Expressionistic Writing: A Stepping Stone to Writing Competency

by Michael John Buckhoff

This paper will explore the need of expressionistic writing in its forms of freewriting, journal writing, personal narratives, etc. and show how this writing is
a stepping stone to the more abstract rhetorical forms of audience based
writing. I will examine excerpts of historical research from David Foster's
book A Primer for Writing Teachers: Theories, Theorists, Issues, Problems, and
then I will look at the philosophical research of James Moffett in his book
Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Lastly, I will study the practitioner
research of Peter Elbow in his article "Closing My Eyes As I Speak". The
purpose of the review of the literature is to show how the above historical,
philosophical, and practitioner research have approached the topic of
expressionistic writing. The identification of these different paradigms of
research is based on Stephen North's book The Making of Knowledge in
Composition Portrait of an Emerging Field.
Historical Research
I start with this mode of research because it is necessary to provide a
historical framework of expressionistic rhetoric. First, let me define
expressionism. Loosely defined, the verb express means "to give or convey a
true impression of: show, reflect; to represent in words"; or "to make known
the opinions of oneself" (American Heritage Dictionary 405). Hence writing is
way of learning to express oneself. Here the student focuses on what he
wants to say in the most personal way possible. Only after maturational and
intellectual growth can the student move from the "I" focus to the more
abstract process of considering writing for someone else. In evidence of this,
Foster historicizes work form Piaget in regards to the cognitive stages of
development. Language in this aspect is seen as cognitive and the child goes
through various stages of language. These stages are represented as sensory
motor (infant response to environment in non-linguistic ways), semiotic
ability (child associates symbols with language), concrete operations (child
can use language to represent reality abstractly), and formal operations
(abstract language and complex logical problems). Language is seen as a
"decentering" process in the sense that it enables the child to be less and
less ego-centric as it learns to interact and understand the world around it
(Foster 11-12). Foster then continues with the problem of the relationship of
thought and language by citing evidence from Vygotsky that language is
more than the expression of thought. The Piagetian concept of egocentric
speech is altered somewhat and is seen differently:
Piaget says Vygotsky, defines egocentric speech as an expression of the
child's egocentric understanding, so that when decentering occurs egocentric
speech vanishes. Vygotsky argues otherwise by saying that the decentering

in egocentric speech develops abstraction from sound, the child's new faculty
to think words instead of pronouncing them (12). As a result of this process,
a separate speech function referred to as inner speech is created.
Foster starts with the cognitive psychologists Piaget and Vygotsky as a way of
establishing the first stage of historical inquiry that North refers to as the empirical stage
by identifying the problem of thought and language and at the same time gathering and
determining the validity of relevant texts (North 71). In other words, Fosters first
searches for texts that will establish thought, language, and development. All this is
done to enable the reader to see a pattern in the text: that pattern is how thought and
language are related. Furthermore, he uses Moffett and Britain in order to link the
cognitive stages of development, that is from egocentricity to a higher abstract level of
thought, to the initial tendencies of a writer writing for oneself (egocentric) and then
gradually moving toward a decentered expression of writing (38-39,44). The creation of
a pattern, the pattern being stages of cognitive development compared with the
hierarchal stages of writing in the respective texts of Piaget, Vygotsky, Moffett, and
Britton enable Foster to start a new narrative on writing. It is at this point that we hear
the communal dialectic as Fosters positions Moffett's theories against the genre of
meditative writing "The Penses" of Pascal. It is argued that Pascal's writing while
deeply personal in tone and address may appear to fit at the top of Moffett's hierarchy,
but are at the same time very abstract and theoretical (42). In simple terms, can
personal writing also be abstract and if so how can Moffett's system of classification be
considered valid. In short, though Foster provides a historical framework in which to
explain what the research is in expressionistic composition theory, he clearly contends
that the hierarchal level of writing proposed by Moffett and Britton is a potentially
challengeable theory.
Philosophical Research
Moffett establishes an argument in response to the question in his book Teaching the
Universe of Discourse as to how should discourse be taught in the schools to native
speakers. In a clearly philosophical fashion, his argument does not concern itself as to
what should be done for he leaves that responsibility to the school curriculum but rather
what are the preconditions of those understandings which might allow us to decide what
to do. In other words, an argument here is founded on a specific set of premises about
the nature of discourse and development designed to be tested not against execution
but as North would say, for dialectic (96-99).

Language is seen as related varieties of discourse concerning itself with the interaction
of the referential relation of "I-it" and the "I-you" phenomena (Moffett 11-12). This
interaction between the first and second persons with a particular audience is examined
thorough expressionistic lens. It is important to mention that North claims that for
whatever reason, Moffett seems uneasy with philosophical research and he tries at all
costs to maintain practitioner status, but the way he goes about doing his research is

clearly philosophical. Thus his philosophical premises are, as I previously stated,

specifically designed to be tested not against execution, but in dialectic. In this manner,
the set of ideas concerning the nature of discourse hopefully as Moffett sees it, will help
advance the current task of reconceiving education in the native language by allowing
correction and completion by other minds (96-107). Moffett proposes that there are two
types of situations; one has to do with the referential relation of the person called "I/It"
and it concerns itself as to how someone extracts information from raw phenomena. The
next type concerns itself with the relation of communication, and it is called the "I/You"
relation. It is how someone extracts for an audience (11-13, 18-19). The relationship
between the information and communication is an interaction that enables a writer to
distance or "decenter" himself from the more personal "I-it" to the "I-you" type of writing.
By demonstrating the possibility that a writer may move through writing in this fashion,
Moffett is able to classify different types of communications as being 1). Reflection:
Intrapersonal communication between two parts of the nervous system; 2).
Conversation: Interpersonal communication between two people; 3). Correspondence:
Interpersonal communication between people in groups with some limited but personal
knowledge to each other; and 4). Publication: Impersonal communication to a large
anonymous group over an extended period of time (32-35). Implicitly embedded within
these classifications is the consideration that they may teach the students to consider
more effective writing strategies by making them aware that there is a hierarchal level of
learning writing . As a result, the students can learn to re-think or unthink the strategies
they use when writing. If one enables the student to identify with the "I/It" relation first,
which seems according to what Moffett describes as egocentricity/Piagetian theory, and
with that idea the student identifies and abstracts from the raw phenomena and
information first, later they can be taught in the steps that lead to a higher abstraction or
the "I/You" relation that identifies with the rhetorical audience in which they are
surrounded. Though it is not directly claimed as a solution, it is considered a strategy
which may lead to writer competency. Moffett offers these strategies not as solutions but
rather a framework in which to debate the nature of discourse. The interesting thing here
with his particular mode of research, that, of course, being philosophical, is his attempt,
to what North contends, to try to identify himself as a practitioner(101). Moffett wants to
be a person who can make successful changes concerning the writing curriculum within
the classroom. For example, he identifies the problem of setting up a writing curriculum
in the schools, but instead of finding necessarily solutions and attempting to validate
these solutions by testing them in practice as practitioner research would attempt to be
sure, Moffett is establishing premises as I mentioned before, as to what kind of
discourse should be taught, and he is meticulously constructing the premises in which to
ground these modes of discourse. Along this line of reasoning, he never offers any
solutions but rather set these questions up for further argument.
The failure to recognize that there is a hierarchal level of abstract learning in the
classroom may impede the students' progress toward writer competency. In order to
prove that this failure could result, Moffett makes an argument for abstraction to more
than just a word or sentence. He contends that abstraction should apply to whole
monological compositions:

Concept formation and propositional statement are very important as parts within the
whole and as parts that may expand into wholes, but a curriculum sequence must be
based on the growth of entire monologues, such as a student would be asked to read
and write, not on discrete particles (30).
At first, children are limited in the kind of discourse they can produce, and therefore,
they should receive a lower abstraction of language or writing. But as their ability to
understand more abstract concepts matures, one can add to the repertoiring kinds of
discourse of increasingly higher abstraction. This enables Moffett to bridge the gap in
the composition field between cognitive psychology and writing. He concludes that these
new positions in teaching represent different levels of learning as far as levels of
abstraction by helping the student learn to identify with abstractive type concepts. The
implications to this argument is that Moffett empowers the personal authority of the
writer by allowing them to progress from personal to more general abstract levels of
writing for an audience. These students will be taught to identify first with the
expressionistic mode of writing, which is considered the "I/It", an then progress toward
the more abstract rhetorical writing or as he identifies it as it being the "I/You" relation. In
Moffett's terms, the spectrum of discourse along with its hierarchy of levels of
abstraction from lowest to highest are represented as interior dialogue, vocal dialogue,
correspondence, personal journal, autobiography, memoir, biography, chronicle, history,
science and metaphysics (47).
Practitioner Research Peter Elbow in his article "Closing My Eyes as I Speak" begins
his article with the following statement:
When I am talking to a person and struggling to find words or thoughts, I often find
myself involuntarily closing my eyes as I speak. I realize now that this behavior is an
instinctive attempt to blot out awareness of audience when I need all my concentration
for just trying to figure out what I want to say (50).
It is obvious here that he wastes no time getting to what the problem is, how to solve it,
and then show how the solution works. All in the first two sentences of his paper! Quite
remarkably, this is a drastic difference from the historical and philosophical research of
Foster and Moffett that I examined earlier. Elbow makes no attempt of establishing a
continuing dialectic of debate but rather gets to the heart of the matter: that of course
being providing strategies for students that struggle to write, especially those that may
suffer from writer's block.
It is not Elbow's claim to discredit or devalue the concept of writing for an audience.
Instead, he contends that the initial ignoring of an audience at the beginning of the
writing process, will enable the writer to produce personal exploratory writing that, while
often times it is seen as unclear and jumbled, will coax his thinking into a process of new
discovery and development (51-53). Though his approach is different than Moffett and
Foster, he continues to lay out further ground work in expressionistic composition theory.
Later on in his paper, Elbow ambitiously claims that ignoring audience can lead to better
writing. It is at this point that Elbow puts a unique twist on Piaget and Vygotsky
developmental models of writing. Elbow contends that "it's not a matter of whether the

writer decenters, but of whether the writer has a sufficiently strong focus of attention to
make the reader decenter" (54-55). It is this strong focus that gives the reader an
authentic voice in writing, and that may not happen unless we learn to ignore the
audience. "To hell with whether they like it or not. I've got to say this the way I want to
say it" (Elbow 55).
A further examination of Elbow's research will reveal further characteristics that would as
North ascribes classify him as contributing to the practitioner house of lore (34-35). But
whereas North accuses the practitioner of taking particular values, beliefs, traditions,
customs of doing writing as Elbow seems to do, that cause the questionable validity of
the research to become embedded in a field characterized by ritualized ramblings and
findings to composition theory, I find Elbow as a practitioner in quite a different light.
Though I am well aware that Elbow makes assumptions in his article, namely the
problematic assumption of the need for "authentic voice" and the assertion that prose is
not "right for readers but prose that is right for thinking, right for language, or right for the
subject being written about" (54) , I still see him contributing to the field of English
Composition as a legitimate way of "knowing" about writing. Elbow, instead of taking a
lot of time basing his need to ignore audience on lengthy empirical investigations
combined with the communal dialectic, decides to propose solutions. By positioning his
argument for "writer based prose" against "reader based prose" and further grounding
his solutions in the work of Piaget, Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and Meade, he succeeds in
contributing in a weighty and respectable fashion in regards to expressionism in
composition theory. At least, the teacher has something that they can implement in the
classroom. Elbow and other practitioner have given teachers not simply solutions
concerning these implementations about curing the ills in writing, but ways of attempting
to address what those ills are.
Conclusions
As I continue to teach writing, I will give the students a sample writing assignment during
the first week of class. This will be my first priority on my teaching agenda so that I can
determine the levels of writing ability among students. If the students have poor writing
abilities, I will start from the lower levels of abstract thought as described by Moffett
earlier in this paper. I will encourage free-writing (i.e. invention stage as ouitlined in St.
Martins Guide), and I will also require journal writing as part of the curriculum. It is
hoped that these mental drills will encourage the student's spontaneity and invention in
writing. While at times, the students will be given the freedom to choose their writing
tasks, other times I will provide more structured type assignments.
The expressionistic mode of writing is a stepping stone and will lead students to more
advanced and abstract forms of writing. I recognize the fact that students may also
acquire knowledge from external experiences and in large part are directly affected by
these experiences. In this respect, I recognize the need to also promote structured
collaborative learning which will engage the students in high peer interaction. Though I
have not directly addressed this issue of social constructionism in this paper and it has
not been my intention to do so, I see it's inevitable merge with my topic of
expressionism. Maureen Newlin, in an interview stated:

Writing and reading tasks will focus on the need for a recognizable purpose and an
awareness of the rhetorical situation; such a focus will help you to develop your writer's
voice in all composing situations, whether personal or social. (21 November 1993)
As my students begin with personal writing and advance to the abstract forms of
rhetorical writing, I will encourage them to continue to focus on their voice. The main
focus of the student should be progress in their writing. Expressionism can allow the
student to achieve a better understanding of self by positing itself with the view of others.
By doing so, the student will learn how to write more abstractly. This in turn will enable
the student to better express himself. In the end, the student will achieve an improved
way of communication. It is this communication that will allow him to interact (verbally
and written) in a competent way with society. In some aspects, expressionism may be
accused of viewing society as a minimal part in the language and invention of writing. To
answer those accusations, I contend that expressionistic composition theory can use
society as a tool in which to discover a better understanding of one's self.
Works Cited
Elbow, Peter. "Closing My Eyes as I Speak." College English. 49, No 1, Jan. (1987):5057.
Foster, David. A Primer for Writing: Theories, Theorists, Issues, Problems. Upper
Montclair: Boynton, 1983.
Moffett, James . Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Boston: Houghton, 1968.
Newlin, Maureen. Personal Interview. 21 November 1993.
North, Stephen M. The Making of Knowledge in Composition Portrait of an Emerging
Field. Portsmouth, NH: Boynyon/Cook, 1987.