- Authority: The power of one who writes (read: authors) or creates the truth that others accept as being truth
- Collaboration: The act of individuals working together as a community to achieve a common or socially-constructed goal
- Composing Processes: The various methods through which writers can compose a text. Implies a post-process and multimodal approach to writing.
- Composing: The general act of creating a text. Implies that both writing and texts are multimodal in nature and include more than just written language
- Dialectic vs. Rhetoric: Dialectic engages both speaker and listener in a reciprocal dialogue, whereas rhetoric predicts the response of an imagined audience
Trying to define authority is hard because it's such a complex concept that includes institutionalized views and power relations. It remindes me of the way United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart ultimately defined the threshold for pornographic obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio: "I know it when I see it."
Also of import, I'm not satisfied with my definition of Dialectic vs. Rhetoric. I feel like I'm oversimplifying or shortchanging rhetoric, but it seems like the most significant difference is that dialectic engages all participants in a dialogue, whereas rhetoric seems to largely function one way, from speaker, to the mental simulation of the audience (imagined audience), then to delivery. It doesn't seem to engage speaker and listener in a sustained, equal, and reciprocal way like dialectic does.
You can expand on collaboration by adding the idea of students teaching students, mentioning Peter Elbow's idea about Writing without teachers.
ReplyDeleteYou can also expand on composing processes by including the process approach to writing by compartmentalizing brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing and publishing as a recursive process.
Are you trying to add to the definitions Aubrey has up on the website, or did you decide to create your own list?
I added my definitions to the community Google doc. None of these words had definitions, so I took a crack at them. There might have been some changes made to them since I wrote them.
DeleteSorry for spamming you with replies, but I really like both of your suggestions. Admittedly, I had taken a pragmatic approach to defining collaboration, but I love the idea of using collaboration to teach students how to socially construct knowledge. I'm also a big fan of defining the composing process as a recursive/iterative process.
DeleteJustin,
ReplyDeletein response to the five words that you've posted, I think that defining authority is indeed a difficult task. From my understanding of the idea of authority within the composition classroom, I would add to your definition that it also encompasses attributes of possessing indisputable knowledge and of maintaining control (in terms of logic) when challenged or questioned. Authority has the ability to thwart opinion and to solidify arguments.
I think that your definition of collaboration is accurate. I understand collaboration as a process in which a group of individuals use communication as a primary tool for completing a project. The idea of community is essential for efficient collaboration, but I think communication plays an even larger role here.
You're right about that aspect of authority, and I think that's what I was trying to get at, though I see now that I left it implied rather than explicit.
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