Writing about Writing: Exploring Our Writing Identities

Have you ever wondered why you write the way that you do? Thought about your unique literacies and linguistic diversity?  Have you considered how texts are composed, and the strategies that authors employ to construct them? Together, we will employ a writing about writing approach to discover, observe, and analyze our identities as writers, as well as to understand how we gain authority to write and speak in new discourse communities. We will have multiple opportunities to research and write collaboratively, as well as to write in different modalities (text, video, podcast, etc). Course projects include a Linguistic Observation & Analysis, a Public Rhetoric Analysis, and a Discourse Community Analysis.

Guiding Questions

• Why study writing? Why do our ideas about writing matter?
• How do our prior writing experiences shape our writerly identities? Influence how we think and feel about writing?
• Is there a “standard” English? How are our ideas about language shaped by our experiences?
• How do writers and texts respond to and shape specific contexts and moments?
• What are discourse communities? How do communities use writing to get things done in the world? How do we gain authority to speak and write in new discourse communities?