Mapping a Post-Process Dialogics for the Writing Classroom as Public

Abstract

The broad goal of this study is to better understand the rhetorical tasks faced by student writers in composition studies' "public turn." Questioning the common assumption that publicness resides outside of the classroom and beyond academic discourses, I sought to understand the classroom as already and always public. My theory building is primarily influenced by work in public sphere theory to define publicness in rhetorical terms--with a particular focus on the discourse negotiations that form publics and the rhetorical competence individuals need to maintain sustainable, deliberative publics. The Habermasean public sphere theory most often invoked in composition studies' discussion of public writing is appropriately complemented by these discursive understandings of publicness that help us address questions of individual rhetorical agency. The value of discourse-based investigations into public spheres--including the classroom public--is that this knowledge "can be used to pursue a better public" (Stob 27), characterized by access, active participation, and reciprocity with the discourses of other publics. I integrate a range of theories including public sphere theory, post-process theory, and Bakhtinian dialogics to build this discursive understanding of the classroom as public. Investigating the rhetorical activities of an actual classroom public--a public-oriented first-year composition course--provides further insight into how the discursive realms of home, school, and public meet in these classrooms and how students uncover agency amidst these discourses. The resulting post-process dialogics for the writing classroom as public uncovers concepts potentially useful for fostering students' rhetorical agency in creating and navigating publics within and outside the academy. While the motivation for this project originated in a desire for greater facility in teaching public discourse, the end of my theory building is not a specific, desired model of public discourse for the classroom, but instead an argument for the centrality of discursive awareness to any well-functioning public. The provisional theory building I embark on in this dissertation attempts to bring into sharper relief some of the ways that we can build with our student writers a better classroom public. Emily Donnelli Department of English University of Kansas April 200