Discusses Mikhail Bakhtin's interest in ethical action and response, or "answerability," and its relevance for composition studies. Examines how Bakhtin has been used to authorize various research in composition studies. Shows how composition instruction might be undertaken as influenced by answerability. (HB)

Examines construction and use of documentation to create and disseminate order in activity systems of several engineering organizations. Finds that participants used documentation to protect themselves and to describe future actions for others to take. Suggests that creating effective documentation was difficult when writer and reader were from…

Suggests that negotiation as a rhetorical strategy can help compositionists rethink the connections between the public sphere and students' writing, and that it can also be a productive way to think of classroom interaction. Brings critical pressure to bear on the concept of negotiation as it has been traditionally conceived and theorized,…

Finds that managers were more likely to recommend that environmental remediation proposals receive priority for funding when they read proposals written in candid language than when they read proposals written in legally defensible language. Shows that threats and a negative tone are highly persuasive in internal environmental compliance reports.…

Evaluates "Editor," arguably the most sophisticated grammar and style checker. Tests its effectiveness by using samples from one student and one published writer. Finds that "Editor" is limited to identifying problems in surface structure and that it sometimes identifies "errors" which are not errors while failing to…

Explores the convergence between projects in ethnographic research and composition pedagogy that emphasize the critical power of experience. Argues that critical ethnography and pedagogy need to redefine "experience" and its function for research and teaching and that composition can help this redefinition by looking for ways to build…

Examines the critical perspective as alternative to current descriptive, explanatory research focus. Notes that critical perspective aims at empowerment and emancipation, reinterpreting relationship between researcher and participants as collaborative. Includes feminist, radical educational, and participatory action research in critical research.…

Examines one aspect of elaboration in student writing as a product of the encounter between writers and readers. Studies a stratified random sample of student placement tests. Finds patterns that correlate significantly with readers' evaluations of texts. Concludes these patterns are two strategies for managing discursive conflict in this…

Studies master's students in professional writing to discern value added by technical communicators. Shows that some expertise is brought to collaborative projects, while other types develop as a function of collaboration. Provides practicing communicators, students, and managers with ideas for documenting, developing, and enhancing this…

Uses the technique of collage to analyze and illustrate Francesca Lia Block's use of that technique within and across her books. (RS)

Examines, using grounded theory methods, an interactive, televised writing course taught via Teletechnet, a distance-education program at Old Dominion University. Shows how technology affects a writing classroom and influences the construction of students as writers. Suggests that institutional contexts are reconfigured in televised instruction as…

Presents the 1998 list of 27 topics that are currently "hot" and "not hot" in the field of reading instruction. Describes the rationale for and nature of the choices, and discusses the nature and significance of the ratings given by "literacy leaders" to these 27 issues. Offers references from both the professional literature and the popular…

Suggests that theories of self in composition studies waver between forces of culture and psyche, and that composition theory lacks concrete representations of the materiality of self, the ways in which individuals negotiate culture to create a sense of identity. Examines diary passages from four volunteers to study the "heterophonic"…

Examines the role of imagination in literacy learning using data collected over a 5-year period in the author's primary classrooms. Notes that the study progressed to a conceptual structure that proposes an inside-out theory of literacy learning. Argues that to be successful and meaningful to all, literacy teaching must begin and end with a focus…

Explores how positivism and empiricism may be distinguished in practice by examining four proposals for writing pedagogy based on behaviorist learning theory. Argues that empiricism offers a viable means of addressing what Douglas Hess has dubbed "the splendid paradox of postmodernism." Suggests several implications for empiricism in…