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    Writing Matters
    Writing Matters
    Writing Matters
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Writing Matters

    By Andrea A. Lunsford and Caren Town

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    About this ebook

    Anyone who laments the demise of print text would find a sympathetic listener in Andrea A. Lunsford. Anyone who bemoans the lack of respect for blogs, graphic novels, and other new media would find her no less understanding. Lunsford is at home in both camps because she sees beyond writing's ever-changing forms to the constancy of its power to "make space for human agency—or to radically limit such agency."

    Lunsford is a celebrated scholar of rhetoric and composition, and many undergraduates taking courses in those subjects have used her textbooks. Here she helps us see that writing is not just a mode of communication, persuasion, and expression, but a web of meanings and practices that shape our lives. Lunsford tells how she gained a new respect for our digital culture's three v's—vocal, visual, verbal—while helping design and teach a course in multimedia writing. On the importance of having a linguistically pluralistic society, Lunsford draws links between such varied topics as the English Only movement, language extinction, Ebonics, and the text messaging shorthand "l33t."

    Lunsford has seen how words, writing, and language enforce unfair power relationships in the academy. Most classroom settings, she writes, are authority based and stress "individualism, ranking, hierarchy, and therefore—we have belatedly come to understand—exclusion." Concerned about the paucity—still—of tenured women and minority faculty, she urges schools to revisit admission and retention practices. These are tough and divisive problems, Lunsford acknowledges. Yet if we can see that writing has the power to help prolong or solve them—that writing matters—then we have a common ground.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Georgia Press
    Release dateAug 15, 2011
    ISBN9780820342818
    Writing Matters
    Author

    Andrea A. Lunsford

    ANDREA A. LUNSFORD is Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English and director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University. She has written or coauthored fourteen books, most recently The St. Martin's Handbook, fifth edition, and Everything's an Argument.

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      Book preview

      Writing Matters - Andrea A. Lunsford

      WRITING MATTERS

      Georgia Southern University Jack N. and

      Addie D. Averitt Lecture Series ~ Number 15

      ANDREA A. LUNSFORD

      Writing Matters

      RHETORIC IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIVES

      © 2007 by the University of Georgia Press

      Athens, Georgia 30602

      All rights reserved

      Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

      Set in 10.5/16 Minion Pro

      Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore

      The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

      Printed in the United States of America

      11   10   09   08   07   C   5   4   3   2   1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Lunsford, Andrea A., 1942–

      Writing matters: rhetoric in public and private lives / Andrea A. Lunsford.

      p.cm. — (Georgia Southern University Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt lecture series; no. 15)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8203-2931-4 (alk. paper)

      ISBN-10: 0-8203-2931-2 (alk. paper)

      1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching (Higher)

      2. Report writing—Study and teaching (Higher)

      3. English teachers—Training of. I. Title.

      PE1404.W7274  2007

      808'.0420711—dc222006037074

      British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

      ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-4281-8

      CONTENTS

      Foreword, by Caren Town

      Preface

      ONE. Key Questions for a New Rhetoric

      TWO. Notes on Language Wars in the USA

      THREE. Authority in the Writing Classroom

      FOUR. Thoughts on Graduate Education in English

      Notes

      Works Cited

      Index

      FOREWORD

      Andrea A. Lunsford, speaker at the fifteenth annual Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt Lecture Series, embodies the best qualities of a college professor, a profession that calls for its members to be exemplary scholars, dedicated teachers, and (perhaps not often enough) engaged members of their wider communities. Professor Lunsford adds to these expectations an outstanding publication record, a commitment to her students that extends far beyond the classroom, a genuine concern about language and literacy inside and outside the academy, and perhaps most importantly, a fully developed sense of humor (both about herself and her world). Her fourteen books and wide variety of chapters and articles on the history of rhetoric, collaborative writing, intellectual property, and technologies of writing, her work at Ohio State and currently at Stanford University as director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, and her speaking engagements and workshop presentations throughout North America attest to her wide influence on graduate and undergraduate students, university and secondary school teachers, and the community at large.

      Professor Lunsford’s Averitt Lectures, which have been collected in this volume, demonstrate her enthusiasm for and concern about language and literacy issues. In the first chapter of this book, Lunsford discusses a new course she and colleagues at Stanford designed for sophomores that emphasizes both oral and multimedia delivery in the writing process, and she frankly describes how difficult it has been to implement such training. Her second chapter moves outside the classroom to emphasize the importance of having a linguistically pluralistic society; to do this she takes a critical look at the English First movement and discusses Ebonics, the canon wars, hypertextual and graphic novels, nontraditional academic prose, and the uses of new technology in writing. Chapter 3 focuses on refiguring classroom authority and urges teachers to stress collaboration and a model of shared responsibility. The final chapter expresses her concerns about the paucity of women and minorities in tenured university faculty ranks and urges colleges to reexamine admission and retention practices and consider including collaboration, increased oral presentation, teacher training, and community outreach in their programs. Throughout the book, Lunsford stresses the strong connections between writing and the changing sociopolitical and technological world.

      Both the lecture series and this book have been made possible through a generous ongoing gift from Dr. Jack N. Averitt and his late wife, Addie. The series was established in 1990 to provide the university and southern Georgia with access to internationally recognized scholars in English and history. The three-lecture series is designed for a wide audience of faculty, students, and community members and demonstrates Dr. Averitt’s commitment to enhancing the intellectual climate of our region. Dr. Averitt has been an enthusiastic supporter of the series in many ways other than financial ones. He attends every lecture and social event associated with the series, and he demonstrates an avid and intellectual interest in the speakers, who have represented a wide range of academic discourses over the years, including history, literature, literary theory, rhetoric, and philosophy. Dr. Lunsford’s lectures would not have taken place (and this book would not exist) without Dr. Averitt’s initiative, generosity, and continuing support.

      This particular series certainly would not have gone as smoothly as it did were it not for my colleague from the Department of Writing and Linguistics, Dr. Patricia Price. She initially suggested Professor Lunsford (with my enthusiastic support), negotiated the myriad details involved in setting up her visit, including catering, lodging, and decorating, and made sure the proper people were paid at the proper time. Patricia did all this competently and gracefully. (Given what we both learned about logistics, invitations, dinners, receptions, and preparation for the lectures themselves, we feel that we will now be able to handle the future weddings of our daughters with ease!) Thanks should also go out to our respective department chairs, Mr. Eric Nelson of Writing and Linguistics and Dr. David Dudley of Literature and Philosophy, and to our dean, Dr. Jane Rhoades Hudak, for their support, advice, and participation. I would personally like to say how much I appreciate my American literature students, who displayed such professionalism in handing out the programs. As always, Helen Cannon at Georgia’s Bed and Breakfast made us all feel comfortable, well fed, and more gracious than we are in real life. Once again, all of us here at Georgia Southern University would like to thank Dr. Averitt for making it possible for us to get to know Professor Lunsford and her important work in such a pleasant and personal setting.

      Caren Town

      GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY

      PREFACE

      I began my career as a scholar and teacher of the history of writing and literacy thinking that I understood what writing was—where it came from, what roles it plays in our lives, what changes it has undergone over the millennia. But the reading and research I have done over the course of my career reveal just how naïve my early assessment was. Writing, so ubiquitous that to many it is as invisible as the air we breathe, began to slither out of my grasp, growing increasingly complex, difficult to define, sometimes deeply mysterious. One of the Western world’s oldest technologies, writing—like the art of rhetoric to which it is often linked—is plastic, endlessly adaptable to new situations, challenges, and opportunities, and thus difficult to pin down, to know with certainty.

      This adaptability marks the power of writing, a power that is understood by many in almost visceral ways. For some twenty-five years, I’ve been asking students, colleagues, and any other audiences I came across to capture their very earliest memories of writing, and over the years I have found that these memories fall predictably into two categories. For most people, the earliest memories of writing have to do with naming the self, with writing one’s name. In one magical moment, a child writes, scratches, paints, or otherwise makes marks in the shape of letters that form her name, and there it is, a representation of the child that is somehow separate from but deeply connected to her. That child has now made her mark on the world, literally changing the

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