Style and the Future of CompositionStudies explores style’s potential for informing how students are taught to write well and its power as a tool for analyzing the language and discourse practices of writers and speakers in a range of contexts. Many college writing teachers operate under the belief that style still refers primarily to the kinds of issues discussed in Strunk and White’s popular but outdated book The Elements of Style. This work not only challenges this view but also offers theories and pedagogies from diverse perspectives that help teachers and students develop strategic habits and mindsets to negotiate languages, genres, and discourse conventions. The chapters explore the ways in which style directly affects—and is affected by—multiple sources of shifting disciplinary inquiry, contributing new insights by drawing on research in cultural studies, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, translingualism, and writing across the curriculum, as well as new approaches to classical rhetorical theory. The reemergence of stylistic inquiry can be used dynamically to produce new insights not only about emerging disciplinary interests but also about the study of style as a kind of language in and of itself. Style and the Future of Composition Studies demonstrates that style deserves to be a central focus of writing teaching. More than just the next style collection, the book advocates for style’s larger prominence in composition discussions generally. It will be of interest to a broad range of students and scholars of writing studies, as well as a wider set of readers in academe. Contributors: Cydney Alexis, Laura Aull, Anthony Box, Jimmy Butts, Mike Duncan, William FitzGerald, Melissa Goldthwaite, Eric House, TR Johnson, Almas Khan, Zak Lancaster, Eric Leake, Andrea Olinger, Thomas Pace, Jarron Slater, Jonathan Udelson

Style and the Future of CompositionStudies explores style’s potential for informing how students are taught to write well and its power as a tool for analyzing the language and discourse practices of writers and speakers in a range of contexts. Many college writing teachers operate under the belief that style still refers primarily to the kinds of issues discussed in Strunk and White’s popular but outdated book The Elements of Style. This work not only challenges this view but also offers theories and pedagogies from diverse perspectives that help teachers and students develop strategic habits and mindsets to negotiate languages, genres, and discourse conventions. The chapters explore the ways in which style directly affects—and is affected by—multiple sources of shifting disciplinary inquiry, contributing new insights by drawing on research in cultural studies, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, translingualism, and writing across the curriculum, as well as new approaches to classical rhetorical theory. The reemergence of stylistic inquiry can be used dynamically to produce new insights not only about emerging disciplinary interests but also about the study of style as a kind of language in and of itself. Style and the Future of Composition Studies demonstrates that style deserves to be a central focus of writing teaching. More than just the next style collection, the book advocates for style’s larger prominence in composition discussions generally. It will be of interest to a broad range of students and scholars of writing studies, as well as a wider set of readers in academe. Contributors: Cydney Alexis, Laura Aull, Anthony Box, Jimmy Butts, Mike Duncan, William FitzGerald, Melissa Goldthwaite, Eric House, TR Johnson, Almas Khan, Zak Lancaster, Eric Leake, Andrea Olinger, Thomas Pace, Jarron Slater, Jonathan Udelson

Setting forth an innovative new model for what it means to be a writing teacher in the era of writing across the curriculum, The End of Composition Studies urges a reconceptualization of graduate work in rhetoric and composition, systematically critiques the limitations of current pedagogical practices at the postsecondary level, and proposes a reorganization of all academic units. David W. Smit calls into question two major assumptions of the field: that writing is a universal ability and that college-level writing is foundational to advanced learning. Instead, Smit holds, writing involves a wide range of knowledge and skill that cannot be learned solely in writing classes but must be acquired by immersion in various discourse communities in and out of academic settings. The End of Composition Studies provides a compelling rhetoric and rationale for eliminating the field and reenvisioning the profession as truly interdisciplinary—a change that is necessary in order to fulfill the needs and demands of students, instructors, administrators, and our democratic society.

Paul Butler applauds the emerging interest in the study of style among scholars of rhetoric and composition, arguing that the loss of stylistics from composition in recent decades left it alive only in the popular imagination as a set of grammar conventions. Butler’s goal in Out of Style is to articulate style as a vital and productive source of invention, and to redefine its importance for current research, theory, and pedagogy. Scholars in composition know that the ideas about writing most common in the discourse of public intellectuals are egregiously backward. Without a vital approach to stylistics, Butler argues, writing studies will never dislodge the controlling fantasies of self-authorized pundits in the nation’s intellectual press. Rhetoric and composition must answer with a public discourse that is responsive to readers’ ongoing interest in style but is also grounded in composition theory.

Cindy Johanek offers a new perspective on the ideological conflict between qualitative and quantitative research approaches, and the theories of knowledge that inform them. With a paradigm that is sensitive to the context of one's research questions, she argues, scholars can develop less dichotomous forms that invoke the strengths of both research traditions. Context-oriented approaches can lift the narrative from beneath the numbers in an experimental study, for example, or bring the useful clarity of numbers to an ethnographic study. A pragmatic scholar, Johanek moves easily across the boundaries that divide the field, and argues for contextualist theory as a lens through which to view composition research. This approach brings with it a new focus, she writes. "This new focus will call us to attend to the contexts in which rhetorical issues and research issues converge, producing varied forms, many voices, and new knowledge, indeed reconstructing a discipline that will be simultaneously focused on its tasks, its knowledge-makers, and its students." Composing Research is a work full of personal voice and professional commitment and will be a welcome addition to the research methods classroom and to the composition researcher's own bookshelf. 2000 Outstanding Scholarship Award from the International Writing Centers Association.

div Composition research consistently demonstrates that the social context of writing determines the majority of conventions any writer must observe. Still, most universities organize the required first-year composition course as if there were an intuitive set of general writing "skills" usable across academic and work-world settings. In College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction, Anne Beaufort reports on a longitudinal study comparing one student’s experience in FYC, in history, in engineering,;