Abstract
In 2008, Written Communication published its first Special Issue on “Methodologies for the Study of Written Communication.” In the Call for Papers for this year’s Special Issue, “New Methods for the Study of Written Communication,” we noted that [the 2008 issue] included important conceptual pieces by Peter Smagorinsky and Charles Bazerman, as well as rich and detailed articles by Theresa Lillis and Tiane Donahue on the methods of ethnography and textual analysis, respectively. These pieces have been influential in the methodological discussions of the past five years in writing studies, as well as heavily used in graduate seminars on methods.
Rigorous and expertly handled methodology remains a hallmark of this journal five years later, as does its commitment to providing writing researchers with a forum for exploring both important research problems and the methodologies to address those problems. While the 2008 issue focused primarily on methodologies—the epistemological assumptions and worldviews that surround and shape specific methods—this 2013 issue focuses primarily on new or updated methods—analytic tools and procedures used in the context of particular research problems. The authors of the five articles in this issue all share the goal of illustrating and arguing for new strategies and tools for studying writing, although their particular approaches range widely, from discourse analysis to classroom studies to keystroke logging.
In “Discourse-Based Methods Across Texts and Semiotic Modes: Three Tools for Micro-Rhetorical Analysis,” John Oddo provides what he calls a “micro-rhetorical toolkit,” a three-pronged framework that combines discourse-analytic techniques from systemic-functional linguistics, multimodal text analysis, and micro-intertextual comparison. Illustrating the use of this toolkit through an analysis of the recontextualization, by CBS News, of a 2002 letter written by George Tenet, Oddo argues for adding his discourse-analytic tools to the repertoire of methods used in the rhetorical analysis of written communication. Oddo situates his article into a contemporary context, in which objects of study are increasingly intersemiotic and intertextual and bring with them the need for new, very fine-grained, defensible analytic techniques.
While Oddo provides a prospective account of bringing together disparate methods, Kate T. Anderson, in “Contrasting Systemic Functional Linguistic and Situated Literacies Approaches to Multimodality in Literacy and Writing Studies,” takes a retrospective view, examining how writing scholars have used two different theoretical approaches to studying multimodality: systemic-functional linguistics and theories of situated literacies. Analyzing two recent empirical pieces published in Written Communication, Anderson illustrates methodological tensions and analyzes how these two often-complementary approaches differ in their treatment of multimodal texts and practices, as well as in analytic methods, research designs, and techniques of data collection.
Working within a sociocultural framework, Jennifer VanDerHeide and George E. Newell present “instructional chaining” as an analytic method for examining writing. In their article, “Instructional Chains as a Method for Examining the Teaching and Learning of Argumentative Writing in Classrooms,” VanDerHeide and Newell illustrate the use of instructional chaining and show its usefulness in both quantitative and qualitative studies of classroom teaching and learning. Ultimately, these authors argue that instructional chaining illustrates the link between teachers’ instruction and their students’ writing performance.
The next two articles explore the implications of new digital tools for studying writing. In “Online Survey Design and Development: A Janus-Faced Approach,” Claire Lauer, Michael McLeod, and Stuart Blythe argue that prepackaged digital survey platforms are not sufficient for writing researchers. Rather, scholars should use the latest online tools in a Janus-faced approach that considers both the participant and the researcher perspective to ensure higher completion rates and the collection of rich data. They pose questions for researchers to consider during survey design, and they illustrate the usefulness of their approach with an example study on professionals’ writing lives.
In “Keystroke Logging in Writing Research: Using Inputlog to Analyze and Visualize Writing Processes,” Mariëlle Leijten and Luuk Van Waes provide an overview of keystroke logging methods in writing research and then examine one specific keystroke logging tool, Inputlog. The authors argue that while keystroke logging is useful for ecological data collection, it remains difficult to connect fine-grained logging data on writers’ cognitive processes. Leijten and Van Waes illustrate the complementarities of keystroke logging and other research tools, and—using data from their own study of writing from multiple sources—explain how the program can be used in new ways by writing researchers.
The final article for this Special Issue (to appear in the October 2013 issue) is Anne Haas Dyson’s “The Case of the Missing Childhoods: Methodological Notes for Composing Children in Writing Studies.” She examines researcher positionality, data collection decisions, a socially embedded view of literacy, and a global consciousness to compellingly argue that writing researchers need to understand children not as learners on a path to adult behavior, but as children – who they are now, in the life spaces of childhoods shared with other children.
We have been encouraged by the interest shown in the topic of methods for studying writing, based on the number and diversity of the manuscripts that authors submitted in response to the Call for Papers, and we have been especially excited by the thoughtful and productive work being done in the areas of multimodal, classroom, and digital research, as illustrated by the pieces in this issue. We hope that researchers can use the methodological advances put forth by the articles to continue to pose and address important research problems in writing studies. We hope as well that these pieces inspire the further development and adaptation of methods for studying written communication.