Paul A. Prior | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This chapter sketches a sociocultural framework for understanding writing, particularly exploring the way notions of literate activity (Prior 1998) and semiotic remediation (Prior, Hengst, Roozen, & Shipka 2006; Prior & Hengst 2010) maintain a distinct interest in both written artifacts and associated actions that are dialogically dispersed across people, tools, times and places. Drawing in particular on traditions grounded in the work of Vygotsky and Voloshinov, this approach argues for seeing writing as chronotopically laminated trajectories. Theoretical and methodological implications of this approach are illustrated by reviewing a line of research that has investigated writing as situated, mediated, and dispersed. The chapter concludes with key implications of this approach for the research, teaching, and practice of writing.
2007Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
1981The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
1986Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Berry, Patrick, Gail Hawisher, and Cynthia Selfe
2012Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. Available at [URL]
Bloomaert, Jan
2010The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bowen, Lauren
2011 “Resisting Age Bias in Digital Literacy Research.” College Composition and Communication 62(4): 586–607.
Cole, Michael, and Yrjo Engeström
1993 “A Cultural-Historical Approach to Distributed Cognition.” In Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, ed. by Gavriel Salomon, 111–138. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Eco, Umberto
1976A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Elam, Kimberly
2001Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Emig, Janet
1971The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Flower, Linda, and John Hayes
1981 “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 32(4): 365–387.
Fraiberg, Steven
2010 “Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal Framework.” College Composition and Communication 62(1): 100–126.
Galbraith, David, and Gert Rijlaarsdam
1999 “Effective Strategies for the Teaching and Learning of Writing.” Learning & Instruction 1999(9): 93–108.
Goffman, Erving
1981Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hutchins, Edwin
1995Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Irvine, Judith
1996 “Shadow Conversations.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, ed. by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, 131–159. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Karsten, Andrea
2011 “Chronotopes in Writing: Excerpts from a Case Study.” Tätigkeitstheorie – Journal für tätigkeitstheoretische Forschung in Deutschland (Activity Theory – Journal of Activity-Theoretical Research in Germany) 5: 87–120.
Latour, Bruno
2005Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lemke, Jay
2000 “Across the Scales of Time: Artifacts, Activities, and Meanings in Ecosocial Systems.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 7(4): 273–290.
Nystrand, Martin
2005 “The Social and Historical Context of Writing Research.” In Handbook of Writing Research, ed. by Charles MacArthur, Steve Graham, and Jill Fitzgerald, 11–27. New York: Guilford Press.
Olinger, Andrea
2014 “On the Instability of Disciplinary Style: Common and Conflicting Metaphors and Practices in Text, Talk, and Gesture.” Research in the Teaching of English 48(4): 453–478.
Olive, Thierry, Rui Alexandre Alves, and São Luís Castro
2009 “Cognitive Processes in Writing during Pause and Execution Periods.” European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 21(5): 758–785.
Peirce, Charles
1998The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893–1913). Ed. The Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
1991 “Contextualizing Writing and Response in a Graduate Seminar.” Written Communication 8(3): 267–310.
Prior, Paul
1995 “Tracing Authoritative and Internally Persuasive Discourses: A Case study of Response, Revision, and Disciplinary Enculturation.” Research in the Teaching of English 29(3): 288–325.
Prior, Paul
1997“Literate activity and Disciplinarity: The Heterogeneous (Re)production of American Studies around a Graduate Seminar.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 4(4): 275–295.
Prior, Paul
1998Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Prior, Paul
2004 “Tracing Process: How Texts Come into Being.” In What Writing Does and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analysis of Texts and Textual Practices, ed. by Charles Bazerman, and Paul Prior, 167–200. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Prior, Paul
2006 “A Sociocultural Theory of Writing.” In The Handbook of Writing Research, ed. by Charles A. MacArthur, Steve Graham, and Jill Fitzgerald, 54–66. New York: Guilford Press.
Prior, Paul
2009 “From Speech Genres to Mediated Multimodal Genre Systems: Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and the Question of Writing.” In Genre in a Changing World, ed. by Charles Bazerman, Adair Bonini, and Deborah Figueredo, 17–34. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press. Available at: [URL]
Prior, Paul
2010 “Remaking IO: Semiotic Remediation in the Design Process.” In Exploring Semiotic Remediation as Discourse Practice, ed. by Paul Prior, and Julie Hengst, 206–234. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave MacMillan.
Prior, Paul, and Julie Hengst
2010 “Introduction: Exploring Semiotic Remediation.” In Exploring Semiotic Remediation as Discourse Practice, ed. by Paul Prior, and Julie Hengst, 1–23. Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave MacMillan.
Prior, Paul, Julie Hengst, Kevin Roozen, and Jody Shipka
2006 “ ‘I’ll Be the Sun’: From Reported Speech to Semiotic Remediation Practices.” Text and Talk 26(6): 733–766.
Prior, Paul, and Karen Lunsford
2007 “History of Reflection and Research on Writing.” In Handbook of Research on Writing: History, Society, School, Individual, Text, ed. by Charles Bazerman, 81–96. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Prior, Paul, and Spencer Schaffner
2011 “Bird Identification as a Family of Activities: Motives, Mediating Artifacts, and Laminated Assemblages.” Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 39(1): 51–70.
Prior, Paul, and Jody Shipka
2003 “Chronotopic Lamination: Tracing the Contours of Literate Activity.” In Writing Selves, Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives, ed. by Charles Bazerman, and David Russell, 180–238. Available at the WAC Clearinghouse [URL]
Prior, Paul, and Steven Thorne
2014 “Research Paradigms: Beyond Product, Process, and Social Activity.” In Handbook of Writing and Text Production, ed. by Eva-Maria Jakobs, and Daniel Perrin, 31–54. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Roozen, Kevin
2009 “Fan Fic-ing” English Studies: A Case Study Exploring the Interplay of Vernacular Literacies and Disciplinary Engagement.” Research in the Teaching of English 44(2): 136–169.
Scribner, Sylvia
1997Mind and Social Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sheridan(-Rabideau), Mary
2008Girls, Feminism, and Grassroots Literacy: Activism in the Girl Zone. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Shipka, Jody
2011Toward a Composition Made Whole. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Shipka, Jody and Bill Chewning
2007 “Live Composition: Four Variations of a Telling.” In Re-Situating and Re-Mediating the Canons: A Cultural-Historical Remapping of Rhetorical Activity, ed. by Paul Prior, Janine Solberg, Patrick Berry, Hannah Bellwoar, Bill Chewning, Karen Lunsford, Liz Rohan, Kevin Roozen, Mary Sheridan, Jody Shipka, Derek Van Ittersum, and Joyce Walker. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 11.3. Available at [URL]
Smith, Dorothy
1974 “The Social Construction of Documentary Reality.” Sociological Inquiry 44(4): 257–268.
Voloshinov, Valentin
1973Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Trans. Ladislav Matejka and Irwin Titunik. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vygotksy, Lev
1987Problems of General Psychology: The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1. Trans. Norris Minick. New York: Plenum.
Wertsch, James
1991Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Witte. Stephen
1992 “Context, Text, Intertext: Toward a Constructivist Semiotic of Writing.” Written Communication 9(2): 237–308.
Cited by
Cited by 6 other publications
Atorresi, Ana & Laura Eisner
2021. Escritura e identidad: perspectivas socioculturales. Enunciación 26 ► pp. 14 ff.
2023. What Is a Workplace? Principles for Bounding Case Studies of Genres, Processes, Objects, and Organizations. Written Communication 40:4 ► pp. 1027 ff.
Walzer, Dorothea
2023. Ubiquitäres Publizieren. Zur Theorie und Geschichte des Selbstveröffentlichens. Journal of Literary Theory 17:1 ► pp. 11 ff.
Wargo, Jon M., Melita Morales & Alex Corbitt
2022. Fabricating response: Preservice elementary teachers remediating response to The Circuit through 3D printing and design. Curriculum Inquiry 52:5 ► pp. 544 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.