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Janet Emig Annotated Bibliography More Books

More Books Comprised of Janet Emig’s Work

1.“The Relation of Thought and Language Implicit in Some Early American Rhetoric and Composition Texts”(1963):1–43. - In the preface to this chapter, Maureen Butler interviews Janet Emig on her thoughts looking back on this information. Emig states that she was “looking at primary sources…and was struck by the inconsistencies in the statements about the rhetoric and the actual writing of a given period”(1). In the opening of this chapter she claims that the “purpose of this special qualifying paper is to examine in a corpus of eighteenth and nineteenth century rhetoric and composition texts the theoretical statements and the implications contained in rules and pedagogic exercises about the relationship of thought and language”(3). Psychologists believe language is behavior while textbook writers “regard language as a subordinate feature in the process of communication”(9). Textbook writers look for the clear conveyance of information as a sign of good writing and communication, of which planning is a necessary part. Think before you write. Most of the textbook writers Emig examines believe that planning should come before writing, and not the reverse. To validate the contrary, Emig cites a note from Jerome Bruner in which he claims that sometimes he sits and writes without preparation, watching the information unfold. Emig posits that fiction writers often work this way, utilizing interview information with Truman Capote, William Faulkner, and Gertrude Stein to solidify her point.

2. “The Uses of the Unconscious in Composing”(1964):44–53. – This piece was written for her first performance at NCTE in 1963. In her interview with Maureen Butler, Emig says she thinks she “wrote the paper to justify why I find writing such an agony”(44). Her argument is that writing in the classroom does not allow students to interact with their unconscious due to time constraints, along with internal and external distraction. Textbooks on writing often ignore the involvement of the unconscious in writing for “there is no wisp or scent anywhere that composing is anything but a conscious and antiseptically efficient act”(48). These books avoid discussing the complexities and disjointed qualities of writing or the difficulties in beginning a piece of work. If textbooks consulted writers, they would surely include the drudgeries and intricacies, and altogether organic qualities of writing because “we find it is the rare writer who admits to writing a wholly conscious and contrived piece”(48). Often writers have a standard to assist their writing. “Where habit is suppressive, ritual is evocative; where habit is eliminative, ritual is initiatory”(50). Whether an author smokes, sits in a particular area, or uses certain ink, there is a comfort reached in these writing rituals that helps the author focus. She draws on Stephen Spender’s idea of Mozartians and Beethovians. A Mozartian is one “whom the creative self leads a constant and uninterrupted life of its own, serene to surface disturbances”(52). The Beethovian, on the other hand, is a struggler for the “creative self in a Beethovian is not a plummeting diver, but a plodding miner who seems at times to scoop south with his bare hands”(52). Janet Emig ends with suggestions for acknowledging these struggles in the classroom – reassess the amount of work, help students understand the evolutionary process of writing, and encourage students to explore.

3. “The Origins of Rhetoric: A Developmental View”(1969):54–60. (Reprinted: “The Origins of Rhetoric: A Developmental View.” The School Review, 77.3/4 (1969), 193–198.) - The article/chapter focuses on the rhetorical origins for each individual, not the origins of rhetoric in society. Emig suggests that “very early developments in the personality and in the perceptions of an infant are prerequisites or precursors to certain features and practices of mature rhetoric”(56). Perhaps because these behaviors and habits develop at such an early age, “rhetorical behaviors will not yield to the kinds of intervening we have classically called teaching composition – giving assignments, reading products, and requesting or demanding major or minor reformulations of revisions”(57–58). She cites studies by Brown and Bellugi who state that mothers, in the early verbal years, serve as translator and model; the mother relays information from the child to an audience and in creating sentences to convey what the child is trying to say, acts as a model from which the child can learn. Composition teachers, when the student is preparing to write or revise, can act as the model, translator, and audience to help the student improve his/her writing skills, which will lead to advanced communication skills.

4. Excerpt from The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders (Chapters 4, 6, and 7)(1971): 61–96. - In the interview with Dixie Goswami (editor), Emig states her admiration of Priscilla Tyler and her vow to “write what [she] thought when [she] realized that her role is not appreciated because there are not pieces by Priscilla Tyler”(62). “Lynn: Profile of a Twelfth Grade Writer” (Chapter Four) - This chapter represents a case study of Lynn, a student from a Chicago suburb. Much of the content comes from taped sessions between Lynn and her interviewer. A bulk of the chapter also deals directly with drafts and final products of Lynn’s writing. Through various prompts, Lynn reveals her choices in subject and her personal writing process. Lynn avoids writing about her emotions, choosing to subjects that do not require her feelings to play a role. The study shows Lynn’s pre-writing habits, most of which are more verbal than graphic. “Findings”(Chapter Six) - The twelfth graders utilize two modes of composing, reflexive and extensive. The context of the work determines the significant other (intended audience) – for school-sponsored writing the other is the teacher and for self-sponsored writing the peer serves as significant other. The pre-writing stage differs with both types because often there is not enough time allotted during the class period. “Students do not voluntarily revise school-sponsored writing; they more readily revise self-sponsored writing”(98). There is sometimes a struggle for students to reconcile what they learn in the classroom with what they know and feel about writing. “Implications”(Chapter 7) - Emig admits that if the group of twelfth graders had been larger, “generalizations about the composing processes of this chronological age group would be more valid”(91). Another possibility for research in the future would be to follow writers from their early years of writing through high school. Cross-cultural studies could add a new depth to the study as well. “Perhaps the most promising aspect of this study for further research and model construction is the characterization of the behaviors involved in composing aloud”(92).

5. “Children and Metaphor”(1971):97–108. - Emig attempts to go through the sources on metaphor and formulate questions for further research because “the few direct efforts to describe how children deal with metaphor tend to be anecdotal, with little conceptual anchoring”(99). One of the problems with metaphor is that “conceptually, we treat, we equate, we confuse similarity with identity”(100). There are four distinctions to consider: comprehending and creating metaphors are two separate ideas, the difference between ordinary and special language, the difference between production, description, and analysis, and what modes of discourse lead to metaphor. There is the assumption that metaphor occurs as part of a developmental phenomenon. “One requisite somatically then seems to be a certain level of maturation of the cerebral cortex”(106), the child must have gained a pool of knowledge from which to pull experiences, the child must reach a certain level of communication, and finally, a “certain level of concept formation must have occurred”(106). Emig closes with questions like - “What are the cognitive/linguistic requisites to comprehending and creating metaphor?” And “A cliché is a worn or dying metaphor. When does a child first comprehend the concept of cliché?”

6. “Hand, Eye, Brain: Some ‘Basics’ in the Writing Process”(1977):109–121. - Emig’s goal in this chapter is to speculate about the roles the hand, eye, and brain “play in the writing process and to suggest hypotheses, with appropriate methodologies, to assess their contributions, as well as to determine the likely forms orchestration and interplay may take”(110). The Hand: The act of writing is crucial to many authors (this, of course, being before the advent of computers). For many, writing must appear in one’s own script, and Emig suggests that the act may reinforce the functions of the brain’s left hemisphere. Finally, actually taking the time to physically write serves to slow the composition process. The Eye: The function of the eye in writing has three different stages – prewriting (the eye presents information to the brain), writing (the eye, hand, and brain all cooperate), and revision (we use our eyes to review work). The Brain: Emig, utilizing information from Robert Ornstein’s The Psychology of Consciousness, details the functions of the hemispheres of the brain. Research with patients suffering from brain damage can also aid in the understanding of the brain’s involvement in composition. “It is with the aphasic, then, that an organic map of the writing process can be sketched very lightly and very tentatively”(118). Emig closes by stating that in order to further this research faculty and advisers need more schooling in biology and physiology, not to mention a connection must be forged between these departments in a college setting.

7. “Writing as a Mode of Learning”(1977):122–131. (Originally College Composition and Communication (May 1977): 122–128.) - “Here I have a prior purpose: to describe as tellingly as possible how writing uniquely corresponds to certain powerful learning strategies”(123). In this article written in 1977, Janet Emig strives to connect the act of writing with other modes, such as reading, talking, and listening. Her attempt to differentiate and define these modes is categorized by whether the act has the writer/speaker/talker originating or recreating the information, and whether a graphic representation coincides with the mode. She states that listening and reading are both receptive, while writing and talking are productive. Writing is the process of creating something that can be recorded in a graphic manner. Reading is a mode that is creating, but not necessarily originating. Listening is creating or recreating something verbal that is not graphically represented, but it is not originating. Talking is creating and originating without graphic representation. Emig cites psychologists such as Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner to solidify the connections between the various modes and how learning can affect writing. “Writing involves the fullest possible functioning of the brain, which entails the active participation in the process of both the left and the right hemispheres”(126).

8. “Non-Magical Thinking: Presenting Writing Developmentally in Schools”(1979):132–144. - “That teachers teach and children learn no one will deny. But to believe that children learn because teachers teach only what teachers explicitly teach is to engage in magical thinking, from a developmental point of view”(135). The pressure has been placed on instructors to formulaically teach something that is, by and large, a developmental process. Citing anatomists and psychologists like Vygotzky, Emig conveys that children might form linguistic and communicative traits before they are able to talk, by way of gestures. Added to this is the child’s exposure to an environment which nurtures imagination. Emig believes that environment plays a key role in the development of a student’s writing skills and that in schools, these environments are not being provided. School writing environments should be “safe, structured, private, unobtrusive, and literate”(139) and the adults ought to be writing practitioners as well as sources of feedback. Magical thinking shouldn’t be a part of our schools. To begin a shift in thought, according to Emig, teachers should write in many modes, observe the practices of other writers, and assess writing based on an individual’s growth.

9. “The Tacit Tradition: The Inevitability of a Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Writing Research”(1979):145–156. - In one of her most well known articles, Emig raises questions concerning the characterization of composition as a discipline, who the ancestors in this tradition are, what the assumptions of these ancestors were, and the new direction of the field of study. There are certain characteristics of a shared discipline – a shared lexicon, syntax, definitions and methods of research, governing paradigms, etc. (147). There are scholars recognized for writing and rhetoric research, identified as significant by others who talk and write about them. They share a common interest and view that these studies are important, and their works supply research for the field. Thomas Kuhn is considered “one of the central figures in comprising the tacit tradition”(147) because of his assertion that we all work from paradigms. The work of George Kelly “may currently be the source of more research in the field of writing than the work of any other personality theorist”(149). Kelly believes we all act from our personal constructs, our “system of expectations”(149).

10. “Inquiry Paradigms and Writing”(1981):157–170.(“Inquiry Paradigms and Writing.” College Composition and Communication, 33.1 (Feb. 1982), 64–75.) - “An inquiry paradigm then is the explanatory matrix for any systematic investigation of phenomena”(159). To qualify as an inquiry paradigm there is certain criteria: a governing gaze, a set of assumptions: (nature of the language, oral and written, the meaning of a given language act or text, that act or text as a revelation or at least a reflection of a writer’s own attitudes and beliefs, the writer’s specific or general cognitive abilities), a theory ( there should be at least four kinds of theories - a theory of meaning, if this is different, a theory of language, a theory of learning, and a theory of research.), a tradition (who are our ancestors and authorities? What are the tenets of the tradition?), and finally, a methodology. A governing gaze, which is a “steady way of perceiving actuality”(160) meaning our view incorporates our experiences and expectations. There are three types of gazers – positivistic, phenomenological, or transactional. Emig examines the positivistic and phenomenological because they lie at opposite ends of the spectrum. The positivistic gazer is scientific, paying little attention to subjective matter. A positivist assignment is “one that does not emanate from the student writer nor from the students’ prior writing”(163). A positivist examines phenomena without contextual constraints and can claim universality. A phenomenologist gazer, on the other hand, considers context a key source of information when seeking to explain phenomena, the perceiver’s vision of the world is necessary. Our perception of reality is not finite, there is always room for more explanation. Phenomenological inquiry is more personal than a positivist gaze, utilizing case studies and ethnographies. Emig explores the idea of theories, specifically looking at Bruner and Kelly. She emphasizes that we must know our theory of writing and our tradition, for “it could be said that those who neither know nor acknowledge their intellectual origins are the true bastards of the world”(166). Why do this? A mature paradigm is needed to judge inquiries as sufficient and there should be criteria for evaluators to consult to be effective. 1

11. “Literacy and Freedom”(1982):171–178. - This final chapter in the book is taken from Emig’s address at the 1982 College Composition and Communication Convention. Emig emphasizes the need for literacy-written and verbal-in the United States and states her belief that “our entire educational system from kindergarten to graduate school is in disarray”(171). There is a need to redefine literacy for it’s not just the ability to regurgitate words on a page in order to fill out a job application, and writing is not even a part of our definition of literacy. English departments are still centers of literature-of reading. Though literature is consumed, the emphasis is not on how the literature is created, the how of it. Citing James Moffett’s definition of writing (from “Integrity in the Teaching of Writing”), “authoring” is “revising inner speech to live in the world as words with a purpose shaped to an actual audience”(174).