Social construction : a redefinition in context

Social construction is found less often as a systematic theory than as a perspective adopted by thinkers in many disciplines who share an interest in the impact of social process on thought and its expression. Many in composition studies are attracted to the concept because an emphasis on the extent to which ideas are socially constructed commonly leads to a complementary emphasis on rhetoric and its role in generating, as opposed to only disseminating, knowledge. In practice, those drawn to social construction also tend to gravitate toward a cooperative conception of rhetoric, and anti-foundational recognition of the instrumental nature of theory, a belief in the incommensurability of conflicting ideas, and an interest in the paradigmatic quality of revolutionary shifts within disciplines. Taken together, these ideas can be used as an operational definition of social construction. This expanded definition proves to be a useful tool in the examination of four important issues in composition studies (the history of rhetoric, relativism, consensus and individual thought, and the social locus of authority in the composition classroom) which constitutes the bulk of this dissertation.