The Rhetoric of Social Action: College Mentors Inventing a Discipline

Definitions:

• literacy
• social action
• mentors
• writers
• interpretive lens
• a priori
• negotiation
• intercultural inquiry*
• homogeneity*
• productive friction*
• social equality*

Distinctions:

• mentors actively create the discipline for themselves
• four views of priorities for someone wanting to support literate social action:

1. Emphasize grammatical correctness
2. Support emancipation
3. Invite Free Expression
4. Support action-oriented problem solving

• Three ways to approach the disciplinary debate over literate social action:

1. read to uncover universal principles
2. text-based view to discern most convincing argument
3. take a cognitive rhetorical view to negotiate competing voices

• role of mentor-as-supporter is not to offer good advice, but to help writer-as-planner consider rhetorical strategy
• coming to understand a discipline as a site of contested knowledge is/ can be valuable learning
• mentoring is a site of mutual learning

How this pedagogy supports student's public literate actions:

•  Student's are mentors, supporters. 
• Mutual learning: mentors have something to teach writers, and writers have something to teach mentors

What they ask of teachers who desire to support such actions:

texts:

• Paulo Friere: 
• Graff:

*I'm not sure how to fit in the case studies, but these terms come from that section