Review of Explanation Points: Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition

Keaton Lamle

Small faults aside, Explanation Points is an obsessively helpful, charmingly accessible, and surprisingly affordable collection of pieces targeted equally at newcomers to the process and publishing professionals. Even some of its minor faults spring from virtues; as odd as it may sound, one limitation for this project comes in its discipline-specific title and marketing. The book is presented as a primer for publishing specifically in rhetoric and composition, and while there are certainly a few essays that seem confined to the rhet/comp world, the fact is that even the most explicitly targeted pieces (Bryan Hawk's, "You Can Do That in Rhetoric and Composition" comes to mind) don't contain any impenetrable jargon and would prove helpful not only to scholars across the gradient of English studies but also to those in just about any corner of higher education with a publishing component. After all, the writing and reading process doesn't change that much from discipline to discipline, and most of the collaboration and editorial essays here hew toward big picture concerns, as opposed to issues faced only by rhet/comp professionals.

In fact, I read this book as part of a reading group composed of scholars dispersed across various disciplines traditionally housed in colleges of humanities and social sciences, and the feedback from readers without experience in the formal study of rhetoric skewed predominately positive. My impressions of the takeaways different readers can expect from the text are as follows:

! Researchers of all stripes will benefit from the book's detailed strategies on how to protect time and space for writing found in section one, "Getting Started."
!! The essays encouraging scholars to find connections between rhetoric and scholars' own broader cultural concerns might prove applicable in broad strokes for writers in the humanities and social sciences.
!!! While every discourse community operates within its own specific norms, there is excellent general advice on receiving and implementing feedback to be found in sections two and four, devoted to fielding comments and navigating the editorial process.
!V Chapters devoted to discussing the dance of identifying audiences and arguing for the scholarly fit of a writer's proposed projects are undertaken through the lens of rhetoric and composition, but they won't present any barriers to understanding for scholars outside of that field.
V It's hard to imagine readers involved in any artistic or intellectual endeavor who won't find section five, "Moving On," relatable and thought-provoking.

The point is, while Gallagher and DeVoss were probably wise to avoid attempting to speak for all of academia in a single collection, I would not hesitate to recommend this text to colleagues and students across the arts, humanities, social sciences, or even STEM-intensive fields, which probably speaks to one unexpected benefit of writing about rhetoric: it is, after all, the "discipline of disciplines."

Reference

Olson, Gary A., & Taylor, Todd W. (Eds.). (1997). Publishing in rhetoric and composition. State University of New York Press.

Applicability

Reference