Big Ideas From Chapter 37: Visual and Digital Writing Practices

While I realized there was a bias toward the textual, I had no idea just how virulent that bias was until I read Mitchell (1984) interpreting the writings of G.E. Lessing by "writing that the, 'image is the medium of the subhuman, the savage, the 'dumb' animal, the child, the woman, and the masses" (p.600)

Apparently, Lessing felt that poetry (more largely, words) had the "masculine potentials of theory and action" (Wysocki, p. 600).  Well, the certainly doesn't jive with the whole premise of Reading Don't Fix No Chevys! 

In talking with other teachers or parents about the potential for using graphic novels (especially in social studies), I'd sometimes hear an audible sneer when they mimicked back the term "graphic novel." Clearly, the implication was, "You can call it whatever you want, sister, that book is a comic." But Wysocki elucidates the root of the underlying feeling that graphic novels are some how less because, historically, they were less: "...in the development of comic books, the tension between word and picture is that of class" (p. 600)  Texts that relied more on visual or pictorial information were created to keep defined class lines in place and to keep those in the lower classes from, "...getting ideas of what their lives should be" (p. 600).  Even kids can sense some adults snub comics, as this fifth grader points in an article from Time for Kids, "Usually teachers tell us to put comics away," says Deshaun Osborne, a fifth grader at Magnolia Elementary, in Joppa, Maryland. "I was shocked to hear we'd be using comic books."  But the article describes how some states are actually incorporating comics into their language arts curriculum. 

But, like many "new media" (and I don't know, are these really new media?  My 89 year old grandfather was reading Disney comics at 9 years old), comics/graphic novels not only offer kids the chance to improve their reading skills (I loved this PowerPoint on inferential thinking and comics), but they also offer kids a chance to compose using a medium that is not solely print-based.  This article describes how fourth grade teacher and National Writing Project Teacher Consultant uses a program called Comic Life to help students more easily create their own comics.  In light of the thinking I've been doing about inference and implication, I think this is a particularly powerful idea.  One of the articles I read for my research was by Stephan Petrucha, an author who writes both traditional and graphic novels.  He points out that graphic novelists in particular need to understand the art of implication (showing, and not telling - really) by noting that the author of a graphic novel has to use implication carefully stating, “…in dialogue sequences, I always try to have the characters doing while they chat, from the overt, like setting the fuse on a bomb, to the sublime, like tearing up the last letter from an ex-boyfriend, to the small, like flicking some ice cream off a straw” (Petrucha, 2008, p. 60).  He goes on to describe how he must imply action or meaning carefully by noting, “It is the standard rule in comic writing that one shouldn’t, for instance, show a picture of a car pulling out of a driveway with the caption reading, ‘The car pulled out of the driveway,’ and a character saying, ‘Look, a car is pulling out of the driveway.” (p.62)  But he begins the piece with a quote from a gentleman at a book expo, "Now kids don't have to read them" (p.60)

My guess is that new literacies will be in defense mode for sometime.  Those who will continue to attack are those who (like my mother, God love her) don't know how to use ATMs, refuse to "check email" and teachers who probably use their classroom computers primarily for Accelerated Reader.  (From where did this tone emerge?  I promise, I will return to my congenial self after submitting my paper this Monday.)

I found it interesting that most of the research into the visual aspects of pages emerges from the field of advertising.  I'll admit, I just don't know enough about semiotics, social semiotics and visual culture to have taken much from this section.  I did find some of the ideas that emerged from the New London Group (NLG) in developing a "pedagogy of multiliteracies to help students work with available literacies (visual, linguistic, audio, spatial, and gestural) so that students become 'creative and responsible makers of meaning'" (p. 604) to be totally applicable, especially to some of the thoughts I'd had on the opportunities comic composition offers.

The crux of this chapter for me was the final section on digital reading and writing.  I, too, questioned what constitutes writing now, though Wysocki seemed to focus more on how the "momentary shape of the internet" makes "audiences form and disperse quickly" (p.606).  So too does the internet begin to make fuzzy the notions of author, reader and writer when content can be copied and reformulated so much more easily than it was when it was solely print-based.  In addition, newer writing environments like blogs and wikis expand the notion of authorship to include the reader.  Perhaps the most fascinating and affirming part of what I'd read was that "hypertexts could give even more control to writers than printed texts..." (Wysocki noting the work of Douglas, 1994 and Johnson-Eilola, 1994 on page 606).  This helped to strengthen my own feelings that hypertext can offer the author more opportunities to clarify implied meanings both at the word and sentence (or stanza, whatever thought unit) level.  My hope is to go on and read these works, especially Douglas's.  I've found that the references at the end of these chapters are the best resources for my own research.  I've had much better leads with the citations offered by the authors of each chapter than I've had, say, using Education Research complete or one of the other search tools through the KSU Library.

Contentious Intention

I have been reading a book called Intention and Interpretation this week desperately trying to find a "good" definition of authorial intention to include in my paper. My problem: as far as I can tell, there is no "good" definition of authorial intention. Instead, opinion (and I would argue, it is opinion) varies from E.D. Hirsh's stance that the text means what the author intended to subjective reader response (led by the work of David Bleich) that presumes, "reader's responses are the text, both in the sense that there is no literate text beyond the meanings created by reader's interpretations and in the sense that the text the critic analyzes is not in the literary work but the written responses of readers" (p. 178, Tyson, 2006). Honestly, I feel a little bit like Alice in Wonderland; the further I go into the territory of interpretation, the more confusing and bizarre things get! I guess it is a sign that I am learning more when I have more questions, but I sometimes feel that in the field of education, you will always have a critic. There is no 'correct.' I can always disagree with your theory as long as I ground my own response in another theory - or better yet, make up my own theory. Doesn't it seem like some things should be universally true? But that isn't necessarily the case, as Tyson points out (when writing about subjective reader-response) that, "What is called 'objective' knowledge is simply whatever a given community believes to be objectively true (p.179). She wisely points out the widely held belief that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around it. She goes on the say, "...'truth' isn't an 'objective' reality waiting to be discovered; it is constructed by communities of people to fulfill specific needs produced by specific historical, sociological, and psychological situations." Subjective reader response is not some free-for-all - students do need to negotiate meaning within classroom communities. It also seems that students do need to identify aspects of their responses that are rooted in the text - so there is a return to the text. But there is no talking to someone else during high-stakes testing, whether on the 3rd grade OAT or the GRE. There is the reader and the text - and there is a correct answer. And this is where I always remain a teacher and a pragmatist: I think I owe my students both a love of reading (and writing) but I also want to provide them with the "keys to the kingdom." I want them to have the skills to do well on tests like the SAT and ACT so they can gain admittance to "the Academy," or med school, or whatever career they desire. Their ability (or lack thereof) should not determine there career/pursuit of passion; their interest should. For lest we forget, one component of admission to the doctoral program was the GRE....




I really haven't felt so confused after I've read so much on one topic before. It is a little maddening. I will reveal my bias here that whether or not a reader interprets what I have written to mean what I intended, there is no doubt that as an author I intended to convey meaning by carefully selecting (or omitting) words. As I think about what it means to infer, I think that both Hirsch and Bleich (and likely everyone in between) has something to offer. As a reader, I'm taught to make inferences based on what I know about author's craft (but I do think that must be taught...or experienced) and by my visceral reactions to what an author has written. I'm still coming back to the fact that as an author, there are some topics/words/symbols that I can use (within a certain cultural context) that will very likely elicit a certain type of reaction from my readers. Pilkington identifies something called strong and weak implicature - strong I've left clues for (Hirsch) and weak a reader reacted in a way I could not envision (Bleish). There is also a belief that writers create their readers as they write (this was in the article I read by Kroll, and it is late, so I'll look it up and add it later!). So either way, there are theorists who would almost negate the importance/role of the writer or the reader. It just depends on whose lens you chose to look through. Guess this is where all this talk of "knowing your theoretical stance" comes in....

It is late, I am salty, and I am going to bed! 

The Trouble with Local Literacies

I'm not sure if I am the only one, but I am having a hard time engaging with Local Literacies by Barton and Hamilton. I've tried starting at different places in the text so I could get a "footing," but the only chapters I've found even slightly engaging are the four chapters that chronicle the experiences of four different members of the study. Perhaps these are more narrative in nature? Maybe I'm expecting some sort of "story line" to emerge and that isn't what I should expect from an ethnography? I've most enjoyed reading this as a sort of cultural voyeur. I found it interesting that the USA, Canada and Australia all undertook major studies into reading difficulties/ illiteracy far before the UK did in 1990 (p163). And while there were some places that I could use context clues to figure words or expressions out with which I was unfamiliar (bin collectors and school-leavers) there were others where my limited background knowledge impeded my comprehension. I decided to take to the web and was helped somewhat (see below). Also, when I read about Shirley's struggles with her son's school, I had a hard time understanding how government run schools were structured. I think she mentions writing to one of the commissioners? Is this like a school board member? I'm just not sure I see as many connections between this study and my lines of inquiry, so perhaps that is why I'm having such a hard time with this. Are there some sort of "big ideas" that we are supposed to be walking away from this book with that I am missing? It seems to me that a lot of what I've read thus far in Part III is just logical. Maybe this is because I was a part of the National Writing Project - a group that "takes teachers where they are" as writers and celebrates our writing histories? I don't know, but I'm interested in hearing everyone else's responses.


I thought I'd try to get some background knowledge using the internet and found these sites interesting, though I still have a lot of questions:


Lancaster
I thought this site, on the Lancaster City Council, was quite interesting.  It really makes you realize just how much has changed since this study was conducted - and it really doesn't feel as if it were that long ago!

Poll Tax
A great site for Anglophiles or a lovely chronology of the history of the UK.  Apparently the poll tax issue coincided with the end of Margaret Thatcher's leadership?

This site helped me to understand that a poll tax regressive and thus is always going to have a greater impact on the economically disadvantaged.  It also helped me to connect how poll taxes were also used in the United States.

And for when you just don't have a clue what a word means, no matter the context:
This is a great site that "translates" British English to American English created by a school.  Just fun to read!

Chapter 27 - The Reading Writing Nexus in Discourse Research

I selected this chapter because the focus of my (life?) paper is on inference at the intersection of reading and writing. More specifically, I wondered how inferential thinking in reading relates to implication in writing and how we can use writing as a tool to develop both. This whole idea really came from Karen who commented on how she used what she did as a writer to help her develop inferential thinking skills in her readers. The interesting thing is, there really isn’t that much out there on this topic specifically. Instead, I’ve had to go venturing into the worlds of reading, writing, psychology, composition and rhetoric to try and put together a lens through which to view the topic. I knew that we needed to select one chapter for our paper/presentation and after previewing and reading this chapter, I felt it was the best. Because I know that you will be asked to read parts of this chapter, I wanted to highlight the parts I felt were important. The very act of “bulleting” the chapter helped me to delve back into the chapter and to distinguish what supports the work I’ve done and still raises questions. It was really a writing to learn activity (which is discussed in the next chapter – chapter 28).


I still struggle with the best analogy for how reading and writing are connected. In my paper I call them opposite sides of the cognitive coin. This chapter (and many other texts I’ve read, all of which fall under the theory of social discourse, I believe) positions both reading and writing as an act of construction – the writer has to construct meaning and the reader, in reading what the writer has written, must also compose meaning. Because readers bring different background knowledge and assumptions to a text, they may construct meaning from the same text very differently than the writer intended. Knorr-Cetina is quoted on page 439 as noting, “a text can be considered ‘co-produced by the authors and the members of the audience to which it is directed.” (p.439) While this can’t be avoided, there are certain endeavors a writer can undertake to better consider and support her readers. And to me, this is the heart of where inferential thinking lies.

Readers look to clues from the author to make an inference, but an author must leave some sort of “hole” for a reader to fill in order to promote inferential thinking. Do most of us set out to “write an inference for our readers”? I don’t think so, but we do want to weave a web of language, so to speak – and there is the struggle. We can’t leave too many holes for readers to fill because our writing will be disjointed. If our writing is literal to the point of austerity, then we have only given our reader a superficial, “surface” piece. If anyone out there knits (who has time?), you might be able to connect this to knitting a scarf or a sweater: too many dropped stitches and the piece is a mess, but by using a technique like purling, a knitter creates a more interesting, complex final product. Do syntactic and semantic complexity demand more of the reader? Yes. (See Kroll, 1986 on page 439.)

How then do writers get readers to “think” (ergo, infer)? It seems that certain literary techniques invite a reader to do just that: the use of figurative language, hyperbole, allusion, etc. We tend to judge high quality literature by the devices the author uses – a part of his or her craft. What is it about the richness of certain works that invites us to think inferentially? Why aren’t I constantly seeing something new when I read, “Go, Dog, Go” but I do when I read “Encounter” by Jane Yolen or “Voices in the Park” by Anthony Browne? When a writer enumerates instead of describes, the result is often unengaging to readers. (Nancy Atwell offers a lot of good examples of student “before” and “after” pieces in Lessons That Change Writers.) And where do visual inferences enter this realm that seems so dominated by text? Why have writing teachers asked their students to, “show, not tell”? Isn’t it because they are asking novice writers to write with the reader in mind? Aren’t writers forced to infer something about their readers when they write? (See the Witte study on page 436.) Nelson (the author of this chapter) points out that, “Writing is an intentional act; writers intend their texts to have particular effects on their audience of readers,” and that, “Writers can be said to ‘read’ their readers – to consider readers and the ways in which those readers might understand, misunderstand, or even refute texts.” (p.439) I think Volosinov (1973) captures the connection between reading and writing best by pointing out that, “word is a two-sided act. It is determined equally by whose word it is and for whom it is meant.” (p.86)

I have also struggled throughout my research and writing to try and focus more on the writing side of the connection. Like Deb said when she came in to speak about the Writing Project, I have a difficult time seeing the two dichotomously. I was heartened when I read the following on page 436, “Some of what is now known about writing comes from studies considered reading research, and some knowledge about reading comes from studies considered to be writing research. Whether a study is considered reading research or writing research has often been a function of the community from which the researcher belongs, the forum in which the report was published, and how the study was framed.” While reading may have “trumped” writing through attention it garners because of federal mandates and funding, reading and writing are different, yet the same. Writing offers us so many opportunities to help students improve both as readers and writers; but so too does reading do just the same. The section subtitled “Acquiring and Applying Discourse Knowledge” was very instructive in regards to what I think is a somewhat superficial separation. The studies conducted by Shanahan were the most enlightening (and I’m sure they will be even more enlightening once I take statistics and know exactly what it means use a “linear structural relations procedure” (LISREL)!


I hope this post sets the tone for our conversation on Monday, April 5. You can see I still have a lot of questions and I’m sure my initial literature review has barely scratched the surface on the subject.
Not to be snarky, but I found great joy in discovering what appears to be an omission in the references section of this chapter. The Vipond and Hunt 1984 study is cited, but not the 1986 study/ publication. If someone out there can find it and I am wrong, great! Would you please let me know? I really like to read it before this paper is due!  You'll also note that the year of the Kroll citation is inaccurate.  Maybe I am just engaging in this editorial schadenfreude becuase I got my official rejection for the article I wrote last semester.  Sigh.

Chapter 27 – The Reading-Writing Nexus in Discourse Research


Chapter highlights:

• The cognitive revolution of the 1970s overturned the behavioralist “black box” paradigm and reading comprehension became a major focus of research. -435

• The attention to reading comprehension helped facilitate connections with writing, because comprehension was being viewed as the making, instead of the reception of meaning. -435

• Both reading and writing came to be viewed as a came to be viewed as generative processes, and a composing model of reading was even proposed (Tierney & Pearson, 1983). – (436)

• The two could no longer be viewed as simple inverses with one strictly generative and the other strictly receptive. (436)

• When reading one’s own writing, one evaluates it (Flower & Hayes) – 436

• Some of what is now known about writing comes from studies considered reading research, and some knowledge about reading comes from studies considered to be writing research. Whether a study is considered reading research or writing research has often been a function of the community from which the researcher belongs, the forum in which the report was published, and how the study was framed. (436)

• Witte study (1983) conducted a writing that had important implications for reading. College writers all revised the same text so it would be easier to understand but maintain information. “The superior revisions were made by writers who, as readers, made inferences among topics and cued those relations to their own readers.” (436)

• Is development in a particular aspect of reading accompanied by development aspect of writing and visa versa?

• Participant Connection

• What is discourse research? - 437

o Cognitive and social are dichotomous, but what is considered cognitive derives from the social. Discourse knowledge – cognitive, but acquired socially.

o It is applied socially – pragmatically – in acts of communication

o Various types of linguistic knowledge fall under this umbrella, including metadiscourse: knowledge of authorial devices for guiding the reader

o Although cognitive research in writing has not seen as much expansion, the body of knowledge regarding the writing process continues to grow and more is being done by researchers in Europe

• Is development in a particular aspect of reading accompanied by development aspect of writing and visa versa?

o Intervention and correlational approach

o Shanahan and Lomax study (1986) – interactive configuration – reading and writing influenced each other – as opposed to a one-way influence

o Imitation (mimesis) – writers acquire new discourse features for their own texts from reading texts with those features.

• Writing for Readers

o From writing end – writers’ efforts to accommodate their readers – the kind of support that goes by the name response

o Readers relationships with writers – Volosinov (1973) “word is s two-sided act. It is determined equally by whose word it is and for whom it is meant.” (p.86)

o Knorr-Cetina (1981) “a text can be ‘co-produced by the authors and by the members of the audience to which it is directed.” (p.106)

• Writing for Readers – p. 439

o “Writing is an intentional act; writers intend their texts to have particular effects on their audience of readers.” P. 439

o “Writers can be said to ‘read’ their readers – to consider readers and the ways in which those readers might understand, misunderstand, or even refute texts.

o They in a sense “write” or create their readers

o They do not have a direct path into other’s thought

o Writers can generate material for their texts through anticipating possible responses, and also epistemic value, because writers must learn (if they already do not know) much of what their audiences might know.

o Social cognition – the ability to consider the perspectives of others and to make assumptions about what they want to gain from their reading (Rubin (1984)

o Barry Kroll’s research on audience – there is a connection between lexical and syntactic complexity and the ease with which children read (and comprehend) text. (1984 – wrong in the book!)

o Hypertext – potential and problems – 440

• Reading the Writer – p. 442

o Reading researchers have often found that speculating about authorial intent is often an integral part of understanding text (Gibbs, 2001)

o “Accomplished readers often seem to “read” (or invent or construct) the author making inferences and assumptions, and their perceptions can influence their understanding of a text.” (p. 442)

o Rhetorical reading – “readers actively trying to understand the author’s intent, the context, and how other readers might respond.” (Haas and Flower, 1988, p. 181)

o Vipond & Hunt (1984) – sophisticated readers “imputed motives” (p.26) as they sought to discern what the author was getting at, 1986 study by same authors looked at how writers lead readers to the points they want to make using nonstandard elements