Forgotten Genres: The Editorial Apparatus of American Anthologies and Composition Textbooks by ...

289 Pages·2011·1.93 MB·English

Forgotten Genres:
The Editorial Apparatus of American Anthologies and Composition Textbooks

by
Laura Louise Aull

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(English and Education)
in the University of Michigan
2011

Doctoral Committee:
Professor Anne Ruggles Gere, Chair
Professor June M. Howard
Professor Emeritus John M. Swales
Professor Sarah Robbins, Texas Christian University
© Laura Louise Aull, 2011
Dedication

For Jerome and Cricket Aull,
my first teachers

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to my dissertation committee, Anne Ruggles Gere, John
Swales, June Howard, and Sarah Robbins. I thank them for their enthusiasm from the
very beginning of my doctoral studies, and for their continued investment as my research
has evolved. I have June to thank for fostering my interest in institutional history of
English departments and the Norton and Heath anthologies; John to thank for introducing
me to corpus linguistic analysis and a broad view of genres and textbooks far beyond
English; Sarah to thank for helping me interrogate the relationship between writing and
reading practices and US culture; and Anne to thank for encouraging my interest in
university power structures and teaching and especially how they have helped shape the
field of rhetoric and composition. All four have been integral and gracious in my
development as a scholar and teacher. Also integral in my journey is Anne Curzan, who
has been great mentor for me in research, administrative work, and teaching.
I would also like to thank Rackham Graduate School for research grants which
helped fund the corpus compilation for this project and others at the University of
Michigan to whom I am indebted, friends and colleagues who have helped me think
through my research, writing, and teaching. Thank you to Ute Roemer and the rest of the
UM Corpus Analysis group for generative discussions throughout the evolution of this
project. Many thanks to Hannah Dickinson for continual laughter and insight, and other
E&E colleagues – including Beth Davila, Melinda McBee Orzulak, Brett Griffiths, Zak
Lancaster, and Moisés Perales-Escudero – for years of feedback, collaboration, and
friendship. Thank you to Raymond McDaniel for his feedback and enthusiasm about this
work. Thank you as well to William Bradford Wetherell, for believing in me so well.
Lastly, to Randall Pinder and Paul Pearson, I extend a thank you, surely insufficient, for
years of love, faith, and equanimity.
Finally, I would like to thank my family: my parents, Jerome and Cricket; my 5
siblings, Bethany, Talia, Geneva, Nika, and Jacob; my 7 nieces and nephews; and scores
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of ancestors, including women like my grandmothers who did not have the opportunity to
do doctoral studies. All of them have made me better and have in so many ways led me to
this point – a point which represents, in the words of my father, ―big doins.‖ My
dissertation is dedicated to my father and mother, who have encouraged all to which I
have aspired but who have, above all, taught me that the biggest doins are those in which
we serve others.

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Contents

Dedication ............................................................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. iii
List of Tables ........................................................................................................................ ix
List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... x
Chapter 1 : Considering the textbook apparatus ..................................................................1
Introduction: a moment for textbook analysis ........................................................................ 1
Textbook analysis as a critical approach to textbooks ........................................................... 4
A genre study of the textbook apparatus .............................................................................. 13
Considering how apparatus genres function through discourse ........................................... 17
Apparatus genres: examples and analysis ............................................................................ 20
From American literature anthologies ........................................................................ 21
From college composition textbooks ......................................................................... 25
Apparatus genres and their implications .............................................................................. 27
Organization of the Dissertation .......................................................................................... 29
References to Chapter 1 ....................................................................................................... 35
Chapter 2 : Analytic approach to textbook apparatus genres: methods and frameworks ..39
Corpus analysis and corpus compilation .............................................................................. 40
The textbook corpora ........................................................................................................... 43
American literature anthology corpus ........................................................................ 45
Composition textbook corpus ..................................................................................... 47
Corpus analysis methods: genre analysis within and beyond texts ...................................... 52
Overview of genre and positioning theories ........................................................................ 56
Literary and rhetorical genre studies .......................................................................... 56
Positioning theory and considering genre reader-writer expectations and relations .. 62
Chapter summary and implications ...................................................................................... 65
References to Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................... 67
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Chapter 3 : Pedagogical con/texts of American literature .................................................71
Anthologies as a way we make American literatures .......................................................... 71
Review of anthology research: Defining and using American literature anthologies by
―what [literature] gets included and what is left out‖ ........................................................... 75
The Heath and Norton Anthologies of American Literature: a brief history ....................... 82
Chapter summary and implications ...................................................................................... 88
References to Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................... 89
Chapter 4 : Limits of the canon debates: American literature anthology analysis ............92
Anthology analysis methods ................................................................................................ 93
Anthology analysis ............................................................................................................... 94
I. Word frequency and keyword lists ....................................................................... 94
II. Storylines and positioning in anthology prefaces .............................................. 103
III. Storylines in early American period overviews (or: Can we indict Columbus and
still celebrate ―America‖?) ....................................................................................... 117
IV. Gender representation in the anthology apparatus: an analysis of pro/nouns ... 123
Chapter summary and implications .................................................................................... 135
What do anthology apparatus genres tell us about the U.S. ―canon‖ and efforts to
revise it? ................................................................................................................... 135
What do we gain by making anthologizing processes and choices more visible? ... 136
References to Chapter 4 ..................................................................................................... 138
Chapter 5 : Pedagogical con/texts of college composition ..............................................141
Considering composition con/texts .................................................................................... 142
A brief history of composition textbooks ........................................................................... 144
19th century developments in English departments and composition textbooks ...... 144
20th century developments in English departments and composition textbooks ...... 152
Composition textbook research: concept-content and tonal analyses ................................ 162
Textbooks in light of these details ..................................................................................... 165
Chapter summary and implications .................................................................................... 169
References to Chapter 5 ..................................................................................................... 172
Chapter 6 : Knowing editors, known students: A Composition textbook analysis .........177
Composition textbook analysis methods ............................................................................ 178
Composition apparatus analysis ......................................................................................... 180
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I. Thematic and discursive patterns in composition apparatus genres over time:
changes in the field, discourse, and genres ............................................................... 180
II. The promotional function of contemporary apparatus genres: textbook self-
presentations ............................................................................................................. 196
III. The positioning function of contemporary apparatus genres: knowing editors and
known students ......................................................................................................... 200
IV. A Closer Look at Discursive Positioning: a case of three textbooks ................ 206
Chapter summary and implications .................................................................................... 223
How possible is it to simultaneously promote and problematize the practice and field
of composition? ........................................................................................................ 225
What do we gain by making the functions of apparatus genres more visible? ......... 226
References to Chapter 6 ..................................................................................................... 229
Chapter 7 : Genre functions and pedagogical applications ..............................................232
A combined analytic approach ........................................................................................... 232
Textbook apparatus discourse: cross-disciplinary comparison .......................................... 238
Positioning of editors and their authority ................................................................. 239
Editor self-positioning .............................................................................................. 240
The construction and positioning of a student audience .......................................... 241
The rhetorical organization and formal features of editorial prefaces ...................... 242
The functions of textbook apparatus genres ....................................................................... 243
Limitations of the study ..................................................................................................... 248
Pedagogical questions and applications ............................................................................. 251
(1) How can teachers use this research to improve their take up of textbooks? ...... 253
(2) At what stage in students‘ learning are they able to analyze apparatus genres? . 253
(3) What do teachers and students gain from my quantitative analysis, and how
should they use this information? ............................................................................. 256
(4) What other areas need more analysis of this type, and why? ............................. 258
Apparatus analysis in the classroom: an example .................................................... 259
Final considerations ........................................................................................................... 261
References to Chapter 7 ..................................................................................................... 264
Appendix materials ..........................................................................................................267
Graphic display of recursive analysis process .................................................................... 267
Corpus linguistics definitions ............................................................................................. 267
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Corpus tools: screen shots from Antconc tools .................................................................. 268
Concordance tool ...................................................................................................... 268
Concordance plot ...................................................................................................... 269
Corpora details (also in Chapter 2) .................................................................................... 270
Apparatus text lengths over time in Heath and Norton ...................................................... 275
Examples of normalization ................................................................................................ 276
Gender noun and pronoun frequencies before and after number normalization ...... 276
Frequencies of words referring to English, Grammar, Language ............................ 276
Course details for pedagogical applications ....................................................................... 277
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 278
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List of Tables

Table 2-1: American anthology corpus materials ............................................................. 46
Table 2-2: Composition textbook corpus details .............................................................. 52
Table 4-1: Norton word freq lists, 1st, 7th Ed .................................................................... 96
Table 4-2: Heath word freq lists, 1st, 6th Ed ...................................................................... 97
Table 4-3: Keywords Norton vs Heath ........................................................................... 101
Table 4-4: Keywords Heath vs Norton ........................................................................... 101
Table 4-5: Anthology preface passages re: editors ......................................................... 104
Table 4-6: Norton preface passages re: canon construction ........................................... 107
Table 4-7: Heath preface passages re: canon construction ............................................. 108
Table 4-8: Norton preface passive verb construction ..................................................... 109
Table 4-9: Heath preface passive verb construction ....................................................... 110
Table 4-10 Anthology preface passages re: anthology additions ................................... 112
Table 4-11: Anthology preface scare quotes .................................................................. 114
Table 4-12: Normalized frequencies, gendered pro/nouns in Heath 1st, 6th; Norton 1st, 7th
......................................................................................................................................... 131
Table 4-13: Normalized frequencies, gendered pro/nouns in contemporary overviews 134
Table 6-1: Composition corpus text lengths ................................................................... 181
Table 6-2: Word freq list 1875-1919 .............................................................................. 183
Table 6-3: Word freq list 2007-2010 .............................................................................. 183
Table 6-4: Normalized freqs: composition actors ........................................................... 188
Table 6-5: Keywords in each comp corpus ..................................................................... 190
Table 6-6: concordance examples: expression in earlier textbooks ................................ 192
Table 6-7: concordance examples: argument in newer textbooks .................................. 192
Table 6-8: new words in newer corpus ........................................................................... 194
Table 6-9: Textbook self-references ............................................................................... 198
Table 6-10: Most frequent trigrams in earlier and newer corpus .................................... 199
Table 6-11: Collocates with you in newer corpus ........................................................... 201
Table 6-12: Frequencies of may vs will in earlier vs newer corpus ................................ 203
Table 0-1: Appendix: Gender pro/noun freqs before, after number normalization ........ 276
Table 0-2: Appendix: frequencies of language-related words ........................................ 276

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