Today’s Plan:
- Mueller Article Review
- Sample Bibliographic Analysis
- Homework
Mueller Article Review
One issue with the Mueller responses. My first question:
What is Mueller’s issue with the way research is taught? What is his issue with Lunsford’s approach (since he points to her famous textbook as an example)?
If I want to know the problem an author is addressing, where do I look?
Response #1: Mueller explains how students are able to read only key parts of articles and get the full point.
Response #2: Mueller’s issue with he way researches taught is how it is interpreted. He refers to students only reading half of a. assigned reading and getting the full experience of the texts.
Response #3: Mueller’s issue with the way research is taught is due to the interpretation to look at writings/research that does not grasp the details. With Lunsford’s approach she describes how to put sources/citations in writings by using the word “into.” Mueller’s approach to this is how the word “into” is just linear in writings and does not have a network-based frame for source use.
Response #4: In his article, Mueller dealt with a problem he identified with research and how it is taught. He started off by addressing the issues he has Lunsford‘s approach. this approach specifically uses what he calls “God predispositions “. His main issue was with selecting quotes and that students are being taught to select quotes too freely and are not using quotes that give accurate descriptions of the topic as a whole.
Response #5: Mueller’s problem with the way research is taught is how different aspects of the research process can be translated to the writer/reader. He finds that if not taught right the responses and reasonings behind the research will not be strong and misunderstood. He wants there to be meaning between associations and rhetorical systems.
Response #6: In “Mapping the Resourcefulness of Sources,” Mueller states the idea that students are not getting an entire research experience because of half-assigned reading, which leads to an open interpretation. A loose interpretation can leave out data and evidence vital to the thesis. Lunsford’s technique of writing and integrating source material must be smooth. To make it flow easily, carefully integrate quotations into the text very clearly. This technique is stating the fact and then using found evidence from the article to support the statement. Mueller has a strong rebuke against Lunsford’s use of the word “into,” saying it is predisposed to a centripetal pathway.
Response #7: “Mapping the Resourcefulness of Sources: A Worknet Pedagogy,” by Derek Mueller highlights the importance of the use of worknets to provide a dynamic research approach while avoiding the linear thought process often seen in research methods. Mueller expresses his dislike in the structure research is often taught by highlighting the work of Andrea Lunsford’s “The Everyday Writer,”. Mueller scrutinizes Lunsford’s use of the word into, arguing using into as a preposition leads to, “a linear but not yet network based conceptual frame for source use, particularly when we seek to emphasize a source-user-hybrid acting throughout all phases, including a constructive phase.” The linear approach to research differs vastly from Mueller’s approach using worknets which is grounded in the work of Marylin Cooper’s article.
Respones #8: Mueller sees worknets as a more productive approach to teaching source use and citation. His problem with most approaches to source use and citation, including Lunsford’s popular method, is that they too often ask students to smash quotations or paraphrases into a paper as a requirement. Lunsford goes as far as suggesting student work their quotations into the paper–which means the paper was initially written without them. Sources might as well be sprinkles spread on top of an ice cream cone.
Instead, Mueller would like students to use sources to help generate ideas and to position themselves in an ongoing disciplinary conversation. For Mueller, sources aren’t something we weave in at the end of the writing process. They are something that should be engaged during every phase of the writing process. I agree with Mueller’s method–my own writing process often involves starting with a document full of quotations I’ve typed out from sources. I then begin the process of carefully putting those quotations into my own words (paraphrasing them), until I am left with only a few that, due to their complexity or the clarity of the original articulation, I decide to quote directly in my work.
So we’ve got four ways of analyzing a research article:
- Semantic
- Bibliographic
- Affinity
- Choric
Let’s talk affinity.
The trickiest one to explain here is *choric*. To do so involves a brief understanding of Greek (specifically Platonic) metaphysics. I’ve taken a shot at defining this before:
While the theorists below all follow at least one of Ulmer’s two critical influences—Derridean post-structuralism or Barthes’s investment in affect and the punctum—they also operate from a more contemporary, materialist framework. From this conflux of influences (Ulmer, Derrida, Barthes, and materialism), we generalize four guiding principles for choric invention. First, choric invention supposes that environs operate as active agents in the inventive process, rather than as a mere backdrop for human acting and thinking. In short, choric invention often stresses the importance of traversing places and spaces. Second, choric invention involves a juxtaposition of personal experience alongside objective, public representation. The third principle is intimately tied to the second and that is—following postmodern theory and ethics—a general resistance to the notion of synthesis in favor of multiplicity. The third principle also predicts the fourth: the resistance to synthesis and preference for multiplicity, combined with chora’s Derridean explication, translates into an opposition to systemicity. Choric invention is radically idiosyncratic; it seeks to invent a method of inventing unique to each specific rhetorical situation.
My articulation is a bit different than Mueller’s:
Like the affinity worknet phase (Figure 3), a choric phase is not concretely grounded in the text of the article. Rather than attend to scholarly and intellectual ties as the affinity worknet does, it explores coincident objects and events from popular culture in the interest of enlarging context—something like what Rickert calls “circumambient environs.” Establishing a choric phase involves exploring the time and place the article was occasioned from and listing corresponding moments, even though they may at first seem an odd assortment (See Figure 4).
What do they share?
Do We Have Time Left to Do a Quick Sample Bibliographic Analysis (using the system I lay out below)?
If so, then let’s take another look at my article on choric invention.
Homework
A reminder that we will meet in the Ross 1240 computer lab on Wednesday. We’ll follow up with the bibliographic work you’ll for homework and begin working on a semantic analysis.
For Wednesday,I’d like you to pick one of the peer-reviewed research articles your group identified last Wednesday in the computer lab. I’ll ask you to skim that article and do a slightly modified version of Mueller’s Bibliographic Analysis. Here is the link to our workspace.
As you skim through the article, identify the sources the author cites.Create a list keeping track of how often another source gets cited. In a scientific article, it also helps to keep track of whether a source contributes to the methodology of the study at hand. Is the source mentioned in their findings (in a kind of compare or contrast)? Then chances are that source is at least significant, if not central, to their argument.
After you’ve read the article and created your list, you’ll want to categorize them (as I did on the board at the end of class). In a doc, create the following headings:
- Central: Central to Analysis / Argument
- Significant: Summarized, Explicated, Responded to, and/or Critiqued
- Passing References: Mentioned as Background Lit or Previous Study; minimal engagement
Sort the references in your list into these categories. Submit that work to Canvas.
