Kleine Summary

Michael Kleine, an English professor of the University of Arkansas, wanted to improve the process and quality of his students' research papers. He believed that the process should be both heuristic and strategic. As a result, academic papers would be epistemic (or referential as Kinneavy would put it) and rhetoric. In order to help his students, he built a model that involved eight cells, four columns and two rows. This model was split into four stages: collecting, rhetorical sifting, pattern seeking, and translation. In each stage, there were two categories, hunting and gathering. Hunting was a method of having a strong sense of purpose and direction, while gathering was the process of "discovering." He then used this model during interviews with eight different professors of varied fields. He found out that the natural and social sciences were focused on researching before writing, however, the people who worked in the departments of humanities immersed themselves in reading and writing. They used writing as a tool in order to learn and discover. He concluded that all academic papers ended up being both rhetoric and epistemic, although specific fields may lean more towards one or the other. What separated professional researchers and students was that professional researchers wrote papers due to an interest, a question, or a gap. Students usually researched because of an external source of compulsion. Kleine argued that the student should write research papers for the purpose of sharing information and bringing something new, not for the sake of reciprocating already shared knowledge. For this purpose, Michael Kleine aimed to absorb his students into the constantly expanding discourse that he and his colleagues participate.