Tacit Knowledge: A Term Not Yet Explicit

Amy Reed

Composition Studies’ use of the term “tacit knowledge” comes from scientist turned philosopher Michael Polanyi’s work. At the beginning of the essay “Knowing and Being,” Polanyi writes:

A few years ago a distinguished psychiatrist demonstrated to his students a patient who was having a mild fit of some kind. Later the class discussed the question whether this had been an epileptic or a hystero-epileptic seizure. The matter was finally decided by the psychiatrist: ‘Gentleman,’ he said, ‘you have seen a true epileptic seizure. I cannot tell you how to recognize it; you will learn this by more extensive experience. (123)

This episode demonstrates Polanyi’s definition of tacit knowledge as knowledge that is implicitly rather than explicitly known.

Polanyi’s definition of tacit knowledge relies on a somewhat radical definition of knowledge. He denies that “knowing” means being able to specify that which you know (133). Instead, knowledge may be “unspecifiable” (133). In other words, we can know more than we can tell. Polanyi mentions two different types of knowledge: tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. However, it is obvious that he believes one to be more important than the other. For example, Polanyi writes, “While tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable” (144). For Polanyi, there is some knowledge that we know explicitly, that is, we can state what we know. And yet, something must happen tacitly for us to understand and use this knowledge. To return to the earlier example, we may memorize the difference between epileptic and hystero-epileptic seizures, but unless we have internalized a tacit understanding of the meanings of these disorders, we will not be able to tell the difference between the two. To a novice without a tacit understanding of the diseases, a seizure caused by psychiatric problems and a seizure caused by a physical abnormality in cortical neurons look much the same. Only the expert with tacit knowledge can distinguish between the two.

Polanyi also explores how tacit knowledge works. He describes two different types of knowledge about particulars. He writes:

In the first case we focus our attention on the isolated particulars; in the second, our attention is directed beyond them to the entity to which they contribute. In the first case therefore we may say that we are aware of the particulars focally; in the second, that we notice them subsidiarily in terms of their participation in a whole. (128)

Focal awareness lets us have explicit knowledge about particulars. For example, while learning to play piano we must have knowledge of the particular components of a song: keys, chords, and octaves. However, once we have subsidiary knowledge, we can know the particulars in terms of their greater contribution to the whole. So the pianist with subsidiary knowledge is aware of separate notes with regards to their contribution to the musical composition as a whole. It is this subsidiary knowledge, “this act of integration” that Polanyi calls tacit knowing (140). For example, when looking at a pointillist painting we could focus on the individual dots that make up the painting or we could step back and try to view the painting as a whole. Only with this latter, subsidiary view could we understand what was going on in the painting. According to Polanyi, when we are able to let go of the particulars in order to focus on the whole, we have achieved tacit knowledge. This “act of integration” seems to be similar to the act of composing (140). When we compose we draw on other voices, we synthesize other sources, and we manipulate our thoughts in order to force them onto paper. Although Polanyi does not specifically mention writing as an example of subsidiary knowledge, his definition of subsidiary knowledge as “integration” seems applicable to our understanding of composition.

The uptake of the term “tacit knowledge” into Composition Studies has been subtle, first appearing in the footnotes of articles and rarely, if ever, being a main focus. For the most part, the term goes undefined in the literature. In addition, there seem to be very few authors who use Polanyi’s term as he intended it. For example, the first appearance of the term in College English is in Peter Neumeyer’s 1969 article, “The Child as Story Teller: Teaching Literary Concepts through Tacit Knowledge.” Neumeyer describes tacit knowledge as a “rich blessing” that allows us to have knowledge that is “comprised of far more than an analysis of the sum of its physical parts” (515). This definition of tacit knowledge seems consistent with Polanyi’s. Here, Neumeyer is suggesting that knowledge means knowing more than the particulars. However, as the article goes on, Neumeyer relates an anecdote about his son who is able to predict the ends of the stories Neumeyer tells him. Neumeyer argues that his son has an “instinctive sense for plot, for order, for form, for pulling together” (517). Neumeyer recognizes this sense as “an example of tacit knowing” (517). Here Neumeyer describes tacit knowledge as instinctual. This implies that tacit knowledge cannot be taught. Instincts are universal; we all have them. Moreover, we are born with instincts. If tacit knowledge is instinctual, then we do not have to cultivate it; it already resides within us. Paradoxically, however, Neumeyer argues that we must “find out whether we cannot teach by devising means through which the child’s ‘tacit knowledge’ can be made explicit” (517). Thus, Neumeyer charges teachers to figure out how to make what is tacitly known, explicitly known to our students. Far from exploring the potentials of tacit knowledge being innate within us, Neumeyer goes on to argue that tacit knowledge can be acquired via explicit instruction. According to Polanyi’s definition of tacit knowledge, there are two problems with this. First, Polanyi claims that “a wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable” (144). This suggests that it is impossible for that which is tacitly known to ever be made completely explicit. The definition of tacit knowledge is that which cannot be articulated. In addition, Neumeyer implies that once the student’s tacit knowledge is made explicit that the student will be able to perform better. However, according to Polanyi, it is the tacit understanding, not the explicit articulation that renders performance; hence he says, “Explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied” (144). There is nothing in Polanyi that suggests that being able to articulate what you know in any way increases performance.

There are many more examples of this same misapplication of the term in the literature. For example, in 1970, George Stade writes of “a language sense, a sense of idiom, a feel for the logic of ordinary expressions—the expressions from which all extraordinary ones are derived” (150). He later defines this “sense” as tacit knowledge. By referring to tacit knowledge as a “sense” or a feeling, Stade seems to imply that tacit knowledge is not real. Emotions are opposite logic, and so tacit knowledge does not exist in any concrete sense. Like Neumeyer, Stade argues that the composition instructor’s task is to “make his students conscious of the relations between speaking informed by this sense, these habits, and idiomatic writing” (151). He further claims, “Once students become just a little conscious of the logic of ordinary language, they are quick to see how grammar, punctuation, and syntax can do for writers what pitch, pause, facial expressions, and gestures can do for speakers” (151). Again, the definition of tacit knowledge is oversimplified. If we can just alert our students to the language conventions that we are aware of, if we can make the students conscious of these rules, we will have “quick” success in teaching students how to write (151). Like Neumeyer, Stade seems to argue that tacit knowledge can be made explicit. And once the knowledge is explicit, students will become “conscious” and able to put grammatical and syntactical rules to use in their writing (151). More correct writing will occur because the students have accessed what was once only tacit knowledge. In addition, Stade argues that tacit knowledge is “a feel for the logic of ordinary expressions—the expressions from which all extraordinary ones are derived” (150). Here he further seems to simplify tacit knowledge. For Stade, tacit knowledge is “ordinary;” it is the building block that we start with but move away from. Tacit knowledge is subordinate to other knowledge, knowledge that will let us derive “extraordinary” expressions (150). Again, this is opposite of what Polanyi argues. For Polanyi, tacit knowledge is the highest form of understanding not merely a stepping stone.

Likewise, in 1979, Patrick Hartwell argues, “Pedagogy begins with the tacit knowledge of organizing speech that we all share and ends with the ‘fixed forms’ of certain writing situations. As a first step, students are asked to become conscious of what they already know about discourse” (550). Here tacit knowledge is knowledge that “we all share” but we are not yet conscious of knowing (550). Again, once we make the move to consciousness, we will reach the point of being able to replicate “fixed forms,” presumably modes or genres of writing (550). In addition, Hartwell notes that “we all share” tacit knowledge. If we all share tacit knowledge, than tacit knowledge must be something that is universal or natural. However, Hartwell fails to observe that if tacit knowledge is natural, then we should not need to teach it and trying to teach it explicitly would not be much use.

The debate over whether writing can be taught explicitly gets picked up twenty years later with the advent of new genre theory and a recognition that genres are not “fixed forms” but rather socially situated and evolving (550). In a 1993 article, Aviva Freedman asks, “What role, if any, can or should the explicit teaching of genre features play in learning to write new genres?” (224). Freedman eventually concludes cautiously by arguing that there is a very limited role that explicit teaching of genre features has in teaching novice writers (247). In her argument, she cites genre theorists who refer “frequently” to the “tacitness of genre knowledge” (231). For example, she writes, “Freed and Broadhead (1987) […] point out that many of the cultural and institutional norms that shape and constrain the distinctive genres are invisible, in their normalcy, to the participants themselves” (231). In other words, even those who tacitly understand and can use specific genres cannot articulate their features. Freedman argues:

Full genre knowledge (in all its subtlety and complexity) only becomes available as a result of having written. First comes the achievement or performance, with the tacit knowledge implied, and then through that, the meta-awareness which can flower into conscious, reflexive knowledge. (237)

Thus, for Freedman, trying to make tacit knowledge explicit for novices results in the simplification of genre knowledge. Tacit knowledge can only be acquired when we “dwell” in, to use Polanyi’s term, the situation (134). If we “dwell” in a situation, we inhabit it. For Freedman, tacit knowledge is something that we acquire through experience, not through conscious thought. However, Freedman does allow that tacit knowledge can become “conscious, reflexive knowledge” eventually (237).

Unlike her predecessors in the field, Freedman seems ready to acknowledge that tacit genre knowledge may be hard to access. This difficulty in accessing tacit knowledge is not just learning to make it explicit as it was for Neumeyer and Stade. Instead it is the very situatedness of the genres, the “cultural and institutional norms” that shape them that makes it difficult for genre users to articulate genre features (231). In some sense then, it seems as though Freedman is linking tacit knowledge to the concept of ideology or the cultural, systemic factors that influence us unknowingly or unconsciously. Again, this implied definition of tacit knowledge seems to conflict with Polanyi’s intention, as well as earlier researchers such as Stade and Neumeyer who posit tacit knowledge as being universal. But for Freedman, tacit knowledge may be different for different cultures and is certainly not a given. For Polanyi, “We can account for this capacity of ours to know more than we can tell if we believe in the presence of an external reality with which we can establish contact” (133). Polanyi is a positivist. For him, tacit knowledge is our only access to the real. Ideology, however, is not a concept associated with the real or actual. For example the Marxist conception of ideology is that of a “false consciousness” (Harkin 119). Ideologies are constructions, products of cultural and institutional forces. Although Freedman does conclude that genre knowledge cannot really be learned explicitly because it is accessed in the form of tacit knowledge, her linkage of tacit knowledge to ideology is susceptible to question according to Polanyi’s definitions.

Interestingly, a more recent article by Kjell Lars Berge explicitly distances tacit knowledge from ideology. Berge defines a key term for his work, doxa, as “tacit practical knowledge constituting the universe of the undiscussed/ undisputed,” but goes on to write “doxa is not to be confused with Hegelian and Marxist ideology” (459). It is interesting that Berge describes tacit knowledge as “practical”. This is congruent with Polanyi’s insistence that tacit knowledge leads to skill mastery. For example, if the pianist focuses on his explicit knowledge of keys and chords his performance is paralyzed. Polanyi argues, “Only by turning our attention away from the particulars and towards their joint purpose, can we restore to the isolated motions the qualities required for achieving their purpose” (126). Berge seems to agree that tacit knowledge is the only type of knowledge that leads practical use or application. By comparing tacit knowledge to the “undiscussed/ undisputed,” Berge also seems to be linking tacit knowledge to knowledge that is foundational. Like Stade, Berge poses tacit knowledge as a building block.

To return to Freedman's idea that tacit knowledge may be consistent with ideology, Patricia Bizzell’s 1979 article, “Thomas Kuhn, Scientism, and English Studies,” also links tacit knowledge to knowledge that is socially constructed rather than real, positivist knowledge. For example, when talking about the paradigm shift occurring in the field of Composition, Bizzell argues, “The paradigm is so deeply implanted in the members of the community that it achieves the status of tacit knowledge, invisible so long as its effectiveness is not challenged” (767). Like an ideology, a paradigm is also socially constructed as the “joint product of community” (767). Here tacit knowledge is able to shift; it is not real or concrete. Tacit knowledge is communally formed and reinforced. For Polanyi, this notion of tacit knowledge would be a mockery. In this definition, tacit knowledge is only an illusion of truth rather than real truth. The paradigm that represents tacit knowledge is only one version of truth, a version that can be replaced.

In a similar fashion, both Carolyn Matalene and William Stahl talk about tacit knowledge as a conventional wisdom that can be different for different groups of people. For Matalene, “communal, tacit knowledge controls the interpretation of both texts and behavior and contributes powerfully to cultural cohesion” (802). Like a paradigm, Matalene’s definition of tacit knowledge is that which is created by one specific community or culture. Like ideology, tacit knowledge is powerful because it holds the group together. Should another paradigm infringe on the current, tacit paradigm, the group would be in danger of splitting. William Stahl, too, implicitly links tacit knowledge to constructed knowledge when discussing the “meaning of technology” (236). Stahl’s argument is that technology comes to have different meanings for different social groups, each of which “contend to impose their definition and understanding” on the others (236). Stahl argues, “Should one of these groups be successful, we can say that they have ‘appropriated’ that technology, or that their definitions, theories, tacit knowledge, and so on have prevailed” (236). Again, here tacit knowledge comes to represent not knowledge that is true, real, or universal, but rather knowledge that may be different for each competing group. For Stahl, tacit knowledge is knowledge that can be hegemonic; it can be a powerful, controlling force precisely because it is only known implicitly.

Still a more radical argument of tacit knowledge’s constructedness can be implied from Peshe Kuriloff, who argues that the commonalities between disciplinary conventions are “shrouded by tacit knowledge, and obscured by emphasis on the features of the written text” (487). While equating tacit knowledge to ideologies or paradigms limits tacit knowledge’s ability to access external reality, here Kuriloff seems to be denying that tacit knowledge has any access to reality. For Kuriloff, tacit knowledg “shrouded” and “obscured” real knowledge (487). Tacit knowledge is far from representing the truth; it is what hides the truth from us. This opposite of Polanyi’s conception of tacit knowledge as that which leads us to discovery. In sum then, Freedman, Bizzell, Matalene, Stahl, and Kuriloff all link tacit knowledge to knowledge that is socially constructed. It is still implicit knowledge, in that we are not aware that we possess these ideologies or that we abide by these paradigms; however, it is not the knowledge of an “external reality with which we can establish contact” that Polanyi insists upon (Polanyi 133). Tacit knowledge, for these scholars, becomes a criticism. If knowledge is tacit, it is constructed and fake; it is knowledge that dupes us because it only applies in specific circumstances.

On the other hand, when Composition scholars refer to tacit knowledge in the way that Polanyi intended it, it becomes a very powerful and positive term. For example, in his 2000 article “Traditions and Professionalization: Reconceiving Work in Composition” Bruce Horner links tacit knowledge to the term “lore” and gives the latter term a more useful and positive definition. In this article, he argues, “We need to relinquish the quest for academic professionalism in defining the work of Composition and to contrast a sense of tradition in Composition as an active and activating force central to its work” (367). In his discussion of tradition, he defends the classroom as a site of research and theory. He quotes Susan Miller, who argues that “popular classroom practices… have depended not on massively adopted textbooks, but on the prior or tacit knowledge and opinions of teachers interacting with students” (qtd. in Horner 374). Picking up on the use of tacit knowledge, Horner notes, “Composition’s traditions are thus here linked with its daily practices and ‘tacit,’ nondiscursive knowledge” (374). It appears that Horner and Miller are linking tacit knowledge to the concept of lore here. Stephen North defines lore as “the accumulated body of traditions, practices, and beliefs” that practitioners of writing use to teach writing (22). In 1982, Gene Krupa, also appears to link tacit knowledge to the daily work of composition teachers and the lore that they pass on about this work. Slightly altering Polanyi’s words, Krupa writes, “We know much more about the teaching of writing than we can say (this is Michael Polanyi’s tacit knowledge), and in a program working like a model, we could display a large part of that tacit dimension of our understanding” (443). Linking lore to tacit knowledge is a very powerful argument, if we assume Polanyi’s definition of tacit knowledge is intact. Horner’s defense of tradition, daily practice, and lore in Composition studies is in response to a critique of those aspects as unworthy of “academic professionalism” (367). According to North, lore is associated with uncritical or unreflective knowledge. However, when Horner and Krupa connect the practice of lore to Polanyi's definition of tacit knowledge, they have connected a practice viewed by critics as unprofessional to a knowledge associated with the discovery of an external real. Polanyi claims that “discovery must be arrived at by the tacit powers of the mind,” not by explicit or empirical knowledge (138). So if lore is tacit knowledge, than lore can give us direct access to important discoveries in the field of Composition.

Several scholars, however, credit tacit knowledge not with making discoveries, but instead with creating solutions. This is the difference between happening upon an herbal plant that happens to alleviate headaches and being a scientist who studies the causes of headaches and medicidevises a compound to target the cause rather than the symptom. For example, in Linda Flower and John Hayes’ 1980 article, “The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem,” the authors argue that “writers don’t find meanings, they make them” (21). Instead of giving access to discovery, for Flower and Hayes, tacit knowledge consists of “inarticulate information people have about rhetorical problems” (25). Having tacit knowledge means having intuitive rhetorical knowledge, knowledge about “rhetorical problems” (25). This assumes that writers have developed strategies to help them respond to various rhetorical sitautions. Much like the scientist who is familiar with the causes of headaches, a skilled writer develops tacit knowledge of rhetorical strategies that help him address multiple audiences, purposes, and occasions. Several other researchers also connect tacit knowledge with rhetorical knowledge. For example, in 1983, Joseph Comprone argues that writers “must employ their tacit knowledge of language and rhetoric expressively, composing rough drafts that will enable them to act as their own reader” (126). Comprone argues that writers must have a tacit understanding of how to review their work from another reader’s point of view, a rhetorical strategy. Furthermore, Comprone refers to tacit knowledge as something that can be “employ[ed];” we can direct it and use it as a tool (126). In 1986, Richard Beach calls for attention to the “tacit knowledge of the conditions governing the use of these strategies” (61). The strategy he refers to is the ability to “[conceive] of writing as doing things rather than simply conveying information” (61). When we analyze a text rhetorically we look at how it is working to accomplish some purpose. For example, the classical appeals, ethos, logos, and pathos, all work to help the writer accomplish some persuasive purpose. In describing this rhetorical purpose, Flower argues that “it likely contains tacit knowledge existing below our threshold of conscious awareness” (532). Flower and Hayes, Comprone, and Beach all link tacit knowledge to an implicit understanding of rhetorical strategies.

From this review of the literature, we notice two things. First, the term tacit knowledge rarely gets defined. Sometimes, as in the case of Berge’s work, tacit knowledge is used to define another term (in his case, doxa). Other times, it simply goes unnoticed. Tacit knowledge is a term that we are expected to tacitly understand. Using context to understand how the term gets used, there seems to be several variations on Polanyi’s original definition. First, tacit knowledge gets understood as knowledge than can and should be made explicit. It also gets interpreted as knowledge that is baseline, foundational for all other, more complex, knowledge. In addition, tacit knowledge gets interpreted as a controlling force and, in particular, a controlling force that is socially constructed rather than one that has access to an external reality. Some of these interpretations are paradoxical. How can tacit knowledge be both simplistic, baseline, and universal and at the same time be complex, controlling, and hegemonic? This begs the question, is tacit knowledge definable? Is it something we can understand and research or is it a concept that is too vague to be studied? If we take Polanyi’s definition as the true, correct one, it seems unlikely that we will ever be able to access tacit knowledge or determine how we acquire it. After all, the definition of tacit knowledge is knowledge that cannot be made explicit. How can we study something that will not be articulated? And yet the concept of tacit knowledge seems so applicable to writing studies. Furthermore, the frequency with which we see Polanyi’s term being misapplied and misunderstood makes necessary the need to redefine and reconsider this term.

Works Cited

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