CMM: Term Shift and Regional Concentration
The year-by-year Concept Magnitude Map (CMM) progression shown in the animation below reveals some expected congruence and productive difference with the PPSM.
Figure 1. The CMM for the entire sample period.
As with the PPSM, there are predominant regions in Texas, the Midwest, and the East Coast, but there is also widespread national involvement. As the aggregate image in Figure 2 demonstrates, only small pockets of the nation are unrepresented.
Figure 2. Aggregate CMM for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
This means that nationally the salient terms in rhetoric and composition online journals come from a distributed geographical base rather than a limited number of predominant institutions.
Restricting the map to only Rank 1 terms—those that recurred most frequently in a given year—reveals some interesting patterns. As the aggregate image of Rank 1 terms for the entire sample period shown below demonstrates, writing is the most popular term by a large margin and is the Rank 1 term for ten of the thirteen sampled years between 1996 and 2008.1
Figure 3. Aggregate map of Rank 1 terms for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
The related term composition and its variants are the Rank 1 term twice, in 2003 and 2004. The only Rank 1 term that is explicitly associated with technology is electric and its variants, which are predominant in 1997. This breakdown of Rank 1 terms suggests that the prevailing discourse in online journals has been focused primarily on the practice and teaching of writing rather than upon technology qua subject. In only one year out of thirteen was the most repeated term overtly connected with technology, and that year was comparatively early in the development of both the Web and online rhetoric and composition journals. Recent history demonstrates that writing is the most prevalent term in online journals, suggesting that it is also the primary subject of discussion.
Importantly, the CMM demonstrates that this trend has geographical aspects. The animation below shows that the total geographical distribution of Rank 1 terms is broad and in keeping with the larger pattern of all ranked terms shown in Figure 3.
Figure 4. Rank 1 terms for the entire sample period.
However, an interesting shift in the concentration of Rank 1 terms emerges when the pattern is viewed in chronological sequence. As Figure 4 demonstrates, between 1996 and 2002, Texas contains the most visible concentration of Rank 1 terms, except in 2001, when it shares prominence with the Midwest. During these seven years, writing is the dominant term, save for the single shift to electric and its variants in 1997. However, in 2003, there is a change both in the prevailing term and in the locus of Rank 1 activity. As Figure 4 shows, in 2003 and again dramatically in 2004 the predominant term is composition and its variants, and their most visible concentrations are on the East Coast. In 2005, the predominant term is again writing and its locus shifts back to Texas. In subsequent years, the predominant term continues to be writing but its area of greatest concentration moves among locations in the Rocky Mountains, the East Coast, the Midwest, and Florida.
The shift in Rank 1 term concentration suggests a progression toward increased national distribution. The first several years of plotted data are fairly homogeneous in terms of both the prominent concept and the location of its greatest concentration. However, about halfway through the sample period, a change in the prominent concept coincides with a shift of its locus. This shift precedes a geographical dissemination, as the following years show an increased distribution of Rank 1 terms which continues through the last year of the sample period, 2008.
The implications of this shift are complex and invite multiple analyses. Examining this change at the institutional level suggests at least one narrative. For the first three years of the sample period, Texas Tech University was the institution with the highest Rank 1 term concentration. It did not return to this position again until 2005, but it was routinely among the institutions with highest concentrations. From this it is possible to assert that the consistent, prolific publication of Kairos, which was housed at Texas Tech University, shaped the disciplinary discourse in this nascent medium and genre. This analysis is supported by the fact that the term kairos itself is a Rank 4 term in 2006, which was the journal’s ten-year anniversary and was marked by a special issue. It would seem that Kairos was a stabilizing and legitimating presence for its medium and genre when both were burgeoning. Subsequently, some of its predominance has been counterbalanced by other publications as online journals have matured. Kairos was in a particular period of transition at the time of its tenth anniversary, as identified by its editors in the corresponding special issue. The journal was assuming a more established role in disciplinary discourse and the location of its sponsoring institution was shifting from Texas Tech University to Michigan State University. Figure 4 reveals that the latter institution has become highly visible in the two years at the end of the sample period, suggesting that the journal still exerts significant influence despite increased parity with other publications.
The movement of terms in the CMM suggests that concepts have a seeming life and autonomy of their own. We can gain information about the longevity and recurrence of terms by tabulating the number of times each appears in the ranked list. The table below displays all of these terms in order of total occurrences.
Figure 5. Table of ranked terms in order of total occurrences. A black cell indicates that the term appeared in the corresponding year.
Figure 5 reveals that the three most frequently occurring terms—variants of write, compose, and teach—are very much within the boundaries of traditional rhetoric and composition concerns. This is in keeping with an observation reiterated throughout this study: online rhetoric and composition journals' principle subject is writing practice and instruction rather than technology, and journal activity is accordingly geographically centered around active rhetoric and composition programs rather than clustered at technology centers. That is to say, in online journals, discussions about technology have not displaced discussions about writing. Nevertheless, technology is still a visible element of online rhetoric and composition journals. Figure 5 demonstrates that eight of the 26 terms, or almost a third of them, are explicitly connected with technology.2 Moreover, the list of ranked terms is productive for not only what it contains but also what it omits. It is interesting to note the terms that appear only once on the list—such as variants of pedagogy, research, and students—as well as those that do not appear at all, such as assessment, ethics, race, reading, process, and many others.
Figure 5 also visually demonstrates that the longevity of the most frequently appearing terms is predicated upon continuous rather than periodic recurrence. The most frequent term, write(r, ers, ing), recurs every year of the sample period. The second most frequent term, composi(ng, tion, tional, tionists, tions), is not present until 2003, but it appears contiguously in every subsequent year. The third most frequent term, teach(able, er, ers, ing), appears in a single unit of five years between 2000 and 2004. This suggests that disciplinary concepts appear in cycles of sustained interest. Intellectual currents are dominant for a period and then recede. Moreover, cross-term coherence is visible within individual years. The only occurrences of the terms moo(ing, s), pedagog(ical, ies, y), and space(s) are all in 1996, which also contains one of online's three appearances. This is potential evidence that the pedagogical aspects of MOOs or similar online spaces were a topic of conversation during this year. The only occurrences of age and gender are together in 1997, which suggests a contemporary disciplinary awareness of these and similar bodily aspects. Hyper(fiction, media, text) and music make their only appearances in 1999, due to Kairos's 1999 "Hypertext Fiction/Hypertext Poetry" special issue and Enculturation's 1999 "Writing/Music/Culture" special issue. 2008 marks the only coincidence of digital, litera(cies, cy, ary, ture), and (multi)media. Term triangulation thus reveals aspects of a year’s individual character and provides a snapshot of contemporary disciplinary discourse.
All of this discussion leads toward an exploration of the geographical aspects of these trends. When mapped, each of the four most frequently occurring terms is shown to result from a fairly distributed national area, as visible in the aggregate CMM images contained in the four images below.
Figure 6. Aggregate map of writ(e, ers, ing), the most frequently occurring term in online rhetoric and composition journals, for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
Figure 7. Aggregate map of composi(ng, tion, tional, tionists, tions), the second most frequently occurring term in online rhetoric and composition journals, for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
Figure 8. Aggregate map of teach(able, er, ers, ing), the third most frequently occurring term in online rhetoric and composition journals, for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
Figure 9. Aggregate map of technolog(ical, ies, ization, izing, y), the fourth most frequently occurring term in online rhetoric and composition journals, for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
Within this broad distribution, there are some individual tendencies. Figure 5 reveals that writ(e, ers, ing) is quite widely distributed, with notable concentrations in all regions of the country. However, as seen in Figure 7, composi(ng, tion, tional, tionists, tions), although still quite distributed, is largely concentrated on the East Coast, which is in keeping with the previously discussed term shift in 2003 from variants of writing to variants of composition. Figure 8 shows that teach(able, er, ers, ing) has a high concentration in Texas, but it is also widely distributed in the Midwest and the East Coast. Figure 9 reveals that technolog(ical, ies, ization, izing, y) shares a similar pattern, although it is more strongly concentrated in Texas, more widely distributed in the Midwest and the East Coast, and less distributed in other parts of the country.
It is significant that all of the most frequently mentioned terms have a wide geographical distribution and none are exclusively concentrated in a specific area. This pattern generally holds true for most of the terms in the ranked list. However, some of the less frequently occurring terms do reveal individuated attachment to regions. In particular, music, student(s), and across the curriculum are concentrated in specific areas. Interestingly, both music and student(s) have some presence in Europe, but as Figure 10 below reveals, music is largely concentrated in the University of Texas at Arlington.
Figure 10. Aggregate map of music for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
Student(s) is centered at Colorado State University, as shown in Figure 11, as is across the curriculum, which has a split concentration between that institution and George Mason University in Virginia, as Figure 12 demonstrates.
Figure 11. Aggregate map of student(s) for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
Figure 12. Aggregate map of across the curriculum for the entire sample period (1996-2008).
Certainly terms such as student(s) and across the curriculum were in national circulation so a broader distribution would be expected, given that article/review titles that contained these terms would be affiliated with their authors’ home institutions. The concentration of these terms suggests the possibility that national interests were manifesting in particular publishing venues at Colorado State University and George Mason University. Alternately, the physical separation of Colorado State University, which is distanced from the active areas of Texas, the Midwest, and the East Coast, may have led to its cultivation of endemic interests. This position is supported by the fact that Colorado State University is the sponsoring institution of Across the Disciplines, and it was the sponsoring institution of its forbearer, Academic.Writing. It is unsurprising that a journal titled Across the Disciplines would be invested in the concept across the curriculum. As mentioned previously, these journals are (and were) geographically based around pillar locations in areas that are under-represented in other journals, including the Rocky Mountains and the Southeast. This evidence suggests a possible connection between regions and intellectual currents, which manifests both in local online journal activity and in the textual content of corresponding publications.
1 The CMM sample period does not include 1994 and 1995 because those years do not contain enough data to produce a useful concordance.
2 The terms are technolog(ical, ies, ization, izing, y), comput(e, er, ers, ing), digital, electr(ic, icity, onic), online, (multi)media, hyper(fiction, media, text), and moo(ing, s).