Uncovering the Role of Role in Writing and Learning to Write

Abstract

Social theories of language (e.g., Vygotsky and Bakhtin) implicate instruction that promotes spoken interaction during the writing process. Such interaction is said to make explicit for students the dialogic relationship between writers and readers that underlies written text. This case study of a “prewriting” class discussion and student writing in a secondary English class suggests that, more than establishing a relationship with readers, students talk and writing invoke a complex of roles that reflect their relationships with one another, the outside world, and their texts. Speaking and writing contexts shape the different roles that students take. The setting of the study is an inner-city classroom in which students' lives bear critical connections to the outside world; such classrooms may be particularly valuable sites for studying students as complex role players in the process of learning to write. In offering a theory of roles and relationships, the study complicates current thinking about how classroom discourse in these and other settings is linked to writing.