I have come upon Daly Goggin’s (2009) Authoring a Discipline: Scholarly Journals and the Post-World War II Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition. Somehow, this slipped by my notice while collecting sources on disciplinarity for my exams list. Unfortunately, my advisers forgot to mention it as well, which is why I’m reading it now!
I’m also thankful that my loving parents gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas–it is a wonderful, wonderful machine. Even better is the fact that Daly Goggin’s book is a little less expensive for the Kindle than it is for my physical (non-new media) bookshelf.
Well, I’m currently reading it: honestly enjoying the experience so much that I’m not simply skimming for relevant information. Daly Goggin has quite a way with words. Her literature reviews, for example, are impressive. Concise, poignant, insightful, exciting. I found myself telling Brendan, “She’s writing about everything I’m writing about! Her prose is so beautiful. I hope when I’ve had as many years of experience as she has, my literature reviews will be as beautiful.” He reminded me that she has an editor and a publisher; I have my own revisions and an adviser on sabbatical.
The piece is interesting and useful, but I haven’t yet gotten to anything new. I did look ahead to a section on the history of the discipline as seen through the lens of editors. Daly Goggin analyzes the editors of the journals she reviews–CCC, WC, RTE, RR, RSQ–to see what types of programs they came from, what their dissertations were written on, and what areas of the country they are from. All of this is interesting to me, except that I’m also a bit irritated by her methods. Mostly because I’ve been so immersed in trying to understand methodology (on a conceptual, theoretical level) lately. For example, she briefly discusses her methodology and methods, claiming to have reviewed her data for salient patterns.
At this point in my dissertation and my career, I’m frustrated and pained by this sort of pin drop. Yes, this is an expected method to utilize; yes, this is the type of methods discussion the discipline often uses. However, it is enough to send me over the edge.
What does it mean?
I’m thinking of Peter Smagorinsky (2008), who says:
“I have only the vaguest sense of what the author is doing with the data in order to render it into results. If I don’t know pretty clearly how the researcher is conducting the study, then it doesn’t matter much to me what the results are because I have no idea of how they were produced” (p. 393).
These are the same sorts of thoughts I have every time I pick up an article or a book. I certainly would like to stop seeing vague descriptions of studies I could never possibly replicate even though I’d be quite interested to replicate them. I’m especially prone to perturbance because various editors have instructed me to be more specific about my methods for replicability’s sake. Yet, I see this is not across the board, but dependent on a great many things.
Although I think her initial discussion of her methods is flawed, Daly Goggin still has interesting information to present. She also has what I would call a compelling argument. She argues for journals as being a major force in the creation and development of rhetoric and composition as an academic discipline. This is definitely an argument I can and will draw on, and one with which I and numerous sociology of science experts agree.
~Courtney
Rhetor(ic) in the Land of Nod 