Notes on Russell: Writing in Multiple Contexts

Bazerman, C. (2010). Traditions of writing research. Taylor and Francis: London. eISBN 9780203892329

Russell, Chapter 26, Writing in multiple contexts. Vygotskian CHAT meets the phenomenology of genre.

Notes:

• CHAT: Cultural historical activity theory

• Vygotsky-internalization-process on the psychological plane; Schutz calls the process “sedimentation of experience” (p. 356); externalization-concrete social action.

• Genre-related to construction of motives “classifications of artifacts-plus-intentions” (p. 357).

• Schutz-sociological phenomenology: meso-level (institutional) and macro-level (ideological) generalizations (p. 362 & 363); genre as social action

• Discourse: a dynamic, functional, intersubjective process of reciprocal negotiation among writers and readers, in which discourse mediates interactions between conversants (p. 504)

Key quotes:

“…weaving together of people and tools is mediated activity” (p. 354).

“Dissensus, resistance, conflicts, and deep tensions are constantly produced in activity systems” (p.354). “It is the construal of the atypical that gives rise to change” (p. 356).

“…a genre is the ongoing ues of certain material tools (marks, in the case of written genres) in certain ways that people recognize as having worked once and might work again, a typified, tool-mediated response to conditions recognized by participants to be recurring” (p. 357).