McNabb, Richard. “Making the Gesture: Graduate Student Submissions and Expectations of Journal Referees.” Composition Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2001, pp. 9-26.
Executive Summary:
In response to studies indicating that grad students in rhetoric and composition are not being prepared by their graduate programs to make the professoriate transition and begin publishing, McNabb investigates the textual practices of grad students that might account for their struggles to publish. He analyzes common modes of writing in graduate submissions in comparison to the modes commonly published and/or called for by journal editors and referees and argues that “writing for publication goes beyond producing a coherent, effective, well-supported argument; a writer has to be able to negotiate the publishing system by making the right gestures” (22).
Similar to how Swales defined common “moves” for scientific article writing, McNabb describes “gestures” that grad students can utilize when constructing journal articles destined for publication. The gesture that’s missing from graduate writing, according to McNabb, is the practice of assigning authority to one’s argument by situating that argument within previously published authorities. McNabb identifies six rhetorical modes commonly utilized when writing for publication in our field (description, testimony, history, theory, rhetorical analysis, and research reports) and illustrates how graduate students are prone to writing testimonies. This is problematic since very few testimonies are statistically published and referees will generally ask for manuscripts grounded in theory or history.
Later, McNabb illustrates the discipline’s practice of valuing epistemic introductions by referencing Swales’ “moves” (where an author situates him/herself within a current conversation in the field, specifically “carving a niche” out for how his/her argument is an important contribution to that topic). This is also problematic since graduate students don’t commonly practice these kinds of introduction writing, yet 3 out of 4 published articles follow this approach.
He concludes by suggesting that graduate students should receive explicit instruction in the programs regarding (a) discursive conventions to follow in writing manuscripts, (b) important disciplinary conversations occurring presently and in the past, and (c) how to incorporate and cite this epistemic knowledge.
Quotable Quotes:
· “Scholars construct arguments around other arguments already authorized by the field and institutionalized by its journals—be it rhetorical structure, canonized author, or generic convention” (11).
· “referees and the editors who uphold their decisions require authors to reinvent the conventions of the field, conventions that give an article a more theoretical or historical structure” (16).
· “the validity of an idea is not determined solely by its pertinence within a given disciplinary conceptual framework but rather by the success of its appropriation of the right conventions. What this means for us authors is that one of the merits by which our arguments are judged is on our ability to appropriate the conventions that allow us to authorize our arguments” (16-17).
· Epistemic presentation within article introductions is “a crucial gesture for authorization. When authors submit a manuscript for publication, editors and reviewers require the authors to position their argument within existing conversations. This positioning, however, is more than just showing you are a part of an ongoing conversation; it is the act of carving out an original space for one’s argument” (20).
· Writers in comp/rhet “must use epistemic presentations to introduce their arguments no matter their rhetorical mode to which the writer gestures. But this gesture requires writers to shift their authority away from their own sense of writing and to an authorized disciplinary convention. In order to authorize an interpretation, a writer must be fully cognizant of the discursive conventions of the field” (22).
Citable Citations: Bazerman, Swales, MacDonald, Goggin, Berkenkotter, Huckin, Miller, Brueggemann, Blue, Shephard
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