An Attempt to Put My Research into Words

So my research project this summer has focused on how students deal with the relationships of power when they present an argument or a controversial idea in an essay.

A lot of the previous research on this topic focuses on the student's relationship with the university. Instructors write about how the university is a institution of power, and as such, teachers need to be careful when we ask our students to adjust to how we speak, read, write, and reason.

The researchers illustrate the issue with examples of academic outsiders: minorities, first-generation college students, immigrants, and exchange students.

I see this tension manifest in both my professional and personal life.

Most of my students were educated by people who expected them to enter a European style university. Some students come from systems that more closely resemble the old Soviet-style education. I wouldn't disparage either of these systems. They each have their strengths, but they are very different than the American style of higher education. The sudden introduction of such a new style is a massive upheaval for many. Some resist. Some become confused. Some are too quick to give up on the system that brought them to this point. It's an exciting environment to teach in.

Closer to home, a few years back my brother-in-law gave me a book on Creationism. At first glance, I found the author's position on college education to be disturbing. I thought the author was accusing educators of brainwashing young people. Since then, however, I've come to terms with the man's anti-establishment views of the university.

After all, the university demands that people adjust if they want to participate in the university's discussions. It can be frustrating. There are rules to follow. Lots of them.

Actually, each discipline within the university has its own set of rules. For example, economists discuss issues in a very different way than chemical engineers. It's not just the content of their discussions that differs; the methods for presenting arguments and evidence are different as well.

The jargon used to describe these kinds of groups isn't too complicated: A group of people involved in a formalized ongoing discussion = a discourse community.

There are discourse communities everywhere. They come into and go out of existence everyday. If you belong to a club that has set channels of communication, then you belong to a discourse community. If you follow a blog and comment regularly, that counts too.

The theory I'm putting forth with my paper is this: It is important to teach students how to actively participate in new discourse communities, so we should use the classroom to help them recognize and control the forces that shape a discourse community.

Here's where I got the idea. In my classroom I teach students from all over the world. They enter the class with these wildly varied preconceived notions about each other's countries, about the academic world, about the professional world, about governments, religion, race...

When these students present an argumentative essay to one and other, the complexity of the relationships that develop between them is difficult to keep track of.

I argue in my paper, that if students treat my classroom as an emerging discourse community - a community where they keep track of how people react to arguments and assertions - those students will be able to pull certain skills out of the experience - transferable skills that will help them identify the ways people argue in a community, the ways people assert their authority, the ways people gain power and influence. These are the skills that will help them move from one discourse community to another.

I believe in a world where cultures and communities are interacting more than ever - in a world where the stakes are high in so many of those exchanges, this skill is invaluable.

My question for you, dear reader, is what are some of the discourse communities you belong to? What is the focus of the community? How do members participate?

Failblog Wins.

Failblog wins. Flawless victory.

Holding onto Agency

My favorite quote from the scene here is when Snoop gets in the car and explains, “Man said if you wanna shoot nails, this here’s the Cadillac. He mean Lexus, but he ain't know it.”

Despite the curse words, I plan to show this clip to my students this fall so I can introduce them to my research and my teaching objectives.

My students come from all over the place, and this makes some of the workshop sessions very exciting. The cultural divide is clearest when they are trying to explain or persuade. While that is interesting, what I really want to dig into this year are the relationships of perceived power during these exchanges.

In my summer reading about diversity in the classroom, all of the composition people are concerned about the relationship between 'fringe students' and the academy. A fringe student can be one of many types of student - first in the family to go to college, a minority, an EFL student, etc. The academics are worried that the overwhelming force of the academy will wipe out anything unique such a student might bring to a discussion. It's a very real problem, but in my classroom something more interesting is going on.

My students have fairly fixed ideas about each others' countries, cultures, and their places in the world. This means that when the expository essay of an Azeri student is workshopped by a Swede, the relationship between reader and writer is very complex. The expectations of the academy become just one element in a much more complicated exchange.

So, in a more explicit manner than in the past, I want to focus my students' attention on the cultural differences they deal with when presenting expository or persuasive texts to each other. I want them to notice when/how they jump from one style of communication to another. I want them to discuss who they feel is in control of a given discussion. I want them to learn how to navigate between different styles of communication without ever losing their sense of agency. You can see Snoop doing just that in the clip above.

Call it code-switching, code-meshing, negotiating World Englishes, or something else. I believe the skill is only going to become more relevant in the future. So I'm excited to take advantage of the unique make-up of my composition classroom.

Summer Break

I'm traveling and writing this summer. Working on a research paper, the novel, and PhD applications. So not much excitement to report, but here is an old video about the most popular Hungarian summer vacation spot, Lake Balaton.

Gazprom's New Venture

Teaching at a business school means it's helpful when one of the biggest corporations in the region makes a ridiculous mistake that inadvertently drives home the basics of Composition Studies. But it isn't always pretty.

One of the things I strive to teach in my classroom is this: Effective communication starts by attempting to understand your audience and then crafting a message that is appropriate for them.

When Gazprom announced its new venture in Nigeria, the executives in charge failed to anticipate how a global audience might react to the name Nigaz.

Nigaz is the name of the new Russian-Nigerian oil firm.

I thought maybe the Daily Mail article was a joke, but here's the BBC report.

I'm not outraged or angry. I don't think the naming was motivated by racism.

In a way, I'm happy about the misstep. This firm's name will make an excellent real-world example of how a writer's intentions can be obscured by the reader's frame of reference. Thanks, Nigaz.

(And thanks to Dan for spotting the story.)

Where we Fight our Battles Matters

This week at CEU there were several volleys exchanged in a debate over LGBT rights and homophobia. The debate took place through a series of mass emails - everyone kept hitting 'reply all'. I want to write about how frustrating it was to see this debate carried out via such an inefficient channel, but before I do, there is something that should be said:

The atmosphere in Hungary is odd right now. Tolerance of all kinds is on the wane.

A quick and dirty explanation: The ruling government has failed to govern, and some segments of the population have turned to extreme political parties as a result. "Hungary belongs to Hungarians" is the proud slogan of Jobbik, a party that recently won three seats in the EU Parliament. Jobbik is backed by the Magyar Garda, a militia that dresses its members in paramilitary fashion. Last month, the party's leading figure refused an interview with the Daily Telegraph because the paper reported that Jobbik can be linked to anti-Gypsy and anti-Semitic sentiments. Even if the party officials do not intend to enact xenophobic policies, the tone of their constituency is not very open minded. They are a small group, but they have the nation's attention.

The result: Debates most would deem offensive are taking place in the public sphere. The debate that took place over the CEU servers was not nearly as bad as what one might hear in a Budapest bar, but I got involved in the email battle because Hungary's growing lack of tolerance is making me angry.

Anyway, the whole affair reminded me of when I was younger.

Back when I first started writing, my motivations were horribly self-centered. I was absolutely certain that everybody would be interested in what I had to say. That was true of a lot of things in my life. It was an unattractive trait. It may have looked like confidence at the outset, but if I wasn't humbled on a regular basis, my head grew to unsustainable proportions.

I have to thank my friends here for being big enough pricks to knock me down a couple of pegs whenever necessary. I don't know how Dora does it without being a prick, but I love her for it. And of course living in a country where the language is as wily as Hungarian has kept me in check as well. Nevertheless, it's that "Hey, look at me!" characteristic that's guided me down many of the roads I've taken in life thus far.
Acting when I was younger
Working as a camp councilor
Much of my college-themed debauchery
Writing
And now as a teacher...
As a teacher I get up in front of people everyday and act like what I have to say is important .

My actions feel less self-centered now, and yet I'm more confident than ever that what I have to say is important. This may seem like a paradox, but I figured out why it isn't this week.

The confidence first took root when I got serious and started studying writing as a craft. When I was at UC Davis, I learned quickly that people were not interested in what I had to say - unless what I had to say was interesting. That sounds obvious, but I think it's a lesson a lot of twenty-somethings need to figure out.

I learned a lot while trying to put together that first novel. Then I got to Hungary and started teaching composition. My work was to help a diverse group of young people struggling to make their views comprehensible. The obstacles they encountered helped me break down the task of writing into much smaller tasks. It was exciting, but it was hard work.

I didn't know at the time that I was reinventing the wheel. When I got to CEU and started reading journals and textbooks my work became easier - and more interesting. And now, with experience and the concepts of a discipline at my disposal, I'm certain that what I have to say about composition and communication is valuable.

That certainty was tested this week after a Master's student sent out an email to everyone at CEU. She invited people to get involved in Budapest Pride 2009 - a film and cultural festival held by a LGBT rights group. That afternoon another student hit 'reply all' and scolded the university for allowing someone to distribute such an invitation. He called the invitation propaganda and then compared LGBT groups to the KGB.

The floodgates were open.

Over the next two days, there were more than 30 emails sent using the 'reply all' option. The few reasonable arguments forwarded were buried beneath ad hominems and outrageous statements. One person indirectly compared homosexuality to witchcraft.

I wrote up a standard reply for everyone who abused the 'reply all' option. Each time I replied only to the sender, asking him/her to recognize that no one was going to make any progress by batting insults back and forth. And to those asking for tolerance, I presented evidence that the use of the 'reply all' button was only driving the wedge in deeper.

I took the debate seriously because it is a very touchy issue in Hungary right now.

But I took the platform for the debate even more seriously because such an issue deserves a real debate. People told me that 'reply all' was forcing others to think about the issue. But from what I read, most of the people were not thinking very hard. People do not hit 'reply all' to generate awareness.

I know why people hit the 'reply all' button. That is the button you hit when you believe everyone is interested in what you have to say. That is the 'self-centered' button, the 'look-at-me!' button, the 'Watch-me-be-smarter-than-that-guy' button. It's an easy button to hit, but if people can stop themselves from hitting it and take a moment to find a more effective way to solve our collective problems, then both time and server space will be put to better use.

So, my challenge to you, readers, is to suggest a forum for such a debate in an environment as volatile as Hungary.

Good News from the Governmant

Yesterday the White House appointed Jim Leach to head the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The NEH is the nation's largest funding body for the humanities. The New York Times article that reported the appointment quotes Leach stating his support for the NEH.

Leach is described as a liberal Republican. He teaches at Princeton.

The Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that Obama's choice of a Republican will likely help push through his proposal to increase NEH funding from $155 million to $171 million. If that proposal is approved, it would reverse the decades-long trend of real terms budget erosion for the NEH.

When I was an undergraduate in philosophy ('94-'99) and a Master's student in English ('02-'04), the outlook for people in the Humanities was bleak at best. People didn't talk about a lack of growth - they talked about how fast the discipline was shrinking. This appointment doesn't make all that go away, but it is pleasant to see those in power renew their appreciation for what people in the humanities have to offer.

Write Like a What Now?

We just finished a three-day weekend here. Dora and I got out of the city for most of it. That was very nice, but while in the country, our dog Dio got some kind of skin infection on his head. So today the vet had to shave his head and scrub the skin clean (read "raw").

So now when I walk the dogs I try to keep my mind occupied. If I don't, I end up fixated on the horrified looks of passers-by. You might find it hard to believe, but most people don't like looking at infected dog head skin.*

Anyway, as I walked my little Frankenstein monster along Andrassy ut, I tried to figure out what it is that keeps my students from writing clearly.

The subject brought me back to a mantra posted on the wall of my high school's expository writing classroom, "Read like a writer; write like a reader." I throw this idea up on the whiteboard during the opening and closing lectures in my first-year writing skills course. Many of the students latch onto it. They often quote it in the summary statements of their final portfolios. It's a nice phrase. It's got symmetry. It's got alliteration. And it makes you sound like you care about writing.

The problem with this advice is that it is easy to say, but it is exceptionally difficult to execute. This is the issue I tried to unravel a bit today. So while people gasped in horror at Dio's gory little head, I contemplated the challenge of 'writing like a reader.'**

The fact is, most of my students do not think about the reader while writing. They think about the rules of grammar, the due date, source citation, the word count, and (if I'm lucky) the content of their essays. These things ought to be the focus during the early stages of writing. They are important. Unfortunately, many students believe that once they can understand their own writing, then everyone else ought to understand that writing as well.

However, when a writer is focused on understanding the meaning of their own work, it's impossible to think about the reader - to consider how another person could/would/might understand a sentence or a paragraph. It's impossible because our brains can't build a strong enough wall between what we want to say and what the text says.

Whenever a writer tries to edit for clarity while still teasing out the meanings and concepts in a paper, there's a turf war in that writer's brain between the intended meaning and the text's possible meanings. Intended meaning is always going to win that war. So to write like a reader, a writer must have the firmest of grasps on the material before reaching the editing and proofreading stages. Once there, the writer then has to think about the material as though they have lost that grasp; they have to anticipate how their words could be misinterpreted.

The advice this challenge might spawn: "Stop thinking about what you want to do, and think about what you might be doing." Not quite as catchy as the adage from my high school, but it does get at the complexity of the task.

Such activity not only requires time and abstract thought - it also requires a powerful sense of insecurity. You have to be the type to worry and fret about all the ways your words might be misread. Most writers I've met have that kind of insecurity in spades. It make some areas of their lives more challenging, but it makes for some very readable prose.

Many beginning writers, on the other hand, believe that once the words are on the page, the task of deciphering an essay's meaning belongs to the reader. They seem to say, "If the paragraph isn't clear, why don't you read it again, stupid." While this kind of confidence might help a person in some situations, it often leads to poorly written papers.

So during my dog walk, while I was worrying about how strangers were reacting to my dog's head, the writing advice I generated was this: "Try being a bit more insecure about yourself and your work."

Mmm, maybe I'm a bit biased.

*Note to my students: "dog head skin" is an awkwardly long noun sequence. Just the kind of thing I've warned many of you against. Avoiding such a sequence is almost always a good point of style, but you will find writers who will break that 'rule' if the awkwardness of the phrasing compliments the meaning of the content. In this case, I used an ungainly and ugly collection of nouns to better get across how unpleasant my dog's head is when shaved.

**I'll leave the challenge of Reading Like a Writer to Francine Prose's lovely volume on the subject.