Composition Forum 42, Fall 2019
http://compositionforum.com/issue/42/

Review of J. Michael Rifenburg’s The Embodied Playbook: Writing Practices of Student-Athletes

S. Andrew Stowe

Rifenburg, J. Michael. The Embodied Playbook: Writing Practices of Student-Athletes. Utah State UP, 2018. 188pp.

J. Michael Rifenburg’s The Embodied Playbook: Writing Practices of Student-Athletes serves as a guide for considering the ways that embodied literacy is enacted by student-athletes. Based on considerations of embodiment and literacy practices, this book provides clear instructional considerations and theoretical considerations for faculty and scholars considering rhetorical agency, teaching diverse audiences, appealing to student-athletes, and embodied literacies. By introducing ideas of improvisation near the end of the book, the notion of contingency in composition, athletics, and music becomes clear. Overall, the book provides an accessible and interesting discussion of sport, composition, and rhetorical principles of composition.

Starting with origin stories, notably one narrative regarding a heavily recruited football player who struggles to write using the note software on a computer, immediately highlights the idea that in a typical composition classroom there are more literacies at play than may first meet the eye. The second origin story involves an athlete who struggles to learn a play, only to find success in learning the play when a teammate uses couch cushions to walk through and teach the play.

Both of these opening stories highlight bodily literacy and provide exigence that is explained throughout. But, “body literacy does not often figure into traditional conceptions of academic literacy” (4). These stories highlight the importance of considering different kinds of learning and different kinds of literacy and set a stage for the rest of the book which methodically provides evidence to support nuanced arguments that highlight these introductory principles.

With an awareness that sport and academics occasionally seem at odds, Rifenburg creates a bridge that highlights the idea that composition is based on helping students and that we composition teachers can better do this by, as Bizzell notes, better knowing our students (442). Then citing Adam Banks’s chairs address at the 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication, Rifenburg explains that “We—composition teachers-scholars—‘served anyhow’” (Banks) despite challenges on all fronts that especially first-year composition faces as a “service” course or sequence. Thus, this book seeks to help teacher-scholars engage with their “student-athlete writers” to “play the long game” and “serve anyhow” (5). In this context, as is played out through the book, service involves helping to teach our students as they are and to help them create meaning in highly contingent rhetorical situations.

Though this book focuses on football and basketball, the sports are broadly representative of two different ways of constructing movement with slightly different goals that provide interesting consideration for later relationships between play embodiment and writing practice. Both of these sports feature plays that form a basis for what embodied enactment might ideally represent. Though the plays are written, the plays are composed by the sum of the players’ actions just as ideas are conjured and then given form after writerly practice is employed.

This book is built upon a continued interest in embodiment in composition studies. Rifenburg cites Mark Johnson who explains that “our embodiment is essential to who we are, to what meaning is, and to our ability to draw rational inferences and be creative” (58). By considering both written plays and the embodied enactment of those plays, this book provides insight into learning and literacy styles that help composition teachers and provide rich theoretical ground (which is discussed later in this review). The strong comparison of sport plays and writing is one of this book’s great strengths. By discussing the contingency of rhetorical situations that an author and an athlete might find themselves in, the book provides clear discussions of how different rhetorical choices can help complete a play by meeting the relative objective of the action at hand.

Rifenburg’s text is based on research he conducted through textual analysis, archival research, and ethnographic research. These methods then allow him insight to interesting theoretical implications of his findings that are relevant to teachers (as explained in chapters 4 and 5). The rich descriptions most notable in chapters 2 and 3 provide clear and appropriate grounds for the arguments that are made throughout. Rifenburg’s familiarity with sport and composition is presented in the approachable fluency with which the author discusses the topic. Additionally, the thorough nature of the research and the depth of observational thought presented are laudable.

The background material and context for this book and introductory material in chapter 1 smoothly move across a variety of topics regarding the relationships between sport and academics, a brief history of collegiate sport, considerations of the body in writing, and an interesting discussion of the relationships between the academy, athletic programs, and the NCAA.

Chapter 2 opens as a textual analysis of football and basketball plays. Opening with defining scripted plays, the comparisons to writing and composition practice are evident immediately. The author argues that “scripted plays are multimodal texts, dialectically constructed, historically situated, and anticipative of competitive bodily enactment” (36). This chapter considers the creation, form, and functionality of written plays. The author convincingly argues that “resemiotization” is a compelling way of focusing on “what plays do” (53) and provides a rhetorical vocabulary for the way information is created by and communicated in a play. Constantly considering the relationships between form, creation, and enactment of plays, this chapter sets a compelling groundwork for the multimodal form of sports plays and their embodiment on the athletic field.

Chapter 3 builds on chapter 2 by discussing “how” athletes learn plays by building on the different modes of communication explained in the previous chapter and providing data that suggests players learn plays through “spatial orientation, haptic communication, and scaffolded situations” (69). These conclusions are made based on the author’s ethnographic experience in following a basketball team from November to the end of their season in February. Noting the goals of basketball, the author draws a compelling argument through the coach’s philosophy of using plays to create a “framework” (71) but using few written cues (75) focusing instead of the repetition needed to create muscle memory (76). Based on player interviews, Rifenburg explains that players do not always recognize textual representations of the plays they performed as the learning experience was so embodied and removed from the written impression of the play (77). Thus, the author explains that plays are “dialectically constructed (95). Noting that “plays on paper and plays executed on the court are different” (87), players must nevertheless learn plays and coaches teach those plays. Then, the performance of those plays is up to the athlete, as well as the way they read and respond to the opposing team concerning the goal of the sport.

Whereas the first three chapters of this book provide theoretical underpinnings, observations, and argument, chapters 4 and 5 form the second half of the book and deal more with the practical implications of teaching athletes.

Chapter 4 draws on the author’s experience as an athletic writing tutor to highlight the ways that NCAA tutoring rules limited tutors’ ability to help athlete-writers’ improve their composition practice. Just as one of the coaches in Rifenburg’s experience didn’t want “robotic” players, it’s also important not to create robotic writers (120). Notably, Rifenburg argues that writing center staff “should advocate for a proper academic atmosphere for student-athletes,” tutors for athletes should mirror practices from the campus-wide writing center, tutors from the campus-wide writing center should serve in the athletic writing center, and if writing centers are not separate then writing center administration should learn about NCAA policies that govern athletic tutoring policies (128).

The final chapter of this book, chapter 5, turns toward an additional section that provides guiding principles in the way that we consider crafting the teaching portion of a student athlete’s educational experience. Opening with considerations of jazz music that emphasizes the value of improvisation, chapter 5 finds its groove in bringing all of the arguments created in the first four chapters back to focus on a few simple but important ideas. As discussed in chapter 3, plays are learned “through spatial orientation, haptic communication, and scaffolded situations,” “but the embodiment of these plays is analogous to the characteristics of jazz improvisation” (133). Like athletes, writers balance the “scripted/spontaneous paradox” of rhetorical situations (137). Further discussions around soloing and meeting collective goals continue to draw similarities and keen points of observation about embodied writing. The book concludes by re-discussing the aims of the book and providing clear rationale for their consideration.

While student-athletes and non-athletic students alike can be very engaged or disengaged in the learning process, it seems that sometimes student-athletes are more often targeted with this label. By considering the advanced literacy practices that the sports process creates, one can appreciate that playing sport shares many similarities with a writing process; knowledge or ideas are conceived of and then communicated, whether in writing or whether in the embodiment of an athletic play.

Overall, this book provides a thorough and engaging examination of the ways that sports plays function as a form of embodied composition. These ideas help to support teachers and scholars by helping them consider that knowledge comes in a variety of packages. This understanding can allow teachers to know their audience and to adjust accordingly. This book pays attention and clearly describes the rhetorical implications of learning plays and being aware of how to adapt based on changes in the situation. Helping students consider that one size does not always fit all is one of the greater challenges of the composition classroom and it is one that is shared in sport.

Rather than providing rules, this text focuses consistently on providing guiding principles that are especially useful in helping composition instructors to consider how they might best teach student-athletes.

Works Cited

Banks, Adam. Ain't No Walls behind the Sky, Baby! Funk, Flight, Freedom. College Composition and Communication, vol. 67, no. 2, 2015, pp. 267-279.

Bizzell, Patricia. We Want to Know Who Our Students Are. PMLA, vol. 129, no. 3, 2014, pp. 442-447. doi:10.1632/pmla.2014.129.3.442.

Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago UP, 1987.