Browsing by Author "Rabbi, Shakil"
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- Mapping Rhetorical Knowledge in Advanced Academic Writers: The Affordances of a Transactional Framework to Disciplinary CommunicationRabbi, Shakil (2020-07-01)Research on written communication shows that rhetorical knowledge is a key domain of disciplinary writing expertise (Gere et. al. 2019). Much of the recent work in this area has focused on the social dimensions of learning this knowledge. This article builds on these conversations with a presentation of two “advanced academic writers” (Tardy, 2009) and interpreting how they conceptualize rhetorical knowledge through an understanding of academic communication as transaction and symbolic exchange (Britton & Pradl, 1982). I make a case for the value of a transactional framework for interpreting writers’ performance of genre situations. I also show that this framework can provide a “metagenre” (Carter, 2007), a way of doing writing in the discipline, and a “threshold concept” (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015), a way of thinking about writing tasks that shapes writers’ experiences of and learning with them. The two case studies provide an argument for the efficacy of rhetorical knowledge in fostering disciplinary genres when it is framed as understanding situations of communication.
- Navigating the legal constraints of being a nonimmigrant: A study of the technical communication challenges for international graduate students in the United StatesRobertson, Chloe Jade (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-17)This dissertation, Navigating the Legal Constraints of Being a Nonimmigrant: A Study of the Technical Communication Challenges for International Graduate Students in the United States, explores the issues that can occur for international graduate students when navigating situations involving technical communication before, and during, their stay as nonimmigrants in the U.S. while they attend graduate school. In this project, I analyze rhetoric as situational, expanding on our understandings of communicative constraints that occur in specific instances of intercultural communication. To begin this analysis, I conducted semi-structured interviews with current international graduate students at a R1 university in Virginia to discuss specific instances in which they felt constrained by their status as nonimmigrants. I then used initial coding and pattern coding to deconstruct specific themes of constraints from my data. There were two emergent themes to the constraints: technical, legal, and financial constraints, and ideological constraints. Within these two themes I found more specific codes which were: misperception, information access, incorrect information, time, linguistic, cultural, and institutional constraints. By coding these constraints, and analyzing how my participants navigated them, I demystify the issues faced by international graduate students in our institutions. One of the main findings of this project showcases that there is a gap between the social-justice oriented scholarship being produced in the fields of technical communication, rhetoric, and composition, and the lived experiences of international graduate students. I conclude that building scaffolded support structures that target instances where constraints are most likely to occur will better support international graduate students during their time at U.S. institutions.
- Uptake Processes in Academic Genres: The Socialization of an Advanced Academic Writer Through Feedback ActivitiesRabbi, Shakil (2021-11-30)Academic socialization has been a common framework in writing studies for decades. Recent scholarship on rhetorical genre studies and feedback on writing can develop this paradigm in generative ways. In particular, examining how writers take up feedback as they write in genres can inform how writing pedagogy understands such activities. This study examines and interprets the case of a graduate student as she works with in-person and textually mediated feedback in research group meetings and reviewers’ letters. Approaching graduate students as advanced academic writers—simultaneously performing the role of expert and learning the content needed to be a full member of a discourse community—enables the identification of genre competencies that are needed for such activities in students’ socialization. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential insights these genre competencies might provide for instructors who teach and mentor student writers.