Writing as Outsiders: Academic Discourse and Marginalized Faculty

4: Understanding and Supporting Full-Time Non-Tenure-Track Faculty

“…All disciplines are affected by this shift (National Center for Education Statistics, 2005), but few are more concerned about and fundamentally affected by reliance on contingent faculty than English departments (Association of Departments of English, 1999;Bousquet, Scott, & Parascondola, 2004;Cayton, 1991;Laurence, 2001;Modern Language Association & Association of Departments of English, 2008). What happens in English, with its near universally required undergraduate writing courses and the foundational skills transmitted in those courses, has ripple effects across campus.…”

Technical writing and the creation of knowledge from within another discipline: a case study from an academic workplace

“…Three other functions of professional language and the problems with each are worth examining here. First, according to Cayton (1991), one purpose of professional language is to convey a sense of researcher objectivity toward the research project. Checkoway (2001) describes the "prevailing positivist paradigm" whereby "researchers are 'detached' experts who define problems in 'dispassionate' ways on conceptual or methodological grounds according to their discipline and gather data .…”

Technical writing and the creation of knowledge from within another discipline: a case study from an academic workplace

“…First, according to Cayton (1991), one purpose of professional language is to convey a sense of researcher objectivity toward the research project. Checkoway (2001) describes the "prevailing positivist paradigm" whereby "researchers are 'detached' experts who define problems in 'dispassionate' ways on conceptual or methodological grounds according to their discipline and gather data .…”

“…Collier and Toomey (1997), for example, writes that as you participate "in an academic discipline or profession and become familiar with the literature ... you enter an ongoing conversation consisting of certain topics, accepted beliefs, and common questions" (69). Cayton (1991) writes that professional standing in academics requires training that "renders the nature and character of what we do beyond the reach of those without similar professional credentials" (650). Further, she writes that, "If professional academics claim to exist in order to provide public service to meet the needs of clients, we do so in such a way that the professional language we speak is all but inaccessible to outsiders" (650).…”

“…Others, such as Cayton (1991), contextualize disciplinary conversations within "the social substratum of academic discourse" (650), implying a hierarchy of power and authority in determining who is allowed to speak for a discipline. Within institutional hierarchies, an individual's eligibility to create knowledge is much more complex than inclusion or exclusion from a disciplinary discourse based on the professional language of that community.…”