Pre-Proposal!

I. Introduction:

I’ve really been struggling with this. Ultimately, I hope that some of my findings will illuminate the ways in which individuals can hope to create spaces that increases the possibility for agency or at least make them aware of discursive conventions for the purposes of rhetorical effectiveness. But when I ask myself, “So what?” I often respond: so what.

I’ll probably tell a story here as well…

II. Research Questions:

a. How do institutional sponsorship and/or discursive expectations shape responses in online communities?

b. Do online spaces actually “free” users from discursive restraints or institutionalized meaning making?

c. How can these findings be used to maximize the real world, rhetorical effectiveness of composition pedagogy?

III. Defining Terms

a. Discourse: this oughta be fun…I’ll include modality (blog, blog commentary, newspaper article, status update, tweet, etc.) as forming discourse as well.

b. Institution: For my study, I’m going to call institutions those sponsors of web commentary. For example, in my pilot, I’m investigating comments on nytimes.com and facebook.com, both of which I’ll consider institutions. In the larger study, I’ll look at blogs attached to more traditional institutions like specific universities, prisons, hospitals, etc.

c. Agency: In textual analysis, as measured by variation within structural expectations of a discourse as I code it. In the focus group and survey, as defined by respondents. This will be, of course, tricky.

IV. Lit Review (this is where I need the most help!)

a. Bartholomae “Inventing the University”

b. Foucault Archaeology of Knowledge

c. Wysocki “Opening New Media to Writing: Openings and Justifications”

d. Johnson-Eilola “The Database and the Essay”

e. See additional pages

V. Research Design

a. Textual Analysis: I’ll code for discursive features within the sponsoring institutions. I will be looking for certain terms, grammatical constructions, and ideas that the institutions use in discussing various (random?) topics. The features and kinds of features) that pop up the most in my pilot study (see C&W abstract) will form a heuristic that I’ll apply to other institutions and modes. Basically, I’ll be noting the frequency of repetition of institutional discourse as defined by my codes. I’ll also look at personal, non-institutional blogs (or tweets or something) as a kind of control group. But I want my argument to be that discursive features run through even the most anti-authoritarian web stuff…(see introduction)

b. Focus Group: The focus group will help me determine how aware hyper literate and discursively savvy (read grad students) are of the institutional discourses they activate when they blog or facebook or tweet. The group will also help me to identify themes and trends I’ll include on the more widely distributed survey.

c. Survey: I’ll survey grad students like in my focus group. I’ll triangulate by also surveying facebook users randomly selected (I was thinking of approaching everyone with the names of my immediate family…) and those who comment on the various topics or blogs. This will be an online survey, though open ended. Hopefully those who are generous with their opinions online will be generous to my survey as well.

VI. Significance of Study: Hopefully the lit review will help here. Maybe the significance revolves around discursive awareness?

VII. Outline of Study: Not sure what you’re looking for here…how different is this from the Research Design?

Basis for Methodology

I am passionately committed to equal rights and responsibilities for all people regardless of their various positioning within institutional discourses. I feel heartbroken when I think of the narratives, the words, the imaginary BS that controls and manipulates the choices of women, black people, people with warts, sex workers, academics, homosexuals, and people who like to read. I hate the fact that this short life in this huge world, blessed as it is with some degree of creativity and variety, can be so limited by forces that often seek only to increase their own power or profits. I hate the academy for defining intelligence and holding the big volume control knob for the world. I hate the media for being in control of the microphone. But I also realize that we have very little opportunity, if we want to continue to be social, to move outside of these limitations. Even though we are all stuck in metaphorical boxes of meaning making (and even though those boxes, even as metaphors, are always empty) I desperately want to make the boxes bigger.

So I would certainly say that my research project—an attempt to identify and describe the ways institutions leak into the language of commentary and criticism of those same institutions—is guided by an ideological thrust toward free expression and equality. I feel like I would laugh at anyone else writing this—such quaint ideas freedom and equality! My ideology, based somewhere between Marxism and the calls for justice I hear rattling around behind Foucault and Derrida (“You’re trapped,” the theorists say. “Break free!” rattles something somewhere…), asks for global equality when it comes to working conditions, environmental responsibility, gender relations, and the ability to assign meaning.

Because my work is so grounded in my ideological project, my methods are those which make my ideology the more rhetorically appealing. I will triangulate between qualitative, quantitative, and textual analysis, doing all I can before I fall short of my own ethical strictures by limiting or exploiting any of my respondents.