Written Communication Jul 2001

The Reader Written: Successive Constructions of Self and Text in Encounters with Everyday Writing

LINDA SCHWEBKE ; PETER MEDWAY

Abstract

A researcher (Schwebke), in collaboration with her supervisor (Medway), investigated the production and reception of a corpus of documentary exchanges in which condominium owners voiced their opposition to renovations proposed by their board of directors. During the course of the research, which included textual analysis, interviews with owners and management, and readings with disinterested outside parties, the texts became radically unsettled, changing their meaning with each fresh stage of the process. The social reality that underlay and was referred to by the texts became equally indeterminate. Encounters with both texts and everyday readers were pervasively intertextualized; each new conversation was felt to be conducted in the presence of a growing collection of eavesdroppers. The two sets of outside readers—a group of “ordinary folks” and an academic—became virtual participants in the ongoing construction of meaning, with academic and everyday perspectives merging in unusual combinations. The analysis draws on Bakhtinian and poststructuralist perspectives to elucidate this experience.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2001-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088301018003005
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
discourse analysis collaborative writing
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References (20)

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    Untying the text: A post-structuralist reader
  5. Bazerman, C.
    Constructing experience
Show all 20 →
  1. Bazerman, C.
    Genre and the new rhetoric
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    Class, codes and control
  3. Bizzell, P. (1982)
    PRE/TEXT
  4. Borges, J.
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    Acts of meaning
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    Invisible cities
     ↗
  7. de Certeau, M.
    The practice of everyday life
  8. Descartes, R.
    The philosophical works of Descartes
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    Language and power
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  10. Giddens, A.
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     ↗
  13. Piper, A.
    Out of order, out of sight
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  15. Witte, S. P.
    Seminars in Applied Language Studies series, Carleton University
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