“God’s Absence During Trauma Took Its Toll”: Dialogic Tracing of Literate Activity and Lifespan Trajectories of Semiotic (Un)becoming

Abstract

Scholarship on trajectories of becoming with literate activities is of growing interest in Writing Studies, particularly in accounts of writing grounded in cultural-historical and dialogic approaches, and in lifespan accounts of writing. The research reported here contributes to those conversations by tracing trajectories of becoming that are dynamically nonlinear, necessarily messy, and predicated on exceptionally complex streams of times, places, life experiences, artifacts, and literate activities. I draw from one case study with Alex, once a deeply faithful Christian who, over complex trajectories of semiotic becoming, lost her faith and was left to make sense of drastic perspectival shifts, in large part, through literate activity. Weaving analyses of talk across 2 years, 15 interviews, and multiple texts and textual interactions, I trace a narrative of Alex’s trajectories of unbecoming/becoming. I argue that Writing Studies needs flexible, theoretically grounded methods to trace becoming across lifespan trajectories and I address this imperative by showcasing one approach— dialogic animation protocols coupled with dialogic analyses.

Voices in Dialogue: Taking Polyphony in Academic Writing Seriously

“…These kinds of methodological approaches open up a wide field of possibilities for further research on the polyphonic meaning of a text and its author’s identity. Future studies can take up the trend to methodologically “propel” activities with a significant intrapersonal polyphony like writing and reading into new dialogical situations and develop and refine methodologies to study the dialogical refractions and reconstructions that happen there (recently, e.g., Olinger, 2020; Ware, 2022). My own analysis of Johanna’s material illustrates how in the ongoing social dialogue the voices of others become interiorized, and how—as “social contact to oneself”—they become intrinsic to the writer’s academic writing practice and her sense of self in a social field.…”

Tracing Discursive Turbulence as Intra-active Pedagogical Change and Becoming

“…Analysis of data was integrative (Prior, 2004; Ware, 2022), drawing together data from multiple sources (e.g., interviews and artifacts) and highlighting patterns and intertextual links across data. An example of integrative analysis across data is showcased in the findings below.…”

“…In this article, we take up questions not only of pedagogical change but also of the complex, emergent, entangled, and embodied character of pedagogical becoming (Prior, 2018; Ware, 2022). We introduce the notion of discursive turbulence , an emergent quality of situated activity stemming from the continual mixing of discourses that can manifest in myriad, complex ways, including fits-and-starts of pedagogical (re)development, mismatched discursive alignments, and affective signs of struggle and intensity (e.g., uncertainty, doubt and unease, elation).…”

“…Approaches that follow up with participants and trace their development of writing pedagogical practices over several years (such as Anson, 2002;Fishman & McCarthey, 2000;Walvoord et al, 1997) are less documented in the literature. With desired impacts often relying on instructors making pedagogical changes on their own, questions of how pedagogical changes are decided upon and implemented, and how to effectively support that process, which we call "pedagogical becoming" (Prior, 2018;Ware, 2022), deserve greater attention.…”

A Taxonomy of Life Writing: Exploring the Functions of Meaningful Self-Sponsored Writing in Everyday Life

“…For instance, as of May 2023, in the last 17 issues, Written Communication has published 91 articles, addressing educational contexts (63.7%), professional/workplace contexts (13.2%), methodological or theoretical issues (13.2%), public rhetoric (6.5%), and self-sponsored writing (4.3%). These articles focused on self-sponsored writing include advocacy writing (Walsh, 2019), writing with aphasia (Miller, 2019), and religious literate activity (Ware, 2021). The Meaningful Writing Project (Eodice et al, 2016) likewise calls attention to the blind spot in researchers’ view when it comes to university contexts: “What counts as literate activity [in higher education] is so narrow that we miss much, perhaps most, of what makes composing in our students’ literacy lives (in all our lives) so rich, so full, and so meaningful” (p. 134).…”