GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
FRENCH DEPARTMENT
GATEWAY TEXT AND WRITING WORKSHOP

The purpose of this workshop is to make you aware of some fundamental notions and principles relating to text and writing. Specific strategies will be introduced in class, in the context of various reading and writing activities.

Texts, texts, texts everywhere
    We spend our lives surrounded by texts that we must learn how to read in order to function adequately. These texts come in a great variety of forms, dozens of which we face every day even if our lives are not particularly text-oriented. There are of course "obvious" texts in the newspaper we read in the morning and in the books that we typically use in college. There are also myriad texts that we go through without even realizing that we are, in fact, reading—that is, processing with skills and strategies that we have learned. Texts are absolutely unnatural: human artifacts, constructed with codes that are not built in our genetic make-up. Indeed, human evolution has been possible only because, somehow, we have managed to transcend our natural, very limited abilities to communicate through a series of breakthrough inventions, including text and language.
  It should come as no surprise, then, that education is greatly concerned with texts, and that much of what gets done in schools and universities belongs to what I call TITO: Text In - Text Out. Students are taught increasingly complex skills and strategies to handle increasingly complex texts, first as readers, then as producers. Quite often, however, the exact relationship between the In" part and the "out" part remains unclear. In many instances, students are required to read some text types (such as novels), but not produce them; on the other hand, they may have to produce texts of a kind to which they have not been exposed as readers (such as a French-style explication de texte). Justifying this relationship—and perhaps improving it—is a crucial, but commonly overlooked, pedagogical issue.

  Notice that text comes before language: this is because a great number of texts are not linguistic in nature, or only partially linguisitic (fims, paintings, buildings, comics, songs). Therefore, we must be very careful, in order to fully understand the importance of texts, not to assume that they are essentially or predominently linguistic.
  What is a text, then? It can be defined as anything designed to be read, and which can stand on its own because it has a coherent and complete structure. A text is not just a random assemblage of elements: in fact, we identify it as a text because its form is rather specific, without being absolutely unique: as representative of a type to which several individual texts belong.
   Perhaps the best way to understand this principle is to think of the relationship between a house and a pile of timber. Althouth the house is made from the timbers, there is no mistaking one for the other, and not simply because their appearances are quite dissimilar—appearances can be deceitful. The real difference is, first, that a pile is, by definition, a non-specific assemblage of items: it has no definite structure (or else it would not be a pile), and no definite function. One can move the timbers around, add or take away a few of them without altering its nature as a pile.

HOUSE PILE

   A house, on the other hand, has a definite function and a definite structure that reflects this function. Of course, multiple variations are possible in the outward appeareance of the house and in is layout, independently of its structure. The structure itself may vary considerably depending on the area where the house is erected. The nature of the terrain, the climate—but also the cultural habits of its dwellers—dictate choices in design and building materials. A house that is poorly insulated, poorly laid out, or that collapses is a "bad" house in the sense that it does not perform well the function for which it was created; however, it is still a house, not a pile of timber.
   In a similar fashion, texts are not images or sounds or words or sentences thrown together haphazardly: texts have a specific form that reflects a specific function and, to some extent, characteristics that reflect cultural traditions and expectations from the indented audience. Sometimes, efficacy dominates (such as in instructions manuals for mechanical or electrical equipment); sometimes, cultural factors are dominant: how can one assess the "efficacy" of a musical composition, for instance, other than by the emotional impact it can have on its listeners? And, certainly, listeners from different cultural backgrounds will favor different scales, keys, tempos and forms. In this sense, the symphony, the sonata, the étude can definitely be construed as text types: even though music is supposed to be "the universal language" and though any human being may derive some pleasure from listening to them, it does take formal knowledge to understand them, their nuances and the differences between them. In other words, to read them with expertise.

THE "TI" IN TITO
   As soon as you wake up and have breakfast in the morning, you start dealing with texts: the front of the cereal box, or the side panel with the nutrition information chart; the label on the jar of jam, on the milk bottle. Turn on the TV, or the radio; glance at a newspaper or magazine, and many more texts and text types present themselves. Some are very short (the label on the jar), some very long (a multi-page "special report" in the paper); some include non-linguistic images (the ceral box front, a TV program), others appear to be "purely linguisitic"—although in fact they are not. Take for instance a news broadcast on the radio: although it mostly consists of language (people talking), the way in which it is organized and structured is not linguistic: musical jingles, for instance, act as markers to let the listener know that the program (or a portion thereof) is starting or ending, much like tabulations, white space on the page, lines and other visual organizers of a newspaper article.
  Because there exists hundreds of text types, we tend to group them in categories and sub-categories, with common characteristics and rules for reading and production. For instance, in Western cultures, we tend to organize visual texts along a left-to-right axis because our languages are written this way. For text types whose main purpose is to provide information, strict organization is favored (from the general to the specific, or vice-versa). In some cases, such as the nutrition information chart on the side panel of the cereal box, it is acceptable to do away with complete sentences, and even syntax: a table (a combination of horizontal and vertical lines) provides adequate structure.
   A magazine article discussing the health benefits of cereals, however, could not dispense with syntax. Readers would expect full sentences at the very least; depending on the magazine, they might also expect a certain level of complexity in the syntax and vocabulary, and perhaps even a certain "style" (through the use of a certain register—colloquial, standard or formal—of technical vocabulary, of rhetorical effects towards drama or humor, etc.). This simple observation cues us to some fundamental aspects of text: reader expectations and functional efficacy .
   All texts are constructed for a purpose: to inform, to convince, to discuss, to entertain, to give directions, to describe, to analyze, etc. Text types are defined by the dominance of one such function (very few texts have a single function). The particular characteristics of a given text type are primarily driven by efficacy: it has been determined that a chart is the most economical way to provide nutrition information on the label of a food product. Writing full sentences to provide that same information would require more space than is available, or a font so small as to be illegible.
   In an article discussing the health benefits of cereals, a series of full sentences alone would not make the piece optimally efficient. They have to be arranged in a particular way; there has to be an introduction to let readers know what the article is about, and a conclusion to bring some sort of closure. The information communicated in these sentences has to be arranged in a coherent manner. In some publications, it might be acceptable, or even advisable for the author to provide this information with some sort of framing: for instance, include some narrative elements involving cerals, such as testimonials or humorous anecdotes. In a scientific publication, the necessary inclusion of non-linguistic data (such as figures, percentages, mathematical formulas, molecular diagrams, etc.) does not affect the importance of textual features: the data have to be expressed and communicated clearly; and the author(s) usually have to present them so as to highlight their significance and import.

a) Description means formulating factual observations on the text, so as to obtain a solid basis for analysis and interpretation. Some questions need to be asked, even if no definitive answers can be found at first:
* Are we dealing with a complete text? A portion or excerpt? If it is an excerpt or a portion, who decided on it? The author? Someone else? Accidental circumstances? (Aristotle's Poetics) For what purpose, if any?
* What text type is it? How can one tell? What type characteristics seem particularly obvious? Does it belong to a known genre?
* What seem to be the primary functions of this text: express an opinion or feeling, entertain, move, provoke, shock, inform, present, supprot or contradict a thesis, amuse?
* Is there an explicit narrator, or other device that embodies a point of view within the text? (If there's a narrator, is it omniscient or participant?) From what point of view is this text constructed? Who created it? Who is the intended receptor (audience)?
* Are there any characters? Are they human? Anthropomorphic? (an animal, an object, a city, nature can be characters) Is the readers' attention drawn to a specific character, a "hero" (who may have positive or negative traits)?
* What are the linguistic characteristics of this text (if any)? Isolated words, full sentences, groups of words or sentences? Is the language used closer to oral or written speech? What register(s) is/are used (formal/standard/colloquial)? Is the vocabulary abstract or concrete? Is there any technical or regional vocabulary? Any slang? How can the style be described? Are there any prominent rhetorical effects?
* What are the non-linguistic characteristics of this text? From what elements is it composed (visual, concrete, sounds)?

2) Analysis means showing how the text works—much like one takes apart a watch to study the clockwork. How does it manage to reach its goals, to fulfill its function(s), to have an effect upon the receptor.
* What effect(s) is/are predictably indiced by the features we identified in the descriptive stage. Is the reader "brough into" the text? If so, how? Does the author play with (or toy with) the reader? Does the author seek to deliberately mislead the reader, in order to create surprise? To influence the reader or manipulate him? How is suspense generated and maintained? Is the reader required to draw his own conclusion? To make inferences? Is the author seeking to preserve some ambiguity? Is he being didactic?
* If the text is fiction, is there a "reality effect" whereby the reader is induced to forget that he is dealing with a work of fiction (for instance through the accumulation of technical details: names, places, dates, etc.)
> Explaining how a text works may be facilitated by a contrario reasoning, or by considering alternatives: it is easier to understand how a feature of the text produces a certain effect if one envisions what might have occured if another solution had been chosen. This is a good way to test whether a given feature of the text holds particular significance at a deep level of meaning.
> Beware of explaining how a text works simply by assuming "intentions" from the author, as if s/he was in full control. It often happens that authors unwillingly and unwittingly reveal themselves through their work, or provoke reactions from readers that they had not anticipated (especially when there is sizable distance—chronological, geographical, cultural—between the author and the eventual audience).

3) Interpretation means eventually proposing hypotheses, possible meanings of the text. When the descriptive and analytical work has be done carefully, it becomes obvious that the meaning of a text, although it can never be established definitively (because various readers will ascribe different meanings), can be framed according to certain objective parameters, which sets it apart from opinion.
Holding and expressing an opinion is a priviledge to which every citizen of a free society is intitled. Opinion, which does not have to be justified, and can be totally unsupported and arbitrary, has no authority or scientific value. Interpretation has to be justified and supported: it may be tentative, inconclusive or debatable, but it cannot be arbitrary or incoherent.
When reaching the stage of interpretation, it is always useful to get back to one's initial impressions: are they confirmed? Modified? Radically altered? Why? Such verifications often help bring to light devices and strategies in the text that had gone unoticed at first.

4) A final stage is evaluation, which may or may not match individual appreciation. An expert reader must be able to recognize and explain the value of a text independently from his/her own opinion or preference. This may be defined in terms of practical, informative, emotional, esthetic value that a text has (or may have) for certain readers, but it can also be expressed as a relative value: why is a text better than another? One easy way out is to adopt a relativistic stance: value is subjective and there can be no text that in all circumstances, and for every reader, is demonstrably better than another. True as this may be from a strictly philosophical point of view, the fact is that human beings do approach texts with a normative bias rooted in a particular context; a reader's task is, first, to establish why a given text was valued in a certain way (positive or negative) in a given context, and, possibly, decide on the relevance of this valuation in other contexts. A second task is to provide a different valuation—with its own justifications and criteria—for a different context.