Where did composition studies come from?

I've been taking several weeks to get through this article by Nystrand, Greene, and Wiemelt (1993) because there is so much to digest. I feel like you could take a course in just following the different ideologies and their scholars. In the abstract of the article, it says, "...the authors argue that the development of composition studies needs to be understood as part of a broader intellectual history affecting linguistics and literary stueis, as well as composition" (p. 267).

This is why the article has been so helpful to me.

In most of my courses, I've concentrated on reading. Of course while studying reading history, we have touched on many of the historical influences these authors cite. I also took a course in Sociolinguistics, which revealed some of these influences as well. In addition, throughout my general ed "Curriculum" courses, we have studied some of these broader historical movements. Finally, through my own research, I've been subtly trying to wrap my head around Bakhtin's theories. This article has helped me understand the history in not only composition studies, but also the historical influences in all four of these areas.

It's interesting how some articles just pull things together, and this one certainly fills in many blanks for me. I really do like the section on Bakhtin and Dialogism. I've read information about dialogism before, but I think by reading the history leading up to this idea helped me understand it more fully. This quote stuck out to me, "For Bakhtin, as for contemporary language scholars, it is the relationship between the individual psyche and the forces of social ideology and interpretive convention that focuses our efforts to characterize meaning in discourse" (p. 295).

As I study Bakhtin's influence in identity theory, connecting his views to Halliday (1978) has also helped me.

While this article is dense; it will be a resource to return to in the future.