Recchio Research Report

TITLE: "A Bakhtinian Reading of Student Writing"

AUTHOR: Thomas Recchio

SOURCE: College Composition and Communication 42.4 Dec. 1991, 446-454

RESEARCH QUESTION(S):  How can looking through a Bakhtinian lens help students and teachers become better writers? 

ANSWER TO RESEARCH QUESTIONS: Looking through a Bakhtinian lens helps students and teachers effectively pinpoint sources of multiple discourses or "interanimating discourses" that shape writing. In defining these discourses and thinking about how they influence us, we can distill a separate voice that is more uniquely our own. Another benefit of the study is to show how students can help subordinate the theorist's voice to his or her own by using discourses properly.

RESEARCH DESIGN: Rhetorical analysis of one lengthy student piece written in response to a prompt using Bakhtinian theory.

KEY RELATED STUDIES:  What’s been done sort of like this? What theoretical work does the author draw upon? The author draws on the work of Bakhtin and his theory of multiple discourse. We also see elements of Freud’s work being discussed in terms of the prompt given to the student and her response.

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS:  Recchio assumes his audience is familiar with Bakhtin and his theory of multiple discourse. 

SUBJECTS (including how selected): Who are we getting the data from?: There is only one subject here, the author of the student paper. Recchio does not say how he came to select the piece.

METHOD OF RESEARCH (including key variables):  What exactly do we do to get the data?: Recchio is getting his data from a first year composition course. He does not say if he taught the course, but he selected one student paper written in response to a specific prompt. 

MEASUREMENT OR ANALYTIC METHODS:  How do we analyze the data/crunch the numbers?  Recchio discusses the layers of discourse in the student paper by analyzing where her points of view originate. He separates the spheres of influence found in her response by telling us which modes of discourse appear throughout the work.

RESULTS: What’s the main (condensed) drift of the data?: The main results are that the student has a total of four modes of discourse appearing in her paper which are clouding her own unique voice. Recchio discusses each mode and its influence on the writer while suggesting that to make the student aware of these modes will help her distinguish how she is influenced and to what degree she is subordinating her own voice to the voice of a theorist or outside influence.

CONCLUSIONS:  What conclusions can we draw from the data?: There are multiple modes of discourse that affect our writing. We are shaped by outside influences that are visible in our writing, which can be separated and distinguished so that we can more accurately write using our own voices. This is beneficial because as writers we will know how to subordinate the voices of theorists to our own voices, which will give us greater authority. As readers and teachers, we can help students understand what influences them and teach them how to write while being aware of the modes that shape them.

IMPLICATIONS:  What should we research now, and how should we change our teaching now, based on these findings?: We should research how the teaching of discourse modes to students changes their writing and how we can go about teaching it.

STRENGTHS OF THE STUDY: Recchio is very thorough in his discussion of the four modes found in this particular paper. He proves his point that there are indeed outside influences on this student’s writing.

CRITIQUE OR LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY: The student paper is very lengthy. I would have liked to have seen maybe a fragment of the paper and a longer discussion on distinguishing modes of discourse as well as at least one more example of student work plus analysis, maybe a more difficult example. Also, I wanted to see what the paper looked like as a finished product, after the student has learned about modes of discourse and edited the draft according to Recchio’s suggestions.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE STUDY: I was left wondering how the student paper was chosen as the piece to be analyzed. Also, does Reccho mean to suggest that this method of reading can and should be applied to all student papers? And is there an infinite number of discourse modes? Or just a handful that we should be aware of when analyzing?