Blake Yancy’s Approach
In her excerpt Writers’ Histories, Processes, and Identities Vary, Kathleen Blake Yancey dives deep into the theory about what shapes how a person writes, how they’re influenced by their historical, identity and process maneuvers. Or in more basic terms, it means how a person identifies themselves and how their historical background can influence their writing processes.
While reading this excerpt, there were multiple things that stood out to me, like this quote “Human beings often seem to share histories, engage in similar composing processes, and have identities that are at the core human, each writer is unique: indeed, each writer is a combination of the collective set of different dimensions and traits and features that make us human” which basically describes how you can share and transfer different ideas with other humans, which helps a human being identify themselves, which in turn helps identify the type of writer they want to become.
While sharing histories and engaging in similar composing processes all identify what it means to be human, there is this thought that kind of swirls around, “ What type of individual writer do I want to become?”. Well to answer that, Blake Yancey states “ … each writer begins a lifelong process of balancing individual perspectives and processes with the opportunities, demands, constraints, and genres of specific rhetorical situations and contexts of the larger culture, what she’s trying to say is that in order for writers to become the best that they can be, individually speaking, they need to break the societal mold, similar to how I mentioned breaking the mold on genre in my blog Escaping the Genrequo.
Lunsford‘s Approach
While discussing the process of creating this foundation from histories, processes, identity and sharing thoughts, we start learning about this theory that in order to gain new knowledge in writing, we have to learn from prior experiences, which is exactly what Andrea A. Lunsford expresses in her excerpt. She states that “Even when writing is private or meant for the writer alone, it is shaped by the writer’s earlier interactions with writing and with other people and will all the writer has read and learned”. This essentially describes how, when we write, we are using past experiences to guide us as we learn and write new things. Similar to how a teacher would ask students at the beginning of class what they learned in the previous class to draw on prior knowledge.
Lunsford also explains that while we play on prior knowledge and past experiences to influence how we write, she also states that those associations and experiences can also be “mitigated or changed” which occurs as “ writers become more confident or encounter more positive experiences with writing”. What she means is that when we as writers encounter positive experiences, like good communication or good reviews from writing, that’s when we will start molding and reshaping the way we write.
Lastly, while there is the positive spin on using prior knowledge and experiences, as they are necessary and helpful, they can also work against writers. Lunsford explains this by stating “When writers call on strategies they have used before when approaching a new writing task, those strategies may or may not work well in the current situation”, which essentially means that if we use specific strategies that worked well in other scenarios, they might not be used in or work well in others. Keep in mind, just because we say some writing strategies work well in one scenario doesn’t mean that they don’t help us learn and identify how similar they can be.
Villanueva‘s Approach
Ok, after talking about all the stuff involving building foundations and learning from previous knowledge or interactions with writing, we FINALLY (yes I said finally in bold letters) get to talk about how Writing Provides A Representation of Ideologies and Identities, which is exactly the title of Victor Villanueva’s excerpt discussing and elaborating on how “We carry many identities, choosing to foreground on (or more) over others depending on the context, audience, and the rhetorical task at hand”. Which, in basic terms, means that when writers basically write, they sometimes choose their specific identities depending on what they’re writing about or who they are writing to. Let’s say for instance, if I were to write a letter or email to a professor at school, I would identify myself as a student writing to her professor for assistance in class, not as a friend emailing a friend for some help in class or missed school work. It all depends on the context or specification in which you’re writing.
Similarly, while many of us have various identities when writing, we also have to start becoming aware of how certain power dynamics, like politics, can shape how ideologies and identities are represented in writing. Basically what this means is that there are certain limits or holds on what readers know, assume and read. Villanueva elaborates on this by stating “To write from the position of one who is “color blind”, for example, could be read as a denial of complex histories and current hierarchical differences in power and economic relations.” and “To write about a gay relationship in terms of husbands and wives is to maintain conventional conceptions of gender roles”. He’s basically explaining that you need to know the context and audience of who you’re writing for to get your point across and to make a difference in their lives.
Penrose & Geisler’s Approach
Wrapping up, or trying to wrap up, our discussion on how writers can feed off their histories, processes, and identities ( Kathleen Blake Yancey), how writers can use their prior knowledge when writing (Andrea A. Lunsford) and how writers can identify themselves and ideologies into their writing (Victor Villanueva), we turn to Penrose & Geisler who, in their excerpt, examine how students ( specifically novice writers) struggle with establishing authority, or their own identity/voice, into academic writing and discourse.
Now, on my first read through, I was a little confused, because compared to last week’s readings’, this excerpt was structured differently then I was used to. But when I started really digging in and understanding the excerpt, I understood the context of what both Penrose and Geisler were trying to stress to their audience, it’s that when we write, whether scholarly or freely, we must include our own opinions, thoughts, and identity into our writing. Penrose & Geisler explain this in this quote “ Janet’s only excursion into metadiscourse-discourse about the text itself and its context- is the opening noun, “this paper”, which, by its very depersonalization, locates the authority for its claims in a material artifact rather than its human author, Janet herself.” . In other words, writers need to utilize their own language, thoughts, opinions and identity into their writing to make it more human and less robotic.
But you really can’t blame Janet, that’s probably all she was taught in grad-school classes ( maybe undergrad?). On page 508 Penrose and Geisler explain this by stating “ ….these process differences are in large part a function of Janet and Roger’s contrasting views of their own authority in this domain and the role of human agents in the construction of knowledge generally”, meaning that maybe the combination of personal views and views from professors can change how people write.
FINALLY wrapping up, in all four readings, there were mentions of writers history, prior experience and identity, all of which are crucial and important when writers write. Keeping those ideals in mind, writers should also keep their audiences in mind as well. Remember, when you’re writing keep in mind who your audience is as well as the context you’re writing in.
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