CCR 691: Logan's (2008) *Liberating Language*

Logan, Shirley Wilson. Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.

INTRODUCTION: “‘By the Way, Where Did You Learn to Speak?’”

An overview of her study, scope, method, and purpose as explained in her “Introduction”:

1. WHAT and WHEN: Logan seeks to answer the question, “Where did [African Americans in the late 18^th-early 19^th century] learn to speak?” Specifically, she’s interested in identifying and analyzing sites of rhetorical education—those places where AAs were instructed explicitly or implicitly in being rhetorical in their communicative experiences.

2. WHERE and HOW: Her sites of research and textual artifacts analyzed within her book are:

a. CH1: “white-sponsored slave missions and initiatives emerging from within communities of the enslaved,” “the black Union regiments during the Civil War,” “the activities of the Republican Loyal League” (6-7)

b. CH2: diaries from multiple individuals; published advice manuals (7)

c. CH3: literacy societies “primarily in Philadelphia and New York, both single sex and mixed, church-affiliated, school-affiliated, and community-based” (7)

d. CH4: Black periodicals (8)

e. Throughout each of her chapters: calls on famous Black rhetors to make “cautious generalizations” (9)

3. WHY: She seeks answers to her research question because she hopes it will “broaden our approaches to contemporary rhetorical education and thereby help to further participation in democracy” (3). She also hopes to inform: “This study will expand our understanding of the various ways in which African Americans, faced with the consequences of enslavement and oppressive color prejudice, acquired rhetorical competence during the late eighteenth century and across the nineteenth century” (9).

Her strategies for supporting her methodology:

· Shows exigency in her study by providing a few examples of the challenges AAs faced in engaging in literacy practices and illustrating how so many white folks were shocked (this being “a form of ‘soft bigotry,’” quoting Anna Perez, 3).

· Defines her terms (e.g. rhetorical education, basic literacy) by calling on main rhetoric folks (Burke, Bitzer, Aristotle).

· Situates her methods of analyzing literacy practices of a population in the margins by likening her study to other main literacy folks (Royster, Williams, Jarratt, Zaluda, Gold).

· Situates her focus on AAs by citing others with a similar target population (Kates, Schneider, Anderson, Franklin, Porter, McHenry).

CHAPTER 1: “Free-Floating Literacy: Early African American Rhetorical Traditions”

Her method:

· She investigates rhetorical traditions and literacy practices in multiple sites to make claims about the experiences of AAs in the 18^th-19^th centuries. Sites and summaries include:

o “Plantation Literacies”: Records of “invisible institutions” (like group meetings in the woods where members could develop expression and worship) and slave missions where AAs received literacy education. These practices often helped to engrain the oral traditions of the culture.

o “Pulpit Literacies”: Missions helped AAs develop memorization skills. Rhetoric textbooks like The Columbian Orator helped AAs like Frederick Douglas realize the power of rhetoric in enacting freedom.

o “Battlefield Literacies”: Since AAs were coming together in the military and sharing literacy skills and since some military officials would initiate literacy education and/or develop schools for these soldiers, much of their rhetorical traditions were garnered through these experiences. Specifically, AA individuals participated in literacy practices by reading, discussing, and producing letters, newspapers, and speeches/poetry readings.

o “Political Literacies”: Sponsored by Union or Loyal League Movement, AAs also experienced literacy through night schools and other community gatherings aimed at promoting political activity and power.

o “Postbellum Workplace Literacies”: Some AAs may have also experienced literacy through working at cigar factories where they practiced la lectura, a custom where individuals were elected (based on mutual respect for their intelligence) to read texts aloud during cigar rolling and workers would use these texts as bases for debate and public argument.

· The evidence she presents come from various sources:

o Examples of AA’s experiences in the 19^th century and many of her terms of analysis from scholars’ previous studies (Costen, Nunley, Raboteau)

o References to historical moments, folks, or events (antebellum South, slave laws, slave mission movements, Militia Act, etc.)

o Analysis of primary texts of published AA writing and of AAs’ personal narratives (Elizabeth Johnson Harris, Frederick Douglas, Charles Colcock Jones, Amanda Berry Smith, Christian Recorder, Weekly Anglo-African)

· She keeps the analysis informational and refrains from making connections between the literacy practices of then to what’s happening today.

Key people and their terms:

· Ralph Ellison’s “free-floating literacy” (11)

· Shirley Brice Heath and Beverly J. Moss’ “literacy events” (11)

· Melva Wilson Costen’s “Invisible Institutions,” (12)

· Vorris L. Nunley’s “hush harbor rhetoric” (12)

My question:

Since in class we’ve been really emphasizing the importance of methods, methodology, and the building of a researcher ethos, it was a bit surprising to me that Logan does not spend time detailing her methods and methodologies. While she references primary sources and other scholarly work, we never seem to learn where and how she collected data. I then remembered how in our colloquium Lois focused less on step-by-step methods for a historical approach in her discussion of her research and Tolar Burton also stayed away from explicit discussion of procedural methods (even stating something about it might be boring for us to hear her methods). Although I imagine this trend for not detailing methods and methodologies is not unique to historiographers, I wonder why some are less inclined to provide such detailed accounts of data gathering and analysis. I wonder if we associate such descriptions as “boring” or too “science-like.” Maybe archival research feels too open-ended and exploratory to be defined methodologically. Maybe we just haven’t valued this practice as much until recently. Maybe historiographers assume we already know methods for historical approaches. Either way, I was interested to observe this trend, and I’m curious as to why researchers might be inclined to leave out discussions of their methods and methodologies and how we might work to address this issue.

CCR 691: Heath (1999) *Ways with Words*

Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways with Words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: University Press, 1999.

Quick overview of Method:

· What and when: As described in her “Prologue,” Heath conducted ethnographic research during a time post-school-desegregation in the 1960s. Heath collaborated with numerous fellow teachers and graduate students on gathering and comparing recorded (field notes or audio tapes) and interpreted data of communication occurring in two populations during this time.

· Where: The sites she investigated were communities in the Piedmont Carolinas: one town consisting mostly of black farm families new to the working-class (Trackton) and one consisting mostly of long time working-class white folks (Roadville).

· How: Data consists of recorded communication occurring at school, at home, or at the textile mills, where most of the families from both towns work.

· Why: Based on their cross-cultural comparisons of communicative trends in Trackton and Roadville (both of children and teaching practices), the collaborating researchers worked to answer the following research question: “For each of these groups, what were the effects of the preschool home and community environment on the learning of those language structures and uses which were needed in classrooms and job settings” (4).

Some notes on Heath’s “strategies” for an ethnographic approach:

· 9 years! (1969-1978)

· Entered the community naturally, through acquaintances

· Acted as a participant-observer (did the work and knew and respected the town, the people, and the ways)

· Upfront with her focus: the physical boundaries, other communicative limitations, patterns of choice, and values associated within the socialization of language (5-6).

· Considers herself an anthropologist

· Acknowledges that her study is not a model for methods of other ethnographic research, admitting that it shouldn’t and likely won’t be replicated by other researchers (7-8).

· Defends her methodology by arguing that quantitative data approaches don’t account for social and cultural contexts (8).

· Acknowledges that participants “are the products of their history and current situation” and that her focus is on cultural, not racial, influences (10).

· Repeatedly refers to this account as a “narrative” or “story”

· Acknowledges that she affected the “social reality” of how classrooms were conducted at the time: “From ethnographer learning, or coming to ‘know,’ I have become ethnographer doing.”

· Acknowledges that these stories are incomplete (13)

· Conceals names of people and locations (13-14)

· Tries to capture the varying dialects as they naturally occur in speech (15)

Some questions/challenges/interesting topics:

1. I found great interest in Heath’s approach to being “responsible” to the community she researches, whether that be through the ways she entered the community, avoided generalized comparisons of race or socioeconomic status in her findings, used only equipment already accepted by the community (audio recorders), or sought to be respectful and considerate of her influence and presence at all times. Based on our conversations in class, I imagine others may have considered these acts of “responsibility” as answers to earlier calls for researchers to have the best interests for their participants when doing ethnography. Being “responsible” to our participants has been an unsettled issue for me all semester, though, since I suspect some of my research goals may not be perceived as well-intentioned (like when we wish to “infiltrate and assess” an institutional department, for example). I consider my aims to be aimed at positive action for some communities, but the actual community I seek to investigate may not see it that way. If our conclusions lead to arguments that our participants won’t be content with, I’m still unsure about how that complicates our responsibilities to our participants.

2. Heath acknowledges that “educators should not look here [in her book] for experiments, controlled conditions, and systematic score-keeping on the academic gains and losses of specific children. Nor should psycholinguisitics look here for data taped at periodic intervals under similar conditions over a predesignated period of time” (8-9). It’s hard not to respect her approach to using long term ethnographic participant-observation to make claims about how some individuals communicate. Still, having just read Chris Anson’s “The Intelligent Design of Writing Programs: Reliance on Belief or a Future of Evidence,” (where he argues that the discipline of college composition needs to perform research in the field that provides actual evidence, not just our own practical theories and story-telling) and based on our numerous conversations in 691 regarding our discipline’s call for evidence-driven research, I’m interested in thinking about how ethnography can be aligned with other methods to provide such results that Anson calls for. How might have Heath approached the study differently to accomplish this? How might we design a multi-method approach for our future ethnographic studies?

CCR 720: Haswell (2005): "NCTE/CCCC's Recent War on Scholarship"

Haswell, Richard H. "NCTE/CCCC's Recent War on Scholarship." Written Communication 22.2 (April 2005): 198-223.

Informal summary:

Investigates the trend of replicable, aggregable, and data supported research within published literature of the field (on research papers, gain in writing courses, and peer review) sponsored by National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and Conference on College Composition (CCCC). Results indicate that there has been a dramatic decline in published RAD research within NCTE and CCCC. Warns that we’re hurting the future of our discipline: “As when a body undermines its own immune system, when college composition as a whole treats the data-gathering, data-validating, and data-aggregating part of itself as alien, then the whole may be doomed” (219).

CCR 720: Anson (2008): "The Intelligent Design of Writing Programs"

Anson, Chris M. "The Intelligent Design of Writing Programs: Reliance on Belief or a Future of Evidence." WPA: Writing Program Administration 32.1 (Fall 2008): 11-36.

Informal summary:

· Argues that the discipline of college composition needs to perform research in the field that provides actual evidence, not our own theory based on story-telling (lore, ethnography) of our experiences in the classroom. Get away from essay-driven articles and towards evidence-driven articles.

· Shows how one critic of composition classrooms (although not grounded in evidence either) has great power in damaging the discipline (in the sense of public opinion) (cites Nan Miller’s report, 2006).

· Likens our disciplinary dilemma to historical court case (State of Tennessee vs. John Scopes) where it was eventually overturned by the Surpreme Court (by way of technicality) that evolution theories be abolished in public schools over the Divine Creation of Man. Aruges, therefore, that we’re a discipline of intelligent design and not of evolution and

o “intelligent design theory is not ready for parallel treatment in the schools because it is based on belief, not on a preponderance of evidence. Current practice—in the teaching of science or the teaching of writing—needs to be supported not by hunches buy by the best that the research traditions of these tow disciplinary areas can provide us, with the understanding that their very existence depends on an openness to challenge and a spirit of continual inquiry” (20).

· Argues for six movements in our discipline

o Foundational research and synthesis (24)

o Replications and extensions (26)

o Graduate education (27)

o Connections with our publics (28)

o Increased scrutiny and critique (29)

o Improved research communities (31)

· Quotable quote:

o “My point is this: if we continue to rely on belief in our pedagogies and administrative decisions, whether theorized or not, whether argued from logic or anecdote, experience or conviction, we do not better to support a case for those decisions than what most detractors do to support cases against them. Instead, we need a more robust plan for building on the strong base of exiting research into our assumptions about how students best learn to write” (11-12).