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Each fall, in workshops titled \u201cTransitioning to College Writing,\u201d Vanderbilt Writing Studio consultants teach \u201cstasis,\u201d \u201cdestabilization,\u201d and \u201cresolution\u201d to rooms full of first-year students.1<\/sup> These three terms, which we call \u201cthree moves of academic argumentation,\u201d are beginning to gain traction at Vanderbilt. The first, \u201cstasis,\u201d introduces a common or contentious view in a field. The second, \u201cdestabilization,\u201dchallenges that view. The third, \u201cresolution,\u201d gives some indication of why challenging that view matters. Teaching these moves has become a common practice not only in the workshops, but in one-on-one consultations at our studio and in writing instruction on our campus more broadly. This post is meant to share some of my more-enlightening misadventures with stasis, destabilization, and resolution in hope that they will help writers, consultants, and teachers use the three moves more intentionally.<\/p>\nWhen consultants teach \u201cstasis, destabilization, resolution\u201d in the \u201cTransitioning\u201d workshops, we usually employ the following excerpt from historian Sven Beckert to illustrate them at work:<\/p>\n
Historians generally view the U.S. Civil War as a crucial turning point in the history of the American nation. But it was more than this: the Civil War sparked the explosive transformation of the worldwide web of cotton production and, with it, of global capitalism. The cotton industry was among the world\u2019s largest industries at midcentury, drawing on the labor of perhaps 20 million workers. Prior to 1861, most of the world supply of raw cotton had been produced by slaves on plantations in the American South and was spun into thread and woven into cloth by textile workers in Lancashire. But in the decades following Appomattox, this world had given way to a global empire of cotton structured by multiple and powerful states and their colonies and worked by non-slave labor. [\u2026] Indeed, the unimaginably long and destructive American struggle, the world\u2019s first \u201craw materials crisis,\u201d was midwife to the emergence of new global networks of labor, capital, and state power.2<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After having students read Beckert\u2019s excerpt, we engage them in a dialogue that might go something like this:<\/p>\n
Consultant:<\/em> Who or what do you think Beckert is arguing against here?<\/p>\n
Student:<\/em> Well, it seems like he is arguing against a standard historical view of the U.S. Civil War, one that sees it as an event of primarily national significance.<\/p>\n
Consultant:<\/em> Good. We might call the statement of this general view the \u201cstasis,\u201d since it introduces a static view Beckert is hoping to change. What is he postulating instead?<\/p>\n
Student:<\/em> He is suggesting that the U.S. Civil War was an event of global importance, not just one of national importance.<\/p>\n
Consultant:<\/em> Exactly. And we might say that he is \u201cdestabilizing,\u201d or upsetting, the common view by making that claim. Does he give any indication of why he thinks that his own view is important for the reader to consider?<\/p>\n
Student:<\/em> Perhaps because to understand global networks now, we need to understand their history, and he is saying the Civil War is part of that history.<\/p>\n
Consultant:<\/em> Right! We might call that a \u201cresolution,\u201d something that hints at a broader significance that needs to be taken account of in the field. Academic arguments generally include all three of these moves–stasis, destabilization, and resolution.<\/p>\n
Identifying a stasis and a destabilization is generally easy enough for the students. But answering the third question, the one that asks about significance, is the reason why I prefaced this dialogue with \u201cmight go something like this.\u201d Students generally have a much harder time identifying a resolution. I have spent a good bit of time speculating, sometimes through discussion with other consultants, about why that might be.<\/p>\n
The first explanation I\u2019ve come across relates to Beckert\u2019s particular argument. Perhaps students\u2019 difficulties with identifying a resolution come from Beckert\u2019s specific destabilization, in which significance is self-evident. The idea that the U.S. Civil War was of international significance rather than just national significance is already a claim about significance, so the destabilization and resolution are hard to disentangle. Of course Beckert\u2019s is not the only academic argument where this is the case. Entire fields–literary theory, for instance–often make arguments almost exclusively related to significance–we should read this not that; in this way, not in that way–arguments about the shape of a larger method or field.<\/p>\n
The second explanation for the students\u2019 difficulty identifying the resolution attributes it not to Beckert\u2019s argument, but to his argumentative and stylistic choices. He does not choose to develop the resolution thoroughly here, at the same time as he states his stasis and destabilization. Resolutions often take space to evolve, and the best arguments thread them throughout a piece of writing. The next example we use in the workshops, in fact, does not even hint at a resolution in the brief excerpt provided.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, the students\u2019 difficulties illustrate the importance of considering stasis, destabilization, and resolution as \u201cmoves\u201d instead of considering them as \u201ca model.\u201d Each move can go in a new direction or follow the same path, and each can happen at its own pace. What is important is not so much the easily identifiable appearance of the resulting product as the process of having thought through them.<\/p>\n
Given the range of outcomes the moves can produce, then, it is especially worth remembering that, if it is important that readers be able to identify the moves easily, words are what enable that. Word choice matters. In Beckert\u2019s case, we can easily identify the destabilization because of what we at the Studio call an \u201cacademic \u2018but\u2019 shift\u201d: \u201cBut it was more than this\u2026\u201d. The \u201cbut\u201d is a dead giveaway, a clear linguistic cue that the destabilization is coming. The resolution, however, is harder to pinpoint, partially because there is no \u201cgo-to\u201d coordinating conjunction for a resolution. The word \u201cso\u201d might come close, but it requires a \u201cwhat\u201d for full effect. And although \u201cSo what?\u201d may be used in many writing classrooms and consultations, it rarely appears in academic work. Beckert\u2019s excerpt certainly doesn\u2019t include it. The adjectives–\u201cglobal,\u201d \u201cexplosive,\u201d \u201cworldwide\u201d–are our only cues. Beckert makes his moves intelligible by couching them in words readers can translate to \u201csignificant.”<\/p>\n
In a recent study of the argumentative writing templates given in They Say\/I Say,<\/i> Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein\u2019s popular writing textbook, Zak Lancaster asks his readers to return to the importance of words. Lancaster, a corpus linguist, mines academic prose for the phrases Graff and Birkenstein use for \u201cnaming your naysayers,\u201d a stasis move in which the writer explicitly cites opposing parties or views. They Say\/I Say <\/i>gives as one example, \u201cHere many feminists<\/i> would probably object that gender does influence language\u201d (83). Lancaster\u2019s study shows the remarkable in<\/i>frequency with which \u201cnaming your naysayer\u201d actually occurs in experienced academics\u2019 writing. In fact, he writes, \u201cnot naming your naysayers\u201d is the most common \u201cmove\u201d in the academic writing he analyzes (448-9). Academics instead prefer general phrases like \u201cSome would argue that,\u201d he says, more than Graff and Birkenstein\u2019s direct method (Many feminists<\/i> would\u2026\u201d.\u00a0Academic writing, he argues, uses language that values \u201cinterpersonal tact\u201d even more highly than the explicitness Graff and Birkenstein\u2019s templates encourage (456).<\/p>\n
Lancaster\u2019s study hits upon something that helps me explain why, as a writing instructor, when students would use the templates I had given them from They Say\/I Say, <\/i>I was always less than thrilled with the results. How<\/i> students state the stasis, exactly what words they use<\/i>, matters. And when they use a template, those words do not necessarily reflect knowledge of a discipline\u2019s or a field\u2019s discursive norms. This means that we–writers, consultants, teachers– cannot stop with introducing or thinking through moves. We need to be sure the moves are expressed through the words on the page. If a consultant or a teacher walks a student through the three moves, it is not enough to have him or her describe them aloud. They also need to put words on the page, because the importance of those words cannot be overstated.<\/p>\n
Of course there is some balance to be struck. In \u201cBoring from Within: The Art of the Freshman Essay,\u201d Wayne Booth (in some sense the progenitor of \u201cstasis, destabilization, resolution\u201d) addresses the necessity of substance to accompany style.4<\/sup> He admonishes teachers for assigning \u201cexercises\u201d divorced from authentic contexts, and he chastises those who grade solely based on grammatical correctness and formal academic style. These practices, he argues, lead to \u201cboring\u201d student writing–writing that, while it may use a controversial or argumentative tone, does not manage to say anything of substance. For writing to be interesting and meaningful, he insists, students must be asked to write about something that matters, and \u201cnothing,\u201d he writes, \u201cis worth saying that everybody agrees on already.\u201d<\/p>\n
Booth\u2019s emphases on controversy and disagreement bring me to a third and final misgiving I often have about \u201cstasis, destabilization, and resolution.\u201d Disagreement, which we often align with destabilization and which Booth aligns with resolution, is oppositional. It has seemed to some feminist pedagogues, as it does to me, a pity that our primary means of talking about academic writing are so oppositional. Must disagreement be the yardstick of significance? And considering the extent to which academic writing prioritizes community-building, as Lancaster\u2019s findings suggest, must we still teach argumentation using the discourse of war, teaching students to \u201cadvance\u201d arguments on certain \u201cgrounds\u201d and \u201cconcede\u201d points as if they were lost territories? Does teaching stasis, destabilization, and resolution mean we answer those questions \u201cyes\u201d?<\/p>\n
Perhaps that is the case when \u00a0\u201cdestablization\u201d is limited to opposition and \u201cresolution\u201d to disagreement. But \u201cresolution\u201d is more the language of peace than of war. \u201cMoves\u201d are as redolent of dancing as of battle. And \u201cdestabilization\u201d need not mean knocking another argument off of its feet so much as adjusting its posture. When it does mean the former, though, perhaps it helps to bear in mind that even conflict can be part of community-building. Recognizing this can help us think about how to use argumentative moves more judiciously. Perhaps it can help us remember that argumentation is a move, too.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
1<\/sup> For full text of the \u201cTransitioning to College Writing\u201d workshop script, which I paraphrase throughout this post, go to https:\/\/vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/faculty\/connect-your-students-with-the-writing-studio\/in-class-workshop\/<\/a><\/p>\n
2<\/sup> From \u201cEmancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War,\u201d by Sven Beckert.<\/p>\n
3\u00a0<\/sup>For the full text of Lancaster\u2019s article, which appears in the February 2016 issue of College Composition and Communication, <\/em>go to: http:\/\/www.ncte.org\/library\/NCTEFiles\/Resources\/Journals\/CCC\/0763-feb2016\/CCC0673Academics.pdf. <\/a>More on the They Say\/I Say <\/em>textbook can be found here: http:\/\/books.wwnorton.com\/books\/webad.aspx?id=11041<\/a>. The book also has an associated blog with articles that help illustrate the principles the book teaches: http:\/\/www.theysayiblog.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n
4<\/sup> Stasis, destabilization, and resolution were adapted by our Studio Director, Gary Jaeger, from Booth\u2019s teachings. Booth and his co-authors, Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams, identify three similar moves in The Craft of Research.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Making Moves that Matter: Argumentation and Word Choice in Academic Writing BY Deann Armstrong (Vanderbilt Writing Studio Fellow for 2016-2017) Each fall, in workshops titled \u201cTransitioning to College Writing,\u201d Vanderbilt Writing Studio consultants teach \u201cstasis,\u201d \u201cdestabilization,\u201d and \u201cresolution\u201d to rooms full of first-year students.1 These three terms, which we call \u201cthree moves of academic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","ACF":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}