A DRAMATISTIC VIEW of INTERNET MESSENGER TUTORIALS DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

WRITE NOW: A DRAMATISTIC VIEW OF INTERNET MESSENGER TUTORIALS

DISSERTATION

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

in English in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Douglas Kevin Dangler, M.A.

*********

The Ohio State University 2004

Dissertation Committee Approved by Associate Professor Beverly J. Moss Associate Professor Scott Lloyd DeWitt Professor Nan Johnson

ABSTRACT

The advent of computer technology in the Writing Center has forced administrators, tutors, and clients to reconsider what they do and how they do it. The construction of a new metaphor for online interactions suggests better ways to interact online. To this end, this dissertation develops the idea of the Fluid Cyborg, a combination of the theories of Kenneth Burke and Donna Haraway, as a means to explain and anticipate online tutoring behavior.

Dedicated to my best friend, Laurie: “Without whom, not” DEDICATION

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I cannot possibly thank all of the people who contributed to this project. I thank my parents, Ivan and Elaine Dangler, for among other things, hours of babysitting while I wrote and a model of how to make a marriage survive a dissertation. I also thank SBC, Inc., whose funding of the BSU Online Writing Center in the year following my data collection kept me focused on thinking about effective communications in online writing centers. I thank Kitty Locker, whose guidance was invaluable at early stages of this project. I thank the informal ABD writing group of Susan Williams, Theresa Kulbaga, Scott Banville, Dana Oswald, Laura Younger, Cheryl Hindrichs, and especially Jen Camden, to whom I am indebted for several invaluable turns of phrase. For my dissertation committee, I have nothing but praise, so thank you Nan Johnson (I’ll make a technophile out of you yet), Scott DeWitt, and Beverly Moss. My committee offered that most precious resource: exceptionally engaged readers and responders who forced me to reconsider practically every aspect of this project. Dr. Moss has my special thanks for taking on yet another grad student, one more disorganized, distracted, and heretical than most. Without your kindness, generosity of spirit, and (perhaps most important) constant encouragement, I would probably still be considering how I wanted to structure the first chapter. Thanks also go to the participants in my study, who were generous with their time and transcripts. I thank Evan and Becca Dangler, whose requests for wrestling and reading were always welcome diversions from academic work. Finally, I thank my best friend, Laurie Dangler.

iv VITA

1969 ...... Born – Lima, Ohio

1992 ...... B.A. In Chemistry/Biology University of Toledo Toledo, Ohio

1998 ...... M.A. in English The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1998-2000...... Assistant Editor Chemical Abstracts Columbus, Ohio

2000-2001...... Tutor BSU Writing Center

2001-2003...... Assistant Coordinator BSU Writing Center

2003-2004...... Assistant Coordinator BSU Online Writing Center

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii DEDICATION...... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iv VITA...... v LIST OF TABLES ...... x LIST OF FIGURES ...... xi SETTING THE STAGE I: TECHNOLOGICAL DRAMA(TISM) AT THE WRITING CENTER ....1 My (Techno)Life, and Welcome to It...... 3 Research Questions ...... 5 Burkean Dramatism...... 7 The Pentad: Burke Lends a Hand...... 7 Burke On(the)Line: “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” ...... 9 Problems of Excessive Fluidity...... 9 Dramatism Modified ...... 10 The Irreducible Ratio of the Interface ...... 14 The Socially Constructed Cyborg ...... 15 Social Constructionism...... 15 Defined...... 15 Burke as Social Constructivist ...... 16 Online Tutoring as a Threat to Social Construction...... 19 Online Power, Collaboration, and Identity ...... 20 Terminological Constructions ...... 22 God-terms ...... 22 Terministic Screens...... 23 Consubstantiation and Substance ...... 24 Donna Haraway’s Cyborg...... 25 The Fluid Cyborg...... 26 A Social Construction MOOvement...... 29 MOO and MUDs...... 29 Rhetoric of Online Embodiment ...... 30 Bots ...... 33 Summary ...... 33 Regrouping...... 35 Looking Ahead...... 35 SETTING THE STAGE II: CONTEXT OF THE STUDY...... 37 Big State University...... 37 BSU Writing Center ...... 39 The BSU OWL...... 40 Historical Overview: Starting Somewhere ...... 40 Pre-study Attempts...... 62 vi MOOing in the Wind...... 62 Caught in a Sticky WebCT...... 64 Project Beginnings...... 66 A Mess of Messengers...... 66 Standardization...... 67 Personal Position(ing)...... 69 IM what IM (and That’s All What IM): The Choice of an Interface...... 70 AVRIL, SUSAN, AND SETH: CYBORG MIS(SED)COMMUNICATION ...... 73 Methodology Redux...... 73 Data Preparation...... 75 Notes on One-Time Tutorials...... 76 Application of Modified Dramatism I: Avril and Susan...... 77 Agents ...... 77 Avril (Client)...... 77 Susan (Tutor)...... 77 Agents in Roles ...... 78 SUSAN AS AGENT ...... 79 AVRIL AS AGENT...... 80 Circumference...... 82 Pre-tutorial ...... 82 Tutorial...... 82 Post-tutorial...... 83 Purpose...... 83 Act...... 88 Statistics ...... 88 Interface...... 94 Blank Space...... 97 Ellipses...... 99 Parentheses...... 100 Emoticons ...... 100 Application of Modified Dramatism II: Avril and Seth ...... 102 Agents ...... 102 Seth (Tutor)...... 102 Agents in Roles ...... 102 SETH AS TUTOR...... 102 AVRIL AS TUTEE ...... 104 Circumference...... 106 Pre-tutorial ...... 106 Tutorial...... 106 Post-tutorial...... 107 Act...... 107 Statistics ...... 107 Purpose...... 108 Seth’s Online Purpose ...... 108 Avril’s Online Purpose...... 109 Agenda-Setting Problems...... 110 Interface...... 115 Blank Space...... 116 Ellipses...... 116 vii Implications...... 117 LIU AND AMY: THE PARADOX OF TUTEE DIRECTION VIA SHORT EXCHANGES...... 120 Application of Modified Dramatism ...... 120 Agent...... 120 Liu (Client)...... 120 Amy (Tutor) ...... 121 Agents in Roles ...... 121 Secret Agent...... 125 Circumference...... 126 Pre-tutorial ...... 126 Tutorial I ...... 126 Interlude I...... 127 Tutorial II...... 127 Interlude II ...... 128 Tutorial III...... 129 Post-tutorial...... 129 Act...... 129 Purpose (Agenda Setting) ...... 136 Interface...... 140 Ellipses...... 141 Blank Space...... 144 Emoticons ...... 145 Capitalization ...... 146 Implications...... 147 SUSAN AND MISAKI: TAKING FACE-TO-FACE HISTORY ONLINE...... 149 Application of Dramatism...... 149 Agents ...... 149 Misaki (Client) ...... 149 Susan (Tutor)...... 149 Role Fulfillment ...... 150 Role Inversion...... 154 Secret Agent...... 157 Circumference...... 159 Pre-tutorial ...... 159 Tutorial I ...... 159 Interlude I...... 160 Tutorial II...... 160 Interlude II ...... 160 Tutorial III...... 161 Interlude III ...... 161 Tutorial IV ...... 161 Interlude IV...... 162 Tutorial V...... 162 Post-tutorial...... 163 Act...... 163 Purpose (Agenda-Setting)...... 166 Misaki’s Online Purpose ...... 167 Susan’s Online Purpose...... 169 Interface...... 172 viii Transcript as Permanent Artifact...... 172 PRIVACY ISSUES...... 172 TRANSCRIPT ARCHIVING ISSUES...... 173 Novel Uses of Punctuation...... 174 QUOTATION MARKS...... 175 ELLIPSES ...... 176 ARROWS ...... 178 Inter-Exchange Division of Ideas...... 178 Typing Notification...... 180 Implications...... 181 FINDING A (CYBER)SPACE FOR FLUID CYBORGS...... 183 Fluid Cyborgs in Online Tutoring...... 184 A Fluid Cyborg Look(s) toward the Future, Or IM at an End ...... 189 Suggestions...... 189 APPENDIX A ...... 192 APPENDIX B ...... 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 199

ix LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: MOO versus chat ...... 31 Table 2: Formatted exchanges ...... 76 Table 3: Avril and Susan statistics...... 89 Table 4: Avril and Susan compared to Avril and Seth ...... 108 Table 5: Liu and Amy statistics ...... 130 Table 6: Misaki and Susan Statistics ...... 164 Table 7: Breakdown of ellipses used by Misaki and Susan...... 176 Table 8: Participant comparisons...... 188

x LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad...... 8 Figure 2: Literal Dramatism...... 11 Figure 3: Generation of the Fluid Cyborg...... 35 Figure 4: BSU demographics...... 38 Figure 5: BSU home state demographics...... 38 Figure 6: 2002 United States census...... 39 Figure 7: Tutee/Tutor agenda-setting negotiations...... 84

SETTING THE STAGE I: TECHNOLOGICAL DRAMA(TISM) AT THE WRITING CENTER

“I can’t come in [to the Writing Center] today. Can I just send in my paper and talk to somebody about it?” “My tutor was great; I just hope I remember everything we talked about when I get home!” “I can’t make it to the Center before you close. Why don’t you have later hours?”

After four years working at the Big State University (BSU) Writing Center, I have heard comments and questions like this many times. Tutees rate the Center’s services highly, but they are often frustrated by the Center’s limited tutoring schedule, isolated location, and antiquated technology. As first a tutor and then a graduate administrator, I looked for ways to improve our services, from tutor training to innovative pedagogy to new technologies. In important ways, this last offers the most interesting and novel enhancements to tutoring. However, my interest in new technology is propelled in part by frustration as a tutor and an administrator. As a tutor, I participated in many tutorials in which tutees did not take notes, and I could not help but wonder if they would remember what we had discussed when they left. Similarly, my own faulty memory left me unsure as to what exactly had been said during tutorials that made them go well or poorly, or what exactly had made an idea “click” with a client. Other tutors assured me that I was not alone in wishing that tutorials could be preserved in order to revisit them and see where specific tutoring strategies did or did not work. But while tutorials can be recorded on to audio- or videotape, transcriptions require large amounts of time, one of the many things in short supply at writing centers (not to mention the ordeal of having to listen to the same tutorial for the approximately three hours it takes to transcribe a one-hour tutorial). In the

absence of such records, it is difficult for tutors and tutees alike to recall a tutorial precisely.1 As a graduate administrator, I am concerned with how tutors understand and apply the composition pedagogy they were introduced to during training. In spite of the five-credit course that undergraduates receive and the two-day training that graduates and undergraduates undergo, tutors are not guaranteed to adhere to writing center pedagogy. Complete coverage of writing center literature is impossible, and little time is available to observe tutors in tutorials. Administrative attendance during tutorials is an option, but this can create an intrusive and authoritative presence and may increase tutor anxiety.2 So, the actual application of training is often unknown. Other quotidian but powerful difficulties exist, such as the tutees regularly turned away because their schedules and ours are incompatible. Although post-tutorial comments have consistently asked for expanded night and weekend hours, tutors prefer not to remain on or return to campus for night tutorials. Such scheduling difficulties prevent writing centers from seeing whole categories of students: those who hold full-time or daytime jobs or whose presence on campus is greatly restricted by other obligations.3 In addition, the remote, wheelchair- unfriendly location of the BSU writing center creates problematic access for some

1 However, asking tutors to transcribe face-to-face tutorials may have the unusual benefit of fostering acceptance of online tutorials. As Eva Bednarowicz notes in her study of MOO tutorials, “Traditional writing center sessions do not usually get transcribed. When they do…these logs come as a shock to tutors who soon realize how little actually ‘gets done’ in a fifty minute session yet how much time is devoted to the negotiation of an agenda that can gracefully accommodate the goals of both tutor and student” (132). 2 One of the first face-to-face tutorials I observed as a graduate administrator featured an undergraduate tutor working with a doctoral student. The combination of my administrative presence and the difficulty of the client’s writing served to unnerve the tutor completely and the tutorial became a long, torturous session of the tutor saying, “I don’t think I can help you.” Since I had not seen or overheard this tutor having previous difficulties like these in the several months he worked at the center prior to this tutorial, I concluded that my presence as an administrator had contributed to his momentary collapse as a tutor. Ever since this tutorial, I have wondered if that particular tutorial might not have been much more successful online, where my presence would have had much less effect. 3 A key to establishing accessible online tutoring also exists in offering online scheduling. Writing center scholars have commented in passing on this need, but little has been published about this seemingly quotidian but surprisingly important aspect of managing writing centers (see Palmquist and Leydens and Schipke; it is also a recurrent topic on the wcenter listserve). This need is felt especially sharply at centers, such as BSU, that lack sufficient funding to staff full-time a telephone-based scheduling system.

handicapped students.4 Together, all of these difficulties argue for a new mode of delivering writing center services, and to me, they argue for an innovative technological mode. My (Techno)Life, and Welcome to It Following James Berlin’s suggestion that researchers should “reveal... to each other the ideological positions inscribed in [their] systems” (“Rhetoric and Ideology” 59- 60), I need to say here that I am a technophile. I’ve been working with computers for 20 years, beginning with my first computer, a Tandy Color Computer 2, a 1.7 MHz powerhouse with 64 KB of RAM and no hard drive. My first online experience consisted of downloading my college grades via a slow, unstable modem, a process that took so long I imagined each letter marching single-file through the phone line. Today, I am an online junkie, checking my email several times a day and surfing the Web for everything from the lowest prices on computer components to information on obscure academic topics. This capacity of computers to bridge distances and facilitate communications in nontraditional and convenient avenues fascinates me. Being on one of the lines that makes up the Internet grants computer users new privileges and new ways to exchange ideas. This privilege is one to which I have grown accustomed and one that no doubt affects everything about how I consider the pedagogical affects of technology. Because I have owned computers and had access for so long, I must constantly interrogate my own position in terms of how other users access and interpret writing center technologies.5 Even with such concerns, I believe that computer-mediated communications (CMC) present valuable opportunities for people to work together towards common communication, commercial, and educational goals.

4 Three of the five doors of the building that houses the writing center require a client to climb stairs. The remaining two are back entrances, one of which is adjacent to a long-term construction site which disrupts the roadway and makes access to the door muddy and treacherous. 5 A recent experience helps prove this point: I discovered only after purchasing a synchronous software program for the BSU Online Writing Center that it is not backwards compatible with old Apple operating systems (those lower than OS X). This potentially prevents access to up to 20% of the BSU campus. This oversight is partially attributable to the fact that there are no Apple computers at the BSU writing center and partially to the fact that the company selling the software buried this problem deep within the online manual, a manual only accessible once the software has been purchased.

These educational goals drive my academic interests. Indeed, the greatest benefits of computers in the writing process are when they go beyond word processing, most often meaning that they are networked. In a study on the effect of online peer review for ESL students, Elaine DiGiovanni and Giriua Nagaswami argue that, “When our students are online, they remain on task and focused” (268). Lester Faigley’s experience with online pedagogy leads him to label it “The Achieved Utopia of the Networked Classroom” (163). David Coogan describes a long-term email tutorial experience that helped him and his tutor “create an alternative writing space that was not, in [his] view, narrow or reductive, but was—and still is—filled with possibility” (43). So my interest in CMC proceeds not simply from my technological fascination, but from a sense that an on task and focused, achieved utopia is a possibility, or at the very least, should be explored. Tempering my technological fascination are the well-known difficulties of online environments. Aside from access and hardware/material concerns, which are many, the emergent status of CMC pedagogy is troubling. Beth Hewett argues that too little Composition pedagogy has been applied to or generated for online tutoring (“Generating New Theory”). As the title of Cynthia Selfe’s 1999 book advocates, compositionists who are not Paying Attention to technology risk being formed by it instead of forming it. Even so ardent a technological proponent as Eric Hobson, the author of numerous articles on online pedagogy and the editor of Wiring the Writing Center, admits to “Straddling the Electronic Fence” and views “the online activities that are currently underway in wired writing centers—Online Writing Centers (OWLs), WWW home pages, etc.—[as] essentially first-generation experiments” (x). However, Hobson also “strongly supports the efforts that are underway in the writing center community to explore what opportunities …await them in the virtual frontier of online education” (xxv). In that spirit, I began an investigation into online tutoring, mindful of the opportunities afforded by online tutoring—the availability of tutorial transcripts for training and research purposes, the convenience of location and time, and the widening of writing center clientele—and wary of its constraints—

inequitable or difficult access, varying abilities, technological hurdles, and the uncertainty of such an emergent area. Research Questions As I contemplated how to begin to “explore what opportunities…await” online, I realized that as a graduate administrator, tutor, and student of rhetoric, what really interested me was why users went online: what was the motivation for their use of this new kind of tutoring? Kenneth Burke asks a similar question at the beginning of A Grammar of Motives: “What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” (xv). In terms of my study, this question became, “What is involved, when we say that tutors are tutored tutees online via Internet messengers (IMs) and why are they writing what/as they do?” Such a broad question had the benefit of being easily divisible into questions that not only focus on the tutor and tutee motivation, but also ask me to interrogate my own position as an administrator. Questions about the motivations of tutees include the following: Who goes online and why? What rhetorical strategies (visual and textual) do tutees use to communicate with their tutors? How do tutors and tutees represent themselves online? On what writing topics are tutees seeking advice? Questions about the motivations of tutors include the following: What rhetorical strategies (visual and textual) do tutors use to communicate with their tutees? What difficulties do they feel they must overcome? What parts of these tutorials do they find most challenging or rewarding? How do tutors gauge tutee progress? Questions about writing center administration include the following: What kinds of additional support do online tutees require (beyond simply more computers and tutor training)? What are the benefits and drawbacks of online tutoring for perennially cash-strapped writing centers? What kinds of conflicts or team building does having some tutors work online and others in face-to-face tutorials engender? How do online tutorials change the nature of the work done at or community perceptions of a writing center?

As I observed tutorials, interviewed participants, and reviewed tutee evaluations, tutor comments, and the 25 transcripts,6 I noticed how each tutorial was guided by different central themes and how this data suggested meaningful patterns. For some tutorials (e.g., Susan and Misaki), the Interface itself played a significant role, whereas for others (e.g., Avril and Seth), a continual return to agenda-setting motivated many of their comments. The shifting themes and motivations of online tutorials thus required a fine-grained, multifaceted analytic tool such as the Dramatistic Pentad of Kenneth Burke. Because the Pentad is made up of five elements of motivation (Act, Scene, Purpose, Agent, and Agency7) and because Burke argues that his “entire book [A Grammar of Motives] illustrates a featuring of act,” (78) Burke’s method is well-suited for a project whose central data, the transcripts, presents bare linguistic Acts. In addition, because the Pentad offers grounding in rhetorical theory, it enables the theorizing about online work that scholars such as Hobson and Hewett argue has been missing from many texts published on the topic of online tutorials and CMC in general. The Pentad asks the questions whose answers are needed in order to fulfill Rae Schipke’s 1996 “Message from the Chair of the ACE Executive Committee: Plugging the Writing Center Into the Future,” the opening article in a 1996 special issue of the ACE Newsletter devoted to online writing centers, which argued that “For centers to be successful, technology will have to be integrated into a broad effort for instruction, and not considered as a cure-all but, rather, as a set of tools to support specific kinds of instruction and inquiry” (n.p.). Finally, my ongoing considerations of Burke during data collection, tutorial observations and participation,8 and participant interviews agree with Karen D. Austin’s assertion that “theorizing of online tutoring needs to take place while we practice, not before” (n.p.). Throughout the time that I analyzed these transcripts, I served as an administrator for online tutorials, and the insights I gained from the Burkean method invariably influenced

6 I have also participated in tutorials. This experience helped me not only with understanding usability issues within the interface, but also with the challenges and successes provided by the medium. 7 Throughout this study, elements of the Pentad are capitalized. 8 Although tutorials in which I was a participant (tutor or tutee) were not included in this study, they were invaluable to me as I worked to understand the difficulties and theoretical possibilities inherent in online tutorials.

how I tutored online and asked others to do the same. Perhaps the most significant way that this played out was in the way that fluidity of experience was foreground, as is explained in the next section. Burkean Dramatism9 The Pentad: Burke Lends a Hand Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism proceeds from the idea that all human interaction can be viewed in terms of drama, echoing Shakespeare’s familiar claim, “All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players:/They have their exits and their entrances;/And one man in his time plays many parts (As You Like It II.vii). Burkean scholar Clarke Roundtree commends Dramatism because it “allows the rhetorical critic to reveal how a discursive text works within the grammar of motives to effectively represent motives for rhetorical purposes” (n.p.). To this end, Burke uses five familiar terms of drama—Act, Agent, Agency, Purpose, and Scene—to construct the Dramatistic Pentad, often represented as shown in Figure 1. Burke illustrates the Pentad with this example: “The hero (agent) with the help of a friend (co-agent) outwits the villain (counter-agent) by using a file (agency) that enables him to break his bonds (act) in order to escape (Purpose) from the room where he has been confined (scene)” (Grammar of Motives xx).10

9 My application of Burke’s Dramatism to Composition is not unique. Beyond Burke’s often unspoken presence in much Composition theory, his Dramatism has been applied explicitly by many other compositionists. For example, Philip Keith commends Dramatism for Composition because it can be for students “an essential tool for making language not merely a channel for communication of already realized thought but an instrument for mining the world of meaning” (351). 10 Thus, the Pentad can be seen as a recasting of the familiar interrogatives of who (Agent), what (Act), when/where (Scene), how (Agency), and why (Purpose). However, Burke intended the elements of the Pentad to be analytical, not generative or heuristic, which separates them from the so-called Reporter’s Questions. Burke treats such questions in Grammar of Motives (22) and in “Some Questions and Answers about the Pentad.”

Act

Agency Scene

Purpose Agent

Figure 1: Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad

By placing these elements in relation to one another (e.g., Agent/Scene), Burke generates ten ratios whose overlap provides even more fine-grained analyses.11 The ratios privilege and stress the endless interactions and fluctuating balance between the five terms and demonstrate the influence of one term on another, such as in Burke’s example of the Scene/Act ratio in Hamlet: “The very place puts toys of desperation,/Without more motive, into every brain/That so looks so many fathoms to the sea/And hears it roar beneath” (Hamlet I.4). Horatio’s warning to Hamlet claims that the influence of the bleak landscape ("the very place [that] puts toys of desperation... into every brain") “might be enough to provide a man12 with a motive for an act as desperate and absolute as suicide” (6). Viewed through the Scene/Act ratio, Hamlet’s actions are influenced by his surroundings. This example not only demonstrates the interesting analyses possible with the Pentad but also the flexibility of Burke’s system, since the same warning from Horatio can also be interpreted in Scene/Agent ratio terms in that the Scene is influencing the Agent (not simply his Act). The constant shifting among the ratios is what makes the system so critically valuable, because it creates a system that resists closure: a new interpretation is just a

11 If the first term is taken as dominant, 20 ratios result from Burke’s Pentad, since, for example, Agent/Act and Act/Agent represent different ratios. 12 Other writers have noted Burke’s exclusive use of the male pronoun, which may perhaps be best regarded as the influence of Burke’s (historical) Scene on his Act.

movement away to another adjacent term (ratio) of the Pentad. "[B]ecause of this overlap, it is possible for a thinker to make his way continuously from any one of [the elements of the Pentad] to any of the others" (Grammar 171).13 Burke illustrates this with the metaphor of a human hand: We have also likened the terms to the fingers, which in their extremities are distinct from one another, but merge in the palm of the hand. If you would go from one finger to another without a leap, you need but trace the tendon down into the palm of the hand, and then trace a new course along another tendon. (Grammar xxii)

Although Burke intends this metaphor to make clearer the interchangeable nature of the elements of the Pentad, it has a strangely lifelike but lifeless quality in a way that will have important consequences later in this chapter in the transmutation into the Fluid Cyborg. For the moment, the most important feature is recognition of the dual distinctness and the overlap of the elements of the Pentad. Burke On(the)Line: “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Problems of Excessive Fluidity This fluidity and overlap between the elements of the Pentad is both freeing and frustrating for the rhetorical critic. In developing a way to understand the motivations behind these tutorials in Burkean terms, I struggled with this fluidity. I wanted to avoid creating a purely mechanistic coding of the data that would fail to recognize the “moments of ambiguity” that Burke sought to highlight with Dramatism, but at the same time, I also wanted to avoid allowing the ambiguities of Dramatism to become too much of the “molten oneness” that Burke describes as the basis for these terms14 (Grammar). In other words, interpreting these tutorials in Burkean terms meant finding some way to bring a reliability and replicability to my analysis without doing away with the flexibility that is at the heart of Dramatism. Rethinking Burke’s central terms in the Dramatistic Pentad is necessary to make it appropriate for online communications. Although Burke’s

13 However, the endless play of overlap and interpretation within the Pentad creates some difficulties in applying the system, since it destabilizes ultimate meaning. Ultimate meaning, however, was not what the system seeks to find however. 14 “[D]istinctions, we might say, arise out of a great central moltenness, where all is merged” (Grammar xix)

Pentad works well for face-to-face human interactions, online communications reconfigure human interactions and, more importantly motives, so greatly that the Pentad does not work without reformulation itself. However, as Phyllis Japp demonstrates with her affirmative answer to her (rhetorical) question “‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’: Reclaiming Burke for Feminist Scholarship,” Burke’s work can be creatively reclaimed for modern application. How to modify Burke’s system, conceived almost half a century ago, for online work is the focus of the next section. Dramatism Modified My partial resolution to this methodological quandary of adapting Burke for online use was the realization that, contrary to my initial drive for methodological closure, the open-endedness of Burke’s Dramatism generates a multi-elemental analysis that refuses to give simplistic answers or engage in easy dualistic notions of representation. This fluidity destabilized how I viewed the role of tutorial participants, leading me to see them as engaged in rhetorical performances, as participants in dramatic Acts, an important aspect of moving beyond a view of tutorials as simply text scrolling endlessly down a computer screen. The multivocal nature of the data reinforced the idea of tutors and tutees as rhetors and Agents, participants who would necessarily occupy different positions not only from each other but within the same position as well. For example, tutors would not necessarily make the same kinds of suggestions to tutees across tutorials or even consistently during the same tutorial.15 Similarly, the role of the tutee was never stable and could conflict with expectations. All of this fluidity is of course embedded in the Pentad, so a brief consideration of its ratios might be helpful in reconsidering Dramatism. Figure 2 attempts to make literal the metaphoric representation of tutorials as viewed through the Pentad. A tutor (Agent) at mid-stage right and a tutee (Agent) at mid-stage left both sit in front of computers, facing the audience. Their transcript (multiply considered as the residue of and the actual Act) is projected on a large screen facing the audience. Together, the entire collection is described by the Circumference, a term Burke borrows from William James to indicate a

15 In this, tutors reflected more or less their understandings and commitments to writing center theory, as well as personal tutoring experiences.

way to “place the object of one’s definitions [i.e., the Pentad] within contexts of varying scope” (Grammar 77). Michael Feehan describes Circumference as “Burke’s term for the scope of analytic enterprise, the range of interest, the breadth of the study to be undertaken” (quoted in Kimberling 17). If their rhetoric encourages cooperation, Agents are moved closer to each other on stage.16 Alternately, problems in tutorials result in movement of Agents away from each. Such a literalization of the metaphor of the Pentad risks caricature; however, like the metaphor of fluidity suggested by the Pentadic Hand, Figure 2 offers a new way to illustrate a complex theory, thereby making it more useful and approachable.

Rhetorical failure

Tutor Tutee Consubstantiation

Figure 2: Literal Dramatism

Those keeping careful track of the elements will notice that two are missing in this Figure 2: Scene and Agency. This is intentional, because the online interactions present special difficulty for Burkean analysis. On one hand, the software programs used to communicate online represent a technological instrument, an enabling tool that Agents

16 Movement closer together corresponds to what Burke termed Consubstantiation, a metaphoric union of bodies, a concept which will be explained in greater length later.

use: hence, they are Burkean Agencies. On the other, they are the environments in which Agents Act, spaces that create boundaries and within whose Circumference Agents move: hence, they are Scenic. There is merit in considering Agency and Scene individually. Considering online programs only in terms of Agency follows the lead of technological theorists. In 1967, long before the advent of the World Wide Web or home computers, Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore argued, "Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication." (8). In making this argument, McLuhan, creator of the phrase "the medium is the message," was agreeing with the Whorfian Hypothesis, an idea from Benjamin Whorf who believed that language structured the consciousness. In a similar vein, Walter Ong argued in Orality and Literacy that the invention and internalization of the alphabet invariably altered the societies that developed them, so much so that non- literate (i.e., non-Western) societies are incapable of the variety of thought available in literate societies. Although such views of language as deterministic of meaning and thought have lost much favor in the last 20 years, the question of how much the medium affects the message remains hotly contested. Recently, however, the deterministic effect of technology has resurfaced. Michael F. Johanyak argues that Some investigations of computer-mediated “chat” (CMC) … seem to favor the cause of technological determinism. Such studies, claiming that CMC users produce a hybrid form of text, appear to focus on language produced by a particular technology rather than consider how language users bring individual cognitive, social, and contextual factors with them to the technology, producing not a hybrid text but a familiar text in an unfamiliar communicative environment. (100)

Others take this as part of the continued evolution of language from print to digital and find correlations in the past. James O’Donnell’s research into the history of print leads him to argue that I started rummaging for fifteenth and sixteenth century criticism of the print medium, expecting that I would be able to show that there were silly people in those days who had silly fears and anxieties which proved to be unfounded. I was chastened and sobered to realize that the people who criticized had it right. They said that the unleashing of the power of distributing the written word would give rise to unorthodox and heretical opinions, and they were right.…

Having discovered that, I needed to back off and say, "Now wait a minute. Why did this succeed?" The answer seemed to be that the medium was so powerful that it created a system of communication that was just so much larger, so much faster, so much more capable of generating economic resources that it simply swamped the legitimate concerns of the previous generation, creating its own new system. The slightly good news is that that new system was so powerful that it had within it the resources to go back and address some of those concerns. Not all of them--the concern for unorthodox opinions getting loose-- that genie didn’t go back in the bottle. (30)

O’Donnell further claims that the advent of digital culture has let the genie out of the bottle again. While McLuhan’s claim is overstated (certainly message content accounts for the large, if not central, amount of meaning) and O’Donnell’s view has yet to be proven, each argues strongly for a view of technology purely as Agency. However, views of online programs as providing the Scene of interaction are also persuasive. Indeed, these programs are hard to discuss without recourse to visual metaphors. Online terminology describes the “Scene”: from the “display” to the “skins” to the many icons involved, this system argues for an interest in creating a specific environment, one obviously tailored to the visual. Participants tell each other that they will “see you online” or to wait until they are “in the chatroom.” Such location metaphors argue strongly for categorizing online programs as the Scene. However, the most persuasive and useful view of online programs is that online the Scene and Agency form an irreducible ratio: that is, these elements cannot be separated from each other. I refer to this ratio as the Interface. In the same way that Kenneth Burke relied on definitions of words for new ways of thinking about them, I give the definition of Interface to show why it represents the Agency/Scene irreducible ratio so well. Interface: 1. A surface forming a common boundary between adjacent regions, bodies, substances, or phases. 2. A point at which independent systems or diverse groups interact…3. Computer Science a. The point of interaction or communication between a computer and any other entity, such as a printer or human operator. b. The layout of an application’s graphic or textual controls in conjunction with the way the application responds to user activity: an Interface whose icons were hard to remember. (“Interface”)

It is perhaps instructive that the third definition has as its primary use “a point,” as though an Interface were grouped around a specific spot, a nexus about which everything rotates, a sun in the universe of computing. However, this positive connotation is balanced with a negative example in the secondary meaning of the third definition: “an Interface whose icons were hard to remember.” Taken as a whole, these definitions of Interface demonstrate the ambiguity inherent in computer Interfaces: they are both the most important part of a system (because they are the point at which humans input and extract information from computers) and they are the system’s weakest link (because they require information to be input and extracted and understood in specific, sometime hard- to-comprehend ways). Thus, this term perfectly captures the ambiguity of the Scene/Agent ratio. Seen as a point or place, the Interface is scenic; seen as a link, the Interface is an Agency. Throughout this work, Interface should be understood as always already representing the Agency/Scene ratio. In this manner, my examination of how the Interface affects meaning in tutorials represents a look into how the display (Scene) and the abilities (Agency) of the Interface work in concert to allow online tutorials to take place. This then allows for the reinterpretation of my original questions through the lens of how the Interface affects the tutorials, especially in terms of how participants negotiate issues of power and identity surrounding synchronous tutorials. Such a view focuses on the rhetorical strategies (visual and textual) participants use online, since these devices are in many ways outgrowths of the Agency/Scene ratio (i.e., the Interface). The Irreducible Ratio of the Interface The inseparability of Scene and Agency online reformulates aspects of the Pentad. Because they do not participate in simple ratios such as Act/Scene or Act/Agency, the Pentad becomes the Online Dramatistic Tetrad: Interface, Act, Agent, and Purpose. This reconsideration results in six ratios: Interface/Purpose considers the influence of the Scene/Agency ratio on what the Agents want to do during the tutorial. Act/Agent involves the influence of tutoring on participants; what do the Agents do during the tutorial or as a result of it? Act/Interface considers the influence of the Interface on what happens in the tutorial; in what ways does the tutorial progress as a result of being held

online? (This is not an implied comparison between on-and offline tutorials.) Act/Purpose considers the influence of what the Agent wants to do on how the tutorial progresses; who is in control of the tutorial? Who is persuasive? (Who is the rhetor?) In writing center terms, this considers who sets the agenda and how this agenda gets changed throughout the tutorial. Interface/Agent considers the influence of the Interface on participants; how do the users alter or are altered by the Interface? Agent/Purpose considers why participants are participating in tutorials; what does each want from this experience? Finally, Interface/Purpose considers how the Interface influences the goals of the participants; do they do what they wanted to do? With these modifications of Dramatism in mind, let us turn to the ways in which Modified Dramatism interacts with the dominant theory of writing centers, social constructionism, and the ideas of Donna Haraway to produce the guiding metaphor of this study, the Fluid Cyborg. The Socially Constructed Cyborg Social Constructionism Defined Citing the work of Joseph Petraglia, Christina Murphy argues that social constructionism follows certain conventions, such as “all reality is arrived at by consensus… thus knowledge, is ‘discovered’ solely through discourse (rhetoric) and … reality changes as consensus/knowledge changes” (111). Andrea Lunsford views social constructionism as “viewing knowledge and reality as socially constructed, contextualized…in short, the product of collaboration (“Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center” 93). Thus, social constructionism holds as a basic premise that social interaction promotes learning, or as Hanna Arendt said, “for excellence, the presence of others is always required” (quoted in Lunsford 93). Social constructionism helps define the central concerns of the field, such as how tutors and tutees negotiate institutional power and how these negotiations affect learning. During tutorials, tutors and tutees collaboratively bring lifetimes of accumulated knowledge and experience in communication to bear on the writing task at hand. Generally, writing centers promote

this collaboration as a careful balancing of tutor and tutee activity, with the tutee making active decisions about the writing and the tutor providing social and intellectual support. This support is usually given in the form of discourse at writing center tutorials, or as Stephen North’s seminal 1984 article “The Idea of a Writing Center” put it “the essence of the writing center method…is…talking” (75). Writing center tutorials are in- person, one-to-one discussions in which the tutor plays the role of a sympathetic reader and Socratic questioner. Burke as Social Constructivist Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism agrees with the social constructionism that grounds much online writing center practice. Bernard Brock argues that “Burke anticipated many of the issues central to the conversation with either old or new postmodern [theorists],” a categorization that includes social constructionism (11). In “Kenneth Burke and the [Re]socialization of Literature and Theory,” Dennis Ciesielski argues that “we are able to place Burke as nearly as possible in a representative school of secular theory and neo- pragmatism—secular pragmatism—which demonstrates, roughly, the idea that truth is socially constructed and (historically) [re]constructed through a sense of communal concurrence and historical flux” (246). As further evidence of this stands Burke’s metaphor of the Unending Conversation. Consider Burke’s descriptions of how knowledge arises via social interaction, what has come to be known as the Burkean Parlor:17 Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows

17 See also, Andrea Lunsford’s recommendation of the Burkean Parlor as a metaphor for writing center tutorials (Lunsford. Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.”).

late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. The Philosophy of Literary Form. 110-111.

The second description is by Michael Oakeshott, whose “Conversation of Mankind” metaphor is the centerpiece of Kenneth Bruffee’s influential 1984 book chapter “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind,’” in which he attempts to account for the difficulties some students have with writing in college. He posits that some extracurricular writing assistance is unpopular with students “because it seemed to them merely an extension of the work, the expectations, and above all the social structure of traditional classroom learning” (206-207). Against this traditional view of education, Bruffee places Oakeshott: As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves… Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this conversation in which we learn to recognize the voices, to distinguish the proper occasions of utterance, and in which we acquire the intellectual and moral habits appropriate to conversation. And it is this conversation which, in the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance. (Oakeshott as quoted in Bruffee 197).

This stress on conversation is no accident. Bruffee, Oakeshott, Burke, Lunsford, and Murphy are all arguing for the need for discussion and talk within education. This talk is the “heart” of constructionism and writing center practice. Online tutorials fit into this practice because they are Burkean Parlors18 for two, spaces (Interfaces) where speakers come together to discuss old ideas in new ways, where writers can begin to appropriate the ways of thinking and speaking that characterize the academy.19 Online participants enter into what Bernard Brock characterizes as “a fluid party conversation as [a] model… for continual change in symbol-using” (“Introduction” 10). In terms of the Parlor as tutorial, tutors are the “others who have long preceded you,” and tutees are the second-

18 Burke’s self-conscious invocation of the term “parlor” (with its linguistic relationship to both a space and a means of communication) resonates with techno-theorists’ choice of terms. Sherry Turkle argues that “MUDs are a new kind of virtual parlor game and a new form of community” (9). 19 Those familiar with composition research will recognize echoes of how Mike Rose and David Bartholomae wish to bring nontraditional students into the Academy.

person subject. In terms of the subject matter of the tutorial, however, these roles are often reversed, creating malleable roles of newcomer and veteran for each tutorial. Skilled tutors persuade clients (sometimes implicitly, other times explicitly) that the clients’ views and ideas are worthwhile and that the tutor has the same goals as the client’s: i.e., to engage in a conversation whose Purpose is to create knowledge through conversation. Tutees, on the other hand, can lead tutors into new content areas, educating their peers on unfamiliar subjects. Both take turns “listen[ing] for a while, until [they] decide that [they] have caught the tenor of the argument; then [they] put in [their] oar[s].” Metaphorically, the stream of the conversation in tutorials can be the structure of the English language (grammar questions), the structure of the Interface, or even how tutees can work in productive ways to keep from flipping their virtual canoes. Clearly, the metaphor of Burke’s Parlor resonates with writing center theory. In validating talk as a form of education, both Burke and writing center theorists provide a way for students to enter into new areas of study without feeling the isolation that can arise from a text-bound educational system. Although Bruffee does not directly reference Burke,20 the similarities between the Burkean Parlor and the “Conversation of Mankind” make for a well-considered view of the place of conversation in education. This view also follows historically important work by Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget21 who studied the significance of internalized and externalized talk in childhood language acquisition. Bruffee continues on in his article to demonstrate the ways that other scholars have argued for the necessity, even centrality, of conversation in education. Bruffee sums his argument as follows: “If thought is internalized public and social talk, then writing is internalized talk made public and social again. If thought is internalized conversation,

20 Although Burke is often an unacknowledged presence in much social constructionism, the eclectic nature of Composition results in many other theorists being cited and put to the same ends as Burke. Consider the use of Thomas Kuhn’s work on science. Stephen North critiques the use of Thomas Kuhn’ Paradigm Shift Theory by Maxine Hairston (who used it to call for the elimination of writing centers) whereas Bruffee uses Kuhn’s discussion of a “community of knowledgeable peers” (214) to argue that peer tutors produce knowledge via social interaction. Both authors eventually use variant interpretations of Kuhn to argue for the same thing: writer-centered learning occurs socially, via talk. 21 For example, while Piaget viewed egocentric speak (talking out loud about one’s self) as atrophying with age (as a child becomes more socially aware), Vygotsky viewed it as going “underground” and becoming inner speech (the functional equivalent of egocentric speech). Both, however, stress the importance of social influences on the development of thought and language (which are inseparably intertwined).

then writing is internalized conversation re-externalized” (210). In offering seemingly competing but ultimately complementary definitions of thought, Bruffee demands acknowledgement of the social nature of learning. To this end, he argues that peer tutoring is valuable because it provides two vitally important social contexts: (1) one “in which students can experience and practice the kinds of conversation that academics value most” and (2) “a particular kind of community: that of status equals, or peers” (210-211). For Bruffee then the use of conversation as an educational tool is established. Online Tutoring as a Threat to Social Construction Social constructionism’s stress on collaborative work can be misinterpreted as requiring physical immediacy, so that some theorists22 have rejected CMC for pedagogical purposes.23 Michael Pemberton observes that “computers and computer software…have …been seen as incipient threats – not merely to the personal, interactive pedagogies that writing centers embrace, but also to the writing center’s existence” (11). While examining the value of online collaborations, Julian and Rhona Newman conclude that “The major advantage of using the computer is the help it gives with lower-level tasks, and it should not be expected to substitute for face-to-face communication in the more complex areas of the advancement of knowledge” (27). By casting CMC as cold and impersonal, a reiteration of the human/machine dichotomy, some scholars argue that its use flies in the face of writing center philosophy. Even some writing center people who have had success online are ambiguous about it: “all the bells and whistles in Cyberspace cannot substitute for human contact.” (Linda Ringer Leff). However, these writers overlook at least three salient points. One, although CMC is a new method of interaction, it is not intended to be a complete replacement for face- to-face communication. The most common way that online tutorials are cast in writing center literature that promotes them is as an “alternative that may supplement, but will not supplant, that which centers have traditionally offered” (Healy 186). In addition to its

22 This reaction is not, of course, limited to Compositionists. Consider Sven Birkerts’ dire assessments “My core fear is that we are, as a culture, as a species, becoming shallower; that we have turned from depth—from the Judeo-Christian premise of unfathomable mystery—and are adapting ourselves to the ersatz security of a vast lateral connectedness” (228). 23 See also Nancy Grimm (esp. pg 324) and Michael Spooner.

role as a complementary but different medium, online tutorials must be considered on their own terms, as a unique form of communication. Therefore, it is as much a mistake to compare online and face-to-face unreflectively as it is to judge a book by the movie made based on it (or vice versa). Different media privileges different communicative acts. Thus, I have taken care in this study to avoid implicit or explicit comparisons of online versus traditional tutorials. Two, although physical immediacy can enable face-to- face conversation (via paralinguistic cues), it may also carry negative associations. Tutees and tutors can feel threatened or respond negatively to the physical presence of the other participant, sometimes with overtones of racism, sexism, or other biases. Online tutorials might help to remove some of these problems (although even in this limited study, biases were evident24). Finally, three, online tutorials are part of the ever-changing landscape of technology, out of which has arisen such once-difficult-to-implement modes of communication as email, modes that are now so common place as to be transparent. So it is no surprise that scholars may take some time to become familiar with the abilities of online tutoring. Online Power, Collaboration, and Identity In arguing for the use of online tutorials, I do not want to fall into the role of computer apologist or unreflective proponent. As others have noted, CMC carries the drawback of lacking traditional paralinguistic cues; that is, tutors and tutees cannot use tone of voice, inflection, gestures, and so on to make meanings clear. The loss of paralinguistic cues and physical immediacy of online participants transforms tutoring. The changing dynamics between tutor and tutee suggest that the best online collaboration can offer new definitions of authorship, and it can show new ways that being online can affect writing processes. Two well-known proponents of plural authorship, Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede, suggest that an undervalued mode of collaboration called “dialogic collaboration” may represent well how online interaction can work. “This dialogic mode is loosely structured and the roles enacted within it are fluid; one person may occupy multiple and shifting roles as a project progresses. In this mode, the process

24 I have in mind here Amy’s incorrect assignment of gender (based on the “aggressive” tone of the tutee) and Susan’s assertion that Misaki could not assume a new identity online.

of articulating goals is often as important as the goals themselves and sometimes even more important” (Singular Texts 133). Online tutorials ask tutors and tutees to occupy these shifting positions, ideally with the tutor creating a metatext. This collaborative production involves political difficulties (sometimes cast in the worst-case scenario as “In cyberspace, no one can hear you plagiarize”). Fortunately, these are the very difficulties that writing center theory actively engages. Some writing center scholars argue that “ideally, the [tutee] should be the only active agent in improving the paper” (Brooks 224), but others see this “power and control as constantly negotiated” between tutor and tutee (Lunsford “Collaboration” 97). Still others argue that “The writing center is uniquely positioned to challenge business as usual in the academy” (Clark and Healy 254). So, while writing center theories invoke political liabilities, they do so in service of more realistic recognitions of the always-already collaborative nature of writing. All collaborations involve issues of power. As a form of collaboration, online tutorials also involve these issues; indeed tutorials are sometimes the results of issues of power.25 Although tutors and tutees exist on supposedly neutral grounds (e.g., the peer tutor model used in many writing centers which involves tutees and tutors with equivalent educational experience), tutorials exist as sites of struggle and cooperation between participants. Online tutoring, with its alternating presentation of participant comments and relative anonymity, presents a powerful test case to explore contested moments of power. Moreover, the blurring of power boundaries can affect the administration of writing centers and, subsequently, the training of tutors. Several authors (Johanek and Rickly, Cooper and Rinker, and Jackson, Kastman Breuch, and Racine) have argued that tutor training must change to accommodate the exigencies of online tutoring, but the area remains underexplored. Since tutors sometimes develop tutoring strategies spontaneously, even after reading literature devoted to this subject, online tutorials will offer the ability to watch tutors put into practice their training. Issues of power, collaboration, and social construction intertwine with participant identity, a concept most allied with Burke’s notion of the Agent (but not Agency). The

25 Consider, for example, a client whose instructor scrawls “Go to the writing center” on the bottom of the paper.

fluidity of online identities heralded by Sherry Turkle and Michael Joyce contribute to less-confined online spaces in which writers can work. Turkle, for example, sees “MUDs [as] dramatic examples of how computer-mediated communication can serve as a place for the construction and reconstruction of identity” (11). Online writers can present themselves in many ways, thus (virtually) endowing online environments with aspects of postmodern theory in line with those outlined by Lester Faigley, who argues in Fragments of Rationality that “postmodern theory understands subjectivity as heterogeneous and constantly in flux” (227). As Agents within this state of flux, online participants en-Act textual and representational heterogeneity. They must find new, often self-conscious, ways to perform their identities online, deploying novel communicative devices (such as emoticons) and revamping old ones (such as more explicit questioning techniques) to demonstrate investment in and attitudes about online tutorials. Again, Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism offers convenient and theoretically rich ways to investigate these communicative strategies. Terminological Constructions As a theoretician concerned with the social construction of knowledge, Burke coined a number of useful terms that interrogate and explain the power of language. Of special interest here are God-terms, Terministic screen, and Consubstantiation. God-terms Burke explained God-terms, as “names for the ultimates of motives.” (Grammar 74). In the online tutorials in my study, grammar exists as a God-term for many tutees. Tutees repeatedly asked for grammar help, sometimes to the exclusion of considering other aspects of writing, and tutors continued to give help on it, even when they said they have other concerns.26 I mention grammar not to delve into the complexities of how writing centers should handle the topic, but merely as an example of how certain terminologies are heavily weighted with emotional and intellectual freight, in other words, God-terms.

26 One tutee not profiled in this study who identified “Proofreading a section of a chapter of my dissertation” as her tutorial agenda wrote, “the tutor is straightforward and clear and did not waste my time discussing irrelevant subjects.” Presumably, “irrelevant subjects” constituted anything non-grammar related.

Terministic Screens In establishing the concept of God-terms, Burke was acknowledging the ways that terminology and language shape human perception. Perhaps his most powerful expression of this is the concept of Terministic Screens, which Burke describes as a result of the nature of language: “Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality” (“Terministic Screens” 45). By this, he means that the language that a person uses to describe or interpret experiences influences how meaning is brought (or attributed) to these experiences. This concept has many implications. Perhaps the main one is that, since Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad does not have to elevate one element above all others, then the various terms are free to be used as their own Terministic screens through which an analyst can work. Terministic screen as a metaphor resonates with the physical screens present in online tutoring. Thus, monitor screens literalize Burke’s Terministic screen metaphor in the form of not only material aspects (Interface) of computers, but also the psychological (Agent) experience as well. In the former, it is obvious how even seemingly mundane physical aspects can influence online work. In this category lie aspects such as the increased ease of reading text on monitors due to high video capacity and screen resolution; also here are the variant ways that the same information may be displayed on even equivalent screens using different operating systems. For example, website designers must take into account that the final display of websites is not under their control (a situation unparalleled in the print culture of Burke’s era). Instead, the final display depends on the end user’s setup, including operating systems, screen size, and resolution, even the installed font styles and colors. This can create significant problems for screen displays in that if the screen size selected by the designer is too large, the end user may not see some of the display (without scrolling sideways, an activity some surfers are reluctant to engage in). In psychological (Agent) terms, the metaphors that control various operating systems also heavily influence how Agents interpret online experiences. The movement from early, command-line driven programs to more advanced graphical user Interfaces (GUIs) has contributed to the ease with which users

discuss and navigate systems. All of these examples argue for a consideration of how the Terministic screens, both literalized in terms of physical screens and metaphorically considered as screen displays, affect online interactions. Consubstantiation and Substance The shifting positions of participants parallel the fluidity of Burke’s rhetorical method of exploring etymologies to demonstrate their multiple meanings. His exploration of "substance" is a striking example of this method. He takes substance as "[u]nquestionably the most prominent philosophic member of the [stance] family," a family whose members "all derive from a concept of place, or placement" and are therefore scenic (Grammar 21). He can then claim that although substance is often used to refer to the materiality of a thing (or Agent) it also carries an ironic definition in that it points to what the thing is not, since "the word etymologically refers to something outside the thing, extrinsic to it" (emphasis in original, Grammar 23). Thus, Burke demonstrates that the substance, the seemingly most internal and conscious element of an Agent (as in "he has substantial bearing" or "she is a woman of intellectual substance"), can be viewed in scenic terms, rather than simply in terms of the Agent. It is characteristic of Burke’s explorations of language to find such antimonies of definition, and this method contributes to the ease with which he moves among the elements of his Pentad.27 Burke’s concept of Consubstantiation, Burke’s primary prerequisite for persuasion, resonates with interactions online. While “[t]raditionally, the key term for rhetoric is … ‘persuasion’” (Grammar xiv), this persuasion, Burke argues, is impossible without the creation of a union of mutual self-interest between speaker and listener, i.e., Consubstantiation. Burke borrows this term from the Christian religious doctrine which holds that there is a real substantial presence of the body and blood of Christ together with the bread and wine during Communion.28 While this metaphor for mutual

27 However, his endless digressions in this vein can also create confusion with his primary terms. For an example of the confusion surrounding Burkean and traditional agency, see Catherine Fox. 28In opposition to this stands the doctrine of transubstantiation, the "conversion of one substance into another....In many Christian churches, [this is] the doctrine holding that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus, although their appearances remain the same." (American Heritage Dictionary). I mention this to highlight that Burke’s use of Consubstantiation here is consciously aware of the position of the body in rhetoric, but he chooses not to elaborate on this presence.

understanding may seem an extreme representation of a metaphysical union of people, scholars writing on technology have offered more extravagant re-imaginings of how humans can use technology to understand and more fully value each other. One of the most important reconceptualizations of the revaluing of human interaction in technological terms is given by Donna Haraway. Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Donna Haraway’s 1985 article “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” argues against the “demonization” of technology occurring at that time (quoted in Raskin). She seeks a “common language” for women within postmodernity, with its tendency to mesh human and nonhuman, positing that many modernist binaries have dissolved - human/animal, man/machine, men/women - in the face of increasing technologizing. Instead of opposing this breakdown, Haraway asks feminists to reveal in “the breakdown of clean distinctions between organism and machine” because these disruptions are systemic and potentially liberatory. Her primary image is the cyborg: “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (149). Cyborgs explode simplistic binary dilemmas in which dominating (patriarchal, racist) sides are set in opposition to dominated ones. Haraway argues for the acceptance of ubiquitous technology because “machines are not the enemy. Science is not the enemy. Knowledge is not the enemy. We’ve got to get smart about technology— computers, Cyborgs, cell phones” (quoted in Raskin). Cyborgs are not dismissable as the product of science fiction, but are readily apparent in the here and now. Haraway’s cyborg represents the complex, hybrid, and difficult-to-negotiate roles of women in a technologized (read, repeatedly masculinized) society. Cyborgs embody both/neither sex and resist assimilation into what she terms the “informatics of domination.” By standing in opposition to perceived wisdom, Haraway creates a new vision of possibility, one with a willful, even celebratory, physical ambiguity and entanglement with technology. Her cyborg is a positive solution to Lester Faigley’s impasse of postmodernism, that is, the inability of postmodernism to create a positive alternative to modernism. The cyborg points out that such an alternative will not be

comprehensible in modernist terms, but will be contradictory, creating, as Haraway does, “an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification” (149). Haraway relies primarily on science fiction literature for images and uses of the Cyborg,29 and so the release the same year of the uber-cyborg movie, The Terminator, is an interesting coincidence. Haraway’s work and The Terminator and its sequels have strangely similar goals, although they arrive at them differently. Both the films and the Cyborg Manifesto seek to avoid societal destruction: Haraway hopes that the “cyborg can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust” (151), and the plots of the Terminator movies revolve around the protagonists’ attempts to avert nuclear holocaust (which they refer to as “Judgment Day,” in an oddly religious reference to atonement for the sins of technology.) The unending violence of the Terminator movies, however,30 seems quite removed from Haraway’s conception of a cyborg that carries the “illegitimate promise that might lead to subversion of its teleology as star wars” (151). This contradiction however, is in keeping with Haraway’s ideal of a cyborg as a subversive and defiant creature. This subversiveness and defiance will be vitally important in creating the metaphor of the Fluid Cyborg, which willfully rejects some notions of online work, as will be shown in the next section. The Fluid Cyborg Arnold Swarzennegger’s portrayal of the T-800 cyborg in this movie set the mold for cyborgs in the public imagination; however, the T-1000 terminator cyborg that appears in Terminator 2 is the model for my Fluid Cyborg. The T-1000, played by Robert Patrick,31 is made of a “polymimetic alloy[, a] liquid metal” (Cameron and Wisher) that can morph into almost any shape and appearance, including convincingly

29 She briefly discusses the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner and its extensive questioning of the artificial separation between human and machine. 30 See Appendix A for a brief discussion of cyborgs in literature and films. 31“To contrast the two terminators, the actors trained very differently. As usual, Schwarzenegger ‘pumped iron religiously.’… Patrick underwent ‘Zen instructions,’ including meditation and breathing exercises.…. The primary purpose of Zen meditation is to move one beyond an individual sense of self. Like the opening section of the old Kung Fu series where martial arts techniques of a Zen monastery are compared to animal behaviors, Patrick learned to imitate animals.” (Whitlark).

real humans complete with clothing.32 It is this character’s ability to change shape, to adopt new voices, and respond creatively to the environment that informs my conceptualization of the Fluid Cyborg for tutoring. The relationship of the Fluid Cyborg to Burke is made clearer when Burke’s metaphoric use of a hand to represent the Pentad is reconsidered. What struck me about Burke’s metaphors, especially that for the Pentadic Hand, is how they seemed so lifelike but lifeless. The image of Burke tracing a tendon to explicate his common substance of the Pentad seemed to limit Dramatism to a static, unusable past, devoted to the limitations of the body and the irredeemably narrow ideas of the interactions of people. All of this stood in puzzling contrast to Burke’s use of “consubstantiation” as the basis for persuasion. With its religious etymology and inherent boundary crossing, consubstantiation questions everything about metaphoric use of language, pushing it past the idea of “this represents” and into “this can be.” To ask another to be co-substantial, to be of the same substance, places Burke’s conception of language well past ideas of simple transfer of knowledge and into transfers of substance. And yet, there lies the Pentadic Hand. By contrast, the Fluid Cyborg offers a much more useful organizational metaphor. Among its attributes: 1. The Fluid Cyborg allows for a new, more flexible conception of Burke’s categories, demonstrating in a highly visual way how they convert from one form to another, not by following preordained, stiff tendons, but by the amorphous flow of technologically enabled substances. Rather than representing an almost literal disembodiment of a hand severed from communication, the Fluid Cyborg is a whole being, capable of internal re-arrangement, of reconstituting itself around an autonomous central core. Categories more clearly meld into each other, now one form now the other, replicating purposive action more accurately than a human hand or the waves of magma that Burke envisions roiling about (“thrown up”)

32 True to the rule-based nature of science fiction, limitations exist on the seemingly infinitely malleable T- 1000, which cannot make complex machines or guns. After all, some element of “reality” has to be maintained in these movies!

around the molten crust of the earth (a metaphor based on a condition that is as deadly for living tissue as anything created by science fiction). 2. The Fluid Cyborg powerfully represents the frozen moment of recognition of a Pentadic element. Rather than portraying the elements as static digits, the Fluid Cyborg is digital, literally capable of becoming that which it is said to represent. In other words, the Fluid Cyborg can morph into a representation of the Pentadic (or Tetradic) element being referenced, crystallizing the metaphoric into the literal at the moment of being, even dividing into two and representing visually the Pentadic ratios under consideration. 3. The Fluid Cyborg is based on a character, the T-1000, that arises from one of the most influential science fiction movies yet, one that introduced film technologies that altered how audiences experience all movies. Just as synchronous CMC alters human perceptions, so did the T-1000, and so does the Fluid Cyborg. It is intellectual action33 dependent on the technological ability to deliver motion, haunting movie houses and computer screens with fascinating notions of the shapes of things to come. The inherently contradictory nature of the Haraway cyborg allows for the appropriation of the T-1000 character for the Fluid Cyborg metaphor. In Haraway’s acknowledgement that “illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins” there lies the basis for claiming only those aspects of the cyborg which are useful for my argument. In this vein, I hope to subvert the excessively violent nature of the T- 1000 and Terminator 2, and instead focus on the ways that fluidity of embodiment can be useful online. For example, thinking along the lines of the Fluid Cyborg stresses the need to find interfaces that allow for ease of movement and communicative ability. This was the thinking that originally led me to the instant messenger (IM) interface, since I reasoned that with so many users, it must be responding well to the ways that its users wanted to interact online.34 It seemed to be amorphous and changeable, offering hundreds of chatrooms where people could meet and interact. In comparison to MOOs,

33 This is, of course, a Burkean redundancy. 34 For more on the educational value of chatrooms, see Curran.

there were far fewer commands to learn and less sense of the need to accommodate the metaphor of the program. Users meet and talk, with the emphasis being purely on the conversation. This does not mean that the body is left behind, but that it is linguistically represented if desired by the users. The relative lack of other channels meant that tutors and tutees could immediately begin a discussion about the client’s work. Clients offer what contextualization they felt was necessary. Contrasting the metaphor of the Fluid Cyborg stands some of the recent work on MOOs, which I will now examine not to reject but to suggest that the Fluid Cyborg metaphor may be a more useful way to consider working online because its central idea is one of mobility and change, rather than attachment to the rhetoric of online embodiment. A Social Construction MOOvement MOO and MUDs MOOs and MUDs are probably the most common types of synchronous CMC discussed in writing center literature. MUD is an acronym for “multiuser domain” (or dungeon35). MOOs stand for “MUD object-oriented,” a reference to the programming language that underlies this more advance kind of MUD. They are the most commonly cited kinds in Wiring the Writing Center (with email a close second). This may be due to a couple of reasons. One reason may be that the similarity of MOO-based tutorials to postmodernism ideas of fragmented individuals makes them popular for academics. In a eulogy to a recently deceased MOOer, Michael Joyce mixes genres and various forms of postmodern addresses to his reader in an attempt to highlight the splintered, multiple nature of subjectivity on MOOs, even suggesting that virtual presences are transcendental. Joyce uses a metaphor of geography to resituate MOO existences and experiences into a more heavily conceptualized site of the presence/absence of the body, a theme that many other writers MOOers would later take up, some as a rethinking of the mind/body split with undertones of electronic separation. In the transient but constantly globally repeated nature of MOOs, Joyce finds a paradoxical permanence that renders the virtual more like or than the actual. Much like his fiction, Joyce’s work bends genre here

35 The reference to dungeons arises from the original reliance of these programs on the metaphors of the role-playing game “Dungeons and Dragons” (Turkle 7).

in an attempt to demonstrate to the reader how nonlinearity can be positive and life- reflecting. Rhetoric of Online Embodiment MOOs are also popular because some scholars believe that they help create “a rhetorical theory of online embodiment” (Bednarowicz 176). Eva Bednarowicz, who develops this theory through the work of Erving Goffman, posits “face-work” as a way to talk about how tutees and tutors communicate support and respect for each other. Bednarowicz sees such support and respect within the concept of “persona-ability” (176). Person-ability defines those traits that online tutors need to have to be effective. These traits include the need to make tutees feel that they are talking to a person and not a machine (a Turing machine), i.e., a way to dissociate popular notions of mechanical coldness from computer work. “This practice relies on tutor facility in constructing an online discursive persona sensitive to the needs of ‘face-work’ in a ‘faceless’ medium” (ix). The most important way that Bednarowiz sees “face-work” as being carried out online is via the emote command. Bednarowicz argues that emoting “represents physical action [and] allows the tutor to construct communicative involvement, personal attention, and listenership at crucial moments of `visual silence’” (ix).36 The “visual silences” Bednarowicz refers to here are the sometimes-troubling lapses in communication that occur online, lapses that Bednarowicz thinks are best alleviated by emoting. Emotes create textual asides that create a kind of metalanguage in which MOO participants can explain their emotional state (as in “Doug laughs”) or physical state (which is often fantasy-based, as in “Doug floats by the ceiling, watching”). Thus, emoting provides the illusion of a physicality in a virtual space. This makes MOOs better than “mere” chat.37

36 Unfortunately for Bednarowicz, the MOO she uses for her research does not support time-stamping, a process that allows researchers to gauge the exact amount of time between messages, thereby eliminating at least some guess work about why emoting is used. 37 For a discussion of users experiencing “embodiment ” via chatrooms, see Segerstad and Ljungstrand.

A look at the technical aspects of emoting may be helpful here. MOO users typically enter text into a textbox and press the enter key. The text then generally38 appears on all users’ screens, prefixed with the name of the user sending the message. However, when emoting, users first key in a special character (usually a colon) and then a first-person, present-case verb. When the user presses the enter key, his or her (or even its39) name is prefixed to the message as part of the message. The following chart illustrates the difference between how emoting works in a MOO. The equivalent text in a chat is provided for later comparison.

In a MOO: In a chat: John types “say hello” John types, “Hello.” Susan sees “John says hello,” Susan sees “John: Hello”

John types “: smile” John types, “I smile Susan sees “John smiles Susan sees “John: I smile”

John types “: jumps for joy” John types, “I am jumping for joy.” Susan sees “John jumps for joy.” Susan sees “John: I am jumping for joy”

Table 1: MOO versus chat

By representing the physical and emotional states of the users, Bednarowicz argues, emoting makes a MOO seem more like real life (RL in MOO terms). In linguistic (and I would argue semantic) terms, however, the emote command simply presents MOOers in third person and relieves them of having to type their characters’ names. Bednarowicz argues that this creates a sense of environment for users (126-127). She grounds her claims in Kristie Fleckenstein’s “somatic mind” concept: “mind and body as permeable, intertextual territory that is continually made and remade” (Fleckenstein as

38 I say generally because private chats are possible on MOOs. When two users engage in private chats, other users cannot see the conversation. More importantly from a research standpoint, private chats are rarely logged, thereby providing opportunities for users to converse outside of the Panoptican gaze. 39 An especially distracting part of many MOOs is an insistence that users choose one of up to nine different genders as part of the registration process. While this reflects the gaming background of MOOs, many of the tutees to whom I demonstrated a MOO-based tutoring system found this feature silly or problematic.

quoted in Bednarowicz, 89). Fleckenstein, in turn, references Gregory Bateson who argues that blind people consider canes extensions of their bodies, as part of their embodiment. Fleckenstein’s project is to enable (create) a rhetoric of embodiment, to reintroduce the effect of corporality into theory. “We are more than just floating signifiers, constantly creating ourselves anew with each conversation.” While Fleckenstein’s dissent with theorists whose “philosophical perspectives... depend on …frameworks that disregard physical bodies” (281) in an attempt to create a theory and pedagogy attuned to the physical presence of students is persuasive and has appeal for virtual communities, it also carries certain liabilities as a result of its insistence on the physical. Fleckenstein cites the author Nancy Mairs who argues that the “body” of a person in a wheelchair encompasses not only her body, but also her wheelchair and the too-narrow doorway she is struggling to pass through. Here, Fleckenstein seems to be on relatively reasonable experiential grounding. However, while her contention that “[b]ecause a body’s epidermal layer inspires, transpires, and communicates information, we cannot determine where the exact point where flesh begins and ends” (287) is a useful heuristic for considering the ways in which people and machines have become more entwined (287), it goes beyond even Haraway’s cyborg in erasing all boundaries. Fleckenstein conflates permeability with discreteness. Bodies do not have to be, indeed, cannot be, hermetically sealed to be bodies, but this does not mean their boundaries can be said to be endless. As rhetorically useful as it may be to argue that students extend themselves via computers into virtual worlds, the metaphor of embodiment, like all metaphors, has limits. Bednarowicz argues that the persona-able tutor is able to create “through one’s body’s idiom, a supportive impression of responsivity to the student’s talk…. When a tutoring conference takes place online in a faceless, ‘disembodied’ and seemingly expression-less venue, the corporeal and the discursive are collapsed into the monotone of the relentlessly discursive” (99). The answer Bednarowicz describes is the use of the MOO emote command, since it will represent the face of the tutor better to the student. However, Bednarowicz’s reliance on primacy of faux corporality neglects several key issues online, not the least of which is whether clients will want to engage in the ‘play’

offered by emoting. While a sense of face or presence is necessary, the emote function of MOOs is an off-putting way of doing it. Thus, the insistence on online embodiment is the most significant point of departure for this study and the theories of Bednarowicz and Felckenstein. While I agree that the presence of the body must be considered in teaching, and attention must be given to what makes clients comfortable online, trying to re-present the body online with the distractions of MOO conventions is not helpful. By contrast, the Fluid cyborg does not insist on making the virtual body “a supportive impression of responsivity to the student’s talk.” The discussions themselves are always already encoded with this responsivity, as we will see in the tutorials that follow. Bots One final critique of Bednarowicz’s rhetoric of online embodiment may be helpful. Bednarowicz’s interest in the rhetoric of online embodiment takes her in an unexpected direction when she reports on online tutors’ use of Bots,40 MOO subprograms designed to respond to specific textual cues. Usually, a MOO participant must ask a question of a Bot (often one suggested by the text description of the Bot), and the Bot will then respond with a prewritten text relevant (one hopes) to the question it was asked.41 MOO tutorial bots were programmed in Bednarowicz’s study to respond to questions on topic sentences, gerunds, and so on. Given the quasi-interactional nature of Bots, it would seem that grammar issues were the most easily handled by the Bots, due to a matching between grammar and canned answers. However, it also seems strange that a scholar as invested in presenting responsivity, as exemplified by the body, would promote the use of a technology so removed from human interaction. Bots have no body and are nobody, and their use can only undermine a rhetoric of online embodiment. Summary

40 “Bot” is an abbreviation of “robot.” 41 Rebecca de Wind Mattingly, a tutor in Bednarowicz’s study, discusses the use of bots in “Working with Grammar Issues in the Online Tutorial,” and she concludes that “The use of bots, in combination with a transcript, makes grammar issues manageable online, even without the visual clues typically used by instructors in the classroom” (n.p.).

Whereas Bednarowicz argues for an online embodiment via the emote function, I argue that embodiment is always already embedded in text, and that the emote function, while playful, is a distraction to those unfamiliar with the MOO conventions. In following Burke’s concept that our Terministic screens alter how we experience life and Jacob Nielsen’s dictum that computer Interfaces must be kept as clean and easy to navigate as possible (so as to have the maximum number of users), I advocate designs that channel text into the most easy-to-interpret fashion and the most technologically transparent. Even a MOO supporter as avid as Bednarowicz acknowledges that, “MOO tutoring, no matter how persona-able, is a time-consuming and labor-intensive activity that requires hours of preparation time as well as familiarity with the environment” (184, emphasis added). It is this familiarity that most likely restricts MOO usage, since, at least at BSU, few students seem to know how to use a MOO, and fewer seem willing to learn.42 In other words, it is the lack of easy navigability and usage that limits the applicability of the Web. What Jakob Nielsen argues about customers purchasing items on the Web is equally true for tutees using writing center services: “Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer can’t find a product, then he or she will not buy it” (9).” In the end, then, the MOO is a useful interface, but one that carries with it the liability of its gaming background43 and insistence on user immersion into the metaphors of the MOO world.44 Additionally, relatively few people seem to use this kind of interface, at least in proportion to the Internet Messenger systems described in the next chapter. This is why although MOOs were influential in terms of theory for my study, they were not used. Instead, I argue that the rhetoric of online embodiment can be more usefully rethought in terms of the Fluid Cyborg.

42 Other studies have demonstrated the sometimes-disruptive effects of emoting and MOOing; see Shewmake and Lambert. 43 In this vein, consider the common MOO registration requirements, such as downloading and installing the software, choosing a user name and gender (from a list of 9!), creating a character description, etc. 44 Ligorio describes “Euroland,” a combination of synchronous and asynchronous CMC that is a “desktop[- and] internet-based, user-oriented… nonimmersive type of virtual reality” (104, emphasis mine) that might hold promise for the future of MOO-style educational uses, if it indeed relieves some of the burden of MOO interactions described above.

Regrouping Fluid Cyborg Analysis combines the descriptive and explanatory abilities of Modified Dramatism (the Online Tetrad) with the ability of the Fluid Cyborg to change, to show different aspects to different people, while retaining its bodily physicality. The joining of the Fluid Cyborg with the Online Tetrad produces a stronger analysis than the two theories create separately. Fluid Cyborg Analysis allows the critic to find motivation in the Purposes and Acts of Agents as they work through the Interface, in a way that does not present itself with simply the idea of the cyborg. Alternately, the Fluid Cyborg offers pedagogical possibilities that Burke’s Dramatism alone does not offer, since the Fluid Cyborg is always looking to the future to see what it might become, whereas Dramatism looks to the past to see what has been.45 Figure 3 offers a graphical representation of the Fluid Cyborg.

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Burke Pentadic Hand Haraway/T-1000 Cyborg Fluid Cyborg (Hand)

Figure 3: Generation of the Fluid Cyborg

Looking Ahead With the theoretical foundations for this study now made evident in the ideas of Kenneth Burke and Donna Haraway, we can move into the next chapter, “Setting the

45 Burke, as a rhetorical critic (a self-described “word-man”) generally offers little in terms of explicit pedagogy. A thread can be developed from various areas within his work, however. Consider his 1939 rationale for analyzing Hitler’s propaganda: “Let us watch it carefully; and let us watch it, not merely to discover some grounds for prophesying what political move is to follow in Munich, and what move is to follow that move; let us try also to discover what kind of ‘medicine’ this medicine-man has concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America” (191 “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle’”).

Stage II: Context of the Study”, which situates the study at the writing center at Big State University and within the tradition of writing center scholarship. The three chapters that follow analyze a series of tutorials held on commercial instant messengers (IM) via Modified Dramatism with an eye toward developing and applying the metaphor of the Fluid Cyborg. “Avril, Susan, and Seth: Cyborg Mis(sed)Communication” examines two tutorials conducted with the same tutee (Avril) and two tutors (Susan and Seth). “Susan and Misaki: Taking Face-To-Face History Online” examines one pair of participants who met online five times. “Liu and Amy: The Paradox of Tutee Direction via Short Exchanges” examines a pair of participants who met online three times. The final chapter, “Finding A (Cyber)Space For Fluid Cyborgs,” revisits the data chapters via Fluid Cyborg Analysis and suggests further research.

SETTING THE STAGE II: CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

Contextualization is a crucial aspect of research. What Scott Lloyd DeWitt argues about invention is true of any pedagogical endeavor: “If we attempt to isolate invention and its complicated variations from its time in place and history, its perceived cultural value and its role in rhetorical education, we will end with a practice that is vacuous at best” (19). To avoid isolating my analysis, I discuss the setting of the study in terms of the university, the writing center that hosted these tutorials, and the history of the university’s online writing centers, along with some of the more noteworthy publications of the time. Big State University Big State University (BSU) is a large, Midwest, Land-Grant university with a six- campus student population of ca. 57,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. The main campus, on which this study took place, has 48,000 students, 77% of which are undergraduates. The enrollment is split evenly between males (49.6%) and females (50.4%), and predominantly is made up of state residents (78%). About 13% of the 48,000 students on the main campus self-declared as a minority in 2002; see Figure 4. Of this, 7% were African American, 4% were Asian American, and 2% were Hispanic, and American Indians made up less than 0.5% of the total. Additionally, over 4,000 foreign students attended the university. This population diverges from that of the 2000 US Census results; see Figure 5. Of the 281 million respondents for the Census, 75% declared as White, 12% as Hispanic or Latino, 12% as Black or African American, ca. 4% as Asian, and less than 1% as American Indian and Alaska Native.46 However, BSU’s demographics reflect its home state’s population, whose residents claimed the following races in the 2000 US Census: White 85%, Black or African American 11.5%, Hispanic 1.9%, Asian 1.2%, and American Indian and Alaska Native 0.2%; see Figure 6.

46These numbers are only for those responding within a single racial category.

These demographics are important in context of the population that elected to participate in this study, as discussed in the final chapter.

African American Asian 7.3% American 4.1% White Hispanic 86.0% 2.1% American Indians 0.5%

Figure 4: BSU demographics

African American 11.5%

Hispanic 1.9% White 85.2% Asian 1.2% American Indian and Alaska Native 0.2%

Figure 5: BSU home state demographics

Hispanic or Latino 11.5%

African American 11.5%

Asian 3.8% White 72.1% American Indian and Alaska Native 1.0%

Figure 6: 2002 United States census

BSU Writing Center The writing center that housed this program was part of the BSU Writing Research Center, WRC, a research and service center devoted to composition research. The WRC comprises three parts: a writing center with open tutoring for the entire BSU community, a university-focused center with services open to instructors of writing courses at BSU, and a community-focused center with tutoring and instructor aid open to instructors and students at local elementary schools. The WRC arose from the work of a BSU Composition scholar who argued that the kind of work done at the writing center would benefit from not being tied to BSU’s English department. Consequently, the WRC reports to and receives funding directly from the Dean of the College. While this allows the WRC a certain amount of freedom from the uncertainties of English Department budgets and politics, it also leaves the WRC somewhat more vulnerable during budget cyclic crises, as will be discussed later. The BSU writing center is small, especially in relation to the size of BSU. The number of graduate and undergraduate tutors is generally between 10 and 15. Graduate tutors work either 25 or 50% positions, which requires 10 or 20 hours per week when 39

classes are in session. Of this, 8 or 16 hours per week are spent tutoring, with the other times set aside for tutor projects, staff meetings, and correspondence with tutee instructors.47 (Undergraduate tutors work much more variable hours.) They go through a 5-credit undergraduate class focused on tutoring, which may ironically make them more familiar with writing center theory and practice than many of the graduate student tutors. The center has a steady level of client usage, with a generally higher capacity in fall quarter, tapering off to the lowest point during summer quarter. The clientele is roughly a 50/50 mix of undergraduate and graduate students, with a small number of BSU faculty and staff. Students in First-Year English constitute the largest single class of clients who visit the center. The BSU OWL Because my study occurred at a university at which various versions of an OWL had been attempted, I had to consider the successes and failures of previous versions of the BSU Writing Center OWL in designing my study. This knowledge was such an invaluable aid in directing my study that I include here a section on the history of the BSU OWL. Such histories are important for other reasons as well. Because establishing online writing labs is difficult, due to budgetary constraints, institutional inertia, and discomfort with technology, having public models that plainly discuss difficulties and successes is necessary. The history of the BSU OWL demonstrates the deeply felt, but often-unsuccessful path that the BSU OWL followed throughout the tenure of various administrators and tutors. This path also seems representative of the kinds of problems that other writing centers have had or may face in creating online writing centers. However, a few words should be said about how places like BSU arose in general. Historical Overview: Starting Somewhere The conflicted acceptance of computers within writing centers is not surprising, given the tumultuous histories of writing centers themselves. If, as Stephen North remarks in The Making of Knowledge in Composition, “[historical] inquiry has to begin somewhere,” (78) the somewhere to begin with writing centers in the United States is

47 As is the case in many writing centers, tutees can choose to inform their instructor of their trip to the writing center. This correspondence is the responsibility of the tutor.

college classrooms in the late 1800s, where Elizabeth Boquet argues that writing centers48 emerged in the form of writing conference methods. Situated within the classroom, writing methods such as constant, real-time correction of papers by instructors represented the thinking that early intervention by instructors would prevent students from repeating mistakes. By the 1940s, however, writing centers began to move out of the classrooms and started to become sites. As sites, they promoted one-on-one conferencing, “dialogue, even dialectic” (45) methods.49 This is also the era when scientific medical terminology50 became most associated with writing centers (as well as Basic Writing, as both were often associated with remedial students). In this era, writing centers tried to gain authority by associating with psychology of cognitivists (identified with the psychotherapeutic aims of Rogerian nondirective counseling). These gains were lost in the 1950s and 1960s, when the rise of linguistics (along with formalism and objectivist thought), which implied “stable, independent meaning” for texts, argued that classroom-based, rational explanations of writing obviated the need for writing centers (Boquet 49). Writing centers became popular as a cure for the literacy crises51 of the 1970s, a time when the debate over the site/method dichotomy was in full swing. One result of the method side was the “auto-tutorial” that came into vogue, a form of tutoring that isolated tutees in the name of individualized but automated help. These tutorials depended on the relatively new technologies of headsets and audiotapes, thereby making them unfortunate precursors of some aspects of computer use in writing centers.52 Auto- tutorials were seen as cheap, reliable methods for writing centers, much as computers would be in the future. When writing center objections arose, difficulties with auto- tutorials were described as a matter of programs simply needing “improvements” (Boquet

48 Consider the tumultuous development of the terms used to refer to the site of writing centers presented by Peter Carino. 49 In Burkean terms, Boquet is arguing that the site/method dichotomy of writing centers represents the Pentadic ratio of Scene/Agency. 50 Writing centers were, for example, referred to as “writing laboratories” (Carino “Early” 14). 51 These crises were generally the result of open admissions policy that arose during this time. 52 The generally negative results of these “programs” may be partly responsible for the pessimism some writing center scholars display toward technology.

51). Moreover, devices such as the auto-tutorial tended to make the student solely responsible for learning, so that as would be the case later with computers, implicating the technology, allowed institutions to deny culpability. Peer tutors begin to appear in writing center literature in the 1970s, primarily prompted by interest in altering the social context of writing instruction by changing the site. However, this was no doubt aided by the lower cost that peer tutors represented to administrations.53 Peer tutors were also justified by recourse to the psychology of Vygotsky and Piaget,54 the “philosophical rationale[s]” of the time (Boquet 46). The slow shift of power relations between the institution, the tutor, and the tutee, results in “the site of the writing lab carr[ying] with it the politics of the writing lab, ....as the writing labs ... becomes increasingly autonomous, it also becomes increasingly tied to specific students, namely, remedial students” (Boquet 46). She implicates writing centers in a tradition of marginalizing students and argues that the social constructivist ideals claimed by writing centers have not traditionally been carried out in practice. The BSU writing center was formed within this environment in 1978, when the BSU University Provost approved the creation of the “Writing Skills Lab” a name indicative of the presumably skills-based (i.e., surface level correctness) promoted by the lab (“General Timeline”). The main BSU writing center opened in fall quarter 1979, followed by a satellite center in 1980. It seems to have been an immediate success, with its five graduate instructors holding 567 tutorials the first quarter, and 754 and 671 for winter and spring quarters 1980, respectively (“Report”). The 200-260 unique clients seen in each of the 1979-1980 academic quarters suggests that clients typically visited the center multiple times. Although no information is available about how long tutorials were, 19,485 minutes were spent with tutees during tutorials for Fall Quarter 1979, which means that an average of 34 minutes was spent per client, about 30% less time than is currently scheduled for face-to-face tutorials at the main center (“Report”).

53 At the BSU writing center, graduate tutors cost the center roughly $20 per hour, whereas undergraduates cost $7.50 per hour. 54 For more on these researchers, see “Burke as Social Constructivist” earlier in this dissertation.

Almost from its inception, the BSU Writing Skills Lab seems to have ridden a budgetary roller coaster. The Lab was almost abolished in 1984 and took funding cuts of 50% and 15% in 1993 and 2002, respectively (“General Timeline”). However, positions were added in 1991 (five 25% positions) and 1996 (four 25% positions). Along with funding changes, the Center experienced discontinuity of location, moving three times in nine years: 1991, 1995, and 2000. These numbers support Peter Carino’s initial assertion in “A History of Writing Centers” that conflict is the central theme of computers in Writing Centers. He takes Hawisher et al.’s 1996 Computers and the Teaching of Writing as a starting place, summarizing and reconfiguring its chronology with respect to the effect of computers on writing centers. After this, he dismisses his earlier argument for the centrality of conflict for computers in writing centers, both because it is an all-too-common historical theme and because it is too limiting in its ability to show possibilities of commonality and growth. By looking beyond simple conflict, he finds commonality, especially in writing center computer proponents who are self-reflective in their movement toward new computer pedagogies, such as Cynthia Selfe and Stuart Blythe. Authors such as Selfe and Blythe were aided by a wave of technological optimism and innovation in the 1980s. However, little information exists concerning computer use in the 1980s at the BSU writing center, but elsewhere computers were having an impact. The Computers and Writing conference began in 1984, the journal Computers and Composition began in 1983, and with varying degrees of success, some writing centers had been experimenting with email OWLs since about 1987 (Sherwood 217). Computers in writing centers however would not really take off until the 1990s. In the 1990s, using such recently developed software as the early browser Mosaic, clients could hesitantly navigate the newly christened World Wide Web at many writing centers, but CMC was not an integrated part of many writing centers, partly because of the cost of the equipment and partly due to the newness of the technology and the lack of a theoretical background for them (Adam & Hamm 203). Purdue, home of the largest and most popular OWL in the United States, had its OWL in place by the early 1990s (Sherwood 217). Influential scholarly texts such as Gail Hawisher and Paul LeBlanc’s

edited collection Re-imagining Computers and Composition: Teaching and Research in the Virtual Age affirmed the emergence of a computer-dependent era. In composition, Lester Faigley’s 1992 Fragments of Rationality delivered a glowing view of the postmodern possibilities of networked55 synchronous classroom computers. The penultimate chapter describes a case study of a class meeting online to discuss class material. Faigley finds that even students who talk little in class are set free by the much-more anonymous online environment, a finding echoed and debated repeatedly in the years since. One quibble is that his class meets offline more often than online, as a way to “cement ideas of who was who online” (187), a move that removes some of the glow from his report, since a truly anonymous classroom might have more fully tested his postmodern ideas of composition. However, his classroom does model many of the online traits valued by online educators: as freedom of expression, a willingness to take risks, and a playful, active engagement with critical ideas and texts. Faigley claims that “[b]y allowing everyone to ‘talk’ at once, the use of networked computers for teaching writing represents for some teachers the realization of the ‘student-centered’ classroom” (167). Thus, Faigley’s interest in simultaneous discussion privileges not postmodern babble, but a concern for student empowerment, an idea that would seem at home for writing centers. That same year, BSU’s English Department hired Dr. Amy Smith to direct the BSU writing center. Smith brought with her successful writing center experience, but shortly after her arrival at BSU, the previously mentioned 50% drop in funding occurred. Although some funding had been used to buy computers, in Smith’s opinion, they “were not used as much as [tutors] might have used them for student work. There weren’t that many of them and most of the students who came in needed talk more than work at the computer.... So our energy was there, not the equipment.” Here, Smith echoes Stephen North, “the essence of the writing center method, then, is…talking” (75), as well as a

55 It is perhaps a sign of change that the once-ubiquitous adjective “networked” has largely been dropped from computers and writing descriptions, probably because it has become the default and normalized condition.

common concern among writing center scholars (and composition in general) that computers may be helpful but can also detract from the “real work” of writing centers. The only place the Center had a significant investment in computers was the Early English Composition Assessment Program (EECAP), a collaborative effort between BSU and outreach centers at the local Catholic diocese schools (later extended to local public schools). “[W]e wanted to develop a peer counseling program in the schools and to link their computer technology, whatever it was, with our computer technology,” Smith remembered. The Writing Center purchased computers expressly to participate in exchanges with these outreach schools. The program worked with these schools “to get them up and running with some kind of an email service,” mainly because Dr. Smith felt that there were certain kinds of questions that were recurring at the Center that could be dealt with online and not use up as much of the resources of the Center as were involved in answering these questions via the telephone. These questions were often about “grammar and structure,” areas that Dr. Smith felt were well-suited to be handled through OWLs. Dr. Smith’s concern for the amount of resources being used by questions on such topics as surface level correctness and structure (in addition to the problems of drop in, “emergency” requests by tutees who desired proofreading and were unwilling to explore options that required longer, less immediately grade-enhancing activities) is not surprising, given the time and personnel constraints of the Center. The Writing Center was working with an estimated 1200 to 1300 tutees per quarter, and Smith was concerned that the Center not become known as a place where tutees would not be able to get help. In addition, in 1992, “the Center was on a growth spurt,” so pulling busy tutors away from tutees to work on an online project was not desirable (Smith). The lack of personnel, especially those who were familiar with the computer language that made the systems function, complicated the technical difficulties of creating an OWL. Smith “wanted a tech support person there all the time, so that if there were quick solutions to technical problems, they were addressed immediately.” Smith did not want a “Band Aid” fix, but something that diagnosed and treated the root cause of the problem, not simply its surface-level manifestation. This concern is certainly paralleled

by the ethos of most writing centers who strive, as is claimed at BSU’s WRC, “to strengthen [a tutee’s] writing abilities in general as well as address... the specific concerns [a tutee] may have about a current assignment or text.” The desire then is not necessarily to improve a specific piece of writing, but to make a better writer. Smith felt that “[p]edagogically, technology doesn’t worry me,” partly because she also believed “that the writing center is not driven by the technology; the technology enables certain kinds of strategic possibilities.” However, the inconsistent maintenance of it (which Smith decried and worked against) did not enable the Writing Center, mainly because it created situations in which people felt helpless and unable to do their jobs or use services. Such moments left “people hanging because they assume [that when] the technology is down, they can’t do anything” (Smith). This feeling of technological helplessness is especially problematic for online writing centers that adhere to social constructivist philosophies that depend on human interactions. In this case, to rephrase Marshall McLuhan, “The medium prevents the message,” since the medium itself kept messages from being delivered, thereby preventing collaboration. A lack of collaborative capacity was common to many computer technologies available when Smith was the director of the Writing Center, which may have exacerbated her concern with the way “we tend to think of computers being just me and my screen.” This isolationism of the interface can be a powerful force in making people more constrained and anxious when working with computers, especially when it removes contact between people, without providing an adequate substitute. “For me, [online education is] like teaching with TV. We know that didn’t work back in the 50’s and early 60’s. Is it possible for teaching and learning to occur without teachers in this way?” Smith saw “that just like a pencil, a pen, a typewriter ... technology always opens new doors. But I see those as opportunities to think about ourselves as language users and what value gets added by the technological opportunity.” Former graduate assistant coordinators recall little online activity at BSU before 1994. A coordinator from 1992-1993 commented that, “I can’t remember any initiatives into the online environment during my tenure…. We did have computers. And I think we had an email account. It may be that some tutees sent papers to us online and tutors

commented online, but it certainly wasn’t a big feature of our work” (email). Another remembered her tenure as Coordinator from 1990-1992 as “a time when e-mail was just becoming popular--not much going in terms of the Web yet at all. Thus, we didn’t make much use of online support beyond the occasional e-mail to set up an appt. or for a quick follow-up from a student on a f2f tutorial. We did tutor on the computer, but it was mostly word-processing, etc. Kind of hard to believe that in only 12 years things have changed so quickly--almost can’t believe I once lived without the Web.” (email, March 13, 2004) At least one attempt at online tutoring was made during Smith’s tenure, however. The BSU writing center “General Timeline” offers a tantalizingly succinct description of 1994-1995 as the year that saw the “Beginning of the (first) online Writing Center. This folded due to technical problems.” Other than this, nothing else seemed to have happened online at the BSU writing center, even though Rebecca Rickly describes this time as witnessing an “explosion of Online Writing Labs across the country” (n.p.). Online education was a topic of increasing importance and discussion within the Writing Center in general and composition at large as Smith ended her term as Director. How the next director dealt with them would be crucial to the importance of the OWL. Unfortunately, after the departure of Dr. Smith in the spring of 1994 and before the arrival of Dr. Sarah Anderson in the fall of 1995, the Writing Center was without a permanent director. Administration was handled on a rotating basis by three faculty members, with two graduate assistant co-directors administering its daily operation. (Note: such situations have recently been formally opposed by the IWCA in its statement on graduate students; see “Graduate Student Statement”). These students worked on the OWL, but information from this time is not as readily accessible as for other times. Additionally, little was archived during the development of the OWL during this time, a common phenomenon in the development of the OWL. (I have come to believe that lacunae constitute its historical record.) During this time, however, the University Provost convened the BSU Writing Board, a move that would eventually lead to the separation of the writing center from the Department of English. The lack of online activity at the BSU writing center at this time is not surprising, since the literature of the era depicts conflicting successes. Hugh Burns’s 1992 discussion

of one early synchronous meeting offers a faintly pessimistic view. As a participant in a synchronous CMC session between three colleges, Burns experiences the same hallmarks of play and dislocation that Faigley valorizes; however, Burns finds that “Here are three groups who had never talked to one another before. Yet we were being asked to form a ‘discourse community’ in a one-hour broadcast.” (117). For Burns, creation of useful CMC communities takes time, more time, in fact, than meeting face to face. While CMCs may lessen travel time and open up new opportunities for education and research, these opportunities come with costs in communicative ability and money. Computers do not necessarily (or perhaps even likely) speed human interactions; they enable them or make them more geographically convenient. Therefore, the extra time that online tutorials take has to be considered in context of how long coming to understand other people and situations can take offline: All writing centers engage in some kind of training, even for traditional tutorials, because their administrators recognize that tutors must learn how to do their jobs. And all of this training takes time. So considering the many years that people have to come up to speed with other technologies (speaking, writing, driving, etc.), it is perhaps surprising that people come up to speed as easily and as quickly as they do. Even while recognizing the time and cost issues involved in adopting new technologies, Burns goes beyond these concerns in the end, ending with a familiar rhetorical gambit advocating the exploration of new technology because educators should always be on the lookout for new ways to improve their effectiveness. Eric Crump makes analogous claims in his 1994 dialogue with Michael Spooner in the Writing Lab Newsletter. In a two-column, point-counterpoint style reminiscent of hypertext and CMC nonlinearity, these authors take opposing views on the potential of computer and writing. Spooner argues against online tutoring, basing his objections on “an instinct I have” (7). He describes himself as a professional editor who finds that “I’m most comfortable with [the editing processes] on paper or online, not face to face,” a strange admission from a person arguing for face-to-face tutoring. He values instead “a student-centered, non-directive, response-oriented, conference-style

dynamic” that he calls a “Rogerian presence”56 and follows this up with his main claim that “the time-displaced, or asynchronous, nature of the interaction on line or on paper simply cannot accommodate the nuance of eye-contact, gesture, or thoughtful silence that are so deeply a part of the discourse in a face-to-face writing conference” (7). Crump’s response is to argue that the future of writing centers is inextricably entwined with computers and that writing centers need to learn how best to use these technologies or risk becoming obsolete: “what we’re headed for ...is a world in which writing will tend to take place on computer networks rather than in print” (6). Crump also argues that people of his generation and earlier (including, presumably, Spooner) were not brought up with technology and therefore “most of us just don’t quite get it when it comes to living, working, and writing online” (author’s italics, 8). This line has anthropological ties because it closely resembles Margaret Mead’s concept of the prefigurative generation, one in which the younger generations have to teach the older ones. From behind their terministic screens, these writers deliver arguments with merit, although neither is wholly satisfying. Spooner’s inconsistencies and preference for non-face-to-face tutorials seem to argue “Do as I say; not as I do.” Crump’s position within writing centers lends his an authority that Spooner’s outsider position lacks, but his arguments approach the boosterism that can circumvent the necessary kinds of thoughtful progression that the field needs. His final comment illustrates this fact well: [Spooner is] right that OWLs using current computer network technology cannot quite replicate the kind of tutor-student relationship that flourishes (if we’re doing things right) in the face-to-face writing center environment. And I embrace them anyway, as much for the possibilities they suggest as for the performance they provide” (8).

Crump’s optimistic argument is, then, that CMC will be better in the future, that the positivistic march of technology will continue unabated until computers will allow a new possibility whose performance matches (outstrips?) face-to-face tutorials. Even as I am persuaded by Crump at this moment, his problematic terminology betrays the filtering of

56 It is perhaps instructive that Spooner allies himself with the dominant mode of writing center discourse of the 1940s.

his terministic screen. He opens his argument with this simile: “New technologies are like mud wrestlers; they are tricky things to grapple with” (6). While the imagery evokes the difficulty and excitement of technology, his punning conflation of mud and MUD (multiuser domains, the synchronous software he favors) equates technology with a “sport” of marginal respectability and unfortunate sexist overtones.57 His subtle pun at the beginning of his argument serves to clue the technologically informed in on his game, but it also is clear that Crump equates technology with progress and increased potential, to the point of making technology a God-term. For Crump, technology connotes goodness in all situations. Crump’s enthusiasm here reflects a lack of critical detachment, the kind that will be called for by later scholars. Finally, his optimism assigns the difficult task of working with still-emergent technology, for some undetermined amount of time, to academics who may not be interested or qualified to do this. An early call for more critical engagement came a year later from Muriel Harris and Michael Pemberton, who attempted to bring organization to the field of online writing by offering a “Taxonomy of Options and Issues” in 1995. They began by arguing that “attempting only to replicate familiar face-to-face tutorial settings in an electronic, text-oriented environment can lead to frustration and to defeat as OWL planners find themselves unable to simulate all characteristics of effective tutorials” (145). They divide online writing labs along the familiar interactive/reactive and time-displaced/synchronous axes. As Director of the Writing Lab at Purdue University, Harris had established a reactive resource with hundreds of handouts, as well as an email tutorial system, but “[n]either Illinois or Purdue has, as yet, established an online chat system,” (147) perhaps demonstrating the authors’ preferences for asynchronous systems. Their descriptions of automated file retrieval and gophers are dated, but their calls for critical investigations of World Wide Web pages, user access, and security problems remain areas of concern for writing centers. Although the authors point out the possible difficulties of synchronous online tutorials, they fail to acknowledge that many of the problems they identify with

57 A few years later, Crump authors “At Home in the MUD, Writing Centers Learn to Wallow,” again displaying his technological Terministic screen via wordplay.

synchronous systems also may occur with asynchronous or even off line systems. In identifying that students may have the transcripts of synchronous conferences available after the tutorial, Harris and Pemberton worry that tutees “might be tempted to appropriate tutors’ words as their own” (154). However, they do not acknowledge that similar fates potentially await any online text, including the resources that both Purdue and Illinois Universities have posted on the Web. My intention is not to fuel debate over which online tutorials are less susceptible to misappropriate, but to suggest that possible corruption can occur to any text, if the author is so inclined. Perhaps their most sustainable objection to synchronous tutoring is their concern for what it does to the philosophy of the writing center: “Online interaction is also problematic in that it has the potential—if not approached thoughtfully—to move tutoring away from collaboration and to take the characteristics of the more familiar response in the margins of the paper” (158). This is certainly a potential hazard of online tutoring, but it is not insurmountable, if scholars take the time to lay out their philosophical concerns in detail.58 In asking for a “thoughtful” approach, the Harris and Pemberton anticipate Cynthia Selfe’s call for compositionists to “Pay Attention” to technology, but they neglect to offer specifics on what this thoughtfulness should entail. Instead, they move into the conclusion of the article, thereby avoid discussion or speculation of the ways that online tutoring could carry out the admittedly tumultuous philosophies and epistemological concerns of writing centers. In 1995, when Dr. Sarah Anderson assumed the directorship of the Writing Center, thoughtful consideration of the impact of online tutoring was imperative, since the World Wide Web had become a pervasive pedagogical presence. The field of computers and composition had matured enough to warrant its own history, Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History,59 and

58 Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch’s 2003 CCCC presentation offered a compelling defense of online tutoring. 59 Just as Spooner and Crump experiment with text display, so do the authors of Computers and the Teaching of Writing, who use extensive sidebars on each page to provide a multitude of voices and opinions. These sidebars are more than academics experimenting with typesetting options; they are first responses to significant changes in text use and concepts of authorship, changes brought about by technologies such as MOOs, MUDs, and hypertext.

that spring brought the first issue of the online journal Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments. Discussion of online writing pedagogy was soaring. The BSU OWL, however, was not. It remained grounded because, as Dr. Anderson put it, “we kind of inherited the OWL. We didn’t know what we had inherited. It was always something the graduate students would go off and work on.” Perhaps as a result of the graduate student association, the project did not amass much academic capital, and the OWL remained sporadically in use. Despite early attempts to pilot projects with email OWLs, tutees had not embraced the idea of discussing their papers with online tutors. This was especially disappointing to Anderson, who saw the OWL as a way to reach a new audience, since, “We came to understand that there were people we could not serve face to face” (Anderson). This audience comprised three main groups: “people with disabilities, people who were night students, [and]… people who were hearing-impaired.” This Director wanted to make the services of the Center as widely available as possible and hoped that new technologies might allow the Center to serve the entire “university community in very broad way. I never thought it was just students.” The irony of the OWL was that while technologies were being used to make the OWL more accessible, the very newness of these technologies (email, the Internet, Java- capable browsers, etc.) may have prevented some tutees from interacting with the OWL. The mechanism of the OWL might be partly to blame, although the idea was simple: “People could ask us specific questions, but they couldn’t send us their paper and say, ‘Look at my paper and tell me what the problems are’” (Anderson). Partly, this was a technological hurdle. The emergence of platform-independent programming languages such as Java script would eventually make interactive online communications easier, but Web surfers might not always have the appropriate technology to use them, since many of them were client-side dependent.60 Thus if clients were unfamiliar with the emergent email programs or had a browser that did not support the main features on the OWL webpage (such as the ability to fill out and send online forms), then their emails might

60 Client-side dependent programming requires that the client’s computer have installed specific software in order to interact properly with other computers (generally servers). By contrast, server-side programming relies on the server hosting the program to generate code usable by client computers.

show up in pieces or not at all at the Writing Center. Such fragmentary or missing email cost the Writing Center time and clients. If few tutees were comfortable with using the technology, fewer knew how to extract meaningful information from the system even when they could use it. With the “no editing” policy of the Writing Center and the much slower exchange speed typical of email communication, the tutee “had to have specific kinds of questions” (Anderson), as well as have the ability to provide a tutor with enough information so that she could respond in an informed manner to the writing problem.61 Lack of personnel again hindered the development of the OWL, although in an unusual way. As Anderson explained, “if a portion of those people [contacted by small- scale OWL publicity drives], even 15%, started using an online service, at that time, I don’t think we would have had enough people to handle it.” This was a reasonable apprehension. Consider the situation encountered a few years earlier at the University of Michigan: We were hesitant to send out a full-force advertising campaign, since we had a relatively small tutoring force; we didn’t know what to expect. Even without advertisement, however, we still did almost a third of our business online during the first semester. (Rickly, “Locating the Writing Center in the Aviary” n.p.) However, while the lack of tutors to staff the OWL was a constant worry at the Writing Center, this perceived danger never remotely became a problem. Ironically, this fear kept the administration doing small-scale piloting, and perhaps as a result, the pool of students was too small for the OWL to receive enough traffic to be an efficient use of tutoring time. It seems likely that far less than even Anderson’s 15% felt comfortable using the service, since she reports that the OWL had very few hits while she was the Director. Exact numbers were not kept, but too few people attempted to use the OWL to allow it the critical mass to be self-perpetuating. Anderson felt that “there were actually clients with whom we didn’t do a very good job,” but the identification of how an OWL could help these people was

61 This system of relying on the technical ability of tutees mirrors the client-side programming common at this time. Both systems could only function if the client (user or the user’s computer) were previously prepared for the session. This could mean two ways: technically, such as with previously downloaded and installed software, or personally, such as if a tutee knew how to ask the right questions of a tutor.

speculative. A lack of focus with the OWL may have led to a sense among the staff that the audience of the OWL was somewhat undefined. This feeling might have been alleviated if a formal needs analysis had been done to determine whether the OWL was even desired or viable, or as Elizabeth Hoger and Marcia Mascolini express it in their “Identifying and Analyzing Audience Need for an Online Writing Lab,” published in 1995, “is the institutional environment (the politics-money nexus) open to an OWL?” (n.p.). However, such studies can be costly in time and effort and may not seem worthwhile for small projects such as the BSU OWL. A final problem may have been the fear of the unknown on the part of the tutors. Tutoring online is a different experience than a face-to-face conference. Without paralinguistic cues (such as facial expression, tone of voice, and even posture), the tutor faced with a quietly humming monitor may feel that there is no one to talk to in response to a piece of writing, whether it is a text email, an attached word-processing document, or even a webpage. (For more on the power of paralinguistic communication in writing center tutorials, see Brooks.) As Anderson remembered, “I think there were people who didn’t feel comfortable with it because they didn’t really know how to respond to a text with no person there, but they did feel much more comfortable with face to face.” This problem was partially alleviated by staffing the OWL only with tutors who volunteered for the position. Allowing tutors the freedom to choose which tutoring method they preferred no doubt leads to tutors who are comfortable online, but it may also result in online tutors who are so accustomed to technology that they do not appreciate the conceptual difficulties clients may face going online. In his 1997 Writing Center Journal article, Stuart Blythe categorizes such a view of technology as an instrumental view of technology, one that sees technology as neutral and places the morality of use with humans. Blythe identifies two other views of technology: substantive and critical. The substantive view sees technology as arising out of value-laden human decisions and as having a formative power on humans. The critical theory of technology acknowledges the social impact of computers and works to contextualize technology and make it more democratic. Blythe advocates this final position because it empowers students and

because it is a synthesis of the intractable instrumental/substantive dichotomy. Blythe goes beyond simply asking for more theorizing, however, and he calls for compositionists to become more involved in the production of software, since this is where many pedagogically important decisions are made. By taking control or at least having a voice in the production of software, writing centers can proactively shape technology to support their pedagogical ideals. If writing centers don’t do this, they risk allowing already- existent forms of technology to reinvent centers in their own image. Although Blythe’s views on the influence of technology approach an Ongian style claim that computers restructure consciousness, he stops short of doing this. Instead, he advocates critical rethinking of computers and reapplications of previous ones as when he argues that all writing can be seen as taking place in a kind of virtual reality that parallels the imaginary (“invoked”) audience that Lunsford and Ede discuss. Blythe’s call for a critical theory of writing center computer use has as much to do with how the use of technology will affect tutors and tutees as it does with what perceptions of writing centers this will engender. In asking how writing centers want to identify themselves in relation to computers, Blythe prompts writing centers to become active forces in carrying out their social constructivist philosophies. Calls like Blythe’s for writing centers to become more responsive to technology were answered by texts that began to emerge in the mid- and late-1990s that rethought the use of text on the page, for example, Mike Palmquist et al.’s Transitions: Teaching Writing in Computer-Supported and Traditional Classrooms. In his preface to 1998’s Wiring the Writing Center, “Straddling the Electronic Fence,” Eric Hobson maintains a carefully balanced assessment of computers and their possibilities in writing centers before remarking at the end that he “strongly supports the efforts that are underway in the writing center community to explore what options await them in the virtual frontier of education” (xxv). While Hobson does his best to remain committed to relative academic neutrality, his closing comments display both his affinities as an educator and a problematic trend within computers and composition. In referring to the texts within Wiring the Writing Center as “the virtual frontier of education,” Hobson replicates Mina Shaughnessey’s 1979 metaphoric categorization of another emergent field, Basic Writing, as a new frontier for composition pedagogy. In

1991, in the Journal of Basic Writing, MinZhan Lu argued that the use of such metaphors led Shaughnessey to commit linguistic imperialism by having an essentialist view of language. By this, Lu interprets Shaughnessy as seeing meaning as a “kind of essence that a writer carries in his mind prior to writing” (59). This essence is not affected by the codes that are used to write it, thereby meaning that thought precedes speech. Lu argues instead that speech and writing affect thoughts, that thinking occurs through language, not before it. This reconceptualization of language into an activity mediated by various factors is an important concern for writing pedagogy. It asks that instructors not assume that writers are merely trying to express what they already have in mind, but that writers are simultaneously trying to create, express, and understand what they are writing, a trio of acts much more complicated than the simple self-dictation of thoughts onto paper. By categorizing the effect of computers on writing as a new frontier, Hobson risks being vulnerable to the same kinds of charges that Lu levels against Shaughnessey. Epistemological uses of computers in writing have been less notable in this subfield than pragmatic how-to-manuals. In this vein, such texts as 1998’s High-Wired: On the Design, Use, and Theory of Educational MOOs and Transitions: Teaching Writing in Computer-Supported and Traditional Classrooms as well as 2000’s Taking Flight with OWLs: Examining Electronic Writing Center Work and MOOniversity: A Student’s Guide to Online Learning Environments are structured around technological affordances (such as which features of which software program are most useful and how to implement them) instead of guided by how technologies can support composition pedagogy. There is great value to learning such technical background, but an insistence on viewing technology through the lens of how it operates instead of what it might mean for pedagogy may undermine computer and writing identities. In the case of Taking Flight, a further complication is the paradox that by publishing traditionally marginalized authors (i.e., graduate students), it reaffirms the academically emergent status of the subfield, thereby undermining the same people it seeks to support. However, this may simply be an affirmation of Eric Crump’s claim that the (presumably) younger generation understands technological culture better.

Two of the most prolific authors within computers and writing, Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, offered in 1998’s “Reflections on Computers and Composition Studies at the Century’s End” an argument against simplistic research that takes the presence of a computer as a single variable. Such research fails to contextualize the impact of computers in writing and as such is prone to contradictory findings. Thus, research on whether computers lead to improvements in the quality of writing is not useful, since such conclusions cannot be applied to real-world situations. These authors find parallel flaws in other areas of computer-mediated communication such as research on word processing (too frequently acontextual), electronic networks (usefully cross-disciplinary, but plagued by its ties to English departments), hypertext (damaged by insistence on nonlinearity), and the WWW (not egalitarian but also not exclusionary). Overall, Hawisher and Selfe argue for more research. In the same way that changes were occurring in the field of writing centers, so was it happening at the BSU writing center. In 1997, the formal proposal to create the WRC was approved by the College of Humanities, and work began to integrate the writing center with its two other units. In 1999, the BSU Board of Trustees made the WRC an official, autonomous unit in the College of Humanities. That same year, Dr. Anderson left the BSU writing center. When she left, the OWL was still being piloted to small groups of students. The task of refining the OWL and finding a larger audience for it would be left to the next Director. Dr. Barbara Jackson became the Director of the Writing Center in the summer of 1999 and left after the fall of 2001. The Writing Center OWL was carried over from Dr. Anderson’s directorship mainly by Tom Wilson, a graduate student Assistant Coordinator of the Writing Center (see below). Jackson, however, welcomed the opportunity to work with it because, as she put it: “everything I know about access technologies ...makes me more attuned to the technology, to wanting to at least give the technology a try.” Jackson saw a possible use of computers in different terms from previous Directors, envisioning them as useful offline as online. Jackson interpreted the physical arrangement of offline computer tutoring as beneficial, since the tutor is usually forced to take a hands-off, nondirective position, often sitting beside or behind a tutee at a computer. This

arrangement might help alleviate the well-known problem of tutees yielding ownership of their papers: giving tutors a pen and paper and sitting back to await a corrected draft. Unfortunately, such concerns were not pursued much at the BSU OWL, which continued to be structured around emails generated from the Writing Center’s website. A large portion of these mails were of the “last ditch, desperation, midnight hour” variety (Jackson). In addition, if the form fields on the OWL website did not work or were not completed by tutees, tutors would receive email submissions that had no context. This created two common and related problems for tutors: they felt unable to respond to a text whose purpose might not have been clear and they felt that “you’re just going to edit it [if] you don’t have a lot of context” (Jackson). Jackson believed that “as a field [composition didn’t] have strategies yet for how to deal with this.” Jackson considered the email OWL to reflect socially conscious pedagogy: “we thought it would be a great way to democratize, to increase our accessibility.” Like Anderson, Jackson hoped to reach students who might not be able to go to the Center during its usual hours of operation, such as students with disabilities or those who commuted to BSU. But even while hoping that a different set of students would be served by the OWL, Jackson’s OWL team had difficulties with off-campus students whose browsers were incompatible with the Center’s webpage. As she explained, “there’s the irony: since those are the students most likely to use it and need it.” Technical problems like these had other implications for Jackson, who believed that institutionalized pedagogical beliefs also played a part in keeping the OWL from being a consistently useful part of the Writing Center: The technical problem actually became a front for the philosophical objections in that it’s really easy to say that there’s not enough tech support and the OWL goes down ...in part because of philosophical objections and that is what writing center work has always been about: this one-to-one, face-to-face interaction. On a surprisingly hopeful note, when the email OWL did get used, it was an occasion for social interaction at the Center. Jackson: “Much more than other kinds of tutoring, when we got a couple of hits, it immediately became a discussion with four or five people.” Such interactivity, while no doubt partly a function of the novelty of the exchange,

pointed to some of the best ways that computer-mediated tutoring could form a community. Moreover, it helps to repudiate the supposed tendency of computers to introduce isolation. Dave Healy addresses such concerns in “From Place to Space: Perceptual and Administrative Issues in the Online Writing Center,” concluding that, “Online consulting constitutes both a threat to and an opportunity for work-place community” (187). However, because of the difficulties presented by the email OWL, Jackson also considered synchronous tutoring, although again, the (erroneous62) perception of the emergent status of this technology kept it from being adopted.63 In addition, new technologies were seen to bring new problems because tutors might “get trained in a MOO and shown how to move around, but that doesn’t mean that the student will know how.” Along with concern over the technical expertise of tutees, Jackson also worried about the potential for synchronous tutoring to overburden hearing-impaired tutees, since tutors’ ease with text might result in a speed with reading and writing that could overwhelm hearing-impaired tutees. However, the synchronous OWL did not take flight under Jackson’s leadership. The alternation of Directors no doubt caused difficulty for the BSU OWL. One person who was a constant at the center during the time of these changes was Tom Wilson, an Assistant Coordinator of the BSU Writing Center. Wilson had more detailed and specific recollections of the OWL then those of the Directors, probably as a result of his closer involvement with the technical aspects of the OWL and because it was a project in which he was especially interested. For example, he discussed the delays and difficulties the OWL team had in simply obtaining a non-person-based email address for the OWL from the BSU IT department. “We had to get separate passwords, separate accounts; basically we ended up with separate disks” (Wilson). In addition, “through

62 Synchronous communications, ironically, have been available in various forms for a surprisingly long time. In addition, W.S. Boothby completed a dissertation titled “The Influence of Computer-Mediated Writing Conferences on Revision: Case Studies of College Students” in 1988, so the technology and reality these conferences were well established at this time. 63 Even as late as 2002, Composition articles proclaimed the newness of online tutoring (e.g., “Interfacing Email Tutoring: Shaping an Emergent Literate Practice.”)

some quirk in the way it [the OWL account] got set up, our replies to students were sent from our own personal accounts.”64 Of course, this caused some confusion among the tutees because they were receiving replies from individual people and not from the OWL address to which they had sent their questions. Occasionally, tutees would respond to the individual tutor’s account and at other times to the OWL address. Since there were three or four tutors checking the OWL account on a dedicated computer in the Writing Center and because tutees sometimes forgot to indicate that they were already working with a specific tutor, tutees who responded to the OWL account might be contacted by several different tutors. This increased the already pronounced discontinuity of email correspondence. In addition, “there was always some uncertainty about who answered which query” (Wilson). Although a log was kept of all correspondence to lessen such problems, it was attempt “to combine ... high technology with very low technology and it wasn’t working very well” (Wilson). The summer of 1999 was a time of much effort being put into the OWL. Wilson and other graduate students worked “fairly intensively” on the OWL, refining and simplifying65 the email format. Basically, the email OWL comprised two sections: a grammar OWL (“Gram-o-gram”) and a tutor OWL (“Ask-a-tutor”). The intent was to separate “easy-to-answer” grammar or surface-level error questions from those requiring more extensive tutor involvement. However, this division may have caused difficulties for online tutees who might not have known where to send a question or why this difference existed. That issue aside, although the grammar OWL was successful in the sense that the questions directed to it were often focused and easily answered online, queries to the tutor OWL were more problematic, often falling into some familiar areas of difficulty. “For the email format, for a lot of us,” said Wilson, “it did feel like copy editing, since the only way we could really respond was to insert comments or even corrections and then send it back to that person and wait for a reply and a response to our responses.”

64 This would leave tutors vulnerable to being emailed by tutees after the tutorial, thereby introducing questions of privacy and off-hours tutoring responsibility. 65 The development of the BSU OWL contains many episodes of “refining and simplifying,” including its most recent iteration under my administration with the synchronous OWL.

Besides the difficulty this comment highlights for email OWLs, it also points to an often overlooked aspect of the use of new technologies: the technology must be rewarding for not only the end users but also for those administering it. In this case, the lack of feedback to tutors disheartened some of them because they felt that their work was disappearing, unappreciated into the void of e-space. Several attempts were made to increase traffic on the OWL and make it a more rewarding experience for tutees and tutors. In the summer of 1999, Wilson’s group promoted the OWL in various BSU main-campus writing-intensive classes: “Women’s Studies, art, psychology, some in the College of Agriculture, some in the College of Education.” Unfortunately, the usage of the OWL that quarter did not reflect the effort put into it. After a disappointing summer response, the backers of the OWL “did not go out to classes [in the fall of 1999], which was probably a mistake.” Instead, they chose to advertise it in-house, with flyers displayed on the front desk of the Writing Center. This limited form of promotion was at least partially a result of a reliance on the Writing Center’s web presence, which by that fall was gaining in visibility and contained the primary link to the OWL. Another important reason that less promotion of the OWL occurred in the fall of 1999 was that the Writing Center moved across campus to a new suite of offices in a different building. The disruptive impact of this move no doubt made maintenance of the OWL very difficult, and it should not be overlooked as another reason for the virtual ghost town that the OWL had become. Little improvement in usage occurred in the fall of 1999 or the winter quarter of 2000: “maybe we cracked double digits” (Wilson). By then, the mandatory one hour per week that tutors had been assigned to the OWL had become known as unproductive time, and so tutors were no longer assigned to the OWL in the 2000 Spring Quarter. Instead, a core group of three to four tutors volunteered to keep an informal eye on the OWL, checking it occasionally, only to see either no email or spam. However, something new was in the air: “by that time, we’d heard about MOO and synchronous chat and we started thinking, ‘Well, geez, this might be the way to go; this might be even easier.’ So in a sense ...we were like a kid who gets one new toy, plays with it until it gets broken,

and then they get distracted by the next new toy and they drop the broken one without ever really cleaning up after themselves” (Wilson). This “new toy” was the BSU Departmental MOO, an educational, online environment in which members of the BSU community could engage in real-time chat and travel through a graphically enhanced but mainly textual environment. The BSU English Department MOO was the brainchild of a technically minded assistant English professor who solicited donations to buy a server. The professor left soon after the server was purchased, thereby depriving the MOO of its main supporter and technological expert.66 So while the Writing Center’s donation allowed it to have space on the server, no one at the Center had the technological ability to administer it. Wilson’s sense that MOOs were trend of the future is borne out by literature at the time, but many people were still using email for tutoring. In 2000, writing from within Muriel Harris’s writing center at Purdue, Justin Jackson argued that “the online tutorial, though a seemingly antithetical medium for its purpose, can in fact appropriate many of the same gestures f2f tutorials employ when engaging writers” (n.p.). While this may seem to contradict Harris’s earlier claim that “attempting only to replicate familiar face- to-face tutorial settings in an electronic, text-oriented environment can lead to frustration and to defeat,” Jackson goes to some pains to demonstrate how the asynchronous online tutorials he conducts are not simply approximations of traditional face-to-face tutorials. He uses the Erving Goffman term “face” to indicate ways that tutors have a presence online, generally by use of metacognitive, Socratic questions that ask tutees to engage in “writer-centered self-questioning” (n.p.). These strategies respond to the desire for socially constructed knowledge that underlies most recent writing center writing,or as Jackson puts it, “The writer-centered tutorial has nothing to fear in cyberspace” (n.p.). Pre-study Attempts MOOing in the Wind My personal history with the BSU OWL began in 2000, when I became a graduate Assistant Coordinator following Tom Wilson’s term. I was familiar with the

66 The loss of this professor is one of the many times when the BSU Departmental MOO encountered difficulties due to personnel changes.

difficulties experienced with the online tutorial systems, and I knew that making the MOO OWL work, even with space on a functioning MOO, would be difficult. In the summer of 2002, influenced by the technological boosterism of MOO proponents such as Lester Faigley, I began experimenting with the BSU MOO. I sent email to writing instructors outlining my interest in trying online tutoring. Only two instructors sent responses inviting me to give presentations in their classes. During these presentations, I took students onto the MOO, passed out a three-step handout optimistically labeled “Going Online with the Writing Center MOO Is as Easy as 1-2-3,” and sat back to wait for the stampede of students. Unfortunately, another western metaphor better categorized student use of the MOO: a ghost town. The summer ended with not one online tutorial. The instructors of the classes I had visited were as perplexed as I was as to why their students had not gone online. One suggested that students had been worried about the privacy of the session, perhaps fearing that others could monitor their sessions (thereby illustrating a common fear of technological invasion of privacy). In my presentations, I had not made clear that other people could be blocked from entering an in-progress MOO session. Somewhat ironically, the fear of invasion of privacy was rendered moot because, in the absence of any BSU MOO users, there was no one whose privacy could be invaded. I had anticipated reluctance among novice users and tried to compensate for the admittedly difficult process of going online by making the process appear technologically simple, structuring it around the idea that “Going Online for a Tutorial is as Easy as 1-2- 3,” as one handout I designed put it. However, the MOO structure in itself created any number of technological barriers for students, starting with the need to download a little- known client program called Encore MOO.67 Although Encore MOO is free, the need to download it, as well as to learn obscure MOO commands, may have been central to the lack of use of the interface.68 The MOO commands that users needed to learn were command-line options such as “walk”, etc. Their intended purpose was to make the MOO

67 This client-side download looks backward to the earlier investments of the writing center in tutee- centered responsibility for technical ability. 68 Currently, the lack of use, as well as technical problems, has led to the BSU MOO being taken offline, most likely permanently.

environment emulate as closely as possible the real-life environment of BSU. As such, users entered the BSU MOO in the geographic center of campus. From there, users had to input commands to “walk” to the building that houses the BSU Writing Center, take an elevator to the fourth floor, and walk through a hall to get to the room within the MOO that belonged to the Writing Center. (Note: due to server permissions, the builders of the Writing Center OWL on the BSU MOO were obligated to create the room in this position, instead of a location closer to the entry of the MOO. However, it seems unlikely that moving the Writing Center room closer to the MOO entrance would have made much difference in usage.) In an effort to make access as easy as possible for MOO novices, I included directions on how use the MOO “teleport” command in the “1-2-3” handout. This command allows MOO users to move instantly from one location to another in the MOO. This may have had the unfortunate result of making the process seem even more technologically uninviting to users, since the user instructions changed from a series of “walk” directions to “For your first command, type in the following: @move to #990.” Such command line prompts may also have been difficult for MOO novices to interpret, and they certainly lack the relative intuitiveness of more advanced interfaces. Advances in interfaces, such as the introduction of the graphical user interface (GUIs69), have made MOOs more user-friendly, but their continued reliance on text interaction still creates difficulties for MOO users. The lack of interest in MOOs led the BSU writing center to discontinue offering the service after two quarters. It would be roughly a year before the BSU writing center would begin offering online tutorials again. This time, however, they would be offered under the auspices of my dissertation study and on a wholly different interface, IMs. I explored one more avenue before turning to IMs, however. Caught in a Sticky WebCT After my exploration of the BSU Departmental MOO, I went searching for a better interface. For a while, I thought that I had found it within the BSU community.

69 Note: GUIs have been the backbone of the Microsoft Windows operating system since it stole the idea from Apple computers in the 1980s.

Prior to the purchase of the BSU Departmental MOO server, BSU entered into an exclusive contract with a large classroom technology company whose product, WebCT, was intended to become the primary interface for classrooms that were either technology enabled or those whose instructors or course work were especially technologically inclined. Examples of these courses included first- and second-year composition classes held in computer classrooms and online courses. Because of the investment that BSU had made in this software, requests to purchase or use new software at BSU were commonly greeted with the imperative, “Use WebCT.” This move toward standardization carries a certain amount of value, even a kind of Burkean awareness, since it acknowledges that the Interface is a vitally important component in academic software success. However, it unfolds with a circular logic: Step 1. You are forced to use one standard application. Step 2. You will then know how to use that application. Step 3. You will now want to use it. Step 4. Return to Step 1. A related benefit was that since many students would be familiar with the WebCT interface and be able to function well on it because they would have used it in classes, novel applications of online technologies could be activated from within the WebCT suite and would benefit from this prior knowledge. Unfortunately, this assumed three conditions: One, students (and instructors) had undergone sufficient instruction on the interface so that they could navigate it easily. Two, many students would already be signed up with WebCT Suite (which was not integrated with the BSU’s Registrar’s office or student username system). Three, WebCT contained functions whose ease of use would promote novel applications of the suite. None of these conditions were universally true. For the first condition, many writing center clients lacked training on WebCT. Many with training had used it only in passing or with difficulty in a class. For the second, clients who were willing to try to use WebCT but had not had it in a class had to be manually added to its database of permissible users (a database that only included students who had taken classes using it, thereby excluding faculty and staff writing center clients). For every tutorial involving a student who was not in the WebCT database, staff at the center would have to request that the student be added to the WebCT database manually and be sent a temporary

password for the WebCT system.70 Finally, for the third, while WebCT did include a synchronous text-exchange space and a rather nice whiteboard71 option, the important file-transfer option was so difficult to use that after a good deal of time failing to use it successfully, I abandoned WebCT. Interestingly, the BSU WebCT representatives later agreed that their system was inappropriate for my application and suggested that I try a commercial Internet Messenger, an idea I had been contemplating for a while. My experiences with the BSU MOO and WebCT convinced me that clients would only use an interface that did not require a significant investment in learning commands or appeared to lack privacy. By the time I began my study, Internet messengers were very common and private, and therefore, they represented a new, viable way to conduct tutorials. Project Beginnings A Mess of Messengers In the winter of 2003, after receiving an exemption from the Institutional Review Board at BSU, I began to advertise my online writing project exclusively at the BSU writing center. I did this because I wanted only people who had been to the writing center and had experienced a face-to-face tutorial to be involved with the online project. Experienced tutees, I thought, would understand the tutorial process better and be more likely to be active online, since they had already experienced the Socratic style used at the center. The tutorials were conducted using three commercial instant messengers hosted by AOL, MSN/Hotmail, and Yahoo, as well as two noncommercial IM-like systems, IRC and ICQ.72 I anticipated that the people most likely to use the IM tutorial

70 Clearly, the WebCT system was designed by programmers more concerned with excluding the Unwanted than enabled the Chosen. This created an ethical dilemma for the Center, which had previously welcomed “all members of the BSU community.” Under this umbrella, BSU tutors had worked with various members of the community, from a local 6th grade class to a non-BSU-affiliated author of a history of aviation. The conditions of WebCT prohibited such outreach activities. 71 Whiteboards are synchronous spaces in which both participants can manipulate common text. Common whiteboard functions include the ability to circle text or to draw objects. Whiteboard technology holds much promise, but because it requires high-speed Internet access, this promise will not be fulfilled until broadband access is more common. 72 While IRC and ICQ were offered as online tutorial options, no tutee ever asked to use them. For this reason, I will refer to the three programs used at the center in the remaining text.

service would be those who had used IMs before, probably for social reasons.73 So, multiple services were offered in order to give clients flexibility and to allow them to use the IM with which they were most familiar. Standardization However, working with multiple IM programs carried liabilities. One, online tutors had to maintain several accounts, meaning that they had to remember several screen names and passwords. Two, tutors had to learn to use three subtly different IM programs, each of which performed common functions differently or not at all. To alleviate these difficulties, I asked tutors to begin using a cross-platform utility named Trillian. Trillian is not itself an Internet messenger; rather, it is a portal to the five most common IM systems. This program allowed tutors to enter in all five of their usernames and passwords. In addition, Trillian presented standardized interfaces for the five systems, thereby making it much easier for tutors to interact with tutees. In specific terms, this meant that far fewer new commands had to be learned, and when they were, they would work across all five platforms.74 With the interface standardized, tutors could concentrate on working with the client, and not on learning the idiosyncrasies of each system. Or so I thought. Trillian carried some of its own liabilities. Some were a result of Trillian being only a cross-platform interface and not a stand-alone IM service. A particularly problematical feature was that tutors who did not change their screennames on the hosted systems would be shown as online to all of their contacts, thus opening them up to interruptions while tutoring. In addition, commercial IM spammers could interrupt these tutorials, a special problem with pornographic spam. From a research standpoint, Trillian also carried the liability of not being hosted on a server to which I had

73I knew of no classes at BSU that were using IMs for classes at this time, possibly due to the one-on-one nature of IMs. A search of the BSU website turned up a few chatrooms, such as one run by a study skills course that required student participation. The situation has not changed since this time, although several attempts have been made, most notably via instructor access to a well-funded digital project at BSU. 74 One common problem was the file-exchange option, which allowed participants to exchange word- processing documents. AOL’s IM system builders were apparently aware of Trillian and actively worked to disable Trillian users from accessing the AOL system, especially the file-transfer option. Frequently, Trillian users had to download patches from Trillian to re-enable this option.

direct access; that is, information about and from these tutorials existed solely on the computers of the participants. Responsibility for whether or not to save a transcript rested entirely with the participants. Some tutors forgot to enable the option that allowed one to save the tutorial transcripts, resulting in the loss of several transcripts. This meant that not only would I not receive a copy, the tutee might not be able to get one either. Similarly, a timestamp function was available for the Trillian system, but some tutees forgot to enable it.75 This timestamp function marked each exchange between tutor and tutee with the time that it was received by the tutor implications (since those are the times I saw in the transcript). This function proved to be quite valuable in establishing the chain of events within tutorials. In spite of theses difficulties, the first tutorial in this study occurred on Friday, January 31, and the final one occurred on August 20, 2003. During this time, 25 were conducted and recorded,76 with 6 tutors and 11 tutees. I collected each tutorial from the computer on which it had been performed, deleting it after I had two copies of it. I also collected any files that had been exchanged during the tutorial. Comments within tutorials suggested that tutees had sent 21 files to tutors, although I was only able to recover 12 of them. Several factors account for the loss of the other nine. Although Trillian has a standardized system and locations for storing transferred files, some tutees overrode this system and stored files either on the desktop (where they were susceptible to erasure) or in idiosyncratic folders. Moreover, when tutors experienced difficulty with Trillian’s file-sharing option, they frequently asked tutees to email the documents. Since most tutors received files via Web-based email programs, these files were frequently stored in a temporary folder that was erased when the computer was shut down. Even if the document had been downloaded and stored on the computer’s hard drive, tutees rarely remembered the names of the transferred files, so searches for them were often fruitless.

75 These problems created some difficulties in my data collection and were some of the reasons that eventually convinced me to seek a hosted IM system for BSU’s online program. Such a program was launched in late Fall 2003 with the help of an SBC technology initiative grant. This issue is developed further in the “Implications” section of the final chapter of this dissertation. 76 More tutorials than this took place, but a few were lost when tutors forgot to correctly set the auto- transcript function.

The tutee/tutor pairings suggested a division into serial tutorials (two pairings with 8 transcripts) and one-time tutorials (15 pairings with 17 transcripts). Two serial tutorials (with tutee/tutor pairings of Misaki/Susan and Liu/Amy) and two one-time tutorials (Avril/Seth and Avril/Susan) are analyzed. Misaki and Susan met online five times and Liu and Amy met three. I interviewed Susan, Amy, and Misaki after tutorials, prompting them to recall their experience of being online. Liu and Avril declined to be interviewed.77 Personal Position(ing) As I mentioned earlier, I was one of three Graduate Assistant Coordinators of the BSU writing center. In this position, I was aware that my interest in this topic had a large influence on the fact that this center was experimenting with online tutorials. This meant that online tutorials could be taking away from time that might otherwise be spent on traditional tutorials. In addition, some tutors in the center objected to the use of computers to do online tutorials, for reasons explored above. They felt that the tutorials took longer and accomplished less, that the human contact they liked about the job was lessened, and that the lack of paralinguistic cues made the job of the tutor more difficult. I agreed that these objections could be valid. However, in agreement with the Directors I had interviewed previously, I felt that these tutorials offered a way to reach a new client base, to extend our hours of operation, and to conduct research.78 In spite of the value that I felt tutorials offered, I also felt that only tutors who wanted to work online should do it. (This was also in keeping with the consent form required by the IRB). As mentioned earlier, having tutors opt out or in of online work may privilege the technologically disposed, and risk bifurcating the center into online and offline tutors (with online tutors perhaps attaining a more validated position since technology is occasionally an un-interrogated Good). I worked hard to respect the positions of those who opposed this variety of tutoring. Thus, tutees who were willing to

77 This was not optimal given that I wanted information about their experiences. Given the chance, I would have asked them the same series of questions I asked the others, focusing mainly on what they wanted to accomplish online, how they did it, and how it might be made better. 78 These are common arguments for the supplementing of traditional tutorials with onlines; see Healy.

work online were highlighted in the schedule book to indicate their willingness, but were otherwise treated no differently.79 IM what IM (and That’s All What IM): The Choice of an Interface Internet messengers are synchronous CMC programs that shuttle text and other information between users via a host server. Commercial companies generally administer these servers, but the software needed to access them is free. In 2002, “Internet messaging … boast[ed] a whopping 63 million users in the United States and [was] estimated to be used by a quarter-billion Net surfers worldwide, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, a research firm that tracks online activity” (Saltzman E1). Along with this immense student popularity, IMs offer quick interaction and a relatively flat learning curve. When used for tutorials, IMs also offer powerful ways for tutorials to adhere to and expand the social constructivist ideals of writing centers, because they are inherently interactive and offer endless possibilities for participant representation. Such representational fluidity is important online. Indeed this fluidity is a central tenet of online environments, places where even intellectual staples such as “principles of intellectual property cannot be applied uniformly,” primarily because these ideas are based on outmoded, Modernist ideas of a coherent self (Kolko 164). IMs generate texts with elusive identities always in the process of being forged through the Act of writing. Paradoxically, the fluidity and seeming ephemerality of IM conversations can be made tangible in a way that few other forms of conversations can: the self-generating transcript. IMs transcripts represent congealed fluidity, the place where words take tangible, permanent form. The transcript allows tutors and tutees to review the exact words of a tutorial, thus providing a form of "talk" that extends the conversation over time and is a significant new way for tutee/tutors to be active during and even after tutorials. Participants can review (even while still chatting) exactly what was said earlier, as well as copy and paste prior texts into current discussions. However, another cautionary note needs to be made here. The nature of this Interface requires that participants have ready access to reliable machines and

79 For various reasons, not all tutors who were willing to work online were willing to participate in my study.

connections. The fact that many students and educators do not have such access is a serious concern within educational circles, even for the kind of research in this study. Issues of access form one of the most difficult social problems surrounding the use of computers in education. This concern generates problems no matter which side of the technological coin toss one chooses or is stuck with. Departments that cannot or choose not to invest in technology risk being viewed as behind the times or risk the loss of educational opportunities for students. Those that do invest in computer technologies face similarly difficult choices, even down to whether a large hardware/software purchase may mean the loss of jobs for teachers. By conducting this study, I risk valorizing expensive, quickly outdated equipment over more traditional methods of instruction.80 My choice of IMs has another pragmatic bend in that it is intended to supplement traditional tutorial and offer tutees a fuller palette of services. In this way, I am following the lead of composition scholars such as Cynthia Selfe, whose 2001 Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention asked educators to take a cautious stance towards educational technology, always asking how the use of technology enhances learning. Here, the adjective educational is vitally important. Since every technology has constraints and affordances and can only be useful when the gains the technology offers outweigh the losses, IMs must be seen by tutors and tutees as worthwhile conversations, not simply diversions. While the potential for learning is great with IM tutorials, they also carry liabilities: their pace is slower than face-to-face tutorials, they rely greatly on the typing skill of the participants, and they lack paralinguistic cues, which may hinder the formation of a bond between tutor and tutee. Problems with technology are inevitable; successfully working through them is not. If researchers work carefully through difficulties with technology, however, what originally seems like a liability can become a strength. Literature on traditional face-to- face tutorials has argued that paralinguistic cues have a significant impact on tutoring, generally as a means to making clearer communication (see Brooks). However, in a

80 Access to and use of advanced (read: expensive) technology always suggests complicity with inequitable funding. Like anyone in such a position, I am still grappling with this issue. Refusal to engage with these technologies because they are inequitably distributed seems an even less fair position, however.

study of synchronous tutorials, Jennifer Jordan-Henley and Barry Maid found that some of their tutors valued the lack of paralinguistic cues in online tutorials because it forced them to adopt new, text-based ways of dealing with tutees. One cybertutor commented, Getting comfortable with people means getting comfortable in the environment, and I tried to help my tutees to that end. That was the greatest benefit to me— the ability to help others get comfortable on the Net was a great teaching tool for me: it taught me a lot about my interpersonal relationships and how I may be different in Cyberspace. (215)

By working to make others comfortable in this new environment, this tutor experienced growth, surely a positive aspect of this mode of tutoring, a mode, incidentally, that Jordan-Henley and Maid also found beneficial. Claus Witfelt, Poul Erik Philipsen, and Birte Kaiser argue in a 2002 article that “our experiences as teachers […] was that chat can be used for discussing serious issues …with very good results” (343). These examples are not used to suggest that all problems with IM tutorials will go away with sufficient thought or experience; rather, educational technology must always be explored for ways that make it most useful for learning for both students and teachers. The best uses of technology help create virtual communities that offer the interaction necessary for learning. As discussed earlier, Eric Hobson advocates careful deliberation of technology, but he concludes that, “computers can help to establish community among tutors and encourage collaboration among writers in ways that help to create writing environments and collaborative relationships that are more natural than the artificial ones found in the typical classrooms” (480). My intention in detailing the difficulties of the BSU OWL is to demonstrate that much deliberation and experimentation went into the choice of interface for this study. Combined with the theoretical considerations outlined in the first chapter, this discussion of the background should prepare readers for the ups and downs experienced in the third, fourth, and fifth chapters, when the tutorials are analyzed via the framework of Modified Burkean Dramatism with an eye toward developing the metaphor of the Fluid Cyborg.

AVRIL, SUSAN, AND SETH: CYBORG MIS(SED)COMMUNICATION

This first data chapter examines two online tutorials between one tutee, Avril, and two tutors, Susan and Seth. The chapter begins with a review of Modified Dramatism and specific information on how it was applied, before exploring each set of participants according to their Agents, Circumference, Acts, Purposes, and Interfaces, in turn. The chapter ends with a look at implications for online tutoring that arise from a Modified Dramatistic analysis of these tutorials, especially in terms of the Fluid Cyborg metaphor. Methodology Redux My Modified Dramatistic system, one that seeks to update Burke’s Dramatism for online communications, suggests a host of possible organizations. Each of the twelve Tetradic ratios could be used as chapter subheadings. Alternately, each participant could be a subheading, around which would cluster the participants’ relationship to the ratios. Or, subheadings could be tutoring topics, with discussion of how each ratio or element played out within a particular topic. Analyzing each tutor/tutee set individually, in terms of the four elements of the Online Tetrad, creates a stable but flexible methodology that still respects the generative ambiguities at the heart of Dramatism. Within each subheading are located discussions of those ratios in which the titular81 element played the dominating role. Hence, the Purpose/Agent ratio is discussed under Purpose, the Agent/Purpose ratio is covered under Agent, and so on. This is not to imply that readers will find every ratio discussed in every analysis. Rather, ratios are discussed if and where they seem natural and organically derived from the tutorial itself. This allows my analyses to focus on the needs of each tutorial and respond to generative ambiguities where they arise. One further subheading, one not involved in the Tetrad, is used: Circumference. This subheading is discussed in the first chapter of this study and briefly in this chapter. It describes the general circumstances and action of the tutorial. As little

81 Burke refers to this as the “ancestral” term (Rhetoric of Motives 21, among many others).

reference to the Tetradic elements is given in Circumference sections as seemed reasonable. The theoretical ways that Burkean Dramatism can elucidate motivations as discussed earlier (in “Setting the Stage I”) are applied in this chapter and the two chapters that follow. Since, as Burke points out, the elements of Dramatism may have varying importance from one analysis to another, no attempt has been made to give equal weight to each element. Similarly, no attempt was made to bring equivalent weight to the various Tetradic ratios, and so some ratios make no appearance at all within the analysis of a particular transcript. Many applications of the Pentad have considered single texts or texts with one author.82 In contrast, the transcripts here were written by multiple authors and represented multiple layers of writing. In addition to online tutorial transcripts, interviews with the participants and tutee writings and evaluations were available. Further, tutors and tutees as rhetors occupy different positions not only from each other but from other who occupy the same position as well. That is, titles such as tutee and tutor imply a stable, coherent subjectivity that was often missing in online tutorials. This was most noticeable for the tutors, who represented the Act of writing and embodied the role of tutor in very different ways. Tutors would not necessarily make the same kinds of suggestions to tutees across tutorials or even consistently during the same tutorial. Likewise, tutees represented various voices not only within their category but within their own interactions with a tutor (as shown by Avril’s flexibility of thesis later in this chapter). The order of subheadings is constant: Agents, Circumference, Act, Purpose, and Interface. This order allows for the reader to learn about the tutorial participants, and then the context of the tutorial, before going on to reading about what they did and how they did it. Within each section, events are generally discussed in a chronological fashion.

82 Burke’s examination of the Constitution is a prime example of this (A Grammar of Motives), as well as works by David Ling, David Birdsell, and David Blakesley. Boor Tonn, Endress, and Diamond’s treatment of a tragic hunting shooting is an important exception to this rule and it stands as one important predecessor of my method.

Data Preparation Raw tutorial transcripts were prepared for analysis in a variety of ways. The most obvious and important is that as part of establishing a coherent and replicable system for analyzing tutorial transcripts, I refer to IM messages as “Exchanges.”83 Two reasons exist for this. One is that unlike line numbers, which may change due to screen or font size, exchange numbers are stable and are tied to particular moments and text. More importantly, exchange emphasizes the collaborative, conversational nature of the tutorial in a way that message does not. Messages are left, but people participate in exchanges. But unlike spoken conversation in which consecutive exchanges generally respond to the exchange immediately prior, IM exchanges do not follow consistent patterns of alternating responses. Participants often send several exchanges in a row, without waiting for partners to respond. The exchange numbers, appearing on the left-hand side of tutorial excerpts, have been added for ease of reference but did not appear in the original transcripts. Exchanges are numbered consecutively from the first post of the transcript, regardless of who posted the exchange, including some instances when the first exchange was sent as an automated reply from the IM system. This latter was necessary to retain the exact environment of the tutorial. As noted earlier, the time stamp function labeled each exchange with a time.84 For the tutor, the time stamp notes those times at which (1) the tutor sent an exchange to and (2) received an exchange from the tutee. Thus, time stamps numbers vary slightly from tutor to tutee transcripts. Only tutor transcripts were used. The moment of the initial connection between tutor and tutee was used as the “zero-time”. Times were then subtracted from this zero time to yield the total elapsed time of the tutorial. Consecutive total elapsed times were subtracted from each other to yield the inter-exchange time, i.e., how much time had elapsed between the sending of each exchange. Inter-exchange times

83 Magdalena Gilewicz and There Thonus use the term “turns” to denote similar conversational moments in transcripts of offline tutorials. However, the more-confined and complicated nature of online turn-taking suggests “exchanges” as a more accurate representation of how participants interact online. 84 Eva Bednarowicz uses MOO transcripts that lack a time stamp function. She relies instead upon tutor reconstruction of tutorials “to explain the log’s tone,” those features that Bednarowicz terms the “perplexity of pauses or silences, awkwardnesses and accomplishments” (129).

are useful in establishing the flow of conversation. They are particularly useful in determining whether an exchange is responding to the one immediately prior or one some time earlier, since very short time inter-exchange times (e.g., 1 second) are generally too brief for a participant to have read and be responding to another’s exchange. Table 2 gives a sample series of formatted exchanges: Exchange Total Inter- Exchanges number elapsed exchange time time 1. 0:00:01 *** [email protected] (Liu) has joined the conversation. 2. 0:00:26 0:00:25 Amy: Hi, this is Amy from the Writing Center. 3. 0:00:35 0:00:09 Liu: hello

Table 2: Formatted exchanges

Aside from this formatting, the exchanges have been left as they were sent. While it would be a trivial technical matter to collapse exchanges to produce an alternating (and more coherent) pattern, this would occlude the influence of the Interface, as well as downplay the sometimes chaotic nature of IMs. However, this chaos can be useful and it holds significant analytic interest. This pattern of delivery of the exchanges is of significant rhetorical interest, especially in those tutorials in which the timestamp was captured. Consecutive exchanges quoted in text (as opposed to those block-quoted) are indicated with right-slants. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors are generally not corrected or indicated with “[sic]” except in cases in which the meaning was unclear without the use of editorial changes. Such changes are indicated in square brackets. One special case exists. In quoting Avril’s exchanges, in which line breaks (blank spaces) are delivered within an exchange, a double right slant (//) is used to conserve space. Notes on One-Time Tutorials The two tutorials in this chapter were one-time tutorials, meetings in which the participants chatted online only once. (Avril met online with Seth and Susan once each.) The singular nature of these tutorials meant that each participant had to establish a quick sense of how the other wanted to proceed online. Without some form of mutual

understanding (an aspect of consubstantiality), little progress could be made. The singular nature of these one-time tutorials tends to feature this coming-to-understanding more than tutorials between participants who had met previously online (such as in tutorials after the first for Misaki/Susan and Liu/Amy serial tutorials). Application of Modified Dramatism I: Avril and Susan Agents Avril (Client) At the time of this tutorial, Avril is a 19-year-old, first-year, female student, and an Asian/Pacific Islander nonnative speaker of English. She had declared a pre- optometry major in the College of Arts and was seeking a bachelor of science. Like every participant in this study, she did not identify herself as Learning Disabled.85 Between January and July 2003 (roughly the duration of this study), she participated in nine traditional and two online tutorials. She had four offline tutorials before the online tutorial examined in this section, including one the day before this tutorial, the subject of which was the same paper, an essay for a freshman English course. She had two online tutorials within six days, and then waited a few weeks before returning to the center for another series of tutorials. Susan (Tutor) A female, native speaker of English, Susan began working at the writing center in Summer Quarter 2002 as an undergraduate Senior (College of Education) student worker performing clerical duties. She demonstrated such exceptional intelligence and empathy that after two quarters of employment, an accelerated section of undergraduate tutor training was held expressly for her in Winter Quarter 2002 so that she could begin tutoring that spring, her final quarter as an undergraduate. Susan became a graduate tutor when she began her master’s degree in the College of Education in the summer of 2002, a position she held until Spring Quarter 2003, when she left to begin doing her student teaching. The tutorial occurred one quarter before she left the center. Throughout her

85 To have more than one tutorial per week at the BSU writing center, self-identification as Learning Disabled is necessary. Participation in this study was voluntary and open to any BSU student, but no participant identified as Learning Disabled. This is most likely because very few clients at the BSU Center identify in this manner.

time at the center, Susan was routinely praised by staff and clients for her skill in working with a wide range of tutees. Susan remembered the tutorial in this chapter vividly and could describe her feelings toward it in significant detail, perhaps because she thought it had been so difficult. Agents in Roles The Tetradic element of Agent is most influential when participants as Agents86 (actors) are foregrounded, that is, when participants work to portray themselves in particular ways. The Agent element has close ties to the online roles suggested by the rhetoric of online embodiment discussed earlier (in “Setting the Stage I”), in which MOO participants engaged in detailed or playful descriptions of their online “bodies”. In the absence of the (need to) emote, IM participants tend to encode their roles as Agents differently and more subtly. The most significant example of this is that no one in the 25 tutorials I collected chose to use anything but his or her real name as the basis for an online name. Thus, in spite of the fact that these participants could have chosen almost any online name, Susan’s online name was always [email protected], just as Avril’s name was always [email protected]. Given the many playful names encountered in chatrooms, this lack of anonymity suggests that clients and tutors took these tutorials much more seriously than they would otherwise.87 Collaboration helped bring forth the Agent element of online participants in two general ways. When their rhetorical devices move them toward unity, the participants are consubstantial co-Agents. However, collaboration in tutorials, on- or offline, is not a given or necessarily a constant feature. Sometimes, participants would work at cross Purposes, becoming counter-Agents (as seen with Avril and Seth). This is in keeping with Figure 2, which attempts to make literal the metaphor of Modified Dramatism.

86 Other views of the Agent role are possible. The program itself could be considered a kind of Agent function because it occasionally generates text. Although the program is obviously incapable of true action, i.e., purposive motion, the text generated automatically by the program represents the purposive motion (i.e., action) of the program’s designers, which is why such text was left in the transcripts and occasionally is discussed. 87 Two other reasons may help account for this seriousness: one, participants knew that these tutorials were being recorded, and two, participants may have assumed that they should use given names because these made it much easier to meet with their tutors on commercial IMs.

However, the Agents in the first tutorial, Avril and Susan, generally demonstrated collaboration and co-Agent abilities. Their ability to collaborate so quickly is perhaps surprising given that they had not met as client and tutor prior to their online tutorial. This meant that their actions as Agents were wholly mediated by the Interface (unlike, for example, Susan and Misaki, the participant pair in the next chapter, who had a long- standing relationship and mutually understood modes of communication). They had no previous offline experience to guide them as they tried to figure out who the other person was and what she wanted from the tutorial. For Susan, the tutor, this meant that she had to ask questions at the beginning that would inform her about the needs of the tutee, whereas for Avril, this meant that she had to be specific about her needs or her tutor was less likely to be able to help her.

SUSAN AS AGENT Susan began by asking Avril to set the agenda quickly in their tutorial. Her third exchange, “What is it that you want to work on?” captures well how Susan establishes both the focus of the tutorial and herself as a tutor whose interest is in helping the tutee. Within her tutor role, Susan asks many leading questions. Moreover, she anticipates tutee difficulties. When Avril states that her prompt asks for students to “clarify [an] opposing viewp[oin]t,” Susan’s follow-up question foreshadows the central theme of the tutorial: an extended discussion of counterargument. Susan repeatedly explains counterargument in agonistic terms; that is, she stresses the contestory nature of counterargument. This difference is implicated in the word choice of the participants. Avril’s (or possibly her instructor’s) view of counterargument is to “clarify opposing viewpt,” whereas Susan at first casts it as a way to “discuss the opposition’s argument” (italics added), but later amends this to describing “why those [oppositional] claims aren’t good ones” and why “the opposing view is flawed.” What is most striking about Susan asking if Avril should “discuss the opposition’s argument” is that she suggests counterargument as an area of focus before she actually receives Avril’s paper. Susan’s early identification of the problem of counterargument in Avril’s paper may seem the prescient ability of a tutor accustomed to the typical problems in client

papers, especially one as new to college as Avril (Susan commented that “I think Avril is an undergrad.”). Considered in this way, Susan is relying on her past experience as a tutor to predict the needs of her client’s paper.88 This may suggest that Susan was so accustomed to her position as a tutor that she unreflectively inhabits this Agent role. If so, then the Agent/Act ratio prevailed here for Susan, much in the way that Burke argues that institutional authority can alter an Agent’s Acts. As Burke argues, “the sheer nature of an office or position is said to produce important modifications to a man’s character” (Grammar 16). These “important modifications” mean that Susan acts so quickly as a tutor accustomed to dealing with particular problems that she may not necessarily consider other difficulties. She chooses to discuss counterargument not only because Avril mentions ideas clustering around counterargument but also because Susan has had this discussion before with other tutees. Susan’s interest in counterargument makes it a Burkean God-term. In the tutorial and interview, Susan returns to this God-term several times, casting it as the biggest problem with the tutorial: The first hour was about getting her to accept that she needed to add counterargument. She didn’t understand what the problem was; I couldn’t explain it well…. I really felt like my hands were literally tied, because I couldn’t explain the idea; it was an abstract concept. I couldn’t get her to understand the importance of the counterargument. (Susan’s Interview) Susan’s frustration with Avril’s resistance to the idea of counterargument may simply be a result of Susan’s perception that Avril is resisting what Susan sees as important. Finally, it may also be Susan’s implicit recognition that Avril is resisting Susan in her role as a tutor.

AVRIL AS AGENT By contrast to Susan’s established role, Avril’s role as Agent was less stable. Early on, she inhabits the role of pliable tutee. When Susan asks, Avril is willing to set

88 Susan’s speed to diagnose may also be a result of the time-dependent nature of IM tutorials. This is explored in more detail in the Interface discussion later in this chapter.

the agenda.89 In addition, Avril came prepared to this tutorial with a four-page paper and a subject (“integration”) on which she sought direction. But Avril also has moments when she questioned the choices of her tutor. Her response to Susan’s critique of her counterargument is illustrative: 69. 0:56:10 0:00:50 Susan: okay...so by not telling me why the opposing view is flawed, you are letting me believe them instead of you. 70. 0:56:29 0:00:19 Susan: does that make sense? 71. 0:57:28 0:00:59 Avril: i should say all the flaws on the side of keeping it at 21 72. 0:58:11 0:00:43 Avril: ...but don’t i do that when I talk about keeping it at 18 73. 0:58:30 0:00:19 Susan: which part?

Although Susan’s response to Exchange 72 seeks more information from Avril about what passages in the assignment demonstrate where she has negated the counterargument, Avril does not respond. This lack of response leaves open the question of whether she understood Susan’s Purpose. Given the attention Susan has paid to the counterargument, one might expect Avril to end the tutorial with an organization that more completely acknowledges Susan’s influence as tutor (Agent). Avril might conclude with a sense that she needs to take a stronger stand in her assignment, or at least provide evidence for why the counterargument is not persuasive. She does not, however, come to this kind of conclusion, as is evident in Exchanges 105-6: “what other items do I need to improve/oh, is thesis okay or should I change?” Avril’s thesis (Purpose) and role remain flexible even at the end of the tutorial, which may be good if it allows her to reconsider from a critical distance her thesis for a while longer, before choosing a well-considered and -supported thesis as she continues to write the paper. However, this flexibility might also result in an inability to finish her paper, since she is persuaded by both sides. In this latter sense, Avril is still unwilling or unable to claim ownership of her paper, and defers to her tutor to establish the theme of her paper. Susan, however, fulfills the role of the non-directive tutor and refuses to make this final decision for Avril. However, because Susan knows

89 Part of her willingness to accept direction can cause problems however, such as in her continual flexibility of Purpose discussed later in this chapter.

that most undergraduate instructors reward papers with a well-defined and -defended thesis, this ambiguity led her to label this tutorial as a failure. Avril’s lack of ownership with her paper may have contributed to Susan’s feeling of failure in the tutorial: I know you witnessed my first tutorial with Avril. It was nearly two hours and I almost threw myself out of this fourth story window here, just because I was so frustrated that I couldn’t express myself…. I was dying. It was terrible; it was horrible. You should count up how many times I used the word confusing.90 “Am I helping or just making things more confusing?”

However, Avril rated the tutorial a success and found it helpful enough to schedule the online tutorial discussed in the next section one week later. Her choice to not to have a face-to-face tutorial during this week also suggests that she valued the experience much more than Susan did. So in the end, Exchange 106 stands as evidence that Avril was not overly influenced by her tutor, rather than as a negative indictment of Susan’s ability to help her to choose a thesis. Circumference Pre-tutorial During the collection period, Avril held four traditional tutorials before meeting Susan for her first online tutorial. Avril’s offline tutorials included one on January 21, 2003 with Amy (the tutor in Liu and Amy: The Paradox of Tutee Direction via Short Exchanges) and one with Seth (later in this chapter) on February 20, 2003. The comments from a tutorial that Avril held with a face-to-face tutor on February 13, 2003, to work on a persuasive paper for a First-Year English course foreshadow her concerns during her online tutorial, in that Avril identifies “[the] other side[‘s] views” as the reason for her visit. The tutor’s comments at the end of Avril’s offline tutorial are instructive: “persuasive essay – however didn’t have other side of viewpoint. Also discussed where to put the thesis and how to make the paragraphs cohesive. Did a quick grammar check as well.” This offline tutorial began late and ended early, taking only 30 minutes, according to the tutor’s time sheet. Tutorial

90 Note: Susan only used confusing twice in her tutorial with Avril. However, she did backchannel a number of times as attempts at consubstantiation.

The participants met online Friday, February 21, 2003, at 9:35 am with Avril initiating the tutorial. Susan responds with two exchanges— “hi Avril...this is Susan./How are you today?”—so predictable that they seem to represent what Burke calls an “aimless utterance,” a kind of speech he finds to be arhetorical (Rhetoric of Motives xiii). Paradoxically however, their conventionality makes them rhetorical in that they create good-will, since Susan’s readiness to fulfill conventions, when mirrored by Avril (“good”), signals to each participant that the other seeks a customarily polite tutor/tutee relationship, rather than an antagonistic relationship. Therefore, this is an attempt at Consubstantiation. Susan then asks Avril to set the agenda for the tutorial, and Avril discusses a list of tasks she’d like to accomplish with this tutorial. There follows a short discussion of technical issues in which Susan tries to instruct Avril as to how to use the file transfer function before suggesting that she simply email it to Susan. After receiving Avril’s email, Susan asks her to identify her thesis and areas of text in which Avril feels that integration is a problem. Susan takes about 12 minutes to read her paper and Avril send a few emails answering the thesis and integration questions. The main section of the tutorial begins about 47 minutes into the tutorial, during which they discuss issues of how Avril can best represent and reduce the effectiveness of the counterargument to her thesis. This discussion lasts about 43 minutes, when Susan tells Avril that she is “on the right track” with her new formulation of thesis. Another discussion of technical issues fills the final 9 minutes of the tutorial, with Susan first trying to use the file transfer function to send a transcript of the tutorial to Avril and then emailing it. The tutorial ends at 11:10. It lasted for 95 minutes, instead of the standard 45 minutes, because Susan did not have a tutorial scheduled in the time slot after this one. Post-tutorial Avril met online with Seth one week after this tutorial in a tutorial examined later in this chapter. She had five more offline tutorials during the collection period, with her final one being on July 2, 2003. Purpose

Susan’s concentration on counterargument as her Purpose highlights the differences in agenda participants may bring to tutorials.91 Clients participate in tutorials to get help with writing, but they may have many definitions of what constitutes help. Some are looking for proofreading, some are looking for comments on the structure of their papers, and some may be seeking encouragement. Such agenda setting appears throughout Susan and Avril’s tutorial. Although Avril and Susan seem to share a general sense of counterargument as the agenda for this tutorial, each attempts to reinterpret the agenda at various times. These attempts to re-set the agenda correspond to moments in which control passes from one participant to another. Figure 2 illustrates how this occurs: Tutor control Tutor sets agenda Tutor asks tutee to set agenda object

subject Tutee sets agenda Tutee asks tutor to set agenda rests with rests with grammatical grammatical Responsibility Responsibility Tutee control Responsibility

Figure 7: Tutee/Tutor agenda-setting negotiations

Movement along the vertical axis indicates shifts in the balance of control within the tutorial: movement upwards92 signifies tutor control; downwards signifies tutee control. Similarly, movement along the horizontal axis represents a shifting of responsibility: movement to the left signifies that the Agenda-setting Agent (the grammatical subject) will be responsible for making the Agenda acceptable to the other participant, including any subsequent explanations of the Agenda; movement to the right signifies that the Agent asking for the Agenda setting is forcing responsibility for this Agenda setting onto the other Agent (the grammatical object).

91 Writing center scholarship usually refers to the Purpose of a tutorial as the agenda negotiated (“set”) by the participants; Jeff Brooks’ article demonstrates the sometimes-contentious nature of agenda-setting in tutorials. 92 Although I am aware of the unfortunate hierarchical implications of allowing the tutor to retain the top position of this metaphor, I am also aware that tutors in practice occupy an institutionally authorized superior position.

This conception of Agenda setting (Purpose) makes it easier to identify how control shifts between the participants, and it has the advantage of not assigning passivity to participants. Rather, it recognizes that Agents may defer responsibility for the direction of the tutorial as a form of action. In other words, it is important to recognize that Figure 4 does not represent a simplistic active/passive dichotomy between top/bottom and left/right sides, respectively. Rather, each feature fulfills Burke’s definition of Act as purposive action. If a tutor asks a client to set the agenda, this does not mean that the tutor is willing or intends to accept the client’s agenda completely; it is not a case of one participant surrendering to another. In this, I reject the view of rhetoric as an always agonistic struggle as Burke describes them, but rather as a collaboration, within which the role of rhetor shifts between participants, so that neither participant wins the interaction. Although rhetoric is seen as something that permeates almost all human interaction, Burke’s most common examples of it are in political arenas, not in conversations among people who are attempting to collaborate. Because of this, he tends to discuss it in terms of the rhetor as speaker who wins over a more or less faceless audience, one that seems to capitulate to the rhetor’s skill. The rhetorical maneuvers that occur in online tutorials are generally outside of agonistic competitiveness (an “overly developed trait” according to Burke, Motives 10), but certainly not always. Thus, the negotiation of Purpose is an active engagement, an interaction, in which renegotiation occurs constantly. It is also a common online Act. In one online study, Bryan Smith found that “learners…negotiate meaning when problems in communication arise in task-based CMC. Indeed, one-third of the total turns were spent negotiating” (52). Susan directs Avril to Purpose almost immediately in this tutorial, with Exchange 6: “What is it that you want to work on?” This request results in Avril’s setting the agenda with a daunting assembly of concerns: “I am concerned with the organization/integration/thesis of my essay.” Susan asks a few more Agenda-setting questions before enquiring subtly about the progress Avril has made toward her Purpose: “okay…so what do you have so far?” This exchange prompts Avril to send in her paper.

Once Susan has received it, she returns to asking questions from the top-right of Figure 4, that is, placing responsibility for agenda setting with Avril. 69. 0:27:46 0:00:17 Susan: should I read it all first, or do you have a specific question to start with? 70. 0:28:32 0:00:46 Avril: You can read it I needed help with integration 71. 0:30:12 0:01:40 Susan: okay...while I am reading it, I would like if you would read it too and identify what you think your thesis is and maybe even the places where you think that integration is a problem. 72. 0:35:29 0:05:17 Avril: the 1st item on the paper is the thesis I am going to add in intro later 73. 0:42:25 0:06:56 Susan: okay...so which sentence is the thesis?

While Susan ostensibly is putting Avril in charge of setting the agenda, she is doing so actively, by asking questions that focus Avril on identifying the Purpose of her paper (“what you think your thesis is”) and where this Purpose is being derailed “where you think that integration is a problem”). Avril does not respond to Susan’s requests for 5 minutes, foreshadowing some of the problems that Avril will have throughout this tutorial with making decisions about what she wants to do both in terms of the tutorial and her assignment. When she does respond, she says that “the 1st item on the paper is the thesis,” which means that this “item” is the thesis: “Prohibition has not worked; age 21 does not necessarily mean maturity; those age 18 carry many responsibilities of adulthood; and increased age leads to problems.” After a 7-minute lapse in communication, the longest in the tutorial, Susan reiterates her request for a thesis. This prompts Avril to reconsider the thesis as “the 1st 2 sent.”, a reformulation that adds this sentence: “Hence we should seriously consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 in the U.S.” Susan agrees with Avril’s conception of her thesis and turns to Avril’s concern with integration, now phrased in emotional terms: “how do you feel about those paragraphs?” (italics added). Susan’s subtle concern with Avril’s emotional state suggests both that Susan is working hard to demonstrate an active interest in her tutee’s essay (an attempt at Consubstantiation) and that she is seeking to set the Agenda. Many of Susan’s exchanges

reinforce this dual theme of creating understanding between the tutor and tutee and subtly resetting the Agenda and reframing Avril’s flexible thesis. Avril’s flexibility of Purpose may follow from the diverse ways that Avril interprets her instructor’s writing prompt and the thesis she forms around it. Her original thesis, one from which she deviates during her tutorial, argues that the age for alcohol purchase and consumption in the US should be lowered from 21 to 18. She uses a binary composed of doubled constituents: an Anti-18/Pro-21 (maintaining) component and an Anti-21/Pro-18 (lowering) component. This doubled binary best represents the complex way that Avril attempts to support her argument, in that it is possible to support one of the constituents of the binary and reject the second. For example, arguments against maintaining the drinking age at 21 (Anti-21) do not necessarily agree with lowering it to 18 (Pro-18); they might support raising it to 25. In other words, Avril’s doubled binaries are not logically closed. These problematic binaries may be behind Avril’s feeling that the paper needs “help with integration.” As well, they may account for why Susan returns repeatedly to question Avril on her Purpose in the assignment. Susan’s Purpose in doing this becomes clear in the following excerpt: 52. 0:47:24 0:01:11 Susan: what it seems like to me is that you are very successful at explaining the counterargument.... 53. 0:48:03 0:00:39 Avril: you mean why keep it at 21 54. 0:48:10 0:00:07 Susan: but it seems that you aren’t saying why those claims aren’t good ones. 55. 0:48:30 0:00:20 Susan: why are you right and they aren’t? 56. 0:48:55 0:00:25 Susan: (I mean...that is something you have to explicitly state in so many words.)

So, Susan’s Purpose is to make Avril understand the importance of counterargument. She does this by following up on Avril’s concern with the “integration” of her essay and transforming it for the first time explicitly into “counterargument.” This explicitness, however, does not draw Agenda-setting to a close and Susan returns to it once more at 55 minutes into the tutorial. Although it seems late for them to still be setting the Agenda, Susan asks, “okay...so tell me the purpose of your entire paper? Is it to convince me that 18 is the better legal drinking age...[?]” (ellipses in original). Avril agrees that this is her

Purpose, and the remainder of the tutorial is a discussion of how she can best neutralize the argument counter to her thesis. As the previous example demonstrates, Avril’s overall Purpose for the tutorial is multifaceted. However, her Purpose in participation is similarly complex. Her Purpose in having the tutorial online, for example, may have been partly practical, because participation in online tutorials was not counted against the one tutorial a week normally allowed at the writing center. Avril’s Purpose in going online may also have partly been because she wanted a record of what happened in her tutorial (she asks for a transcript at the end of each of her tutorials). Finally, it may have been her interest in IMs, since she identifies as having used IMs prior to her first tutorial (although she admits that it has been “a long time”). Act Statistics The tabulated “Acts” of this tutorial in Table 3 demonstrate that Susan was the more talkative of the two participants,93 with Susan transmitting 62% of the exchanges and the words. Compared to the nearly 80% of talk delivered by tutors in some face-to- face tutorials (Sullivan and Pratt), this does not seem to represent a completely dominant amount of discussion. In addition, each participant sent almost exactly the same average number of words per exchange (about 11), indicating about the same level of involvement within each exchange by each participant. This data does not account for the keyboarding94 skill of each participant, but given the slow pace of the tutorial (about 15 words per minute), it seems likely that this was not a significant hindrance.95

93 My use of such statistics follows the methodology of other scholars on synchronous CMC. Pilkington and Walker argue that “The balance of participation is represented by the percentage of the total number of words produced by each participant” (50). 94 Keyboarding skill seems to have little impact, according to other researchers. In a study of 32 online ESL students, DiGiovanni and Nagaswami find that “lack of keyboarding skills only handicapped one pair” (267). 95 Of course, reading ability also affects these interactions. Nawal Mohamed Abdul Rahman Al-Othman argues that “reading online is slower than on paper,” and that ESL reading proficiency has a marked influence on their success online (120). But in reaction to Gunther Kress’s claims for “a new media age” prompted by the ubiquity of screen reading, Alice S. Horning argues that “As we spend more and more time looking at screens, reading text and processing images, sounds and movement, our print-based reading

Participants Avril Susan Total Total words 528.00 885.00 1413.00 Percent 37.37 62.63 100 Total exchanges 46.00 78.00 124.00 Percent 37.10 62.90 100 Total chars 2028.00 3977.00 6005.00 words/exchange 11.48 11.35 11.40 Char/word 3.84 4.49 4.25 Time (min) 95.00 Words/min 14.87 Exchanges/minute 1.31

Table 3: Avril and Susan statistics

Whereas the Purpose of a tutorial gets at what it is that participants want to discuss during a tutorial, the element of Act concerns how it is that they move towards this goal. Thus, this element of the Tetrad comprises descriptions of the tutorial as it is enacted by the participants. This is not to overlook the similarities between these two elements. Indeed, the Act/Purpose overlap is one of the central ambiguities of Burke’s method, since Act is defined in terms of Purpose. Purposive motion, what Burke defines as Act, is less easily seen in online tutorials than in Burke’s examples, mostly because the online Act is so heavily mediated by the Interface. However, the actions of the participants are easy to describe in terms of their value as symbolic action, another important Burkean concept. This is the idea that language is not used primarily to communicate information, but to perform symbolic acts. This conceptualization allows us to consider the Acts of online participants in several ways. At its most basic, Act in online tutorials is the typing and reading of each participant. In contrast, Act in face-to- face tutorials is the talking and (occasional) writing of client and tutor. Act is driven by Purpose, i.e., it is also intellectual activity, meaning that much that occurred in Act is hard to represent or make visible. For online tutorials, the transcript re-presents the Act;

skills will continue to be expanded in the ways Kress suggests, but the underlying processes essential to the ‘new media age’ are ones we already have” (85).

it exists as the tangible trace of what96 the participants were doing over a particular span of time. The influence of Act is seen in every human action (as opposed to human motion), but for the purposes of this study, it is confined to those instances when Agents are explicit about how they wish to perform an event. Much of this tutorial is Susan’s Act of trying to convince Avril that she needs to revise her essay to include not only a description of the counterargument (i.e., that the drinking age should be maintained at 21), but also reasons why such a counterargument is flawed. This proves a difficult thing for Susan to do. Part of this difficulty may arise from the different ways that Avril and Susan enact this Agenda. Avril seems to be seeking a way to make her essay a more coherent whole,97 uniting her doubled binary in a singular argument. In contrast, Susan enacts a narrower goal: getting Avril to articulate more clearly the specific flaws of the counterargument. Presumably, after this has been accomplished, Avril’s paper will represent the coherent whole that Susan feels represents successful writing. To convince Avril of her point, Susan employs a number of tactics, such as discussing in specific terms Avril’s lack of criticism of the argument to maintain the drinking age at 21. This tactic does not work out as Susan likely expects it to: 62. 0:51:38 0:00:18 Susan: but 21 yr olds influence young college students and people in the workforce.... 63. 0:51:56 0:00:18 Susan: what point are you trying to make to support your claim that 18 is the better drinking age? 64. 0:52:49 0:00:53 Susan: you told me what the other people say, but you don’t tell me why what they say should not convince me to believe them. 65. 0:53:01 0:00:12 Susan: let me know if this is confusing... 66. 0:54:08 0:01:07 Avril: in that case i am on the side of 21 for ex. if the age is at 18 those people will be influing even younger people but if it is at 21 then they influence people younger than them

Here, Avril’s flexibility of Purpose undermines Susan’s Act. Instead of helping Avril understand that she needs to detail the flaws of the counterargument, Susan has

96 Burke makes the equation of “what” and Act explicit in A Grammar when he inventories the scholastic questions and Dramatism and finds that, “All that is left is to take care of is Act in our terms and ‘what’ in the scholastic formula” (228). 97 She may be chasing that most elusive of writing terms: flow.

unexpectedly convinced Avril of the superior strength of the counterargument. Susan’s skill at pointing out the flaws in Avril’s counterargument, along with her institutionally authorized role of tutor/Agent, has at least momentarily caused Avril to reverse her previously held opinion that the drinking age should be lowered to 18. This ambiguity underlies a central difficulty in both Avril’s paper and Susan’s attempts to give her advice about how to revise effectively her writing: Avril’s reluctance to make strong arguments on one side or the other derails Susan’s effort to narrow the focus.98 Susan’s text sometimes explicitly brings to the surface her Act, such as in the following exchanges: 67. 0:55:05 0:00:57 Susan: okay...so tell me the purpose of your entire paper? Is it to convince me that 18 is the better legal drinking age... 68. 0:55:20 0:00:15 Avril: yes 69. 0:56:10 0:00:50 Susan: okay...so by not telling me why the opposing view is flawed, you are letting me believe them instead of you.

Unfortunately, Avril believes that she has already done this “but don’t I do that when I talk about keeping99 it at 18[?]” The lack of Consubstantiation (i.e., the rhetorical failure) here revolves around the participants’ lack of mutual definition of counterargument. The problem lies in the participants’ variant understandings of counterargument. Even when Susan quotes from Avril’s paper (Exchange 80) in an attempt to show Avril that readers will believe Anti-18 evidence unless these arguments are directly and specifically refuted, Avril still wants to remain neutral. Exchange 83 demonstrates Susan trying to counter the power of the Anti-18 argument via humor:100 in reference to “the image of hung over drunken high school kids” raised in Avril’s paper, Susan responds, “somehow you have to make that not seem so bad…” By underplaying the problematic nature of “hung over drunken high school kids,” Susan subtly and nonconfrontationally

98 Because Avril is an ESL student, her lack of clarity here may be a culturally or linguistically based phenomenon. 99 Again, “keeping” here should be “lowering.” 100 The use of humor is important online, although the absence of paralinguistic cues may make this a somewhat riskier strategy for online tutors. See Sherwood for a discussion of the importance of humor in tutoring.

critiques Avril’s argument while simultaneously suggesting ways to alleviate the problem (i.e., Avril could argue that since most high school students live at home, they can be more effectively policed by their parents and teachers who are presumably more involved in students’ lives than are college instructors). However, it is in the next exchange that Susan finally explicitly identifies the problem with Avril’s counterargument: “the key is address it specifically” (emphasis added). This is the until-now unspoken Act that Susan wishes Avril to do. At this moment, someone unfamiliar with writing center pedagogy might question why it took Susan so long to come to the point. However, as mentioned earlier, writing center theory argues for tutors to be respectful of the learning process of tutees and to refrain as much as possible from giving explicit wording or direction to tutees (often phrased as the directive/non-directive debate). Although Susan suggested in her interview that the technological apparatus was to blame for much of the difficulty of the tutorial, some of the difficulty may have been due to attempting to enact nondirective pedagogy with a client actively seeking directive advice. In carrying out writing center methodology, Susan demonstrated remarkable and commendable restraint in avoiding taking possession of Avril’s paper, even though this meant that progress was slow. Similarly, Susan’s Socratic responses in Exchanges 88 and 90 to Avril’s emphatic question in Exchange 87 (“How do I do this ???”) provokes a long (2:56) pause.101 But while Susan continues to argue that Avril needs to refute specific counterarguments, Avril believes this is a bad idea: 91 1:12:17 0:02:56 Avril: we have to present both side of the issue at 1st i thought if i did this then my keeping 18 side would be weak but i had to do it because people reading need toknow i don’t won’t to be biased but ... and now since i put taht it make my side weak

Avril’s belief that she must remain neutral (“i don’t [want] to be biased”) is both a rejection of the more confrontational style of counterargument suggested by Susan as well as the missing element that allows Anti-18 statements to remain unopposed

101 Interestingly, the long pause between Exchanges 90 and 91 is not interrupted by Susan’s backchanneling or prefaced by a filibuster move by Avril. In addition, this is one of the longest of Avril’s exchanges, certainly the longest one in which she did not use blank space.

throughout the paper. In Burkean terms, this is a result of her Act/Purpose ratio: Avril’s lack of refuting specific opposing viewpoints (Act) results in her thesis (Purpose) being negatively affected. Her request for help begins the final round of exchanges in which Susan becomes more directive about her suggestions, moving into a controversial area of online tutoring: tutor modeling.102 93. 1:13:27 0:00:20 Susan: so what you need to do is make a statement that says something like " even though they said this....it doesn’t matter because...." 94. 1:14:25 0:00:58 Avril: said what about 15 year old

95. 1:15:50 0:01:25 Susan: yeah..."even though (they said that thing about 15 yr olds), that doesn’t matter because (why you are still right)"

Susan’s move from global but detailed discussions (as a symbolic Act) of Avril’s thesis to this more concrete wording of a pattern of expression enables Avril to become more specific. When Susan Acts to give Avril a pattern for rejecting a counterargument, this is seemingly what Avril needs to understand counterargument: 10. 1:17:54 0:01:05 Avril: we can come back to that how about something like this even though they said this it doen’ t matter because all peolpe feel curious about trying the fobidden fruit 11. 1:18:42 0:00:48 Susan: and then.... 12. 1:20:04 0:01:22 Susan: so it doesn’t matter if you are 15 or 20? 13. 1:21:06 0:01:02 Avril: right about previos statement 21 is good bec. it will affect younger people but not as young as 15 14. 1:21:55 0:00:49 Susan: okay...good. That is the counterargument. Tell me why that doesn’t matter. 15. 1:23:41 0:01:46 Susan: or matter enough to convince me that I should believe 21 instead of 18 is the better drinking age. 16. 1:25:06 0:01:25 Avril: many people feel curiosus to try things they are unfamilar with so they will try it at any age it’s better to keep it at 18 so less problems occur such as abuse or bing e drinking

102 The extraordinary ease with which tutees may appropriate the words of the tutor makes tutor modeling a contentious area for online tutoring.

17. 1:25:29 0:00:23 Susan: good... you are on the right track.

The influence of Susan’s modeling (Act) on Avril’s conception of her argument (Purpose) is clear. By Exchange 103, Avril has progressed in her understanding of the idea of counterarguments enough to offer a coherent version of what she will need to refute to be successful in her paper. Admittedly, logical problems exist in Avril’s treatment of the counterargument: the connection between inherent curiosity and why lowering the drinking age to 18 will lead to fewer problems with binge drinking remains unclear. However, Avril now understands that she must specifically refute the argument against her thesis if she is to be persuasive. Avril’s paper (see Appendix) had originally offered no significant counterargument (or even an argument that consistently supports one side of the drinking age debate), but her new formulation of counterargument suggests that such a counterargument will be present in her final paper. In this sense, the tutorial fulfilled the Stephen North writing center ideal of “making better writers, not necessarily better writing.” Interface Not surprisingly, online tutorials are heavily influenced by the element of Interface. The Interface mediates all exchanges and influences greatly how the Agents Act to fulfill the tutorial Purpose. As the fourth of 25 online tutorials collected, Avrila dn Susan’s tutorial shows the difficulties that the participants had in navigating the Interface. Ironically, this lack of ease with the Interface may have led Susan to be less rigid in her responses than she might have been if she had a previously manufactured online persona on which to rely. From auto-response message that Avril receives from Susan at the beginning of the tutorial to the final exchange when Susan receives notice that Avril has logged off the program, the Interface103 plays an explicit role, one that combines the traditional Scene and Agency elements of the Pentad.

103 As noted earlier, IMs represent an irreducible ratio of Agency and Scene, in that it is impossible to separate out these two otherwise independent elements.

Exchanges 18-38 are a good example of this mixture of Scene and Agency. Particularly striking are the moments when Susan describes the layout of her IM program to Avril when they are working on sharing Avril’s file: 20. 0:11:27 0:00:37 Susan: Do you have a little document icon in your IM screen? 21. 0:11:49 0:00:22 Susan: When you roll your cursor over it, it should say "send file" 22. 0:12:43 0:00:54 Susan: on my screen, it is next to the little camera for attaching pictures... 23. 0:13:15 0:00:32 Avril: I am not seeing it

Because Susan is accessing the AOL Internet Messenger system via the Trillian platform, her screen view is different from Avril’s, who presumably is using AOL’s own software (i.e., not using Trillian as an interface). The difference in their Interfaces means that Susan could not predict what Avril’s screen might look like, and so could not help her to send in her essay. On the surface, the Interface is made up of the mixture of Scene (the screen generated by the program) and the Agency (what the program can do). However, these distinctions merge irretrievably when one considers that the only way to access the Agency of the Interface is to use the Scene and that the Scene is useless without the code of the program (Agency). Another way of considering this is to reflect on the Trillian program as an expression of its designers’ Purpose. Even though these designers had gone to significant lengths to make the Trillian platform work seamlessly with the AOL IM,104 Susan and Avril were unable to use the file-exchange feature. The 7-minute lapse in communication that resulted as Avril signed off the system to email in her essay (a move that was not required by the system for Avril to send in her email) is the longest lapse in the tutorial and compelling evidence that as a communications system, this Interface was imperfect. Moreover, this imperfection resulted from the tangled nature of the Interface as a combination of Scene and Agency. Susan has particular Scene in front of her in terms of the layout of the program she is using, but Avril, because she is using a different Agency, has a different Scene, one that lacks certain features that Susan’s possesses. These

104 Trillian’s designers released several upgrades during the course of this study. One of the main reasons for these upgrades was because AOL kept changing its IM program to prevent Trillian users from accessing all features present in the AOL IM program.

differences led Avril to respond to Susan’s questions with visual language (“I am not seeing it”), suggesting that not only does Avril intuit this moment as Scenic but also that as a result Avril and Susan’s communication fails because they cannot come to terms with the Interface. So Avril’s comments suggest that this moment is not purely influenced by Scene or Agency; rather, the Agents Act under the combined influence of Scene and Agency (Interface). In this case, this moment can be seen as motivated by the Interface/Act ratio (the Interface is responsible for how the Act is performed) or the Interface/Agent ratio (the Interface makes Agents behave in particular ways). Only by considering the Interface in terms of irreducibly conflated Scenic and Agency terms does the true nature of the Act become clearer. The Interface as the computer program and technological apparatus is the main force motivating the relaying of exchanges. The importance of this conflation is that it forces the issue of how to communicate more clearly on the Interface to the fore. The difficulty that Avril and Susan experienced communicating on the Interface suggests that more standardization is necessary for two reasons. One is the pragmatic reason that if the Interface frustrates its participants, they are less likely to create common experiences within which to reach consubstantiation. The second is that important aspects of online tutoring may be lost if participants cannot easily and quickly accomplish their goals within the tutorial. If Avril cannot send her paper to Susan, then it is obviously much less likely that they will be able to hold a tutorial that examines her paper in the fashion that Avril desires. This is not to say that this moment created insurmountable difficulties for Avril and Susan. Interestingly, Susan moves to deflect the first reason given above, and she uses this moment to promote technological consubstantiation. Following their failed attempt to use the file transfer function of the IM system, Susan explains her difficulty in accessing Avril’s paper: “my email is crazy sometimes...” This comment invites Avril to locate the difficulty of the tutorial within the Interface, that aspect of apparently capricious technology that sometimes obeys the commands of the users and sometimes does not. Avril, however, does not commiserate here. This may be due to her interest in

moving forward with the tutorial or to her willingness to accept blame for the technological difficulties that have occurred during this tutorial, since she says “sorry about this [difficulty with file transfer] // I have not used im in a long time.” Blank Space Beyond the technical difficulties created by the IM interfaces, the text-driven nature of the Interface prompts Avril and Susan to develop various Interface-dependent rhetorical strategies. One of the most interesting is Avril’s use of blank space, that is, multiple lines of text within a single exchange. She first uses blank space in Exchange 10, when Susan asks for further clarification of her Purpose: 9. 0:06:49 0:01:55 Avril: it is a persuasive/research paper/putting outside voice into our argument topicof dicussion – education 10. 0:07:06 0:00:17 Avril: based on issue

11. 0:07:25 0:00:19 Avril: clarify opposing viewpt

12. 0:07:48 0:00:23 Avril: take postion of your own 13. 0:08:05 0:00:17 Avril: support arguement with evidence

14. 0:09:03 0:00:58 Susan: but also discuss the opposition’s argument as well, right?

In this idiosyncratically worded description of Avril’s Purpose, broken up over five consecutive exchanges, the Interface plays a central role in how Avril delivers and conceives of her Purpose. Avril’s transmitting of only one phrase105 on each exchange and her inclusion of blank space after Exchanges 10, 11, and 13 might appear to be a simple repeating of an instructor’s writing prompt; however, the time lapses between Avril’s exchanges averaged 19 seconds, indicating that she was either very familiar with the instructor’s requirements and could input them quickly or that she was simply cutting and pasting these comments from an electronic version of the syllabus. Several Interface- dependent clues argue against the latter. The use of the abbreviation “viewpt,” the lack of articles in the phrases “based on [an] issue,” “clarify [the] opposing viewpt,” and “take

105 While technically, Exchange 9 is a clause, its fragmented syntax argues strongly for its inclusion here.

[a] postion of your own,” and the misspellings of “arguement” and “postion” argue against the cut-and-paste method, since instructors generally use more formal diction in syllabi. Her use of the first-person plural pronoun our in Exchange 9 suggests that Avril is interpreting her Purpose from a hard-copy syllabus,106 since students generally use first-person plural to describe assignments at the writing center (often expressed as “We’re supposed to do x, y, and z”). However, her shift to the use of the second-person pronoun you in Exchange 12 suggests that Avril is less sure about interpreting this aspect into her thesis. In other words, while Avril understands that she must include an outside voice in her paper, she is not sure how she personally will take a position in regards to this outside voice.107 While it is possible that the blank space evident in the transcript is simply a technological artifact, evidence argues to the contrary. One, Avril uses this technique on several occasions, all of which are to send lists. Two, the blank space occurs inconsistently within lists, suggesting that they are placed there by the tutee. If this blank space were simply a technological artifact, then they should appear consistently, since technology is above all consistent. This is reinforced by the fact that Avril did not simply cut and paste her text, a move which might be expected to create technological artifacts. Three, Susan and I were unable to duplicate Avril’s use of blank space in subsequent experimentation with the IM system, suggesting that it is a feature known only to more experienced IMers, which Avril has already identified herself. Finally, although Avril comments self-consciously on other textual displays on the interface, she never expresses surprise at the manner in which her blank space text is displayed. Thus, it is likely that Avril’s use of blank space is a (conscious or not) rhetorical decision designed to validate her role as the speaker (Agent), and it is further a decision influenced by the affordances of the Interface. The effect of blank space is that Avril retains the position of speaker, so these exchanges occupy the bottom, left-hand side of Figure 4. Because the speed and brevity

106 If she is copying from a hard-copy syllabus, then part of Avril’s difficulty with the concept of counterargument may lie with the verb clarify, which does not connote a rhetor assuming an oppositional stance to the opposing argument. 107 This lack of assurance is discussed at greater length in the Purpose section.

of the exchanges tend to silence the other participant (notice that Susan does not interrupt Avril’s exchanges), I term them “Filibuster Exchanges”. Filibuster exchanges are greatly aided by the typing notification feature of the Interface. For example, when Avril begin entering text into the IM system, text reading “Avril is typing…” appears on Susan’s screen. During her interview, Susan described typing notifications as the textual equivalent of “Excuse me, I’m about to speak”. Because Susan was careful to appear polite to her tutees, she would wait for their exchanges to be sent before she sent hers, sometimes even retyping them before sending them. These moves are only possible due to the exigencies of the Interface, thereby demonstrating again its influence on Susan’s Purpose. Ellipses In addition to such phrases as “it seems to me” and “it seems that” to soften her criticism of Avril’s thesis,108 Susan uses other, more subtle textual devices necessitated by the Interface. Susan uses punctuation such as ellipses and parentheses along with emoticons109 to create moments of consubstantiation. The use of ellipses in IMing may stem from the status of this form of communication as intermediate between speak and writing. Susan’s use of ellipses suggests to the reader a longer pause than does a comma. In other words, these ellipses may be a more directive way of asking the reader to pause, or to suspend thoughts, since the writer may view the reader in a more conversational fashion than formal writing. The use of ellipses is especially interesting in a speed-based text environment since, ellipses take more effort to produce than commas (three keys strokes instead of one) but are used in place of them. Susan uses ellipses a surprising 48 times in this tutorial. By comparison, in a tutorial based on a questioning style, she uses only 27 question marks. Susan sent 78 exchanges; so on average 2 out of 3 of her exchanges contained an ellipse. Obviously, Susan intends ellipses to have a significant function. In most cases, the ellipse occurs as either a substitute comma after an introductory phrase (indicating that Avril should pause) or a substitute sentence marker (such as a period) between clauses. Perhaps the most rhetorically interesting use of

108 In other words, “seems” is a more polite, less direct way to indicate that something is wrong. 109 As noted earlier, emoticons are emotional indicators formed by the use of punctuation.

ellipses by Susan occurs at the ends of exchanges. Susan uses 18 ellipses at the end of exchanges, indicating that she will be sending another exchange shortly. This move works well for Susan because 13 of the 18 times she uses ellipse as an exchange end punctuation she retains the floor (i.e., Avril interrupts Susan only 5 times). Thus, Susan’s use of ellipses parallels Avril’s use of blank space in Filibuster Exchanges.110 Such control is important in online tutorials because it directs the flow of conversations and allows Susan to try to explain her ideas as fully as possible before being interrupted. This is clearly a feature that results from the Scene/Agency ratio since it is only necessary in an online environment. In traditional tutorials, paralinguistic cues allow people to alternate control of conversations. Here, however, Susan clearly feels that she must exhibit an explicit signal to keep Avril from interrupting her. By contrast, Avril only uses two ellipses, and then she places them on the second line, instead of the first, thereby depriving them of much of their filibustering power. Parentheses Susan uses also uses parentheses as a way to lessen her authority and soften her criticism of Avril’s thesis. Thus, Exchange 56 by Susan: “(I mean…this is something you have to explicitly state in so many words.)” This stress on positivity extends to Susan’s self-abnegating backchanneling: “(am i making sense or just making things more confusing?)” The cumulative effect of Susan’s rhetorical maneuvering is to soften her negative review of Avril’s writing, thereby offering as much harmony between the participants as possible. This parallels in an inverse fashion how capitalization within electronic texts such as email and IMs (LIKE THIS) can be interpreted by users as “shouting.” Emoticons Another common consubstantiative move by Susan is her use of the so-called “smiley” emoticon, :-), which she uses four times for various effects. While her intent varies, it is not accidental that Susan only uses the emotionally positive smiley icon, since

110 Susan also uses ellipses in their traditional sense of indicating missing text as in Exchange 93 when she models text for Avril, but refrains from giving Avril a complete thesis. This is covered in more detail in the Implications section at the end of this chapter.

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she is attempting to create a supportive environment for Avril. In this vein, she uses it in Exchange 35 to express happiness and relief at receiving Avril’s document. In Exchange 116, Susan uses it as a friendly gesture and possibly ironic comment on thanking Avril “for being patient with me, too.” In Exchange 125, Susan uses it to similar effect: “You have a nice weekend, too. :-).” However, Susan’s emoticon in Exchange 47, where it is the sole text, has a much more involved effect. 47. 0:44:16 0:01:08 Susan: yeah...it seems to me the overarching theme is that the drinking age should be lowered to 21

48. 0:44:22 0:00:06 Susan: oops...18 49. 0:44:24 0:00:02 Susan: :-)

On the surface, she uses it to make light of her typo in Exchange 45. On another level, it also functions to solidify her status as a tutor/Agent. This is accomplished as follows. Susan wants to be seen by Avril as a sympathetic listener and active respondent who has Avril’s best interests at heart. Susan knows that she has to make Avril identify with her to get her to be persuaded by Susan’s arguments. By explicitly recognizing when she has made a mistake, Susan makes herself more human (fallible) to Avril, an important move in an interaction that has so few other personal aspects. Her speedy response (within 6 seconds of the original exchange), also demonstrates Susan’s active status as a respondent. In addition, this emoticon demonstrates that Susan is in control of her text and recognizes when she’s made an error, thereby affirming Susan’s status as the knowledgeable tutor. By highlighting this singular error, Susan also highlights how infrequently she makes such errors, thereby confirming her role as the knowledgeable tutor. Especially in comparison to Avril’s nonstandard text, Susan’s text reinforces her position. By gaining Avril’s respect, Susan can function more effectively as a tutor. Interestingly, Susan does not choose to use emoticons during the most difficult part of the tutorial, the discussion of counterargument. This is curious because since this is the part in which Susan is most critical of Avril’s writing, it would be expected that she would attempt to deflect some of the potential sting of the criticism with an emoticon. This may suggest that she trusts language more than technological constructions such as

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emoticons. Alternately, it may suggest that Susan chose to mitigate her criticism via linguistic constructions aimed at Consubstantiation instead of emoticons because she was relatively new at IMing. Application of Modified Dramatism II: Avril and Seth Agents Seth (Tutor) At the time of this study, Seth is a male master’s student in the College of Education with a focus on ESL. He is the only tutor in this study who is a nonnative speaker of English. He had a complicated language history: “Indonesian is my native language, but my education has been all in English, so I can’t do formal writing in Indonesian. I’m maybe more fluent in English.” Seth began working at the BSU writing center in Fall Quarter 2002, so he had been a tutor for two quarters when this tutorial took place. Seth left the writing center after Spring Quarter 2003 when he obtained funding in his home department. Seth was an active member of the center, participating in conferences and submitting articles on ESL tutoring to writing center journals. Seth was comfortable with technology, “I like computers,” and he found that “people who aren’t techie make it more difficult for the tutor, since you have to tell them what to do.” He felt that “Online tutoring was challenging, and not as easy as I thought it would be. It was time-consuming. Talking is faster, although I do type fast.” Agents in Roles

SETH AS TUTOR In the role of tutor, Seth begins by being very focused, asking Avril almost immediately what she would like to work on. Initially, Seth’s suggestions to Avril are generic enough to be nondirective. Most of these are intended to provide her with information about how to structure her essay, albeit some of them are vague, such as “make a transition to the next topic…bank” and “make sure the transition is smooth so it doesn’t sound like you just jump from one topic to another.” Seth assumes that not only does Avril know what he means by transition, but also that she can incorporate transitions without examples of or suggestions on how to do this.

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Later, Seth becomes directive, moving from giving general writing advice to offering critical evaluations of Avril’s writing. This is seen most strikingly in Exchanges 47-51 in which Seth goes from enthusiastic respondent to Avril’s questions (“exactly!”) to critiquing her thesis and telling her what to do: 48. 0:34:59 0:00:16 Seth your thesis now is weak and not supported by your paragraphs

49. 0:35:23 0:00:24 Seth it is too general

50. 0:35:51 0:00:28 Seth incorporate ind rev, bank and tech in your thesis statement

51. 0:36:09 0:00:18 Seth that way... your readers would know what you will be talking about in your paper

In the absence of the many Consubstantiative moves that Susan performs, Seth risks alienating this tutee. He may appear less encouraging than Susan and more like an instructor than a collaborator. Seth’s response to Avril’s comment that “i am not sure how to star[t] teh intro” furthers his trend toward directiveness. Exchanges 53 and 54 provide a striking example of how Seth moves from being a nondirective and neutral respondent to being a directive and authoritative evaluator: 53. 0:37:23 0:00:33 Seth there are some ways to do that 54. 0:37:37 0:00:14 Seth let me give you the options

The passive construction of the sentence in Exchange 53, with its dummy subject “there,” offers a neutral commentary on authority, since no person is acting in it. Furthermore, the adjective “some” suggests that the “ways to do that” are not necessarily better than the ones Avril is currently using. However, Exchange 54 establishes Seth’s control over the tutorial, his position as the institutionally authoritative tutor: “Let me give you the options” (italics added). Interestingly, although this imperative sentence has the tutee as the “you-understood” subject, Seth’s use of the definite article the leaves little room for argumentation about who is in control here. He gives the options: the unique ones, the only “ways to do that.” The grammatical subject is the client, but the semantic Agent is

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the tutor. In the face of this, Avril responds with a simple “ok” before Seth gives a list of “the ways:” 56. 0:40:15 0:01:49 Seth you can give an argument on why the topic is worth reading 57. 0:40:29 0:00:14 Seth make sure it’s not to general or clichéd

58. 0:41:53 0:01:24 Seth second, you can provide historical background of your issue 59. 0:42:36 0:00:43 Seth and another option, you could preview what your going to be talking about

Confronted with this tutorial style, however, Avril also changes roles, as we will see below. Overall, however, Seth demonstrates little fluidity in his responses to Avril.

AVRIL AS TUTEE Initially, Avril occupies the role of a passive tutee. Ironically, this passivity can occasionally be seen in her Act of responding to Seth. When Seth gives Avril a series of general writing directives in Exchanges 33-45, her exchanges are very brief (“okay”, “i see,” and “yup”) and suggest that she is reading along but that she is not actively involved. Her question following Seth’s advice to “build your thesis statement from your topic sentences” suggests that she is not sure of his advice here: “would that be about tech, bank, ind rev.” When Avril does become more involved in the tutorial, she takes on a new role of actively questioning Seth’s advice. Although Avril does not interrupt Seth’s list of “the ways,” her question in Exchange 60 looks backward to the kind of concrete modeling given by Susan. 60. 0:42:49 0:00:13 Avril can you give me an example for 2nd do you mean how I started after thesis

Her Purpose is to have Seth demonstrate in specific terms what he means so that she can implement his suggestions. This exchange begins Avril’s shift from rather blankly going along with Seth’s ideas to asking for action from Seth in terms of him proving that his ideas would work in her paper. In other words, Avril is attempting to control the flow of communication here from simply being one way. These participants are negotiating 104

control as much as content. Moreover, in the second part of Exchange 60 (“for 2nd do you mean how I started after thesis”), Avril begins to question if Seth has misread or misunderstood her paper. In asking if the historical overview that Seth recommends in Exchange 58 is not what she has done in her section immediately following the thesis, Avril is subtly asking Seth to reconsider his suggestions about her paper, as well as subtly questioning his authority. Not surprisingly, this exchange causes difficulty for Seth, who asks Avril to rephrase her question.111 Several reasons could exist for this: perhaps Seth is confused by the dual questions separated by blank space; perhaps he cannot determine the referent for the phrase “for 2nd”112 in Exchange 60; perhaps he is wary of yielding the floor to the tutee; or perhaps he may want to avoid offering concrete advice (modeling) to his tutee, for the same reasons of fears of appropriation seen in Susan’s tutorial. The complexity of these exchanges demonstrates how tutors and tutees constantly negotiate not only tutorial content but power dynamics as well, since tutors must respond in ways that do not leave them vulnerable to plagiarism even when they try to give options to tutees. An even more striking example of Avril’s move toward increased authority in the tutorial is shown by Exchanges 90-96, in which Avril becomes insistent on having Seth email her a transcript of the tutorial. 90. 0:58:43 0:00:13 Avril can you email me the transcript ot our chat 91. 0:59:37 0:00:54 Seth i will have to ask my coordinator before i send it you... but i’ll send it you after that

92. 0:59:57 0:00:20 Seth i hope our tutorial helped you 93. 1:00:26 0:00:29 Avril last time they sent it to me by email 94. 1:00:48 0:00:22 Seth yes... i will send it to you

111 Although Avril has asked two questions, Seth asks her to rephrase one (“your question”). The ambiguity of his request again highlights the need for tutors and tutees to be highly specific online. Seth is most likely referring to the second question for two reasons: (1) because Avril’s second question is more likely to be the question Seth last read, it is more likely to be the one he has in mind when he begins typing, and (2) because the first question seems to be clear enough to not require a rephrasing, it is less likely that Seth would ask for a rephrasing of it. 112 The “for 2nd” phrase could refer alternately to Seth’s second suggestion (Exchange 58) or to the second question that Avril asks in Exchange 60. (In the latter, the phrase would function to indicate a listing.)

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95. 1:00:51 0:00:03 Avril so i am sure you are allowed to 96. 1:00:59 0:00:08 Avril ok thanks

By successfully persuading Seth to change his position on sending her the tutorial transcript, Avril has come to much more fully and firmly occupying the role of an active client. Circumference Pre-tutorial As noted earlier, Avril has four traditional tutorials before she meets online with Seth, including one with Seth a week earlier. Their online tutorial occurs six days after her online tutorial with Susan. Avril brings a different paper to her online tutorial with Seth, but he was unable to save this assignment.113 Seth was able to preserve the time stamp for this tutorial. Tutorial Seth went online on February 27 at 3:18 and meets Avril who signs on at 3:23. They exchange conventional greetings before Seth asks Avril to set the agenda on the unfinished history paper she sends to Seth. Avril says she would like feedback on how to organize it. Seth suggests thematic or chronologic organization, of which Avril chooses the former since she has already tried to do this. Seth asks for the themes of the paper, which Avril identifies only as industrial revolution, banking, and technology. Seth offers advice about topic sentences and paragraphing, as well as building a thesis statement from topic sentences. He categorizes Avril’s current thesis as “weak and not supported by [her] paragraphs.” Avril re-sets the agenda to focus only on the organization of her introduction, and Seth suggests some ways to make it more effective. Avril asks for more specific examples of how to carry out Seth’s advice. Seth does not understand her question, but he eventually agrees with the current form of Avril’s organization. Avril

113 Subsequent attempts to retrieve this assignment were unsuccessful. The loss of this paper is another reason why writing centers should host synchronous online tutorials on their own servers, since such losses would be greatly minimized. Perhaps the single most important lesson that I learned from this project was that control of the server is of paramount importance for research. A related lesson was that computer technology is most useful (perhaps ONLY useful) when it makes certain actions automatic for participants.

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asks him to check for punctuation errors, which Seth says he did not find in her paper. Seth sends her the URL for the post-tutorial anonymous survey. Avril asks if she can get a transcript of their tutorial and spends a few exchanges persuading Seth that he is allowed to do this, since Susan did it for her earlier. They close by discussing the reasons behind the tutorials (i.e., my dissertation research). They end at 4:23, after 60 minutes. Post-tutorial Avril and Seth do not have another tutorial, offline or online. Avril has five more traditional tutorials (including one with Susan two weeks after her meeting with Seth) before the end of the data-collection phase of my study. Throughout the study, Seth has one more online tutorial. Act Statistics The statistical Acts of Avril and Seth are included in Table 4 below, including those of Avril and Susan for comparative purposes. Participants Avril/Seth Avril/Susan Total words 986.00 1413.00 Total chars 4166.00 6005.00 Total exchanges 113.00 124.00 Words/exchange 8.73 11.40 Char/word 4.23 4.25 Time (min) 65.00 95.00 Words/min 15.17 14.87 Exchanges/minute 1.74 1.31

Client exch 43.00 46.00 % Client exch 38.05 37.10 Client words 361.00 528.00 % client words 36.61 37.37 Client chars 1322.00 2028.00 Client Char/words 3.66 3.84 Client words/exch 8.40 11.48

Tutor exch. 70.00 78.00

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% tutor exch 61.95 62.90 Tutor words 625.00 885.00 % tutor words 63.39 62.63 Tutor chars 2844.00 3977.00 Tutor Char/words 4.55 4.49 Tutor words/exch 8.93 11.35

Table 4: Avril and Susan compared to Avril and Seth

The pace of the tutorial is fairly slow at about 15 words per minute and 1.7 exchanges per minute. This may be due to the relative unfamiliarity of the participants with the program. Although Seth transmits significantly more text than Avril (63% versus 37%), they send about the same average number of words in each exchange (8.9 for Seth and 8.4 for Avril), so it is in the higher number of exchanges that Seth sends that result in him transmitting so much more text. Seth also tends to use longer words than Avril, as shown by the average number of characters per word (4.5 versus 3.8), which suggests a somewhat more complicated vocabulary. However, the difference is not terribly significant. The tabulated Acts for Avril and Seth are similar to those of Avril and Susan. Although Seth and Avril have a far shorter tutorial (by about 30 minutes), the percentage of text sent by Avril (37%) is the same as with Susan. The percentage of exchanges transmitted mirrors this trend, (Avril 38% and Seth 62%). These statistics demonstrate the dominance of the tutor, at least in the amount and frequency of text. Purpose Seth’s Online Purpose Seth’s Purpose is to give general writing advice to Avril (allied with his role of the knowledgeable tutor). He does this in a number of places, beginning with Exchange 33, after Avril has identified an interest in thematic organization: “i would organize your paper that way and support your topic sentences...” In other places, Seth advises Avril to “make it more brief,” where the antecedent of it is the first three paragraphs of Avril’s paper, and “don’t forget to wrap up your paper in your conclusion.” Unlike Susan, Seth

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offers little in the way of practical suggestions to Avril, as we will see below. However, Seth does refrain from focusing on grammar problems, a common concern with ESL clients, as we will see. However, Seth has a few occasions when he tries to get Avril to be specific. Sometimes this seems intended to get her to reflect on her structure, as in Exchanges 28 and 29: “what themes do you have in your paper/we can use those as topic sentences.” Avril’s response, “indust rev//bank//tech,” contributes little to agenda setting because they are so vague and Seth does not follow up on them in a specific way, so little comes of this attempt at being more specific. Avril’s Online Purpose Avril’s Purpose in this tutorial is as multivalent as that in her earlier tutorial with Susan. She begins the tutorial with a stated interest in reorganization of her paper’s structure, which she views as thematic. However, this style of organization is not completely carried through in this tutorial, and Avril and Seth disagree over the success of and whether she should continue with this organizational pattern. Thus, her Purpose becomes defending her thesis. This is most clearly shown in Exchange 62, which is Avril’s response to Seth asking for her to more clearly define her questions about his suggestions on her organization: “after the thesis I talked about time of debt, economy in crisis.” In this subtle redirection of Seth, Avril is in essence asking Seth to re-examine her text immediately following her thesis statement in terms of whether that text provides an historical overview. In other words, Avril is trying to get Seth to recognize that she has already done what he asks her to do in Exchange 58, thereby quietly challenging his authority. The problem of this miscommunication may reside in that these participants do not seem to have a shared sense of which sentence constitutes the thesis (or what the thesis is in this paper). Thus, they cannot come to agreement (Consubstantiate) over whether this definition or placement of the thesis is adequate. Without an explicit identification of the thesis, Seth and Avril cannot speak clearly to each other about how successful her support for the thesis is. In a face-to-face tutorial, Seth probably would have physically pointed to a specific statement and established it as the thesis, thereby giving tutor and tutee a specific

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Scene within which to Act. Such specificity is important in all tutorials, but especially in online tutorials, where the conflation of Scene and Agency into Interface demands that participants become very specific. The Interface of online tutorials will only work if Agents work via explicit linguistic Acts. The Interface demands different rhetorical Acts for consubstantiation to take place. Namely, tutors need to quote from the tutee’s paper to establish precisely what passage they are discussing and what specific elements tutors have in mind when they discuss such aspects of writing as theses, paragraph structure, etc.114 Without this specificity, online participants may talk past each other, as happens in this tutorial. Agenda-Setting Problems Difficulties in setting the agenda arise in this tutorial almost from the beginning. Seth asks Avril “what are you working on today” in Exchange 4 in order to get her to set the agenda. Avril momentarily deflects this responsibility: “i still need to reorganize my paper but did not have enough time before our appt.” Avril’s God-term here “reorganize” will serve to set the agenda for much of this tutorial, much in the way that her interest in “integration” helped focus her previous tutorial on making the disparate pieces of evidence in her paper either support the thesis or become part of a rejected counterargument. Once Seth receives the paper, he returns to agenda-setting: “are there any questions that you have to answer?” Seth’s question here seems aimed at getting Avril to be specific about her thesis. Avril’s response, “we had to answer what had the greatest impact on the nature and character of the US in the early 19th century and i chose ; changes in the American economy,” indicates not only that Avril is indeed using an answer to a question as the basis for her thesis but also that she has an implicit thesis in mind. This thesis would seem to be “Changes in the American economy had the greatest impact on the nature and character of the US in the early 19th century.” However, she does not explicitly state the thesis, and Seth does not ask her to do so. After he has read her paper, he asks her another agenda-setting question: “what are your concerns?” Avril

114 As before, whiteboard technology would be extremely useful for this kind of location-based (scenic) online tutoring.

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acknowledges that she’d like to “add more about bank[ing] etc,” and Seth suggests two “ways to organize it … one would be chronologically and the other one would be thematic... which one do you prefer?” In suggesting these alternatives, Seth seems to be offering up two equally important, value-neutral methods of organization. In this, he, like Susan, follows writing center pedagogy, which asks for tutors to give tutees options, but not be directive. This is in keeping with the views of Composition scholars such as Stephen North and Jeff Brooks, who argue that the tutor has to allow the tutee freedom of decision making.115 Seth gives several suggestions to Avril about how to structure her essay, including the idea that she can assemble her thesis after the paper is written: “you can build your thesis statement from your topic sentences/that way… the thesis represents your paper as a whole.” By suggesting that Avril can generate a thesis after she has written her topic sentences, Seth implies that Avril should begin to write the central parts of her essay first, and then consider how these pieces fit together before attempting to generate her thesis. Given the flexibility of thesis Avril demonstrates in this tutorial and the one before it, this advice might work for her, since she would not have to commit to a thesis until she could evaluate the writing she had already done. This is an example of the writing to learn idea that informs much composition theory, such as the ideas of Peter Elbow who suggests that students play the “believing game” when writing.116 Exchanges 41-51 demonstrate a crucial moment in the tutorial. 41. 0:33:49 0:00:01 Seth you also need an introduction 42. 0:33:55 0:00:06 Avril yup 43. 0:33:56 0:00:01 Seth which will have your thesis statement 44. 0:34:11 0:00:15 Seth you can build your thesis statement from your topic sentences 45. 0:34:23 0:00:12 Seth that way... the thesis represents your paper as a whole 46. 0:34:35 0:00:12 Avril would that be about tech, bank, ind rev

115 Brooks suggests that tutors mirror the involvement of clients, invoking a sliding scale of attentiveness in which the tutor can be progressively more involved as the client is. 116 The Believing Game involves writers trying to believe that a statement is true as a way to explore other viewpoints.

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47. 0:34:43 0:00:08 Seth exactly! 48. 0:34:59 0:00:16 Seth your thesis now is weak and not supported by your paragraphs 49. 0:35:23 0:00:24 Seth it is too general 50. 0:35:51 0:00:28 Seth incorporate ind rev, bank and tech in your thesis statement 51. 0:36:09 0:00:18 Seth that way... your readers would know what you will be talking about in your paper

Here, Seth moves from discussing the structure of Avril’s paper to evaluating her thesis. His definition of thesis in Exchange 45 as a synecdochic stand-in for the entire paper suggests its contribution to the structure of the paper. This conception neglects to mention the role of argumentation in a thesis, however, other than to mention that Avril’s thesis “is weak and not supported by” the rest of her paper. Seth also does not identify Avril’s thesis, and her conception of it (“would that be about tech, bank, ind rev117”) reveals the same ambiguity that was evident in her earlier tutorial with Susan. A thesis may “represent [a] paper as a whole” Seth suggests; however, a complete thesis generally offers some opinion on a topic, some argumentative stance. By not informing Avril of this requirement and not ascertaining that they are discussing the same thesis, Seth risks Avril misunderstanding his advice on how she should revise her thesis and her paper. Such misunderstandings are foregrounded in Exchanges 62-66, in which the participants talk past each other. 62. 0:43:59 0:00:46 Avril after the thesis i talked about time of debt, economy in crisis 63. 0:44:20 0:00:21 Seth your thesis should be at the end of your introduction... 64. 0:44:32 0:00:12 Seth sentences before that should lead to the thesis 65. 0:45:03 0:00:31 Seth if you want to give a historical background, you can talk about what had happened before this changes in american economy

117 Interestingly, this is one of the few places where Avril does not use blank space to indicate a listing. Perhaps this is due to the speed of the exchanges at this moment, since Avril only takes 12 seconds to respond to Seth.

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66. 0:45:58 0:00:55 Avril yes but should i put my paragarah 1,2,3 which are now after the theisi right aboue the theisis

Their shared lack of clarity on the thesis contributes to their difficulties here. This results in Seth directing Avril to questions of structure within the paper by giving general advice, and Avril re-directing Seth to where he thinks she should locate her thesis. This attempt to reset the agenda (and Seth’s Purpose) is predicated on her interest in getting Seth to be more specific with his advice, as well as convincing him that she has already done what he has asked of her. In response to the rhetorically complex delivery of Exchange 66, Seth once more asks Avril to rephrase her question. Again, Seth may be perplexed by Avril’s complicated delivery or he may simply be having difficulty deciphering Avril’s nonstandard English. However, Seth may also be trying to get Avril to decide on her own what she should do here, a common tutoring strategy. Avril’s response is to describe a restructuring of her paper in which she uses “background” (i.e., historical) paragraphs to introduce her thesis. Seth approves of this strategy, but his approval is not unproblematic. By agreeing with Avril’s light restructuring of her paper, Seth is basically agreeing to Avril’s paper retaining its pre-tutorial organization. Thus, these assurances create ambiguities in Seth’s Purpose. This problem is rooted in the original agenda negotiated between Avril and Seth: In Exchange 27, Avril responded to Seth’s question of whether she’d like to organize her paper thematically or chronologically, by saying that, “thematic is good\\and i have so far tried to do it.” Seth then began suggesting thematic ways to organize her paper. However, in Exchange 70, Seth says that Avril’s organization scheme, which has become chronological instead of thematic, is “a good way to do it.” The tutorial has come full circle, with Seth returning to the original structure of Avril’s paper. This circularity parallels the endless cycling of the Burkean Pentad, with co-Agents becoming counter-

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Agents with different Purposes. Just as Avril does not maintain a consistent theme in her paper, so does Seth neglect to maintain a consistent structural stance as a tutor. The final substantive section of the tutorial involves Seth’s response to Avril’s penultimate attempt at agenda-setting: 72. 0:51:04 0:00:18 Avril did you have any other things that i need to do yes ok 73. 0:51:07 0:00:03 Seth you might want to have one paragraph of intro 74. 0:52:01 0:00:54 Seth include the thesis at the end of the intro... make sure your thesis includes ideas from all your topic sentences 75. 0:52:35 0:00:34 Seth then start your second paragraph with the industrial revolution 76. 0:53:02 0:00:27 Seth then... make a transition to the second topic 77. 0:53:37 0:00:35 Seth when you write your paragraph... make sure your ideas support your topic sentences...

In Exchanges 73-77, Seth continues giving general structural advice (adhering to his original Purpose). This time, however, Seth is somewhat more specific in advising her to collapse the first three introductory paragraphs into one and use the topic of the industrial revolution to begin the second paragraph. Although Seth is providing a structure for Avril to follow, central concepts remain unclear (such as defining a thesis as a sentence with both a topic and an opinion on that topic). This means that Avril may remain content simply to mention the industrial revolution in her second paragraph and neglect to take a stand on it or express some argumentative view of this concept. Again, the lack of a specifically identified thesis creates difficulties. Seth’s Purpose may be to impart writing advice to Avril, but without a common understanding of Avril’s thesis, the participants will fail to move towards consubstantiation because this primary prerequisite for agreement is not being met. By the end of Exchange 77, the participants have been working together for about 54 minutes. Seth tells Avril that they have only a few minutes remaining and offers her another try at setting the Agenda. In the first, she asks if he “can…check for punctuation.” After taking a little more than a minute to look at her paper, Seth replies: 114

“As I looked at it, I didn’t see any major problem.” Perhaps Seth is upholding a writing center principle that tutors do not edit client papers or perhaps he realized that he did not have time to explain particular punctuation problems, but given the nonstandard English Avril displayed in both tutorials and her first paper, it seems that a brief discussion of punctuation or a citation of an online reference might have been useful for Avril. Interface Technical difficulties arise early in the tutorial; for example, five minutes lapse as Avril sends her paper to Seth’s email account, a replay of the Interface influence in Avril’s tutorial with Susan. Fortunately, this technical aspect takes less time. Interestingly, although Seth asks Avril to send her paper to him via the file-transfer system of the IM, when she asks for directions on how to do this, he responds by asking her to email it to him. Presumably, Seth recognizes that it will take less time for him to give her his personal email address than to explain how to use the file-transfer option.118 Avril’s next two exchanges further highlight the Tetrad element of Interface: “also i was wondering how to keep my word doc […and] the im sreen up at the same time/bec. when i have one up i cant see the other.” Avril’s difficulty with the arrangement of the two programs on her screen perfectly captures the complicated, intertwined nature of the Interface, since she is trying to bring order to both the Scenic element of text display and the Agency element of program function. Just as in her tutorial with Susan, Avril experiences difficulty with the program. As he did with Avril’s question about file transfer, Seth does not respond to Avril’s inquiry here. Instead, he offers organizational advice about Avril’s paper. Perhaps Seth’s lack of specific response here represents his desire to focus the tutorial on Avril’s agenda (i.e., maximum efficiency) or perhaps Seth does not know how to have both programs active at once. However, this was not simply a problem of Seth not reading Avril’s exchange, since Seth recalled this specific problem:

118 The file transfer option created a good deal of concern. Originally, I recommended its use to tutors in order to keep their personal email addresses hidden from tutees. However, the difficulty of transferring files via this option created enough problems for tutees and tutors that several abandoned it rather than work through the difficulties of this Burkean Agency. The fact that Seth, in one of his first online tutorials, chose to forego explaining the file transfer option demonstrates the lack of transparency with this option, as well as the tutor’s perceived need for expediency.

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“Avril didn’t know how to transfer files, use two programs at once, and blah blah blah. And this made it more difficult to work with her.” Whatever the reason, the result is that Avril’s questions go unanswered, thereby illustrating the peculiar capacity of the Interface to both enable and disable conversation. Blank Space As with her tutorial with Susan, Avril continues to create unique effects with blank space, from additional emphasis to gaining a measure of control over the tutorial to organizing items in a list and phrases or clauses in a vertical manner. However, its power as a Filibuster Exchange is less here than it was for her tutorial with Susan. 68. 0:49:10 0:01:33 Avril my paragraph after the theis are background you can read them so i thought taht i could place them as intro and then have thesisi 69. 0:49:48 0:00:38 Avril the 1st 3 paragraphs are time befoer change

This time, blank space substitutes for periods, since each exchange contains a sentence. Of greatest rhetorical interest is the second sentence, “you can read them,” which suggests that Avril may feel that Seth is being insufficiently attentive during this tutorial, another move toward disturbing the hierarchical nature of the tutorial (i.e., tutor above tutee, a momentary shift from co- to counter-Agents). If this is the case, Seth does not appear to notice. Ellipses In contrast to Avril’s use of blank space, Seth uses ellipses as punctuation and to signal Filibuster Exchanges. He uses 31 ellipses in 70 exchanges, meaning that about half of his exchanges contained ellipses. Like Susan, Seth uses more ellipses than question marks, using 10 question marks in a tutorial in which he asks eleven questions. Seth does not use ellipses to create Filibuster Exchanges as frequently as Susan, but the few times that he does use it this way, Avril does not interrupt him. For example, 33. 0:31:32 0:00:10 Seth i would organize your paper that way and support your topic sentences...

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34. 0:31:35 0:00:03 Seth for example... 35. 0:32:20 0:00:45 Seth you can have a general topic sentence about indutrial revolution and put your supporting ideas in the paragraph... 36. 0:32:37 0:00:17 Seth if you need to break it up into more than one paragraph... that’s ok too

The speed of these exchanges helps preclude interruptions as well. In general, however, Seth most often uses ellipses to denote the end of phrases or clauses, such as in Exchange 36 above wherein he uses it in place of a comma after an introductory phrase. The third use Seth makes of ellipses is to suggest a hesitation. An example of this is his use of ellipses after an initial “yes” following Avril’s request for him to send her a tutorial transcript. The ellipses suggest that Seth is not completely convinced that he should send the tutorial, but he does so anyway. Thus, the context suggests that these ellipses indicate the verbal elongation of a word, connoting thoughtfulness or ambiguity. This ambiguity is uncharacteristic of Seth, who seems quite focused and sure of himself earlier in the tutorial, and this punctuation stands as evidence of his ambiguity.

Implications Seth’s ambiguous ellipses, Susan’s self-conscious reflections on her errors, and Avril’s continual questioning of her theses all stand as indications that these participants are experiencing something new. By working online, they are Cyborgs. In terms of Fluid Cyborg Analysis, they are not only working on bringing flexibility to their roles as Agents, but they are also subject to the flexibility constraints of their Purposes, Acts, and Interface. The Fluid Cyborg model describes and suggests modeling for tutorial participants (Agents). Whereas Seth demonstrates an adherence to a rigid model of tutoring, not bending from his hierarchical position as the knowledgeable tutor, Susan is flexible. Many times, this is due to her attempts at consubstantiation. When Susan says that “my email is crazy sometimes,” she is not simply admitting to having technological difficulties, but occupying a more fluid relationship with Avril, one which opens up spaces for Avril to communicate with a peer. Avril also demonstrates flexibility and the 117

ability to inhabit various roles. In both tutorials, she begins passively, but moves to a more active role, even to the point of effectively convincing Seth to send her a copy of their transcript. This is Avril’s most significant alteration in tutoring position and is the primary occasion when she changes appearance from a faceless but agreeable tutee to a much more defined and active client. Both tutors had difficulty carrying out their Purposes, primarily because central terms were not defined commonly, resulting in tutee demonstrating a different understanding of them than that of the tutor. Avril and Susan’s different comprehensions of counterargument created moments of significant difficulty, and Avril and Seth’s variant understandings and location of the thesis created problems. Together these moments of difficulty argue strongly for online tutorial participants to be very explicit about how they are using terms and what exactly they mean when they say that a particular phrase or clause is the thesis of a piece of writing. Establishing the particular points of the agenda explicitly at the beginning of the tutorial may save a great deal of difficulty later on. However, this means that tutors will need to have a flexible understanding of how directive they can be with tutees, that is, how they Act online. This most often manifests in how tutors try to get tutees to understand and carry out actions that they thought were necessary for the paper to be successful (i.e., more fully approximate conventions for undergraduate papers). For Susan, this meant how much text she could model for Avril without leaving herself vulnerable to appropriation but still being clear enough that Avril understand how she needed to not only outline counterarguments but also show why these counterarguments were false. For Susan, this took the form of “fill in the blank” modeling, in which Susan took wording from Avril’s paper and, by leaving out specific text, made it clear what aspects were lacking. Exchange 93 illustrates this most clearly: “so what you need to do is make a statement that says something like ‘even though they said this....it doesn’t matter because....’” Seth faced a similar challenge in trying to get Avril to make her thesis stronger and her paper more thematically organized. His approach to this was to be much more general with Avril, in the sense that he rarely

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quoted from her paper, choosing instead to focus on her topics and the ways that these topics did or did not come together to form a thesis. Finally, Fluid Cyborg analysis also points up a problematic lack of flexibility within the Interface itself, given the lack of accommodation that it offers to the participants. The file-transfer protocol is primarily at fault here as its difficult implementation significantly slows the tutorials at the beginning. This is probably due to the software not being originally intended to facilitate easy file exchanges (based on the difficulties these and other participants experience). However, in order for online tutorial participants to be Fluid Cyborgs and communicate effectively online, software has to offer more and become more flexible.

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LIU AND AMY: THE PARADOX OF TUTEE DIRECTION VIA SHORT EXCHANGES

This chapter examines one tutorial pair, Liu and Amy, who met online three times, from May to August 2003. This chapter follows the Agents, Circumference, Acts, Purposes, Interface, and Implications order of the previous chapter. The close reading analysis of the transcripts continues, with the addition of tutor comments. Obviously, meeting more than once is one significant difference between one- time tutorials, such as the ones in the previous chapter between Avril/Seth and Avril/Susan, and the serial tutorials in the next two chapters. However, this is of significant critical interest because the participants come to tutorials after the first with more experience in working online with a particular person. The first tutorial of the serials often resembles a one-time tutorial. For this reason, more time is generally spent examining the tutorials after the first in this section. An additional complicating factor is that the participants in the Amy/Liu and Susan/Misaki tutorials worked together offline as well as online. This suggests that they could interact differently online, enacting strategies informed by their offline knowledge of each other. As Susan said, “tutorials with Misaki are usually good because we have established a relationship through working face-to-face with each other every week for almost a year. We can ‘hear’ each other through our written words.” This same is not true for Liu and Amy who met first online. Liu and Amy did eventually work together offline as well, and they rely on this information when they meet online later. For these reasons, all meetings of the client/tutor pairs are given in the chapters that follow. Application of Modified Dramatism Agent Liu (Client)

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Liu is a 31-year-old, female, native Korean speaker working on a dissertation in Education with a focus on Foreign/Second Language Education. Liu was well-known at the center due to her frequent uses of its services (often once a week). I had worked with Liu as a tutor prior to this project and knew her as a conscientious, diligent student. Liu declined to be interviewed for this study, although she was willing to release her tutorial transcripts and drafts of her writings. Amy (Tutor) Amy is a 24-year-old, female, native English speaker pursuing a master’s degree in Journalism. Amy began working as a tutor at the BSU writing center in the fall of 2002. After three quarters and upon completion of her degree, Amy ended her time with a one-quarter appointment as an assistant director of the writing center. An outgoing tutor and administrator, Amy also presented at regional conferences on writing centers. She demonstrated highly developed organizational ability and interpersonal skills, aspects probably influenced and developed by her previous job as a professional editor and writer. I met with Amy twice to discuss online tutorials, and she gave me the copies of Liu’s papers on which she had handwritten preparatory comments, some of which they discussed online, others they didn’t. Amy does not use IMs often, preferring instead to “email back and forth a lot, like sometimes continuous emails. If someone happens to be online at the same time I am, we’ll just send quick emails back and forth.” She has a strong sense of the appropriateness of CMC chatting “I don’t use [chat] at home because if I’m going to have continuous chat with someone, I might as well call them.” Agents in Roles As with participants in earlier tutorials, the participants here chose to meet online using variations of their actual names and always greeted each other with their real names. This established their relationship as professional, but did not preclude some

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misunderstandings, however. One interesting development was that in an interview immediately after tutorial I, Amy comments that she assumed that Liu was male.119 This one I thought was really difficult because…. He, I assume it was a he, we didn’t establish that at the beginning. I couldn’t tell from his name because I think he was Korean. But from his tone, I assumed this. Amy’s response upon learning that the tutee was female was “Is it? Huh.” (italics added) Amy demonstrated further pronoun difficulties as she verbally worked through her re- assignment of Liu as female. This is shown in her next comments after I asked how she felt they had worked together as a team: I thought I was going to make some headway when he, er, she I guess, was concerned about repetition, that there was repeating ideas throughout. And I suggested “Should we stop on the grammar and start working on some of the repetition?” But I think by asking the question, it kind of put the control back in their hands and they were like “No, I want to continue on grammar.” So I thought maybe that was an angle we could go on. There was one question that she had about “things that aren’t clear to you” and I think she meant it in a grammatical sense… (italics added).

From this point on, Amy referred to Liu with female pronouns. However, her movement from singular male to singular female to plural back to singular female pronouns clearly demonstrates the difficulty Amy experienced at least momentarily in recasting this tutee into a female role. Amy’s reasons why she had considered Liu male are similarly interesting: I think it was some of the words. In the beginning, I think she used a lot of slang. Things like “yeah” or “huh” or phrases I would associate more with a male. And some of it might be too that the first [online] tutorial I had was a female and instead of using “yeah” or “uh huh,” she’d use “yes” or “I understand.”… I think before I even got the document, when I first read it, I had a sense of it being male.

Amy’s sense that Liu “used a lot of slang” is accurate. In fact, it seems that Liu uses this consciously to fulfill the role of a casual tutee, a role that may seem at odds with Liu’s scrupulous attention to grammatical detail elsewhere in the tutorial. Unlike Amy, who

119 If the pseudonym Liu fails to convey the gender ambiguity that Amy felt was inherent to Liu’s real name, this researcher accepts the blame.

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uses “yes” 16 times in three tutorials, but does not use any form of “yeah”, Liu uses variations of “yea/yeah/yah” 50 times in three tutorials, but does not use “yes” even once. In addition, she sometimes dropped the subject of sentences, such as dropping the “I” in I.17, “sent it out,” to indicate that she had emailed her paper to Amy. However, although she interpreted Liu’s use of slang as masculine, Amy did not feel that traditional gender politics ruled the tutorial. In fact, although she acknowledged that “[Liu] had a definite agenda,” Amy felt that she herself also “had a definite agenda, and … was kind of pushing my agenda by suggesting things and commenting on things before [Liu]120 asked questions.” According to Amy, this results in a tutorial in which there “wasn’t quite so much of a banter of back and forth ideas” and instead it was more “tutor-directed.” Amy’s perception of the tutorial as “tutor-directed” will be taken up in the Purpose section. What is necessary here is to recognize the importance of this to the construction of Liu and Amy as Agents. To avoid too much overlap, however, only one more significant moment in the first tutorial will be discussed: Liu’s first five exchanges in tutorial I, which perform several unusual moves that establish her role as client: I.3121 0:00:34 0:00:09 Liu: hello I.4 0:00:39 0:00:05 Liu: i’ve waiting for you I.5 0:01:12 0:00:33 Liu: i have a paper on out-of-school literacy practices I.6 0:01:45 0:00:33 Liu: this is part of my dissertation. I.7 0:02:01 0:00:16 Liu: i don’t know how this tutoring works.

Although Amy has signed in well ahead of the scheduled time of the tutorial (8 minutes), Liu indicates that she has been waiting online for the tutorial to begin, signaling excitement or impatience. The former suggests that Liu may be trying to demonstrate an active interest in the tutorial, an attempt at constructing an eager online identity. This would figure as a move towards Consubstantiation, since Liu wants Amy to identify with

120 Square-bracket editorial alterations are for reader clarity, and reflect changes from Amy’s use of male pronouns to describe Liu. 121 The Roman numeral in front of exchanges identify the number of the tutorial; e.g. This excerpt is from Liu-Amy’s first tutorial

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her excitement about the tutorial in general. However, if Exchange 4 represents Liu’s impatience, then aside from negatively affecting identification, this comment constructs Liu as a dominating presence in the online tutorial, as more of a customer than a collaborator. This dominating presence is bolstered by Liu’s identification of her writing as part of her dissertation, a comment that compels academic respect. This may contribute to Amy’s negative reading of this tutorial, which she regarded as “really difficult.” A final note on Liu’s construction of herself as an Agent in this tutorial: Liu sometimes comments self consciously on a previous exchange. Often times, this will take the form of including an explicit acknowledgement of a mistake on an immediately prior exchange punctuation. For example, tutorial I, Liu neglects to include a question mark at the end of Exchange I.44: I.44 0:31:11 0:00:05 Liu: some more on page 1 I.45 0:31:12 0:00:01 Liu: ?

The one-second time lapse shows that Liu was very quick in correcting her mistake. More important than her speed is that she feels it necessary to establish that Exchange 44 was a question and that she feels Amy will understand what she means by this single- character exchange. (As discussed in the section on Purpose, this happens to be a moment when Amy and Liu are still working through their negotiation for the content, so Amy does not respond specifically to this question mark.) Just as Liu is defined as a client/Agent by certain traits, Amy uses particular traits to define herself as a tutor/Agent. One of the most obvious ways that she does this is by using a large number of ambiguous words such as could, seemed, and phrases such as I think, etc to give the client authority. Amy also takes responsibility as a reader such as in II.74, where she describes her difficulty with one of Liu’s terms: “I was unclear about this term (italics added).” In this way, Amy strives to make Liu feel less that she has failed to be detailed and complete as a writer, but that Amy as a reader does not know enough about the subject. The construction of several other sentences shows Amy refusing to locate Liu’s writing as a source of difficulty. Instead, Amy identifies

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problematic constructions as problems onto themselves. In Exchange II.90: “There was one sentence that seemed a little long.” The net effect of this is to allow Amy to focus attention on difficult areas but not explicitly blame Liu for these difficulties. She uses indefinite forms, blame redirection, and politeness as a way to construct a nondirective online identity. Amy’s construction of herself as a tutor also includes constructing Liu as an ESL Other. Interestingly, this only happens in the first tutorial, and seems to be an assumption based on Liu’s name and her writing. Thus, when Amy tells Liu that a phrasing “would work, but we would typically include an additional word in the phrase” (my italics) the “we” here (and in Exchanges 46 and 72) is not inclusive of Amy and Liu, but rather of Amy and other native English speakers. This is reinforced by the use of “English” to describe “word or phrase” in other exchanges: “There were a few other instances of not quite using the English word or phrase correctly. for example, on page 1, we would say ‘sometimes’” (I.42; see also I.46 elsewhere in this manuscript). Secret Agent In the tradition of Kenneth Burke’s use of tonal puns and the Haraway Cyborg’s willful violation of genre boundaries, I offer the subcategory of the Secret Agent. The Secret Agent was suggested by my name’s appearance in the Liu/Amy transcripts.122 In this case, I specifically embody the absent audience that online tutorials create;123 however, this sub-element of Agent exists online in a way that it does not in traditional tutorials. There is always the sense that this tutorial could be examined by others. Specific clearance for me to examine these tutorials had, of course, been granted by the participants. Thus, they knew about this in advance. This does not remove the possibility that others will see online tutorials. Although enabled by the Interface, this unease with the electronic permanence of online tutorials is an embodiment of potentially

122 Most likely because I had not met Avril, my name was not explicitly mentioned in her tutorials. My position as the coordinator of the online program does come up explicitly in Avril’s persuasion of Seth that she should receive a copy of their tutorial. See “Avril as Tutee” earlier. 123 My name appears twice in Liu and Amy’s tutorials: once at I.161 (“Amy: OK, I’ll tell Doug (who’s in charge of the online pilot progam).”), and once at III.344 (“Amy: Doug recommended you might be willing to help with our training session.”).

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eavesdropping Secret Agent presence. When I first proposed online tutoring at BSU, some administrators and tutors expressed misgivings about the ways that these tutorials could be read by instructors, parents, and others. In this view, the permanence of tutorials represented a danger since errors made in online tutoring might be used against the tutor in a way that is significantly less likely for offline tutorials. The role of Secret Agent exists as a representation and acknowledgement of these kinds of fears, as well as a way to discuss them with some emotional detachment. In the end, the Secret Agent role embodied by administrators may exist as a way for tutors to remember that they are accountable to clients and to remain focused and helpful. Circumference Pre-tutorial From January to August 2003, (the data collection phase), Liu had 26 tutorials, 6 of which were online. Liu had 12 traditional tutorials before her first online tutorial with Amy, including one four days before this tutorial (she also had one three days after this tutorial).124 Amy had done one online tutorial before working online with Liu.125 As noted earlier, Liu and Amy had not met prior to their first online tutorial.126 Their first tutorial shows many of the same introductory concerns demonstrated in the Avril/Seth and Avril/Susan tutorials, concerns such as the agenda setting moves discussed in the Purpose section. Although the time-stamp was preserved only for the first tutorial, the client papers were preserved for all tutorials. Tutorial I The first tutorial took place on May 20 at 1:22, 8 minutes prior to the scheduled beginning of the session. Like most tutorials, this one begins with Amy identifying herself and greeting Liu. Liu emails Amy “a paper on out-of-school literacy practices,” and asks her to read the “first 9-10 pages,” for “sentense level, grammatical issues.” After receiving the paper, Amy takes 12 minutes to print it out, read it and handwrite comments on it. They begin discussing the sentences that Liu underlined. In addition to

124 One of these 12 tutorials was with Susan. 125 This tutorial was on May 1, 2003, with Misaki. 126 Amy did not hold a traditional tutorial, and presumably meet in person, with Liu until July 30, 2003.

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the underlined sections, Liu asks other questions, leading to a nonsequential conversation in which participants respond to each other in an overlapping manner. They discuss grammar, as well as word choice, all of which are aimed at achieving a native speaker quality to Liu’s writing (e.g., discussions of formal and informal diction). At 55 minutes into the tutorial, Amy tells Liu that they only have “5-10 minutes left,” but the tutorial goes on for about 20 minutes more. They finish the content portion of the tutorial at Exchange 155 and begin discussion of having another tutorial. They agree to meet the next week at the same time. Amy says that she will email Liu if scheduling is a problem. The time lag created by Amy’s reading of Liu’s paper was one of the reasons that tutors were encouraged to email in their papers at least an hour in advance of their online tutorial time. This change was suggested by Susan following a successful tutorial using this format in which she had participated in March. Tutorials were scheduled for 15 minutes past the usual tutoring time, so tutees were supposed to log on at 15 minutes before the hour (rather than at half an hour before the hour). For example, this meant that tutorials would begin at 11:30 at the physical writing center and 11:45 for the online system. The extra time for onlines was intended to give tutors time to receive, read, and consider responses to the tutee’s paper, thereby eliminating the time lapses of earlier tutorials. That not all tutees adhered to this model is evidenced by the beginning times of each of Liu’s tutorials (which become progressively later). Interlude I After her online tutorial, Liu cancels the offline tutorial she schedules at the end of tutorial I, and she does not work with Amy again until nine weeks later. In this time, Liu had one online tutorial and three traditional tutorials.127 The topics in these tutorials (as recorded by the tutors) were similarly focused on grammar and sentence structure, etc. Amy had no other online tutorials in this time. I interviewed her immediately following tutorial I. Tutorial II

127 Liu met online with Marcus on July 18, five days before her second online tutorial with Amy.

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Although they meet online at the correct time, 12:46 on July 23, for their second tutorial, Amy did not receive Liu’s paper in the hour prior to the tutorial. Thus, the tutorial begins with Susan acknowledging receipt of Liu’s paper, which Liu describes as a condensed excerpt of the dissertation on which they had previously worked. Without the timestamp, it is impossible to tell what kind of time lag accompanies Amy’s reading of Liu’s paper, but the shorter time did not affect the amount of text they exchanged. In fact, they exchanged significantly more text and exchanges than in the first tutorial. Amy begins by noting that Liu has identified specific issues (“grammatical issues” and “stylistic issues”) at the beginning of her paper and then begins to ask questions about these issues. However, Liu says in Exchange 24 that she has sent in the wrong draft of it. She emails the correct version. Following confirmation that this is the correct version, Amy repeats the question she asked about the initial, incorrect version: “Does this paragraph (literacy is a significant school subject...) start the paper?” A discussion follows on how the introduction relates to the rest of the paper and this leads Amy to ask about Liu’s Purpose and audience. At the end of this discussion, Liu realizes that she has again emailed the wrong file to Amy.128 Interestingly, she elects not to send in the new file, but sends it over three exchanges. Amy initiates a discussion about the complexity of Liu’s writing and how reorganization might help to make it easier to read. They then discuss the “tone” of the piece. At this point, Exchange 168, Amy notes that they need to finish in “the next 5 min. or so.”129 Liu transmits her final paragraph. Their discussion of word choice in this paragraph concludes the substantive portion of the tutorial. The final section (Exchanges 224-258) contains their plans to meet offline for tutoring in a week. Interlude II

128 Oddly, the paragraph that Liu identifies as the correct one matches a paragraph that Amy attempts to transmit to Liu (the IM program rejects Amy’s excerpt because it exceeds the maximum allowable length). Presumably, these paragraphs should be different. 129 If Amy is following the tutorial procedure, she should end the tutorial at 1:20 pm, so this comment may have been made around 1:15 pm. However, the tutorial continues on for 92 more exchanges and ends at 1:38 pm.

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Liu and Amy meet in face to face tutorials every week for a month before their third online tutorial, including the one they scheduled at the end of their second online tutorial, leading to a total of four traditional tutorials with Amy. Liu has two other online tutorials,130 and Amy tutors in one other online. Liu’s tutorials follow a familiar pattern of discussion in that she asked for the focus to be on grammar. Part of the delay between the second and third tutorials results from Amy being unavailable for tutoring due to her work as the assistant coordinator of the writing center. Tutorial III The tutorial takes place 28 days after tutorial II at 1:48 pm on Wednesday, August 20. Once again, this tutorial had less time, and once again, it had more exchanges than the previous tutorials (the amount of text was somewhat less, however).131 The tutorial began a few minutes later than scheduled, and Liu’s opening exchange, “i finally got on,” suggests that technical difficulties were the reason. However, as before, Amy has “just printed out [Liu’s] paper,” and they begin by looking at the areas that Liu has highlighted, following her request that they look at “grammar.” Using the numbers from each section of Liu’s paper to organize their conversations, they discuss academic writing as a genre, article choices, the connotations of “engagement,” and how to revise difficult phrasing, as well as the use of numbers for in-text lists, present versus past tense, and prepositions (including whether prepositions should be used between subjects and verbs). The final 90 exchanges contain a discussion of Amy’s forthcoming marriage and Amy’s request for Liu to attend the writing center’s fall training sessions. (Liu originally agrees but is later unable to attend.) Post-tutorial This was the last online tutorial for both Liu and Amy. In addition, it was Liu’s final tutorial for the collection period, as she did not return for a traditional tutorial. Act Serial tutorials offer a new way to consider Act, as trends of Acts across tutorials. Because the entering and transmitting of text is the central Act of online tutorials, much

130 She has another online with Marcus and one with Troy. 131 A detailed discussion of the trend toward short exchanges occurs later in this chapter.

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can be gained from looking at how many times Acts are committed. Because Liu and Amy’s Act are circumscribed by the combination of the text of the transcript and Liu’s essay, Acts are counted within these texts. The table below arranges these Acts in a table.132 Chapter 4: Liu/Amy Tutorial I II III Total words 2218 2334 1990 Total chars 10425 11522 9264 Total exchanges 177 253 399 words/exchange 13 9 5 Char/word 5 5 5 Time (min) 745250 words/min 304540

Client exch 115 146 204 % Client exch 65 58 51 Client words 611 885 522 % client words 283826 Client chars 2935 4641 2383 Client Char/words 5 5 5 Client words/exch 5 6 3 client 1-word exch 30 67 92 client 2-word exch. 8 10 39

Tutor exch. 61 107 195 % tutor exch 34 42 49 Tutor words 1605 1448 1468 % tutor words 72 62 74 Tutor chars 7490 6881 6881 Tutor Char/words 5 5 5 Tutor words/exch 26 14 8 Tutor 1-word exch 2 11 18 Tutor 2-word exch. 0 1 17

Table 5: Liu and Amy statistics

As mentioned in the Circumference, these tutorials showed a trend toward less time but more exchanges. Interestingly, Liu sent more exchanges than Amy did for all three tutorials, the only set for which the client sent more exchanges than the tutor in the 25

132 The use of this table is in no way meant to suggest that these are statistically significant findings. They are presented only as the data from an admittedly very limited number of tutorials and are only used to suggest the rhetorical methods employed in specific tutorials in the most general terms.

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tutorials in this study. However, it should also be noted that Liu sent far fewer words than Amy. This indicates that as the pace of the tutorials, as measured in the number of exchanges, became much faster as the tutorials went on, the number of words per exchange got lower. The increase in speed paralleled a decrease in the overall average number of words per exchange, from 12.5 to 9.2 to 5.0 words per exchange.133 The number of words Liu used in each exchange decreased significantly, from 5.3 to 6.1 to 2.6; however, Amy’s words per exchange showed a much more striking decrease, from 26.3 to 13.5 to 7.5. These numbers demonstrate that the participants chose to Act in different ways as the tutorials progressed. Much of the increased brevity of Liu’s responses resides in her choice of using an increasing number of one- or two-word exchanges. Liu’s economy of expression is in part a response to the influence of the Interface, since shorter exchanges are faster and easier to type and to read. However, it is also a conscious Act to separate text and ideas out to make them easier to understand. Moreover, many of Liu’s one- or two-word exchanges function as markers of active listening. The use of many short exchanges instead of fewer, longer ones may also help to make the tutorial seem more interactive and it may help to reduce confusion when discussing complex topics. One of the most compelling reasons for this correlation is that participants are kept more on task when they are receiving frequent, brief exchanges and they seem less likely to suggest new avenues of discussion during the time they are waiting for the other person to respond. The use of shorter exchanges does not mean that the content will be superficial, but rather that the participants are taking a more linear, gradual approach to their discussions. The following excerpt from tutorial I demonstrates the difficulty of using long answers (I.26-37): I.26 0:23:37 0:00:07 Liu: most grammatical issues I.27 0:24:39 0:01:02 Liu: necessary ever before in North America (on page 2) I.28 0:24:51 0:00:12 Liu: can i put "ever before" there?

133 These statistics are complicated by the tutee’s transmission of previously written text (especially in tutorial I), and are offered only as a very rough estimate of the participant involvement.

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I.29 0:25:00 0:00:09 Liu: first line on page 2 I.30 0:25:17 0:00:17 Amy: Overall, your grammar looked pretty good. For the sentence you underlined on page 2, L1 and L2 would each be a separate and distinct literacy, right? I.31 0:25:33 0:00:16 Liu: yeah I.32 0:26:05 0:00:32 Liu: oh, i wonder whether teh paper makes sense overall I.33 0:26:29 0:00:24 Amy: For the first line on page 2, the phrase would work, but we would typically include an additional word in the phrase, making it, "more necessary than ever before." The "than" gives a more clear sense of comparison. I.34 0:26:40 0:00:11 Liu: any confusing parts? I.35 0:26:43 0:00:03 Liu: ok. I.36 0:27:30 0:00:47 Amy: OK, back to the first underlined section. If the L1 and L2 literacies are different, then you’d need to reflect that in the plural form of literacies (for example, "both L1 and L2 literacies"). I.37 0:28:23 0:00:53 Amy: Overall, the ideas make sense. Do you want to continue with some of the grammatical sections or move on to confusing sections and come back to grammar later?

Before Amy can respond to Liu’s agenda of “most[ly] grammatical issues” in Exchange 26, Liu begins asking her about other concerns (Exchanges 27-29). This means that although Amy clearly intends to follow up on her question to Liu in Exchange 30, she cannot until she has responded to Liu’s questions in Exchanges 28 and 29. In the time that it takes Amy to write out her long answer in Exchange 33 (about 48 seconds), Liu asks one broad question (Exchange 32) before and one (Exchange 34) 11 seconds after Amy’s long response. In Exchange 36, Amy returns to the thread she began developing in Exchange 30. After she delivers this, Amy sends Exchange 37, which clearly appears to be her way of dealing with the barrage of questions that Liu is asking. This convoluted interaction demonstrates that taking a long time (in relative terms) to answer this particular client prompts her to ask even more questions. In a sense, this is good for Liu because she can verbalize questions as they occur to her and get to see them displayed. However, it is obviously also a challenge to Amy, since she cannot answer questions as quickly as Liu asks them. 132

In contrast to this, consider the much more orderly way that Liu and Amy work through the agenda in tutorial III, aided in no small measure by their much shorter exchanges (III.7-23): III.7 Amy Did you want to focus on the areas you highlighted? III.8 Liu when you are ready. let me knwo III.9 Liu yeah.. III.10 Liu grammar.. III.11 Amy Is the first phrase "the concern of a blurred distinction and the existence of an overlap"? III.12 Liu Yeah III.13 Liu a or the... III.14 Liu the distictintion.. III.15 Amy Is the "blurred distinction" different from the "existence of an overlap"? III.16 Liu the same.. III.17 Amy Two separate concerns? III.18 Liu same issue.. III.19 Liu redundant? III.20 Amy Maybe. III.21 Amy I wasn’t sure if it should actually be concerns (plural). III.22 Liu aha. III.23 Liu yeah.. concerns

Although the time stamp was not recorded for tutorial III, it seems quite likely that very little time lapses between these exchanges (given the much higher number of exchanges in tutorial III, average inter-exchange times must be very low). The use of short exchanges by each participant means that they tend to overlap each other’s thoughts much less.134 What is important to note here is how much more smoothly the tutorial progresses when the participants Act in a more abbreviated manner. Amy is still writing longer exchanges than Liu, but her longest response here is about half as long as her shortest exchange in the earlier excerpt. In addition her longest response in this excerpt (Exchange I.11) is mostly a quote from Liu and so it could have been quickly copied

134 The use of short exchanges will also be important for agenda setting and therefore will also be discussed in the purpose section.

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from Liu’s paper and pasted into the IM interface. If so (and there is no way to tell for certain), then Amy’s response could have been about as fast as Liu’s. These short exchanges are not always successful in letting the other participant know what was meant by them, and Liu can be so compact in her responses that it is difficult to know what she means. Exchanges II.91-95 demonstrate this well: II.91 Amy Is there a way to break up this contrast? II.92 Liu however.. II.93 Amy You mean, if you split the ideas into two sentences? II.94 Amy Using a however to start the second sentence? II.95 Liu yeah.

Liu’s one-word Exchange 92 seems to leave Amy without a clear idea of what Liu means, forcing her to follow up on it in Exchanges 93 and 94. Aside from occasional difficulties such as these, Liu’s short exchanges seem effective. They are perhaps most effective as conversational markers. Liu’s use of 50 variations of “yea/yeah/yah,” for example, is an example of an Act that seems intended to smooth over the sometimes disjointed conversations often encountered online. These short exchanges respond to both Act and Interface, relying as they do on the screen and keyboard. Similarly, when 22 of the first 25 exchanges by Liu in tutorial III are one- or two-word exchanges, then something is at work besides simple convenience. That something is a conscious defying of conventions, a textual embodiment of Haraway’s monstrous cyborg. Reconsidering Liu’s deliberate misspellings such as “ya” for “yeah,” this shortening of a form that is already slang can be seen as a way to build intentionally on a denial of customary forms. Such forms are a hybrid of Standard and informal English, coupled with the compulsion to speed and convenience that is the hallmark of IMs, paralleling the ways that “Many studies have claimed that different types of CMC, such as chat and email, are hybrids between speech and writing” (Segerstad and Ljungstrand, 153). They are the calligraphy of the Cyborg hand, text that has been mechanized and standardized to perfection in appearance but is perverse in its willingness to violate standards.

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Moreover, as will be shown in the Purpose section, these short exchanges work paradoxically and in conjunction with other Interface-dependent textual artifacts to create an authority for Liu in that she was better able to direct the Acts in the tutorial. That is, she was able to influence greatly the content considered by the tutorial by the use of these short exchanges, even though they do not seem to represent sustained intellectual involvement. Just as Liu’s use of short exchanges demonstrates a surprising involvement in these tutorials, the ways that Liu enacts her transmittal of her essays to Amy shed light on what she had intended. The Act of preparing her essays for a tutorial reveals much about Liu’s motivations. For example, in her 18-page long, first paper, Liu underlined 15 separate selections of text on which she wanted to focus during the tutorial. Interestingly, her criteria for choosing these particular selections are not explicitly revealed, other than her oft-stated interest in examining the “grammar” of her papers. In the second tutorial, Liu includes a heading with a numbered list (vertically organized) of areas on which she wants to focus: “(1) grammatical issues//(2) stylistic issues as well –more concise words, appropriate ways to express, more convincing (persuasive) ways to argue etc.” The way that Liu embeds so many complex issues here parallels the way she asks many overlapping questions during her first tutorial. However, Liu asks far fewer overlapping questions in the second tutorial, preferring instead to let Amy address the issues Liu identifies in the paper, which range from her interest in concise wording to genre conventions to rhetorical skill. The third paper demonstrates Liu acting in a much less organized way. The most obvious sign of this is her use of underlining, highlighting, and square brackets. While this text markup indicates sections she’d like to discuss in the tutorial, no difference in importance is suggested among these various methods, rendering them ambiguous for the tutor. The paper, an abstract of Liu’s dissertation, is the less polished and prepared of the two and consists of an introductory paragraph, a short summary of literature, and a numbered list of items related to her dissertation. The latter seem to lack an organizing principle and invoke a variety of viewpoints: plural and singular first-person and third- person. However, the way that this system plays out online is surprisingly efficient.

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Purpose (Agenda Setting) The Purpose of online tutorials is best considered in terms of the negotiation surrounding the setting of agendas. As was done with earlier elements of the Pentad, the Agenda-setting in these serial tutorials will be examined across the series. Two forms of Agenda-setting occur in the Liu/Amy tutorials: subject-negotiation (what the tutorial will discuss) and tutorial-procedure agenda setting (how this discussion will proceed). Subject-negotiation agenda setting is more common, generally occurs near the beginning of a tutorial (although it can occur anywhere), and is most often directed by the client. Tutorial-procedure agenda setting also usually occurs explicitly at the beginning of tutorials (although it gets carried out in different implicit forms throughout). It is most often directed by the tutor and becomes less explicit as the tutorial progresses. The negotiations for both types are sometimes explicit, but often occur subtly and implicitly. Both types of Agenda-setting become less chaotic (i.e., less re-setting of the agenda) from the first to the third Liu-Amy tutorials. In tutorial I, Liu begins the tutorial by asking to focus on “grammar” but, as we have seen, tends to ask a barrage of questions as the tutorial moves forward, often so quickly that Amy does not have time to respond adequately. In tutorial II, the overall Agenda changes somewhat less frequently, perhaps because Liu has identified her Agenda items in the document she emails to Amy. However, Liu emails the wrong documents to Amy twice and the Agenda is explicitly re- examined by Amy at these moments to ensure that it is being carried out as Liu wishes. By the third tutorial, however, the Agenda is almost completely identified by Liu at the beginning in terms of highlighted items within her electronic document, and the tutorial proceeds very linearly along the lines of these highlighted items. What follows is a discussion of these moments of Agenda-setting within tutorials that shows the move toward less convoluted Agenda-setting. Exchanges I.8, I.11, and I.18 demonstrate tutorial-procedure Agenda-setting by the tutor. I.8. 0:02:13 0:00:12 Amy: Great. We’re scheduled to start at 1:30, but if you can email me the document, it will give me a few minutes to look over your paper. You can

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email it to [email protected].

I.11. 0:03:13 0:00:03 Amy: OK. It’s easiest if you email what you want to work on, so that I can refer to various sections as we type back and forth. With a dissertation, it’s probably best to just send the part you want to work on today; a lengthy document sometimes won’t go through.

I.18. 0:07:55 0:00:12 Amy: Just for reference, next time it is usually more time-efficient to email a document the day before or at least an hour or two before an online tutorial. I know it can be unclear the first time you make an online appointment. :-)

In these three exchanges, Amy tells Liu how the tutorials will proceed and what she wants Liu to do. In this, she is also reiterating the tutorial procedure that clients were given before the tutorials.135 Exchange 8 also corresponds to a Purpose/Agent ratio because even while Amy establishes the tutorial procedure, she is also subtly telling Liu that it is too early to begin the tutorial (i.e., establishing her control of the tutorial). Similarly, in Exchange 11 Amy uses a technological scapegoat (“a lengthy document sometimes won’t go through”136) to limit the size of the paper she will have to read and thereby her responsibility as a tutor to Liu.137 Tutorial-procedure Agenda settings occur in later tutorials as well, but they are shorter and more implicit. In tutorial III, Amy needs only say “Did you want to focus on the areas you highlighted?” (III.9), and they begin working immediately on these areas. This focus on tutors is not to say that clients did not direct tutorial-procedure agenda

135 The exchanges of several clients suggested that they had not read the online instructions or had not sufficiently understood them. This can be accounted for as either a fault with the study’s document design or the hurried nature of online clients. Alterations in wording were made during the study to create a more easily navigated and understood environment for tutees and tutors. Dynamically responding to participant experiences should lead to better structures for programs, since “out-of-the-box” tutorial systems may carry assumptions about the content and directions of tutorials that are antithetical to current writing center theory (as were some of the earlier software programs described by Boquet in “A History”). 136 Later iterations of the online system contained directions to tutees that they refrain from emailing in more than seven pages of text because of the time limitations in tutorials. 137 Amy’s round-about response here also suggests that technical questions are considered out of bounds for tutors, a move in line with the oft-expressed opinions of tutors that they felt uncomfortable giving technological advice to tutees

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setting, as Liu did in II.18: “could you read it through and talk about section by section?” Clearly, Liu wants tutorials to proceed in a gradual, stepwise fashion (perhaps because of the lessons she learned during the chaotic tutorial I). More commonly, however, tutors and tutees engage in subject-negotiation Agenda-setting. Liu’s identification of grammar as the Purpose is the most common and explicit name used in this form. Liu invokes this God-term repeatedly throughout her tutorials. In tutorial I, after Liu directs Amy’s attention in “the first 9-10 pages” to “…more sentense level, grammatical issues” (I.15), she repeats this term and the synonym phrase “sentence structure” eight times. The discussion of the I.26-37 excerpt in the Act section already shows how Liu repeatedly re-sets her Agenda in the beginning of tutorial I. Amy attempts to deal with these new Agendas in various ways, such as by telling Liu that “Overall, your grammar looked pretty good” (I.29), perhaps as a way to move past grammar as an Agenda item. Liu’s Agenda is not as clearly focused on grammar as one might imagine however, and she demonstrates a shift toward melding discussions of the coherence of her writing with grammar problems. Thus, her interest in grammar is subsumed into her desire for Amy to discuss “meaning-interrupting errors” (I.58) and “confusing areas” (I.115), both of which seem to suggest not only areas of grammar difficulty, but of stylistic challenges as well. These kinds of Agenda items lead to Amy giving reader-response style tutorial advice, such as “One overall area that confused me a little was in the very beginning...” (I.122). In the main, most of the Agenda items in tutorial I were grammar based. This trend continued in tutorial II. The Agenda-setting in this tutorial was unique, however, in that in advance of the beginning of the tutorial, Liu identified two Agenda items in her electronic document (‘grammatical” and “stylistic issues”). However, because Liu sent in three variations of her essay (two by email and one embedded in the IM tutorial itself), the Agenda items are not discussed in a linear fashion. Amy acknowledges Liu’s concerns immediately: “I see you want to work on grammatical issues, as well as persusive arguments, concise words, etc.” (II.12), in an interesting example of how Amy allows Liu to set the Agenda. This rhetorical strategy sits on the left-hand line in Figure 4 between the tutor and the tutee setting the agenda.

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Despite the prominence of grammar as an Agenda item, Amy’s first question to Liu about the paper is about the lack of prefacing for the reader. Her suggestion that the second sentence is “a little vague in defining the subject of your study” (I.51) prompts Liu to discuss her writing prompt in more detail. Their discussion of audience concerns does, however, weave its way back around to grammar, with Amy suggesting that one way to make the paper more accessible is to define unusual terms (i.e., the use of nonrestrictive clause as definitions). Thus, although Liu sets grammar as the overall Agenda, Amy tends to apply the idea of grammar to more global concerns; that is, she does not simply correct or mechanically address the Agenda items that Liu has identified in her document. Instead, she mixes up Liu’s Agenda items with some of her own, sometimes addressing grammar and sometimes addressing areas that presented comprehension challenges for her as a reader. By the time Liu finishes sending in her third paragraph (I.130),138 Amy has re-set the overall Agenda from Liu’s interest in grammar to Amy’s response as a reader to the general effect of the text. She often combines the two, however, such as in I.136: “Oftentimes academic writing for journals uses complex sentences, but I think you can put more weight and emphasis on your contrasting ideas by using more semicolons and even breaking up the sentences.” This strategy allows Amy to offer larger-scale reader response to Liu’s writing and yet still offer Liu the specific advice about grammar that she identifies as her main interest. From I.136 to the end of the tutorial, Amy continues to enact subject-negotiation agenda setting by identifying each Agenda item and working through it with Liu. Liu and Amy negotiate a different kind of Agenda-setting in tutorial III. Here, Liu sets the Agenda within the electronic document before the tutorial and the participants follow through completely on it. In specific terms, this means that Amy begins discussion by identifying the first phrase that Liu has highlighted, and then discussing the second highlighted section and so on. Even the moments when Amy

138 Liu’s apologetic tone for having to send in a third variation of her electronic document may be partly responsible for Amy’s ability to re-set the agenda to reader response.

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deviates from Liu’s Agenda are closely related to Liu’s Agenda, such as when Amy discusses a gerund (“linking”) that she feels would be better as a noun (“link”) since the connection between two of Liu’s ideas is permanent and not developing. Although Amy has chosen this as an Agenda item, it so closely ties into Liu’s highlighted phrases that it is simply a related aspect and not a new Agenda item. They follow the numbered points of Liu’s Agenda so closely that when Amy is done discussing Point 4 and moves to Point 6, Liu alerts Amy to the lapse (III.130-147): III.130 Amy Point 4? III.131 Liu Ya III.132 Amy suitable means is correct... III.133 Liu a means? III.134 Amy Yes. III.135 Liu Good III.136 Amy You can use the adjective "suitable" or leave it out. III.137 Amy Both would be correct. III.138 Liu a means.. III.139 Liu ok. III.140 Liu Next III.141 Amy In point 6, the "with" is also correct. III.142 Liu examining ...strengthens. III.143 Amy Since it describes the engagement, right? III.144 Liu ok.. III.145 Liu point 5.. III.146 Amy Oops, I missed that. III.147 Amy Yes, that would also be OK.

This excerpt represents well the way that Liu directs the tutorial Agenda (i.e., lower left hand of Figure 4). Interface The Interface exerts a great deal of influence on these tutorials, motivating participants to behave in ways that privilege particular kinds of communicative Acts. Many online rhetorical strategies are aimed at retaining the “floor” of the tutorial, that is, signaling that a thought will be carried over from one exchange to the next. In this vein,

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inter-exchange punctuation strategies such as ellipses are used. Intra-exchange strategies such as blank space are also used as a way to organize online communication. As their name suggests, emoticons signal the emotional state of participants. Finally, a trend toward short answers is also partly attributable to the influence of the Interface, as was discussed under the Act section. One of the most interesting ways that the Interface demonstrates its influence is the unique uses of punctuation online. Often times, punctuation stands in for the paralinguistic clues such as voice and inflection that are used in traditional tutorials. Thus, they give significant insight into a participant’s rhetorical intent. Because punctuation is only possible in written context, it is unsurprising that users have created new ways to use it online. Perhaps the most obvious example of punctuation revision online is the use of ellipses. Ellipses Ellipses are used in four ways: (1) mark deleted text, (2) signal lead-in or trailing- off (Filibuster Exchanges), (3) stand in for commas, or (4) suggest hesitancy. Each of these will be considered in turn. One further note is necessary for clarification: Liu frequently (over 100 times across the three tutorials), uses two periods instead of the traditional three that make up ellipses. Partial ellipses fulfill the same functions as full ellipses, and are therefore treated in the same manner. As a way to mark deleted text, Liu uses ellipses that often reflect the relative amount of text deleted. In III.54 and 55, Liu wants to transmit two sentences with the same subject and verb but with different indirect objects [these might just be phrases and not objects], so she deletes the repetitive part: III.54 Liu what language is used for reading? III.55 Liu ...... for writing?

Her use of 15 periods here indicates her interest in making the size of the ellipse correspond to the size of the omitted text. Liu can use ellipses to suggest a leading in for Exchange 55 because readers are accustomed to picking up on a lead-in ellipse; they recognize this as a way to indicate that the text they are reading responds to some other original situation. Similarly, IM

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participants know that when the see an ellipse, it can function as a Filibuster Exchange (i.e., “hold off on writing as I’m not done yet”) in addition to a continuation (i.e., “as I was saying earlier”). Liu frequently uses ellipses as markers for continuation, in both traditional and innovative senses. In III.51-52, she uses a trailing-off ellipse to suggest that more is coming. III.51 Liu what if ... III.52 Liu i want to separate r/w However, Liu also inverts the idea of the Filibuster Exchange and uses ellipses as a retroactive marker of continuation. In III.96, Liu is responding to a critique from Amy and she reiterates her previous point in a new fashion: III.92 Amy: Point 3... III.93 Liu: ya... III.94 Liu: make sense? III.95 Liu: grade level reading/writng skils III.96 Liu: that’s wht i want to say..

Liu reformulates her intent in her paper’s Point Three in III.95, but then reinforces this intent in III.96, which she ends with a partial ellipse that functions as both a characteristic trailing off moment and as a way for Liu to indicate the close connection between Exchanges 95 and 96. In other words, the ellipse is a retroactive marker of continuation that signals to Amy Liu’s intent to continue on with her comment in Exchange 95 in Exchange 96. Ellipses are also used to stand in for commas, as suggestions that the reader pause. In this sense, they are similar to trailing off and leading in ellipses, but appear at different positions in the text. They share similarities with the use of ellipses to suggest hesitancy. III.18 Liu: yeah.. concerns

Not all of Liu’s uses of ellipses are rhetorically successful. Her strategy of using trailing and leading ellipses is more successful than the use of commas, since she occasionally ends an exchange with this make and does not follow up on it. Either of these forms of punctuation, however, can appear in the absence of a continuing thought. 142

This may be related to the increased use across tutorials that Liu makes of ellipses. Liu uses a full ellipse (three periods) only once in each of the first two tutorials, but 17 times in the third. She uses a partial ellipse (two periods) much more frequently: 10 times in tutorial I, 44 times in tutorial II and 80 times in tutorial III. In the third tutorial in particular, her use of the partial ellipse is remarkable, since she uses one, on average, in almost half of her exchanges (97 in 204 exchanges). Liu’s overuse of ellipses tends to rob it of its rhetorical value as a signal for a Filibuster Exchange. Quite often, Liu’s traditional use of an ellipse is followed by a nontraditional use that takes away some of the rhetorical power of the ellipse. The first time she uses a full ellipse is in I.15 where it acts as a locus of suspension, signaling to Amy that Liu will be delivering more information in the next exchange. Its later use is ambiguous: I.13. Amy: Is the first phrase "the concern of a blurred distinction and the existence of an overlap"? I.14. Liu: yeah I.15. Liu: a or the... I.16. Liu: the distictintion.. I.17. Amy: Is the "blurred distinction" different from the "existence of an overlap"? I.18. Liu: the same.. I.19. Amy: Two separate concerns? I.20. Liu: same issue.. I.21. Liu: redundant? I.22. Amy: Maybe.

While she uses a partial ellipse to end Exchange 16, Liu does not follow it up with additional information as she does with Exchange 15. It does not seem likely that Amy’s exchange interrupted here, since Liu’s next exchange is a retroactive continuation, a two- word response to Amy’s question. Finally, Exchange 20 is another Filibuster Exchange use of an ellipse, since it clearly connects Exchanges 20 and 21. These uses of ellipses seem related to the work that Liu has put into preparing for her tutorial. She has underlined them in the electronic document she has emailed to Amy, identifying those areas on which she would like advice. However, whereas Liu identifies her agenda in Exchange 12 as grammar, the question she’s actually asking is 143

more complex than simply a grammar question. To demonstrate this, the text she’s highlighted is given in full here: In the second section, I pointed out the concern of a blurred distinction and the existence of an overlap between out of school and academic literary practices, thereby envisioning a possible linking between the two.

So, just as ellipses connect her two exchanges, Liu projects a connection within her document and her ideas, all clearly aimed at making her writing as reader-friendly as possible. In other words, while Liu is asking Amy to consider just the grammar of this section, she is also asking Amy to understand the connection between the two. Blank Space Liu’s use of ellipses to suggest connections between ideas in her paper and ideas in the tutorial parallels her use of blank space as an intra-exchange method of vertical text organization. This blank space, as shown below for I.58, suggests that (1) Liu is thinking of the spatial organization of her ideas, and (2) Liu does not consider an exchange a container for one thought (like a sentence), but as a container for several related thoughts. This stands as a unique way to maintain the floor, and is in some ways opposed to the use of ellipses to carry thoughts across several exchanges. This might indicate a more advanced level of thinking for some IMers. They have moved beyond the idea of it being just little messages sent back and forth quickly and into a mode of communication that can accommodate complex thinking. Liu’s use of blank spaces in lists demonstrates this concept. She could have simply listed them as items separated by commas, i.e., a horizontal list, but she prefers to separate them with blank space, i.e., a vertical list. I.58 Liu: Two primary concerns 1 My study is regarding “out of school literacy” so I emphasize the connection between the two. (2) Plus, mine is an American based study, but they call for studies for Asian pacific students, so I need a strong relevance of my study to their theme.

This may be a result of the time-pressures of the tutorial in that each participant is trying to send exchanges as quickly as possible. These differences in the ways that participants consider exchanges as discrete or not effect the way that text is exchanged during

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tutorials. As her quotation earlier suggests, Susan preferred to wait until the other person was finished writing before she sent an exchange, even if this meant erasing what she had and starting over. By contrast, Liu sends her exchange as soon as she is done writing it, even if this means that it does not respond to the exchange immediately prior. In addition, she is even willing to send incomplete exchanges (I.127): I.126 1:01:31 0:00:05 Amy: OK. If you think it will be clear to the readers in your field, that should be fine. I.127 1:01:35 0:00:04 Liu: that’s why i .. I.128 1:01:38 0:00:03 Liu: ok. I.129 1:02:11 0:00:33 Liu: what else?

In Exchange I.127, Liu may have an objection to Amy’s suggestions but she is not going to follow up on it. As noted earlier, Liu prefers to use short exchanges and ellipses to direct the flow of the topic in her tutorials. Liu generally prefers short exchanges because she can get her point across more quickly. This powerful insistence on speed online may place a premium on conciseness and thus may be helpful for focusing excessively verbose students. On the other hand, this may be a problem for clients who are naturally quiet or slow typists, etc. Emoticons While, in theory, emoticons can signal a large range of emotional representation, in practice, they are much more limited. In the Liu-Amy tutorials, only smiley and frowny139 emoticons were used. Perhaps Liu’s lack of use of emoticons in tutorial I is also partially responsible for Amy’s contention that Liu was male, since emoticons are often suggested as a more feminine style of writing, one that takes into account the feelings of the sender and the receiver. In studying chatrooms, Susan Herring finds that

139 Frown emoticons were only used to suggest lack of comprehension on the part of the sender, not as a negative indictment of the other participant. This is a vital difference for one-to-one conferencing as compared to synchronous systems with multiple users. See Dibbell and Herring for the harmful effects of multiple user synchronous systems.

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“females on IRC140 typed three times as many representations of smiling and laughing as did males” (211).141 Amy uses two smiley emoticons in tutorial I and three in tutorial II. These are consciously intended to make the tutorial more friendly, as Amy says about Liu’s late document submission in tutorial I, “at the beginning, I said , ‘For future reference’ and I put a little smiley face so that he wouldn’t think I was yelling at him” (interview). However, Liu does not reciprocate Amy’s emoticons. Liu does demonstrate that she is familiar with them, however, since she uses a frowny emoticon to indicate her displeasure with herself because she sent the wrong file to Amy in tutorial II. Tutorial III, however, perhaps because it followed Amy and Liu’s traditional face-to-face tutorial in the writing center, is quite different. Each participant uses four smiley emoticons. This is in keeping with the generally more congenial and personal tone of the tutorial, including the final section in which Amy and Liu discuss future, nonacademic plans (including Amy’s forthcoming marriage). Capitalization Amy and Liu seem to have different interpretations of the meaning of capitalization online. Amy uses it to indicate emphasis. II.60 Amy: Could you include the focus by telling us that academic literacy is vital to WHOSE success in school and being a member of the educational discourse community?

Liu, however, seem less sensitive to its use, and only uses it once. This interesting episode occurs in II.71-80 in which Liu’s caps lock had apparently been turned on. In Exchange 71, she responds to a critique from Amy with “GOT YOUR POINT.” Although she next delivers a typo, “no” as “NOL,” that she retroactively edits in the next exchange, she continues to use capital letters for two more exchanges. The lack of a retroactive commenting on her use of capitalization (as she does elsewhere for errors) suggests that she does not consider capital letters to be a mode of emphasis as Amy does.

140 IRC (internet relay chat) is an older version of chatrooms. 141 Compositionists such as Kathleen Welch also agree with findings such as Herring’s: “One advantage of the verbal-graphic mixture is that the graphic is more obviously gendered than is the purely printed word” (195).

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Implications Fluid Cyborg Analysis of Liu and Amy’s serial tutorials suggests that Liu was somewhat less flexible than Amy. Within the role of a tutee, however, Liu can be both passive and assertive. In contrast to her hesitant admission in I.7: “i don’t know how this tutoring works,” Liu’s request in II.9 (actually an imperative) to Amy (“when you are done reading, let me know”) demonstrates her willingness to lead the tutorial instead of simply being told what to do by Amy.142 Even though several weeks have passed between the tutorials, Liu is confident online and ready to pick up where they left off. This suggests that the building of online skills is cumulative for this tutee, paralleling the ability of the T-1000 to store and recall representations of the people with which it has come into contact. Interestingly, Liu’s confidence involves her ability to direct Amy online, but does not extend to the technology itself. For example, during tutorial II, Liu arranges a day and time to meet Amy for offline tutoring, but she transmits this message: “i may call and confirm...” Liu’s fluidity as a cyborg is intermittent. Amy is more consistently flexible as a tutor, more of a Fluid Cyborg. She does not try to force Liu to alter text, and presents her suggestions as options or things she “likes:” “Would you like to start with the first paragraph?” (II.17) and “I like the (1), (2), and (3)” (III.37). Amy is also willing to let Liu disagree amicably with her: III.41 Amy Would you want to break the activities (reading, writing) into its own number as well, or is that a part of the language factor? III.42 Liu i woulnd’t.. III.43 Amy OK.

This role flexibility, their stance as Fluid Cyborgs, helped these participants to collaborate well when setting tutorial agendas. Amy felt that her tutorials with Liu worked so well because Liu was “proactive, [in that] instead of me having to ask a lot of questions, such as ‘What would you like to work on next?’, ‘Do you want to move on?’, ‘Does that make sense?’, she’d come right out and say, ‘That makes sense.’ And we’d move on. It felt like it moved twice as fast.” This allowed them to work past setting

142 Liu repeats almost exactly the same imperative in III.8: “when you are ready. let me knwo.”

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agendas and into content discussions much faster, especially by the time they came to the third tutorial. Paradoxically, they did this by relying on a system that was linear and somewhat rigid but allowed for speedy communication. Liu’s numbering of her areas of difficulty before the tutorial made it easier for the participants to know what was being referenced, thereby allowing Amy to ask very brief questions and Liu to give brief answers. By recognizing the limitations of the system, they accommodate the Interface, occupying it as Fluid Cyborgs. This is in marked contrast to Amy’s other tutorials, such as the one Amy described as follows: “The first tutorial, I felt like we didn’t get much accomplished because there was a lot of lag time in between. However, [Liu] seemed to be really proficient with chatting and responded incredibly quickly; she broke things up more in one segment so that I could start to comment on something before she asked the second part of the question or something else.”

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SUSAN AND MISAKI: TAKING FACE-TO-FACE HISTORY ONLINE

This final data chapter examines the tutorial pair of Misaki and Susan, who met online five times, in January and February 2003. This chapter follows the same order as earlier chapters: Agents, Circumference, Acts, Purposes, Interface, and Implications. Unlike Liu and Amy, Misaki and Susan went online with a long history of holding traditional tutorials. Their shared history allowed them to rely on past experience. However, this history was no guarantee of easy online communication. Application of Dramatism Agents Misaki (Client) Misaki is 31-year-old, female, native Japanese speaker working on a dissertation in Textiles and Clothing. Misaki had worked with Susan “for almost a year before we went online. So when we went online it was very comfortable for me. Even though I cannot see her face I know from what she wrote I can see how she looks like.” She was not experienced with IMs, saying that her first tutorial was “my first time to use [an instant] messenger.” Misaki was a conscientious tutor who was a familiar face at the writing center and had donated some of her artwork to the center. Susan (Tutor) Susan describes her interaction with Misaki as follows: “we knew how to ask each other things. She knew what I was trying to get her to come around and say. She knew how I would ask a leading question. So she knew what I was trying to get her to come out and say because we’ve had a longer working relationship.” Susan feels that she has an amicable, mutually beneficial tutoring relationship with Misaki: “She will ask me to explain unclear statements again, and this process helps me refine my use of the written word in online tutorials. It also reassures me that what we accomplish online is beneficial to her because I know that she has understood everything (if not initially, she understands after I re-explain something).” (Interview, March 19, 2003).

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Role Fulfillment Misaki and Susan sometimes fulfill the traditional roles of knowledgeable tutor and inexpert client. Misaki, for example, feels a great deal of anxiety over her writing: “Chatting with Susan was fun, but I was not comfortable sending my sentences to her. I was not sure what I was saying. After I did this, I wanted Susan to correct my sentences.” Misaki’s anxiety often centers on grammar use, a topic explored in greater detail in the Purpose section. In the present section, however, Misaki’s anxiety over English grammar is examined because it is an integral part of how Misaki fulfilled her role of inexpert client, one who often assumes that her English language use is not good. In this sense, she frequently asks Susan if her writing is “strange”:

I.20143 Susan No. I understood perfectly, and it didn’t sound strange. I.21 Susan I actually noticed yesterday that the language use in your email was very good. :-) I.22 Misaki Thank you. Which part did it sound strange?

Misaki seems relentlessly focused on eliminating any aspect of her writing that might cause confusion or suggest her ESL status: I.34. Misaki How about the rest of my sentences. When I was writing, I was uncomfortable...

This is the same sense of always being wrong that Liu demonstrates in her tutorials. Indeed, this is a common ESL online concern. In a study on synchronous CMC for higher education students, Rachel Pilkington and S. Aisha Walker found that ESL students “expressed anxiety concerning the quality of their English and how it might affect both the quality of their written work and their ability to communicate effectively in discussion” (49). So it is not surprising that these tutees make explicit their sense that they commit grammar errors when they write or speak so they must appeal to a native speaker for help. Given the lack of an oral accent online, it may seem surprising that this common ESL concern is not lessened online.144 Indeed, the lessening of linguistic

143 Note on Tutorial I: In the original transcript (that Misaki and Susan would have been watching unfold as they wrote), my name is listed as the sender. I have replaced my name with Susan’s for ease of reading. 144 This is not to ignore the persistence of non-Standard ESL language structures that do not disappear online.

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marking was one of the reasons why I thought ESL students might prefer this form of tutoring. However, in an interview with me, Misaki indicates that this was not the case for her. In response to my question “Most of the people in my study are ESL. Do you think this is because ESL students are more comfortable online?” Misaki answered “For me, it’s more comfortable face to face.” (March 26, 2003). While this obviously is only one tutee’s response, it demonstrates how easily simplistic expectations are undercut online. By highlighting these aspects, I do not intend to use Misaki as a representative example of every ESL student or to imply that these students chose this form of communication because they were attempting to hide their ethnicity. Rather, this information is offered to explore the motives of one particular online participant.145 Misaki’s feelings of comfort offline are of course related to her comfort with her long-standing tutorial partner, Susan. However, this history may be what solidifies their relationship online, preventing the easy interchange of tutor and clients roles seen elsewhere (e.g., Liu and Amy). The supposed freedom of online identity heralded by Sherry Turkle and Lester Faigley does little for Misaki, who cannot shed her identity as an error-prone student. Susan remarked upon this stability of participant roles in response to my question of “Did anyone have a different ‘appearance’ online?”: “I don’t think [Misaki] could take on a different sort of freedom [online]. Not that she was restricted before; we had a pretty good relationship.” This sense of a pre-determined tutor role may also be partly due to the way that Misaki internalizes her grammar problems; for example, in her response to Susan’s leading question about a grammar problem: I.60 Susan What is creating the separation in the first place? I.61 Susan It is a very little thing.... I.62 Misaki I am I.63 Susan no :-)

145 The writing center sees a high percentage of ESL clients, sometimes approaching 50% at BSU. Because these clients tend to be more frequent visitors to the center, they are also more likely to have established relationships with tutors. They were also more likely to have seen the advertisements for the online system. This is a study of particular people online. No attempt was made to represent the general BSU population.

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Although Susan’s smiley emoticon works to relieve this situation of seriousness by recognizing Misaki’s unintentionally comic response, Misaki’s willingness to assume absolute personal responsibility for errors in her writing dramatically highlights the ways that this tutee defines herself through, almost literally as, her writing. Susan worked to identify herself in the role of the knowledgeable tutor, but in a surprising way. Whereas Misaki assumes that she is making errors that Susan will notice and “fix,” Susan is careful to avoid making grammar errors online. In those rare instances when she does make errors, Susan calls attention to them. Paradoxically, Susan’s hyper-vigilance about her own errors works to increase her standing as the knowledgeable tutor, since it demonstrates that she only violates grammar norms by accident. This is especially important in an all-text environment such as this one, in which grammar and spelling errors are “point-to-able” 146 in ways impossible in speech. By explicitly calling attention to occasions when she has erred, Susan invokes a self- conscious anxiety of correctness to enable her position as a tutor. I.40 Susan This is very much the way I would right it. Do you want to look at a few little details that might be improved? I.41 Susan oops..."write" :-)

And later I.65 Susan Your words and arrangment are perfect. I.66 Susan (although my spelling is not....)

Susan’s drive to generate correct text demonstrates how invested she is in appearing to be the knowledgeable, unmistakable tutor. She does not want Misaki to think that she is unaware of her own errors. While Susan’s modeling of correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation may seem overly scrupulous for a mode of communication as informal as an IM tutorial, Misaki valued it, since she “wanted to be more specific online” in terms of grammar usage (interview). However, this is a frequent reaction online. In working with

146 This turn of phrase is from Burke’s “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle.’”

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ESL students online, Yi Yang finds that this kind of self-conscious correction (which he refers to as “repairing”) is common and that “word form, spelling, and sentence structure are more often repaired than other types of errors” (201). Moreover, a participant in Yang’s study found that, “grammar was constantly in his mind when he was doing online chatting. As a result, repairs and self-repairs of errors of many types occurred again and again in the data. This shows that on-line chatting had the advantage of providing the chatters opportunities to correct themselves in real time” (204). In any case, Misaki repaired about the same number of errors as did Susan, although Misaki made them more frequently. Paralleling the way that Misaki took strong personal responsibility for grammar errors, Susan readily accepted blame for the difficulties of online tutoring: “tutor error (especially my struggles with using the right words) probably has everything to do with the troubles of online tutoring.” This is related to the extensive backchanneling that Susan used here (as with Avril). Indeed, the explicit identification of this anxiety is a hallmark of Susan’s tutoring persona and role as tutor/Agent. Susan was also self-consciously anxious about her knowledge of technology. II.33 Susan You know...that might work. Let me take a moment to make a confession about my email habits... II.34 Susan 90% of the time I treat emails like regular letters, which means that I format them like letter (greeting with an end comma, closing with an end comma, my name at the bottom, etc.) II.35 Susan But as Doug tells me, that does not have to be the way emails are formatted. II.36 Susan He usually leaves off the greeting, closing, and name all together. II.37 Susan Am I making any sense? Let me know if I lost you. II.38147 Misaki What does "leaves off" mean? No punctuations? II.39 Susan "Leaves off" means that he doesn’t say "Hi Susan" at all. He just starts the message. II.40 Misaki How does he usually do when he send a message to professors? II.41 Susan same thing: just the body of the message

147 Misaki’s usage question here is in keeping with Lina Lee’s finding that ESL “learners might accidentally gain knowledge of L2 vocabulary” when using chat software.

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II.42 Misaki I always spend some time thinking how to start. II.43 Susan I always do too. II.44 Susan To me, retaining the letter format shows more respect, especially if I don’t know if the person I am sending an email to and if they are up on how technology people (like Doug) format emails.

From her choice of “confession” to her identification of the “technology people,” this excerpt shows Susan working through her anxiety about both her online Agent persona and presence of the Secret Agent.148 Eva Benarowicz terms the former “persona-ability” and uses Erving Goffman’s theory of “face”149 to develop a theory of “persona-ability” that calls for online tutors to work consciously on how they present themselves online. By emphasizing her discomfort with technology, Susan offers a moment for Miskai to identify with, as well as shoring up her position as the knowledgeable tutor, since she knows more about this mode of communication than Misaki. As with her anxiety over grammatical correctness, Susan’s foregrounding of anxiety cements her position as an aware and in control tutor. Role Inversion Even though these tutorial participants occupied specific roles fairly rigidly, some self-conscious inversions of the usual tutor-tutee hierarchy occurred online. In one of their few digressions from pedagogical content, Susan discusses the influence that Misaki has on her conception of Japanese culture. III.74 Susan I was telling my family last night about all the things you explained to me (i.e. Japanese toilets). III.75 Susan They thought it was very interesting. III.76 Misaki toilet? III.77 Susan remember...no seat, etc.. III.78 Misaki I remember. But not a beautiful story... III.79 Susan entertaining though :-)

148 This is detailed in the Secret Agent section below. 149 “‘Face’ according to Erving Goffman is the ‘positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image self delineated in terms of approved social attributes” (quoted in Bednarowicz 188).

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III.80 Misaki I am glad that you enjoy Japanese culture. III.81 Susan I have a great teacher... III.82 Misaki I? III.83 Misaki You have? III.84 Susan Of course--you. III.85 Susan :-)

Susan’s identification of Misaki as the content leader presents an opportunity for Susan to disavow actively the usual tutor-tutee hierarchy.150 Moreover, the difference in race and background of Misaki and Susan surfaced several times, forming a vital component in the shifting of leadership of the tutorials. The cultural diversity of these participants accounts for much of their dynamic Agent interaction; that is, Misaki’s interest in English (her interest in having a native speaker against which to test her language use) plays well off Susan’s position as a linguistic and cultural informant. This explains why many of their conversations revolve around stylistic issues as much as grammatical ones. In Tutorial III, for example, Misaki is seeking the “best” of the following four sentences to send in an email to friends describing the situation of a mutual acquaintance who is moving because his wife got a job in another city: III.24 Misaki email: Mitchell Smith and his wife are moving to San Francisco for her new job. III.25 Misaki email: M. S. and his wife are moving to SF because his wife got a new job there. III.26 Misaki email: MS’s wife got a job in SF, and they are moving. III.27 Misaki email: Since Mitchell’s wife got a job in SF....

Susan feels that these sentences all convey the same message, but Misaki is concerned because “…(this is my problem) I do not know which one expresses my idea that Mitchell is moving because his wife got a job./Does this make sense? Mitchell is moving to SF because his wife got a job there./In this sentence, I am not telling that his wife is also moving.” Since the sentences in II.24-26 actually do include Mitchell Smith’s wife in the grammatical subject of the main clause, Misaki must prefer III.27, since only this

150 The conversation to which Susan refers apparently took place during an earlier face-to-face tutorial.

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exchange might not include Mitchell’s wife in the grammatical subject (if Misaki constructs the main clause as “he is moving there,” thereby generating an ambiguity of reference). However, they seem to be working at cross-Purposes here, since Susan only considers whether the sentences are in Standard English, and not what else they might imply. It may be the absence of Susan’s recognition of variant tones in the sentences that Misaki is questioning here. Misaki is, in essence, questioning Susan’s acceptance of the equivalence of these sentences. Her return to this topic demonstrates not only Misaki setting the Agenda but also Misaki critiquing Susan’s tutoring. In Tutorial V, Misaki returns to the leading role in the tutorial by re-examining this problem of grammatical specificity. She determines it to be a hold-over from the grammatical construction of Japanese: “when I speak Japanese, I wouldn’t say ‘I have money’/instead, ‘have money.’” It is this grammatical condensation, in which the subject is occasionally implied and not delivered explicitly in a sentence, that Misaki feels may be the primary cause for her difficulty with English. Her identification of these differences between English and Japanese provides her with an authority within the tutorial, one that Susan implicitly acknowledges. V.232 1:39:13 0:00:49 Misaki That’s it. I think that’s why my explanation is too short. V.233 1:39:23 0:00:10 Misaki Thank you for listening. V.234 1:39:50 0:00:27 Susan Ah...because you don’t use all the words in Japanese? V.235 1:40:07 0:00:17 Misaki yes it is. Sometimes just "ve money" V.236 1:40:19 0:00:12 Misaki or "have" V.237 1:40:33 0:00:14 Susan is that in speaking or writing? V.238 1:41:18 0:00:45 Misaki Speaking, most of the time. But sometimes it works even in writing (depends on the context) V.239 1:41:49 0:00:31 Susan hmm...interesting...we should talk more about this in person some time... V.240 1:42:11 0:00:22 Susan I think there can be some parallels drawn to English, but we can save that for another time.

By V.240, Susan has come to recognize that Misaki’s very involved question about the structures of Japanese and English will have to be dealt with in another tutorial, preferably “in person.” Even the structure of her sentences demonstrates how Susan

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acknowledges Misaki’s authority, since her movement from singular first-person (“I think”) to plural first-person (“we can save that”) suggests that they will jointly negotiate the impact of Misaki’s question later. In other words, Susan will take Misaki’s linguistic experiences into account in considering these grammatical “parallels.” In Dramatistic terms, this is a moment of Consubstantiation in which the client and Agent exchange roles, flowing smoothly from one position to the next, just as a Fluid Cyborg morphs from one character to another. Secret Agent Although clients and tutors may exchange roles online, one thing that remains constant is a subtle unease about the possibility of surveillance. Thus, the final aspect of Agents is the Secret Agent, a construction I use to indicate the absent presence of an authority figure. It is probably not surprising that I am this “authority figure,” since I was the administrator of the online writing center. Whereas I am mentioned as an administrator151 twice in the Liu and Amy tutorials, I am mentioned nine times in the Misaki and Susan tutorials. Both participants practice a subtle critique of my authority in the form of humor. This began with the first tutorial. Because she had difficulty setting up her IM account before her first tutorial with Misaki, Susan used my IM account for tutorial I, a situation about which she made several jokes: I.5 Susan I don’t know if I like being Doug.... I.6 Susan but what else to do?? :-) I.7 Misaki These messages are only for us? Does anyone can see?

Although Susan treats the situation humorously in I.5 and I.6, anxiety about use of an administrator’s IM account exists for these participants, prompting Misaki’s questions in I.7. This may be due to the quasi-private nature of online tutorials, in which a permanent record may be kept, a record that can potentially be exposed to anyone. Even among a pair of participants who had established strong ties and trust offline (Susan said “I regard Misaki as a friend”), a certain amount of unease about the intrusion of an authority figure

151 In addition, Liu and Amy only mention my name once (in tutorial I) as the online writing center administrator. The second time (in tutorial III), Amy mentions it because I was a past administrator of the traditional writing center.

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remains. Although prior to her tutorials Misaki reads and signs a standard research confidentiality clause that assures anonymity for participants, she remains concerned about the privacy of the tutorial at the moment of the tutorial. That is, she is content to give over the transcripts for me to view after the tutorial, but she is nervous about who could see the transcripts during the tutorial. This nervousness seems to lessen somewhat by the end of the tutorial, however; and she is willing to joke about the name confusion as well when she signs off: I.103 Misaki […]Thank you Doug. I.104 Susan What??? I.105 Misaki Thank you Susan I.106 Susan :-)

They revisit the Secret Agent function in the second tutorial, and Susan expresses relief at no longer having to use my IM account: II.18 Misaki Yes.I remember Doug was writing last week. II.19 Susan Thankfully I was able to create my own Yahoo account so I don’t have to be Doug anymore. :-)

This problematic influence of the Secret Agent surfaces again when Misaki mentions her unease at filling out the tutorial evaluation form that followed online tutorials: II.11 Misaki I think I was the only person who sent the sheet, so Doug knows who wrote it. II.12 Susan good point--so much for anonymity

How Misaki could have known that she was the only person to fill out the evaluation form is unclear, unless she had asked a writing center employee how many online tutorials had been held that week. The evaluation sheet carried no hit counters to indicate how many people had visited the page, and I spoke to no one about how often it was being completed. However, Misaki’s recurrent interest in this issue demonstrates unease with the intrusion of an authority figure into their online tutorials, which they perceive as

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somehow less private than traditional tutorials.152 However, these tutorials were effectively closed to others by the IM interfaces, and I know of no way that I could have eavesdropped during their tutorials.153 While recognition of the Secret Agent is important, care must be taken to not over-value it. As shown in her “confession” about her email habits (II.33-44), Susan was able to mock the disrespectful email formatting of the “technology people,” as embodied by me, the assistant coordinator of the online writing center. Circumference Pre-tutorial From the beginning of data collection for this study to Tutorial 1, Susan and Misaki have four traditional tutorials. Tutorial I They meet at 8:41 am on January 31, 2003. The tutorial opens with usual greetings, followed by Susan joking about her use of my Internet Messenger account. They decide to discuss an email that Misaki had sent to Susan. Susan asks Misaki to set the Agenda (“is there something specific you want to talk about?”). Misaki asks about specific phrasings; in particular, she wants Susan to identify “strange” phrasing. With Misaki’s Agenda of eliminating idiomatic phrasing in mind, they examine prepositional phrase constructions such as “as far as” and how to punctuate greetings in emails. Susan sets the Agenda on a grammar-oriented course by offering to help Misaki with “a few little details that might be improved.” She gives Misaki what might be termed reader- response grammar information; that is, Susan tells Misaki how she interprets Misaki’s punctuation and phrasing in terms of how it “sounds” to Susan. For example, Susan tells Misaki that a comma in one of her sentences (between “sorry” and “I did not respond yesterday”) forces the reader to make an unusual pause. Susan repeats this advice in a

152 This mirrors student attitudes to the BSU writing center MOO as discussed earlier in “Setting the Stage I.” The issue of online privacy is explored in more detail in the Interface section. 153 Other systems, including the one currently in place at BSU, do allow for administrative observation or even disruption of in-progress online tutorials. However, these features have never been used during tutorials. While I understand the problematic nature of such controls, the lack of programming expertise or market-place authority of writing center administrators will continue to result in problematic features being embedded with programs until writing center administrators gain creative control over these programs.

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parallel situation with Misaki’s comma between a salutation and the name of the recipient in an email. However, Susan maintains that aside from these few difficulties, Misaki’s phrasing is “natural.” Susan sends Misaki the online evaluation form and they end the tutorial at 9:36 (after 77 minutes). Interlude I Misaki does not have a traditional tutorial between the first and second tutorials. Susan holds no onlines. Tutorial II They meet again online one week later at 8:40 am on February 7, 2003. This tutorial begins with the usual small talk and a discussion of online tutorials. Misaki’s comment that “Our meeting last week was a trial, wasn’t it?” is surprisingly ambiguous because she could mean that it was difficult or that it was an experiment. Given that she later says that it was “fun,” the latter explanation seems more likely. She concludes that an “On line tutorial takes more time compared to facd-to-face tutorial.” Susan agrees and they discuss aspects of the online system such as anonymity and typing notification. Misaki reiterates her question from the week before about punctuation in email greetings. This leads to Susan discussing her preferences for email punctuation and formatting, such as whether to include the recipient’s name, etc. Both participants say that they format emails like formal letters, especially when they intend to email it to authority figures, such as professors. Misaki remarks that “I cannot start with Hi./to professors.” Misaki draws a parallel to the way that respect is conferred in written Japanese, concluding that “I think that’s why I feel my writing unpolite if I don’t put anything before main contents.” Susan checks the connotation of Misaki’s email greeting with a passing tutor and reports that he finds it to be “friendly.” The resultant extended discussion of the connotations of email greetings makes up the bulk of the remainder of the tutorial. They arrange to meet online again in a week, with Misaki saying that “I will make an appointment with you at the writing center when I start writing a paper. But I need some time for my reading” (II.142). They end the tutorial at 9:54 (after 74 minutes). Interlude II

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Misaki does not have a tutorial between the second and third tutorials. Susan holds no onlines. Tutorial III They meet again online one week later at 8:25 on February 14, 2003. Susan opens with an emoticon displaying.154 Misaki sets the agenda by presenting “sentenses that I tried to write in my email, but I did not feel comfortable.” She questions Susan on the correct term for a person who is “second generation from Japan/Her parents were from Japan, and she is from Hawaii.” Susan does not know the term, and so they move on to a discussion of three versions of a sentence detailing how a friend of Misaki’s moved to another city because his wife got a new job there. Misaki defines the source of her confusion in that the grammatical subject of her sentences does not include her friend’s wife’s name and “I thought I had to put subjects who were moving.” Susan assures her that “logic says that she is going along” even if the wife’s name is not in the grammatical subject of the sentence. Susan inquires about a presentation Misaki gave on which they collaborated at the writing center. They discuss aspects of Japanese culture and the tutorial ends at 9:48 (after 83 minutes). Interlude III Misaki does not have a traditional tutorial between the third and fourth tutorials. Susan meets online with Avril (detailed in an earlier chapter). Tutorial IV They meet online one week later at 8:29 am on February 21, 2003. Misaki sets the Agenda with “I have a couple of questions about singular/plural words.” They analyze Misaki’s descriptions of articles of clothing. Susan identifies problems such as, “it seems strange that ‘a’ (singular) is modifying ‘motifs’ (plural).” This leads them into a discussion of the usage of “motif” and whether Misaki should include “repeated” as a modifier of “motif,” a situation that Susan recommends and Misaki finds “strange.” While trying to untangle this usage, Susan asks Misaki if “Is being online too complicated to talk about these things?” a categorization with which Misaki agrees. She

154 This emoticon is not the traditional smiley, but a special, trademarked one available on the IM system.

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finds that “these writings are very hard” because she feels she lacks a large enough vocabulary. Susan recommends that Misaki combine some other sentences and add in some specific articles. After they set a time for their next meeting, the tutorial ends at 9:26 (after 57 minutes). Interlude IV Misaki has a traditional tutorial with Susan three days after their fourth online. Susan holds no onlines. Tutorial V One day after their traditional tutorial, Misaki and Susan meet online at 9:02 pm on February 25, 2003. This tutorial was the only one in the study to take place at night.155 In addition, both participants work from home. As Susan was attempting to make up hours she had missed at the writing center, she was interested in doing tutorials at night. She was also willing to let the tutorial go on for longer than usual, and this tutorial lasted for 106 minutes, the longest in the study. The tutorial begins with Misaki asking Susan how long it took her to download the IM interface and then thanking Susan for working at night. Misaki sets the agenda by asking Susan to read the first paragraph of a “paper for History of costume class” followed by a one-word question: “strange?” Susan identifies a non-parallel listing and they begin work on it. Misaki makes several suggestions about her difficulties with the phrasing, which Susan collects and transmits as an exchange. They discuss the usage of singular articles as they apply to the point of view expressed in the paragraph, as well as the difficulty of working online when they cannot see each other’s expressions. This latter leads to a series of unusual emoticons, that is, emoticons generated by the IM interface that are more involved than the simple :-) smiley emotion used almost everywhere else. Misaki directs Susan’s attention to the next paragraph, and Susan identifies some problems with specific sentences. They discuss the connotation of the phrase “have the decency,” with Susan referring to a thesaurus for a list of synonyms for decency. Misaki feels that the meaning here is hard to define, and she offers “Does not look like hippie” as the closest approximation to what she has in

155 Susan did meet online with one other tutee at night, but the transcript was lost.

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mind. She decides that “It looks like my image in my mind does not have English expression.” They consider other Agenda items such as how to use “function” in a sentence and subject-verb agreement. Misaki theorizes that her lack of description and limited English vocabulary are related to the brevity of expression typical in Japanese (such as not identifying a specific subject for some sentences). Susan suggests that similar abbreviated structures exist in English and they make plans to discuss these at their next meeting (which they schedule as a face-to-face tutorial). The tutorial ends at 10:48 pm. Post-tutorial Misaki and Susan have two more traditional tutorials before Susan leaves the writing center at the end of spring quarter. Misaki has eight more tutorials (including two onlines for a total of seven) before the end of the data collection time, for a total of 20 tutorials. I interviewed Susan on March 19 and Misaki on March 26, 2003, after the completion of all of their online tutorials. Act As discussed earlier, serial tutorials allow for the observation of Acts as repeated purposive choices. These Acts are easiest to see when organized in tabular form, such as in Table 1 below. Over their five tutorials, Misaki and Susan average 1177 words in 149 exchanges, during an average time of 74 minutes. Misaki generally produces less text and sends fewer exchanges than Susan, with the lone exception being tutorial III, in which Misaki produced 50% of the exchanges and 52% of the text. However, this tutorial was unusual for other reasons, notably that it produced the least amount of text of any of the tutorials (854 words), the fewest exchanges (100), and the lowest number of both words (10.3) and exchanges per minute (1.2). This may be related to Misaki’s rather unfocused Purpose of “These sentenses do not express what I want to say.”156

156 This is explored in greater detail in the Purpose section.

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Chapter 5: Misaki/Susan Averages Tutorial I II III IV V Total words 857 1369 854 999 1807 1177.2 Total chars 3567 5870 3597 4460 8574 5213.6 Total exchanges 109 149 100 137 250 149.0 Words/exchange 7.9 9.2 8.5 7.3 7.2 8.0 Exchanges/min 1.4 2.0 1.2 2.4 2.4 1.9 Char/word 4.2 4.3 4.2 4.5 4.7 4.4 Time (min) 7774835710679.4 Words/min 11.1 18.5 10.3 17.5 17.0 14.9 Total full ellipses 22 23 16 32 61 30.80 Total partial ellipses 106884.60 Total emoticons 6535156.80

Client Exch 41.00 70.00 50.00 67.00 118.00 69.2 % Exch 37.61 46.98 50.00 48.91 47.20 46.1 Words 269.00 520.00 444.00 419.00 714.00 473.2 % Words 31.39 37.98 51.99 41.94 39.51 40.6 Chars 1063.00 2229.00 1819.00 1838.00 3313.00 2052.4 Char/words 3.95 4.29 4.10 4.39 4.64 4.3 Words/exch 6.56 7.43 8.88 6.25 6.05 7.0 1-word exch 7 6 4 10 15 2-word exch. 2 11 6 6 14 Full ellipses 24269 Partial ellipses 00212 Smiley 00004

Tutor Exch 68 79 50 70 132 79.80 % Exch 62.39 53.02 50.00 51.09 52.80 53.86 Words 588 849 410 580 1093 704.00 % Words 68.61 62.02 48.01 58.06 60.49 59.44 Chars 2504 3641 1778 2622 5261 3161.20 Char/words 4.26 4.29 4.34 4.52 4.81 4.44 Words/exch 8.65 10.75 8.20 8.29 8.28 8.83 1-word exch 665419 2-word exch. 265510 Full ellipses 20 19 14 26 52 Partial ellipses 10476 Smiley 653510 Frown emoticons 00001

Table 6: Misaki and Susan statistics

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Misaki and Susan do not exhibit the same neatly consistent trends that Amy and Liu do, mainly due to the atypicality of tutorial III. If this tutorial is ignored, a clear trend toward more exchanges per minute (1.4, 2.0, 2.4, 2.4) is observed. This tentatively suggests that they were becoming accustomed to the demands of the Interface and were more comfortable on it. However, the removal of tutorial III does not produce a consistent trend in the number of words produced per minute, (11.1, 18.5, 17.5, and 17.0 for tutorials I, II, IV, and V, respectively). The divergent trends exhibited by the words/minute and exchanges/minute ratios make it difficult to interpret how these participants progressed over the course of these tutorials, since these ratios represent in large measure the pace of tutorials.157 Thus, in spite of the trend towards more exchanges per minute, it is not clear that these participants became more comfortable and able to communicate over this interface. The uneven nature of the interactions of Susan and Misaki may result from the difficulty they experienced in transferring their long-standing face-to-face relationship onto the Interface. In addition to the difficulties she felt in not being able to use her physicality (gestures, paralinguistic cues, etc.) to explain concepts, Susan indicated that “since we take the time to make sure she understands everything that I say, it takes much longer to get anything accomplished” (3/19/03). This move toward complete understanding may inhibit the freedom and speed of interaction since Susan must constantly gauge Misaki’s comprehension. An additional complication for Susan was that I had a more difficult time [online]. It forced me to be more articulate. I never let that sort of thing trip me up in a face-to-face tutorial. I’ll find some other way to get my point across, but when words are the only thing you have…. Especially when you have to type it and typos become a problem, especially when you’re working with speed and you only have an hour. (Interview)

Misaki, on the other hand, felt that the lack of a common physical text was a central problem contributing to difficult and uneven online interactions. She said that “We were not looking at the same paper….Susan had one [copy] and I had one [copy], but we can’t

157 I assume here that as participants grow more familiar with and comfortable on the Interface they will produce more text.

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talk on the paper” (March 19). However, Misaki’s phrasing, “talk on the paper” points toward a central problem that Susan identified in their offline tutorials. When we’d talk about rephrasing something, we’d say it out loud, but I didn’t know if it actually made it to the paper. In a face-to-face tutorial, she’d take notes, I’d see them in the margins, things I know we stressed and talked about a lot, but she’d bring back a revised copy the next week and have a lot of the same things. I’d ask her to pull out the one from the week before and see where we had talked about it, where she’d made the corrections, changes, in pencil or pen, but it never made it to the typewritten paper.

So this aspect of the Interface may have been less directly linked to the Interface itself than to the ways that Misaki worked during all of her tutorials. In addition to compiling the Acts as numbers, it is instructive to look at how Acts were considered online, since a wholly text-driven environment seems like a perfect example of pure symbolic action. Agents occasionally directed each other to engage in Acts or described their own. A participant may describe her actions in order to gain more time in which to complete the described action: I.35 Susan I am rereading...

Explicit verbalizations of actions are arguably more important online than in a traditional tutorial. Although comments such as “Give me a minute to read this, please” are used in traditional tutorials as a way for tutors to both buy time to digest the writing and let the tutee know that active engagement is taking place, the Act engaged in is usually obvious and would not necessarily require commenting. Online, it is much more important. Even such actions as searching for an electronic document must be made explicit online for the sake of displaying active involvement: I.95 Susan Hold on.. I am getting it...

One participant may even direct the gaze of another in order to set the agenda:

I.44 Susan Okay...look at the first line in the body of the message starting with "Sorry" I.45 Misaki I am looking.

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As the final example of the previous section demonstrates, much thought goes into setting the Agenda online, even going so far as to have a tutor tell a tutee where to look on the screen. As Liu and Amy did, Misaki and Susan spent a great deal of time setting and resetting the Agenda for each tutorial. Moreover, their divergent Purposes sometimes agreed and sometimes did not, set the stage for multiple negotiations of Purpose. Misaki’s Online Purpose Like many students, Misaki had specific reasons for visiting the writing center, not all of them compatible with writing center philosophy: “professors sometimes tell foreign students that before we submit papers, they want us to go to the writing center. So in that case, we expect the writing center tutors to proofread” (interview). It comes as no surprise then that Misaki’s Purpose often revolves around getting the correct grammatical construction for a particular phrase. Misaki was similarly specific about why she initially went online: “the first time I met online was because the online tutorial was not counted toward the regular meeting. It was an extra and I needed to meet Susan more than once.” However, the history of her online meetings with Susan suggests that she was not using the system simply to get an additional tutorial. Although she did have two tutorials (one online, one offline) the week of January 27, she did not again have two tutorials in one week until February 24. Clearly, she had other motivating factors for going online. She said that “I used it because I had to write a paper and I wanted to meet Susan face to face. But I couldn’t finish it [in time].” So Misaki partially went online because this allowed her to have a tutorial for which she needed less preparation. This does not mean that Misaki came to her tutorial unprepared. Indeed, Susan felt that “Misaki always had her questions lined up and she knew what she wanted to ask me” (Interview). She tended, however, to defer to Susan’s ideas of what they should focus on during the tutorial. Consider tutorial I, in which Misaki sends in a portion of text and asks for Susan’s opinion on a grammatical construction. I.18 Susan I can see it right now...is there something specific you want to talk about? I.19 Misaki I did not respond to you yesterday. Do I need to put "to you"?

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The first sentence in I.19 is a quotation from Misaki’s email, but it is done without quotation marks or other signaling, showing a reliance on Susan to recognize this as both an excerpt from Misaki’s email and the first Agenda item. Susan has no problem meeting these expectations. However, after Susan declares that this sentence “didn’t sound strange,” Misaki further relies on her to identify future Agenda items, such as in I.22 when she asks Susan’s opinion about her overall phrasing: I.22 Misaki Thank you. Which part did it sound strange? I.23 Susan Nothing was "strange," but take a look at the sentence that begins "As far as the meeting..."

As discussed in the Agent section, Misaki views Susan as a linguistic informant who can teach her how to write and speak like a native speaker. Misaki returns to “strange” or “natural” several times in this tutorial, clearly making “natural” a God-term. This God-term not only encompasses Misaki’s interest in sounding like a native speaker but it functions as a code word for grammar concerns as well. In this latter instantiation, Misaki repeatedly asks Susan how a native speaker would phrase something. For example: I.39. Misaki Thank you. If you write this message to someone, how would you write?

Again, Misaki is not only relying on Susan to set the Agenda, but she is relying on her to identify phrases that cast Misaki’s writing as “strange,” i.e., cultural feedback on how native speakers would write. The overlap between the God-term functioning of “natural” between grammar concerns and stylistic aspects of native speakers arises repeatedly throughout this tutorial. Structure is another God-term for these participants. Like Liu, Misaki seems to define structure in terms of sentence structure and not overall structure of a paper. I went to the writing center because I was not comfortable with my grammar and I was not sure how the paper should be structured because there is a big difference between Japanese writing and English writing. The order is totally different: usually the part we put last should come first in the English paper.

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Misaki’s concern with order does generally get resolved in grammatical terms. In the five tutorials in this study, Misaki had little involvement with these larger issues, preferring instead to focus on sentence-level problems. Because of this, Misaki’s involvement with bridging the gap between sounding natural and strange in English tended to involve her using Susan as a sounding board. This sometimes takes the form of queries about terms: III.15 Misaki I went there with my friend and she met Mitchell for the first time. Then we were introduced to his wife who is a III.16 Misaki second generation from Japan? III.17 Misaki Her parents were from Japan, and she is from Hawaii. How do you call her?

Misaki’s Purpose here is not just a question about an appropriate term to refer to Mitchell’s wife, but it is motivated by a desire to express accurately a concept that carries personal and professional significance for Misaki, given her scholarly interest in ESL education. Susan’s Online Purpose Although Misaki tries on occasion to get Susan to proofread her paper, Susan generally has another Purpose in mind: getting Misaki to recognize her own errors. To do this, Susan sometimes employs a round-about method: I.26. Susan Okay...do you see anything to change that may have been a typo? I.27. Misaki meeting time is concerned? I.28. Susan Yes! I.29. Susan You are right.

Susan uses this strategy again in discussing an error in comma use: I.58 Susan Do you have any ideas for "fixing" this separation? I.59 Misaki no idea. I.60 Susan What is creating the separation in the first place? I.61 Susan It is a very little thing.... I.62 Misaki I am I.63 Susan no :-) I.64 Susan it is only the comma causing the problem.

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I.65 Susan Your words and arrangment are perfect. I.66 Susan (although my spelling is not....) I.67 Misaki You mean the sentence does not need comma? I.68 Susan right--no comma needed.

This “guessing game” grammar instruction system that Susan uses a few times with Misaki relies on Susan’s sense that “[Misaki] knew what I was trying to get her to come around and say.” This system appears cumbersome online, probably because much of the work of this kind of communication in face-to-face tutorials is dependent on paralinguistic cues, which undoubtedly operate faster in a face-to-face tutorial. In a face- to-face tutorial, a tutor may give a significant look and slow down her finger when passing over a specific section of text, thereby clueing in the tutee that this is the part that is wrong. The tutee can then guess about the correction. Online, such subtleties are impossible and the tutor is forced to be much more specific about grammar difficulties.158 Susan also uses this technique to set up Agenda items for the next tutorial: I.80 Susan Yes, I do have to go to another tutorial, but for next time, take a look at your greeting in the email... I.81 Susan see if you see any similarity between that and the "sorry" sentence. I.82 Misaki greeting? I.83 Susan remember that punctuation like commas and periods separate the sides of the sentence. Although she intends Misaki to respond to her query in the next tutorial, Misaki asks an immediate follow up question, prompting this answer: I.91 Susan Well, actually it is probably better not to have any punctuation before the comma after my name. This does not resolve the issue for Misaki, who responds with both a question and a recognition that they will not attend to this question within this tutorial: I.96 Misaki What do you mean "before the comma after my name"? I can wait until our next meeting.

158 This system parallels the difficulties that Misaki experienced in her use of English as discussed in the Agent section, that is, the heavy use of condensed and understood phrasing in Japanese. In both online tutoring and Misaki’s difficulties with Japanese-to-English translation, explicitness is a necessary but difficult component.

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Although Misaki may have hoped that Susan would answer her question here, Susan does not. This prompts Misaki to return to this Agenda item in the next tutorial, in the only inter-tutorial Agenda-setting in the study.

II.20 Misaki I have email today. But before starti, I have one question. II.21 Misaki Your last suggestion, "actually it is probably better noto to have any puctuation before the comma after my name." II.22 Misaki What do you mean by this? II.23 Susan I apologize; that was worded rather poorly. II.24 Susan What I meant is that there probably shouldn’t be any punctuation other than the comma that comes at the very end of the greeting. i.e. "Hi Misaki!" instead of "Hi, Misaki!"

Interestingly, although Misaki identifies an Agenda item in II.22, Susan initiates an extended discussion of email format in II.29 that focuses the rest of the tutorial on this topic, even after Misaki says that she has “got it” in I.28. II.28 Misaki I got it. II.29 Susan But I have to say again that my preference for not having any other punctuation in the greeting besides the ending punction may not be how everyone feels about the issue. II.30 Susan For example, one of my professors sent an email this week to my entire class that said "Hi, everyone, " II.31 Susan To me that seems very strange, but that is how he chose to do it. II.32 Misaki I see. My question about period was "Hi everyone."?

Susan sets grammar as an agenda item in other areas. In this next excerpt, Susan sets an agenda item concerning Misaki’s use of a comma. I.44 Susan Okay...look at the first line in the body of the message starting with "Sorry" I.45 Misaki I am looking. I.46 Susan Okay--when I read it to myself, I hear a pause after sorry (where the comma is)... I.47 Susan So it sounds like "Sorry. I did not respond yesterday." I.48 Susan Let me know if I am making sense. I.49 Misaki You mean "a period instead of a comma"? I.50 Susan Well, that depens...Is that how you wanted it to sound? Let me explain some more... I.51 Susan The comma separates "Sorry" from "I did not respond yesterday " I.52 Susan this makes it sound like you are stating to me that you did not respond yesterday, which 171

is something that I already know. I.53 Misaki I feel more like "Sorry not for responding to you yesterday. I.54 Susan Okay...that is what I am getting at... I.55 Susan since you mean for the sorry to apply to the "not respond" part of the sentence, it seems strange for there to be a comma separating them.

Even though Susan sets grammar as an Agenda item here, she does not do so as a proofreader, merely pointing out where Misaki is wrong. Instead, Susan directs Misaki’s attention to the response of this reader to Misaki’s choice of punctuation. This reader- response grammar allows the tutee (the writer) to understand what is going on in the mind of someone else who is reading for comprehension. Susan’s attention to these generally grammar-specific issues may not fulfill as much as one would hope the Stephen North’s dictum that writing centers “Improve the writer, not the writing,” but Susan is attempting to walk the thin line between doing the work of editing for the tutee and requiring the active involvement of the client. Interface As before, the technological exigencies of the interface created some difficulties and presented some new opportunities. Because the Misaki and Susan tutorials were the first ones held online, some technological apprehension existed with this first tutorial, even though IMs were well known to be an extremely popular form of communication. Simply the establishing of a connection was cause for celebration, as evidenced by Susan’s Exchange I.3: “Yay--it works!” Moreover, the features of the interface were often discussed by the participants, sometimes in positive terms, sometimes not. In this section, we will examine how the transcript was considered as a permanent artifact by the participants. This permanence led to considerations of both privacy issues and technological ability. Transcript as Permanent Artifact

PRIVACY ISSUES Just as the possible intrusion of the Secret Agent affected their online interactions, the existence of a persistent electronic or physical transcript influences online tutorials.

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Misaki, for example, asked about the privacy of these tutorials almost immediately upon engaging in a tutorial: I.7 Misaki These messages are only for us? Does anyone can see? I.8 Susan No--not right now. I.9 Susan They will be saved for Doug to look at though.

In her eagerness to answer Misaki as fully and accurately as possible, Susan complicates her answer and carries it across two exchanges. Partly, this was a way to assure Misaki of the privacy of the Interface, and partly this was a way to reiterate that tutorials would be analyzed after the participants were done. The gist here is that the existence of the transcript made Misaki and Susan feel at least momentarily vulnerable.

TRANSCRIPT ARCHIVING ISSUES This vulnerability, however, is predicated on the actual existence of the transcript, which is never a sure thing. Transcripts were certainly desired. Like Avril, Misaki actively sought a tutorial transcript, a phenomenon Susan mentioned: “I noticed that all my clients wanted to hold onto [transcripts]. They voluntarily asked for the transcripts. I never said, ‘If you like you can save this.’ They said ‘Can I? How do I do this?’” However, as the following excerpt shows, the means to do this was not always clear to the participants. I.98 Misaki Can I save our conversation? Or I.99 Misaki Do I have to print it? I.100 Susan yes, please do save it I.101 Susan you don’t have to Print it if you don’t want to

Interestingly, confusion arises because Misaki seems to want instructions on how to save the tutorial and Susan seems to want to assure Misaki that she has permission to keep the tutorial. Misaki takes for granted that she can get permission. Her interest in printing out the transcript is a way to archive this electronic conversation, perhaps because printing out the screen seems to be the most tactile and reliable method. At any rate, Susan assumes that Misaki knows how to save the transcript and does not elaborate on how this is to be done. Not surprisingly, when Misaki quotes from tutorial I in tutorial II, the

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spelling inconsistencies between Susan’s original wording and Misaki’s quotation suggest that she is working from a printout of the tutorial, rather than electronically cutting and pasting. This argues that she was unable to resolve the technical difficulty of saving her IM session and had to print it out instead. Novel Uses of Punctuation Susan’s use of emoticons is similar, but more extensive, to how she interacts with Avril. She uses two methods to generate her emoticons: “I always key in the smiley face. The others I put in from the panel.” The panel Susan refers to here is the icon bar in the IM program, which hosts a variety of IM program-dependent variations on emoticons. These emoticons represent a panoply of emotional states and messages, some of which are colorful but hard to understand.159 Susan felt that this expanded array of emoticons was helpful: “A lot of times we were playing around, but sometimes we used it to mean a sincere “good job.” Not just, “That’s fine,” but a “Really good job!” in trying to create different levels. I really liked these.” Tutorial V, in which Susan uses 11 emoticons, demonstrates most clearly the time when they “were playing around:”

V.78 0:35:46 0:00:19 Susan great V.79 0:35:58 0:00:12 Misaki Where did you get that smile? V.80 0:36:00 0:00:02 Susan (that means I am really happy for you) V.81 0:36:24 0:00:24 Misaki I found it! V.82 0:36:32 0:00:08 Susan yay! V.83 0:36:45 0:00:13 Misaki V.84 0:36:51 0:00:06 Susan nice... V.85 0:37:00 0:00:09 Misaki V.86 0:37:16 0:00:16 Susan V.87 0:37:21 0:00:05 Misaki V.88 0:37:45 0:00:24 Susan V.89 0:37:52 0:00:07 Susan good job! V.90 0:38:01 0:00:09 Susan (I really like these.) V.91 0:38:34 0:00:33 Susan I think they can help fill in the gaps when I can’t see your facial expressions or show you mine. V.92 0:38:58 0:00:24 Misaki They are cute.

In this short excerpt, Susan goes from explaining the meaning of the emoticon in V.78 to using more complex styles without explanation, and Misaki keeps up. Their playfulness

159 Among these emoticons are animal heads, stick figures, and animated faces that offer kisses, smiles, and obscene gestures.

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here not only allows them to take a break from being very task-oriented, but it also serves to make them more comfortable online. Finally, these emoticons stand as moments of consubstantiation in an almost literal sense, as Susan and Misaki playfully don mask after mask to show their understanding of each other. This is a powerful instantiation of the Fluid Cyborg in that these participants are using much more explicit graphic representations of their emotional states, representations impossible with simple text- based emoticons such as smiley faces, :).

I.21. Susan I actually noticed yesterday that the language use in your email was very good. :-) Here, Susan’s emoticon use puts Misaki at ease and compliments her here, since she knows that sounding natural (like a native speaker) is a God-term for Misaki.

QUOTATION MARKS The “natural” sounds of English are often referenced in these tutorials, sometimes via the use of quotation marks, as in I.47 and I.49. I.44 Susan Okay...look at the first line in the body of the message starting with "Sorry" I.45 Misaki I am looking. I.46 Susan Okay--when I read it to myself, I hear a pause after sorry (where the comma is)... I.47 Susan So it sounds like "Sorry. I did not respond yesterday." I.48 Susan Let me know if I am making sense. I.49 Misaki You mean "a period instead of a comma"? I.50 Susan Well, that depens...Is that how you wanted it to sound? Let me explain some more... In I.49, Misaki uses quotation marks to indicate how the period “speaks” to the reader; that is, she is literalizing the idea of how punctuation tells the reader how to interpret writing. In contrast, Susan uses quotation marks to set off words for special, although sometimes oddly unclear, emphasis. For example, she categorizes Misaki’s word use in one tutorial as follows: I.37 Susan Honestly--it is very good... I.38 Susan Very "natural"

Later in that same tutorial, she repeats this usage: 175

I.73 Susan It sounds perfectly natural without the comma. I.74 Misaki I did not know that. I.75 Susan I’m being completely honest when I say that your email language is almost completely "natural."

One can almost see Susan making gestures in the air each time she uses the word natural here. This use is particularly strange because it sets off and marks as strange exactly that which Misaki hopes will be not be strange. Interestingly, Susan made explicit reference to this later in her interview: “[Misaki] was at the point in her writing, an ESL student, and she wanted her English writing to sound natural. Quote unquote natural. You know, not that she was a foreign speaker using English, but to sound like an English speaker.”

ELLIPSES Eva Bednarowicz argues that “as typographic markers of pauses, [ellipses] are unique to a textual environment” (136). Joyce Menges finds that, paradoxically, “ellipses signal continuity or pauses” (n.p.). In the online tutorials in this study, ellipses fulfilled both of these functions, as well as functioning as a comma replacement and the more common function of the ellipse to indicate deleted text. Moreover, they became more common as the tutorials progressed; see Table 1. Tutorial Misaki I II III IV V Full 2 4 2 6 9 Partial 0 0 2 1 2 Susan Full 20 19 14 26 52 Partial 1 0 4 7 6

Table 7: Breakdown of ellipses used by Misaki and Susan

The table demonstrates not only the much greater reliance on ellipses by Susan but also Misaki’s trend toward using more ellipses. The use of ellipses is most evident in Tutorial V, which contains the highest number of ellipses for both Misaki and Susan. Susan’s first ellipse, for example, happens in her second exchange, just over a minute into the tutorial.

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V.3 0:00:50 0:00:27 Misaki I was wondering if you took long time to download the messenger. V.4 0:01:04 0:00:14 Susan It took proabaly about 10 minutes...not bad.

This ellipses serves to indicate not only a pause, but also that text has been left out, since the presumed content of this sentence is “It took probably about 10 minutes, which is not bad.” This abbreviated form of communication serves the time-dependent nature of tutorials well. It may however, carry a cost in intelligibility. As Susan said, “when I’ve gone back and re-read some of these [transcripts], I’m like, ‘That didn’t even make sense.’ Especially these ones here with Misaki.” So the use of these ellipses to create greater conversational flow must be weighed against how much they assume about the relative communicative efficiency of the tutorial. Misaki’s first ellipse also suggests that ellipses do not always function as they are intended. Her first ellipse generates a filibuster exchange, suggesting a continuation of her thoughts, but Susan seems not to have noticed Misaki’s intentions, since she responds 4 seconds after Misaki’s ellipse with a comment that does not relate to Misaki’s attempt at re-setting the Agenda. V.30 0:11:38 0:00:12 Misaki I was wondering... V.31 0:11:42 0:00:04 Susan features, garments, and garments do not go together as well. V.32 0:12:08 0:00:26 Misaki business suit is a design element, V.33 0:12:27 0:00:19 Misaki but comfortable and decorative fabric are not design V.34 0:13:02 0:00:35 Misaki Business suit usually is not comfortable and it does not use decorative fabric. V.35 0:13:24 0:00:22 Susan go on... V.36 0:13:47 0:00:23 Misaki Can I put them in a pararell phrase?

Elsewhere, Susan’s use of ellipses substitutes for commas, V.15 0:05:32 0:00:05 Susan oops...sorry...I spoke too soon. :-)

Since ellipses in this usage require more time (three keystrokes instead of one), users must feel that it represents a rhetorical or communicative gain. Most likely, this gain is in

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the conversational feel of the tutorial, since ellipses suggest pauses and hesitancy, and thus have less authoritarian or confrontational implications. Ellipses may indicate continuation, but this does not mean that they can command online participants to refrain from transmitting text. (Indeed, although many other aspects of tutorials were discussed in interviews, no one ever explicitly mentioned the use of ellipses as a rhetorical strategy.) I.34 Misaki How about the rest of my sentences. When I was writing, I was uncomfortable... I.35 Susan I am rereading... I.36 Misaki But I had to send it. I.37 Susan Honestly—it is very good... I.38 Susan Very "natural"

Since Misaki and Susan use ellipses as markers of continuation, but interrupt each other in turn, the filibustering value of the exchange is minimal.

ARROWS Besides ellipses, Misaki sometimes identified the areas of concern with novel uses of punctuation, such as arrows. I.30 Misaki This was my first time to use "as far as" <<-- I.31 Misaki <<--Is this strange? This use of angled brackets to function as an arrow is unique among participants. It is especially interesting in that it points across two exchanges. This inter-exchange is a very conscious Act because Misaki sets up her question in I.31 before she transmits I.30. In other words, she is planning ahead when she writes I.30. Inter-Exchange Division of Ideas In Exchanges I.7-9, we see an interesting contrast between Misaki and Susan in this earliest of tutorials. Whereas Misaki asks two intra-exchange questions, Susan carries her answer across two exchanges. Carrying a sentence across two or more exchanges suggests that Susan sees exchanges as semi-fluid. She does not see them as seamlessly flowing information, but rather as compartmentalized units of information more like formal sentences than the snippets of sentences common to oral conversation. Because of this, Susan almost always uses some form of punctuation to mark the end of

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sentences. In addition, when she does carry sentences across exchange boundaries, she will use usually ellipses to signal these inter-exchange continuations. Misaki is less formal about the division of thoughts within exchanges, sometimes splitting sentences at unusual places. III.12 Misaki Here is the situation III.13 Misaki Mitchell Smith is a photographer. I was introduced to him through a gallery owner. III.14 Misaki I met him at the gallery, and he invited me to a charity exhibition. III.15 Misaki I went there with my friend and she met Mitchell for the first time. Then we were introduced to his wife who is a III.16 Misaki second generation from Japan? III.17 Misaki Her parents were from Japan, and she is from Hawaii. How do you call her? III.18 Susan Hmm...good question... III.19 Susan Was she born in the US?

Although she does not use ellipses to signal a continuation in III.12, Misaki also does not use a period, thereby relying on Susan’s understanding of the context of her question to retain the floor. (Note that Misaki continues on uninterrupted for five more exchanges.) While the lack of end punctuation in III.12 is most likely a concession to the speed of her writing, Misaki’s division of the sentence in III.16 and 17 is much more usual and likely to be a rhetorical strategy aimed at highlighting the text about which she is unsure. By splitting this dependent phrase between its verb and subject complement, the reader understands that it is the idea “second generation from Japan” that Misaki is questioning. This division is done not simply because it is long or in order to give the tutor something to read while the tutee continues to generate text. She has two other exchanges in Tutorial III that are of equal length (24 words), but they do not continue onto the next exchange. So it seems likely that she was dividing this exchange for reasons of rhetorical impact. Exchange III.17 adds certainty to this interpretation, since III.17 reflects back on the divided sentence in III.16. Misaki’s divided exchange parallels the use of intra-exchange blank space by the other tutees and points up the inventive ways that Misaki responds to the influence of the Interface. Susan’s response to both this division and the idea that Misaki is pursuing is to use ellipses. Susan had this form of visual thinking in mind when she said that 179

One of my concerns with this [online tutoring] is getting in-sync with each other. Trying to type words and send it while you’re still typing words. Holding your place. I can’t go “umm, umm, umm” while something is transferring. I might ask a question and go to think about one thing and go to say, ask a question, but while I’m doing that, she’s gone on to a totally new subject.

Typing Notification The typing notification feature, text alerts generated by IM program that alert participants when the other IM user is entering text, was important in different ways for Susan and Misaki. Susan felt it had a significant impact on how and when she transmitted text within the Interface. It was so important to her, that she checks with Misaki early in tutorial II to see if she is monitoring this feature. II.16 Susan I also want to ask you if you see at the bottom of your window that I am typing a message. II.17 Susan Not every messaging program shows that, and it helps to know that the reason for a pause is because the other person is typing. II.18 Misaki Yes.I remember Doug was writing last week.

Susan commented on this feature in her interview: “I’d come to depend on that very much when I was working in Yahoo. When I was working on AOL we don’t have it. And that was a hang-up. I think that might have been part of the issue with Avril.” (interview). Susan used the typing notification to structure her responses, even to the point of when she notices that the other person is typing, she will refrain or even “…delete. When I see somebody’s typing, I don’t say anything. If I’m in the middle of getting my idea out, I’ll finish. But I won’t do any more prompting or ask any more questions.” So perhaps Susan’s use of this aspect of the Interface may account for some of the discontinuities in her tutorial with Avril, where Susan did not know when Avril was responding. Alternately, this may also suggest why Susan’s tutorials with Misaki seem less choppy. Misaki, however, was not as dependent on the system, even to the point of finding it distracting: “I remember that it says that Susan is typing, but I can’t see what she’s writing. And I know that I was writing and I delete it and I write again. So Susan saw

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that I was writing and she didn’t receive my message for a long time.” Overall, Misaki felt that “If the Center said that she was sending and I haven’t received it that was … [a problem].” Misaki’s conflation of “the Center” with the commercial IM program is interesting because it demonstrates how clients may come to see writing centers as embodied by the technological apparatus they use. It seems that if clients have difficulty negotiating the Interface, part of the blame for this is assigned to the program and part to the writing center itself.

Implications The time that Misaki and Susan worked together in traditional tutorials did not make their transition to online tutorials easy, although Misaki said that “After reading [my] transcript[s], I thought it was good that I had one year of face to face tutorials before I begin the online.” Part of this difficulty may have been in their distrust of and anxiety about the Interface. In their interviews, each of these participants suggested that they considered their time underutilized online. When asked if she would recommend online tutoring to a friend, Misaki replied “Yes, but not for a class paper. If you only have one per week and a 4-5 page paper, I think the person will be disappointed.” The assignment of blame to the writing center for the difficulties of the IM program suggests some of the implications that arise from the Misaki and Susan tutorials. The Misaki and Susan tutorials were unique in this study because the participants had a long history of working together offline. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that they would have a relatively easy transition to online tutoring. This was not the case. These participants endured many of the same problems that others did, including having difficulty working with the Interface in technical and conceptual terms. The move online may have been complicated by the lower expectations that Misaki held for them. When she tells Susan, “I will make an appointment with you at the [physical] writing center when I start writing a paper” (II.142), it is clear that Misaki believes that face-to-face tutorials are better suited to discussing certain (higher value?) aspects of writing. This belief that online tutorials are less efficacious than traditional ones may account for why Misaki seems to be less prepared for the beginning online

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tutorials (at least judging from Susan’s claim that Misaki was exceptionally well- prepared for traditional tutorials). She only emails in an extended piece of writing once (tutorial V), the rest of the time sending in either disconnected captions (tutorial IV) or other limited text (tutorials I-III). In addition, most of her questions are vague, relying upon Susan to validate or correct errors. Because of this, much of the conversation is restricted to sentence-level aspects of writing such as grammar and genre conventions of informal writing such as email. This made it difficult for Susan to anticipate Misaki’s interests since Susan could not plan the structure of the tutorial around her comments on a conventional text. Indeed, although Misaki defers the setting of specific Agenda items to Susan, this does not make tutoring easier for Susan, since she now has to follow whatever lead that Misaki sets (usually ambiguously) at the beginning of the tutorial. The lack of a defined and prepared text meant that Misaki has to describe all of the text and context while online. This led to a significant amount of time in the tutorial being spent on Misaki providing context to get Susan up to speed with Misaki’s problems. Thus, less time was left for actually working on writing issues. In other words, these tutorials were inefficient because of the design of the system which did not ask for sufficient preparation from the tutee. This suggests that online tutorials need to have clear instructions and transparent designs, so that participants are as prepared as possible. Such preparation does not end when participants have gotten online. Misaki’s difficulty with saving her tutorial transcript demonstrates that online tutorial designs must be easy for participants to not only use but also to store their transcripts or one of the most valuable aspects of the tutorial will be lost. All of these Interface issues point to the Interface being less flexible and accommodating than it should be.

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FINDING A (CYBER)SPACE FOR FLUID CYBORGS

“It’s more complicated than that.” - Burke “Rhetoric of Religion” “[The world is] messier than that” – Donna Haraway (quoted in Kunzru)

My attempts in this dissertation to divide up and study IM tutorials through Modified Dramatism have proven as complicated and messy as the epigrams from Burke and Haraway would have predicted. Part of the difficulty of joining such disparate and dense thinkers as Burke and Haraway lies in the application of their thinking on technology, an aspect of human production that Haraway embraces and Burke rejects. This creates problems with applications of Burke that value technology, since technology often represents a negative God-term for Burke, one that he usually joined with negative modifiers, such as the “technological pollution” he termed his idée fixe (“Hyper- Technologism” 96). As Star Muir argues, Burke understands the human as constituted biologically and symbolically, yet his reaction to technologism attitudinally borders on the extremism that his system is dialectically designed to avoid. Rationally tracking down the implication of duality [here: man-machine interaction], Burke seems unable, or perhaps unwilling, to infuse the machine with an aesthetic.160 (65)

In order “to infuse the machine with an aesthetic,” to describe the advantages and disadvantages of online tutoring and consider them in terms of what can be done, I propose Fluid Cyborg Analysis. This conflation of multiple viewpoints, a way to bring Burke into the 21st century, allows us to consider more clearly the multifaceted aspects of online tutoring. From Donna Haraway’s theories, the Fluid Cyborg adopts a willful dissimilarity of parts; from popular culture in the (shifting) form of the T-1000 terminator, the Fluid Cyborg adopts a flexibility of stance, the ability to look multiply at

160 “Aesthetic” here suggests a way of releasing technology from a culture of fear and interpreting it as possibly beautiful.

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various circumferences; and from Kennth Burke’s Dramatism, the Fluid Cyborg adopts a framework intended to discover the motivations of people. This framework is not, however, intended only to understand the motivations of Agents in the form of tutors, as have been earlier critical investigations of online tutoring, such as Eva Bednarowicz’s assignment of responsibility for tutorial success on the “persona-ability” of the tutor. Instead, Fluid Cyborgs Analysis suggests how several aspects of Modified Dramatism must be considered for rhetorical success. In other words, in examining Agents, Purposes, Acts, and Interfaces, a more rounded view of online tutoring emerges. Fluid Cyborgs in Online Tutoring Traditional cyborgs have had their machine aspects emphasized, so that they are stoic, mechanical stand-ins for people, supposedly unable to deal with emotions and the “messiness” that people create (for example, the first film cyborg, Cyborg Maria of Metropolis, seems to be driven mad with an infusion of consciousness; see Appendix A). By contrast, the Fluid Cyborg’s ability to deal with multiple disjunctions and morph into variant identities represents a new kind of thinking about the way that machines and people can interact. It echoes and intensifies Kenneth Burke’s movement between the elements of the Dramatism, invoking shifting forms smoothly and without delay, as the situation (circumference) calls for it. The power of this metaphor for agents lies in its insistence on flexibility and adaptation. In Terminator 2, the T-1000 disguises itself by flowing over a floor and mimicking the pattern of a tile floor, a fitting metaphor for the way that tutors sometimes need to blend into the background and get out of the way of the client. Amy does this well. Recall how she suggests that Liu reformulate part of her essay but drops the suggestion when Liu resists (III.41-43). Given the minor value of this revision, Amy’s willingness to let the writer make decisions makes sense. However, for more important concerns, a Fluid Cyborg can be very focused. Another scene in Terminator 2 shows the T-1000 passing through prison bars, an appropriate metaphor for the way that tutors need to stay on task and not be distracted or stopped by other obstacles. Consider here the

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resolute focus on “counterargument” that Susan displays when working with Avril. In ways like these, the Fluid Cyborg can function as a useful metaphor for tutors and tutees. When I initially discussed my metaphor of the Fluid Cyborg tutor with a writing center colleague, his pragmatic critique got to the heart of my concerns: “Can you really imagine discussing that idea in tutor training? What are you going to say: ‘Okay, people gather round: it’s time to become Fluid Cyborgs’?” I answered him by returning to the metaphoric and philosophic basis of the Fluid Cyborg. The Fluid Cyborg is both heuristic and descriptive, a way to illustrate and reconsider the roles of online tutors. Such a use goes back to the way that I used to begin discussions in tutor training courses. An early class of the course was devoted to tutor generation of metaphors for the ways that tutors interact with clients. This list of what their roles as tutors most closely represent was always useful in the breadth of terms and concepts, since the list was populated with mentors, coaches, teachers, etc. The Fluid Cyborg is useful not because it is easy to understand initially, when it will seem outlandish to tutors, but because it asks them to consider how they want to interact with technology. This extreme metaphor foregrounds conversations of what the role of a tutor is and how participants will be affected by electronic mediations. By foregrounding the flexibility of roles, Purposes, and Acts as they are mediated by the Interface, the Fluid Cyborg insists that taking tutoring online does not mean giving up the personal relationships that tutors and tutees value. Instead, it can mean strengthening and revaluing these relationships with technology. Liu and Amy demonstrate this better than any of the other participant pairs. Consider the way that Liu asks questions in her first tutorial. When Amy tries to answer them all, they have some moments of confusion.161 However, by the second and third tutorials, they have fluidly adapted to the exigencies of the Interface and demonstrate an ease and ability on the Interface unlike any other set of participants. They are able to move from agenda point to agenda point with a speed and dexterity that the other participants lack. At nearly eight

161 This is not to say that this confusion may not be a useful strategy, since it may demonstrate effectively to participants that they need to remain on-task and deal with topics one at a time. Donna Haraway discusses the education effect of confusion in How Like a Leaf.

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exchanges per minute, their pace is 3-4 times faster than any of the other participants, lending a momentum to their tutorial that alleviated many of the problems of agenda setting encountered by others. They seem able to meld into the Interface and understand it from the inside, as Fluid Cyborgs. The flexibility at the heart of the Fluid Cyborg suggests that trying a variety of tutoring styles is a great benefit to tutors, and it provides a space for varied tutors to attempt these new styles. At the same time, flexibility demands maintenance. Writing center administrators cannot, for example, buy or begin using software, train tutors how to use it, and then expect the system to be self-propagating and popular. Just as physical writing centers require constant advertising and attention, so do online writing centers require constant upkeep and reappraisal, in terms of both technical work and tutor training. Such continual maintenance is expected. The tumultuous histories of writing centers demonstrate the difficulty that educators have had in moving away from the deficit model of grammar correction to one of creative collaboration: is it any wonder that online writing centers have had growing pains and difficulties? The Fluid Cyborg metaphor hints at why some tutors and tutees find online work rewarding and others do not.162 This is partly a function of how comfortable online participants are with technology and partly how explicit they want to be in a medium that never forgets.163 For the former, Susan and Misaki’s explicit difficulties (and distrust) of

162 These feelings of reward should not be confused with easy pin-pointing of tutee advancement. To argue that online tutorials must unambiguously demonstrate immediate knowledge gains is to misunderstand the ways that writers become better and how they process information for later use, as well as to misunderstand Stephen North’s dictum that writing centers produce “better writers, not better writing.” In a 2000 study comparing student groups who met online and offline with those who met only offline, the authors found that “face-to-face discussions preceded by either synchronous or asynchronous computer-mediated communication were perceived to be more enjoyable and include a greater diversity of perspectives than face-to-face discussions not preceded by computer-mediated communication” (Dietz-Uhler and Bishop- Clark 269). The enjoyment of the experience is also important, since if participants dislike online tutorials, they are unlikely to return. There is good news if they do return, since Patrick M. Markey and Shannon M. Wells found that “prior chat room experience was consistently found to be a moderate predictor of how well people were liked. The more experience individuals had in using chat rooms, the more they tended to be liked” (145). Thus, in general returning participants may find online tutoring progressively more comfortable, resulting in a greater sense of consubstantiation as they become better liked and like each other more online. All of this contributes to the success of tutorials, although it is difficult to describe. 163 This is a slight exaggeration, given the loss of some tutorials. The general perception, backed by the idea of the Secret Agent, is that Someone is always listening, thus a permanent record exists somewhere.

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technology demonstrate one end of the spectrum, and Liu and Amy represent the other. For the latter, the differences between the modeling explicitness of Seth and Susan show how differently tutors may interpret the boundaries of appropriateness for online tutoring. Boundaries like this have physical parallels, in that Fluid Cyborgs are not immune to gender dynamics. However, they are subversive with gender. Consider here Amy’s misidentification of Liu’s gender and the momentary difficulty she had in reassigning Liu’s gender. The predominance of female tutors and tutees in this study suggests that online tutoring may be able to function as a space for women to work online free of the difficulties faced in other spaces, such as the negative stories of online violence experienced by MOO participants in Julian Dibell’s My Tiny Life or the abuse experienced by women finding “an e-space of their own,” in the words of Gail Hawisher and Patricia Sullivan. As the lone male in this study, Seth can easily seem to symbolize a patriarchal approach to tutoring, one that tends to fulfill stereotypical attitudes. However, he is also the only non-native English speaker who is a tutor. Therefore, he deals with linguistic difficulties that do not affect the native language tutors. This is not simply an issue with online writing, but reading as well. In a November 2003 article on ESL students, Neil Anderson argues that “Researchers have done very little to explore the reading strategies that learners use while engaged in online reading tasks” (6). The more complicated nature of writing leaves little doubt that CMC still has much research needed. In a hopeful light, researchers have found online chats to be helpful for ESL students: “on-line chatting forced the staff members to focus on meaning (or the content of their communication). By chatting about something that the participants were interested in, they were able to switch their attention to the meaning or content of the communication. English was now used as a tool to accomplish certain tasks instead of being the goal of the communication and learning process.” (Yang 204).

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In addition to frequently working across language differences, some had the complicating factor of being at quite different places in their educations.164 Table 8 tabulates some of these differences. Rank165 Gender Native language Avril-Seth U-G F-M ESL-ESL Avril-Susan U-G F-F ESL-Native English Liu-Amy G-G F-F ESL-Native English Misaki-Susan G-G F-F ESL-Native English

Table 8: Participant comparisons

In spite of these differences, consubstantiation and role inversion was achieved. Consider the way that Susan self-consciously recasts Misaki as the “teacher” in their tutorial V. Writing center literature has long held that clients are more knowledgeable in their content area than tutors; the Fluid Cyborg taps into this sense of empowerment, this idea that tutors bring more to the electronic table than text that needs to be “corrected.” Susan and Amy are successful at listening to the knowledge of their tutees, but Seth is much more firmly in the Freire Banking166 concept mold of a teacher than that of a questioning collaborator. Within her role as questioning collaborator, Amy works particularly well with Liu at developing an understanding of agenda setting. Unlike the difficulties that Avril/Susan and Avril/Seth encounter in setting the agenda, Liu and Amy, especially in tutorial III, have well-defined goals. Interestingly, however, Liu defines these goals less in terms of specific questions than in terms of the sequence in which she wants to consider them.

164 The tutorials examined in this study did not include ones in which two native speakers worked together, or when two males worked together, or when one in which two undergraduates worked together or an undergraduate tutor worked with a graduate client. While these tutorial combinations were collected, it was beyond the scope of this project to examine them as fully as those selected. 165 Here, U stand for Undergraduate and G stands for Graduate. 166 Paulo Freire divided teaching schools into those in which students were invited by instructors to be active, questioning participants (the Problem-Posing system, roughly equivalent to Social Constructionism) and those in which students were passive receptacles to be filled with the knowledge parceled out by instructors (the Banking Concept, roughly equivalent to the Current-Traditionalist teaching style).

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This focuses their tutorial on a step-by-step working-through of text that Liu has identified as problematic, meaning that she does not simply set up questions for Amy to answer. This gives Amy flexibility of Purpose in setting the agenda within Liu’s framework of ideas. Thus, they can move smoothly from point to point, without having to constantly re-orient themselves. This fluidity is the clearest example of the Fluid Cyborg in this study and represents the model for online tutoring that I suggest.

A Fluid Cyborg Look(s) toward the Future, Or IM at an End Unlike Julian Dibbell who closes his 1998 text on MOOs with the realization that MOOs have lost relevance for him, I am still fascinated with my investigation of online tutoring, and remain optimistic about the exciting and interesting ways that online tutorials can benefit participants. My appreciation for the constraints and affordances offered by IM tutorials alerts me to the need for new metaphors and conceptualizations of this important work. My analyses of these transcripts have made me ever more convinced that great potential resides in online tutoring. The Fluid Cyborg challenges online tutors and tutees to acknowledge and foreground how their experiences are mediated by technology. To this end, I offer some closing suggestions on improving online tutorials, all of which arose from my in examination of the Fluid Cyborg metaphor. Suggestions The Fluid Cyborg metaphor and analysis suggests many new avenues for online tutoring. One of the most important options suggested by these transcripts is the creation of a national or international database of online tutorials. This could be done by having opt-in or opt-out release options built into tutoring Interfaces, so that participants could easily release their tutorials for research purposes. Of course, these transcripts would be scrubbed of all identifying marks. Such a database made available online could be an invaluable source for administrators, tutors, and even clients. Administrators and tutors could use them for instructional and modeling purposes, as well as for analysis. Clients could search them for not only advice and information about writing topics, but also for information about how tutorials are conducted in general. An electronic bulletin board

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could allow Web surfers to comment on tutorials, initiating discussion on the utility of various tutoring practices, thus creating the conversational basis for another virtual Burkean Parlor. The lack of public tutorials stands as one of the primary blocks to advancing knowledge of effective tutoring practice, and the Online Tutorial Database could solve this. This project also suggested the need to develop stronger pre-tutorial introduction and clearer instructions for tutees, including links to sample tutorials, so that tutees have a better idea of how the Interface works and what kinds of limitations exist online (e.g., page limits for documents). This would help to alleviate the difficulties that almost all participants experienced in early tutorials, allowing them to focus more on their Purposes than on the Interface. In terms of this study, this means finding software that is more flexible, more amenable to intermingling with people to become part of a Fluid Cyborg. This assumes the creation and implementation of IM tutorial-specific software, a difficult but not impossible feat. To this end, IM software could be designed to be as plainly laid out as possible, with as few controls as necessary and common activities labeled in functional ways. This has begun to happen at BSU, where, as part of an SBC technology initiative, the BSU online writing center launched a hosted IM system in November 2003. While beyond the scope of this dissertation, the design of this program reflects the influence of the Fluid Cyborg. It includes functions that automate common functions so that IM participants can focus on being flexible online, such as automatic transcript logging (to prevent the loss of transcripts) and an administratively configurable chat system. This latter allows for the reprogramming of non-intuitively labeled functions. For example, the file-transfer function that caused a great deal of difficulty for tutees might be better relabeled “Send a file to your tutor.” Along the same lines of task automation, the Fluid Cyborg model suggests that flexibility can paradoxically be found in repetition. Tutors who notice that they are giving similar advice to different clients can, with the help of certain IM programs,

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include prewritten (“canned”) messages to send to tutees.167 These messages would enact a function similar to the bots of Bednarowicz and De Wind Mattingly, but with the crucial difference that “canned” texts in IM do not carry the sense that the tutee is interacting with a machine, but rather with a human operator. In a similar vein is the referencing of websites. Frequent referrals of tutees by tutors to the same reference websites suggests that these sites be studied by all tutors and that the sites be included in easy-to-transmit and access formats, so tutors can more easily send tutees to these sites. All of these suggestions are intended to make IM tutorials operate as smoothly as possible, allowing online participants to concentrate on interpreting and responding to each other, Fluidly Cyborging their ways to better understanding of their writing and their interactions. Styles of instruction, not just tutoring, are always changing, and if writing centers fail to keep a sharp eye focused on what the future may bring, they risk being rendered inconsequential as students adapt to and expect new modes of communication. Into this constant flux steps the Fluid Cyborg, a way or reconsidering what we are, what we do, and what we can be.

167 These programs are often based on a salesperson/client model. A problematic aspect of these messages is that prewritten responses are not provided for tutees, although time pressures are the same for them.

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APPENDIX A

CYBORIGIN, OR BACKGROUND NOTES TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF

THE FLUID CYBORG

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Paralleling Donna Haraway’s brief overview in “A Cyborg Manifesto” of critically useful science fiction literature, I have taken my metaphor of the Cyborg from science fiction. The Fluid Cyborg develops not just from Terminator 2, with its main conceit of technology running amuck and destroying its creators, since this notion has a long history in Western literature. The idea of the mechanical augmentation of humans is an old one. The first literary description of the technological extension of human life was probably Mary Shelley’s monster in 1816’s Frankenstein, the result of storytelling competition between Lord Byron and Mary and Percy Shelley. Interestingly, Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, would later become “the first computer programmer,” working on Charles Babbage’s computational machine for the British navy (Gray, 5). As Chris Hables Gray points out in Cyborg Citizen, this makes “real and dynamic” one “link between the future imaginary…and the reality of technoscience” (5).168 But for all of the influence of the Frankenstein myth, the monster itself does not fit the usual definition of the cyborg, the neologism created in 1960 by Nathan Kline and Manfred Clynes. Their condensation of “cybernetic169” and “organism” (Gray 11) defines cyborgs as amalgamations of machines (i.e., computers) and humans. Thus, the reanimated but entirely human tissue that is Frankenstein’s monster is less their idea of a cyborg than technologically enhanced (chemical, mechanical, etc.) humans. Interestingly, their research was based on ideas generated by work with the first cyborgs, lab rats, so notions of cyborgs arose from non-human, but animal origins. Even if it is not a true cyborg, the heart of the Frankenstein monster ideal beats on in every metallic mechanical menace in science fiction since 1816, with the perilous inter-tangling of science and humanity informing practically every science fiction movie ever made. Channing Pollock, the author commissioned to rewrite the first true cyborg film, the 1927 German Metropolis, so that it “could be told with the available ‘shots’” to

168 In a fascinating example of recursive influence and intertextuality, Metropolis exerted a strong influence on the 1935 film version of Frankenstein. 169 Cybernetic comes from the Greek word “kubernn, to govern.” Cybernetics is “The theoretical study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems, especially the comparison of these processes in biological and artificial systems” (American Heritage Dictionary). Its use in cyborg seems to suggest a shift from the theoretical to the practical, at least in common conceptions of cyborgs.

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an American audience, “wrote a quite different film that… wasn’t a very original story, being based on the theme of Frankenstein, but it had drama and an idea” (Pollock as quoted in “The Metropolis Case” by Enno Patalas). This edition of Metropolis was the version seen by most audiences until the 1984 restoration, influencing the makers of such cyborg movies as Blade Runner, the Terminator series, and even I Love Maria, a recent Japanese remake of Metropolis. The most influential aspect of Metropolis is its depiction of its cyborg, Cyborg Maria.170 The famous image of this as a gleaming metallic, female robot has little screen time. The metallic face of the cyborg is replaced halfway through the film with the face of the female protagonist, Maria, and is not seen again until one brief shot of the cyborg near the end of the movie, after it has been burned at the stake. However, the image is unforgettable. Cyborg Maria (the “first fully formed synthesis of human and machine on film,” according to Liam) is created in the prototypical mad scientist’s laboratory, complete with arcing electricity and a dwarf apprentice. The scene progresses with the metallic cyborg’s face slowly interchanging with the face of the heroine Maria until Cyborg Maria has been covered over with the veneer of Maria. It is unclear if Cyborg Maria is, in fact, actually a human/machine combination, and thus a cyborg, since the process used to create the Cyborg Maria seems to be equal parts technology and magic. There is no discussion of whether Cyborg Maria is covered with actual human skin. However, when Cyborg Maria is burned, its flesh, hair, teeth, and eyes give way to metal, so these were presumably human tissue. More importantly, Cyborg Maria requires a human intelligence and template (in the form of naked, bound Maria), and it demonstrates a will of its own, so the implication is that the machine requires the absorption of human spirit in order to be animated. (Cyborg Maria, however, seems unable to handle the infusion of consciousness she receives, and she dances wildly and laughs insanely at the workers as they burn her.) Since humans are the builders of

170 The creation receives no name in the movie, other than the Mechanical Man, but I will refer to her for the sake of simplicity as Cyborg Maria.

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tools,171 thereby giving physical “life” to them, little profit seems derived from arguing about the difference between machines that do not have human tissue but act and appear human (such as Cyborg Maria, the T-1000, and the Replicants of Blade Runner) and those that contain human tissue and act and appear human (such as the T800). To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “sentience is sentience is sentience.” And in science fiction sentience always flows from human creators.172 Thus, I am content to blend genres of robot and cyborg for the purposes of my project.173 Finally, when the T-1000 wags its finger reprovingly at a character who has just shot him multiple times, as if to say “naughty, naughty,” little doubt remains that this is a machine with human consciousness, including emotions. While technically far cruder than the impressive special effects in modern science fiction films, the robot-to-human (cyborg) identity transformation scene in Metropolis presages the fluid adaptation of identity in many cyborg films that followed, including the one most important for my thesis, the T-1000 in Terminator 2. Terminator 2 used newly developed “morphing” technology to move between the T-1000 in default human form and a series of humans or objects (at one point, the T-1000 flows over and mimics a linoleum floor). The technological advance of this technique is its ability to seamlessly exchange one object for another, even of one person for another. This is the value of the metaphor of the Fluid Cyborg: the ability to rotate through personas (Agents), Purposes, and Acts to find those that work best. It is the use of technology not only to communicate but also to do this through a variety of Terministic screens.174

171 Kenneth Burke offers an interesting take on tools built my humans. Discussing P.W. Bridgman’s “operationalism,” he says, “here we come to a complete treatment of meaning in terms of laboratory instruments. Whatever may have been the purpose of a man who designs such agencies, they themselves are totally without purpose, even in the ambiguously biological sense of the term” (279). 172 This sentience also creates the hubris that gets humans in trouble with machines, but these arguments blend into the theological so quickly as to be beyond the scope of this dissertation. 173 Various writers have also characterized the T-1000 as a cyborg (and not simply a robot), a categorization dependent on the idea that consciousness in even the most metallic body creates a cyborg. William Macauley and Angel Gordo-Lopez, for example, locate the T-1000 as “a paradoxical cultural manifestation of fears and desires related to cyborgs” (441) and Cynthia Fuchs classifies the T-1000 as, “the threateningly androgynous cyborg” (283). 174 A great irony in Terminator 2 is that this ultimately anti-technology movie owes its existence to advancements in technology.

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This fluidity raises the T-1000 as a metaphor over every other static cyborg. Other examples from science fiction may more fully approximate people in organic terms, but none can alter themselves as quickly or as convincingly as the T-1000. The replicant Rachel in Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s film based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is a robot so similar to humans that only complex chemical tests can differentiate her from a “real” human. She has been given the memories of her designer’s daughter, and thus believes herself human. When she learns her history, she is greatly affected, unable to tell what is originally, uniquely hers. This condemns her to a nightmare of embodiment, of never knowing what is real and what is someone else’s. Moreover, she is stuck in this facsimile form, unable to inhabit it comfortably. As such, she demonstrates the difficulties of embodiment that plague most cyborgs, and highlights why the T-1000’s flexibility is so ground-breaking and critically useful.

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APPENDIX B

LIST OF ACRONYMS

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BSU - Big State University CMC – Computer-mediated communication f2f- face to face (communication) IM – Internet Messenger MOO – MUD object oriented MUD – Multiuser domain (or dungeon)

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OWL – Online Writing Lab WRC – Writing Research Center

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