Writing research: A field in growth
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Starting from
quite modest beginnings as a field of empirical study in the late 1960Ős and
early 1970Ős (see Martin NystrandŐs article in this volume for a
comprehensive historical overview), writing research has now begun to
position itself internationally as a dynamic, pragmatic, and not least highly
transdisciplinary field of inquiry,
focusing on many different forms of written communication which are studied
from the point of view of a wide range of research perspectives. More
recently, attention in the field has begun to move towards understanding the
complex relationship between the semiotic system of writing and other
semiotic or representational systems increasingly found in electronically
mediated multimodal texts: photographic images and other forms of visual art,
diagrams, animations, video and sound sequences. This shift of attention has
naturally enough been provoked by the need to address in meaningful ways the
increasing degree of blending of these different ways and means of making
meaning in texts linked in networked hypermedia systems, and the
interactional aspect of different forms of shared writing environments opened
up for by the development of new media technologies. |