An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View

An Overview of Writing Theory and Research: From

Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View

Lucy Chung-Kuen Yao*

Abst「act

Writing in academic communities is treated as a mode of learning, but

few teachers understand what academic writing is and how it is acquired. In
the past three decades, writing theory and research has bloomed in the
United States. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to view writing theoriesσit­
ically, and, hopefully, this review will shed some light on the teaching of
EFL writing in Taiwan.
Research has viewed writing from two distinct perspecitives: the cogni-
tive and the social. The cognitive theorists' main concerns are the individual
writer ’s internal cognitive activities during the process of writing which is
composed of three subprocesses, namely,” planning ’”?’ translating/drafting ’”
and "revising. ” The social view, on the other hand, emphasizes that academic
writing is a communicative act influenced by the particular social context in
which the student writer is situated. The umbrella term ”social view ” covers
the following terms: ”social-cognitive theory," "social construction ism ’”
"social interactive theory," "social-historic theory," and "social-humanistic
theory." In conclusion, the cognitive view and the social view are not incom-
patible but mutually reinforcing. Given that we now have a promising theo-
retical base, it is possible to reconceptualize writing and to teach writing
more effectively.

Key words: "academic writing ’”” cognitive writing process’！？”socia卜

cgnitive theory ’”" social constructionism ’”” social interactive
theory, " social- historic theory ’” a nd ”social- humanistic theory."

• Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National C~ung-Hsing Univer-

sity
國立中興大學臺中夜間 部學報（Journal of Taichung Evening School, NCHU), Vol.3(1997), 183 ~ 202

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2 （國立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:

From Cognitive to Socia 卜 Cognitive View

Lucy Chung-Kuen Yao （姚崇昆）

I. Introduction
In colleges and research institutes, under~aduate and graduate students
are often required to write papers and reports. Writing is treated as a mode
of demonstrating knowledge, and is also used by instructors as a mode of
prompting independent thinking, researching and learning. It is writing done
for academic purposes, that is, "academic writing ”( Murray, 1987) in short.
Although our understanding of the knowledge and processes that constitiute
skill in producing written text has increased significantly in recent years ’ the
views toward how writing ability is developed and what goes on in one’s
mind when one is writing in academic discourse communities are far from
being unified. The purpose of the paper is to review these writing theories
critically. It is hoped that it will shed some light on the teaching of writing
in our EFL curriculum.
Research in this area has viewed writing from two distinct perspectives:
the cognitive and the social. From a cognitive perspective, writing is viewed
as a knowledge-transforming activity in which cognitive operations are used
by a writer to (a)construct conceptual knowledge structures, (b)generate
sequences of propositions to describe and reason about one ’s conceptual
knowledge, and (c)produce coherent textual and linguistic structures to repre-
sent conceptual and propositional knowledge. A cognitive view of discourse
production focuses on the internal cognitive activities and symbolic represen-
tations of the writer as an intelligent producer and manipulator of symbolic
information. From a social perspective, writing is viewed as a communicative

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 An Ov~rview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View 3

act involving the production and use of linguistic codes in a culturally

defined communicative context. The . social view emphasizes that writers
participate in a social interaction with a community of readers and respon-
ders in a situation for which written discourse has particular socially-defined
functions (Bazerman, 1988 ; Nystrand, 1989). Taken 一together, the cognitive
and social perspectives characterize writing as a structure-building process
whose purpose is to communicate conceptual knowledge via natural language
(Frederiksen & Donin, 1991).

IT.Cognitive View
Over the last 30 years there has been a major paradigm shift in compo-
sition theory and research whereby the emphasis has moved from the prod-
uct to the process of composing. The most well-known pioneer in composing
process research is Janet Emig. Emig provided not only a ”science conscious-
ness" (Voss, 1983) and a new methodology, but also an agenda for subse-
quent research, raising issues such as pausing during composing, the role of
rereading in revision, and the paucity of substantial revision in student writ-
ing. Her monograph "The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders"(l971) led
to numerous observational studies of writers' composing behavior during the
next decade. Also through the work of Linda Flower and John Hayes, a
cognitive theory of composing was introduced to many college teachers. In
their book A Cognitive
’: Proc~ss Theory of Writing" (1981), the process of
writing is described as "a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers
orchestrate or organize during the act of composing, and these processes
have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization" (p.366). Their main
claims - that composing processes intermingle, that goals direct composing,
and that experts compose differently from inexperienced writers - have
become commonplaces of the process movement. Their research provides valu-
able information on how writers set goals, how they solve problems, and

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 4 （ 國立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

how they represent meaning to themselves. Although their work has been
criticized on the grounds that their ”think-aloud" protocols ("thinking aloud"
reports of what is happening as a subject writes) distort the very process
they are trying to study (Lunsford, 1980), their work has continued to influ-
ence the field of composition research. Through the efforts of many
researchers, the nature of the composing process, its components, and its
research methodology have become better defined.

The Cognitive Process ·Model

Writing is a complex process which involves many subprocesses. In the
light of its function, it includes three major components, namely, planning
(i.e., task-interpretation, goal-setting), translating/drafting, and revising/
editing.

pendnHnH nu
。o

--
t

Planning is a generic cognitive process that appears to encompass vari-

ous processes writers often describe as ”incubation" (Cooper & Odell, 1978).
In Flower and Hayes ’s (1984) model, planning is "the purposeful act of repre-
sen ting current meaning to oneself". It involves basic cognitive operations
such as generating information, organizing or structuring information, and
finally setting goals. Academic writing as a problem-solving process begins
with identifying or defining the problem to be solved. Writers build or repre-
sent such a problem to themselves rather than "find" it (Flower & Hayes,
1980). An initial representation is defined as "an effort to explore the whole
rhetorical problem, which we categorized into five key dimensions ...‘ topic ’,
‘ theme or purpose’,‘ form ,'‘ audience ’, and ‘ other task-specific goals ’." They
found that the less successful writers left many things undone or the problem
unattended to (Flower et al., 1989).
In planning, writers appear to draw on three executive-level strategies:

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 An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View 5

knowledge-driven planning, schema-driven planning, and constructive plan-

ning. A constructive strategy which involves setting one ’s own goals, crite-
ria, plans, and procedures in response to the task is often required in the
kind of academic writing which demands knowledge transforming skills.
Research has found that the goals that writers set for themselves during
task interpretation are linked to essay quality (Kantz, 1989) and that
purpose for writing influences planning for global as well as for local aspects
of text production (Matsuhashi, 1981).

2. Translating/Drafting
In Flower and Hayes ’s model, writing is ”translating" ideas into words
on paper. For some student writers ,’,an original text already exists"
(Sommers, 1980 ); while others seem to keep "going back to the sense of one ’s
meaning in order to go forward and discover more of what one has to say"
(Perl, 1979). With such "retrospective structuring ’” writers discover new
ideas as they write and change their plans and goals accordingly. Bizzell
(1986) criticizes the separation of ！’ pl~mning" and ”translating" in the Flower
and Hayes model. Even though Flower and Hayes allqw for language to
generate language through rereading, Bizzell claims that the separation of
words from ideas distorts the nature of composing.

3. Revising Process
Research suggests that experienced and novice writers di ff er in their
implicit theories of the revision process, in how they behave during revision,
and in the changes they are likely to make in the text. For Perl's unskilled
college writers, revising is "error hunting" (1979), that is, editing. And,
Sommer ’s student writers who hold a "thesaurus philosophy of writing"(1980),
believe that revising is re-wording t。” clean up speech" and that most prob-
lems in their essays can be solved by rewording. These students are aware
of lexical repetition, but not conceptual repetition. On the other hand, revi-

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 6 ﹛國立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

sion is not a matter of correctness, following the directions in a manual. It is

discovering meaning and clarifying it while it is being discovered (Murray,
1981). Experienced writers regard revision as the process of discovering
content, structure, and voice (Flowe, Hayes, Carey, Schriver and Stratman,
1986). In Beach ’s study (1976), the extensive revisers were able to generalize
about their plans and problems. However, more revision does not necessarily
produce better papers. In Bridwell ’s study (1980),the most extensively revised
papers were at the top and bottom of the quality scale. It seems that the
amount of revision is not the key variable. Flower and colleagues(1986)
suggest that the two key variables underlying expert performance are likely
to be ’, knowledge" and ”intention. ” A writer needs both declarative knowl-
edge about texts and conventions and procedural or how-to knowledge such
as strategies for making revisions, while intention determines whether the
writer actually 11uses" the knowledge to revise. However ，可oor ” writers do
not necessarily lac~ ” declarative knowledge ,"” grammatical rules ’” or compos-
ing processes. Poor writers have been identified as those who have not effec-
tively assimilated these processes and often interfered with their thinking by
editing their writing prematurely.

Recursiveness of the Writing Process

Composing process is viewed not just as a linear series of stages but
rather as a hierarchical set of sub-processes (Flower and Hayes, 1980). The
set of processes and subprocesses occur linearly and recursively throughout
the writing process (Bridwell, 1980). Recursiveness in writing implies that
there is a "forward-moving action that exists by virtue of a backward-
moving action" (Perl , 1980). A writer moves in a series of nonlinear move-
ments from one sub-process to another, constantly attending to matters of
content, style, and structure, solving continuous sets and subsets of complex
cognitive, lexical, syntactical, and rhetorical problems (Sommers, 1979).

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 An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View 7

However, researchers have found well-differentiated composing patterns

between people whose writing expertise was in the area of creative and liter-
ary writing (Berkenkotterm, 1983) and people whose expertise was in writ-
ing technical reports and documents (Selzer, 1983).
The cognitive model has been criticized for making strong theoretical
claims in assuming that relatively simple cognitive operations produce enor-
mously complex actions. Even though cognitive researchers have warned
that novice writers cannot be turned into experts simply by tutoring them in
the knowledge expert writers have, many writing teachers believed cognitive
research could provide a "deep structure" theory of the composing process,
which could in turn specify how writing should be taught. Furthermore, the
Flower and Hayes' model (1980) had other attractions. The placement of
"translating” after "planning" was compatible with the sequence of invention,
arrangement, and style in classical rhetoric. It also suited a popular concep-
tion that language comes after ideas are formed - a. conception found in
everyday metaphors that express ideas as objects placed in containers.

ID.Social View
Writing, like other acts of literacy, is not universal but social in nature
and cannot be removed from culture. Giroux (1988) accused the cognitive
view of neglecting the content of writing and downplaying conflicts inherent
in the act of writing. Pedagogies assuming a cognitive view tend to overlook
differences in language use among students of different social classes,
genders, and ethnic backgrounds. What Giroux sees as a fundamental flaw of
cognitivist research is the isolation of part from whole. Johns (1986) also
warns that "we may be doing our students a disservice by strictly adhering
to all tenets of this [ process ] approach" (p.251), and indeed much of the 叮iti­

cism leveled against an overconcentration on process comes from scholars

working within the genre-based framework of English for Academic

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8 （國立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

Purposes (EAP) and from a systemic-functional linguistic perspective

(Gosdon, 1995). One central assumption of the social camp is that human
language (including writing) can be understood only from the perspective of
a society rather than a single individual. The focus of a social view of writ-
ing, therefore, is not on bow the social situation influences the individual, but
on how the individual is a constituent of a culture. Under the umbrella term
of "social view," writing has been discussed with different emphases.

Social-Cognitive Theory
A social-cognitive perspective on writing tries to account for the cogni-
tive operations and representations that underlie the social process of commu-
nicating meaning through discourse in a specific social context. The individ-
ual, a socially situated reader, writer, or learner, is engaged in the literate
act. One of the important proponents is Linda Flower, who started with ”a
cognitive theory ” (1981), gradually turned her attention to ”cognition in
context ’” and recently publicized the ”social cognitive theory of writing"
(1994). Flower ’ s goal is to develop ’, social cognitive accounts of how individ-
ual students, as thinking personal agents operating within and shaped by a
social and cultural fabric, learn. And why they do not learn" (p.33). Thus
meaning construction is viewed as ’both a private [cognitive] and a commu-
f

nal [social ] act ”( Flower, 1994). She takes it as her task to show that the
cognitive and the social - cognition and context 一 interact in the construe-
tion of meaning, that each shapes and is shaped by the other.
Transition into a "discourse community" is seen as a social-cognitive
event. To enter such a community, students need to learn the textual conven-
tions, the expectations, the habits of mind, and methods of thought that
allow one to operate in an academic conversation. And, in some cases, they
will need to learn a body of topic knowledge as well. To this task, students
bring a wealth of prior knowledge, past practices, and tacit ass山nptions

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 An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View 9

about school writing - some of which support this transition and some of
which complicate it Conceptualizing this transition as a social-cognitive act
of entering a discourse emphasizes both the problem-solving effort of a
student learning to negotiate a new situation and the role the situation will
play in what is learned. Learning to negotiate a new discourse calls for a
rapid growth in strategic knowledge, defined in terms of three key elements:
the goals writers set for themselves, the strategies they invoke, and the
metacognitive awareness they bring to both these acts.
In the social-cognitive tradition, case studies of academic writers have
revealed the composing patterns and strategies that the specific tasks called
for in different academic settings. These studies emphasize the differences of
each case, but together they help us picture the larger strategic repertoire
students are developing in the disciplines. This repertoire includes not only
text conventions, rhetorical patterns, and domain 可 specific organizing ideas,
but also strategies for reading and writing and (in some cases) meta-level
strategies for interprding what these different discourses expect. Strategic
knowledge is seen as a response not only to the immediate environment
context of the class and the assignment, but to the larger social-cultural
contexts reflected by one ’s prior experiences and knowledge. A combination
of protocols, interviews, and texts helps build a picture of strategic knowl-
edge in action, revealing patterns in the ways students engage with
academic discourse and suggesting paths by whick their powers could
develop. Although Flower and her colleagues recognized that ”Academic
discourse is not the result of a unified cognitive or social process, but is
made up of a variety of context-specific practices, some of which are associ-
ated with disciplines and genres," they argued for commonality.
During academic writing process, reading and writing are not only
cognitive, constructive processes but also social, communicative processes
between writers and readers. Two important schools of thought concerned

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10 f 國立中興大學臺中夜間部學報 〉

with these issues are "social constructionism ” and ”social interactionism"

(Nystrand, 1990). Social constructionism concerns itself with the large-scale
processes of writers and readers as members of discourse and interpretive
communities ; relevant research includes work by Bartholomae, Bizzell, Bruf-
fee, and Faigley. Social interactionism concerns itself with dyadic interac-
tions of particular writers and readers ; relevant studies include research by
Bakhtin, Nystrand, and Tierney. To a great extent, social constructionism
concerns itself most immediately with communities of writers and readers,
and social interactionism concerns itself with the individual interactions of
writers and readers.

Social Constructionism
In the past few years ’ writing researchers influenced by post-structural-
ist theories of language have brought notions of discourse communities to
discussions of composing. Patricia Bizzell and David Bartholomae, for exam-
ple, have found such ideas advantageous in examining the writing of college
students. Bartholomae (1985) claims that writing in college is difficult for
inexperienced writers not because they are forced to make the transition
from "writer-based" t。” reader-based" prose but because they lack the privi-
leged language of the academic community. When students· write in an
academic discipline, they write in reference to texts that define the scholarly
activities of interpreting and reporting in that discipline.
In general, social constructionism treats writing as the informed activ-
ity of members of particular discourse communities (Faigley, 1985). In this
view, the community is said to inform its speaker ’s discourse, which reflects
and instantiates the group ’s ideology. This means that social constructionism
generally concerns itself with the relationship of writers and readers by
noting the global effects that groups have on their individual members
(Nystrand, 1982). In writng research, both Bartholomae (1 985) and Shaugh-

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 An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View 11

nessy (1977) interpret the difficulties of basic writers as a problem of social-

ization since learning to write entails mastering the ways of speaking of the
academic community. In a similar way, academic writing problems of L2
student writers have also been visualized as problems of socializing into the
discourse community.
Studies of how students learn to write in disciplines (e.g.,Berkenkotter,
Huckin, & Ackerman, 1988) have generally treated enculturation as issue of
transmission. This structuralist formulation treats disciplines as abstract,
uniform bodies of knowledge that can be passed from expert members to
novices (Prior, 1994). In contrast to this view, socio-historic theories
(e.g.,Bakhtin, 198l)view learning as concrete and historically situated and
communities as diverse and differentiated.

Social-Interactive Theory
Writng is to be read. When one writes, one needs to establish a mutual
frame of reference (i.e. ，川a temporarily shared social reality") between writer
and reader (Nystrand, 1989, p.79). In order to communicate with the reader
successfully, the skilled writer situates him/her by establishing topic, tone,
and so on - metadiscoursal elements that in effect provide the reader with
instructions on how to interpret the text. Skilled writing is "continuously
constrained by the writer ’s sense of reciprocity with her readers" (p.78). The
writer ’s purpose is constrained in a way by her reader ’s expectations of
purposes. It is in just such matters that social and cognitive factors interact
in composing. A given text is functional to the extent that it balances the
reciprocal needs of the writer for expression and of the reader for comprehen-
sion. According to Nystrand (1989),

Communicative homeostasis is the normal condition of grammatical

texts .... Texts are not just the result (product) of writing but also
the medium of communication whose features are best understood

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 12 （國立中興大學畫中夜間部學報〉

for their capacity to bridge writer and reader interests and

purposes. A social-interactive view of writing underscores the
quintessential mutuality of written communication.(p.82)

Recent reflections on Vygotsky ’s theory have challenged earlier transla-

tions of his work that represented the ”zone of proximal development ”的 the

dyadic scaffolding a generic expert provides for a generic novice, an interac-

tion whose sole function is the transmission of conceptual knowledge. Minick,
Stone, and Forman (1993) argue for a view of learning that is simultaneously
more personal, interpeson剖， and institutional.

Bakhtin ’s Socio-historic Theory

Bakhtin ’s socio-historic theory has influenced many researchers such as
Herrington (1992) and Prior (1991, 1995). It is a theory grounded in the
concrete utterances of particular people in particular situations rather than in
formal abstract patterns of language. From Bakhtin ’s perspective, words are
dynamic, negotiable spaces within which particualr personal and social signifi-
cations converge, clash, and co-exist. For Bakhtin,

The word in language is half someone else ’s. It becomes "one ’s

own" only when the speaker populates it with his own intentions,
his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his
own, semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of
appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal
language (it is not after all, out of . a dictionary that the speaker
gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people ’s mouths, in
other people ’s contexts, serving other people ’s intentions ...
(pp.293-294)

In contrast to notions of self-expression and transmission, Bakhtin ’s

dialogic notion of ownership is grounded in an understanding that both the

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 An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View 13

person and the community are diverse, developing, and interpenetrated.

Bakhtin's notion of "authoritative” and ”internally persuasive刊 discourses,

emphasizing both the negotiable dynamics of the word and the ways such
negotiations reflect and shape the development of the person, has offered a
rich construct for the analysis of (teacher) response-(student) revision connec-
tions, and a useful way to reconceptualize the issues of ownership.
"Authoritative discourse" can be defined as language that is associated with
some form of social authority and is relatively closed, that is,”not well
understood or integrated with the person ’s consciousness ”( Prior,1995, p.298).
On the other hand, the internally persuasive word" is "half-ours and half-
’,

someone else's ＇’ (Bakhti 口， p.345 ）﹔ as such it is open, negotiable, and interac-·

tive. For Bakhtin, what is internally persuasive is the dynamic product of
interactions between an active evolving person and a series of concrete expe-
riences in social and natural worlds. Thus in Bakhtin ’s socio-historic theory,
academic writng can be viewed as the negotiation of the teacher ’s authorita-
tive and the student ’s internally persuasive discourses, a central mechanism
of disciplinary enculturation, as others' words and worlds are slowly interwo-
ven into the evolving formation of a particular person.

Socio-humanistic Theory
Contrary to what social constructionists (Bartholomae and Bizzell) have
said, the goal of the expressivists - to help students grow in their ability to
understand their own experiences - is not compatible with learning disci-
plinary language. "Students do not learn very well unless they have an
emotional connection. If they cannot relate their own lives to philosophy,
their familiar languages to the new one, the papers they write will be no
more than products of a mind game" (McCarthy, 1987). Peter Elbow (1973)
believes that the work of writers must reflect their personal experiences.
Good teaching is building a trusting community, a context that facilitates the

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14 〈國 立中與大學臺中夜間部學報 〉

growth of the student writer. Some student writers need such a trusting envi-
ronment in order to present their views ; others need it in order to que_stion
their views. In the expressivist context, students are 市mpowered, not by
suppressing their own voices to mimic the disciplinary language, but by
struggling to use it for their own ends, by groping to interweave it with
their familiar discourses."
A text on a particular topic always has "off-stage voices" for what has
previously been written about that topic. Thus a social view of writing
moves beyond the expressivist contention that the individual discovers the
self through language and beyond the cognitivist position that an individual
constructs reality through language. In a social view, any effort to write
about the self or reality always comes in relation to previous texts.
A line of research taking a social view of composing develops from the
tradition of ethnography. Ethnographic methodology in the 1970s and 1980s
has been used to examine the immediate communities in which writers learn
to write 一 the family and the classroom. In sum, writing processes are,
”contextual rather than abstract, local rather than general, dynamic rather
than invariant" (Faigley, 1986).
A substantial body of research examining the social processes of writing
in an academic discourse community now exists in the sociology of science.
This literature taken as a whole challenges the assumption that scientific
texts contain autonomous presentations of facts ; instead, the texts are "active
social tools in the complex interactions of a research community" (Bazerman,
1988, p.3). Donald McCloskey (1983) says that "the scientific paper 峙， after

all, a literary genre, with an actual author, an implied author, an implied

reader, a history, and a form 叫 p.505).

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An Overview of Writing Theory and Research:From Cognitive to Social-Cognitive View 15

N.Conclusion
Writing theories have presented us writing teachers and researchers a
better picture of the academic writing and influenced our teaching practices.
An important outcome of writing research is the realization that writing
must be treated simultaneously as a cognitive and social activity, and that
these approaches may differ to a certaim extent, but they are mutually rein-
forcing rather than incompatible. Given that we now have a promising theo-
retical base, it seems reasonable to reconceptualize writing (i.e., academic
writing) as a social act of negotiating meaning through ”dialogues ” between
the teacher-reader and the student-writer. From this social-cognitive
perspective, teachers and students will find writing a more 11meaningful" and
effective mode of learning.

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20 ﹛國立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

寫作理論與研究之回顧：

從「認知 j 到「社會認知 J 觀

姚崇昆＊

中文摘要

「寫作」，在大學及研究所之學街環境中，是一種常見的學習方

式。但是很少老師與學生對「學術性寫作」有真正的暸解。近年來，寫作
研究與理論在國外蓬勃發展。本文主音在介紹與評論寫作理論，籍此提供

寫作老師一些最新的觀念，希望有助於國內寫作教學的改進。

本文從「認知」與「社會」兩層面探討學術性寫作。「認知」理論主

要討論作者個人內在的「認知過程」，其中包括「計劃」’「起稿」’

「訂正」等過程。持「社會觀」者則認為學術性寫作是師生溝通、建造知

識的工具，是社會性行為，深受寫作環境的影響。「社會觀」涵蓋以下學
派：「社會認知觀」’「社會建構論」，「社會互動論」’「社會歷史

論」與「社會人本論」。

綜合地說，「認知觀」與「社會觀」兩者並不互斥，而是互補。換言

之，唯有同時從寫作的「認知」（作者個人的寫作過程）與「社會性」

（作者與寫作環境的互動）探討，我們才可能對寫作有較完整的暸解。

關鍵詞：學術性寫作、認知﹔寫作過程、社會認知觀、社會建構論、社會互

動論、社會歷史論、社會人本論

．國立中興大學 外文系教授

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