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An interesting tidbit from WAC-L.  Forgive me if you've already
seen it.  If nothing else, the term "writing silos" really ought to
become part of the Inkshed nomenclautre.

Forwarded message: > From root Sun
Jan 22
> Date:         Sun, 22 Jan 1995 16:18:39 -0700
> From: "David E. Schwalm" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:      Re: Scholarly Audiences and Beyond
> To: Multiple recipients of list WPA-L <[log in to unmask]>
>
> All kinds of evidence points to the fact that our language performance tends
> to fall apart when we find ourselves in strange territory, where we are
> unfamiliar with the concepts, lexicon, and rhetorical expectations of the
> denizens of that territory. Is this, then, an argument for learning to write
> in "writing silos," tall but narrow disciplinary or conceptual spaces? Maybe.
> But when we move from writing silo to writing silo, we usually bring some
> stuff with us--some abstract syntactical and rhetorical forms, paradigms,
> whatever. In other words, it's not as if we're moving from Spanish to Japanese
> when we move from writing about philosophy to writing about biology. And I
> suspect that the better command we have of these abstract language paradigms
> the faster we are able to acquire the specific writing conventions in any
> given writing silo. Great hack writers tend to get comfortable in other
> people's silos really quickly. My point is that to learn to write you have to
> write, and in learning to write you are learning at least two different kinds
> of things: language abstractions and silo conventions.
>
> -- David E. Schwalm, Vice Provost for Academic Programs
> ___Arizona State University West
> ___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
> ___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500__IACDES@ASUACAD
>