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Tracing Authoritative and Internally Persuasive Discourses: A Case Study of Response,Revision, and Disciplinary EnculturationAuthor(s): Paul PriorSource:
Research in the Teaching of English,
Vol. 29, No. 3 (Oct., 1995), pp. 288-325Published by:
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Tracing Authoritative and Internally Persuasive Discourses: A Case Study of Response, Revision, and Disciplinary Enculturation
Paul Prior University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This paper presents a contextualized analysis of a series of response rounds (text-re- sponse-revision) hat a graduate sociology student and her professor ngaged in as the student produced multiple drafts of a conference paper and a preliminary xam- ination. The series of textual exchanges was collected as part of a situated study of writing, response, and disciplinary enculturation in a sociology seminar that was linked to a multi-year research project. Initial analysis of this focal student's texts found that the professor's esponse nvolved extensive rewriting and that the student routinely incorporated he rewritten text into subsequent drafts. These findings raised the issue of who was talking in these texts. The study next integrated nter- textual analysis, parallel discourse-based nterviews, and semi-structured nter- views to trace the intermixture of the professor's and the student's words in the student's texts and to explore he extent to which the professor's words were "author- itative" or "internally persuasive" o the student. The findings show that response and revision were shaped by personal, nterpersonal, nd institutional histories. The study documents complex ntertextual patterns n the way the student incorporated and resisted he professor's written response; uncovers ubtle and striking variations in the extent to which the professor's words became internally persuasive o the stu- dent; and finally suggests that, through hese response rounds, the student had some reciprocal nfluence on the professor.
Studies of how English eachers respond to writing and how students then revise their texts have repeatedly dentified ownership as a key issue, an issue often reflected n descriptions of teachers appropriating tudent texts (e.g., Knoblauch & Brannon, 1984; Michaels, 1987; Sommers, 1982). Con- cern over such appropriation has prompted pedagogical practices de- signed to counter it. For example, in describing her writing workshop, At well (1987) suggests that teachers not write responses on students' pa- pers (only edit them as a final step before publication). The issue of own- ership has generally reflected cultural notions that equate writers with originary authors and the function of writing with self-expression. Re-
288 Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 29, No. 3, October 1995
 
Tracing uthoritative nd Internally ersuasive iscourses 289
search n the disciplines and the workplace (e.g., Berkenkotter, Huckin, & Ackerman, 1988; Doheny-Farina, 989; Herrington, 1985; Odell, 1985) has presented different views, emphasizing not only writing's social and transactional unctions, but also its developmental potential the ways writing mediates learning and enculturation to specific communities' ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and communicating. Seen from a devel- opmental perspective, analyses of ownership and appropriation n re- sponse to writing that take the individual as given become problematic. However, n studies of writing in disciplines and professions, abstract no- tions about given cultures, notions that erase individual and group differ- ences across contexts and time, are equally problematic. Taking a socio- historic, developmental perspective that complicates both persons and communities, this paper explores relations among response, revision, learning, and enculturation. To investigate these issues I will first present two figures from the study reported here to illustrate the nature of a response round (text-response- revision) from a sociology seminar. Figure 1 represents the written re- sponse of a sociology professor to one page of a sociology doctoral stu- dent's 22-page draft of a conference paper. I counted 17 responses on this page (out of 109 made to the whole draft). I would code all of these re- sponses as text-editing rather han commentary.1 f incorporated nto the next draft, he professor's response would add 106 words to this page (out of 332 she would add to the whole draft), delete 83 words (out of 567 she would delete from the whole), and rearrange ne passage of the text (1 of 7 rearrangements roposed). While research on how students understand and act on instructor re- sponse has routinely uncovered misunderstanding, partial compliance, and resistance (e.g., Beason, 1993; Hayes & Daiker, 1984; Herrington, 1992; Michaels, 1987; Onore, 1989; Prior, 1991; Sperling & Freedman, 1987; Ziv, 1984), he next draft of this student's conference paper displayed the stu- dent's accurate, ndeed almost total, compliance with the professor's pro- posed revisions. This compliance may not be surprising n one sense. Ziv found that explicit responses were more likely to be acted on appropriately than implicit responses, and rewriting, as long as it is interpretable, s an extremely explicit form of response. Figure 2 represents how the student revised the text from Figure 1 in her next draft, the boldprinted ext repre- senting the professor's words. To be precise, she acted on all 17 responses, adding 105 of the 106 words (the only exception being an error he profes- sor made in describing a linear relationship as "monotonic"), eleting all 83 words the professor had crossed out, and making the rearrangement s indicated. Altogether, I collected 7 drafts of this conference paper from the stu- dent, 6 of which the professor had responded to in writing, and also 4

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