Pragmatic Construction of the Self in English Composition Theory

"Offering students the opportunity to question ‘final vocabularies' but not making such questioning a requirement, injects a strong (and badly needed) dose of common sense into composition theory. This reader especially found the concept of ‘imaginative identification' to be important and useful as a theoretical concept that can readily apply to pedagogy. Older students who tend to make up a large portion of the classes in community college are very resistant to activist pedagogy, and find traditional composition pedagogy to be too confining. Dr. Zeppetello offers us a viable alternative." Fred Koschetski"To any instructor divided between the traditional means and ends of composition courses, with whatever inequities they may perpetuate, and the insistence of privileging the eradication of those inequities, possibly at the expense of writing skills, Dr. Zeppetello offers a workable alternative through his adaptation of the thought of Richard Rorty. It is a pragmatic answer, deserving consideration by those who must put theories into practice in the proving ground of theories, the writing course. . . . it is a valuable ‘common-sense' approach." Fred Anderson". . .offers new ways of accessing the process of teaching composition and suggest ways for instructors to encourage students to find their own writing voice. The method described in Zeppetello's book does not adhere to any of the current positions exclusively. He has allowed for a certain flexibility in examining the writing potential and the ‘final vocabularies' of individual students." Florence Dee Boodakian

" . .offers new ways of accessing the process of teaching composition and suggest ways for instructors to encourage students to find their own writing voice. The method described in Zeppetello's book does not adhere to any of the current positions exclusively. He has allowed for a certain flexibility in examining the writing potential and the ‘final vocabularies' of individual students."" – Florence Dee Boodakian"

Table of Contents:

Preface, Introduction

1.Language, Contingency, and the Writing Self

2.The Expressionist Self

3.The Emergence of Self-Consciousness

4.Responses to Descartes

5.The Contingent Self

6.Elbow and Pragmatism

7.Recontextualization, Redescription, and the Ironist Self

8.Composition Theory and the Ironist Self

Selected Bibliography; Index"