The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of WritingBased on five years of close observation of students, writing and collaborative planning--the practice in which student writers take the roles of planner and supporter to help each other develop a more rhetorically sophisticated writing plan--foremost cognitive composition researcher Linda Flower redefines writing in terms of an interactive social and cognitive process and proposes a convincing and compelling theory of the construction of negotiated meaning. Flower seeks to describe how writers construct meaning. Supported by the emerging body of social and cognitive research in rhetoric, education, and psychology, she portrays meaning making as a literate act and a constructive process. She challenges traditional definitions of literacy, adding to that concept the elements of social literate practices and personal literate acts. In Flower's view, this social cognitive process is a source of tension and conflict among the multiple forces that shape meaning: the social and cultural context, the demands of discourse, and the writer's own goals and knowledge. Flower outlines a generative theory of conflict. With this conflict central to her theory of the construction of negotiated meaning, she examines negotiation as an alternative to the metaphors of reproduction and conversation. It is through negotiation, Flower argues, that social expectations, discourse conventions, and the writer's personal goals and knowledge become inner voices. The tension among these forces often creates the hidden logic behind student writing. In response to these conflicting voices, writers sometimes rise to the active negotiation of meaning, creating meaning in the interplay of alternatives, opportunities, and constraints. |
Contents
1 | |
Competing Images of Literacy | 8 |
Some Emerging Claims | 19 |
Forces in Tension Within a Social Cognitive View | 30 |
Constructing Negotiated Meaning | 36 |
Construction as a Metaphor for Meaning Making | 85 |
Observations of Meaning Making | 108 |
An Educators Account of | 128 |
A schematic view of a writers representation | 244 |
Reflection and the Reconstruction of a Literate Practice | 263 |
Coming to Conclusions | 292 |
Tables | 294 |
Carter and Jennies Planning Session | 301 |
Notes | 307 |
Constructing Meaning | 312 |
317 | |
Planners Blackboard for developing informationbased plans | 144 |
Freshman Class | 148 |
Focus of attention | 161 |
Benchmarks of difference | 181 |
Strategic Knowledge and the Logic of a Learner | 192 |
A Strategic Response to Thinking | 223 |
Other editions - View all
The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of Writing Linda Flower Limited preview - 1994 |
The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of Writing Linda Flower No preview available - 1994 |