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Critical Thinking Skills and Emotional-Response Discourse: Merging the Affective and Cognitive in Student-Authored Texts through Taxonomy Usage

motions, because they often interfere with critical or rational thought while simultaneously enhancing our writing, need to be more fully addressed in our research. In our Western rationalistic critical thinking, we tend to “objectify” subjects. Thus, by recognizing the role of emotions in student-authored texts, we begin to advance as well as complement more conventional composition agendas. To do this, we must help teach students to identify and analyze their personal affective language within their texts. By doing so, we not only acknowledge the importance of critical thinking, but also learn that effective pedagogy, when framed by critical thought, considers emotions which are necessary for, although frequently disruptive of, better critical thinking development. Thus, we better promote critical thinking and healthier attitudes which in turn produce more emotionally and intellectually balanced individuals. As many researchers in the social sciences point out, emotions are an integral part of the human experience. Without them, each human ceases to be truly unique because emotions “lend significance to things, to events, and to ideas” (Brand, “Writing” 290). Yet these affective responses go largely ignored in composition pedagogy. While we all acknowledge the importance of affect in writing, we are less effective at 1) identifying affective discourse markers in student writing and 2) recognizing how and where emotive discourse interferes with rather than assists writing and writing pedagogy. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to present and explain a taxonomy of emotive-response discourse markers that helps teachers identify points in student-authored texts where emotion or affective language confuses, even flattens, the critical thinking and rhetorical abilities of students. Designed to help students identify inappropriate explicit emotions (or emotiveresponse discourse) within their own and others’ texts, the taxonomy presents students with a visual guide by which they can begin to identify these complicating and flattening affective language areas within their analytical pieces. By locating and identifying the presence of affective interference, they are better equipped to revise accordingly. Additionally, because there is a need for emotions in critical thinking, teachers also need to be able to identify points where emotion both facilitates and interrupts student writing. By following the taxonomy, teachers can more effectively incorporate proper, non-interfering affective elements into their teaching. E