Cognition, Context, and Theory Building

English studies are caught up in a debate over whether we should see individual cognition or social and cultural context as the motive force in literate acts. This conflict between cognition and context (Bartholomae, Berlin, Bizzell, Knoblauch) has special force in rhetoric and composition because it touches some deeply-rooted assumptions and practices. Can we, for instance, reconcile a commitment to nurturing a personal voice, individual purpose, or an inner, self-directed process of meaning making, with rhetoric's traditional assumption that both inquiry and purpose are a response to rhetorical situations, or with the more recent assertions that inquiry in writing must start with social, cultural, or political awareness? These values and assertions run deep in the discipline. One response to these differences is to build theoretical positions that try to polarize (or moralize) cognitive and contextual perspectives. We know that critiques based on dichotomies can fan lively academic debates. They can also lead, Mike Rose has argued, to reductive, simplified theories that narrow the mind and page of student writers. In the end, these attempts to dichotomize may leave us with an impoverished account of the writing process as people experience it and a reductive vision of what we might teach.