Reading as Cultural Activities: Enabling and Reflective Texts

ABSTRACT

Fluent reading is best conceived as rational action, rather than solely as cognitive processes. Information processing theories focus only on two conditions of rational reading: the nature and the medium of cognitive processing. There are three cultural conditions of rational reading: the materials read, the purposes for reading, and the circumstances of reading. Consideration of the origins of writing and the organization of literacy activities allows me to construct and elaborate a continuum of kinds of writing (documents and texts). At one pole is “reflective writing,” which consists of formatted signs on a surface, i.e., a document, the reading of which facilitates judgment about, or engenders a response to, some state of affairs. Most reading theorists presume that virtually all reading is of this kind. Newspapers, magazines, novels, nonfiction books, and journals are examples of reflective writing. At the other pole is “enabling writing,” which consists of a document whose text enables the accomplishment of some action beyond the acts of reading. It must be possible to use enabling texts for transtextual purposes. Forms of all sorts, schedules, contracts, lists, and menus, fall into the category of enabling writing. Acts of reading enabling documents require attention because it is these acts that insert us into the bureaucratic structures of society, allowing the administration of goods and services and the control of persons and property, i.e., the reproduction of social order.