ABSTRACT

Grounded in models of writing and learning that emphasize texts and transmission (see chaps. 1 and 5), studies of connections between written response and textual revision (e.g., Beason, 1993; Michaels, 1987; Onore, 1989; Sperling & Freedman, 1987; Ziv, 1984) have generally focused on how student writers interpret responses and how they act on them as displayed by changes in subsequent texts. The notion of mediated authorship treats the basic terms of such interactions (the people, their words, and their texts) as dialogically open and interpenetrated. It asks what footings the speaker/writer takes to her words, whose voices are present in an utterance, and how those voices are being (re)appropriated. These questions work to foreground developmental issues, particularly the ways such textual exchanges mediate the historical (re)production of persons and communities of practice.