06.09.2021 Views

Design Discourse - Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing, 2010a

Design Discourse - Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing, 2010a

Design Discourse - Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing, 2010a

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Franke<br />

solv<strong>in</strong>g. When I asked these same technical writ<strong>in</strong>g students to write a letter of<br />

compla<strong>in</strong>t for me, I received many adequate responses, some equal to my own<br />

draft, <strong>and</strong> several wonderful, excellent examples. Many were expert ventriloquists<br />

<strong>and</strong> did an excellent job of speak<strong>in</strong>g for me <strong>in</strong> their letters, pick<strong>in</strong>g up<br />

on my “voice.” I am not ashamed to say I cribbed some of their strategies, the<br />

ways they positioned themselves as the consumer, del<strong>in</strong>eated the problem, <strong>and</strong><br />

persuasively argued for a particular solution. I suspected then <strong>and</strong> still do that<br />

these early PWR students wrote from a sense of community—“us” aga<strong>in</strong>st the<br />

forces of coldness <strong>and</strong> technology—a community that developed its most fluent<br />

voice <strong>and</strong> vivid identity when challenged by “foreign” discourse.<br />

It was clear that we had come to a k<strong>in</strong>d of stasis—a quiet crisis of homogeneity,<br />

at least with<strong>in</strong> this large group of creative writers. The majority<br />

had become surpris<strong>in</strong>gly self-satisfied with their small constellation of genres.<br />

As writers, they didn’t seem to be work<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the ways that we expected. They<br />

didn’t seem curious or <strong>in</strong>vested <strong>in</strong> what was “outside” their immediate doma<strong>in</strong>.<br />

What encouraged this parochialism? There are the usual suspects: a distaste for<br />

“ma<strong>in</strong>stream” academic argument, fear of work<strong>in</strong>g hard <strong>and</strong> fail<strong>in</strong>g, the thrill of<br />

be<strong>in</strong>g able to take the self as a subject—but there were bureaucratic reasons as<br />

well. Tak<strong>in</strong>g a close look at the way we described the courses, I found that after<br />

students got beyond a small set of “core” PWR courses, we only really described<br />

two tracks or “clusters”: one led <strong>in</strong>to creative writ<strong>in</strong>g (Writ<strong>in</strong>g Poetry, Writ<strong>in</strong>g<br />

Fiction, Writ<strong>in</strong>g Children’s Literature, Experiments <strong>in</strong> Creative Writ<strong>in</strong>g) <strong>and</strong><br />

one led <strong>in</strong> the opposite direction to technical <strong>and</strong> bus<strong>in</strong>ess areas (Computer<br />

Technology, Bus<strong>in</strong>ess Writ<strong>in</strong>g, etc). There were many shades of gray, but our<br />

students seemed to <strong>in</strong>sist on the black <strong>and</strong> white.<br />

Their resistance was surpris<strong>in</strong>g <strong>and</strong> troubl<strong>in</strong>g. Dr. Victoria Boynton,<br />

also <strong>in</strong> <strong>Professional</strong> Writ<strong>in</strong>g, found that her poetry class had several disaffected<br />

technical writers <strong>in</strong> it who were seem<strong>in</strong>gly unable to picture themselves as “readers”<br />

of each other’s creative work <strong>and</strong> were hav<strong>in</strong>g small emergencies of confidence.<br />

Dr. Alex<strong>and</strong>er Reid, also <strong>in</strong> PWR, reported that his new media theory<br />

classes seemed to produce anyth<strong>in</strong>g but a body of enthusiasts for the theoretical<br />

<strong>and</strong> practical issues brought up <strong>in</strong> his discussions. It was too “cold” to some, too<br />

“abstract” <strong>and</strong> too “impractical” for others. Instead of produc<strong>in</strong>g a pervasive program<br />

ethos for our thirty or so majors <strong>and</strong> m<strong>in</strong>ors, we had unwitt<strong>in</strong>gly produced<br />

writers who were constantly undergo<strong>in</strong>g m<strong>in</strong>or crises. Small groups were def<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g<br />

their collective selves as be<strong>in</strong>g allergic (or immune) to genres outside their<br />

purview; for these students, “foreign” genres were threaten<strong>in</strong>g <strong>and</strong> un<strong>in</strong>terest<strong>in</strong>g.<br />

We were not produc<strong>in</strong>g writers who were commodious <strong>and</strong> <strong>in</strong>clusive. We were<br />

produc<strong>in</strong>g niche writers who shunned the difficult <strong>and</strong> unfamiliar. We had written<br />

the wrong curriculum.<br />

120

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!