Descriptive Review and the Development of an Authorial Identity

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Ways With Words: Theories and Methods for Studying Literacies in (Inter)Action

Abstract

This paper, a part of a larger study, uses discourse analysis to look at youths’ talk about writing during modified descriptive reviews, a protocol for talking descriptively about writing. In doing so, the paper considers the ways that power structures can impact youths’ understandings of themselves as writers and investigates the ways youth construct and transform writing identities. Approaching analysis of the youths’ words from the perspectives of New Literacy Studies and critical writing process theory, this research finds that making time for youths to talk descriptively about writing provides opportunities for youth to engage in complex ways with peers’ texts, to engage in complex ways with their own texts, and to develop identities as writers.

Author

• Bethany Silva, University of New Hampshire