The Act of Writing The Act of Writing A Media Theory Approach Daniel Chandler Prifysgol Cymru Aberystwyth University of Wales First Published in Great Britain in 1995 by the University of Wales, Aberystwyth Copyright (C) 1995 Daniel Chandler The right of Daniel Chandler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. Cover design: Daniel Chandler and Alun Jones Cataloguing in Publication data Chandler, Daniel (Glen Joel), 1952- The act of writing: a media theory approach 1. Authorship I. Title 808’.042 PN145 ISBN 0 903878 44 5 Printed and bound by The Registry, UWA, Old College, King Street, Aberystwyth, Dyfed SY23 2AX, Wales, UK Acknowledgements I would like to express my grateful thanks to friends and colleagues for their kind and constructive observations on early versions of some of these chapters. These include: John Beynon (University of Glamorgan), Rose Chandler, Paul Ghuman (UWA), James Hartley (University of Keele), Gareth Elwyn Jones (UWA), Hughie Mackay (University of Glamorgan), Stephen Marcus (University of California at Santa Barbara), Peter Medway (Carleton University, Ottawa), Mike Sharples (University of Sussex), Paula Thomas (UWA) and Steve Westmore. My survey of academic writers would not have been possible without the kind co-operation of over a hundred of my colleagues, and I would like to express my particular appreciation to those who kindly allowed me to interview them in detail about their own writing. Although I would like to name them in formal recognition, I promised them anonymity in print. I have also been fortunate to have had the invaluable assistance of Robert Cooper, of the Hugh Owen library, who maintained a constant supply of books and papers from the British Library and Elgan Davies, Chief Librarian at the Old College library at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA). Alun Jones, Chief Technician at the Education Department, kindly assisted me in using the Apple Macintosh computer. And I would particularly like to thank Steve Westmore, Director of AVC Multimedia, who generously lent me a PC so that I could work on the text at home. Above all I offer boundless thanks to my wife, Rose, and to our children – Robin, Rowen, Cerian and Huw – who have both endured and sustained my obsessive writing about writing for quite long enough. Daniel Chandler Llanybydder, Dyfed February 1995 Contents Acknowledgements i List of Exhibits vi 1 A Media Theory Approach 1 A media theory approach 3 Texts and the construction of meaning 4 Processes of mediation 7 2 The Medium of Language 14 The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 14 When is a tool not a tool? 21 Metaphors for the word processor 27 Language and mediation 31 3 The Written Word 41 Writing and mediation 44 Writing and revision 48 The death of completed texts 55 Reasons for revision 58 4 Writing as a Way of Thinking 60 Dimensions of discovery 61 Contents !iv Inspiration 63 Writing may lead to writing 66 The discovery of meaning 67 Making connections 72 Drafting and discovery 73 Bodily thinking 75 The inadequacy of ‘problem-solving’ 77 Discovery of form 78 When is a text finished? 82 Discovery and ideology 84 Descriptive frameworks 88 Writing, personality and cognitive style 90 Values, purposes and the functions of texts 97 5 Form and Content 103 ‘The medium is the message’ 104 Intertextuality 106 Academic writing 110 The authorial ‘I’ 112 Structures 122 The format of experimental papers in science 126 A sense of machinery 129 6 Writing Tools 132 Tools and rituals 133 Resonances 137 Writing speed 139 Writing tools and written style 143 Tools and revision 151 !v Contents Tools and composing styles 155 Tools and subject matter 157 Handwriting and the sense of self 159 Tools and tactility 161 Writing as carving 169 Tools and extension 172 Texts as objects 175 Writing tools and consciousness 178 Writers as readers 182 Limitations of the screen 185 7 Writing in Academia 189 Academic tribes and territories 190 Personality differences in academic disciplines 193 Academic roles 197 Kinds of writing 202 ‘Writing-up’ 206 Collaborative writing 208 Motives for publishing 210 The academic publishing system 213 Choosing or being chosen 217 Writing tools and social relations 218 Afterwords 222 Appendix: Writing Strategies 229 Architectural strategy 229 Bricklaying strategy 230 Oil painting strategy 231 Contents !vi Water-colour strategy 233 Mixed strategies 235 References 237 Index of Names 255 Index of Topics 263 !iii Contents List of Exhibits 1.1 Locus of meaning in the reading of texts 5 1.2 Reverse adaptation in our engagement with media 11 2.1 Some transmissive phrases in English 20 2.2 Key metaphors of engagement with media 22 2.3 Instrumental and Poetic uses of language 24 2.4 Conventionality of linguistic usage 36 3.1 Some transformative features of writing 44 3.2 Functions of writing and the need for review 53 3.3 Some reasons for revising or avoiding revision 58 4.1 Possible links between personality and writing strategies 96 4.2 Neo-Classical and Romantic values in writing 98 5.1 Linguistic features of scientific writing 115 5.2 The shaping of experience 118 5.3 Stylistic and structural features of writerly vs. readerly texts 121 6.1 Reported ‘effects’ of using a word processor 156 6.2 Comparative features of some writing tools 187 7.1 Aspects of mechanismic and organismic paradigms 195 7.2 A web of academic written genres 203 7.3 Motives for academic writing 213 7.4 The ecology of the act of writing 220 Contents !i For Rose, Robin, Rowen, Cerian and Huw !ii Contents 1 A Media Theory Approach World... is the basic medium through which man is related to himself, to others, and to nature... We do not experience being directly... The structure of this medium... different in different epochs, determines what can get through to the self and how it can be interpreted... This view of the world is opposed to the conviction that the world is an external something to which one reacts passively. It denies that the world is a kind of show, a given which is purely observed, theorized about, predicted verifiably, and controlled, but which is independent of these activities. Edward Ballard This book is a wide-ranging exploration of the act of writing which focuses on a variety of ways in which the experience is framed. It highlights major processes of mediation involved in writing, including the dynamic nature of the writer’s engagement with media such as language, the written word and writing tools. It involves a particular focus on academic writers, although many references are also made to literary writers. In British academic terms, the book might be regarded as part of: ‘literacy studies’ in education or applied linguistics; or as part of ‘cultural studies’ or ‘communication studies’ (blending psychology, sociology, literary theory, semiotics and linguistics). In north American terms, it might be classed as ‘composition research’, a slightly more focused hybrid of disciplines (primarily psychology, education and linguistics, and such sub- disciplines as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics) which are concerned with aspects of the writing of writing. I welcome readers who wear any of these spectacles. However, for its author, this text is concerned with ‘media theory’: with the study of processes of mediation, taking the writing of writing as its particular focus of concern. Media theory is even less of an established discipline than the other hybrid subjects mentioned. The best-known ‘theorist’ of !2 Chapter 1 media in the broadest sense, Marshall McLuhan (who enjoyed widespread popular attention in the 1960s and ’70s), can hardly be regarded as having developed a coherent theoretical framework for the study of media. There would be little scholarly agreement about its focus of concern or tools of enquiry even amongst those who have recently chosen to use the term (mainly in communication studies and its offshoot ‘media studies’, the study of the mass media). But if the author is wearing the spectacles of ‘media theory’ why choose to study writing? The simplest answer is that of the mountaineers: ‘Because it was there’ and because no-one else had done so. I know of no other media theory approach to the writing of writing (and several specialists in various interested disciplines have confirmed the freshness of this stance). Most treatments of media focus on the mass media; most treatments of writing pay little attention to the media or processes of mediation involved. Those who do not regard the act of writing as problematic are unlikely to see anything in the experience which may be worth studying. But various taken-for-granted assumptions about the act of writing are still widely held, and some of these need to be examined more closely. For instance: • that most people approach writing tasks in much the same way; • that written composition is basically a three-stage linear process of planning, writing and revising; • that effective writing must involve starting with a plan; • that effective writing must involve extensive revision; • that editing while generating text is a bad practice; • that linguistic and generic conventions are not major constraints on what is expressed; • that writing involves transmitting an intended meaning to readers; • that the act of writing is a matter of transcribing ideas which are already clear rather than a way of ‘discovering’ one’s thoughts; • that writing is not a social act; • that writers shape texts without being shaped by doing so; • that the ‘writing-up’ of academic research is a matter of recording and communicating that which is already clearly established; • that ‘literary’ writing is quite different from any other kind; • that writing can be ‘literal’, impersonal and unrhetorical.