Introduction
Delivery problems
Re-mediating and
re-distributing delivery
The rhetorical scene
Take 1: Revising the canons
Society and socialization
Take 2: A cultural-historical remapping of rhetorical activity
Mapping literate activity
Using CHAT to form new canons
From the core text to the data nodes
References
Mapping literate activity
The terms
of the map of literate activity (production, representation, distribution,
reception, socialization, activity, and ecology) are not intended to evoke
a series of steps, but to signal a multidimensional model, like Jakobson's
(1990) model of language functions.
Production directs our attention to the tools, practices, and contexts that shape the formation of a text (or series of texts) as well as to the series of texts and artifacts produced. It merges individual and collective invention with the mediated force of technologies, genres, discourses, and practices.
Representation involves the way a discourse is entextualized
in talk, text, and mind. Representation highlights semiotic codes, discourses,
genres (as representational artifacts). We're thinking here of Hutchins'
(1995a) notion of distributed cognition as the “propagation of representational
states across media” (p. 118), with media including the human mind
and body. Representation collapses style and arrangement, but also expands
them to encompass the full range of semiotic media and means found in
representational artifacts of all kinds (material, machinic, biologic).
Distribution involves the way particular media, technologies,
and social practices disseminate a text and what a particular network
signifies. It's important to stress that even a person sitting alone writing
on a piece of paper that is read only by herself is displaying a type
of distribution.
Reception is actual reading/viewing/hearing and response, how meaning is made under what conditions and for what ends. It is a mental and social activity. Reception can be, and often is, actively shaped by writers or distributors.
Socialization is the making of people and the making of society in concrete history. As individuals engage in cultural practices, they are involved in apprenticeship, learning, and development. As situated engagement in cultural practices unfolds, society is (re)produced, that is, transmitted and transformed in activity.
Activity points to the more or less durable, goal-oriented, motivated projects that lead people to cooperation, indifference, and conflict. Cultural-historical activity theories appear to offer richer ways to investigate and define rhetorical situations.
Ecology points to the biotic and natural world, which enables and constrains all the previous functions and which may also be a domain of rhetorical action. Bazerman (1988) noted the ways scientists must deal with the responses not only of other scientists and publics, but also of the material world. And Monsanto certainly recognizes that the debate over genetically modified (GM) plants will be settled when all plants have GM DNA, a condition we are fast approaching in the case of corn and soybeans.
You may have noticed that mediation is not on this list. What happened to it? In fact, we did not drop it. From a cultural-historical perspective and adopting James Wertsch's (1991) terms, we take mediated activity and mediated agency as fundamental units of analysis. In those terms, everything in the three maps (literate activity, functional systems, and chronotopes) is about mediation.