Dr. John's

Eazy-Peazy Guide to Effective Writing

by John F. Barber  

Major Theories of Writing

Background: A Product Orientation
Like rhetoric, composition has a long history. But unlike rhetoric, that part of composition's history that is important to present-day college writing is fairly recent. Prior to the 1960s, writing was considered to be a product of individual endeavor, and writers were told to follow a rhetorical model essentially handed down intact from Aristotle. Adherence to the rules of "good writing" meant primarily following the rules for "standard English." Emphasis in writing is focused on rhetoric. Example: Alexander Bain's English Composition and Rhetoric (1866).

Influence of Cognitive Psychlogy: A Process Orientation
This adherence to older models was seen as narrow-minded and limiting. A study by Braddock, Lloyd-Jones and Schoer, "Research in Written Composition" (1963) surveyed existent pedagogical studies of writing, and found most lacking any broad theoretical notion of writing abilities or even awareness of any other studies. In response, from the middle of the 19th Century to within the past two decades writing was considered more of a process than a product. According to James Berlin (Writing Instruction in 19th Century American Colleges) composition theorists and teachers of the 19th Century saw two major approaches to writing:
  1. Expressive ---> writing results from creative inspiration
  2. Cognitive --->writing results from conscious mental effort

Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics (1948) and the developing discipline of cognitive psychology, boosted by the 1966 Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English at Dartmouth College launched the cognitive process approach to understanding and teaching writing. Two kinds of cognitive approaches to the study of and the actual teaching of writing:
  1. Cognitive ---> the individual process
  2. Social ---> a collaborative effort

Major theme: interrelationship of thought and language. Major theorists were cognitive psychologists:
Influences of Cognitive Process Theory on Writing Instruction
Most visible in area of "invention" or "discovery." Other aspects of the writing process include drafting, revising, and editing.

Major Features of Cognitive Process in Writing

Criticism of Cognitive Process Theory of Writing

If the major theme of a cognitive process theory of writing is the interrelationship between thought and language, and since Piaget and Vygotsky suggest as much, it was natural for two theories of the cognitive theory of writing to emerge:
  1. An individual process
  2. A collaborative process ---> called "social constructionist"

Social Constructionist Theory
Main Idea: Knowledge constructed by group discourse
We construct our sense of self from communal ideas and attitudes. Language is the means for discovering and articulating a separate uniqueness. Language is the means for discovering selfhood by giving voice to all culturally-based understandings which constitute our experience. Thus "I" as the "subject" of our experience is a composite entity articulated in language of our communal experiences. Four Lines of Research:
  1. Discourse communities ---> group talk produces meaning
  2. Sociology of science ---> development of forms
  3. Ethnography ---> Concerned with context of the language situation
  4. Marxist ---> politics of production

Social Constructionist Theories of Discourse
Knowledge is built through collaboration and agreement. Opposition must be included or there is a reversion to individualist construction which reverts back to defining individuals as instruments of the language which defines them (cognitive process). Central question for deciding which camp to join: Do we control language, or does language control us? Social constructionists see the interaction of the individualizing power of the mind and the collective social authority of language as reciprocal and as the essential dynamic from which we make meaning.

Connection with Poststructuralist theory ---> writer, reader, and text are socially constructed entities, constituted by vast interpretative frameworks. Language is a "web of meaning." There is no underlying truth. We exist as relationships between words. No connection between signifier (content) and signified (object). Discourse community denotes a group of individuals bound by common interests/conventions which will influence production of text within that group.