Catching up with Professor Nate: The Problem with Sociolinguisitics in Composition Research  

In Professional Academic Writing, Susan Peck MacDonald makes the observation that recent debates in rhetoric and composition about whether to initiate students into disciplinary practices or 'resist' current practices have frequently been framed in terms of 'accommodation' versus 'resistance,' and adds that 'these may be destructive dichotomies for us to be working with' particularly 'given the lack of close rhetorical and linguistic scrutiny we have spent on describing the nature, variation, or effects of textual practices in the humanities and social sciences'. When a field finds itself trapped in a particular dichotomy, it's time to re-examine research methods and agendas.

Prendergast, Catherine. JAC (1997). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing