Understanding the Rhetoric of Research

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College English grew out of English Journal and became its own journal in 1939 when there appeared to be a stronger need for analysis of English in higher education. Originally there had just been a College Edition of EJ. College English has had a very similar editorial policy to that of EJ except that it has been a bit more open to highly theoretical articles and cross-disciplinary studies. In 1970 it is especially clear that College English wants to continue a progressive stance on issues in the field of English. The areas of scholarship the journal is interested in include:

(1) The working concepts of criticism: structure, genre, influence, period, myth, rhetoric, etc. (2) The nature of critical and scholarly reasoning; implicit standards of evidence and inference; the nature of critical explanation. (3) The structure of our field; implications of the way we segment it; consequences of specializing in the usual ways; the place of rhetoric and composition. (4) The relevance of current thinking and research in other fields (e.g., philosophy, history, art history, psychology, linguistics) to the study and teaching of English. (5) Curriculum, pedagogy, and educational theory. (6) Practical affairs in the profession. (7) Scholarly books, textbooks, and journals in the field.

The current policy for College English is similar in its scope and notes further that, "Contributions should either add new knowledge to what is already known, challenge received opinion, or simply inform a larger readership of the implications of scholarship and research that would otherwise be known only to specialists." The policy emphasizes that the rhetoric should be accessible to people of varied interests. Therefore, we don't see any extremely empirical articles in the journal. For College English, an article on empirical research needs to be focused largely on interpretation of the findings rather than on the detailed ins and outs of data collection or statistical findings. A glance at the December 1997 issue's table of contents, and it becomes clear that a "narrative" or qualitative approach is emphasized. Included is an article entitled "Pomo Blues: Stories from First-Year Composition," a poetry section, and a review entitled "Telling Tales about Teaching Writing."