College Composition and Communication Sep 2024

A Commonplace Problem: Uncovering Composition’s Tacit Axiologies of Reading

Lizzie Hutton ; Carolyne M. King

Abstract

Composition studies seems relatively unified in the belief that “active,” “rhetorical,” and “conversational” modes of reading are students’ best hope for facing the challenges of college reading and writing tasks. As commonplaces, however, these descriptors mask both reading outcomes and the specific practices presumed to support them. Through an analysis of three popular composition textbooks, we disentangle and reveal some of the reading axiologies most fundamental to the field and which we contend these commonplaces gesture toward but leave vastly undertheorized. We argue that more precise explications of these distinct reading axiologies ultimately provide a contextualist framework for reading, helping students approach their reading-writing tasks with greater clarity, flexibility, and purpose.

Journal
College Composition and Communication
Published
2024-09-01
DOI
10.58680/ccc202476190
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism literacy studies
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