What Writing Does and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices

Introducing textual analysis as it applies to composition research, this volume is divided into two parts - Part 1 focuses on the various approaches to analyzing texts and Part 2 turns more explicitly to considering the processes of writing, exploring textual practices and their contexts, and examining what writing does. Each chapter has been structured to provide answers to a specified set of questions, and includes: a preview of the chapter’s content and purpose; details on the types of data and questions for which the analysis is best used; an introduction to basic concepts, referring to key theoretical and research studies in the area; examples from educational materials, student writing and other texts; one or more applied analyses, with a clear statement of procedures for analysis and illustrations of a particular sample of data; and a brief summary, suggestions for additional readings, and a set of activities. This work is appropriate for courses on text analysis and composition research methods, and should prove useful to researchers performing text analysis.