THE WRITING-READING NEXUS: Authors and Their Audiences

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2023

Abstract

Writing-reading relations, which are at the core of written communication, deserve their central role in writing research. This chapter reviews research into four major ways in which writing and reading are connected. For “the constructing meaning connection,” the review focuses on cognitive research into reading and writing, which since the 1970s has examined the constructive nature of both processes and has countered portrayal of reading as the inverse of writing, or vice versa. For “the intertextual connection,” attention is on studies into transformations that are made when writers compose their own texts from one other source text, as in summarizing, trnanslating, or critiquing, as well as when they perform discourse synthesis from multiple extant texts by organizing, selecting, and connecting content. For “the knowledge resources connection,” emphasis is on relations between reading and writing abilities and on the acquisition of genre knowledge. And, for “the social and cultural connection,” the review addresses research into audience influence on writing, citations of other authors, collaborative writing, response to writing, and author-oriented reading. The international bodies of work reviewed in the chapter, which come from different disciplines and are associated with different traditions and epistemologies, can be viewed as an ongoing collaborative quest to understand these four kinds of relations that are so important in communication through written language.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Writing, Second Edition

First Page

141

Last Page

162

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