McGee & Ericsson

McGee, Tim and Patricia Ericsson. "The Politics of the Program: MS Word as the Invisible Grammarian." Computers in the Composition Classroom. Eds. Michelle Sidler, Richard Morris, and Elixabeth Overman Smith. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2008: 308-325. Print.

Link to the article. 

In this article, the author's reinforce the argument self makes about not "paying attention." They argue that the technology that fades into the background is the most dangerous. They take the argument for critical usage to the next step by focusing on a specific software program that has faded into the background (even still today). They analyze the background and implications of Microsoft Word's Grammar Check. Ultimately, the creation of Grammar Check was based on the field of computational linguistics, which has a different field focus than composition and rhetoric (the field that teaches most writing courses). Essentially, GC relies on a system that is not only not complete accurate, but sets up a binary system right vs. wrong. For the seasoned writer, the author's say this is not a big deal; however, they suggest that this can be detrimental to the student writer. In addition, the author's tie this system to the issue of Standard English. The right or wrong implications of the checker suggest right or wrong versions of language, which is tied back to the issues of power and the interface discussed in Selfe & Selfe.

This article comes at an interesting time because I just read "New Spaces and Old Places: An Analysis of Writing Assessment Software" by Vojak, et al. about a week ago. The article was published this year, and they found that many of the software programs are still basing their analysis and feedback on things like style, and whether or not keywords are present in the student writing. The issue of current traditional rhetoric present in the tools we use (whether it be textbooks or software) is still ever present. Blogger even has a spell check. I have red dots under words it doesn't recognize.