In the late 70s, early 80s, "cognitive" theorists such as Linda Flower borrowed from cognitive psychology to look at how the individual mind develops writing ability. This seemed a more promising and "scientifically rigorous" extension of early anecdotal process theories of Donald Murray and others. This line of research was attacked by Bizzell and others for its lack of attention paid to the entire context of communication and in particular the social interaction of the individual and community. Later theories, such as "distributed cognition" by Dias et al. try to balance the individual/social binary. The promise of distributed cognition is that the activity of a community can be manifested in its documents and thus gives some creditability to textual analysis as a viable method for understanding the social activity of people (since our field threw out cognitive models in the 80s). Some people still work in the cognitive realm, as evidenced by the Kellogg article I included, another article you didn't mention in your blog ;-)
And for Cagles blog:
I liked your comparison of Flower and Hayes, and Kellogg. They are both looking at cognitive development, but Flower and Hayes are looking at writing process as an act and Kellogg is looking more longnitudinal. That's a good summation.
Regarding your rationale for knowing grammar (grammar 1 is it, according to Hartwell?), it makes sense to a degree. However, I still tend to think its the rules of Hartwell's grammar 4, which are really about style, that move the writer along the basic to advanced continuum. For example, the rule not to end a sentence with a preposition. Ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct in grammar 1, but more of a violation of grammar 4 because it is a stylistic technique to eliminate wordiness.
The models/theories of "distributed cognition" of Dias et al. and genre activity systems of Russell can be contrasted with the "inner directed" theories of Flower and Hayes, Kellogg, and to some extend Ong. "Distributed cognition" are meant to explain the complex interaction of individual and social, but we might question how useful they are to developing indivdiual writers.
And for Cagles blog:
I liked your comparison of Flower and Hayes, and Kellogg. They are both looking at cognitive development, but Flower and Hayes are looking at writing process as an act and Kellogg is looking more longnitudinal. That's a good summation.
Regarding your rationale for knowing grammar (grammar 1 is it, according to Hartwell?), it makes sense to a degree. However, I still tend to think its the rules of Hartwell's grammar 4, which are really about style, that move the writer along the basic to advanced continuum. For example, the rule not to end a sentence with a preposition. Ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct in grammar 1, but more of a violation of grammar 4 because it is a stylistic technique to eliminate wordiness.
The models/theories of "distributed cognition" of Dias et al. and genre activity systems of Russell can be contrasted with the "inner directed" theories of Flower and Hayes, Kellogg, and to some extend Ong. "Distributed cognition" are meant to explain the complex interaction of individual and social, but we might question how useful they are to developing indivdiual writers.
