The article offers a fresh perspective on semiotic approaches to writing. It endorses recent arguments for more study of writing that shapes and directs the production of material artifacts and for considering writing as one semiotic mode among others. The main purpose, however, is to consider a case of nonwritten symbolic production, architectural design, for what it may suggest for the study and the teaching of writing. A constructivist account is proposed whereby the design (like equivalent written texts) not only proposes and foreshadows a new object in the world but creates one, bringing into existence, through acts of representation, a virtual object that is real in its social effects. Transcripts from design conversations are drawn on to elucidate the characteristics of such virtual artifacts, and implications for writing are drawn.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Ackerman, J.
(1993). The promise of writing to learn. Written Communication, 10, 334-370.
2.
Ackerman, J.
, & Oates, S. (1996). Image, text, and power in architectural design and workplace writing. In A. H. Duin & C. J. Hansen (Eds.), Nonacademic writing: Social theory and technology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
3.
Arendt, H.
(1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4.
Baird, G.
(1995). The space of appearance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
5.
Braverman, H.
(1974). Labor and monopoly capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.
6.
Callon, M.
, Law, J., & Rip, A. (Eds.). (1986). Mapping the dynamics of science and technology: Sociology of science in the real world. London: Macmillan.
7.
Chandler, D.
(1995). The act of writing: A media theory approach. Aberystwyth: Prifysgol Cymru/University of Wales.
8.
Chin, E.
(1994). Redefining “context” in research on writing. Written Communication, 11(4), 445-482.
9.
Doheny-Farina, S.
(1992). Rhetoric, innovation, technology: Case studies of technical communication in technology transfers. Cambridge: MIT Press.
10.
Eagleton, T.
(1983). Literary theory: An introduction. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
11.
Foucault, M.
(1977). Discipline and punish (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
12.
Freud, S.
(1984). Negation. In Penguin Freud Library: Vol. 11. On Metapsychology: The theory of psychoanalysis (pp. 435-442). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. (Original work published 1925)
13.
Geisler, C.
(1993). The relationship between language and design in mechanical engineering: Some preliminary observations. Technical Communication, 40, 173-176.
14.
Gusdorf, G.
(1965). Speaking (La Parole). (P. T. Brockelman, Trans.). Chicago: Northwestern University Press. (Original work published 1953)
15.
Haas, C.
(1990). Composing in technological contexts: A study of note-making. Written Communication, 7(4), 512-547.
16.
Halliday, M. A.
(1976). Halliday: System and function in language. Selected papers edited by G. Kress. London: Oxford University Press.
17.
Halliday, M. A.
(1978). Language as social semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.
18.
Halliday, M.
(1985). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold (Nelson).
19.
Herrington, A. J.
(1985). Writing in academic settings. A study of the contexts for writing in two college chemical engineering courses. Research in the Teaching of English, 19, 331-359.
20.
Hodge, R.
, & Kress, G. (1993). Language as ideology (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
21.
Jarocinski, S.
(1976). Impressionism and symbolism. London: Eulenburg.
22.
Jencks, C.
(1973). Modern movements in architecture. Garden City, NJ: Anchor.
23.
Kostof, S.
(1985). A history of architecture: Settings and rituals. New York: Oxford University Press.
24.
Lanham, R. A.
(1989). The electronic word: Literary study and the digital revolution. New Literary History, 20(2), 265-290.
25.
Lynch, M.
, & Woolgar, S. (1990a). Introduction: Sociological orientations to representational practice in science. In M. Lynch & S. Woolgar (Eds.), Representation in scientific practice (pp. 1-18). Cambridge: MIT Press.
26.
Lynch, M.
, & Woolgar, S. (Eds.). (1990b). Representation in scientific practice. Cambridge: MIT Press.
27.
McCarthy, L. P.
(1991). A psychiatrist using DSM-III: The influence of a charter document in psychiatry. In C. Bazerman & J. Paradis (Eds.), Textual dynamics of the professions: Historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities (pp. 358-378). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
28.
McCarthy, L. P.
, & Gerring, J. P. (1994). Revising psychiatry's charter document: DSM-IV. Written Communication, 11(2), 147-192.
29.
Medway, P.
(1994). The language component in technological capability: Lessons from architecture. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 4(1), 85-107.
30.
Medway, P.
(1996). Writing, speaking, drawing: The distribution of meaning in architects' communication. In M. Sharples & T. van der Geest (Eds.), The new writing environment: Writers at work in a world of technology (pp. 25-42). London: Springer Verlag.
31.
Medway, P.
(in press). Representation and making: Student production in English. Changing English, 3(2).
32.
Nattiez, J.-J.
(1990). Music and discourse: Toward a semiology of music. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
33.
Olson, D. R.
(1995). Conceptualizing the written word: An intellectual autobiography. Written Communication, 12(3), 277-297.
34.
O'Toole, M.
(1994). The language of displayed art. London: Leicester University Press.
35.
Patin, T.
(1993). From deep structure to an architecture in suspense: Peter Eisenman, structuralism, and deconstruction. Journal of Architectural Education, 47(2), 88-100.
36.
Peirce, C.
(1931-1958). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vols. 1-6, C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss, Eds.; Vols. 7-8, A. W. Burks, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
37.
Plowman, L.
(1992). Talking and writing in a group writing task: A sociocognitive perspective. Brighton, UK: University of Sussex School of Cognitive and Computing Science.
38.
Rowe, C.
, & Slutzky, R. (1976). Transparency: Literal and phenomenal. In C. Rowe (Ed.), The mathematics of the ideal villa and other essays. Cambridge: MIT Press.
39.
Schön, D.
(1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.
40.
Sebeok, T.
, & Umiker-Sebeok, J. (1987). The semiotic web. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
41.
Selzer, J.
(1983). The composing processes of engineers. College Composition and Communication, 34(2), 178-187.
42.
Shepherd, J.
(1991). Music as social text. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
43.
Smagorinsky, P.
(1995, February). Constructing meaning in the disciplines: Reconceptualising writing across the curriculum as composing across the curriculum. American Journal of Education, 103, 160-184.
44.
Smagorinsky, P.
, & Coppock, J. (1994). Cultural tools and the classroom context: An exploration of an artistic response to literature. Written Communication, 11(3), 283-310.
45.
Smagorinksy, P.
, & Coppock, J. (1995). The reader, the text, the context: An exploration of a choreographed response to literature. Journal of Reading Behavior, 27(3), 271-298.
46.
Thomas, W.
, & Thomas, D. S. (1928). The child in America. New York: Knopf.
47.
Vygotsky, L. S.
(1978a). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
48.
Vygotsky, L. S.
(1978b). The prehistory of written language. In Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes (pp. 105-119). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1935)
49.
Vygotsky, L. S.
(1986). Thought and language (A. Kozulin, Ed. and Trans.). Cambridge: MIT Press. (Original work published 1934)
50.
Winsor, D.
(1989). An engineer's writing and the corporate construction of knowledge. Written Communication, 6(2), 270-285.
51.
Winsor, D.
(1994). Invention and writing in technical work. Written Communication, 11, 227-250.
52.
Witte, S. P.
(1992). Context, text, intertext: Toward a constructivist semiotic of writing. Written Communication, 9(2) 237-308.
53.
Wood, C. C.
(1992). A study of the graphical mediating representations used by collaborative authors. Brighton, UK: University of Sussex School of Cognitive and Computing Science.
