Hi, all. If you’re thinking deeply about methodology in nonacademic writing research, please consider this cfp!
CFP: Special Issue on Methodological Challenges and Innovations in Community,
Government, and Workplace Writing Research
What it means to work and participate in a community (where, how long, and in what type of organizational structure) continue to change. Along with the dissolution of borders (e.g., migration), reactionary measures to rebuild those borders (e.g., restrictive migration policies), and increasingly ubiquitous LLMs, reading and writing practices fragment and re-coalesce, automate, appear and disappear across workplaces, government, and community contexts. As these changes have significant implications for the study of writing and the people impacted by these changes, this Special Issue of Written Communication will specifically focus on the methodological implications of these changes and whether our current methodologies are ‘up to’
the task of addressing them. How do research methods endure and evolve under continually changing literacy practices in workplaces, government agencies, and communities? What existing methods might need innovation? What new methods might illuminate new data on writing and sites of writing, or that allow writing researchers to ask new or different kinds of questions? For example, in researching
local community writing, how should our methods accommodate responsible studies of community organizing and writing to (and during) the occupation of public spaces, writing to organize resistance to mass deportations, and action research within deeply divided communities? How can our methods recognize and secure data sovereignty, particularly in communities that have existed in place for decades, centuries or since time immemorial? How did ‘personal’ or ‘private’ writing during quarantine (for connection, for healing, for mental health, or for personal or archival recovery) affect writing practices post-quarantine? How do these changes alter writing researchers’ relationships to the sites where we study writing and the people with whom we work? Does the acceleration of research programs preclude or change relationship-building with industry or community members? What do these changes occasion in institutional approval processes, methods of data collection, selection, segmentation, and analysis methods? What ethical and methodological principles can be innovated and/or adapted to ensure/guarantee respect, beneficence, and justice?
Beyond the local, globalization and transnationalism are bound up in new forms of power and new forms of resistance, with language and literacy deeply linked to these dynamics. When considering composing practices brought on by the increased accessibility of mobile technology, for instance, we might also consider the challenges posed to public-sector writing by authoritarian, neonationalist, and populist government regimes. We might trace the impact of global economies of industries such as manufacturing and service work; we might create ways to reveal the impact of remote work or redistributions of workplace job forces. What methodologies best illustrate the impact of clawbacks of remote work or even the possibility of working with expectations such as loyalty oaths or redistributions of workplace job forces? How have these changes been brought on by pressures for environmental justice, affordable housing, and accessible workplaces? How will such changes affect the processes of outlining, writing, editing, and approval? In what cases will they disrupt current genre systems and change the regularization and regulation of specific genres? In a broader sense, how might authoritarianism and precarity require us to rethink data collection approaches such as interviews? How can we responsibly gain participants’ trust and safeguard their data?
How are technological advances implicated in these changes? For example, effectively nonconsensual incorporation of LLMs into routine composing platforms raises important questions about privacy, intellectual property, and unwanted change to writing processes. To what extent will LLMs accelerate deskilling and reskilling of the labor of individual writers or result in a ‘flattening’ or a normative baseline of writing as a cultural practice? Increased mobility and accessibility for whom? How are ‘analog’ composing technologies moving into new roles or acquiring different affordances in light of these advances? To what ends are these innovations in writing technologies in a deeply unequal global economy – for example, the planned obsolescence of certain writing technologies and practices? As people begin to use LLMs more as writing partners, how will that change how we understand the identities, duties, division of labor, and skill sets of writers (cf. Brandt 2005)?
This Special Issue will feature 12 shorter-form methods articles (5,000-6,000 words), focusing on specific current challenges or innovations for methodologies (e.g., case study, ethnography) or methods (e.g., interviewing, eye-tracking, surveying) in Writing Studies. We do not expect the sites of study to be new (although they can be); rather, we expect that challenges and/or implications will be illustrated concretely with trial examples from a new dataset (or an old dataset reconsidered). We are also interested in articles that show how old questions or findings could or should be reinterpreted. We are particularly interested in transnational perspectives and
research from historically marginalized locations of writing.
To be considered for the Special Issue, please submit a ~500-word abstract by January 10, 2025, to wcxeditors
Submit timeline:
● 500-word proposal by January 10, 2025
● Proposal decisions by January 24, 2025
● First drafts by March 21, 2025 with comments received by April 1, 2025
● Final revised manuscripts by May 15, 2025
● Published in the October 2026 issue
Dr. Clay SpinuzziDepartment of Rhetoric and Writing
University of Texas at Austin
208 W. 21st St., Stop B5500
Austin, TX 78712-1038