of Education in 1963, Emig reveals an even more explicit consideration of the student-subject. She reports that she chose to focus on the inconsistencies in 19th century authors’ texts regarding the acts that led to writing because she believes that “the teaching of writing was [as] deformed in the past as it is in the present by concentrating on what the teacher does, not on what the student writer is experiencing” (“The Relation” 1). Her starting point for a consideration of what leads to writing is the student, not pedagogy. In “The Origins of Rhetoric: A Developmental View,” Emig adds that she wanted to look at “the origins of rhetoric in the life of an individual rather than in the life of a culture” (55). While we would now contend that the life of an individual is inseparable from the life of a culture, Emig’s stated goal attests to an intention to examine the individual student-subject who learns to write. Of course, there are Emig’s seminal works, The Composing Process of Twelfth-Graders, which focuses on the writing processes of real subjects, real students, and “Writing as a Mode of Learning,” which advocates writing not just as one of many modes of learning but as a unique mode of learning. Significantly, writing as learning is described as “active, engaged, personal—more specifically, self-rhythmed—in nature” (124). This statement also attests to her belief in the primacy the student-subject ought to occupy in any notion of learning and in any notion of writing.
Other scholars call for a synthesis of approaches to writing and for broader conceptions of writing. Janice Lauer speaks to pedagogical issues, James Kinneavy to the nature of writing process, and Sondra Perl to the nature of writing itself. In “Instructional Practices: Toward an Integration,” Lauer argues that the two major pedagogical directions of composition teaching—art and as nurturing natural process—should be integrated, along with the pedagogies of imitation and practice. This integrated approach, she writes, “offers a more stimulating and supportive context in which students can learn to write and write to learn” (3). Lauer argues for a both/and perspective rather than an either/or, a syntheses of approaches that expand the pedagogical horizon. In “The Process of Writing: A Philosophical Base in Hermeneutics,” Kinneavy voices a concern that writing process was often too narrowly conceived, and he calls for a more comprehensive notion of process. He provides theoretical and pedagogical depth by applying Martin Heidegger’s notion of hermeneutics to the notion of writing process. Such a perspective, he suggests, provides a more flexible, recursive, exploratory, and, especially, pluralistic perspective than the “almost monolithic notion floating in the journals that there is a single process underlying all invention, prewriting, writing, and editing stages” (8). Speaking to the complexity of writing and the need for deeper understandings of its process, Perl discusses teachers’ insights into their own composing processes and products, noting one teacher’s conclusion “that at any given moment the process is more complex than anything we are aware of” (“Understanding” 369). Perl maintains that these sorts of insights “show us the fallacy of reducing the composing process to a simple linear scheme and they leave us with the potential for creating even more powerful ways of understanding composing” (369). This call for an examination of actual writers’ insights into their own writing situates the starting point of inquiry with the student-subject, the writer.
Lester Faigley contends that a disciplinarily shared definition of process is needed if a discipline of writing is to ever achieve legitimacy. If writing process were to continue influencing the teaching of writing, he argues, “it must take a broader conception of writing, one that understands writing processes are historically dynamic—not psychic states, cognitive routines, or neutral social relationships” (“Competing” 537). From the expressive perspective, he says, we should study the possibilities that technological changes engender for personal expression. From the cognitive focus on problems, we should study the imbrication of writing process and power; and from the social perspective, we should study how texts serve power as well as the power relations that shut down certain discourses. Faigley’s broad characterization of what writing process ought to be implies a complex notion of the student-subject.
Richard Gebhardt and Charles Kostelnick also discuss the need for broader perspectives, suggesting that early theories to date did not yet approximate the complexity of writing process. Gebhardt notes that “the processes of writing are sufficiently complex, and sufficiently variable from writer to writer, that they cannot be reduced to a pat formula but demand models of great breadth and flexibility” (294). Kostelnick, on the other hand, says that writing process parallels design process. He further argues that a comparison of the two underscores the importance of building models that would account for the full spectrum of the writing taught and researched. Both scholars, however, attest to the complexity of writing process and articulate a broader spectrum of possibility that suggests student heterogeneity.
Both D. Gordon Rohman and Erika Lindemann also implicitly reject a homogeneous notion of the subject. They speak to the need for writing process theory to include notions of situatedness as well as flexibility. Rohman, for example, says that writing is usefully conceptualized as a process, “something which shows continuous change in time like growth in organic nature” (106). The analogy of writing process to organic nature suggests that the student-subject is the logical antecedent to process. Just as notions of writing should not be static, he argues, neither should notions of the student-subject for which those notions are formulated. Lindemann is even more specific in her support for a heterogeneously conceived notion of writing process: “writing involves not just one process but several. [. . .] Also, the processes change depending on our age, our experiences as writers, and the kind of writing we do. Indeed, they seem as complex and varied as the people who use them” (21). Lindemann therefore describes a highly rhetorical conception of writing process, as heterogeneous as those who use it.
Still other scholars offer new conceptualizations of writing process, or they discuss those they believe to have been overemphasized or neglected in the past. Lee Odell, for example, recommends that we could best help students by identifying the intellectual processes reflected in their writing. Linda Flower and John Hayes provide the ground for further research on the thinking processes involved in writing. Barry Kroll recommends a “cognitive-developmental” theoretical approach to composing, which draws upon the psychology of Jean Piaget and the educational psychology of John Dewey. He argues for an emphasis on writing as process because, he says, it could provide students with strategies to manage their writing that would not oversimplify their process.
Although George Jensen and John DiTiberio argue that C. G. Jung’s system of identifying different personality types would benefit both composition instruction and composition research, they also acknowledge that different people use different processes. This observation suggests that what was most needed was a better understanding of how people differ and how these differences affect writing process. Personality, then, was the element they believe had been neglected. C. H. Knoblauch takes issue with a perceived overemphasis on the textual aspects of writing choices, and he insists that behavioral aspects are worthy of teaching scholarship. We should, he argues, ask questions about the correlation of writing choices to both the kind of task attempted and to the competence of a specific writer. When these questions are answered we better understand how to develop advantageous behaviors in the classroom.
Jack Selzer, however, believes composing habits do differ among writers, but he does not believe these differences inhered within a writer. Carol Berkenkotter maintains that changes in aim, an element she contends is overlooked, also changes the composing habits of experienced writers. Sondra Perl, however, argues that parts of the writing process cause changes not only from writer to writer but also from topic to topic (“Composing Processes”). It is an overemphasis on the rationalization of composing that Richard Young maintains was the “great danger of a technical theory of art—of art as grammar” (201). Patricia Conners argues that our research ought to focus on intuition and intuition ought then to inform our teaching practice. “A persistence in viewing intuition and the whole problem-solving process of writing as inexplicable and mysterious,” she says, “is a little like insisting the world is flat—no true wonder is lost in a more accurate understanding” (77). Alice Brand identifies affective elements as the overlooked element in what she contended was a concentration of scholarship on the cognitive
