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JournalISSN: 0741-0883

Written Communication 

SAGE Publishing
About: Written Communication is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Professional writing & Rhetorical question. It has an ISSN identifier of 0741-0883. Over the lifetime, 705 publications have been published receiving 32599 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a synthesis of a number of elements from these theories, drawing most heavily on Charles Bazerman's (1994) analysis of genre as systems of speech acts within an overarching framework of Vygotskian activity theory (Leont'ev, 1981; Engestrom, 1987, 1993).
Abstract: This article attempts to expand and elaborate theories of social "context" and formal schooling, to understand the stakes involved in writing. It first sketches ways Russian activity theory in the tradition of A. N. Leont'ev may expand Bakhtinian dialogism, then elaborates the theory in terms of North American genre research, with examples drawn from research on writing in the disciplines in higher education. By tracing the relations of disciplinary genre systems to educational genre systems, through the boundary of the classroom genre system, the analyst/reformer can construct a model of the interactions of classroom practices with wider social practices. Activity theory analysis of genre systems may offer a theoretical bridge between the sociology of education and Vygotskian social psychology of classroom interaction, and contribute toward resolving the knotty problem of the relation of macro- and microstructure in literacy research based on various social theories of "context." ***** What makes one conversation more meaningful than another? For either an individual, a dyad, a collective, or even a culture? When three African American students who hope to be doctors some day sit down on one particular day to write a laboratory report in a college cell biology course, what are the stakes involved in those marks on a screen? For the students and their families and their neighborhoods and churches? For the instructor and his university and his profession of biology? For the profession of medicine and its patients and its government regulators? How can a student or teacher or researcher understand the meaningfulnessthe stakesof some (act of) writing. Vygotsky and his immediate successors did not use genre as a category of analysis. But in the last decade, a number of Vygotskian theorists have incorporated into their work various theories of genre. I will propose a synthesis of a number of elements from these theories, drawing most heavily on Charles Bazerman's (1994) analysis of genre as systems of speech acts within an overarching framework of Vygotskian activity theory (Leont'ev, 1981; Engestrom, 1987, 1993). The goal is to move toward a theory of writing useful in analyzing how students and teachers within individual classrooms use the discursive tools of classroom genres to interact (and not interact) with social practices beyond individual classroomsthose of schools, families, peers, disciplines, professions, political movements, unions, corporations, and so on. In other words, I am attempting to expand and elaborate theories of social "context" and formal schooling, to understand the stakes involved in writing. Literacy, Brandt (1990) persuasively argues, is "not the narrow ability to deal with texts but the broader ability to deal with other

684 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a fine-grained multimodal analysis of the LyfeN-Rhyme piece is presented, revealing semiotic relationships between and among different, copresent modes.
Abstract: This article reports research that attempts to characterize what is powerful about digital multimodal texts. Building from recent theoretical work on understanding the workings and implications of multimodal communication, the authors call for a continuing empirical investigation into the roles that digital multimodal texts play in real-world contexts, and they offer one example of how such investigations might be approached. Drawing on data from the practice of multimedia digital storytelling, specifically a piece titled “LyfeN-Rhyme,” created by Oakland, California, artist Randy Young (accessible at http:// www.oaklanddusty.org/videos.php), the authors detail the method and results of a finegrained multimodal analysis, revealing semiotic relationships between and among different, copresent modes. It is in these relationships, the authors argue, that the expressive power of multimodality resides.

656 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper investigated cultural and gender variations in the use of metadiscourse in the United States and Finland by asking whether U.S. and Finnish writers use the same amounts and types and whether gender makes any difference.
Abstract: Metadiscourse refers to writers' discourse about their discourse—their directions for how readers should read, react to, and evaluate what they have written about the subject matter. In this study the authors divided metadiscourse into textual metadiscourse (text markers and interpretive markers) and interpersonal metadiscourse (hedges, certainty markers, attributors, attitude markers, and commentary). The purpose was to investigate cultural and gender variations in the use of metadiscourse in the United States and Finland by asking whether U.S. and Finnish writers use the same amounts and types and whether gender makes any difference. The analyses revealed that students in both countries used all categories and subcategories, but that there were some cultural and gender differences in the amounts and types used. Finnish students and male students used more metadiscourse than U.S. students and female students. Students in both countries used much more interpersonal than textual metadiscourse with Finnish ...

631 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors sketch a social semiotic account that aims to elucidate such principles and permits consideration of their epistemological as well as social/pedagogic significance.
Abstract: Frequently writing is now no longer the central mode of representation in learning materials—textbooks, Web-based resources, teacher-produced materials. Still (as well as moving) images are increasingly prominent as carriers of meaning. Uses and forms of writing have undergone profound changes over the last decades, which calls for a social, pedagogical, and semiotic explanation. Two trends mark that history. The digital media, rather than the (text) book, are more and more the site of appearance and distribution of learning resources, and writing is being displaced by image as the central mode for representation. This poses sharp questions about present and future roles and forms of writing. For text, design and principles of composition move into the foreground. Here we sketch a social semiotic account that aims to elucidate such principles and permits consideration of their epistemological as well as social/pedagogic significance. Linking representation with social factors, we put forward terms to expl...

602 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors discusses the succession of models of adult writing that he and his colleagues have proposed from 1980 to the present and notes the most important changes that differentiate earlier and later models and discusses reasons for the changes.
Abstract: In Section 1 of this article, the author discusses the succession of models of adult writing that he and his colleagues have proposed from 1980 to the present. He notes the most important changes that differentiate earlier and later models and discusses reasons for the changes. In Section 2, he describes his recent efforts to model young children’s expository writing. He proposes three models that constitute an elaboration of Bereiter and Scardamalia’s knowledge-telling model. In Section 3, he describes three running computer programs that simulate the action of the models described in Section 2.

441 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
202325
202228
202122
202016
201919
201816