This article discusses the "primary reflections" of composition studies by first outlining distinctive features and then discussing the different advantages and dangers of these features.
Lauer first talks about the distinctive features of composition studies and discusses "at its deepest level, a discipline has a special set of phenomena to study, a characteristic mode or modes of inquiry, its own history of development, its theoretical ancestors and assumptions, its evolving body of knowledge, and its own epistemic courts by which knowledge gains that status" (20). Personally, I did not realize how "new" of a discipline composition studies was until reading this article and Lauer really shows how composition studies crosses disciplinary lines, but also talks about the different theorists theories on the development of a discipline and what truly made this discipline become what it is today. She chooses to begin by discussing in a "dynamic perspective" by turning back to the sixties and some of the pioneers. Basically how composition studies began was teachers within English departments began to feel dissonance between what they understood and the responsibility they had to their students. With Lauer discussing this she connects it to the handout we received and read because so many teachers became concerned about the amount of illiteracy among the population of college bound students. The other way these two other articles connect is through the idea that it took advocates to truly fight to make a difference in the epidemic of illiteracy and it took decades to make this difference.
Lauer discusses how it took early theorists a willingness to be risky, had to go beyond their own boundaries and enter into foreign domains to be able to find a place to start. Many early theorists looked into classical rhetoric, linguistics, semiotics, psychological studies, philosophical theories, and even biological theories. The one idea that seemed to come from all of this is the idea of community. One reason community is so important is because composition is considered a social field and social knowledge depends on personal relationships between an advocate and an audience. By being able to advocate to the right audience the work moves forward, but advocate to the wrong audience first and it gets stalled or put at a standstill and frustrates others who are in the field. However, I believe the most important point that comes out of the idea of community is by theorist Farrell and it says, "knowledge generated by social fields plays an important role in both academia and society because its overreaching purpose is to transform the society into a community by helping define the zone of relevance in matters of human choice" (as quoted in Lauer 25). The reason I find this so important is because in order for the attitude to shift over those several decades it took the community and advocates working together to make the changes. In order to keep up the moving forward of composition studies it will continue to take community and advocates working together.
I truly believe that throughout this semester and the different readings we will be doing we will continually see the idea of community for the discipline of composition because it has been such a struggle to bring this discipline forward and the best way to do that is by forming a community who supports it and wants to see its growth.
