Forgotten Genres: The Editorial Apparatus of American Anthologies and Composition Textbooks by Laura Louise Aull A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English and Education) in the University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Anne Ruggles Gere, Chair Professor June M. Howard Professor Emeritus John M. Swales Professor Sarah Robbins, Texas Christian University © Laura Louise Aull, 2011 Dedication For Jerome and Cricket Aull, my first teachers ii Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my dissertation committee, Anne Ruggles Gere, John Swales, June Howard, and Sarah Robbins. I thank them for their enthusiasm from the very beginning of my doctoral studies, and for their continued investment as my research has evolved. I have June to thank for fostering my interest in institutional history of English departments and the Norton and Heath anthologies; John to thank for introducing me to corpus linguistic analysis and a broad view of genres and textbooks far beyond English; Sarah to thank for helping me interrogate the relationship between writing and reading practices and US culture; and Anne to thank for encouraging my interest in university power structures and teaching and especially how they have helped shape the field of rhetoric and composition. All four have been integral and gracious in my development as a scholar and teacher. Also integral in my journey is Anne Curzan, who has been great mentor for me in research, administrative work, and teaching. I would also like to thank Rackham Graduate School for research grants which helped fund the corpus compilation for this project and others at the University of Michigan to whom I am indebted, friends and colleagues who have helped me think through my research, writing, and teaching. Thank you to Ute Roemer and the rest of the UM Corpus Analysis group for generative discussions throughout the evolution of this project. Many thanks to Hannah Dickinson for continual laughter and insight, and other E&E colleagues – including Beth Davila, Melinda McBee Orzulak, Brett Griffiths, Zak Lancaster, and Moisés Perales-Escudero – for years of feedback, collaboration, and friendship. Thank you to Raymond McDaniel for his feedback and enthusiasm about this work. Thank you as well to William Bradford Wetherell, for believing in me so well. Lastly, to Randall Pinder and Paul Pearson, I extend a thank you, surely insufficient, for years of love, faith, and equanimity. Finally, I would like to thank my family: my parents, Jerome and Cricket; my 5 siblings, Bethany, Talia, Geneva, Nika, and Jacob; my 7 nieces and nephews; and scores iii of ancestors, including women like my grandmothers who did not have the opportunity to do doctoral studies. All of them have made me better and have in so many ways led me to this point – a point which represents, in the words of my father, ―big doins.‖ My dissertation is dedicated to my father and mother, who have encouraged all to which I have aspired but who have, above all, taught me that the biggest doins are those in which we serve others. iv Contents Dedication ............................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. iii List of Tables ........................................................................................................................ ix List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1 : Considering the textbook apparatus ..................................................................1 Introduction: a moment for textbook analysis ........................................................................ 1 Textbook analysis as a critical approach to textbooks ........................................................... 4 A genre study of the textbook apparatus .............................................................................. 13 Considering how apparatus genres function through discourse ........................................... 17 Apparatus genres: examples and analysis ............................................................................ 20 From American literature anthologies ........................................................................ 21 From college composition textbooks ......................................................................... 25 Apparatus genres and their implications .............................................................................. 27 Organization of the Dissertation .......................................................................................... 29 References to Chapter 1 ....................................................................................................... 35 Chapter 2 : Analytic approach to textbook apparatus genres: methods and frameworks ..39 Corpus analysis and corpus compilation .............................................................................. 40 The textbook corpora ........................................................................................................... 43 American literature anthology corpus ........................................................................ 45 Composition textbook corpus ..................................................................................... 47 Corpus analysis methods: genre analysis within and beyond texts ...................................... 52 Overview of genre and positioning theories ........................................................................ 56 Literary and rhetorical genre studies .......................................................................... 56 Positioning theory and considering genre reader-writer expectations and relations .. 62 Chapter summary and implications ...................................................................................... 65 References to Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................... 67 v Chapter 3 : Pedagogical con/texts of American literature .................................................71 Anthologies as a way we make American literatures .......................................................... 71 Review of anthology research: Defining and using American literature anthologies by ―what [literature] gets included and what is left out‖ ........................................................... 75 The Heath and Norton Anthologies of American Literature: a brief history ....................... 82 Chapter summary and implications ...................................................................................... 88 References to Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................... 89 Chapter 4 : Limits of the canon debates: American literature anthology analysis ............92 Anthology analysis methods ................................................................................................ 93 Anthology analysis ............................................................................................................... 94 I. Word frequency and keyword lists ....................................................................... 94 II. Storylines and positioning in anthology prefaces .............................................. 103 III. Storylines in early American period overviews (or: Can we indict Columbus and still celebrate ―America‖?) ....................................................................................... 117 IV. Gender representation in the anthology apparatus: an analysis of pro/nouns ... 123 Chapter summary and implications .................................................................................... 135 What do anthology apparatus genres tell us about the U.S. ―canon‖ and efforts to revise it? ................................................................................................................... 135 What do we gain by making anthologizing processes and choices more visible? ... 136 References to Chapter 4 ..................................................................................................... 138 Chapter 5 : Pedagogical con/texts of college composition ..............................................141 Considering composition con/texts .................................................................................... 142 A brief history of composition textbooks ........................................................................... 144 19th century developments in English departments and composition textbooks ...... 144 20th century developments in English departments and composition textbooks ...... 152 Composition textbook research: concept-content and tonal analyses ................................ 162 Textbooks in light of these details ..................................................................................... 165 Chapter summary and implications .................................................................................... 169 References to Chapter 5 ..................................................................................................... 172 Chapter 6 : Knowing editors, known students: A Composition textbook analysis .........177 Composition textbook analysis methods ............................................................................ 178 Composition apparatus analysis ......................................................................................... 180 vi I. Thematic and discursive patterns in composition apparatus genres over time: changes in the field, discourse, and genres ............................................................... 180 II. The promotional function of contemporary apparatus genres: textbook self- presentations ............................................................................................................. 196 III. The positioning function of contemporary apparatus genres: knowing editors and known students ......................................................................................................... 200 IV. A Closer Look at Discursive Positioning: a case of three textbooks ................ 206 Chapter summary and implications .................................................................................... 223 How possible is it to simultaneously promote and problematize the practice and field of composition? ........................................................................................................ 225 What do we gain by making the functions of apparatus genres more visible? ......... 226 References to Chapter 6 ..................................................................................................... 229 Chapter 7 : Genre functions and pedagogical applications ..............................................232 A combined analytic approach ........................................................................................... 232 Textbook apparatus discourse: cross-disciplinary comparison .......................................... 238 Positioning of editors and their authority ................................................................. 239 Editor self-positioning .............................................................................................. 240 The construction and positioning of a student audience .......................................... 241 The rhetorical organization and formal features of editorial prefaces ...................... 242 The functions of textbook apparatus genres ....................................................................... 243 Limitations of the study ..................................................................................................... 248 Pedagogical questions and applications ............................................................................. 251 (1) How can teachers use this research to improve their take up of textbooks? ...... 253 (2) At what stage in students‘ learning are they able to analyze apparatus genres? . 253 (3) What do teachers and students gain from my quantitative analysis, and how should they use this information? ............................................................................. 256 (4) What other areas need more analysis of this type, and why? ............................. 258 Apparatus analysis in the classroom: an example .................................................... 259 Final considerations ........................................................................................................... 261 References to Chapter 7 ..................................................................................................... 264 Appendix materials ..........................................................................................................267 Graphic display of recursive analysis process .................................................................... 267 Corpus linguistics definitions ............................................................................................. 267 vii Corpus tools: screen shots from Antconc tools .................................................................. 268 Concordance tool ...................................................................................................... 268 Concordance plot ...................................................................................................... 269 Corpora details (also in Chapter 2) .................................................................................... 270 Apparatus text lengths over time in Heath and Norton ...................................................... 275 Examples of normalization ................................................................................................ 276 Gender noun and pronoun frequencies before and after number normalization ...... 276 Frequencies of words referring to English, Grammar, Language ............................ 276 Course details for pedagogical applications ....................................................................... 277 Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 278 viii List of Tables Table 2-1: American anthology corpus materials ............................................................. 46 Table 2-2: Composition textbook corpus details .............................................................. 52 Table 4-1: Norton word freq lists, 1st, 7th Ed .................................................................... 96 Table 4-2: Heath word freq lists, 1st, 6th Ed ...................................................................... 97 Table 4-3: Keywords Norton vs Heath ........................................................................... 101 Table 4-4: Keywords Heath vs Norton ........................................................................... 101 Table 4-5: Anthology preface passages re: editors ......................................................... 104 Table 4-6: Norton preface passages re: canon construction ........................................... 107 Table 4-7: Heath preface passages re: canon construction ............................................. 108 Table 4-8: Norton preface passive verb construction ..................................................... 109 Table 4-9: Heath preface passive verb construction ....................................................... 110 Table 4-10 Anthology preface passages re: anthology additions ................................... 112 Table 4-11: Anthology preface scare quotes .................................................................. 114 Table 4-12: Normalized frequencies, gendered pro/nouns in Heath 1st, 6th; Norton 1st, 7th ......................................................................................................................................... 131 Table 4-13: Normalized frequencies, gendered pro/nouns in contemporary overviews 134 Table 6-1: Composition corpus text lengths ................................................................... 181 Table 6-2: Word freq list 1875-1919 .............................................................................. 183 Table 6-3: Word freq list 2007-2010 .............................................................................. 183 Table 6-4: Normalized freqs: composition actors ........................................................... 188 Table 6-5: Keywords in each comp corpus ..................................................................... 190 Table 6-6: concordance examples: expression in earlier textbooks ................................ 192 Table 6-7: concordance examples: argument in newer textbooks .................................. 192 Table 6-8: new words in newer corpus ........................................................................... 194 Table 6-9: Textbook self-references ............................................................................... 198 Table 6-10: Most frequent trigrams in earlier and newer corpus .................................... 199 Table 6-11: Collocates with you in newer corpus ........................................................... 201 Table 6-12: Frequencies of may vs will in earlier vs newer corpus ................................ 203 Table 0-1: Appendix: Gender pro/noun freqs before, after number normalization ........ 276 Table 0-2: Appendix: frequencies of language-related words ........................................ 276 ix