Text Complexity: Toward Construct Definition Through Epistemological Analysis

• In Event: Text Complexity: What Is It, How Is It Measured, and, After All, Why Is It Important?

Abstract

Purpose
This is a theoretical exploration is to analyze and define the construct, text complexity, from the perspective of reading as a transactional activity with authors and physical texts.

Perspective
The Common Core State Standards (CCSSI) promote the belief that our nation’s students need to read complex texts because reading simpler texts leads to an “impoverishment of knowledge” (CCSSI for ELA, Appendix A, p. 4) (cf. Adams, 2009). The CCS present a model for measuring text complexity, but the construct itself is not explicitly defined. Clarity in construct definition is essential for measurement and for educators’ understandings with regard to classroom practices involving texts. I consider a definition of text complexity that encompasses the relations between reader and text by applying and extending Rosenblatt’s (1938, 1994) transactional view of reading.

Mode of Inquiry
The following key premises from Rosenblatt’s (1938, 1994) transactional view of reading are considered to create a relational definition of text complexity (depicted in Figure 1): a) Reading happens through a transaction between a particular individual and a particular text. b) Transaction means the reader and the text are aspects of the total reading experience, “each conditioned by and conditioning the other” (1978, p. 16). c) Through the transaction, an evocation of meaning occurs. d) Transaction is different from interaction, which implies a dualism of reader and text. e) “Text” has two referents: “a set of signs [in print] capable of being interpreted as verbal symbols” (Rosenblatt, 1994); and text of meaning created though the reader-text-author transaction (p. 1064). In both cases, text “. . . implies a transaction with the reader” (p. 1065).

A topographical epistemological analysis is conducted to examine text complexity as defined from a transactional perspective (see guiding questions and epistemological clusters in Figure 1).

Arguments/Warrants
Three arguments result: a) Addressing the seven questions in Figure 1 leads to the claim that text complexity can be philosophically considered a contextualist construct. b) Text complexity cannot be bound within a text. c) There are two ways to think about text complexity, both relational. First, the degree to which a text is complex is determined by a particular reader with a particular text. One printed text or one text created between one printed text and a reader may be considered very complex to one reader and not complex at all to another. But second, communities of readers may decide that certain features are involved in decisions about degree of text complexity, and then on the whole, they may decide that certain texts, when read by many readers, are considered more complex than others (cf. Rosenblatt, 1994 on warranted assertions by communities). Hence, paradoxically, complexity is reader-text dependent, but also may be determined through central tendency across many readers reading the same text.

Scholarly Significance

Examining the construct, text complexity, from a philosophical stance may lead to further discussion and debate, which in turn may result in greater clarity about the meaning of text complexity.

Author

• Jill Fitzgerald, MetaMetrics and UNC Emerita