Volume 33, 2023

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Prescriptive advice about doctoral writing often fails to recognise the complexities of the doctoral journey. Linguistic and cultural backgrounds are negated where advice about writing converges around a norm. In this paper, we explore the role of ‘advice’ in our growth as thesis writers by examining our literacy history and tensions we faced while writing our theses. We pursue a duoethnographic process (Sawyer & Norris, 2013), a process that facilitates the construction and reconstruction of perspectives. From our differing backgrounds, we experienced discourses of ‘advice’ in alternative ways. We identify opposing 'advice' trends which, in turn, provided a space for our agency. Inspired by Foucault’s (1977) ‘power/knowledge’ we think of past experiences and encounters along our doctoral journey as power effects which shaped our views on advice. We conclude by outlining how insights for our teacher-selves inform how we speak about impacts and advice with doctoral students.

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This article analyzes a rhetorical genre ecology emerging in the aftermath of a natural disaster in Ghana. Drawing on news articles and opinion pieces, a presidential speech, a government post-disaster assessment summary, and a World Bank Group action report, I argue that in their operation within the contingent environment of public spheres, genre uptakes may be highly unpredictable, but also serve multiple, varied functions that together respond to the multiplicity of exigences presented by the diffused contexts of publics. The analysis explains how diffused contexts of genre interaction shape social action, and how these interactions, in turn, enact publics.

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We see our study as falling into the category of writing program historiography known as microhistory: a narrative reconstruction that explores in thorough detail a particular time period in a specific writing program’s history while striving to remain sensitive to the socially constructed attitudes of the primary actors. One of the signal values of microhistory for writing program scholars, Annie Mendenhall (2016, p. 40) writes, is that the reduced scale of analysis—from several decades or even longer to much narrower time frames—allows for close analyses of what actually shaped the actions of key stakeholders. Attending to the archival record while carefully monitoring our evaluations for preconceived assumptions creates opportunities for the examination of some of the meta-historical conclusions connected to master narratives in our field, the “myths” about which Dana Landry (2016) offers a thorough examination in her “people’s history” of Canadian Writing Studies. By critically analyzing the patencies and complications that existed between local and wider discourses underpinning writing pedagogy, such microhistories as the one we undertake here help reveal the “material and ontological” realizations of the ways that Landry’s broad myths continue to shape Writing Studies in Canada: that the teaching of writing is neither difficult nor scholarly; that all most struggling writers really need is a one-time remedial corrective course focused largely on grammar; and that writing is not worthy of serious academic attention (Landry, 2016, p. 63). Micro-histories respond to Bryant’s (2017, p. 17) call for “concrete research” that will help us to understand the etiologies of these tenacious meta-narratives, and in particular those that serve as warrants for the “complaints tradition” discussed by Heng Hartse (2018) during his keynote speech at the CASDW’s annual conference.

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Paul Kei Matsuda (2013) argues that due to a disciplinary division between applied linguistics and composition, modern iterations of language-based theories in composition lack accountability from knowledgeable peers. This article applies Matsuda's critique of U.S. Composition to a Canadian context. By conducting archival research on one of Canada's only two writing studies organizations, Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing / l’Association Canadienne de Rédactologie (CASDW-ACR), this project seeks to discover if the same disciplinary divide has existed between writing studies and L2 writing. The findings show that, unlike U.S. Composition, writing studies in Canada has long been open to and relied on L2 writing to establish itself as a discipline in Canadian higher education. The opportunities afforded by this historic partnership between writing studies and L2 writing should be intentionally built on in Canadian writing curriculum as internationalization introduces new translingual, visa students to the Canadian writing classroom.

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The book "Higher Education Internationalization and English Language Instruction" is an autoethnographic work that examines the intersectionality of race and language in the Canadian higher education system. Through personal stories and narratives, the author explores themes such as native-speakerism, writing centre tutoring, multicultural education, and social justice. The book makes two significant contributions: first, it amplifies the voice of racialized individuals through the application of Critical Race Theory to personal experiences and diaries, serving as a springboard for thought and an invitation to dialogues on transformation. Second, it demonstrates the potential of personal narratives to reveal ideas that are often overlooked in positivist approaches, providing insight into methodological approaches that graduate students and young researchers can adopt. The book concludes with practical implications for addressing discriminatory systems and practises in universities to promote diversity and inclusiveness. The book follows a standard format for scholarly works and provides a useful background on the internationalisation of higher education and the significance of English as a medium for multiculturalism in Canada.

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Cognitive bias, especially confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, poses a significant challenge to argumentative writing genres, including the persuasive essay. To address this challenge, I introduce the complexity paper. Rather than attempting to convince the reader of a particular position on an issue as with a persuasive essay, the goal of a complexity paper is to convince the reader that the issue under discussion is difficult to resolve. This altered motivational structure encourages the writer to engage in perspective taking, thereby addressing confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. I outline a three-part structure of the complexity paper using the example of physician-assisted suicide with the goal to help university instructors implement this genre into their courses. I recommend incorporating a complexity paper into a writing scaffold structure that precedes an argumentative paper.

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Multimodality in assignments is increasingly common in higher education, thereby requiring students to demonstrate competency in the employment of multiple modes to communicate. Specifically, the field of engineering communication relies on multimodal resources to construct meaning and convey information. This article describes the integration of multimodality in a second-year software design and communication course assignment. In this assignment, students read the text, Made to Stick that enlists six principles of effective communication strategies and are expected to apply these communicative principles to a tech talk video. Students then produce a written argument which evaluates how effectively the presenter employed Made to Stick principles. Through engagement with multimodal resources, students are afforded the opportunity to practice and develop three skills of application, analysis and argumentation.

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This article proposes that the rise of GPT technology presents an opportunity to initiate meaningful discussions in the postsecondary classroom about the connections between writing, language, and personal autonomy. Partly grounded on predictive text, GPT-produced language is often recognizable by its blandness and its proneness to the predictable turn of phrase—qualities that postsecondary students (among others!) often struggle to overcome in their own work. George Orwell famously described relying on cliché as akin to turning oneself into a machine. The analogy arises from the lack of relationality in cliché-riddled writing, a quality similarly found in AI-generated text. Rhetoric and composition theory provides insights into the relational nature of written discourse and, equally, into the places where GPT technology falls short of the profoundly intersubjective and interpersonal elements underlying written communication. Foregrounding these findings in class discussions of GPT tools is a central task in training students to engage critically with such tools. Assignments inviting students to contextualize themselves as writers—linguistically, culturally, discursively—represent an actionable step to help students identify the relational and interpersonal contexts to which GPT output cannot attend.

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The article describes a publicly oriented writing assignment that can be adapted across disciplinary contexts. The assignment is linked to the JSTOR Daily publication with its tagline “where news meets its scholarly match.” Emulating the style of writing published in this open-access online context, students produce informative writing that contextualizes contemporary issues by drawing on applicable scholarship. As JSTOR Daily publishes a wide range of topical content, student writers can use the genre to explore a variety of topics and perspectives found across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. This assignment can either stand-alone as a piece of web-based, potentially multi-modal, public writing, or it can be used as a starting point that supports heuristic learning as students write for this public genre then move on to write on the same topic in a scholarly genre. Teaching materials, including a sample assignment sheet and workshop prompts, are appended.