Making the gesture: Graduate student submissions and the expectation of journal referees

Composition Studies, Spring 2001 by McNabb, Richard

Recognizing the importance of gesturing, scholars in rhetoric and composition have recently examined the parameters of how claims can be made in disciplinary discourses. In Shaping Written Discourse, Charles Bazerman demonstrates historically how the objects of study, the authorized questions, the kinds of evidence-all of which contribute to the discursive conventions of the field-are adjudicated within the disciplines. Through his analysis of experimental articles in the sciences, he illustrates how such conventions are a "textual means of consolidating the scattered productions of [scholars] into a stable and progressive knowledge structure" (5). By defining the range of objects, conceptual instruments, and rhetorical structures of the discipline, the field is able to consolidate professional interests, indoctrinate novices, and direct future lines of inquiry (6). Put differently, by defining the field's norms and values, disciplines restrict what counts as knowledge; they establish rules and procedures that classify the objects of knowledge and determine who has the authority to speak about the objects in ways that do count as knowledge. Bazerman illustrates how understanding texts within a profession helps us understand how the profession constitutes itself and carries out its work.

Building on Bazerman's research, Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas Huckin-in a chapter of Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication to which John Ackerman contributes-focus on ways novice writers learn the discourse conventions of a field. They argue that "for writers to make things happen (i.e., to publish, to exert an influence on the field, to be cited), they must know how to strategically utilize their understanding of the genre" (e.g., articles, conference proposals) in which they are writing (3). Tracking a graduate student through the professionalization process at Carnegie Mellon, they found that novices must be able to use the appropriate written conventions to be able to participate and communicate in disciplinary forums. Graduate students must "negotiate their claims within the context of the field's accepted knowledge and methodology" to publish work in professional journals (Genre 118). Berkenkotter, Huckin, and Ackerman's study further indicates the importance of gesturing when writing for publication-that is, the need to shift one's interpretive authority away from the material and into an established disciplinary matrix. As I illustrate in my analysis below, when scholars do not make the appropriate gestures their arguments are denied publication.

Gestures to a Rhetorical Mode

From 1990 to 1998 thirty-seven percent of RR's submissions were from graduate students (identified either through self-admission in a cover letter or through a telephone survey). These graduate students submitted manuscripts from rhetoric and composition programs throughout the country-representing sixty-seven percent of all such doctoral programs.2 An analysis of the submissions suggests that the advanced literacy of gesturing is missing from many of the graduate student submissions. In my survey of the submissions, I found that two of the more common mistakes students made when constructing their arguments were the failure to gesture to an appropriate rhetorical mode and the failure to gesture to an appropriate problem presentation.