McComiskey

McComiskey, Bruce. Teaching Composition as a Social Process. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP, 2000.


McComiskey reframes process theory in composition by arguing for a 3-part pedagogy which he calls "social-process theory." This theory asks students to attend to the 3 components -- the cycle -- of composing: textual, rhetorical, and discursive. The goal for him is to teach students to intervene in public discourses in productive ways.

Key Terms:
social process: "social process composition pedagogies treat critical writing as rhetorical inquiry and political intervention into the cultural forces that construct our subjectivities" (3).

Cultural production/contextual distribution/critical consumption: (taken from postmodernism and cultural studies); the "cycle of composing" which is the 3 levels of composing (defined above).

"I agree that a balanced approach to the 3 levels of composing leads students to the fullest and most effective understanding of their writing processes" (7).

"I propose a cyclical model of the writing process, one that acocunts for the composing strategies of individual and collaborative writers as well as the socio-discursive lives of texts" (20).

"Invention heuristics based on this cycle encourage students to understand language and culture as socially constructive forces (production) conditioned by contexts (distribution) and negotiated by critical subjectivities (consumption)" (20).

"...I argue that the most fruitful meaning for the 'post' in post process is 'extension,' not 'rejection,' and I offer social-process rhetorical inquiry as a pedagogical method for extending our present view of the composing process into the social world of discourse" (47).

"...it is important for students to learn that their critical knowledge is significant only insofar as it is made public" (132).

"And it is only through the postmodern turn toward pragmatic, public discourse that students can learn these socio-rhetorical strategies. I believe that the development or awakening of 'critical consciousness' alone...is insufficient. It is crucial that students also learn to transform their critical knowledge into communal discourse, audience-centered communication with the intention of influencing cultural practices through persuasive writing" (133).

I have so much to say about this book that I wrote a 2 page argument about it... I won't reproduce it here. But suffice it to say that I have quite a few problems with this text -- mostly because McComiskey's pedagogy is, to put it simply, oppressive and coercive: his values become the value of the composition class, and to me, these values are not at all criticized or examined. To put it another way, teaching students to intervene in public discourses through persuasive writing privileges one kind of writing over another, not to mention that public discourses are inherently problematic (and therefore should be corrected).