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Reading and Writing Ideas As Well As Words

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How the Language Really Works:
The Fundamentals of Critical Reading and Effective Writing
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The Human Author

The Imagined Author

The Reader as Author

The Three Authors and their Implications for Reading

All written texts have three authors.

First, and most obviously, there is the human being who wrote the text. Second, we have an imagined “author” to whom we attribute intent and purpose in our attempt to understand a text. Finally, each and every reader is “author” of his or her own understanding of any given text.

Each of these personas has implications for reading. More to the point, each has implications for misreading a text, especially when critical reading is desired.

THE HUMAN AUTHOR

Writing starts with a living human author. The standard model of effective communication also includes an audience, a purpose, and an intended message.

When author and audience are known to each other -- as with speech -- the model holds fairly well. In such circumstances, however, communication takes place within a social context, not simply on the page.

Texts present a different situation. While prior knowledge of an author can aid understanding of a text, it can just as likely lead to misreading. Any assumptions about the meaning of a text based on an author's prior texts is at best speculative, and at worst denies that author the ability to express new ideas.

Questions about the real author and his or her purpose in writing a particular text can be answered only by talking with the living author. Even then we cannot be entirely sure what an author truly intended. An author might not be forthcoming about, or even aware of, his or her real purpose. And whatever the author's intentions, he or she may not have successfully communicated an intended meaning within the text.

THE IMAGINED AUTHOR

When readers have no personal knowledge of the actual person who wrote a text they tend to create an imagined "author" as an aid in their interpretation of that text.

Writing is a purposeful act of human communication, and so it is a useful heuristic, if nothing else, to imagine an author behind a text. But here again there are inherent dangers.

When we imagine purpose or intent we risk risks letting our imagination go beyond the evidence within the text itself. If our notion of a “virtual” author is based on textual evidence, why not simply refer to the evidence itself? The goal should not be to imagine the intention of someone who is not present, but to make as best sense as we can of the words upon the page and in so doing to recognize techniques for conveying information and ideas that we might employ in our own writing.

Ultimately, any focus on an interpersonal communication between an author and reader leads to assumptions and speculation about motive and intent. Above all, it draws the interpretive effort away from the text itself.

THE READER AS AUTHOR

In the process of reading, readers become the author of their understanding. Their understanding is their own creation, based on the evidence they find, the knowledge they bring to their reading, and the inferences they draw.

Critical readers take possession of a text in two ways—both involving recognition of the nature of the material before them.

First, critical readers go beyond recognizing “what a text says” to seeing “what a text does,” to recognizing and describing the text as a document and tracing the development and support of ideas. Secondly, critical readers recognize and classify the nature of the ingredients of the text. This occurs primarily in recognizing 1) what the examples are examples of and 2) how the nature of the terminology present shapes perceptions and understanding.

Consider an example: (from Jean Dresden Grambs's Women over Forty:Visions and Realities, rev. ed., 1989)

The changing status of women has been one of the most dramatic of the social upheavals of the second half of the 20th century. Women are entering the labor force earlier and remaining at work for more years, even if they have young children. More women are divorced and heading their own households. More women are going to college, obtaining professional and advanced degrees, and seeking careers in law, medicine, and business.
The question, of course, is: What is the nature of the new status of women? To see that we must see what the examples are examples of? And here we might notice a pattern of empowerment, of embracing new positions and responsibilities. Now consider a different set of examples:
The changing status of women has been one of the most dramatic of the social upheavals of the second half of the 20th century. Women are entering the labor force earlier and remaining at work for more years, even if they have young children. More women are divorced and heading their own households.More women are experiencing bankruptcies, often from the loss of health insurance following divorce.
Only the last example has been changed. But now we have a pattern of increased financial and social pressures that are anything but empowering.

Critical reading is not passive reading. Readers must find and classify patterns of elements and infer their overall affect on the meaning of the text as a whole. In so doing all readers become authors of their own understanding.


Related Topics
Critical Reading, at its Core, Plain and Simple
Critical Reading v. Critical Thinking

Choices: The Ingredients of Texts
Inference: Reading Ideas as Well as Words
Three Ways to Read and Discuss Texts


Reading / Writing
Critical Reading
Inference
Choices
Ways to Read
Grammar

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