How specific are disciplinary discourses?: Towards some reconciling of general and particular in academic literacy pedagogy Tim Moore Swinburne University

How specific are disciplinary discourses?:Towards some reconciling of general and particular in academic literacy pedagogy

Tim Moore

Swinburne University

Disciplinary discourses: the epistemological view

Toulmin’s relativism

What has to be recognised first is that validity is an intra-field, not an interfield notion. … the merits to be demanded of an argument in one field will be found to be absent (in the nature of things) from entirely meritorious arguments in another

Toulmin, S. (1958). The uses of argument.

Disciplinary discourses: the epistemological view

McPeck’s critical thinking

Just as the rules of a particular game do not necessarily apply to other games, so certain principles of reason may apply within certain spheres of human experience, but not in others. A principle in business or law may be fallacious in science or ethics (McPeck, 1981: p.72)

McPeck, J. (1981). Critical thinking and education.

Disciplinary discourses: the cultural view

Geertz’s local knowledges

To an ethnographer sorting through the machinery of distant ideas, the shapes of knowledge are always ineluctably local, indivisible from their instruments and encasements

Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge.

Disciplinary discourses: the cultural view

An acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted 1977: p. 95)

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice.

The framework within which the cultural norms or models of behaviour and action that are specific to a particular social group are consciously internalized during socialization. These ‘dispositions’ function as a form of pre-reflective background to subsequent action (Milner, 2002; p. 231)

Bourdieu’s habitus

Disciplinary discourses: the pedagogical view

The key to improving students’ standards of literacy lies we think in … exploring the fundamental relationship between the culture [and sub-cultures] of knowledge and the language by which it is maintained and expressed (1988: p.7).

Clanchy, J & Ballard, B. (1988). Literacy by degrees

Disciplinary discourses: The pedagogical view

• [In disciplinary cultures] there are strong boundaries defining … variations in knowledge, structures and norms of inquiry, different vocabularies and discourses … (Candlin, Bhatia and Hyland, 1997) (my emphasis).

• Disciplinary cultures are extraordinarily differentiated in almost any respect one might name” (Candlin, 1998: p.5).

Incommensurable discourses?

Discipline A eg Philosophy

Discipline B eg. Literary/ cultural studies

Discipline C eg. History

?

Each [disciplinary] discourse has unique ways of identifying issues, asking questions, … presenting arguments, and these make the possibility of transferable skills unlikely”

Hyland, K. (2000) Disciplinary discourses


Guide To Researching And Writing Philosophy Essays

1.Introduction

For many new students of Philosophy, writing a philosophy essay will be something of a new experience, and no doubt many of you will be a little unsure of what to expect, or of what is expected of you. Most of you will have written essays in school for English, History, etc. A philosophy essay is something different again. However, it is not an unfathomable, mysterious affair, nor one where anything goes. This guide is intended to give you a few preliminary pieces of advice about writing essays in philosophy, as well as a few requirements.[1]

http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/assessment/essaygu_fn.html#fn1

Philosophy: A disciplinary discourse?

A guide to writing philosophy essays

• In the introductory paragraph, state the main conclusions that are reached in the essay

• Explain the context - or wider importance - of the argument you are considering.

• Set out the argument as precisely and carefully as you can. Clearly identify the conclusion of the argument, and its premises

• Discuss the validity of the argument

• Given that the argument is valid, discuss whether the premises are true

• .………


History essay guide

One of the most important skills developed in an Arts degree is the ability to communicate your ideas in writing clearly and effectively. … Essay writing in History is particularly aimed at helping you progressively develop your skills in research, analysing different forms of source material, using different kinds of evidence, and writing strong, critical and clear arguments based on this evidence.

The study – Participants and methods

Participants:

Academics from three disciplines

• History (n= 6)• Philosophy (n= 5)• Literary/Cultural Studies (n= 6)

Method:

• Semi-structured interviews• Textual analysis i) advice protocol documents. ii) exercise tasks iii) essay tasks

Towards some analytical categories

Consciousness is always consciousness of something (Brentano)

Thinking is always thinking about something, and that something can never be ‘everything in general’, but must always be something in particular” (McPeck, 1982, p. 4).

Sample essay topics

• Assess the usefulness of Marx’s theory of surplus value.

• How might we understand the actions of the Parisian students in May 1968? What were the motivations for their actions?

Sample essay topics



Sample essay topics



Object of inquiry textual vs phenomenal

Sample essay topics



Content of inquiryepithetic vs thematic

Sample essays topics



Processes of inquiryevaluative vs interpretative

Essay topic data - Philosophy

1. Provide a statement of the argument of Aquinas’ Third way. Do you think this is a persuasive argument for the existence of God?

2. Critically evaluate Hume’s argument about testimony to miraculous events? Is his view correct?

3. What is Duff’s objection to Pascal’s Wager? Does it show that there is something wrong with infinite decision theory?


1. Provide a statement of the argument of Aquinas’ Third Way. Do you think this is a persuasive argument for the existence of God?



Objects of inquiry(Textual: expository)



2. Critically valuate Hume’s argument about testimony to miraculous events? Is his view correct?


Content of inquiry(Epithetic: correctness, persuasiveness etc.)





Processes of inquiry(Evaluative)

Essay topic data - Literary/cultural studies

1. To what extent can the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four be considered a science fiction text?

2. To what extent can Peter Greenaway’s film The Belly of an Architect be characterized as postmodern nostalgia?

3. Discuss with detailed examples how intertextuality operates in:

i) any two versions of Frankenstein or ii) Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or iii) any other film or television programme and a novel on which it is supposedly ‘based’.


To what extent can the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four be considered a science fiction text?

To what extent can Peter Greenaway’s film The Belly of an Architect be characterized as postmodern nostalgia?

Discuss with detailed examples how intertextuality operates in:


Objects of inquiry(Textual: literary/cultural texts)


To what extent can the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four be considered a science fiction text?


Discuss with detailed examples how intertextuality operates in:


Content of inquiry(Thematic: textual, conceptual)


1. To what extent can the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four be considered a science fiction text?

2. To what extent can Peter Greenaway’s film The Belly of an Architect be characterized as postmodern nostalgia?

3. Discuss with detailed examples how intertextuality operates in:


Processes of inquiry(Interpretative)

Essay topic data - History

1. What, besides aesthetic impulses, motivated the patrons of Renaissance culture to commission works of art?

2. How democratic do you consider the Athenian government to be in the time of Perikles?

3. How should we understand the legacy of Aboriginal dispossession in Australia?


What, besides aesthetic impulses, motivated the patrons of Renaissance culture to commission works of art in your view?

How democratic do you consider the Athenian government to be in the time of Perikles?

How should we understand the legacy of Aboriginal dispossession in Australia?

Objects of inquiry(Phenomenal: actions, practices policies, states-of-affairs etc.)


What, besides aesthetic impulses, motivated the patrons of Renaissance culture to commission works of art, in your view? ?

How democratic do you consider the Athenian government to be in the time of Perikles?

How should we understand the legacy of Aboriginal dispossession in Australia?

Content of inquiry (Thematic: causes, consequences etc.)


1. What, besides aesthetic impulses, motivated the patrons of Renaissance culture to commission works of art, in your view?

2. How democratic do you consider the Athenian government to be in the time of Perikles?

3. How should we understand the legacy of Aboriginal dispossession in Australia?

Processes of inquiry(Interpretative)

Distinct disciplinary discourses?

Object: textual: (arguments/objections etc)Processes: acts of evaluation (assessing, criticisng etc.)Content: epithetic (validity, rightness, persuasiveness etc.)

PHILOSOPHY

Object: textual: (novels, plays, television series etc.)Processes: acts of interpretation (understanding etc.) Content: thematic (textual,,conceptual etc.)

LITERARY/CULT STUDIES

Object: phenomenal: (states-of-affairs, events, actions Processes: acts of interpretation (viewing, understanding etc.)Content: thematic (causes, consequences, characterization etc.)

HISTORY

But, Literary/Cultural studies as Philosophy?

LITERARY/ CULTURAL STUDIES

Why does Simon During disagree with Frederic Jameson’s theory of postmodernism? Is he right?’

PHILOSOPHY

What is Duff’s objection to Pascal’s Wager? Does it show that there is something wrong with infinite decision theory?

But, History as Literary/Cultural studies?

HISTORY:

To what extent can Australian prisoner of war writings from World War 2 be described as ‘embittered’ documents’?



Philosophy as History?

PHILOSOPHY

What do you think was Plato’s motive for writing the Gorgias?

HISTORY

What, besides aesthetic impulses, motivated the patrons of Renaissance culture to commission works of art?

Philosophy as Literary/Cultural Studies?

PHILOSOPHY

Explain the influence of Hegel’s ideas on Sartre’s account of our relations with ‘others’ in Being and Nothingness and in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.


To what extent can the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four be considered a science fiction text? (In your answer, consider the novel’s generic and intertextual relations with earlier 20th century dystopian and utopian fictions by Zamyatin, Huxley and Wells.)

Overlapping discourses?

Object: textual: (arguments/objections etc)Processes: acts of evaluation (assessing, criticisng etc.)Content: epithetic (validity, rightness persuasiveness etc.)

PHILOSOPHY

Object: textual: (novels, plays, television series etc.)Processes: acts of interpretation (exploring, investigating Content: thematic (aesthetic, moral, textual etc.)

LITERARY/CULT STUDIES

Object: phenomenal (states-of-affairs, events, actions Processes: acts of interpretation (viewing, understanding etc.)Content: thematic (causes, consequences, characterization etc.)

HISTORY

Against essentialism – “the centre cannot hold”

Given the complex, differentiated nature of communities it seems important not to reduce a community of practice to a … uniform or univocal “centre” or to a linear notion of skills acquisition. There is no place in a community of practice designated “the periphery”, and most emphatically it has no single core or centre

Lave and Wenger (1991: p. 36)

Grand rubrics like Natural Sciences, Biological Sciences, Social Science and the Humanities have their uses in organizing curricula … and in distinguishing broad traditions of intellectual style. And of course the sorts of work conducted under any one of them do show some general resemblances to one another and some genuine differences from the sorts that are conducted under the others. …

But when these rubrics are taken to be a borders-and–territories map of modern intellectual life. Or worse, a Linnean catalogue into which to classify scholarly species, they merely block from view what is really going on out there where men and women are thinking about things and writing down what it is they think”

Geertz, 1983



G (Philosophy ): K works in both [the analytical and continental] traditions and doesn’t really see that there is a serious divide. She wrote a paper a couple of years ago called “A Plague on both your houses” where she was taking issue with this divide between these schools. J is sympathetic too

But L and A are very much opposed – and they think that [the continental tradition] is a kind of philosophical disaster – and they should be effectively run out of town.


A (Literary/Cultural Studies): Although we are in the Centre together, there’s no simply uniformity of view. I mean, B’s a Deleuzian. It’s fine, we disagree among ourselves and we have different interests as well. M is interested in Russian formalism. … People have different disciplinary foundations. And K ‘s interested in German romanticism and eco-criticism.

Disciplinary discourses approach - non-transferable skills

Discipline A eg Philosophy

Discipline B eg. Literary/ cultural studies

Discipline C eg. History

?

Each [disciplinary] discourse has unique ways of identifying issues, asking questions, … presenting arguments, and these make the possibility of transferable skills unlikely” (Hyland 2000: p.145 my emphasis).

Although not every principle [of critical thinking] applies in every field - there is a common core of basic principles that apply in most fields (Ennis, 1987: p. 31).

Generic ‘discourses’ - core skills

Generic ‘discourses’ - core skills

The problem with academic discourses (‘disciplinary or generic’)

The university has become either a place for producing specialised capacities of an increasingly technical nature, or it is largely an amorphous institution, the character of its internal life lacking any kind of clarity

Barnett, R. (2004). Learning for an unknown future.

Wittgenstein - Games and family resemblances

I am saying that these phenomena [games]* have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all - but that they are related to one another in many different ways.

I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than family resemblances; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way – and I shall say games (or disciplinary discourses) form a family

Philosophical Investigations (1958) p. 31, sect. 66

* Such as those denoted by the notion of ‘disciplinary discourses’

Habitus – naming its principles

What type of entities do students need to direct their thinking towards (texts? – what type?; phenomena - what type?)

What type of thinking processes is it envisaged that students need to be engaged in? (evaluating; criticising; exploring; interpreting; solving etc.)

What kinds of judgements do students need to make ultimately (adequacy of an argument, usefulness of a theory, motive for an action, ethics of a policy etc.), and how might they go about making them?

For what purposes? To what ends?

Object of inquiry

Content of inquiry

Processes of inquiry

Transcending disciplinary discourses

What students stand most in need of is help to develop … the faculty of judgement … It is only judgement that truly enables people to make appropriate use of the knowledge and skills they have built up in the many different situations of their learning. (Taylor, 1999).


A (Literary/Cultural Studies): Although we are in the Centre together, there’s no simply uniformity of view. I mean, B’s a Deleuzian. It’s fine, we disagree among ourselves and we have different interests as well. M is interested in Russian formalism. … And K ‘s interested in German romanticism and eco-criticism. People have different critical outlooks


G (Philosophy ): K works in both [the analytical and continental] traditions and doesn’t really see that there is a serious divide. She wrote a paper a couple of years ago called “A Plague on both your houses” where she was taking issue with this divide between these schools. J is sympathetic too

But L and A are very much opposed – and they think that [the continental tradition] is a kind of philosophical disaster – and those in the Centre should be effectively run out of town.

Documents

How specific are disciplinary discourses?: Towards some reconciling of general and particular in academic literacy pedagogy Tim Moore Swinburne University