The Shifting Tides of Composition Studies

For decades, the field of writing composition has been in a state of flux, as it consistently is shaped by evolving pedagogical philosophies and differentiating ideological currents. Scholars such as Richard Fulkerson and James Berlin have provided their insights into certain frameworks that help educators better understand these specific changes. 

Opening up with Fulkerson’s Composition Theory in the Eighties, he describes how composition scholars in the early 1980s generally agreed on the axiology– or the values- of writing instruction: mostly stating that teaching composition basically revolved around how to improve the students’ writing abilities rather than teaching them the importance of writing overall. However, Fulkerson also mentioned something called paradigmatic diversity, which is a new concept for me? Maybe a new phrase that I haven’t heard of before? But basically he mentioned that due to multiple theories emerging that competed to define how to best achieve this goal of teaching values of writing he had to identify three major approaches to get the point across: 

• Formalism ( Current-Traditional Rhetoric) which focuses on grammar structure, and correctness. 
• Expressionism which emphasizes the writers personal voice, creativity, and self-discovery into their work. 
• Rhetorical Approaches which are concerned with the writer’s audience, persuasion and effective communications. 

Fulkerson adds more depth to the three philosophies mentioned above by expanding on and creating a foundational framework that can help give a broader understanding of composition pedagogy. He classifies them into four primary philosophies: 

• Formalism ( as mentioned above) which focuses on correctness, structure, and clarity in writing. This pedagogy assumes that good writing can and will follow established rules and conventions. 
• Expressivist ( mentioned above) which stresses and prioritizes personal voice, self-expression, and individual creativity above anything else in writing. 
• Rhetorical Composition ( mentioned above) which centers on the writer’s awareness of the audience, persuasive strategies, and the overall social nature of discourse. 
• Mimetic Composition which views writing as a means to represent reality accurately. This one seems the most common in most philosophies… (Particularly my educational one)

Tying in the two other Fulkerson articles above into the last article by using Fulkerson’s Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century which discussed an even wider perspective on the field of composition studies. It seemed to me that Fulkerson essentially took his four philosophies ( Formalism, Expressivist, Rhetorical Composition, and Mimetic Composition) and kept narrowing them down and shaping them into what really needs to be taught in writing composition classes. While keeping Expressivist, Fulkerson added Critical/Cultural Studies (CCS) and Procedural Rhetoric into the line up. 

Lastly, we turn to a new perspective, one that is outside of Fulkerson. This perspective comes from James Berlin. He argued that all writing instruction needs to be inherently ideological- basically how one person uses their thoughts and ideas to shape the way they write. Berlin categorized composition theories into three main rhetorical traditions, one of which seems oddly familiar ( can you guess which one it is?):

• Cognitive Rhetoric or objective rhetoric which stresses on viewing reality as external and knowable through logic and empirical methods. 
• Expressionist Rhetoric which sees the truth as individual and subjective, one that is discovered through one’s personal reflection.
•  Social-Epistemic Rhetoric which argues that knowledge is socially constructed and threaded with power structures. 

Combining the three articles from Richard Fulkerson and the one article from James Berlin, there is something that shines a light on how teachers of writing composition can really expand on the way they want to teach writing and the importance of writing to their students. This can also be formatted to fit not only college level writing but also K-12 English Language Arts classes.