Taking a page from their books: Negotiating containment and resuscutating rhetoric in writing across academic and spoken-word genres

Building on Darsie Bowden's (1993) theorization of containment in the writing classroom, in which she argues that the use of the text-as-container metaphor may present problematic limitations on students' relationships to ownership and rhetorical analysis of texts, this study uses discourse analysis to examine how three high school and four university students, each of whom participated to some extent in the extracurricular practice of spoken-word writing, did perceive containment within what they saw as a genre of academic writing, and how those perceptions may be linked to their constructions of textual ownership across academic and spoken-word writing practices. Utilizing the work of genre theorists who argue for a conception of genre as social, mediated and dynamic, the study looks at how articulation of purpose and rhetorical awareness shifted as these students moved from one genre of writing to another.; Analysis shows that participants enacted common ways of perceiving and working within a genre of academic writing that seemed to suggest a connection between their perceptions of containment, their resistance to the construction of positive textual ownership, and a shutting down to critical rhetorical analysis of their writing. Furthermore, they showed that in their spoken-word writing---where containment was often perceived as an empowering tool in the construction of textual ownership---they engaged in critical rhetorical analysis of their writing, inquiring into the dominant cultural standards that shaped their rhetorical decisions and how those choices implicated both their readers and themselves as writers.; Building on current arguments for a push toward rhetorical and genre analysis in the writing classroom, and attending to Bowden's warnings about the limitations of containment and its effects on ownership in composition, this study offers participants' in- and out-of-school writing practices as ways into thinking about how students are capable of and enthusiastic about rhetorical analysis in writing. Further, the researcher argues that the cultivation of such metadiscursive awareness through genre analysis in academic writing, and the incorporation of students' individual experiences with and goals for genre, may offer strategies for a resuscitation of rhetoric in the classroom.