Page 68 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

TRANSFORMING TEXTS 35

These textual categories become central for our understanding of
how instructors' knowledge of writing assessment corresponds to the
text and how any given transformation in the text or in textual pro-
duction changes the relation between writing assessment and text.
If we look first at the culturally salient text, the dominant crite-
rion for its success is that of how significant the text is for specific
cultural groups as well as for society at large. As Kress (1994) ex-
plained, a text's cultural salience depends on how well a piece of
writing speaks to the cultural and social histories that exist and how
it considers the possible cultural and social futures to come. The
text's importance comes not from aesthetic or skill qualities but
from how well the writer understands how his or her writing fits in
with the concerns of a particular segment of society by adopting the
language and rhetorical practices of that group. The culturally sa-
lient text, then, corresponds quite comfortably with the positions
found in the social constructivist view of writing instruction. In this
composing theory, a writer's competence is assessed by how satis-
factorily he or she grasps the exigencies involved in an issue and by
the degree to which the student writer uses language directed
toward a particular audience to respond to a set of stakes.
Salience is not a primary issue with the second textual category,
although the culture and politics of an era may determine what a
dominant group finds beautiful or pleasing in a text. The aestheti-
cally valued or valuable text, Kress (1994) suggested, reflects the
merit that a group ascribes to a particular writing style. The aesthet-
ically valued text category meshes well with Faigley, Cherry, and
Jolliffe's description of the "literary view of composing" (1986, p.
13) reflected in some faculty members' approach to assessment. To-
gether, these two positions propose a belief that there is an absolute
sublime element in worthy texts, even in student texts, albeit it is an
unteachable beauty—a grandness that readers must experience and
writers must probe for through the writing process.
The mundane text is the most problem filled for writing assess-
ment and for theories of composing. Yet the mundane text plays the
greatest role in networked writing. For these reasons, I will spend a
greater amount of time and space covering this textual category
compared with the other two. Kress (1994) described mundane texts
as those that "form the bedrock of social and economic life" (p. 38).
The everyday forms of professional or occupational writing reflect
mundane texts. From e-mail memos to Internet relay chat to interof-