Writing Theories: A Summary

In her 1971 book, The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders, Janet Emig makes groundbreaking revelations in introducing rhetoricians not only to the fact that the act of writing was a process, but also that depending on the stage and genre of the draft, the theory behind these processes would change. Since then, hundreds of rhetoricians have taken it upon themselves to delve deeper into the world of compositional theory and attempt to provide a theoretical explanation behind the practice. These theories, presented in various forms, shape how we categorize writing today. Through the lens of expressivism, social constructionism, and cognitivist theory, we can start to understand how various scholars both view and teach writing.

Expressivism, the theory that purports writing as the discovery of the author's truth, is largely explained and illustrated through the work of Donald Murray and Peter Elbow. Both scholars are of the camp that writing is self-sponsored, and as such, an awareness of external forces in unnecessary at best, distracting at worst. Writing, to the expressivist scholar, is about the self, and, more importantly, the process of discovery.

Peter Elbow illustrates a compositional practice directly related to expressivism by discussing the notion of "free writing." Free writing, as elbow explains it, allows the writer to simply express his unfiltered, uncensored thoughts, and more freely allows an untainted truth. That if you write without considering how someone may read your thoughts, you will discover something real.

While Murray doesn't explicitly cover the art of free writing, he does emphasize, in his piece titled "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product" that writing is "the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world” (4). It's evident that the expressivists believe writing to be a form of exploration and discovery.

Expressionism has long been contested by cognitivists, who take a scientific approach to the writing process. While expressionism is largely presented as meaning discovery, a cognitivist would would argue that writing is comprised of mechanical meaning-making. As demonstrated in Linda Flower's work, the cognitivist associates quality writing with quality thinking. The cognitivist emphasizes writing as mentation, rather that something along the lines of meditation.

The cognitivist very much thinks like the formalist in believing that meaning is an inner-textual activity. As long as the writing is clear, there is no need to consider an intended audience. The cognitivist camp thinks very little about the slipperiness of language and the community difference of discourse--rather, it takes a narrow look at the written product itself, as well as the meaning that has been made within only the context of the product.

As expressed by James Berlin, social constructionism emphasizes the various ideologies both the author and the reader hold going into a text. As the theory that promotes the writing process as knowledge and conversation, social constructionism is less internal than the two others. The social constructionist, unlike the cognitivist, views writing as a social activity that is largely motivated by social change. The driving force behind social constructionism is the rhetorical situation, and as such, writing to a specific audience is an essential aspect of this "camp" of writing.