Writing in the Disciplines: Literacy, Identity, and Growth

Introduction: Approaching Writing as an Adventure

For a person who has previously written anything of substance only when absolutely required — and who frankly does not enjoy writing — perhaps thinking of this craft as a new adventure is the most practical way of approaching it. It is an adventure: it has a beginning, an ending, and a great deal of descriptive action in between. Approaching writing as an adventure means being willing to explore and to innovate; it also means doing the homework before beginning an essay or a research paper. Can it be fun to find one's way around a new challenge? Certainly — but it can also be a burdensome task if approached with dread and confusion.

The truth is, once a person is enrolled in a college course, there will be assignments from professors that require thinking, digging, researching, and writing with clarity. There is nothing worse for an instructor than having to pour through boring paper after boring paper. With that in mind, the fledgling writer needs to be prepared to investigate what established writers are saying and recommending, and the fledgling writer cannot be afraid to emulate other writers' approaches. That does not mean plagiarizing; it simply means taking the time to review the strategies established writers embrace — whether in fiction or in an empirical study of criminal behavior — and learning from what has already been done. Paying attention to directions, making what I write interesting, and showing progress: those three things are within my grasp.

David Kellogg and the Brake of Reflection

David Kellogg presents thoughtful ideas and insights relative to "writing in the disciplines" (WID) — which he describes as a "movement" — and in the process references Judith A. Goleman's book Working Theory: Critical Composition Studies for Students and Teachers. Within that work, Goleman references an essay by someone named "Susan M.," who discovers within the narratives of her past writing that there had been "no internal motivation" regarding the topics she chose to write about (Goleman, p. 2). As a result, Susan M. explains, "Everything I wrote about had to interest the teacher. It made no difference if the subject interested me" (Kellogg, p. 2).

What Kellogg emphasizes repeatedly and in several contexts is the importance to a writer of two concepts: "critical effectivity" and "interpellation" (Kellogg, p. 5). A learner may find success in a writing venture by tuning into "critical effectivity" — described as a process that unfolds as an individual digs into a writing project. Critical effectivity is a process in which the writer keeps "re-seeing their subjectivity and acting on what they see"; it is something that must be "cultivated" and most often comes with physical and intellectual maturity. Interpellation, by contrast, has been with a person since childhood, though it may not be recognized until later in life.

Regarding the use of interpellation as a concept for developing writers, Kellogg explains that it "serves as critical effectivity's functional opposite." What he means is that interpellation is a process in which individuals — writers — recognize themselves as subjects through ideology. For example, the family is an "Ideological State Apparatus" (ISA); the college one attends is an ISA as well. A new writer is therefore engaged in hailing a concept, because one cannot employ a concept in an article unless it has first been "hailed."

My Writing: New students who must engage in writing — whether they find it enjoyable or not — carry certain assumptions about what writing is, Kellogg explains, and generally that new student's goals are "strongly opposed" to the goals of an instructor in a composition program "grounded in critical literacy." That first-year student is most often looking for pragmatic skills to use in a career — just enough competency to get by — while the composition instructor hopes to help develop critical and reflective skills. I must learn to cultivate the ability to critique society through my writing, rather than simply learning to construct meaningful sentences and properly formatted research papers (Kellogg, p. 6).

Deborah Brandt: Living, Learning, and Literacy

My writing skills are rough, to be sure. And here I am entering the criminal justice field, which will require writing skills I do not yet have. Perhaps what I should be thinking about is how to project what I think and feel about issues. I cannot worry solely about percentages and crime-related statistics; I have to do the research, see how other writers have approached the subject, and make my work an interpellation. That is, I am called — or hailed — into preparing this writing because of who I am and what I believe about the criminal justice system, not merely because I have been assigned a particular paper. I have to come to terms with my inexperience through the application of patience and deliberation.

Deborah Brandt investigated the literacy experiences of eighty people — specifically, when and how they learned to read and write. The interviews were as much about how people learned as they were about levels of literacy. She chose two people from those interviews to feature in her essay: Martha Day and Barbara Hunt. Martha was a working journalist by her early twenties; Barbara was a cashier at a gasoline station at the same age. Brandt takes the reader through the lives of both women. Martha made her way into editorial work despite suffering from gender discrimination: her parents pushed her brother toward college while she was left caring for her invalid mother at home. However, Martha did not settle for being an uneducated, homebound woman. She began writing a newsletter for her Methodist church's Sunday school group, and because the Sunday school teacher happened to be the managing editor of a local daily newspaper, Martha eventually got a job rewriting news releases from the agricultural department in Wisconsin after the teacher purchased a regional farm magazine. The point is clear: Martha was intelligent, literate, and seized every opportunity to improve her writing.

Barbara, too, parlayed small opportunities into a writing career. It began in high school forensics, where she memorized declamations and eventually wrote her own. She also wrote speeches on topics with "real emotion" — similar to the ideology-linked system Kellogg described as interpellation. Barbara recognized herself as a subject through ideology; she wrote speeches about abortion, racism, and homelessness, and she practiced them in front of the cows she milked on her father's dairy farm. She genuinely wanted to alert readers and listeners to the tragedy of homelessness, so she put herself in their place.

My Writing: This approach — being stimulated and motivated by genuine concern for others — applies to me. I have to take advantage of the opportunity to learn writing in the discipline I have chosen. I should put myself in the place of people within the criminal justice system. What would it be like to be on death row and know that one's days were literally numbered? Exploring that question in a research paper or essay would help fire up the creative energy needed to make it a good, interesting piece — one the instructor will enjoy reading rather than endure.