Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer 2023)
Brittany (Britt) Amell is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Digital Humanities Hub at the University of London. Her research focuses on critical, collaborative, and reparative engagements with unconventional scholarship, non-traditional knowledge production, and writing and genre studies. She can be reached at BrittanyAmell @ Cmail.Carleton.ca
As a social practice, the doctoral dissertation has been characterized as the outcome of complex negotiations that surround the entire dissertation process (Paltridge et al., 2012). Here, the word, negotiation, often implies a mutually beneficial agreement arising between two or more parties as a result of dialogue. However, the experiences of doctoral writers often reflect a different reality, one where choices are constrained and affordances are limited. Other factors, such as power differentials and assessment conditions, can also play a significant role in shaping the local contexts in which doctoral students write. Few doctoral writers, for instance, wish to risk failure when it comes to the assessment or examination of their dissertations. Given this, it is important to reflect critically on usages of negotiation that imply a natural smoothness or ease accompanies the dissertation writing cycle.
Kaufer and Geisler (1989) note how
Contributions that respect the past with too little change become tired and predictable, the worst implications of Kuhn’s normal science. Conversely, contributions that push change with too little rootedness are likely to remain unclassifiable rather than revolutionary. (p. 289)
While Kaufer and Geisler write mainly about novelty in academic writing, it seems their insights regarding the difficulty of balancing the push for change with the pull to maintain the status quo is also applicable when it comes to thinking about negotiation and doctoral writing. Understanding negotiation as an approach to writing shifts the focus back to doctoral writers who need to be able to assess the context and “make strategic decisions” about whether to conform, resist, or subvert “existing patterns or conventions” (Denny, 2010, p. 112). This view also shifts the focus back to supervisors, and perhaps committee members as well, and the role they play in collaboratively identifying the range of “rhetorical options” that are available to doctoral writers, as well as the consequences and effects that can come with “manipulating these options” (Tardy, 2016, p. 132). When it comes to evaluating these options, attention also ought to be paid to the consequences of adhering to conventions. For some writers, “blending in” can signify both “assimilation and a lack of recognition by the dominant,” which in turn introduces another set of consequences for writers (Denny, 2010, p. 110), whereas for others, pursuing an unconventional dissertation might conflict with the time and energy that is available to them.
Understanding negotiation as an approach to writing shifts the focus back to doctoral writers who need to be able to assess the context and “make strategic decisions” about whether to conform, resist, or subvert “existing patterns or conventions.”
I am fascinated by unconventional dissertations and the paradoxes they present. Making them the focus of my recently defended doctoral research (Amell, 2023), I spent several years tracking down and analysing examples of doctoral dissertations that, seemingly against all odds, managed to diverge from well-worn epistemic, methodological, and textual paths. I questioned what united these ‘unconventional’ dissertations together while also considering what set them apart. To reach a contextualised understanding of these dissertations, including how they are produced and received, I adopted a textographic approach to the study of writing (Paltridge & Stevenson, 2017; Swales, 1998). Informed by this approach, as well as my stance towards writing overall, I collected and analysed data that included responses to questionnaires (N = 70), interviews with authors and supervisors of unconventional dissertations (N = 9), a corpus of dissertations (N = 70), and other relevant artifacts (e.g., dissertation policies, blog posts written by participants, podcasts, and so on).
…when it comes to negotiating their writing, doctoral writers must successfully navigate the complex task of balancing the pull of maintaining conventions with the push of departing from them.
Several notable findings emerged from my analysis of the data. For instance, I found that the unconventional dissertators I interviewed had in common the support of at least one supervisor or committee member who had themselves reached some level of prominence (e.g., as a dean or scholar in the field) or had previous experience with supervising or writing unconventional scholarship. I also found that writers of unconventional dissertations departed from conventions in varied ways that ranged from more obvious departures (e.g., by incorporating artifacts or making use of modalities that were atypical for the writer’s context) to more subtle departures (e.g., by utilizing unconventional method/ologies or linguistic elements). I argued that although unconventional dissertations may be commonly portrayed as those that buck all traditions, the data I collected and analysed demonstrated a different reality, one in which writers mitigated the risk associated with pursuing unconventionality by carefully and strategically striking a balance between appropriating some conventions in order to resist, subvert, or re-work others for new or different purposes and ideologies, seems far more useful (See also Tardy 2016, p. 63). As such, when it comes to negotiating their writing, doctoral writers must successfully navigate the complex task of balancing the pull of maintaining conventions with the push of departing from them (i.e., centripetal versus centrifugal forces, after Bakhtin, 1981). However, this complexity often seems to be missed, which is why I find myself continuing to advocate for the importance of returning social and rhetorical tension to the notion of negotiation in writing, and suggest that there is utility in thinking about and discussing negotiation as a tactical balancing act.
References
Amell, B. (2023). Not all who want to, can—Not all who can, will: Extending notions of unconventional dissertations [Doctoral Dissertation, Carleton University]. Dissertation and dataset can be found at https://hsscommons.ca/publications/373/2.
Bakhtin, M. M. (2011). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed.; M. Holquist & C. Emerson, Trans.; 18th ed.). University of Texas Press.
Denny, H. (2010). Queering the writing center. Writing Center Journal, 30(1), 94–124. http://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&issn=08896143&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA360608867&sid=googleScholar&linkaccess=abs
Kaufer, D. S., & Geisler, C. (1989). Novelty in academic writing. Written Communication, 6(3), 286–311. https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.library.carleton.ca/doi/pdf/10.1177/0741088389006003003
Paltridge, B., Starfield, S., Ravelli, L., & Nicholson, S. (2012). Doctoral writing in the visual and performing arts: Two ends of a continuum. Studies in Higher Education, 37(8), 989–1003. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.562285
Paltridge, B., & Stevenson, M. (2017). Textography as a strategy for investigation: Writing in higher education and in the professions. Oslo Studies in Language, 9(3), 45–58.
Swales, J. M. (1998). Other floors, other voices: A textography of a small university building. The University of Michigan Press.
Tardy, C. M. (2016). Beyond convention: Genre innovation in academic writing. University of Michigan Press ELT.