Writing and my Evolving View of It
A STARTING PLACE
Writing is a complicated process that changes due to how the writer views it. My personal experience has changed greatly throughout my time in my Composition and Rhetoric I class. Initially, I viewed writing as a simple process that is completed once the assignment due is turned in. I now believe that it is much more complicated than that, with my previous writing following me into the future of my writing that may not even be related to my previous work.
THEORY OF WRITING
Theories are typically defined in dictionaries as a principle or multiple connected principles offered to explain the practice of an action. My theory relies heavily on the fact that each person’s view of writing and action of composing is dependent on their personal experience. My theory also involves Discourse and discourse, a confusing duo that has a significant difference that is only changed by a simple capitalization. Lowercase d discourse is defined by Gee, an author featured in the course’s textbook, as “language-in-action.” In contrast, Discourse is a combination of discourse with other social behaviors and ways of being. An important concept in writing is an author’s exigence and their audience. An exigence is an author’s reason for composing a specific piece, while their audience is who they intend to reach and who they reach beyond what they initially intended.
Two other key terms included in writing are medium and genre. Medium is a system of communicating, whether it is in writing or not, while a genre is the type of composition being done. These all tie together to form a rhetorical situation, which is defined as the aspects surrounding a paper that decides how it is written and composed. Before this class, the only terms I knew were personal experience, medium, and genre. Beyond those, every other term I use now was found through the class, either through the textbook, lectures, or any other resource offered by the teacher.
A CHANGING PROCESS
At the beginning of the quarter, my definition of writing was “the use of words in order for the author to convey a message on a particular subject through different formats ranging from formal to informal that are strengthened by the understanding of threshold concepts.” My key terms were simple in comparison to the terms I learned after this class and did not have much thought put into them (as shown through the picture below).
After two more times of completing the map activity, I finally created my final draft of what I define writing as personally. My current definition of writing is “the process of composing, in one or more media, to communicate the writer’s purpose to their audience(s). Writing as a process changes over time for each reader and writer, and is dependent on each person’s experience. The tone of each piece depends on the genre and rhetorical situation being dealt with.” This definition, along with several key terms, is what I have decided writing means to me after nearly completing my Composition and Rhetoric I class.
INFLUENCES
Each assignment of this quarter has been pivotal in my evolving definition of what writing is. Our first reading response asked about what writing is to us and about our personal experience writing. Looking back at it, I have expanded the types of writing I have done throughout the course. Our last response was on the topic of multimodal composition, something I never would have originally thought would belong in a typical writing class.
Project 3 focused on composing in multiple mediums of writing. It seemed to have changed how I view writing as a class and a practice the most out of all the projects we completed. This took writing and elevated it to a new level of something beyond the normal “typing on a blank page” stereotype that was enforced heavily until now. I never thought of something as simple as a flyer being just as much of a piece of writing as a research paper. This class has helped me put into perspective how writing is seen everywhere and all hold the same value, either formal or informal.
The textbook, which was a collection of writings from various authors about different topics connected to our assignments, played a role in how I learned about my new view of writing. Grant-Davie wrote a piece that was my first introduction to thinking about writing as a study rather than just an action completed by students and professionals. It pointed out the complicated concept of a rhetorical situation, something I had never heard of or thought about until reading it.
BRINGING THEORY TO REALITY
In reference to how I play out this theory in my own life, I think this class has taught me to be more introspective into how I write and my whole process of it. This class has changed my theory of writing, which has caused me to change how I write. Instead of changing my theory to fit how I write, I changed how I write to fit my own theory that I cultivated through these texts and activities. I think more about how exigence and audience can shape my papers before I begin writing. This can be shown clearly through my visual maps inserted above, displaying an increase of my consciousness of my writing and how each concept ties into another or multiple more. I now know how I define the theory of writing to myself and how I can apply it to other aspects of my academic and personal lives.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I have used this theory in the classroom of the course and outside of it to my other classes. I transferred this thought process to many other papers I have completed in other classes this quarter. Even when I am not in class, I find myself considering what concepts apply to my everyday writing, like to-do lists and texts. This course has taught me to think about my actions of writing as more than just actions. Through the use of a diverse range of media, Composition and Rhetoric I taught me how to apply myself more thoroughly in my writing and gave me tools to analyze my compositions in a deeper sense than a simple grammar check.
