Self-Contradiction in Faculty's Talk about Writing: Making and Unmaking Autonomous Models of Literacy

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This research derives from a larger IRB-approved study of how groups of academic writers—from college seniors to faculty members and in such relationships as advisor-advisee and coauthor—perceive and practice “writing style” in their disciplines.

With each participant, I conducted an initial literacy history interview, collected examples of their writing (including drafts), and conducted a follow-up text-based interview (Prior, "Tracing"). When I prepared for these follow-up interviews, I reviewed the initial interview transcripts and read the texts they had shared, looking for potential differences between how they represented their writing and specific linguistic and textual features actually present. For instance, as readers will see below, I noticed that Jing Jing had described good writing as text that flowed without relying on transition words, but I found transition words in the piece of writing that she admired, and so I put this apparent contradiction on my list of topics to discuss.³

Of my eight focal participants, contradictions between representations and practices emerged in interactions with seven (two undergraduates, two doctoral students, one postdoc, and two faculty). Because of my interest in faculty members’ representations of writing, I focus here on the two faculty: Dan Simons, a tenured professor of psychology who is a white American man, and Jing Jing Chang, a tenure-track assistant professor of film studies who is a Chinese Canadian woman. Recognizing that participants have the right to claim authorship and to protect their identity, my consent form allowed them to specify whether they wanted their names or pseudonyms used. Both participants preferred their names. More details about each participant open each case study, below.

When the participant permitted, I supplemented my audio recordings with video because talk is never the only relevant semiotic channel; visual embodied actions like facial expressions and gestures also convey meaning (see Olinger, “Visual”). I videorecorded Jing Jing but not Dan, although he consented.⁴

After producing rough transcripts of the interviews, I identified the excerpts in which, prompted by my questions, Dan and Jing Jing accounted for apparent contradictions between representation and practice. I transcribed these excerpts in finer detail, adapting conventions from conversation analysis (e.g., Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson; see Appendix A). A key principle of discourse analysis is that utterances are context dependent and accomplish social actions. As a result, transcribing my questions and backchannels, pauses, and other paralinguistic details (e.g., laughter, intonation) helps me, and readers, understand the co-constructed nature of the interaction (see also Potter and Hepburn). For instance, an interruption from me (“Oh wow. Okay”; see Appendix B/line 19) might be excluded from a transcript with less detail. But this utterance, far from irrelevant, shows me doing work as the interviewer: I am indicating that Dan’s explanation is new and surprising to me and that I accept it.⁵

After I produced the more-detailed transcripts, I examined those excerpts for the explanation each writer gave for the contradiction I identified. Noticing that there were multiple different explanations, I kept track of each one.

For the case studies below, I first describe the initial representation and then present the apparent contradiction that I had noticed when reviewing the texts I had collected. Next, I narrate the conversation I had with each participant about this apparent contradiction; as I do this, I identify each different account as it emerged. Lastly, I gather the multiple accounts produced by each writer and reflect on what they mean for the autonomous model of literacy.

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Dan Simons is a cognitive psychologist and tenured full professor who has taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) since 2002. With Christopher Chabris, he published The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us (Chabris and Simons), a New York Times bestseller. In 2010, Dan and Christopher blogged for Psychology Today, and they have written many essays for popular media that apply findings in experimental psychology to contemporary issues or review books by science journalists. Dan also developed a writing guide for colleagues and students that is available on his website.

Our initial in-person interview (56 minutes, 10/18/12) covered his experiences with academic and popular science writing, stylistic preferences, collaborations with Chabris, and approach to teaching writing in psychology. We also discussed my feedback on his writing guide, in which he had expressed interest when we had met to discuss his participation in the study. Afterwards, Dan shared multiple drafts of a coauthored article and an op-ed, and I saved copies of his blog posts. The follow-up interview (48 minutes, 3/28/13), which was also in-person, involved text- and discourse-based questions about his writing and student writing containing his comments.

 

The Initial Representation

Dan’s eight-page writing guide describes “broad principles of effective writing,” which include suggestions for an “enticing” opening, “flow,” “structure,” and revision. These principles are followed by 31 “common mistakes and pet peeves.” At the end is a “revision worksheet” containing a distillation of the guide’s advice.

One of the 31 “common mistakes and pet peeves” is “Don’t say something is interesting without explaining why it is interesting. Better yet, don’t say it—show it.” This advice is also the last “pro tip” on the sentence-level section of the revision worksheet: “Show it, don’t tell it. Give an example to illustrate your point rather than just stating your point. Show that the result is interesting rather than stating that it is.”

Several assumptions underlie “show, don’t tell.” First is the importance of disciplinary evidence, which reflects white language habitus in the preference for logic and rigor. Second is the ideological frame that good writing is universal, which suggests that characteristics of one genre will apply to others. “Show, don't tell” is standard advice in creative writing (e.g., Henkin), and although creative writing is usually considered quite different from academic writing, writing advice for academics may include such guidance (Schimel; Sword). Dan nods to this idea when he writes on his website that the guide covers “scientific writing, but the same principles apply to most non-fiction (including journalism)” (Simons, “Writing and Revising”).

Dan and I discussed this advice during our initial interview, when we reviewed my feedback on his guide. I remarked that I was wondering if he felt that “show, don’t tell” applied to popular science writing, scientific writing, or both, or whether it operated in one type more than the other. I declared that although I understood how this principle functioned in journalism, I was curious how it applied to scientific writing. He replied that it “applies to everything” (line 1; see Appendix B for the subtitled audio and transcript) and provided an example from a personal statement for graduate school, in which a hypothetical student wrote that they developed “outstanding insights into: clinical populations” (lines 3-4/B⁶). Dan remarked that the student shouldn’t say they developed “outstanding insights”; instead, they should show that they did. He called this advice a “classic mantra for journalism” (lines 7-9/B).

I then asked him for another example, saying I was “having trouble visualizing” how this advice applied to scientific articles. He responded by raising the issue of using “interestingly” to evaluate data. He implied that “interestingly” isn’t necessary because readers will “come to that evaluation” themselves if writers show why the findings are interesting (line 20/B). He added, “And you know I’m guilty of that as well. ‘Interestingly’ is an easy transition. But if you have to say it’s interesting, then it probably isn’t to other people unless you (.) explain why, so, just (.) explain it.” (lines 22-24/B). Here, he acknowledged the difficulty of always following his advice, and he attributed his inconsistency to willpower, admitting that he has been “guilty” of using an “easy” transition that does not force the writer to explain why something is interesting. Although explaining why might arguably fall under “tell”—it is just a different kind of telling than “interestingly”—this possible contradiction did not come up.

To summarize, Dan upheld the view that “show, don’t tell” applies to all good writing and gave two examples of evaluative language (“I developed an outstanding understanding…”; “Interestingly,…”) that should be avoided by writers, who would instead display that understanding and that interestingness. At the same time, he mentioned that he has not always followed this advice. Moreover, his comment about the need to explain why something is interesting hints at the flexibility of “show, don’t tell”—a quality that recurs in our follow-up interview.

 

An Apparent Contradiction

After that interview, I examined the texts that Dan had sent and also began reading his blog. I noticed that one of his scholarly articles was discussed in a blog post (Simons, “Demographics”). Examining the post, I found two instances in which Dan seemed to veer from his advice (See Fig. 1):

In writing the paper and re-weighting the samples, I discovered something interesting about who responds to these sorts of surveys. Although both could be weighted to a nationally representative sample, the raw demographics of the samples were vastly different. They were roughly comparable on most dimensions (e.g., income, education, region of the country), but their ages differed dramatically.

…

For me, this figure was eye opening. I wasn't surprised that an online Mechanical Turk sample would be disproportionately younger, and I assumed that phone surveys would oversample the elderly, but I had no idea how extreme that bias would be. What that means is that any national survey conducted by phone is mostly contacting older people. Unless the sample is adequately large, the number of young respondents will be minuscule, meaning that the weighting for those respondents will be huge. If a small survey happened to get a few oddball younger respondents, it could dramatically alter the total estimate.

Fig. 1. Two excerpts from Dan’s blog (underlining added).

Immediately after he used the words, Dan explained why the findings are “interesting” and why the figure is “eye-opening.” But because he had outlined a rather strict policy to “show, don’t tell” where it is preferable to “let [readers] come to that evaluation” (line 20/B) instead of doing the work for them, I wanted to learn his take on his usage. During our follow-up interview five months later, I reminded him of his emphasis on “show, don’t tell,” showed him the first example from the post, and asked for his “read” on the language (line 13; see Appendix C for the subtitled audio and transcript).

 

Accounting for the Apparent Contradiction

As I will show, Dan accounted for the apparent contradiction between representation and practice by arguing that the advice to show, not tell was being applied in the wrong context. Yet in resolving this contradiction, he introduced some new contradictions and redefined “show, don’t tell” in the process.

First, he offered a simple explanation: “Um (1.1) Blog style. (1.0) So blog style has more personal (.) narrative uh content to it.” (line 14/C). He elaborated by saying that he might write “I discovered something” in a blog, but “I would never do that in a journal article.” (line 15/C). Yet he then qualified this reason: he stated that he might use language like “we encountered something odd or unusual” in journal articles, although he did not give a reason, and that although he does not like the expression “something interesting,” he intentionally uses it in blogs (lines 16-17/C).

Next, he gave another reason besides personal narrative content: “I want to flag what people should pay attention to in that context,” (line 21/C). Here, he commits to the value of words that guide the reader through a text and lack a propositional function—thus undermining the autonomous view of texts underpinning much academic writing advice.

When I showed him the second excerpt (See Fig. 1), he accounted for his language use with the same reason as before: “So this is- this is basically s- you know blogs are are supposed to be more personal, so (.) I try to give my reactions to things a lot more often,” (lines 28-31/C). He explained that many of his posts “are a bit more opinionated and have a bit more of a- you know (1.0) sort of evaluative component to it, and kind of self-evaluative too.” (lines 34-37/C). He clarified that he tries to avoid using “interestingly” but sometimes still “need[s] to” use it in blog posts (lines 39-41/C).

I then jumped in with my own defense of his use of “interesting” in the first excerpt: “But it seems to be different because it is (0.2) it is more personal than interestingly.” (lines 43-45/C). He agreed and said that because this is a post about a journal article, “here I have to be commenting on something other than just what's in the paper. So (1.0) the the goal is to you know here I kind of put in a little bit about discovery sorts of issues. Right (0.2) whereas I wouldn't talk about (.) the discovery process in a journal article, that’s just not what you do.” (lines 47-56/C). He added that he does not edit these as much as he does journal articles (line 58/C). I stammered that I didn’t mean for my question to come across as a critique (lines 59, 61/C), and he replied, “Yeah, I know but I I might if I were revising it I might change that. ºI don't know.º I mean I edit before I post these things, but not (1.0) not the way I would for a journal article. And I’m the only one who looks at it” (lines 62-66/C).

In saying this, Dan returned to his point that “show, don’t tell” applies to journal articles and not blogs, but he acknowledged that he might have deleted that language had he taken more time to edit—or had someone else flagged it. Although Dan justified this apparent contradiction by saying that “show, don’t tell” does not apply to blog posts, his comment may indicate that he still feels ambivalent about his use of evaluations like “interesting” and “eye-opening.” The desire to follow writing advice universally, to be consistent across genres, seems strong.

After Dan made his point about editing, I interrupted him to return to the writing guide, asking if show, don’t tell was relevant in the two examples from his blog post (line 67/C). He replied, “It's more tell.” (line 68/C) and qualified his statement: although the post includes the sentence “I found something interesting about who responds,” he is “still setting up a mystery here, I haven't told you (.) you know the critical finding yet.” (lines 70-73/C). He added, “it’s a little more tell” than he usually includes in his posts (line 77/C), “but- if if you look at some of the other ones, I kind of have teasers up at the beginning and then I tell.” (lines 78-79/C). Looking across these explanations, “telling” now means not only evaluating the findings (“I found something interesting about…”) but also explaining the mystery introduced in the beginning.

Dan then gave a final reason: “There's also the journalism principle that (.) you not not bury the lede. Right. So you’re (.) supposed to have something in the first paragraph that pretty much gives away everything you're talking about, so and you have to do that in a blog or nobody reads the whole thing.” (lines 83-87/C). Although I had showed him the fourth and sixth paragraphs, he uses this “journalism principle” to support his redefinition of “tell.” With this journalism principle, telling happens in the first paragraph.

 

The Value of Studying These Accounts

Dan’s initial representation of good writing was that “show, don’t tell” applied to all good writing—in essence, supporting the autonomous model of literacy. Yet when accounting for the apparent contradiction by explaining that such markers of affective stance (“interesting,” “eye-opening”) were appropriate for “blog style,” he validated the notion that good writing is context-specific. This difference alone is enough to reveal cracks in the autonomous model. By looking even more closely at his multiple accounts, however, we can see even more cracks. In this complex series of accounts of his practice—which I as interviewer co-construct, given that I elicited them, accepted them, and offered my own—Dan contends that “show, don’t tell” applies everywhere, that it does not apply to blogs, that it is a mantra of journalism but that a basic rule of journalism (don’t bury the lede) calls on a writer to tell in the introduction (although the case in point was not actually in the introduction), and that the writing process (with less editing) may account for what must then be seen as a problem.

These cracks in the autonomous model are difficult to notice because of what Gilbert and Mulkay call “conceptual vagueness” (80). Dan suggested that blogs can admit more “narrative” features than traditional journal articles, yet in this more narrative genre, “telling” before “showing” fits right in. The vagueness of “telling” resembles the discourse of Gilbert and Mulkay’s scientists when they used the contingent repertoire to account for the success or rejection of particular theories. Gilbert and Mulkay note that conceptual vagueness can be

expanded or contracted, withdrawn or supplemented, without creating glaring inconsistencies, to meet the exigencies of each new conversational exchange. They [i.e., vague terms] enable speakers to carry out complex and subtle interpretive work in a way which always leaves them room for further manoeuvre and which always seems to allow the speaker’s own scientific views to emerge unscathed. (82)

Indeed, there were no “glaring inconsistencies” during our conversation; it was only upon my scrutiny of what Dan meant by “telling” that contradictions began to emerge. Whereas his initial contradiction was quickly apparent, the additional ones were not immediately visible until after I did more refined transcription and reflection. These inconsistencies reinforce the ideological model of literacy: conventions for good writing are contingent, not universal. Dan is a highly successful, flexible, reflective academic writer, publishing journal articles, popular science writing of various genres, and writing advice. If anyone were to be consistent, perhaps, it would be him. As critical discursive psychologists have shown in various domains, however, these kinds of complex, conflicting accounts are far from unusual. Without these theoretical tools, we would not be able to see the autonomous model crumbling as it is.  

Jing Jing Chang is a tenured associate professor of film studies at Wilfred Laurier University (WLU) who moved from China to Canada when she was nine. At our first interview, she was nearing the end of her first year as a tenure-track assistant professor at WLU, in a job she accepted upon graduating from UIUC with a PhD in modern Chinese history and a minor in cinema studies. She had published several book reviews and was working on articles. I met Jing Jing through another participant in my study, a Chinese PhD student at UIUC for whom Jing Jing was a valued writing mentor.

Our initial Skype interview (100 minutes, 5/22/12) included text-based questions about feedback she provided to that UIUC student and questions about her own experiences with academic writing. During our conversation, she mentioned that she admired the writing of an English literature PhD student, “Adam,” a white Canadian man who took her Identity Politics in Film seminar. She connected me with Adam and, with his permission, sent me his final paper with her comments, along with two of her published book reviews and some of her graduate school papers.⁷ After I read her feedback on Adam’s paper, I conducted a follow-up Skype interview (80 minutes, 9/12/13).

 

The Initial Representation

During our initial interview, Jing Jing articulated the view that a good academic writer is one who transcends seemingly rudimentary supports like transition phrases. She expressed this view when I asked if she noticed any differences in writing style between the English graduate students she now taught in WLU’s Department of English and Film Studies and her former graduate-student peers in UIUC’s history department. She said that “generally speaking, English students actually write very well” and, laughing, observed that “in fact, I think they can write better than I do.” The more courses that history graduate students take, “the more they lose in terms of writing in a very interesting fashion,” but English graduate students “write to express themselves” and “want the language, the words, to become beautiful. They want to express an aesthetics.” I now provide more detailed quotations from when she began describing, and embodying, these stylistic differences. (See Olinger, “On the Instability,” on how gestures can function as metaphors depicting stylistic qualities.)

Jing Jing asserted that writing in history is “stuck” between the social sciences and the humanities (line 1; see Appendix D for the subtitled video and transcript). She explained that history grapples with “big problems” like the humanities do (line 3/D), but its style is similar to that of social science fields like library science, communication studies, sociology, and political science (lines 4-5/D). She then described this social science style as “very boring, like math” (line 6/D), and characterized it by breezing through a typical structure: “step one, step two, step three. Okay this is what I want to prove this is how I’m going to prove it.” (lines 8-11/D). As she articulated the stages in this structure, she sliced her flattened hand down through the air in successive steps, enacting the style’s cut-and-dried nature (See Fig. 2). Although not apparent in the images, Jing Jing’s movements were quick and sharp, demonstrating her negative stance toward this style.

Fig. 2. Jing Jing slices a flattened hand down in stages to describe a “math” style (lines 8-9/D).

 

About a minute later, she mentioned Adam, an English PhD student who had taken her seminar and whose style epitomized this aesthetic sensibility, as he “writes beautifully compared to history students” (line 1; see Appendix E for the subtitled video and transcript) and his style “flows so well” without what she called “arbitrary transitional: phra(h)ses” (lines 8, 11/E). While saying that his style “flows so well,” her hand moved from a higher plane to a lower one, as earlier, but she smoothly combed her fingers down through the air (see Fig. 3), indicating that she valued this style’s “flow” more highly:

Fig. 3. Jing Jing’s gestures describing Adam’s flow (lines 5-9/E).

 

In trying to describe what Adam’s writing flows without, she introduced her own habits: “like he wouldn’t use like- I I would have this problem I- sometimes I will still use some arbitrary transitional: phra(h)ses to help my paragraphs transition smoothly. In fact the ideas might not flow, but in his writing, he- his ideas flow, (0.8) without those- those phrases,” (lines 10-18/E). This pattern—glowing descriptions of his style co-occurring with self-deprecating ruminations on her own—recurs in our follow-up interview.

Jing Jing’s views are grounded in the ideal of the autonomous text, which asserts that written language should not require any additional context to be interpreted and which values concision (recall Sprat’s “so many things, almost in an equal number of words”). Aligning with this view are critiques of academic writing (e.g., Pinker) that argue that language indicating how readers should interpret content but not directly communicating that content ought to be eliminated. One form of such language is metadiscourse, the “linguistic devices writers employ to shape their arguments to the needs and expectations of their target readers” (Hyland 134). Jing Jing’s examples of the problematic style were “interactive resources,” one of Hyland’s two categories of metadiscourse that “allow the writer to manage the information flow to explicitly establish his or her preferred interpretations” (138). Hyland notes that transitions “mark additive, contrastive, and consequential steps in the discourse, as opposed to the external world” (138) while “frame markers” like “my purpose is to…” and “to conclude” are “references to text boundaries or elements of schematic text structure, including items used to sequence, to label text stages, to announce discourse goals, and to indicate topic shifts” (138). Jing Jing associated metadiscourse with a plodding, step-by-step, abrupt, inelegant style typical of social science fields (and her own writing) and its absence with the flowing, beautiful style typical of English Department writers like Adam.

 

An Apparent Contradiction

Jing Jing’s representation of Adam’s writing, however, differs from what appears in Adam’s texts; namely, he uses interactive metadiscourse. When preparing for our follow-up interview about four months later, I recalled her view that Adam did not use transition words, so I searched for them in his seminar paper. In one section, I found three: the words “however,” “therefore,” and “also.” (See Fig. 4). In our follow-up interview, I asked her about them.

Like Flowers of War, Empire of the Sun breaks down the binary of West/East, but it ultimately does not relinquish the Other, nor give up a view of China as either passive victim or thieving rogue. However, for most of the film, Morris contends, “Spielberg unreels a solipsistic vision of war, involving projection into different positions, rather than any attempt at objective realism” (138). Therefore, the film reveals Orientalism to be representations and not reality. Jamie’s personal changes are also connected to the imperial/colonial themes of the film. Jamie’s shattered illusion of control and modernization/maturity parallel Britain’s decline and America’s ascension, respectively. Does the war’s shattering of Jamie’s illusion merely substitute one colonial power for another though? Is another Orientalist illusion adopted in the end? Hopefully Jamie closing his eyes in his mother’s arms signals his embrace of a less discriminatory reality, but the film does not entirely rule out the possibility that Jamie will become just another bureaucrat in the Empire like his father.

Fig. 4. Excerpt from Adam’s paper (bold added).

 

Accounting for the Apparent Contradiction

As I will show, Jing Jing accounted for the apparent contradiction between representation and practice by arguing that she had simply mischaracterized his writing during our first conversation. Yet in resolving this contradiction, she introduced new ones as she sought to describe what made Adam an exemplary writer.

As we looked at Adam’s paper, I pointed out the transition words, and she agreed that they were there (lines 30-37; see Appendix F for the subtitled video and transcript). I responded by providing a reason for the discrepancy between her perceptions of Adam and the reality of his writing: “But they must not have been so noticeable.” (line 38/F). Jing Jing agreed and said she didn’t notice them because “it’s not the same word over and over and over again” (line 39/F). Adam’s virtue lies in the fact that he does not rely on the same transition words, not that he uses no transition words.

Jing Jing then contrasted herself and Adam: “I have this problem with writing, it’s ver:y bad.” (line 40/F). After I asked what she meant, she clarified that her problem was using the same words, namely, the phrase “as such” at the start of a sentence. I responded by laughing and saying, “Okay well that’s only one word! .hh ha ha one phrase” (lines 67, 69/F). It appears I thought the issue was lighter than she did. Although she was smiling while I said that, she sounded unconvinced: she replied, “ehhh”, exhaled, and shook her head while smiling (line 70/F). My response was again to make light: “that’s funny.” (line 71/F).

After that exchange, I turned to my final question: what her graduate students struggled with and how Adam was different. She responded that Adam made connections between seemingly opposite ideas, used the theories to understand the films, always had something to say in class, worked harder than other students, and clearly wanted to be there. I then asked whether Adam’s language was “more sophisticated or different” from that of other graduate students she had taught. Her reply provided additional representations of Adam’s style.

First, she renewed the contrast between herself and Adam, stating, “I hear a voice, I hear his voice. (1.0) Whereas myself included, I I (0.8) am not a good writer.” (lines 1-3; see Appendix G for the subtitled video and transcript). After a pause, she added, putting her head in her hands, “Um Ohhh (I’m) so: struggling with my writing.” (lines 3-5/G). She then said that when she reads his writing, she does not see much language like “According to this writer, he said this, uh there’s this (0.8) limitation of this, there’s a gap and therefore we should look at this. From this way.” (lines 8-12/G)—i.e., in technical terms, she does not see evidentials (“According to…”)⁸ or explicit statements about one’s argument and its place in the larger conversation, which could be described as frame markers (Hyland). While she uttered these paraphrases of hypothetical text, she scooped her voice, enacting the rudimentary quality of each utterance (line 11/G).

Jing Jing then clarified that Adam does use this kind of language, but it is not noticeable: “The way he writes it is- there is that, but everything is embedded. It’s not- it’s not sequential.” (lines 12-15/G). She gave another example: he does not use language like “this is what this writer said, okay I disagree because there’s something wrong, and this is the new way.” (lines 17-20/G). She then evaluated her hypothetical example as “formulaic” (line 24/6), stating that Adam is “willing to even challenge” “the conventional academic style.” (line 27/G).

As she described what Adam did not do, she flattened her hand and stepped it down several levels to depict the “sequential” nature of this kind of formulaic writing (lines 15-16/G; See Figs. 5-6):

Fig. 5. Jing Jing contrasted Adam's style with step-like gestures (lines 15-16/G).

 

Fig. 6. Jing Jing used step-like gestures while giving examples of formulaic language (lines 17-20/G).

 

Jing Jing initially resolved the seeming contradiction between her representation of Adam’s writing and his actual writing by saying that he did not overuse the same transition word. Later in the interview, however, she acknowledged that although he used metadiscourse (not her word), his use was not “sequential” and was instead “embedded”; thus, “You don’t hear that.” (line 21/G); “You don’t see that formula.” (line 24/G). Still, when I went back to see if the text was consistent with these representations, I realized that her account had created opportunities for new contradictions. For instance, in the following section of his paper, Adam distinguished his own points from those of Barlow and Said through language like “Barlow explores . . . ,” “By extension, I would argue that . . . ,” “Said never makes clear . . . ,” and “. . . but I would suggest that. . . .” (See Fig. 7):

Barlow explores the difficulties of talking about China as a colony, for as many scholars argue, “China was never really colonized” (368). She suggests the need in postcolonial studies to move away from the predominant England/India colonial model (371). By extension, I would argue that Said’s Anglo-French-American/Near Eastern model of Orientalism does not precisely apply to China, despite his scattered examples suggesting so. In the chapter, “Orientalism Now,” when Said states that “A wide variety of hybrid representations of the Orient now roam the culture” (285), he goes on to mention China and Japan (as well as Indochina, India, and Pakistan). Said never makes clear whether these South and East Asian representations are hybrids of Orientalism, but I would suggest that hybridity is a useful way of thinking about Orientalist representations of China.

Fig. 7. Excerpt from Adam’s paper (bold added).

An out-loud reading of those phrases (see bold text in Fig. 7)—“Barlow explores this, By extension I would argue this, Said never makes clear this, I would suggest this”—resembles Jing Jing’s stylized version (lines 10-12, 17-21/G), intended to represent what Adam did not do. Although I identified this passage after our interview, I suspect that asking her about it would not have settled the matter. As Potter and Mulkay show, variability in a participant’s responses is rarely a “manageable technical proble[m]” that can be resolved by “further interpretive work by both parties” (250).

 

The Value of Studying These Accounts

Like Dan’s explanations for his use of “show, don’t tell,” Jing Jing’s accounts were complex, shifting, and co-constructed—as I elicited her accounts, offered my own, professed to be working on similar issues, and laughed off her assertion that her metadiscourse use was problematic. Whereas Dan’s accounts invoked, depending on the interactional context, both the autonomous and the ideological model of literacy, Jing Jing’s accounts maintained the truth of the autonomous model—specifically, the idea that textual meaning is autonomous and that good writing should therefore flow smoothly without such supports as transition phrases or overuse of the same phrase, code glosses (“as such”), evidentials (“according to…”), or sequential or overly explicit frame markers (e.g., “this is what I want to prove”; “There’s a gap and therefore we should look at this”). Yet whereas this idea remained constant, what changed were her representations of the features that demonstrated beautiful writing: Adam did not use transition words at all, he used them but varied them, or—in conceptual vagaries that can be defined by the beholder—he used them but embedded them, or he used them in a context where his overall writing had a distinctive and interesting voice.

Again, during the interview, I noticed no inconsistencies (beyond the initial contradiction). It was only upon more-detailed transcription and closer inspection, using the lens of variability from the sociology of scientific knowledge, that the deeper meaning of this interaction was revealed. Although the autonomous model seems to be resilient, the presence of multiple, conflicting accounts belies this apparent strength.