Wikis, Writingverb, and Community:
Some Assembly Required
Bruce Erickson, Director
Program in Professional Writing
BMG Digital Humanities Conference, 2013
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
As a replacement presenter, my spoken content was extemporaneous.
Hence, what I can provide are only bits and pieces that will require
some assembly. In the contexts of wiki-fying writing and knowledge,
I have provided a few pages from the wiki we use; my apologies in
advance for format issues stemming from porting content between
the wiki and MS Word. In the context of teaching writing, the piece
entitled “De-mystifying Writing, Seven Steps Toward” highlights
things you can do to articulate writing more clearly to your students.
As you have questions, please feel free to contact me:
baerick2@illinois.edu
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
De-mystifying Writing, Seven Steps Toward
March, 2013
When I was growing up, we watched To Tell the Truth each week, a television show in
which celebrity panelists posed questions to contestants in order to discern which one
was telling the truth about her/his identity. At the end of the show, the host would
ask, “Will the real Mr./Mrs./Ms. _____ please stand up?” Sometimes the celebrities
chose well; oftentimes the contestants mystified (confused) the celebrities.
Like the celebrities on To Tell the Truth, the students who enter my advancedcomposition courses are often confused about writing (what it is and how to do it
effectively), and social construction leads me to conclude: we are the ones who have
mystified them. In my presentation, I share seven steps toward de-mystifying writing in
the courses we teach, seven things each of us can do to dispel some of our students’
confusion.
1) Teach this principle:
Words are not CONTAINERs of meaning
a) Use CONTAINER to refer to something which can (and might) hold/envelop
something else
Integrating this principle into ones understanding of writing can: afford a means by
which a miscommunication can occur (in even a simple language-use event), highlight the sociallyconstructed aspects of language-use events (particularly events involving participants from
substantively-different discourse communities), and provide an insight into what a qualified
reader does when reading a text.
2) Teach this principle:
Ones AGENCY is different than ones SOCIAL AUTHORITY
a) Use AGENCY to refer to a living thing's intrinsic capability and capacity "to do" in
a context
b) Use SOCIAL AUTHORITY to refer to the right an individual/group has been granted
(within a group of individuals) to:
i) choose the actions another will perform,
ii) command (with the expectation of being obeyed) another to perform those actions,
and/or
iii) judge the actions of another — with an expectation of sufferance by the
other/others.
Integrating this principle into ones understanding of writing can: provide insight into the
nature of the strength and power relationships between an individual and a discourse
community, provide insight into why every possible target audience (for a particular text) is
not a viable target audience (for that particular text), and provide insight into the
relationships among AGENCY and knowledgei, as well as the relationships among SOCIAL
AUTHORITY and knowledge.
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
2
3) Teach this principle:
A PROCESS is the activity/activities through which INputs
become (are changed into) OUTputs
a) Corollary: A PROCESS can be divided into two (or more) sub-PROCESSes
Integrating this principle into ones understanding of writing: can highlight that
transformation is essential to a PROCESS (i.e., a PROCESS is more than a series of related events),
can highlight a PROCESS as mental model is a constructed thing, and can afford a means
for identifying a unique PROCESS, as well as a means of identifying discrete skills.
4) Give students the following scenarios to use when interrogating the contexts in
which they write:
a) Writingverb-to-self scenario
Ideally, when writing-to-self:
i)
the writer desires a (specific) consequence (for a particular instance of writing)
ii) the writer constructs a WRITER'S CHALLENGEii (either implicitly or explicitly),
iii) the writer is the targeted audience, and
iv) the DESIRED CONSEQUENCEiii is to be achieved by the writer.
b) Writingverb-to-others scenario
Ideally, when writing-to-others:
i)
the writer desires a (specific) consequence (for a particular instance of writing)
ii) the writer constructs a WRITER'S CHALLENGE (either implicitly or explicitly),
iii) the writer chooses a target audience (other than self), and
iv) the DESIRED CONSEQUENCE is to be achieved by THAT AUDIENCE (but not
by the writer).
c) Writingverb-for-others scenario
Ideally, when writing-for-others:
i)
SOMEONE OTHER THAN the writer desires a specific consequence (for a
particular instance of writing),
ii) and/or SOMEONE OTHER THAN the writer constructs the writer's
challenge (either implicitly or explicitly),
iii) and/or SOMEONE OTHER THAN the writer chooses a target audience,
and
iv) the DESIRED CONSEQUENCE is to be achieved by THAT AUDIENCE.
Integrating these scenarios into ones conversations about writing verb tends to heighten
awareness of our social SITUATEDNESSiv as writers (as we are writing) and readers (as we are
reading). Notably, the writing scenario can change as a text-in-progress moves through a
specific writingverb process, particularly when such a PROCESS involves editors and/or
publishers. When reading, an awareness of these scenarios can prompt us to discerning
who is actually desiring us to do what (as a result of reading a particular text).
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
3
5) Teach this principle:
In a writing-to-others scenario, writingverb a text is a subPROCESS of achieving a DESIRED CONSEQUENCE (the writer typically lacks
the agency and/or social authority to achieve alone)
a) Corollary: READING a text is typically a sub-PROCESS of “achieving a DESIRED
CONSEQUENCE intended by the writer of the text”
It is tempting for writers to think their writingverb PROCESS ends when they complete a
text. This can be particularly so when they have been planning/researching/composing
/revising/editing in a writing-to-self scenario (even though they intend to use that text later).
However, it is commonplace for the function (of an instance) of writingverb to be unfulfilled
when the writer finishes revising and editing a particular text. While writingverb and
reading are separable actions (often performed by different AGENTSv relative to a particular text),
writingverb and reading are intertwined with another action — an action evoked in the
reader (who read the text).
6) Teach this principle:
Ones SENSE of something is often different than the MEANING one
makes of that something
a) Use SENSEnoun to refer to ones comprehension of the nature of something —
particularly when that comprehension also includes HOW that something
interacts (read also as "is related to") with other things (in the physical world or the mind)
b) Use MEANINGnoun to refer to the mental SENSE, value, and emotion(s) one
associates with something (in a context) — a word, a phrase, a memory, a sound, a
picture, an event, et cetera.
Integrating this principle into ones understanding of writingverb affords a conceptual
tool we can use to explain:
1. differences in interpretations (of a text) among discourse communities and
2. differences in interpretations (of a text) among individuals in the same discourse
community.
It also affirms the individual has the AGENCY to construct MEANING, even a meaning that
is in conflict with the dominant socially-constructed SENSE (in a society or a discourse
community). Examples of such individual agency include Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ
Naturalis Principia Mathematica and Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
7) When communicating (in the course),
Reduce the number of mixed messages (you present)
a) By intending only one SENSE whenever you say/write “writing”
“Will



the real writing please stand up?” We often use writing to refer to:
an action — “Are you writing a letter or a memo?”
a process — “Let’s talk about how you go about writing a letter.”
a unit of prose (e.g., sentence, paragraph, and/or text) — “Have you seen this
student’s writing?”
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.
4
To discern which SENSE of writing you intend, a student must use cognitive
resources at a time when such resources might be better allocated to learning.
b) By not asserting “writing is a process” to students when you intend to
only assess their: writingtexts (working texts not included), writingprosestyles, writingprose-grammar , writinggenre-conventions , and/or arguments
Setting aside the fact such mixed messages are potentially disingenuous (and likely
to lead to a loss of credibility), such mixed messages are also confusing. Avoiding the
introduction of unnecessary confusion lets your students allocate their cognitive
resources to learning something useful.
c) By not asserting/implying the SOCIAL AUTHORITY warranting the genre
exemplars you present (to your students) extends uniformly (also read as
“without interruption or conflict”) through all possible discourse
communities beyond your class (and/or your writing program)
In general, the structure of a category (of everyday things) implies an exemplar — a
prototype against which potential members are judged for inclusion/exclusion
to/from the category. Choosing an exemplar requires AGENCY and getting others to
agree to a particular choice (of something as an exemplar for a category) warrants the
choice with SOCIAL AUTHORITY. However, that warranting is only applicable to those
individuals and discourse communities participating in the agreement.
Epilogue
If you find implementing these seven principles awkward or difficult, let me suggest this
is evidence you are on the path to helping your students de-mystify writing — what it is
and how we do it effectively (particularly in contexts outside the academy). These seven steps
are just a beginning; to continue, think critically and press on!
i
Gilbert Ryle (1949) suggests there are two types of knowing: knowingthat and knowinghow. It seems
reasonable to suggest knowledge — the “lowest” type of knowing in Bloom’s Taxonomy of the cognitive
domain (as presented in David Sousa, 2001) — corresponds with knowingthat, and then suggest the
remaining types of knowing in Bloom’s Taxonomy — knowingcomprehending, knowingapplying, knowinganalyzing,
knowingsynthesizing, and knowingevaluating, — seem congruent with knowinghow and the notion, knowing is
doing, made by Seely Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989).
ii
Use WRITER’S CHALLENGE to refer to the challenge a writer faces in order to overcome the difference
between: what the target audience is doing before reading the text (yet to be created by the writer) and
the targeted audience achieving the desired consequence after reading/interpreting the text (yet to be
created by the writer).
iii
Use DESIRED CONSEQUENCE to refer to the audience-based outcome/action a writer is trying to bring
about through writing-as-a-verb (also denoted as "writingverb").
iv
Use SITUATEDNESS to refer to the notion that (at a given point in time) an individual person or business
exists in a complex "web" of forces which influence an individual's actions/behaviors (including
thinking).
v
Use AGENT to refer to a living being with AGENCY (see # 2 above).
© 2013 by Bruce Erickson. All rights reserved.