Doctoral+Students+Presentation

Black ink: Kalpana Green ink: Shannon Blue ink: Angeli


 * Chapter 12**
 * Writing as Art and Entertainment** (Kalpana and Shannon )

As stated before, writing helps us to remember; it serves as a way to record.

Universal in linguistics- a grammatical rule (or other linguistic feature) that is found in all languages or "a feature is universal if it occurs more frequently across unrelated languages than is predicted by chance" (p. 191). http://youtu.be/OuUAPVFFCRQ The repetition of a feature in all languages is called absolute universal. Otherwise, it is statistical universal. Sets of features recurring in distinct order is called typological universal (eg/word classes) The difference between orature and literature is not as sharp as one might initially imagine. There is a transition between orality and literacy. Walter Ong - technological autonomy http://youtu.be/W-8hD7xtSeU Writing - recording events that one might forget.
 * Learning to Write: Varieties of Universal and the Autonomy of Literature**
 * Merchants || Inventories ||
 * Rulers || Memorials and Decrees ||
 * Religion || Inscription of prayers ||
 * Egyptians || Eulogy ||

Middle Bronze Age - The development of first writing systems. Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions (religious/prayer) Writing developed not only for enhancing speech but also for other possibilities of thought and action.

There are prototypes of works that are repeated later; the author has a set of developmental principles, which may vary culturally. The most common are heroic, romantic, and sacrificial tragic-comedy
 * What to Write and How to Do It: Protoypes and Development Principles**

Chirography/penmanship or handwriting transcribed orature. Examples are Iliad and Odyssey. Prototypes - Cognitive Science/model built for replication. Prototypes vary culturally with patterns across traditions. Generic prototypes - heroic, romantic, and tragic-comedy. Usurpation of rightful monarch, threat to society from an external enemy || **The Great-Works Program: Canons, Classics, and Scriptures**The birth of literature Oral Societies- constant changes; Poets used universal prototypes to create poemsExample/bard-prototype for particular scenes in the Iliad - retelling by creating new poem For Writing.... p. 202 Novelty, derivative, innovative
 * Heroic || Internal disruption of social hierarchy-
 * Romantic || Separation of lovers due to social disapproval ||
 * Sacrificial || Communal disaster due to some ethical violation and the necessity of a communal sacrifice to rectify the situation ||

How we as a society accept these new texts ...

"Suppose one person writes a successful novel combining realism and magic. Then a second person writes a work that is realistic but includes elements of magic. In this case, we are likely to see the second author as derivative. But suppose more writers take up this technique. At a certain point, we are likely to stop counting any of these writers as derivative. Rather, we are likely to count them all as members of a movement, and we will view a number of them as innovative."

“Syntagmatic analysis studies the 'surface structure' of a text, [and] //paradigmatic analysis// seeks to identify the various paradigms (or pre-existing sets of signifiers) which underlie the manifest content of texts” (Saussure). Webster and Dryden are not paradigmatic ||
 * Oral || Written ||
 * No works of verbal art || Body of literary works accumulate over time ||
 * Creation and recreation continually changes || Readers can read the work of art several times because the creation is permanently recorded using writing ||
 * Less abstract based on speech patterns || Selection possible/inevitable because of the concreteness ||
 * No fixed reference text || Canons emerged/based on educational structures and practices – school, governmental exams etc ||
 * Retelling the universal prototypes. Able to produce new poems that exists in ephemeral (short lived/transitory) tellings. || Paradigmatic – Shakespeare and Milton
 * Development principles and poets prototypes are constant and not the poem itself || Center pieces of traditional education and tend to be the most widely distributed and familiar works. Examples are Hindu epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, Quran, Bible, Torah. ||

** ORAL: ** -Cues and constraints in orality that don't necessarily occur in writing where more revision and focus are possible. -Epithets and formulaic phrases -More fluid ; can gauge the action of the audience and adjust appropriately

**WRITING**: -novelty prized in writing -Authors can tighten plot structures -Fosters development of a complex internal life for the characters -elaborate revision -Writing may also increase an author's awareness of his or her own inner states (p. 195) -We can reread a piece of writing again and again -"The writer's audience is always a fiction." (Ong, 1977 )

When we developed the tools to mass produce books, we created the issue of having so many works from which to choose. This leads to a selection of works, individually and socially: **Canons.** There's a system of production and distribution; what is read in schools, what is required for passing government exams, etc. Canons are a source and a product of the prototypes that guide traditional practice (p. 200); self-conscious identity (religious, national, ethnic, etc.)

** Rewriting of classics: ** some to familiarize readers with social consequential works (e.g., The Bible) Some to comment on or respond to such works (negative or positive), parodies This **Writing Back** can be found seen in anti-colonial pieces, women writing back to patriarchal precursors, and in responding to originals so much as to radically transform its social implications. *The hegemonic identity-based traditions are challenged by the non-hegemonic identity category. Rewriting of the classics isn't that commonplace, you'll find, however, **models and allusions**, for emotional and interpretive or thematic reasons (help us to understand new plot by drawing on our knowledge of plots/themes from previous works). **Modeling**: see parallels between earlier works and new work **Allusions:** Think of the present work in terms of the earlier work, but more localized, easier to identify than modeling

Paradigmatic works - not only reprinted recopied, but rewritten.Christian literature with biblical stories, Qussas/stories from Quran, Hindu epics retold, Homer's work retold, and Japanese 'The Tale of the Heike'.

http://youtu.be/3QNVtWp9E0E This story is an from the Mahabharata/Ekalavya Differences between canonical and their precursors/Sanskrit-Sahrdaya (competent to make critical judgements), Arabic/litterateur, Chinese/gentleman, European/ideal reader. Entertainment and popular literature are used interchangbly

** Difference between Art and Entertainment ** Audience

**Art is** work that is aimed at and succeeds in pleasing ideal readers, thus reader who are familiar with the canon and the classics. **Entertainment is** work that is aimed at and succeeds in pleasing readers who are not familiar with the canon or the classics. An author may aim at and succeed at reaching both (e.g., Shakespeare) Digital technology is transforming the production and reception of texts.
 * Art || Entertainment/Popular Literature ||
 * Work aimed at and succeeds in pleasing ideal readers || Lacking in didactic function. Qussas may be popular, but not entertainment ||
 * || Succeeds in pleasing readers who are nor familiar with the cannon or the classics ||
 * Author/plays of Shakespeare || Author/Plays of Shakespeare ||

**Imagining a Readership, and a Market**

Difference between ideal and popular readers/familiar with(out) canon.No one is an ideal reader for any work; an ideal reader is one prototype. Everyone's knowledge is different and everyone's knowledge is partial.

Walter Ong/Orality and how it influenced culture and changed consciousness.

**The Difference Identity makes: Cultural Traditions and their Canons** Literature for broad patterns and not for individual and cultural specificity. However, a discussion of Chinese, or Zulu would focus on the particulars of those traditions. An essay on Kalidasa or Chinua Achebe would focus on the particularities of individual writers.

Cultural traditions influence generations. Abhinava Gupta/Outside tradition and Aristotle/ Inside tradition.

Countries influenced each other and the writers influenced future generations.



Chapter 14 Writing In The Professions (Angeli) __ I. The Importance and Pervasiveness of Writing In The Workplace __ * Faigley & Miller (1982): white-collar professionals in six occupations wrote an ave. of 23% of the work week * Harwood (1982): typical graduate wrote 1x or 2x / day; also, as income rose, so did the frequency of writing * Jolliffe (1997): upper management need to consider workers' identities when addressing workers in company documents



__ II. The Processes and Practices That Support Writing In The Workplace __ The Cognitive Process Model of the Composing Process (Flower and Hayes, 1981)

* Doheny-Farina (1986): "Stored Writing Plans" - a rich and specific understanding of complex social issues that would affect the writer's decision-making process in composing texts. * Hovde (2001): extensive generative nature of of the research process needed in writing software documentation * Spilka (1988): generating content was more important than arrangement or style

* Broadhead and Freed (1986): documented a very __linear__ composing process of 2 management consultants using boilerplate formulas __ Boilerplate language __ Boilerplate language is to a lawyer as a sidearm is to a gunslinger. It is intended to bore you and intimidate you at the same time. You're supposed to feel like the language is so 'official and important' that you have no right to question it. And, since it is written by lawyers, boilerplate language is like a hypnotist's finger snap, which is to say it puts you into an immediate hypnotic stupor. Lawyers love to create boilerplate language. They will spend hours carefully arranging multi-syllable words to achieve the precise balance of confusion and torpor.

* Beaufort (1999): studied a writer who wrote __nonsequentially__ * Schumacher, Scott, Klare, Cronin, & Lambert (1989): When composing a __news story__ - writers needed less time planning; when writing __editorials__, writers spent more time reaching decisions as they wrote * Couture & Rymer (1993) and Beaufort (1999): influence of situational factors - amount of time available, and routine/not routine - on planning & revising * Beaufort (1999): writing processes varied depending not only on the genre but on physical realities

A # of studies: intertextuality in workplace writing * Witte & Haas (2001): "distributed cognition" * Allen, Atkinson, Morgan, Moore, & Snow (1987): Document specific processes that best facilitated collaborative writing - preserving divergent P-O-V of group members, shared decision making about documents //* Collaborative writing// a.k.a. //document cycling// - lead writers to feel less ownership & immediacy * A # of studies: period of psychological adjustment to the loss of control of their texts * Henry (1995): also affect the writer's abilities to imagine the real audience for the texts

Another factor in workplace settings: efficiency w/ the writing process * Malbrito (1997) - losing money * MsIsaac & Achauer (1990) - Proposal Operations Center

Influence of organizational culture on writer's behaviors: * Brown & Herndl (1986): social hierarchies w/in an organization influenced writers' sense of what linguistic features & genres were appropriate. Findings: superfluous use of nominalizations causing writing to be muddy & verbose was greater among average writers than among outstanding writers; increased if the writing was for upper management; also increased w/ a sense of job insecurity * Henry (1995): writing in a military organization characterized as use of nominalizations, passive voice, etc.- "chop chain" Gender differences - not much research * Tebeaux & Barker & Zifcak (1999): argue for business writers to have androgynous writing strategies

__ III. The Role of Changing Technologies In Workplace Writing __ 2 Lines of Questioning: Effect on writers' processes & how technologies spawn new genres

* Lutz (1987): Experimental study - professional & advanced grad students composing press releases on computer or paper/pencil Findings: computer - spent less time planning, felt feel to write spontaneously & creatively, & made 5x more changes to the text, & more changes at the whole-sentence level; however, had difficulty making whole-text changes and reading their texts * Sellen (2002): IMF writers - managers drafted & did final editing on computers but collaborated on revisions on paper (71% of writing time) Paper - served other cognitive functions in critical-thinking & composing processes "Rather it is the process of taking notes that is important in helping them to construct and organize their thoughts." * Gladwell (2002): air traffic controllers used little strips of papers to make notes of airplane locations & computers

Shifting of social roles: dictation has nearly disappeared; secretaries are more than typists * Cook-Gumperz & Hanna (1997): social status of nurses increased when using bedside computers to chart patients' conditions

Other technical media: personal digital assistants (PDAs), structured document processors (SDPs), instant messaging (IM), & hypertext Result: alteration of the concept of //authoring// * Wenger (1994): hypertext enables readers to be coauthors with writers * Horton (1991): nonlinear organizational patterns - trees, cycles, grids, etc.- can be created

New genres spawned: * Yates (1989): internal memos evolved - dropping unnecessary courtesies (ex. "yours very truly"); led to the use of vertical files E-mail took off as a communication medium; hybrid bet. oral & written communications; textual features - use of incomplete sentences, a preference of coordinated rather than subordinated ideas, & use of a specialized vocab. and emoticons * Gimenez (2000): e-mail - preferred medium of communication * Yates et al. (1999): norms for e-mail communications differed, shaped by social context * Bernhardt (1993): overview of ways in w/c hypertext is changing acts of reading & writing; features that influence the ways writers & readers interact around hypertexts - hypertexts are interactive, functionally mapped, modular, navigable, hierarchically embedded, spacious, & graphically rich.

__ IV. The Impact of Workplace Writing On Employees, Institutions, and Society __ * Cook-Gumperz & Hanna (1997): Nurses' use of bedside computers both depersonalized the writing for the nurses & raised the visibility of the nurses' observations to the rest of the staff

Social factors can also have a __negative__ effect on writers. * Pare (2000): social workers circumvented legal & social constraints on the types of info they could put into case reports on juvenile delinquents Other studies: the //Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders// pushes psychiatrists into codifying clients' behaviors for billing & accounting purposes * Stygall (1991): jury instructions can interfere w/ the jury's understanding of the legal process *Schryer (2000): particularly dense boilerplate text in an insurance company's letters denying disability claims caused multiple appeals over 60% of appeals * Sauer (1994) - the linear, sequential model of cause-and-effect prose used in accident reports failed to account for the multidimensional nature of accidents * Herndl, Fennel, and Miller (1991): rhetorical analysis of memos from the Three Mile Island nuclear accident & the Challenger disaster; engineers were arguing for cancellation of the flight based on data, while managers discounted the argument based on contracts and record of successful flights



Writing practices can also have a __positive__ influence on work activities w/in organizations. * Doheny-Farina (1986): drafting of a business plan in a small, start-up computer company shaped the direction of the company * Katz (1998): 1 writer's social agency w/in an organization through her acumen & self-confidence as a writer

How to people **learn to write** in certain workplaces? **Cognitive apprenticeship** or

legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

How do we **evaluate** writing? There isn't one standard for what counts as writing proficiency or expertise (p. 229). Gee: Once a writer is in a school setting, he or she is working outside of her primary discourse because she/he is now part of the social, political, and cultural contexts that shape the nature of writing in multiple ways. What is correct or good **depends on the social context** (activity, discourse, genre).