The Texture of Learning to Write in the 21st CenturyDeborah BrandtUniversity of Wisconsin-MadisonUSA

Why is writing on the rise?

Knowledge has become the primary ingredient in our products and managing knowledge has become the primary process in our work.

“I write the entire day. My whole job is on paper.”

mortgage

broker

“I write all day. I may work on as many as fifty texts of one sort or another.”

historical society librarian

“Seventy per cent of my job is writing.”

corporate manager

“At least seventy-five per cent of my time.”

government analyst

“Eighty per cent of my time.”

communications

specialist

“Conservatively, a fourth to a third of my time.”

insurance

underwriter

“Fifty per cent of the day.”

social worker

“Four hours a day.”

police

officer

“Twenty per cent of my time.”

bookkeeper

“I spend a lot of time writing.”

nurse

“If you think about what I do for a living, I type on my computer. And I’m not just writing software. I’m writing words to people. Even when I’m on the phone I’m writing.”

software

engineer/

entrepreneur

When texts are the main products, writing emerges as a dominant form of labor.

As a practical matter, writing is becoming the basis of literacy development across the lifespan.

When literacy first spread as a mass skill, it was in the form of reading, not writing.

Reading came to say something about a person’s goodness, worthiness, or standing in society.

In many societies, reading is associated with the rights and duties of citizenship.

Unlike reading, mass writing came to be associated with work.

Writing has always been less for good than it has been a good.

Writing can be disruptive to power.

By law and custom, the people’s writing is not as protected as reading.

What happens when literacy serves economic production and competition?

What does it mean to experience literacy as a form of labor?

How might new demands on our literacy change the ways we read and write?

Reading is being subordinated to writing.

“When I’m reading I’m always looking for little nuggets of information….

IT security

expert

…. “I am more of a writer than a reader.”

attorney

....“But I don’t skim when I am writing.”

college

student/

researcher

… “Most of the time, I’d much rather be writing than reading.”

author

Writing competes with reading in people’s lives.

When people get used to being writers, their appetites for reading can change.

…. “It’s like when you ride in a car, you don’t pay attention. But as soon as you get your driver’s license you are much more attentive.”

journalist

“When I became a writer…. I started reading more challenging things.”

blogger

We read and write among others who also write.

We do not own what we write.

In the workplace, employers own the texts that are written by their employees.

There is no ring of privacy or protection around the writing that most people do as a matter of daily living.

….“It’s not me.”

housing specialist

…. I’d want to express but I wasn’t going to do something that was going to make me look bad and then have my employer on me….”

insurance

underwriter

….”You can hope [the employer] doesn’t get his way….. But my job is to make the best case for his position.”

government

analyst

… “I try to make certain that I’m not saying what I’m feeling.”

speechwriter

Who we are is not supposed to matter when we write for hire (even though it does!).

Everyday writing can be regulated, monitored, inspected, and confiscated by authorities.

…. “They’d spend a couple of weeks poring over all of our records and then they would interrogate us….”

nurse

…. “Here’s my idea. Are you going to let me get away with it?”

publicist

…. “If our review board sees our writing veering into policy, they don’t like that. They won’t let us publish it.

government scientist

… “As you study for the exams for this profession, you understand what the regulations are and you adapt your writing skills to them.”

financial

advisor

Writing is much less private and protected compared to reading.

As everyday writers compose in contexts of detachment, regulation, surveillance, and control, their overall language habits can be affected.

We may not own what we write but we remain responsible for it.

“I always am making sure I don’t write the wrong thing….

bookkeeper

…. “For half an hour you think about a word.”

drug clinic

intake worker

…. “Writing speeches gives me access to the trials and tribulations of leadership.”

speechwriter

Responsibility for writing encourages human growth.

…. “It’s part of your responsibility to understand [the interpretations of others.]”

social worker

…. “Writing is the way that I interject myself into the situation, through the words that I use, the way that I structure the sentences….”

police

officer

… “ I’m not a creative person but if I haven’t written in a while I feel I have lost the ability to see relevant things.”

attorney

Writing is self-forming.

Writing is the future of literacy.

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