A THEORY OF LITERATE ACTION B a “A Theory of Literate Action makes a significant contribution to the field and en- z e r A T H EO RY O F riches and deepens our perspectives on writing by drawing together such varied m and wide-ranging approaches from social theory and the social sciences—from a B n a psychology, to phenomenology, to pragmatics—and demonstrating their relevance z e to writing studies. While much has been made of the ‘social turn’ in the field of Lr I T E R AT E AC T I O N: m L Rhetoric and Composition, the impact of social theory and social sciences on rhe- a n torical theory and literacy studies has not been as fully explored—nor have these I T L I T E R AT E AC T I O N approaches been gathered together in one comprehensive text, to my knowledge.” E — Mary Jo Reiff R VO LU M E 2 “I have followed Chuck Bazerman’s thinking closely over the years, but seeing it A all together allowed me to see what I had not seen in it: how cognitive psychology T (even neurobiology) intersects with social psychology and then sociology; how at- E tentional processes and motive/emotion relate to genre; the historical insights; all up and down, macro micro meso. This work leads in so many productive direc- A tions. I’ve taken pages of notes.” C — David R. Russell T I Charles Bazerman, Professor of Education at the University of California, O Santa Barbara, is the author of numerous research articles and books on the social role of writing, academic genres, and textual analysis, as well as text- N books on the teaching of writing. V Perspectives on Writing O Series Editor, Susan H. McLeod L . The WAC Clearinghouse 2 Fort Collins, CO 80523-1052 http://wac.colostate.edu WAC Clearing- house Charles Bazerman 3015 Brackenberry Drive Anderson, SC 29621 Parlor www.parlorpress.com Press S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9 ISBN 978-1-60235-479-1 PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING Series Editor, Susan H. McLeod PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING Series Editor, Susan H. McLeod The Perspectives on Writing series addresses writing studies in a broad sense. Consistent with the wide ranging approaches characteristic of teaching and scholarship in writing across the curriculum, the series presents works that take divergent perspectives on working as a writer, teaching writing, administering writing programs, and studying writing in its various forms. The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press are collaborating so that these books will be widely available through free digital distribution and low-cost print editions. The publishers and the Series editor are teachers and researchers of writing, committed to the principle that knowledge should freely circulate. We see the opportunities that new technologies have for further democratizing knowledge. And we see that to share the power of writing is to share the means for all to articulate their needs, interest, and learning into the great experiment of literacy. Recent Books in the Series Katherine V. Wills and Rich Rice (Eds.), ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios (2013) Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri (Eds.), The Centrality of Style (2013) Chris Thaiss, Gerd Bräuer, Paula Carlino , Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams, and Aparna Sinha (Eds.), Writing Programs Worldwide: Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places (2012) Andy Kirkpatrick and Zhichang Xu, Chinese Rhetoric and Writing: An Introduction for Language Teachers (2012) Doreen Starke-Meyerring, Anthony Paré, Natasha Artemeva, Miriam Horne, and Larissa Yousoubova (Eds.), Writing in Knowledge Societies (2011) Martine Courant Rife, Shaun Slattery, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (Eds.), Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom (2011) David Franke, Alex Reid, and Anthony Di Renzo (Eds.), Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing (2010) A THEORY OF LITERATE ACTION: LITERATE ACTION VOLUME 2 Charles Bazerman The WAC Clearinghouse wac.colostate.edu Fort Collins, Colorado Parlor Press www.parlorpress.com Anderson, South Carolina The WAC Clearinghouse, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1052 Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina 29621 © 2013 by Charles Bazerman. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri- bution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Theory of Literate Action: Literate Action Volume 2 / by Charles Bazerman. pages cm. -- (Perspectives on writing) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-60235-477-7 (pbk.: acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-478-4 (hardcover: acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-479-1 (adobe ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-480-7 (epub) Copyeditor: Don Donahue Designer: Mike Palmquist Series Editor: Susan H. McLeod This book is printed on acid-free paper. The WAC Clearinghouse supports teachers of writing across the disciplines. Hosted by Colorado State University, it brings together scholarly journals and book series as well as resources for teachers who use writing in their courses. This book is avail- able in digital format for free download at http://wac.colostate.edu. Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paperback, cloth, and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press at http://www.parlorpress.com. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina 29621, or e-mail editor@ parlorpress.com. CONTENTS Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �3 Chapter 1� The Symbolic Animal and the Cultural Transformation of Nature � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �7 Writing as Learned Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Activity, Work, and Transformation of Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Biological and Cultural Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 The Transformed and Extended Here and Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Non-Symbolic and Symbolic Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Language as Situated, Embodied Utterance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Language, Literacy, and Cognitive Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Chapter 2� Symbolic Selves in Society: Vygotsky on Language and Formation of the Social Mind � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �25 Linguistic Structure and Literary Affect: Vygotsky’s Catharsis . . . . .26 Goals, Obstacles, and Empowerment: Vygotsky’s Adler . . . . . . . . .28 Cognitive Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 Second Order Symbol Systems and Consciousness Development . .34 Interaction and Self-Regulation: Influencing Others and Influencing the Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Places of Play, Self-Articulation, and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 Chapter 3� Active Social Symbolic Selves: Vygotskian Traditions � � � � � � �43 Activity, Object, Affect, and Social System: Leont’ev . . . . . . . . . . . .44 Complex Activity Systems: Engeström . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Written Genres in Activity Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Reflectivity in Individual and Group Writing Activity . . . . . . . . . . .55 Meaning, Consciousness, and Activity: Luria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Chapter 4� Active Social Symbolic Selves: The Phenomenological Sociology Tradition � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �65 Schutz, the Problems of Economic Behavior, and a Unified Social Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Schutz’s Typification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 The Typified Internal and External, and the Falling Away of the Untypifiable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 Relevance in Consciousness and Externalized Mediations . . . . . . . .72 The Natural Attitude and the Pull of Typified Consciousness . . . . .73 Critiques of Social Construction and Ways Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 v Contents Typification, Novelty, and Particularized Meanings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Typification and Particularity: Appreciating the Music of Life . . . . . 79 Schutz, Berger, and Luckman and the Social Production of the Everyday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Chapter 5� Active Social Symbolic Selves: The Pragmatic Tradition within American Social Science � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 85 Philosophic Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Pragmatism as a Perspective for Social Understanding and Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 The Differences and Commonalities of Early Pragmatisms . . . . . . . 88 Peirce’s Semiotics with Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 James’s Psychology of Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Dewey’s Thinking about Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Dewey’s Learning through Active Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 The Problem of Living with Others: Mead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Mead in Relation to Other Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Mead, Chicago Sociology, and Symbolic Interactionism . . . . . . . . . 97 Legal Institutions and Legal Practice as Experiment: Holmes . . . . . 98 Pragmatic Influences on Sapir and Linguistic Anthropology . . . . . 100 Sullivan’s Pragmatic Interpersonal Psychiatry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Language and Writing as Interpersonal and Self-Forming . . . . . . . 104 Chapter 6� Social Order: Structural and Structurational Sociology � � � � 107 Merton’s Social Structure through Individual Choice-Making . . . . 107 The Mechanisms of Choice Making within Opportunity Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Terms for an Agentive Structural Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Merton’s Relation to Structurationist Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 The Relevance of Meso-Phenomena and Theories of the Middle Range for Rhetoric and Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Chapter 7� From the Interaction Order to Shared Meanings � � � � � � � � � 121 The Interaction Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Proximate Interactional Orders and Distant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Fragility of Written Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 The Invisibility of Fragility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Creating Alignment and Readability in Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 The Interactional Potential and Challenges of Evoking Novel Meanings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 vi Contents Chapter 8� Linguistic Orders � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 135 The Importance of the Orderliness of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Creating Orderliness of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Keeping Language Orderly: Housekeeping and Prescription . . . . . 140 Learning Transcription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Words and Lexical Orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Syntax and Grammar, Ordering Word Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 The Educational Uses of Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Chapter 9� Utterances and Their Meanings � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 151 Volosinov and His Circle’s Proposal for an Utterance- Based Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Utterance to Speech Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Social Facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Meaning in the Situated Speech Act World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Meaning from an Utterance Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Sense-Making in Everyday Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 The Sense-Making Difficulties of Literate Interaction . . . . . . . . . . 164 Socialization into Literate Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Chapter 10� The World in the Text: Indexed and Created � � � � � � � � � � � � 169 Locutionary Acts, Ideational Functions, Chronotopes . . . . . . . . . 170 Genred Ontologies and the Work of Expanding the Worldview of the Genre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Epistemology, Accountability, and Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Scientific Epistemologies, Methods, and Visible Phenomena . . . . . 174 Pointing at Other Texts: Intertextuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 The Intertext as a Resource and a Contended Topic . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Intertextuality and Socially-Formed Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Intertextuality and Individuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Reasoning and Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Trust and Prior Belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 The Insubstantial Pageants of Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Chapter 11� The Writer on the Spot and on the Line � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 191 The Problems of Spread of Shared Understandings and Action . . . 192 Literacy and the Organization of Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 The Challenges of Learning to Write . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 References � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 199 vii