History Bump

Project proposals should describe what you intend to do: What I intend to do in this project is to look at how the history of International English language teaching has been written at different historical moments and geographical places and to compare those stories to the ones told today by composition instructors teaching at several English medium Universities in Turkey. I would use a sort of 'Whitian' rhetorical/ analysis informed by a transnational feminist perspective in oder to explore the ways that these stories are emploted and how/whether their figurative or latent content reveals anything interesting about gender, motivation and/or power.

Why you feel it's worth your while to do it: I want to do this project because I am hoping that it will give me a better sense of my own position as a International English language writing teacher. I am interested in the ways that agency shifts as the desire to spread the language as a disciplining function of Imperialism is transformed into a demand by the 'postcolonial subject' (this term doesn't quite work here, but I'm using for now anyway) for foreign workers (intellectual labor?) to teach English-for-International-Business (this is simplifying things too much). I am confused by Composition and. Rhetoric’s seeming invisibility in the international context from within the field’s histories of itself. If people are engaged in teaching and learning writing, in English, outside of what someone like Connors designates the geographical and temporal ‘territory’ of rhet comp, are they not teaching composition?

How you will do it:

Methodology: I want to ground my project in White’s sense of history both in terms of the way I read my archival sources and the ways that I represent them in my own narrative. I would like to take up his call to open history up to alternative ways of seeing and representing. White is clearly writing from within a more general, postmodern/poststructural ‘crisis’ of knowledge, which has had a major influence on the ways that scholarship is done. Transnational feminist scholarship (Mohanty, Sudbury, Alexander) has explored ways of reading historical and contemporary events and making them relevant to the present by contesting the ‘back then’ and ‘over there’ of a great deal of Western scholarship—contesting White’s dusty historian lost in the archive, maybe. Specifically, Jacque Alexander, has developed a methodology based on a ‘palimpsestic’ analysis that I think White would very much approve of—she takes textual moments separated by time and space, lays them on top each other, and identifies textual instances of continuity and change. In this way she is able to isolate heteronormative discourse that shows up in a colonial text from 1517 and then reemerges intact in the US Congressional meetings of 1997, juridical proceedings in Trinidad and Tobago, and discussions of the Abu Graib prison scandal. The richness and sophistication of her method allows her to make/identify connections that a more superficial analysis would not expose. I would like to explore ways of adapting her work to my own context.

Research design: My project would have three parts 1) Rhetorical analysis of a limited set of ‘classic’ story-of-English texts—I would like these to represent different historical moments and geographies, 2) rhetorical analysis of a limited set of contemporary testimonials from teachers teaching English—these will all be contemporary and located in Turkey, 3) to lay these moments on top of each other and see what emerges that can provide insight into the global context of rhetoric and composition.

I will begin by surveying English language teaching histories in order to identify a limited group that I will argue are representative of general trends. I will need to make some decisions such as, will I consider only full length texts dedicated to teaching or will I also use excerpts from other historical texts in which passages appear that discuss teaching (such as missionary logs, travel books, etc.). This process will help me to further focus my project.

How it constitutes historical work in composition studies: This project constitutes work in composition studies in that it attempts to historicize composition and rhetoric’s increasing presence and visibility in international contexts in countries (job boards and the appearance of English language rhetoric positions in at least Germany, Turkey, and the Gulf) where English is not the language of wider communication. I worked in a department in Turkey that taught composition classes very similar to SU’s WRT 105 and 205. Composition does not have a strong presence overseas, but it is growing. I would like to intervene at this early moment given the lack of scholarship in this area.

Concerns you have about the project: My concerns are mainly that I am physically far away from the areas I am interested in looking at. Hopefully electronic communication and interlibrary loan will assist my in this. I am also wondering how far back in time I want to go—or what time period I should concentrate on. I am assuming that I will be able to address these concerns as I learn more about what is ‘out there.’ Finally, I am concerned that my project won’t be easily identifiable as a history of composition—but I also think that it is a sympom of the problem to begin with—Comp rhet doesn’t seem to be keenly aware of its global context., and globally, the history of English is part of the history of comp.

List of possible research questions:
1) What can be revealed through a rhetorical reading of a specific and limited collection of 'classic' English Language Histories (I do not mean language teaching textbooks)?
2) What can be revealed through a rhetorical reading of a collection of contemporary International English language teacher testimonials?
3) What evidence of continuity and change emerges from a comparison of historical and contemporary texts? So what?
4) The underlying/overlying question: In what ways can Haydin White's theory of discourse, combined with transnational feminist insights (on at least the nation, mobility, and theories of the border), create a useful framework/ methodolgy with which to assess the questions above?

I would rely on textual analysis of historical texts. I would conduct interviews with both Turkish and non-Turkish instructors (in Turkey) in order to look at the 'stories' they tell as to why they teach and compare them to historical accounts. I could also probably get friends to ask student to write to me--maybe they could have them do in-class writing or something like that.

Tentative Inital Bibliography:

Alexander, Jaquie. “Transnationalism, Sexuality, and the State” (forthcoming).

Crystal, David The stories of English. Woodstock : Overlook Press, 2004.

Darian, Steven G. English as a foreign language: history, development, and methods of teaching, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press [1971, c1972].

Manfred, Gorlach. Text types and the history of English. Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, c2004.

McCrum, Robert. The story of English / New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books, 1993.

Pennycook, Alastair. The cultural politics of English as an international language London ; New York : Longman, 1994.

Pennycook, Alastair. English and the discourses of colonialism. London ; New York : Routledge, 1998.

The Story of English. 1 - 9, An English speaking world [videorecording] / MacNeil-Lehrer-Gannett Productions/BBC Chicago, IL : Films Inc., c1986,