The complementary individuality and sociality of writing: A constructivist and genre theory complex perspective

Abstract

This monograph aims to supplement an imbalance in composition studies: we have become too focused on the social aspects of writing to the detriment of the individual's role. After the social turn, as a response to the empiricist theories of the ‘80s, the field equated contextual influence with contextual dependency (Russell & Dryer, 2017). I advocate for greater complementarity in our understanding of the two dimensions by proposing a framework based on rhetorical genre studies and constructivist stage development. Both theories bear a complementary relationship where genre theory helps us understand how social action is organized through discourse, and stage constructivism explains the meaning-making structures that guide individuals' actions in their different social contexts. Using them together can give us a more thorough understanding of our students' current meaning-making stages and how they align with the demands of our courses. To provide a metatheoretical language and coordinate the theories' joint use, I will use Edgar Morin's (1988, 1992, 2008) principles of complex thought. Thinking complexly offers a blueprint for recognizing, embracing, and engaging in conversations on multiple levels, allowing epistemological distance and proximity as necessary to interrogate the individual, the social, and both. Complex thought is not a discipline but an epistemological orientation that allows for communication between constructivism and genre theory in this framework. In the first chapter, I will overview the main principles of stage constructivism and genre theory. In the second chapter, I introduce the language of complex thought and demonstrate its usefulness by using it in association with latest developments in the field of composition—genre systems. Then, I will outline the framework joining stage constructivism and genre theory and use it in chapter three to analyze the writing of three students in the first two assignments in a first-year composition course. These are the literacy narrative and summary units, which show varying levels of alignment between what the assignments require and what students can do. To conclude this monograph, I will suggest epistemological and pedagogical implications of the framework I have outlined.