CAHSS Faculty Articles

Title

From Official Educational Policy to the Composition Classroom: Reproduction through Metaphor and Metonymy

Department

Department of Writing and Communication

Publication Date

6-2012

Publication Title

Journal of Writing Research

ISSN

2030-1006

Volume

4

Issue/No.

1

First Page

31

Last Page

51

Abstract

This paper uses critical discourse analysis to examine the language used in the teaching and learning of writing in a composition program in a public university in the United States. The objective was to identify metaphors and metonymies employed to construct an official standpoint of writing and the teaching of writing within the program, to identify the ideological position of the views conveyed in the documents and to analyze how this perspective is passed down hierarchically from the official documents to those actually developed and used by the instructors in the classrooms. The metaphors and metonymies used in the documents construct writing as an important commodity and college writing as more valuable than writing in other places. Metaphors and metonymies stood out as important semiotic devices for instructors to stay within a given pedagogical and educational perspective in ways that may normally be largely unnoticed by them.

ORCID ID

0000-0003-0180-5620, 0000-0002-5154-2796

ResearcherID

P-3827-2019

DOI

10.17239/jowr-2012.04.01.2

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