[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-576167-105":59,"doc-detail-576167-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","salvaging-the-subject-restoring-voice-in-writing-pedagogy","Salvaging the Subject - Restoring Voice in Writing Pedagogy","","Explores how academic discourse in writing pedagogy pressures graduate students and teachers to bracket subjectivity, adopting a disembodied, “objective” style. Traces discomfort arising when persuasive argument is treated as separable from personal conviction and ethics. Drawing on scholars such as David Hume, Peter Elbow, and David Bartholomae, it argues that impersonality is a misconception, communication always bears traces of sender and receiver. Proposes that writing teaching should cultivate ownership negotiated within power structures, informed by affect and emotion in reading and composing.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/salvaging-the-subject-restoring-voice-in-writing-pedagogy/576167/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/salvaging-the-subject-restoring-voice-in-writing-pedagogy/576167.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Jiven","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-21","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":81},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why does the author question the necessity of believing an argument in writing instruction?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The author recounts a student challenge after introducing a research unit, which triggers unease. The concern is that persuasive argument can be produced without personal conviction, allowing ethically extreme or meaningless positions to be defended as long as the rhetoric is cogent.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does academic discourse encourage students to write without caring about their claims?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The author argues that academic discourse trains writers to bracket subjectivity and adopt an apparently reasonable, disinterested, even objective tone. This makes it easier to advance claims that the writer does not truly care about, fostering intellectual irresponsibility.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What solution does the author propose for writing pedagogy?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The author suggests teaching students to develop ownership of their writing—potentially contested or shared—negotiated within structures of power. Writing pedagogy should also reflect the significance of affect and emotion in reading and writing to restore the writer’s voice.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},576167,1792424153,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":81,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},1099513958607,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/100002390cf8733938c?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1778829742770036399","Salvaging the Subject: Restoring Voice in Writing Pedagogy  \nLogan Wiedenfield  \nAlcorn State University  \n“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”  \nDavid Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature  \nDuring my first semester as a composition instructor at the small southern school where I was then completing my Master’s, I was asked by a student, after an introduction to the final research unit, whether it was necessary to believe in the argument one puts forth. Surprised, I muttered something to the effect that persuasive argument is not necessarily a function of personal conviction, that, hypothetically, a rhetorically cogent essay could be written about even the most universally vilified of topics—a defense of child abuse, for example, or a treatise on world domination.  \nThough today I don’t remember the student’s exact response (I suspect I gave him precisely what he was fishing for), I remember very well the uneasiness the conversation provoked in me. I felt as ifI had been tricked into endorsing a kind of nihilism, a game-like system free from the constraints of ethics in which sophistical sleight of hand would always win out over impassioned, embodied prose. This game surely exists within the academy, and it is  \nespecially familiar to graduate students, who, in order to publish and gain a foothold in the“market,” often seek out and attempt to fill perceived gaps within a given body of scholarship. Such ventures may lead to, for example, postcolonial readings of Beowulf and posthumanist analyses of Voltaire. My point is not that such studies are unnecessary or frivolous—indeed, in many cases work of this kind seems not only warranted but urgently needed—but rather that the impetus behind such projects seems to be misguided. Like my student, who was willing to sacrifice his voice in order to better suit what he perceived to be needs of the class (and presumably, his instructor), graduate students too often feel pressure to relinquish or postpone the scholarly pursuits they care about in order to advance in the academy. In such cases, the writer’s subjectivity is undercut, cancelled, and rhetoric becomes an end in itself, its own reward. The discursive world here created is not one populated by devil’s advocates, as one might think, but rather one populated by advocates for no one in particular—for an institution perhaps, or worse still, for a market.  \nThe kind of writing I am describing here is fostered by academic discourse, which, as Peter Elbow has persuasively argued,“tries to peel away from messages the evidence of how those messages are situated as the center of personal, political, or cultural interest.” He goes on,“the conventions [of academic discourse] tend toward the sound of reasonable, disinterested, perhaps even objective (shall I say it?) men”(141) . Thus, academic discourse asks us to bracket our subjectivity from our message, to become, in so many words, disembodied. It is no surprise, then, that students and academics alike show little reluctance advancing claims about which they  \ndo not care. It would seem that the form of academic discourse essentially encourages a kind of intellectual irresponsibility. Elbow points out that  \nthe very appeal of academic discourse …tends to rest on the assumption that we can separate the ideas and reasons and arguments from the person who holds them; that there are such things as unheld opinions—assertions that exist uninfluenced by who says them and who hears them—positions not influenced by one’s feelings, class, race, gender, sexual orientation, historical position, etc.—thinking that “stands on its own two feet.”  \n(140)  \nIf we have learned anything from the last century of philosophy and critical theory it is this: communication is not the unilateral process postulated by classical linguistics. Just as the receiver brings to bear his own subjectivity on the message, the message","cbCaiiynZafNsPAy","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiiynZafNsPAy","pdf",147135,11,"English","# Salvaging the Subject: Restoring Voice in Writing Pedagogy\n## Persuasion without conviction and the unease it creates\n## Academic discourse and the disembodied “objective” style\n## Rhetoric as an end and the marginalization of writerly voice\n## Affect, emotion, and shared ownership in teaching writing","[{\"question\":\"Why does the author question the necessity of believing an argument in writing instruction?\",\"answer\":\"The author recounts a student challenge after introducing a research unit, which triggers unease. The concern is that persuasive argument can be produced without personal conviction, allowing ethically extreme or meaningless positions to be defended as long as the rhetoric is cogent.\"},{\"question\":\"How does academic discourse encourage students to write without caring about their claims?\",\"answer\":\"The author argues that academic discourse trains writers to bracket subjectivity and adopt an apparently reasonable, disinterested, even objective tone. This makes it easier to advance claims that the writer does not truly care about, fostering intellectual irresponsibility.\"},{\"question\":\"What solution does the author propose for writing pedagogy?\",\"answer\":\"The author suggests teaching students to develop ownership of their writing—potentially contested or shared—negotiated within structures of power. Writing pedagogy should also reflect the significance of affect and emotion in reading and writing to restore the writer’s voice.\"}]","Salvaging the Subject - Restoring Voice in Writing Pedagogy | PDF",1792029260,17]