4th Set of Readings, Annotated, due 1/18/19

Sommers: Revision Strategies (Dani): 9th Reading

Two representative models: Gordon Rohman Prewriting, Writing, Rewriting James Britton Conception, Incubation, Production Models based on speech fail to take into account revision Edward Corbett: Five parts of discourse Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria, Pronuntiatio “Writing begins at the point where speech becomes impossible” According to Sommers, revision process: a sequence of changes in a composition - changes which are initiated by cues and occur continually throughout the writing of a work Author’s experiment: Student writers vs experienced writers when it comes to revision Students Predominant concern during revision: rewording/vocabulary Thesaurus philosophy of writing Large concern: repetition Comes from imitating speech Experienced Writers Primary concern during revision: finding the form/shape of argument Rereading with someone else’s eyes

Kinneavy: The Basic Aims of Discourse: 10th Reading

Distinguishing expository writing from literature/creative writing may be too simple Discourse: the full text, oral or written Aims: the primary goal (delight, persuade, inform, prove, etc) Intentional fallacy: “Dangerous [...] to assume that what the author says he is trying to do is actually what the work accomplishes” Affective fallacy: “danger to assume that the reaction of a given reader is an accurate indication of purpose” “Discourses exist in a continuum with decreasing referential and increasing emotive affirmations”

The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority(Slack Miller Doak): 11th reading

>They begin by talking about authors?

>Who is an author?

>They say, "Rather than authors producing certain discourses, certain discourses are understood to produce authors. To grant authorship to a discourse is to grant that discourse a certain authority. In a peculiar turn of events, this authority comes to reside in the author, the author produced by the discourse itself."

The Relevance of Communication Theory:

>We are interested in taking multiple theories from communication and what they, together, can teach us

>They are listed as: transmission view of communication(problems with conveying messages), translation view of communication(concern with interpretation and reinterpretation of message), articulation view of communication( concern with ongoing struggle to articulate meaning).

>Corresponding to technical communicators, these are purveyors, mediators, and articulators.

Transmission:

>Technical communicators are "taught, for example, that the highest goal they can achieve is "clarity and brevity," which suggests a transparency that belies what they really do."

>To transmit the sender's meaning as a perfectly executed message is the role of this communicator.

Translation:

>Given the fluidity of meaning and the polysemy of any text, a translator can never be transparent. Lawrence Grossberg describes the position of the translator in this view: "Translation involves the retrieval and reconstitution of two different traditions, of two different sets of possibilities and closures. It always involves us in compromise, not only of the text's language, but of the translator's as well"

Articulation:

>In contrast to transmission: The transmission view acknowledges that senders do have meanings that they desire to encode and that they do often desire a particular response to that message from the receiver. However, the transmission view limits our recognition of the full fluidity of meaning.

>In contrast to translation: The translation view reconstitutes transmission to add an understanding of the receiver's contribution to the constitution of meaning and introduces the constitutive role of a mediator. However, translation based on the model of encoding and decoding limits our understanding of the full authorial contribution and power of the mediator.

>Different articulations empower different possibilities and empowers others

>Technical communicators are authors, even when they comply with the rules of discourse that deny them that recognition

Pedagogy and Practice:

>It is essential that we learn to analyze critically the articulations evoked in the language of technology and science. In a sense, technical communicators need to be shaken from the somnambulistic faith that their work is linguistically neutral.