Teorema de Peeling

An academic literacies approach to writing draws on a number of social theories listed by Gee (2000) as marking a ‘social turn’ away from behaviourism and cognitivism. This immediately marks it differently from predominantly cognitive connections made between dyslexia and writing. It has its roots in a literacy movement known as ‘New Literacy Studies’ (Gee 2012; Lea & Street 2006). A key concept in this movement is Street’s distinction between

autonomous and ideological models of literacy (Street 2003;1984). Proponents of ‘New Literacy Studies’ reject the autonomous model as associated with schooling, the assumption that literacy is acquired in a neutral environment and will in itself enhance cognitive development. The ideological model sees literacy as always embedded within social practices. Language is not the direct transfer of meaning into words via the cognitive processes of the individual. Language both constructs and is constructed by different conceptions of knowledge, identity and social relations (Street

2003). Conceptions always derive from a particular world view and have the power to dominate and marginalise (Street 2003).

The concept of academic literacies gained status as a theoretical approach to writing in HE based on the seminal work by Lea and Street (1998) and in the following discussion I draw extensively on their work. They argue that student writing can be viewed in three ways, a study skills model, an academic socialisation model and an academic literacies model. The first sees writing as a cognitive skill in dealing with features of language, such as grammar and correct sentence structure. Academic socialisation involves the

acculturation of students into the ways of their disciplines. This model recognises the connections between disciplines and their associated genres and knowledge making practices (Lea & Street 2006). An academic literacies model does not discount the

relevance of the other two, but considers academic socialisation to be an inadequate conception of academic writing (Lea & Street 2006). They suggest that the kinds of social relations and identities that are possible are defined by the practices of the surrounding discourses. These practices are implicit and variable, but become treated as the norm. Proponents therefore seek to make explicit the tacit and contested nature of social relations, identity and knowledge making practices in different disciplinary and institutional settings. Student writing is viewed as ‘sites of discourse and power’ (Lea & Street 1998:159). Researchers are interested in how language is ‘recruited’ to do social work (Lankshear 1999:222).

An academic literacies approach owes some allegiance to the work of Foucault (Hyland 2009). In Part 1 of the review, I discuss how different experiences of ‘being dyslexic’ are constructed by

surrounding discourses of dyslexia. In doing so, I apply to dyslexia a theoretical stance that is also associated with writing, one in which the choices writers can make are enabled or constrained by surrounding discourses (Hyland 2009). This strikes a different chord from predominantly cognitive explanations of writing behaviour in the dyslexia field. However, this does not mean that writers’ choices are entirely predetermined; they have some agency

in the decisions they make, though this is applied in slightly different ways by different researchers.

From a Foucaultian perspective, individual acts of doing, speaking and writing construct discourses and change them over time (Gee 2012; Hall 1997). As discussed in Part 1, writers select from their available cultural and linguistic resources to create patterns of behaviour designed to justify, blame, persuade, explain etc. (Gergen 1994). They can therefore be stakeholders in how they present themselves (Burr 2003).

Ivanic (1998) applies Vygotskian precepts to explanations of individual agency: writers reach a particular intramental state, which determines what they can write; this is a fluid state, which changes according to life experiences and values. This intramental state can derive only from intermental experience in the social world. These ideas are important to Ivanic’s work on writing identity, which is discussed further in due course.

Scott (1999:181), in work that is directly relevant to the agency of student writers, questions the idea of writers as the puppet of external forces and considers that essay writing involves individual meaning-making and creativity. She believes in the ‘transformative action’ of the subject whom she sees as presenting ‘motivated signs’. Each time writers produce text, they use their resources, (knowledge, understanding and experience) to create an individual experience, which is still socially made. Reading students’ essays therefore should be an ‘imaginative attempt to identify what each student is doing and where it might come from’.

In contrast to a view of writing as emerging from the cognitive processes of the individual mind, and in the case of dyslexia from inefficient cognitive processes, an academic literacies approach recognises notions of ‘others’, both metaphorical and literal, that enable or constrain the decisions writers can make. Gregg,

Coleman and Lindstrom (2008) are amongst the few in the field of dyslexia to raise issues such as awareness of audience and reader, which they discuss in terms of social cognition. Researchers in the

field of academic literacies take a much wider view of these external influences and frequently draw on the work of Bakhtin. According to Bakhtin (1981:342), there is a state of tension between what he terms ‘authoritative discourse’ and ‘internally persuasive discourse’. We encounter authoritative discourse ‘with its authority already fused to it’, for example in official or legal documents. We accept it as it stands. Internally persuasive

discourse occurs ‘when thought begins to work in an independent, experimenting and discriminating way’ (:345), but it is still ‘half ours and half someone else’s’ (:345). Utterances are further influenced by their being directed to someone or their addressivity (Bakhtin 1986:95). The composition and the style of an utterance ‘depend on those to whom the utterance is addressed, how the speaker (or writer) senses and imagines his addressees’. This varies according to role, for example as subordinate or superior, familiar or unfamiliar or an ‘unconcretised other’.

Researchers also draw on the work of Fairclough (1992; 2003) and his notions of intertextuality. Fairclough (1992) differentiates between manifest intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Manifest intertextuality refers to parts of a text that can be traced to another source, when another text is quoted, paraphrased or referred to directly. Interdiscursivity describes how one text makes reference to another because they are shared text types. In academic writing therefore, this incorporates the requirement to refer to

authoritative others in the field and also draw on particular ways of writing and using language that are shared by others in the

discipline. Explanations of dyslexia-related difficulty with language do not take these kinds of requirements into account.

The decisions and dilemmas involved in language use are further influenced by discourse communities and interpretations of the term discourse. In Part 1, reference is made to the definition of Discourse by Gee (1999). To elaborate further, Gee (1999:7) distinguishes between ‘little d’ and ‘big D’ discourse. At the level of ‘little d’ discourse, interest is focused on how language is used to enact particular activities and identities of a community; but ‘little d’ discourse is closely interwoven with non-language events that

cause activities and identities to be enacted in particular ways (big ‘D’ discourse). Shared language use therefore becomes part of a community identity and writers are constrained by the discourse communities of which they are a part or indeed from which they might feel excluded.

Swales (1990:25-27) identifies six defining features of a discourse community: it has an agreed set of common public goals;

mechanisms for intercommunication among its members; participatory mechanisms to provide information and feedback; access to one or more genres by which to further its aims; a specific lexis and a threshold level of members with suitable degrees of expertise. Learning to be members of a discourse community equates with a socialisation model of student writing (Lea & Street 1998), so from an academic literacies perspective the idea of discourse community is contested. This is partly because the concept of community is not stable (Hyland 2009) and there are many different conceptions of it (Becher & Trowler 2001).

An academic literacies approach takes a more critical stance and aims to make visible how ways of using language become part of the routine practices of particular social groups and institutions. These practices construct social roles and relationships and ways of creating knowledge that are specific to those groups, but they become treated as the norm (Lillis 2001). This idea of community has the effect of including some and excluding others, and the beliefs and values become taken for granted as ideology

(Fairclough 2003). The discourses of dominant groups therefore both manage and reproduce the kinds of values and beliefs that are possible (Van Dijk 1997).

This critical element, and for some overtly political (see Fairclough & Wodak 1997), is a key part of an academic literacies perspective. Lillis (2001:40) sees ‘essayist literacy’ as ordained institutionally. She bases this on Gee’s view of academic language (Gee 2004), though he refers to all educational settings. He describes academic language as maintaining a view of ‘higher intelligence’ that is ‘epitomised by explicitness (i.e. low reliance on context), analytic

skills, logical (deductive) thought, abstract definitions and

generalisations, and sustained attention to or communication on a single topic’ (Gee 2004:91). The problem according to Lillis (2001) and Turner (1999:154) is that there is a ‘discourse of

transparency’. This is associated with a view of language as the transparent transmission of meaning and a view of academic thinking as the objective, logical representation of knowledge. There is therefore a tension between how language is viewed in the academy and the actual ways in which language is constructed by and constructs discourse practices. According to Lillis (2001), these tensions have an effect on students’ understandings of what is expected and can disadvantage some, in particular ‘non-

traditional’ students.

As already suggested, the field of dyslexia leans towards a view of language as autonomous rather than ideological (Herrington & Hunter-Carsch 2001). This raises the question of how to approach analysis of language from a social practice perspective. An

academic literacies approach to language often draws on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (Hyland 2002). According to

Halliday and Hasan (1989) texts exist in their immediate living environment, which they term ‘context of situation’. They also contain elements of the cultural histories of the participants, which they term ‘context of culture’. Halliday saw a relationship between the context of situation, context of culture and the functional organisation of language (Halliday 1994). Texts simultaneously weave together more than one kind of meaning (Eggins & Martin 1997). Ideational meanings map the reality of the world – it is what the text is about; interpersonal meanings say something about the writer’s attitudes to the topic, the role he/she takes on, such as questioning or expressing certainty and attitudes to the reader; textual meanings show how the text is organised, that it is an event coherent with social expectations (Eggins & Martin 1997). Once language is viewed as socially constructed, therefore,

understanding of language difficulty becomes multi-layered and complex.

In Part 1, connections between theories of dyslexia and writing difficulty were suggested. The different ways of ‘being dyslexic’ constructed by the context further widened the picture of how the experience of writing might vary. This resumé of theoretical underpinnings of an academic literacies approach suggests still further layers to understanding how student writers make writing decisions and use language. In the following section I look in more detail at how these theoretical approaches impact on essay writing. I frequently draw on the work of Ivanic (1998) and Lillis (2001). Both have theorised an academic literacies approach in detail and worked in depth with HE student writers. Ivanic also analysed essay texts. Their work illustrates the dilemmas and potential disadvantage for writers that are revealed by this view of writing, dilemmas that are equally relevant to writers identified as dyslexic.

2.2.2 Implications for writers and their essay