CCR 601: McNabb (2001) "Making the Gesture"

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

CCR 720: Miller (1986) "MLK Borrows a Revolution"

Miller, Keith D. "Martin Luther King, Jr. Borrows a Revolution: Argument, Audience, and Implications of a Secondhand Universe." College English 48.3 (Mar. 1986): 247-265.

Miller performs a rhetorical analysis of some of the works of MLK Jr., arguing that one of King’s rhetorical strategies was to borrow already effective streams of argument, religious themes, and literary and biblical quotations that his imagined audience presumably already considered persuasive. Thus, Miller outlines four themed assumptions drawn upon by King (“Love,” “Need for Nonconformity,” “Inadequacy of Materialism and Humanism,” and “Interdependence”), analyzing in each theme King’s borrowing practices by providing comparable quotations from both King and his borrowed sources. By placing King’s words next to the words of other black preachers (which King often did not cite),Miller illustrates that King was practicing—what Miller doesn’t name but what we’d call today—“patchwriting” (Howard), what Miller calls “secondhand language”. He further demonstrates how not only did King consistently borrow and rephrase the sermons of others, but King also substantially repeated these themes, phrases, and quotes in his own work over and over. Instead of condemning King for his borrowing and patchwriting practices and for King not citing his sources, Miller informs readers that such approaches to sermon and speech writing were common for ministers and preachers. In fact, Miller attributes King’s success in persuading audiences to his ability to place borrowed and already widely accepted themed assumptions into his own writing as well as King’s strategy for acknowledging white sources, while suppressing black sources:

By adapting and readapting sermonic boilerplate and by refining and retesting his best original material, King successfully placed the strands of his homiletic arguments against segregation into a web of ideas and phrases that the moderate and liberal white Protestant community had already approved….Systematically suppressing his ties to homiletic traditions elevated King’s status as a rhetor, even as he was shrewdly flattering his audiences by telling them what they already believed with words they had already heard. (256)

After acknowledging that “While the appearance of originality was necessary for King’s persuasiveness, skillful borrowing was equally as necessary,” Miller concludes his essay by drawing some implications about teaching composition based on his argument. First, King’s borrowing helps to illustrate how discourse is intertextual and helps us to reconsider our assumptions about generalizations, clichés, and plagiarism. Second, we should teach students the rhetorical power in knowing commonplaces and clichés, in the form of already accepted assumptions, and help our students practice using such commonplaces effectively. Third, instead of teaching invention as being an individual’s exploration, we should focus our students’ attentions toward keeping their audience in mind during all stages of the invention and writing process.