Thursday, October 11, 2007

Bartholomae's response to Flower and Hayes

Bartholomae seems to disagree with Flower and Hayes on how the processes of discovery, creativity and invention take place in the writing process. For Flower and Hayes they seem to be internal tasks where energy is devoted to the subject itself. Bartholomae makes the point that the professor writing for Seventeen magazine must also consider the audience reading the magazine and the content of the magazine. He says the writer must know where his piece will fit in the history of what has been written. The professor will likely compose his article much differently for the magazine than he would for an academic journal. While Seventeen may not have elaborate or complicated conventions for it's writing style, articles in the magazine will still have a unique presentation. It is useful from Flower and Hayes's article to note that a break through came when the professor identified the type of people he was writing for, teenage girls. Unfortunately we see very little of the writing that comes after the author has developed his plan.
I agree with the criticism Bartholomae presented in his article. While it would be foolish to completely throw away the work the Flower and Hayes did in their study it seems like they failed to take the next step after learning what happened during the mental part of writing for their author. I think we've mentioned a few times that different situations where a person is writing will impact the way that a person presents their argument. Looking at how a writer crafts their argument based on addressed and invoked audiences might be another place that we find an author not simply planning based on ideas in his/her head but taking into account outside factors as well.

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