Tracing Authoritative and Internally Persuasive Discourses: A Case Study of Response, Revision, and Disciplinary Enculturation

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Abstract

This paper presents a contextualized analysis of a series of response rounds (text-response-revision) that a graduate sociology student and her professor engaged in as the student produced multiple drafts of a conference paper and a preliminary examination. 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 response involved extensive rewriting and that the student routinely incorporated the rewritten text into subsequent drafts. These findings raised the issue of who was talking in these texts. The study next integrated intertextual analysis, parallel discourse-based interviews, and semi-structured interviews to trace the intermixture of the professor's and the student's words in the student's texts and to explore the extent to which the professor's words were "authoritative" or "internally persuasive" to the student. The findings show that response and revision were shaped by personal, interpersonal, and institutional histories. The study documents complex intertextual patterns in the way the student incorporated and resisted the professor's written response; uncovers subtle and striking variations in the extent to which the professor's words became internally persuasive to the student; and finally suggests that, through these response rounds, the student had some reciprocal influence on the professor.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)288-325
Number of pages38
JournalResearch in the Teaching of English
Volume29
Issue number3
StatePublished - Oct 1 1995

Keywords

  • basic writing
  • English instruction
  • enculturation
  • adolescents
  • written communication
  • writing revision
  • argumentation
  • words
  • teachers

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