Literate Action

Literate Action

Charles Bazerman (Education, UCSB)
Friday, April 11 / 1:30 PM
1205 Education

Bazerman proposes a new theory of writing and rhetoric which conceives writing as a form of situated social activity, typically displaced over time and space.  Because of these dislocations, understandings of genre and activity system are important for participants to construct the communicative situation. The theory draws on Russian psychology, phenomenology, and pragmatic social science, and addresses the problem of creating shared meaning deictically and intertextually within utterance and the interactional order.  In this talk, Bazerman will present some of the general outlines of the theory.

Charles Bazerman is a Professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School. His book Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science examines the history and current forms of scientific research writing. In his next book, The Languages of Edison’s Light he examined how technical discourses and projects intersect with many other discourses of civic, economic, and cultural life. His recent volumes, A Rhetoric of Literate Action and A Theory of Literate Action, put together his understanding of writing developed over the last forty years. He is founder and chair of the International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research.

Sponsored by the IHC’s LISO RFG.

For more information please visit: http://www.liso.ucsb.edu/news