Composing Research, Chapter 3

Reading Chapter 3 of Cindy Johanek’s  Composing Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition.   It's called “Numbers, Narratives, and He vs. She: Issues of Audience in Composition Research” on pages 56-86. Using hypothes.is to annotate. It looks like, except for Dr. Zamora's introductory post, that I am the first one there. 

So far, this reading makes me embarrassed for the researchers Johanek mentions. She talks about the fear of math and stats, and even says "our" referring to math anxiety. That's a perfect example of why NOT to use first person when writing. She is assuming too much about her readers, just because she assumes they are "composition" people. She implies that comp folks disparage, don't understand, or fear math, and then she goes further and quotes those who see it as unnecessary or as drudgery. Cringe worthy.  Seems people are angry when composition scholars use quantitative data at all. (Makes them feel stupid, insecure, maybe? So the answer is to get mad, dismiss, belittle, or complain?) Some researchers apologize for using data.  The author seems to want to address this as wrong, but isn't getting to the point very quickly.

It took me until "mode" to understand why Johanek was talking about bowling randomly in the text. She's explaining math terms like average, mode, and standard deviation. OMG.

Johanek says that some researchers acknowledged that their readers would not understand or would be fearful of the statistics in their report, but didn't offer any explanation. Is it their job to help their readers through math ignorance or anxiety? Steen calls these readers "innumerate." :) Should the authors also explain any words over three syllables to avoid alienating or angering readers who have less than adequate vocabularies?

And let's admit it: Words tell more lies than numbers do. (68) 

Shepherd's opinion on page 71 that science that doesn't include female opinion is like Nazism is ridiculous. Johanek is getting to the point that she disagrees with these wild pronouncements.

Sullivan is silly, too. She decides for me, because I am a female, what kind of research I must do. But what if I don't want to do it her way? Who is she to make rules for all? Johanek disagrees with her, too.

Storytelling. Words tell stories, and so do numbers. Both are valuable. "We should all become the best drivers we can, ready for any road" (83). She is being very careful about saying that the researchers and readers need to understand the numbers, too.

 

The author concludes by saying we need to include the feminist, understand math as a storytelling language, and accept the narrative. Well said.