“I’m Not Mean”: How the Course Syllabus Communicates Power

Abstract

To explore how syllabi communicate power and what this genre says about pedagogy and student-instructor interactions, I analyzed selected syllabi from an undergraduate professional writing (PW) program and conducted two focus groups with students and one with instructors to learn their perceptions about the genre broadly and to explore their reactions specific to PW syllabi. To analyze my IRB-approved study’s data, I use McCroskey and Richmond’s bases of power framework. Findings suggest that syllabi reflect contradictions inherent in the instructor role and help to illustrate the often incongruous relationship instructors cultivate with students, evidenced by rule-enforcing on the one hand and relationship- and community-building on the other. To negotiate these contradictions, instructors distance themselves from their syllabi, using a variety of strategies to downplay their authorship. Naming the bases of power and identifying them through the rhetorical and genre convention rules of the syllabus reveals various maneuvers instructors use to communicate (power) through syllabi. Doing so characterizes instructor power as nuanced discourse, surpassing the language written on the page to the ways the genre is used as a rhetorical space for negotiating roles, behaviors, and activities.