Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 15:48:43 CST
From:         Eric Crump <C509379@MIZZOU1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: apology for conferencing

On Tue, 29 Dec 1992 22:41:15 -0700 David E. Schwalm said:
>Eric, what do you think about "talking about writing"?
>
This is a trick question, right?

I'm going to answer it anyway so as to avoid cleaning my office
further (moving and removing all this stuff makes me worry that I'm
upsetting some fragile and irreplaceable ecology).

I don't know exactly what's behind the question, David. Are you
wondering if I'm aware of the various ironies and paradoxes embedded
in the phrase? I'm afraid I don't know enough about them and would
probably flunk if this was a test (this isn't a *test* is it?).

What I *think* about "talking about writing" is that the phrase itself
says something about the relationship between the speaking and
writing:  orality not only precedes chirography historically but
actively and currently as well. Writing is no longer merely "speaking
put on the page," as it was once portrayed, but its shape is still
informed, to some degree, by speaking, the old "conversation of
human|kind" bit.  What is common to both writing and speaking is
their nature as methods of interacting, of conversing.

I'm influenced by the fact that I have been skipping around in Richard
Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_ during break.

"Edifying philosophers| do not think that when we say something we
must necessarily be expressing a view about a subject.  We might just
be *saying something*--participating in a conversation rather than
contributing to an inquiry." (371)

"The point of edifying philosophy is to keep the conversation going
rather than to find objective truth." (377)

And what's good for edifying philosophers must be good for the
rest of us, right? :-)

In the writing center biz, of course, Stephen North sometimes gets
credit for credo-izing the primacy of talk. Can't put my finger on a
copy at the moment to get a quote, but somewhere in "The Idea of a
Writing Center" (CE 1984) he says that, reduced to its essence, the
business of writing centers is to talk with writers about their
writing.  That notion caught on, I guess, because it is so amenable to
practice.  It's common for student writers, facing the task of writing
in a new and difficult grapholect, academic English, to find it much
easier to express ideas orally than chirographically.  The one-to-one
situation usually available in writing centers helps many writers feel
safe enough to *say* what they feel incompetent to *write.*  They
have, after all, been talking competently much longer than they've
been writing.

As all the ENFI teachers out there know, computers can help mitigate
the perceived difference between conversing in writing and in speech.
Like John & Karen, I'd like to see a broadly accessible online writing
environment develop that would draw students, faculty, and staff from
all disciplines into written electronic conversations.  I have this
dream:  The orality of CMC is what finally draws writing off the
academic margins and into the center.

More on that later.

--Eric Crump
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