Oops, I sent this to Russ, and only Russ, the first time.
Great discussion!!
I think I'd like to come at the issue of "rhetorical authenticity" from
another angle (and here I'm taking up a theme from _Worlds Apart_ and
Russ's review of it). If we're talking about rhetorical authenticity
from a teaching/learning-in-school perspective, then I think what really
matters is how a writing project is framed for students and what
explicit or implicit claims are being made for it by the teacher. Or put
another way, it's a question of authentic situations, authentic rhetors,
authentic audiences, and authentic purposes.
So for example, let's say a piece of writing has been elicited by a
teacher in a case-study type of situation, with students assigned a
pretend persona (say, an employee in an organization), with a pretend
audience (say, the employee's manager), for a pretend purpose (say, to
present an analysis of a problem and recommend a solution), for the
*real* purpose of being read and graded by the teacher. Then the texts
produced by the students will be authentic
pieces-of-writing-produced-by-students-in-a-classroom-for-a-teacher/grader-for-the-purposes-of-practicing-writing-and-receiving-grades.
The texts will be that and nothing else--they will have no other
rhetorical authenticity but that. I don't mean to say that the
assignment and the writing experience wouldn't be worthwhile--they may
be very worthwhile--but the texts have no other rhetorical authenticity.
The texts will not be anything like a text actually produced in the
workplace by an employee, addressed to the employee's manager, and
intended to convey a problem analysis and recommended solution. In fact,
the two types of texts will be Worlds Apart.
Graham
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