Russ, I'd say you're getting close . . . in this paragraph you're defining
the kinds of response you want the writing to create in terms of effects
that seem to me to be observable, and not particularly value-laden. You
can tell that a piece of writing is part of a dialogue, for instance, by
all the same mechanisms you use to tell whether any utterance is part of a
dialogue (chiefly, its relevance to the utterances which preceded it . . .
now what is Polanyi's term for that?? It escapes me at the moment . . . )
> There are a whole bunch of other issues in this discussion I want to come
> back to, but let me start by posing that as a question: does it make
> sense to say, as I think I'd like to, that people learning to use written
> language need (and rarely get) occasions in which their language is
> uttered in that sort of context -- where it's part of a dialogue, where
> substantive, dialogic responses are the mechanism by which it links to
> the world?
One caveat: I don't like the word "substantive," either, and I'd suggest
maybe "content-oriented" in its place. (As an aside: I'm a bit ambivalent
about saying that the statement, "Russ, you're obsessing about ideas that
really aren't very important," isn't substantive because it may possibly be
that that statement is an *opening* for a content-oriented comment. That
is to say, it could mean, for example, that I'm trying to tell you that I'm
not persuaded. I'm not sure why this is important, but I think it is,
somehow . . . maybe it has to do with how people who are unskilled at
responding to content initially frame their responses.)
But I have to say that I think you lose it here:
Where there is an expectation that an actual reader
> interested in what's being said will be actually persuaded, informed,
> amused, touched, etc.
. . . because teachers who give very traditional assignments and who grade
very traditionally can also be "actual readers" who are interested, and who
will possibly actually be persuaded, etc. Well, maybe not persuaded, but
certainly informed, amused, or touched . . . I think if writing teachers
were NOT informed, amused or touched from time to time, they'd quit in
droves . . .
I think maybe all you need is to say that the response will be another link
in the dialogic chain: that is to say, it, too, will be relevent and
content-oriented . . .
Marcy
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Marcy Bauman
Media Consultant
College of Pharmacy
University of Michigan
734-647-2227
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