Singular texts/plural authors : perspectives on collaborative writing PDF
Preview Singular texts/plural authors : perspectives on collaborative writing
Page iii Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing Andrea Lunsford Lisa Ede Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale & Edwardsville Page iv Copyright © 1990 by the Board of Trustees Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Edited by Patricia St. John Designed by David Ford Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga 93 92 91 90 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Ede, Lisa Singular texts/plural authors: perspectives on collaborative writing / Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford p. cm. Includes bibliographical references Includes indexes. 1. Authorship — collaboration. I. Lunsford, Andrea II. Title. PN145.E34 1990 808'.02 — dc20 8919712 ISBN 0809314479 CIP The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984 Page v For our parents Page vii CONTENTS Preface ix Intertexts 1 1 5 Old Beginnings Questioning Assumptions 5 Setting a Research Agenda 7 Surveying Literature on Collaboration: Early Attempts 9 Revising Our Research Agenda 12 A Note on Definition 14 Intertexts 17 2 20 Collaborative Writers at Work Scenes of Collaboration: Foregroundings 20 Scenes of Collaboration: Reflections 41 Scenes of Collaboration: Backgroundings 44 Intertexts 68 3 72 The Concept of Authorship: Explorations and (Dis)Closures The Myth of the Solitary Author: An Example from the Sciences 73 Shifting Conceptions in the History of Authorship 76 Page viii Contemporary Criticism and the Problem of the Author 87 Contemporary Discursive Practices and Challenges to the Traditional 93 Concept of Authorship Intertexts 103 4 107 The Pedagogy of Collaboration Historical Perspectives on Collaborative Learning 108 Contemporary Composition Studies and the Question of Collaboration 112 Cooperative versus Collaborative Learning 116 The Challenge of Collaborative Writing 118 Collaborative Writing in the Classroom 121 Intertexts 127 5 130 New Beginnings Research Methods Revisited 130 Hierarchical and Dialogic Modes of Collaboration 133 Understanding and Overstanding 137 Groundings 141 Appendixes 145 A 147 Survey of Writing in the Professions B 187 Survey of Writing in the Professions: Stage Two/Group Writing C 247 Interview Prompts: Stage Three D 251 Collaborative Writing Assignments Bibliography 259 Name Index 279 Subject Index 283 Page ix PREFACE In his essay "Terministic Screens," Kenneth Burke enjoins his readers to "pick some particular nomenclature, some one terministic screen . . . that you may proceed to track down the kinds of observations implicit in the terminology you have chosen, whether your choice of terms was deliberate or spontaneous" (Language 47). For us, the "nomenclature" of writing together, which began spontaneously, evolved quickly into just the kind of tracking down — as Burke could have told us — that led to everwidening circles of investigation. Why write . . . together? Our involvement in collaborative writing grew out of the personal, the homely, the concrete. We wrote together as an extension and an enrichment of our long friendship. In the process of making each of us present to the other, of hearing our "selves" echoed back and forth, of constituting and reconstituting, forming, transforming, and reforming voices to speak our texts, we came ineluctably to hear within ourselves a large polyphonic chorus rather than just a duet. And so we set out to chart our own experience of collaborative writing and to view that experience through the "nomenclatures" of workrelated writing, of history, theory, technology, and pedagogy. The experience and the study of collaboration have been for us in some ways acts of subversion and of liberatory significance. We began collaborating in spite of concerned warnings of friends and colleagues, including those of Edward P.J. Corbett, the person in whose honor we first wrote collaboratively. We knew that our collaboration represented a challenge to traditional research conventions in the humanities. Andrea's colleagues (at the University of British Columbia) said so when they Page x declined to consider any of her coauthored or coedited works as part of a review for promotion. Lisa's colleagues (at Oregon State University) said so when, as part of her tenure review, they supportively but exhaustively discussed how best to approach the problem of her coauthored works. These professional impediments to our collaboration strengthened, rather than weakened, our resolve to work together. We are each, in our different ways, very stubborn. We are also committed to working to change the academy so that others can, without penalty, experience the satisfactions and challenges of collaborative inquiry. One hindrance to academic collaboration in the humanities, we believe, is the practice of insisting on the concept of primary and secondary authorship. By crediting the first author as primary and the second and following authors as secondary, this practice denies the reality of collaboration such as ours. Whenever we write together, however we list our names, our collaboration is equal. When we first began working together, we thought that presenting our names in alphabetical order would indicate our shared responsibility for and participation in our texts. Quickly disabused of that notion, we have since alternated the order of our names. We have even considered publishing major projects such as this book under coined neologisms, such as Annalisa Edesford or LisaAnn Lunede. Our ultimate recognition of the problems this practice might cause our colleagues and readers forced us to abandon this plan. The visual presentation of our names on the title page, then, is yet another attempt to indicate how seamless is the weaving of our ideas, words, and responsibilities in this book. The years that we have worked on this project have been difficult ones for both of us. This book bears the mark of our struggle — one that has emboldened us to take risks, to write more personally than we have in the past. Not the least of this personal struggle has been our attempt to question each other's assumptions and to recognize, to really hear, and to appreciate the questions of others. For this book about collaboration reflects not only our personal exploration of collaborative writing but an extraordinarily wide range of cocollaboration. The research project with which this book began was funded in 1984 by the Fund for the Improvement of PostSecondary Education, under the auspices of the Mina Shaughnessy Scholars Program. The meetings we shared with the project directors and with other Shaughnessy Scholars helped us refine not only our research design but our thinking about collaboration as well. In the course of carrying out that research, we received invaluable critiques and help from Linda Flower, Lynn Troyka, Pamela Bodenroeder, and from Helen Berg, who steadfastly insisted that we could understand and use the statistical manipulations she was carrying out for us. We owe an early and continuing debt to Bob Connors, who has patiently listened to us talk through this book, and also to Theresa Enos, who has supported our work by allowing versions of some of it to appear in Rhetoric Review. We are Page xi also enormously grateful to those respondents to our early surveys who allowed us to conduct extended interviews with them: Albert Bernstein, Eleanor Chiogioji, James Goodling, Chris Kuhn, Lyle Matznick, Dick Miller, Bill Qualls, Scott Roser, Allan Warrior. Some of their stories animate and make concrete the research story we tell in chapter 2. From our CCCC community, we have drawn support and insight throughout the long process of writing. Many colleagues have graciously and generously shared their own work with us: Nancy Allen, Diane Atkinson, Charles Bazerman, Deborah Bosley, Mary Beth Debs, Stephen DohenyFarina, Janis Forman, Anne Gere, Dixie Goswami, Jeanne Halpern, Sharon HamiltonWeiler, Tori HaringSmith, Shirley Brice Heath, Mara Holt, Karen LeFevre, Hallie Lemon, Meg Morgan, Lee Odell, Ann Piternick, Jim Reither, Mike Rose, Craig Snow, Susan Stevenson, Jan Swearingen, John Trimbur, Steve Witte. We are grateful to them all. Kenneth Bruffee, Anne Gere, Tom Hilgers, Karen LeFevre, Elaine Maimon, Barbara Nodine, and Harvey Wiener put together CCCC sessions with us, and out of those sessions and our other presentations came criticism and response that enriched and broadened our understanding. At one such meeting, Lisa Albrecht challenged us to probe more fully the questions of power and of gender raised by the data we were gathering, and she showed us ways we might do so. And many, many other women in our profession, by the example of their works and lives, have contributed to the making of this book. We especially wish to note Suzanne Clark, Sharon Crowley, Janet Emig, Beth Flynn, Phyllis Franklin, Cheryl Glenn, Shirley Brice Heath, Janice Lauer, Susan Miller, the late Mina Shaughnessy, and C. Jan Swearingen. As we worked toward a final draft, we had the benefit of particularly strong readings from John Trimbur, Karen LeFevre, Charles Cooper, Suzanne Clark, and Chris Anderson, whose criticisms were in every case constructive. And we have had the luxury of two incredibly helpful departments. At Oregon State, Bob Frank and Bill Potts offered strong support throughout this project. Anterra Beyerl, Lois Gangle, Anne Wilson, and Marjorie Kickert provided muchneeded help with copying, mailing, and other chores, while Diane Slywczuk demonstrated absolutely magical abilities to negotiate the rough terrain of grant budgets and administrative documentation. And without the friendship, assistance, and support of Barb Hogg and Lex Runciman, much of the work of this book simply would not have been possible. At Ohio State, Murray Beja, Ed Corbett, and David Frantz provided encouragement and always found time to listen; Jim Phelan and the students in our spring 1989 graduate seminar sparked new ideas every day; Cindy Cox, Carole Papper, Melinda Bako, Kelly Vezdos, Jane Ashby, and Nader Ayish worked tirelessly to document all those voices we wanted to include in the bibliography; Beverly Bruck and Lorraine Carlat produced meticulous copy for us and kept the express mail meters Page xii humming; Heather Graves developed two workable and complete indexes for the book; and Gerald Nelms and Roger Graves added so much to the process of producing this book that we scarcely know where to begin in listing their contributions. Finally, we owe a particularly strong debt to the dedicated staff at Southern Illinois University Press. We wish to thank Patricia St. John, Susan Wilson, and Natalia Nadraga, who worked with us as we prepared the final manuscript for publication. And we can never adequately thank Kenney Withers, who not only supported, encouraged, and (when we needed it) goaded us during the years we worked on this project, but who has, in his role of editor, done so much to encourage the revival of rhetoric in English studies. We do not mean by this lengthy list of acknowledgments to eschew responsibility for the text that follows. Indeed, we are eager to assume that responsibility: to author this book. But we are acutely aware of the extent to which our ability to author anything at all is anchored in our experiences with others. Even as we drew up this list of those who most directly supported and influenced our work, we were aware of the scores of others upon whom we indirectly relied, and we realized that we could never make this list complete, never compile a definitive set of acknowledgments. With this text, we have entered the crowded parlor of which Burke speaks, and we have joined the multiplicitous conversation in progress there. But we have not arrived alone. Instead, we have been accompanied by a whole chorus of voices which have also entered into that conversation — a chorus that we have attempted to evoke in the Intertexts preceding each chapter. For all the voices we are most particularly grateful, for they have taught us to listen even as we try to speak.
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