Response to February 27th readings. Landmark Essays: Berthoff, Hairston, and Reither

In her chapter, Hairston applies Kuhn’s model for revolutions in science to the composition field. She claims that a paradigm shift is (or was, in the 80s, when she wrote the article) happening in the composition field. The shift that Hairston sees is from the traditional paradigm, based in classical rhetoric and an idealization of what an efficient writer do, to the new paradigm started by process writing theories. The author offers a very good overview of research in composition and provides a neat summary of the main features of the new paradigm (p. 124). When I finished reading the three articles, I pictured Hairston’s article drawing a line in the development of composition research, where Berthoff’s article would be placed closer to the process writing theory end and Reither’s article would be situated closer to the other extreme, and closer to sociocultural theories. In some way, I found similarities between Reither’s and Berthoff’s claims. Despite I associated both authors with different trends (Berthoff being more a “literature” person and Reither being more a “social” guy), I found that both conceptualize writing as a knowledge-building activity. Berthoff (“the philosopher” in my imagination) does it in a broader way[1] and conceptualizes the composing process as a meaning-making process, as something we craft. Reither (the “social scientist”, as I picture him), on the other hand, conceptualizes writing as a knowledge building activity but more linked to the specific communities where it happens. Writing, according to Reither, is grounded in the need to communicate unknown things and is based on inquiry and thus, linked to learning. For this author, writing can’t be separated from the social-rhetorical situations.
[1] “Teaching composition as a mode of thinking and a way of learning” (p. 109)