Meta, Meta, Meta...

WAC and WID have no doubt been on my mind over the past year because of the core reform that is currently taking place, a reform that includes the creation of writing and oral communication intensive courses in the disciplines (CID).  Clyde, Heidi, Erin (comm faculty member), and I are hosting workshops this summer for faculty who are planning to teach these CID courses.  The gang handled the first round of workshops while I was at Computers and Writing, so I haven’t had much of a chance yet to hear how it went, but I’m super curious.  One thing I’ve learned over the past year is that I can never anticipate exactly what people are going to have a problem with, but I know someone will have an issue with something.  All of this leads me to today’s article:

Article 10:

Carter, Michael. “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing in the Disciplines.” College Composition and Communication 58.3 (2007): 385-418. Print.

Carter’s main point in this article is that WID folks can help other faculty understand that writing can be a way of introducing students to the “ways of knowing and doing in the discipline.”  Basically, writing isn’t just a skill that can be generalized over all circumstances—it needs to be taught conscientiously.

Carter suggests a few terms that were new to me: metagenre and metadiscourse (meta, meta, meta is starting to sound like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia to me…).  Metagenre “signifies a higher category, a genre or genres” (393), which “directs our attention to broader patterns of language as social action…” (393).  For example, different disciplines might use similar genres, like the variety of lab reports you might see across the sciences.  Why might we need to identify these metagenres?  Well, because Carter says that “looking at metagenres allows us to see similarities among ways of doing across disciplines that are traditionally considered distinct” (397).  If WID faculty were to teach other faculty about metagenres, Carter argues, the faculty could then show students the ways of doing in the discipline (403). 

Metadiscourse, according to Carter, builds from metagenres.  He explains, “Together the genres that compose a metagenre point to a social formation composed of individual disciplines that emphasize the way of doing defined by the metagenre” (393). 

I think Carter is ultimately arguing to move beyond our focus of individual disciplines, but instead we should focus on metadisciplines (and beyond—meta-metadiscipline?).  My work in the Writing Center (and now with WAC) has already led me to an interest in the ways different disciplines approach writing, but beyond that I have also recently become enamored by interdisciplinary writing.  This interest fell in my lap after I stumbled on a few books on Behavioral Economics, and now I can’t get enough of it—a mixture of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and economics?  Shoot—that’s nerd heaven as far as I can tell.  I was already planning on approaching my 201 class in the fall as an interdisciplinary writing class (so stay tuned for more about that!). 

It’s late, and I’ve got more work to do on my online class yet—it launches in a little over a day!  I’ll probably take the weekend off from this to wrap up my course site. 

Back on Monday!

mk