Culture, cognition, and context: Situated literacy practices of L1 and L2 writing programs.

摘要

Drawing on the sociocultural approaches of activity theory (e.g., Vygotsky, Engestrom) and practice theory (e.g., Bourdieu, Lave) that emphasize the importance of understanding literate activity in relation to situated sociocultural contexts in which literacy events occur, my dissertation investigates how situated disciplinary perspectives shape the literacy practices of an L1 and an L2 writing program at one university. The dissertation reports a longitudinal ethnographic study drawing on my participant observation as a student, writing instructor, and researcher in the two programs. Based on the data collected for the past four years (field notes, interviews, institutional and instructional documents, and student writing samples), the study examines how literacy practices are embedded in intellectual histories, inquiry paradigms, and institutional structures and how writing mediates students’ acculturation into disciplinary ways of thinking, conducting research, and writing a research paper. By tracing important threads embodied in the institutional and pedagogical practices of the programs, my study also illustrates the ways that differing disciplinary contexts create institutional boundaries between the programs as well as the ways the local boundaries reflect and participate in making a division in writing scholarship and a division of labor between L1 and L2 writing teachers. The study shows ways that the L1 program (in its design and in classroom practices) is particularly shaped by the humanities, cultural studies, and writing studies, while the L2 program is likewise shaped by linguistics, applied linguistics, TESOL, and English for Academic Purposes. In L1 and L2 writing studies, there has been little empirical research that explores the complex dialectic processes that shape the situated literacy practices operating in and between L1 and L2 college writing programs. This research on the literacy practices of two writing programs aims to prompt critical reflection on, and ultimately innovation in, the writing programs at this and other universities as well as contributing to a meta-disciplinary awareness of the relationship between L1 and L2 writing studies in the US.