareness of the limitations of the liberal-deliberative rhetorics that underpin most college writing courses. That students reported only a tenuous sense of connection between college courses and self-sponsored activist education suggests that teachers and scholars of rhetoric and composition may need to give cocurricular activism more consideration in the next phase of the “social turn.”
June 2014
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Abstract
Doctoral students who seek to become part of what Geertz called “intellectual villages” (Geertz 1983: 157) must acculturate themselves into the ways of being, knowing, and especially writing in an academic discourse community. In this autobiographical case study, I use the academic writing I produced as a doctoral student to explore the process of developing an academic identity. I analyzed my writing for the absence or presence of the following rhetorical strategies: referencing conventions, use or avoidance of the scholarly I, and use of questions in the text. This critical examination of my writing illustrates the ways in which I experimented with my emerging academic identity as I struggled to begin participating meaningfully in the ongoing conversation within the discourse community I sought to join.
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“Imprison’d Wranglers”: The Rhetorical Culture of the House of Commons, 1760–1800 by Christopher Reid ↗
Abstract
Reviews Christopher Reid, "Imprison'd Wranglers": The Rhetorical Culture ofthe House ofCommons, 1760-1800, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 270 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19-958109-2 As rhetoricians expand the parameters of rhetorical histories, the inter actions between politicians and the people on "Main Street" or "out of doors" become as important as the words of famous orators. In Imprison'd Wranglers, Christopher Reid extends this approach to the eighteenth-century British Parliament. He argues for a "rhetorical culture" surrounding the House of Commons in an era when politicians became public figures. According to Reid, new relationships developed between Members and constituents with the expansion of print culture: "eloquence was flowing outside the House, to be captured, admired, or caricatured in print, before flowing back in the form of pamphlets and newspaper reports... which were read in the Chamber " (p. 14). By tracing this flow through multiple institutions and media, he produces a comprehensive account of change and continuity in parliamentary oratory. The title of Reid's book comes from William Cowper's The Task (1785), in which the poet, reading newspaper reports of debates, longs to "set th' im prison'd wranglers free." While Cowper reconstructs orators' performances, Reid examines now MPs were metaphorically "imprisoned" in the "chain of newspaper mediations that brought speech events in Westminster" to distant constituents and reassesses the rhetorical dynamics of distributing parliamentary speech in print (p. 3). By addressing "the complex reciprocity between print and oratory" in late eighteenth-century Britain, Imprison'd Wranglers complements recent work by Carolyn Eastman (A Nation ofSpeechifiers , 2009) and Sandra Gustafson (Imagining Deliberative Democracy, 2011), who explore how printed American oratory fostered new political identities in the new nation and promoted new forms of rhetorical education at the turn of the nineteenth century (Eastman, p. 10). Reid likewise studies how print reconstructions of the British Commons "brought parliamentary debate onto a broader terrain of public argument," "permanently altered the rhetorical context" of political speech, and gave the people "a stake in Parliament" (Reid, p. 11, 75). To survey the breadth of Parliament's "rhetorical culture," Reid exam ines newspapers, pamphlets, letters, collections like William Cobbett's ParliaRhetorica , Vol. XXXII, Issue 3, pp. 312-323, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 15338541 . ©2014 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights re served. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintlnfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/RH.2014.32.3.312. Reviews 313 ntaty History ofEngland, and satirical sketches (p. 3). The architecture of the Chamber, the classical curriculum, and the working conditions of newspaper reporters also come under his purview. He draws on political historians like David Cannadine and Joanna Innes but approaches parliamentary texts and practices as a historian of rhetoric. Reid compares parliamentary speaking techniques to classical and eighteenth-century rhetorical theories and ad dresses the challenges of working with transcripts of oral performances. For him, reporters transcripts matter less as accurate representations of speech than as efforts to represent "the House as a place of collective rhetorical action ... in which political arguments and meanings were forged" (p. 17). These archives, including the transcripts, the Chamber, and reporting practices, re veal how oratory circulated beyond the Chamber and brought constituents into the political nation. Imprison'd Wranglers comprises four sections: Part 1 (Chapter 2) ap plies Roxanne Mountford's "geography of a communicative event" to St. Stephen's Chapel, the home of the eighteenth-century Commons (p. 25). The three chapters of Part 2 discuss how Parliament reached the public through the "fictitious tribunals of the press" (Chapter 3), reporters who copied debates from memory (Chapter 4), and visual satirists like James Gillray (Chapter 5) (p. 75). In Part 3, Reid examines how MPs modified classical rhetorical practices including declamation (Chapter 6) and the con cept of ethos (Chapter 7) in the face of increasing publicity. Part 4 features a broader view of parliamentary rhetorical culture with a case study of the 1773 Lord Clive debates (Chapter 8) and an exploration of MPs' persuasive uses of quotation (Chapter 9). Reid concludes with...
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Abstract
The intercultural divides in values, perceptions, and interpretations of concepts have been studied extensively by international business and intercultural communication scholars. Consequentially, much effort in university classrooms is spent on focusing on the differences between groups and on finding ways to “manage” cultural diversity. What is often missed is the common ground among cultural groups and the differences within what are presumed to be homogenous groups of students. To negotiate this complexity of diversity, we describe an initiative to foster collaborative student-led analyses of a case study to open up meaningful discussions around diversity.
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Abstract
This case study, an example of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research, explores student motivations to collaborate with both peer teams and community partners in a service-learning course. Written by one instructor and three undergraduates, the article draws on personal narratives, student reflections, and a postcourse student survey. Our experiences and findings suggest that in courses like these positive extrinsic factors motivate students to collaborate in ways that the extrinsic motivators in typical assignments do not, helping to foster trust and shared goals. We also share our work as an example of how to include student voices in SoTL work.
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Abstract
Business educators recognize the importance of developing teamwork as an employability skill. However, current methods used to teach teamwork have been met with mixed results from both students and educators. This article integrates research on the importance of teamwork, team development processes, and coteaching through examining a case study wherein coteaching was used as a means of conveying teamwork concepts to students. Coteaching is an alternate approach to teaching teamwork skills. In this case, the core competencies of shared values, complementary expertise, and the willingness to experiment were critical to forming and developing a functional teaching partnership.
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The Legal and the Local: Using Disparate Impact Analysis to Understand the Consequences of Writing Assessment ↗
Abstract
In this article, we investigate disparate impact analysis as a validation tool for understanding the local effects of writing assessment on diverse groups of students. Using a case study data set from a university that we call Brick City University, we explain how Brick City’s writing program undertook a self-study of its placement exam using the disparate impact process followed by the Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Education. This three-step process includes analyzing placement rates through (1) a threshold statistical analysis, (2) a contextualized inquiry to determine whether the placement exam meets an important educational objective, and (3) a consideration of less discriminatory assessment alternatives. By employing such a process, Brick City re-conceptualized the role of placement testing and basic writing at the university in a way that was less discriminatory for Brick City’s diverse student population.
May 2014
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Abstract
If you've been in the field of user experience design, usability testing, or marketing for anytime at all, you've almost certainly come across the use of personas to help members of a cross functional design team communicate with one another about the impacts that design decisions will have on a particular user demographic. As Adlin and Pruitt (2006) explain, personas are useful because they put an individual, human face on demographic and ethnographic data which would otherwise be difficult to explain to software engineers, project managers, information product developers, and other stakeholders in a way they can easily conceptualize and apply. Usually on one sheet of paper, a persona will provide a photo of the character for the persona; a memorable name for the persona; a short bio or background information about the persona; the persona's goals for using the product being developed; a short and memorable quote from the persona which usually conveys their ethos ; and other information relevant to the use of the product being designed such as training; previous experience with similar products, or physical disabilities (such as arthritis or poor eye sight---see http://www.clemson.edu/caah/caah_mockups/persona_clemsongrad.html for an example of personas developed for the redesign of a College's website).
April 2014
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Abstract
This article presents findings from a case study of an adult literacy program. The author conducted this IRB-approved study as part of a three-year, research-based, community-engagement project that partnered the literacy program with a writing center at a large public research university. The author argues that the participatory methods afforded by community-engagement research can allow researchers to achieve insight into particular programs while contributing to local literacy. The author also argues that understanding the characteristics of particular programs can contribute to knowledge of the field of adult literacy education and help collaborators develop engagement projects that support adult literacy.
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Abstract
Between 1884 and 1926, such publishers of technological information as Henley Publishing, Audel Publishing, John Wiley, Van Nostrand, McGraw-Hill, and Practical Publications put out dozens and dozens of technical catechisms on a wide variety of technical subjects. Then, around 1926, these publishers ceased releasing texts called catechisms. What made the genre so popular? Did it disappear? The answers to these questions provide a case study of genre adaptation, genre change, and genre persistence within technical communication.
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Communication Challenges in the Hospital Setting: A Comparative Case Study of Hospitalists’ and Patients’ Perceptions ↗
Abstract
Hospitals have encountered significant changes since implementing the hospitalist model. The changes have been most prevalent in the communication between patients, primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitalists. This comparative case study examines hospitalists’ and patients’ perceptions of communication challenges. During interviews, hospitalists reported that most of their communication challenges related to patients and their families. But during group sessions, hospitalists reported that less than one third of their communication challenges related to patients and their families. A comparison of patients’ and hospitalists’ perceptions demonstrates that there are critical gaps in patient education that affect patients’ care and their trust in their caregivers.
March 2014
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Abstract
Literacy brokers—defined as people who assist others with reading and writing—have gained increasing attention in Literacy and Composition Studies (for example, Jerskey; Lillis and Curry; Lunsford). Yet their analytical richness has been marginally examined or subsumed under already established terms such as sponsors of literacy. This essay seeks to reclaim the significance of literacy brokers in doing critical emotional work through what I call literacy as affinity. In this ethnographic study of transnational literacies of Romanian immigrants, I show that as literacy brokers move across contexts, they accumulate knowledge and develop a bi-institutional perspective. In doing so, these brokers serve more than instrumental ends; they perform literacy as affinity by brokering personal experiences and languages of nation-states and by participating in advocacy for the sake of others.
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Abstract
This article reports on a case study evaluating lecturers' experiences of their own affective writing process using a reflective critical incident analysis. While the cognitive-affective focus of academic writing has been explored previously from a collaborative perspective (Benton et al. 1984), this current study takes the individual writer as the unit of analysis. There are several reasons why lecturers need to write. Foremost among these should be that when they write, they are providing a positive model for students, and are helping to demystify the act of writing. Scholarly writing can be a struggle, and by doing so ourselves, we learn empathy for our students. In reality, many lecturers are facing the need for increasing their publications output. In terms of writing for publication, Murray (2013) has advised that busy academics must develop productive writing processes, and this may mean changing writing behaviours.Affective conditions such as sense of class community, self-efficacy and writing apprehension are known factors affecting writing behaviour and performance. A blended accredited professional development module entitled ‘Writing and Disseminating Research’ is discussed as a way to afford lecturers opportunities to develop writing skills that may also promote positive affective conditions. Data suggests that the pedagogic intervention resulted in greater confidence in terms of participants’ critical writing skills and provided a suitable environment for affective conditions to flourish. Four themes emerged from the analysis of the critical incidents on writing apprehension: self efficacy, the role of external sources on affective writing, peer feedback and class community. Future research would explore the sustainability of the process extending into the lecturers' own practice with their students.
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Emerging Voices: The “Hands of God” at Work: Negotiating between Western and Religious Sponsorship in Indonesia ↗
Abstract
This article draws from ethnographic research to explore the interplay between Western capital (both monetary and cultural), the English language, and Indonesian religious identity at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies, an “inter-religious, international Ph.D. program” in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. After discussing research methodology and positioning the program’s local-global religious identity within the larger Indonesian geopolitical context—which highlights English’s complicated role as both the language of Western imperialism and the language of global academic connection—this article explores how two Muslim PhD students negotiate this contact zone as they write. These student portraits, in turn, highlight the importance of acknowledging (1) religious identities as resources in our increasingly global US classrooms; (2) that identity negotiation occurs both textually and extratextually as multilingual writers reformulate and circulate information they draw from English publications to foment social change in their local communities; and (3) the contributions that non-Western voices can make in academic conversations long dominated by the West.