Research, Writing and Writer/Reader Exigence: Literate Practice as the Overlap of Information Literacy and Writing Studies Threshold Concepts

The Need for Expert Definitions of a Literate Practice

The focus on teaching threshold concepts in writing studies and information literacy classrooms reflects an effort to improve students’ ability to write and conduct research by helping students develop a rhetorically sophisticated view of these practices. Indeed, Downs and Robertson note that one of the two primary goals of a course teaching the threshold concepts of writing studies is to challenge students’ misconceptions about writing (105).² In writing studies, this takes the form of teaching students concepts about writing and how it works as a rhetorical phenomenon derived from the researched knowledge of the discipline. Downs and Wardle describe teaching concepts of writing studies as a move from “acting as if writing is a basic, universal skill to acting as if writing studies is a discipline with content knowledge to which students should be introduced, thereby changing their understandings about writing and thus changing the ways they write” (553). In a similar way, the ACRL Framework supports such a change of perspectives by reframing concepts found in the now-defunct ACRL standards like “credibility” and “finding sources” in more socially contextualized and rhetorically complex ways (i.e., “Authority is contextual and constructed” and “Research as inquiry”). By taking on the expert view represented by threshold concepts, students can excise misconceptions about research and writing that limit their understanding of and effectiveness using these practices.

Teaching threshold concepts is particularly useful for accomplishing the work of reframing student perceptions because threshold concepts represent the key or pivotal conceptualizations that define and thus represent acquisition of expertise in a given disciplinary community of practice. David Perkins describes threshold concepts as reflecting perspectives that “appear counter-intuitive, alien (emanating from another culture or discourse), or seemingly incoherent” (Perkins, “Faces” 9). As part of the particular, expert perspectives of a disciplinary community of practice, threshold concepts often challenge “commonsense” or popular ways of understanding a particular subject or practice. Rather than belonging to a discrete set of particular skills, a threshold concept is “the way in which such concepts are related, the deep-level structure of the subject which gives it coherence and creates a shared way of perceiving that can be left unspoken” (Davies 71). Threshold concepts thus represent “gateways” through which new learners may gain specialized expert knowledge (Perkins, “Constructivism” 43), meaning that, “[a]s a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even worldview” (Meyer and Land, “Introduction” 3). By gaining this “transformative” knowledge, learners do not simply grasp a few new random concepts but experience a shift of perspective that alters their worldview in relation to a number of contexts and phenomena.

Equipped with the more expert views on writing and research represented by the perspectives of scholars of writing and information literacy, the thinking goes that students are better able to take up writing as a rhetorical act and adapt more effectively to the multiple and various writing and research situations they face in the university, the workplace, or in social and political life. But if acquiring the concepts leads to a change in practice, this means that, taken together, the concepts imply a distinct practice we would like students to embrace. We might even say, then, these concepts define researching and composing scholarly texts in very specific ways. A scholar with a complete understanding of “scholarship as [a] conversation” (ACRL Frame #5) may take up a range of approaches to research: reading scholarly sources as interconnected and responding to one another; reading academic articles with an eye for how they situate themselves within a given scholarly exchange; reading sources to determine gaps in existing scholarly exchanges on a given subject so that she might identify opportunities to make meaningful interventions in the existing discourse; or all of these. The understanding of this particular concept carries implicit suggestions about effective practice of research and writing. In other words, acquisition of threshold concepts of writing studies and acquisition of the ACRL Framework implicitly define the rhetorical practice of composing and the rhetorical practice of information literacy respectively.

This dynamic carries important implications for threshold concept pedagogies and for constructing pedagogies that make the most of the overlaps between the concepts of writing studies and information literacy. Insofar as we teach concepts to alter practice, then, students are likely to alter their practice only to the extent that they understand and can apply the concepts we are trying to help them acquire. But the character of literate practice means that a limited understanding of those concepts does not simply translate into a less polished rhetorical practice; the rhetorical deployment of information in composing is not something one can partially acquire and still practice effectively across contexts. Similarly, a student cannot recognize that information has value without understanding how the process of creating information contributes to its value, how inquiry determines the information creation process, and how this all contributes to the construction of a contextualized authority. The development of literacy is a more holistic process as Anne Beaufort has observed:

 

 

While it is not only beyond the scope of this essay but also unnecessary to address each individual concept in turn when drawing out an expert definition of the practice implied by the ACRL Framework and the threshold concepts of writing studies, it can be helpful to provide an initial example to suggest the origins of the choice of expert definition affirmed here.⁵ For our purposes, the first concept of information literacy of the ACRL Framework, “Authority is Constructed and Contextual” will serve. To identify the practice implied, we can ask why it is important for a writer to establish his authority in the first place. The answer, from a rhetorical perspective, is that effectively constructing one’s authority as an author in a highly contextualized way amounts to demonstrating to a particular reader that the author is someone the reader should listen to on a particular subject, someone able to address whatever caused the reader to take up the text in the first place. And, of course, the reason an author would want the reader to perceive him as an authority to be listened to—to meet the reader’s “expectations of authority on the topic under discussion” (Johnson and McCracken 189)—is to ensure that the author will be able to achieve his purpose in writing. To couch this in more technical rhetorical terms, constructing authority is the literate practice of establishing the exigent character of a text and its author for a particular reader in order to move that reader to address or resolve the writer’s exigence for creating that text. To address how the other concepts imply this same practice, it is first necessary to define the rhetorical concept of “exigence” more explicitly. While readers may be quite familiar with the concept of exigence, we take up the concept in some detail below to emphasize those aspects of the concept that are most important for the approach we forward here.

Broadly speaking, exigence is the reason or motivation for producing and consuming discourse. Lloyd Bitzer influentially defines exigence as “an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be” (6).⁶ In rhetorical situations, this obstacle, problem, issue that demands attention can only be addressed through the production of discourse. Rhetorical exigence in writing situations is thus defined as an issue for the writer that demands the help of the audience of readers in some fashion for its resolution or mitigation. A protest sign is likely not produced simply as an expression of the protester’s views but is typically created to convey a message to those in power or other members of the populace because these other rhetorical actors are necessary for effecting the change the protester desires. The exigence leading to the production of discourse is a policy or political event the protester wants to be addressed or altered but that requires the action of others to be involved.⁷ This example gestures to the importance of the temporal character of exigence, explained by Keith Grant-Davie when he defines exigence as answering the questions of “what has prompted the discourse, and why now is the right time for it to be delivered” (268, original emphasis). Exigence is the demand for the production of discourse in the present moment.

The exigence identified by the writer does not simply move the writer to produce discourse, but is, in fact, constitutive of the entire rhetorical situation that results (Vatz 157; Consigny 177). The very perception of the exigence by the writer is itself a means of defining the rhetorical situation to be addressed. Agents do not so much encounter rhetorical situations as they construct them from perceptions of particular exigencies. Grant-Davie suggests as much, describing exigence in broad terms as involving what the discourse is about, why it is needed, and what it is trying to accomplish (266-269). How one perceives the problem or issue needing to be addressed identifies who it is that is able to help address or resolve that problem or issue. For instance, if we wish to do something about people ignoring the ban on smoking within 25 feet of building entrances on campus, how we frame that problem will determine the rhetorical action to follow. Contacting the central administration to do more to enforce the ban reflects a perception of the issue that naturalizes the behavior of those ignoring the ban as inevitable, meaning that rules and enforcement are the only way to address the situation. If, however, we do not frame this behavior as inevitable, we can address those who smoke directly, suggesting incentives or appealing to their sense of fairness that the majority who does not smoke should not have to pass through it on the way to class. Exigence, then, is not simply something that exists externally to the writer but results from the writer’s interpretation.⁸ This interpretive character places exigence “at the core of [the] situation” (Miller 157).

        But while much of the scholarship on exigence focuses on the rhetor’s experience, the rhetorical character of writing situations involves audiences as well who, as readers, play a role in every part of those situations. As Grant-Davie notes in his discussion of teaching writing as a rhetorical act, “reading and writing may be seen as parallel activities involving negotiation of meaning between readers and writers. If reading is a rhetorical activity too, then it has its own rhetorical situations” (272) and these “may have their own exigences, roles, and constraints” (272). Readers, then, also have exigencies for attending to discourse, which are likewise based on perception and on external circumstances producing the need to consume discourse. These may very well be different from the perceived exigence motivating the rhetor, even when the discourse is successful. But if exigence as it pertains to the rhetor is the perception that discourse is needed and needed now—i.e. that the production of discourse will meet some need of the rhetor’s—it reflects this same character for audiences, that consuming the discourse will meet some need the audience has (required information, emotional excitement, show of respect or formality, entertainment, etc.). Written texts that accomplish the rhetor’s intentions—insofar as they require the reader’s action to accomplish those intentions—have framed the writer’s exigence for writing in terms of one or more of the reader’s exigencies for reading.⁹ But if we understand writing as a radically situated phenomenon, exigence for reading becomes far more specific than a perceived need for discourse on the part of the audience. Exigence for reading is as highly specified as it is for writing. Exigent texts meet the reader’s need for this text, produced by a writer having these qualities, addressing this subject, appearing in this form. We can go further noting that audiences are likely to look for discourses addressing a specific need in particular places meaning that even this path of circulation and this mode of delivery might be important exigencies for a given audience.

Texts, of course, signal this kind of information in a host of ways including style, formatting, the use of specific lexis, the emphasis on particular content, design elements, location, and even material composition among other things. For example, while waiting for a dental appointment, a patient reaches for a magazine to alleviate her boredom of waiting. Being a Pittsburgh Penguins fan, she reaches for the Sports Illustrated because she knows that its content is more likely to include information capable of alleviating her boredom than the Better Homes and Gardens lying next to it on the table. But she also sifts through the three different issues of Sports Illustrated to find the most recent one, as she has been following the Penguins and knows she is more likely to find something she does not know about their current run for a sixth Stanley Cup—something of real interest to her—in the most recent issue. Because the author’s work appears in the latest edition of Sports Illustrated, the reader is willing to, at least initially, allow that the author is capable of resolving her exigence (i.e., alleviating her boredom by providing relevant, reliable information about the current NHL hockey season to which she might not otherwise have access).¹⁰ The text the reader is most likely to consume in that particular reading situation is the one that most likely meets her exigence for reading in that situation.¹¹

It is important to note, however, that while the circulation and delivery have done some of the initial work of framing the author’s identity and the text as capable of addressing her exigence for reading, the text itself must continually establish and re-establish this exigence throughout. As the SI article enacts the conventions of the sports column, it indicates to the reader that the author and the text are capable of addressing her exigence—that the text is exigent to the reader. Those conventions include, of course, terminology, style, formatting, and other features including subject matter and content knowledge (Beaufort 18). The fact that content is one of the features that indicates exigence suggests that other features not commonly recognized as part of establishing exigence—like arrangement and logical and stylistic transitions—are important considerations as well. Each point made by the author must indicate its connection to the exigence(s) that have drawn the reader to consume the text (or which the author has demonstrated are exigent to the reader through the text) or risk the reader dismissing the points or turning away completely. Suddenly taking up the subject of global warming in an article on the NHL playoffs will be likely not to seem exigent to the reader unless the author makes evident the connection between global warming and the NHL playoffs or the reader also finds this topic exigent.¹²

Defining the practice of research and composing as addressing writer/reader exigence thus accounts for the concepts of the ACRL Framework and those identified in Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. As writers go through the process of constructing exigence for the reader, they pass through a number of practices that tacitly affirm the concepts of the ACRL Framework. Defining research as part of the practice of resolving writer/reader exigence necessarily figures “research as strategic exploration” (Frame #6), since within this description of literate practice, research is taken up to define the exigence for writing and identify the audience’s likely exigence for reading. In academic contexts, framing the subject matter in terms that are exigent for the reader requires identifying the topics relevant to a particular community which means identifying the most relevant ways in which those topics have been discussed (Frame #5, “Scholarship as conversation”). Intervening in a way exigent to a particular disciplinary audience requires developing sufficient knowledge not only to conduct such interventions but to claim the authority to do so (Frame #1, “Authority is constructed and contextual”). Since this process demands attending to the knowledge and ways of framing that knowledge that are exigent for a particular community—i.e., recognizing that (Frame #3) “information has value”—such work requires learning about not only the knowledge itself and the sources that matter in its distribution, but also the intended audience, their values, concerns, and history. Such an approach figures research not only as an effort to support one’s own position but also necessarily frames the practice of (Frame #2) “information creation as a process” and the practice of (Frame #4) “research as inquiry.”

Writers who take up the effort to address their exigence by using a text that they have made exigent for a particular reader understand without having to explicitly articulate that:

• writing is a social and rhetorical act (Roozen 17);
• writing addresses, invokes, and/or creates audiences (Lunsford 20);
• writing expresses and shares meaning to be reconstructed by the reader (Bazerman 21);
• writing mediates activity (Russell 26);
• writing represents the world, events, ideas, and feelings (Bazerman 37);
• writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies (Scott 48);
• writing is linked to identity (Roozen 50);
• writing provides a representation of ideologies and identities (Villaneuva 57);
• text is an object outside of oneself that can be improved and developed (Bazerman and Tinberg 61);
• and reflection is critical to a writer’s development (Taczak 78).

This list names only the most immediately apparent concepts in the definition offered here. Approaching research and composing as the process of constructing reader exigence to address writer exigence not only teaches students that writing works a particular way, but also how and why. The questions “what is my exigence for writing?”; “who can help me resolve that exigence?”; “how can I construct a text that is exigent to that audience?” guide student researcher/composers to consider continually what matters to the writer, who is the audience who will care about and can address that matter, what kind of person and text does that audience recognize as capable of addressing their exigence for reading, etc. Though student writers may not articulate these concepts explicitly, they must take them up conceptually because of the ways in which defining composing in the terms we advocate here reframe the practices of research and composing themselves as metacognitively reflective acts.

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