{"id":6122,"date":"2004-07-04T14:38:04","date_gmt":"2004-07-04T14:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/07\/04\/witte-1984-topi\/"},"modified":"2004-07-04T14:38:04","modified_gmt":"2004-07-04T14:38:04","slug":"witte-1984-topi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/07\/04\/witte-1984-topi\/","title":{"rendered":"Witte, 1984, “Topical Structure and Revision”"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 5<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

 Witte,
\nStephen. "Topical Structure and Revision: An Exploratory Study.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998<\/i>.
\nEd. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999. 132-155. <\/p>\n

Big Idea
\n<\/b>Stephen Witte’s 1983 article reports on the quantifiable patterns of topical
\nstructure in a sample of written revisions of a common text.  Through
\ncomparative readings of revised texts and a common seminal text (from which the
\nrevisers set out), Witte’s study surmises that the reviser’s treatment of
\nsentence topics correlates to the writer\/reviser’s understanding of the text’s
\ndiscourse topic.  The relationship between a discourse topic and sentence
\ntopic figures significantly into Witte’s work; he adopts a vocabulary of
\nspecialized terms such as "topicalization," "theme\/rheme,"
\n"macroproposition," and "hypertheme" in his elaboration of
\nmethods.  According to Witte, sentence topics may or may not house
\ndiscourse topics, but the writer\/reviser’s prior knowledge and readerly understanding<\/i>
\nof the seminal text’s discourse topic guides the choices<\/i> applied
\nthroughout revision.  Witte acknowledges his methods are suited to
\ninformational texts, collaboratively revised. Notably, he delivers some
\neighteen-plus name references in the first three or four pages of the article (a
\ncluster of comp\/rhet folks as well as several {unfamiliar-to-me} structural
\nlinguists from the Prague
\nSchool<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Wondering About
\n<\/b>With all due respect, big chunks of this essay were a muddle; lesser chunks
\nwere interesting in a structuralism-amuck, 1983-snapshot kind of way. 
\nWitte’s theoretical lead-in to the more empirical study sparked a few
\ninteresting issues.  Without explicitly discussing sentence topics in terms
\nof links<\/i> and relationships<\/i>, Witte is centrally concerned with
\nsyntactic cues, their systematic connections, and the role of the writer\/reviser
\nin reshaping those cues toward a more coherent, unified discourse topic. We
\ncould bend this analysis to rhythm<\/i> or pulse<\/i>–the discourse topic’s
\ndependence on the coordination of smaller units.   As provocative as
\nthis is, the structuralist drawback impends: the study builds from a kind of
\nde-natured, de-cultured "writer’s hand(s)" (not unlike de Saussure’s
\nfeatureless talking heads).  The situation is absent: topoi<\/i> sans kairos<\/i>.  <\/p>\n

The portions of the essay that scale the revisions from high-score to
\nlow-score based on the sentence topic patterns (matches, deviations, etc.) were
\nhard to read.  It’s filled with statistical references, and it’s never easy
\nto connect the high\/low assessments to specific texts (only a few of which are
\nsampled).  Witte notes that one of the setbacks in his study is the problem
\nof "no average text."  In fact, the whole piece is responsibly
\nself-conscious; he incorporates lots of reminders that this is "an
\nexploratory study," and it’s simply a frame for writing researchers to
\nconsider.  But how should we use this? What other applications might
\nWitte’s work hold?  I don’t have a lot of ideas about this, but as I read,
\nI started to think that much of this analysis could be applied electronically
\n(especially the clause-length stuff).  In other words, when I want to see<\/i>
\nrevision (separated from the document), I simply use Word to compare
\ntexts.  The changes are highlighted, easy to view.  I’ve never
\nconsidered the quality of a revision in terms of altered topic patterns;
\ninstead, I simply have a glance at the depth of revision, the way the writer
\nresponded to specific in-text suggestions or questions, and any oversights,
\nomissions, or clear decisions not<\/i> to make changes.  And while I’m
\nnot in favor of computers as stand-alone readers, I continue to wonder how
\ntechnologies can assist our reading by helping us see patterns in texts (not to
\nkick out sloppily composed standardized exams).  Witte’s approach, I think,
\ncould be rendered into a software application–an application that might be
\nuseful if we use it to see texts differently rather than measuring those texts
\nas successes or failures. <\/p>\n

Witte’s approach to measuring sophistication of revisions based on topic
\npatterns doesn’t acknowledge rhetorical strategies, deliberate re-arrangement,
\ntopical abstraction or exemplification.  All of these forces ought to
\nfigure into revision–even in classifiably informative texts, and studies of
\ntopic structure alone might not reveal such developments.  It also sets up
\nknowledge of audience and revision in fairly narrow terms.  Revision isn’t
\nalways (ever!) a sealed-off, exclusive, after-writing stage; knowledge of
\naudience, however carefully ascertained, is imperfect, incomplete. 
\nSimilarly, while the sentence topics can be identified and tagged, discourse
\ntopics spill, morph, shift–endlessly.  By this, I mean the sentence enjoys
\npunctuated boundaries; a discourse topic flows and is not frozen in time. <\/p>\n

Passages
\n<\/b>"Although making inferences about composing processes from written
\nproducts is somewhat risky, the method I have outlined and applied to controlled
\nrevisions of college writers appears to be a promising one for studying the
\ntextual causes and effects of revision.  It is a method which may allow
\nresearchers and teachers alike to study the decision-making processes writers
\nuse during revision" (153). <\/p>\n

"Whether the findings hold for other kinds of texts collected under
\ndifferent circumstances and evaluated by different kinds of raters remains an
\nopen question" (153).  <\/p>\n

"In this regard, topical structure analysis–unlike the analytic methods
\ndesigned to examine the effects of the revision–enables the researcher to
\nexplore the relationship between the textual causes of revision, the text
\nfeatures to which the writer as reader responds, and the effects those changes
\nhave on the revised text" (153). <\/p>\n

"Thus in revising the original text, the high-score writers chose to
\nreduce the number of sentence topics and to develop more fully those retained,
\nwhereas the writers of the low-score texts chose to increase the number of
\nsentence topics and to develop each of them less fully" (153).  <\/p>\n

~muddle~ "Differences between the two sets of revisions can also be
\nattributed to differences in the mean number of t-units per sentence
\ntopic.  The low-score revisions averaged 1.89 t-units per sentence topic, while
\nthe high-score revisions averaged 2.59, about 27% more than the low-score
\nones" (150). ~muddle~ <\/p>\n

"The two groups’ differing constructions of the gist<\/i> of the
\noriginal governed their choices of sentence topics.  These different
\nsentence topics, in turn, led to different decisions about content which could
\nbe deleted from the original" (149). <\/p>\n

"But on what basis did the two groups decide which elements of the
\noriginal text to delete? I suspect that they based such decisions on their
\nconstructions of a discourse topic<\/i> or a gist<\/i> for the original
\ntext, because those constructions seem to differ in important ways" (147). <\/p>\n

"When what is said (by the principal verbs in the text) about the
\ndiscourse topic is combined with the discourse topic, the product is the ‘macroproposition,’
\n‘gist,’ or ‘point’ of the text" (140). <\/p>\n

"As I have explained it, topical structure analysis would seem to be a
\nuseful tool for studying the textual cues which may prompt revision and for
\nstudying the effects of revision on text structure, primarily because it
\naccounts for and illuminates the interaction of reading and writing during the
\nrevision process. Topical structure analysis should enable researchers to chart
\nmore efficiently the actual decisions writers make as they revise texts"
\n(140). <\/p>\n

"Such a view of the relationship of subtopics<\/i> (i.e., sentence
\ntopics) to the discourse topic<\/i> surmounts the problem of using the
\northographic boundaries of sentences and paragraphs as the principal semantic or
\nmeaning markers in extended discourse. (Sentence boundaries can vary
\nindependently of meaning when writers choose to produce compound or
\ncompound-complex sentences, and I can find no evidence that writers segment
\ntexts into paragraphs in consistent ways.)" (137). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 5<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span> Witte, Stephen. "Topical Structure and Revision: An Exploratory Study.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999. 132-155. Big Idea Stephen Witte’s 1983 article reports on the quantifiable patterns of topical structure in a sample of written revisions of a common text.  Through comparative readings of revised…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[167],"tags":[203,252,150,253,251,250],"class_list":["post-6122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading_notes","tag-revision","tag-semantic","tag-structure","tag-syntactic","tag-topical","tag-witte"],"yoast_head":"\nWitte, 1984, "Topical Structure and Revision" - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/07\/04\/witte-1984-topi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Witte, 1984, "Topical Structure and Revision" - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: 5 mins Witte, Stephen. "Topical Structure and Revision: An Exploratory Study.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1999. 132-155. Big Idea Stephen Witte’s 1983 article reports on the quantifiable patterns of topical structure in a sample of written revisions of a common text.  Through comparative readings of revised...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/07\/04\/witte-1984-topi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/derek.mueller\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/derek.mueller\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-07-04T14:38:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Derek Mueller\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Derek Mueller\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.earthwidemoth.com\\\/blog\\\/2004\\\/07\\\/04\\\/witte-1984-topi\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.earthwidemoth.com\\\/blog\\\/2004\\\/07\\\/04\\\/witte-1984-topi\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Derek Mueller\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.earthwidemoth.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/66fc5e80a62f53057760790b1cfeb24b\"},\"headline\":\"Witte, 1984, “Topical Structure and Revision”\",\"datePublished\":\"2004-07-04T14:38:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.earthwidemoth.com\\\/blog\\\/2004\\\/07\\\/04\\\/witte-1984-topi\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1297,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.earthwidemoth.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/66fc5e80a62f53057760790b1cfeb24b\"},\"keywords\":[\"revision\",\"semantic\",\"structure\",\"syntactic\",\"topical\",\"Witte\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Reading Notes\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.earthwidemoth.com\\\/blog\\\/2004\\\/07\\\/04\\\/witte-1984-topi\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.earthwidemoth.com\\\/blog\\\/2004\\\/07\\\/04\\\/witte-1984-topi\\\/\",\"name\":\"Witte, 1984, \\\"Topical Structure and Revision\\\" - 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Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin's, 1999. 29-42. Big Idea Braddock's essay on the placement and patterns of topic sentences exposes a problem of referring students to mythic truths--affirmed in popular textbooks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/reading_notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6068,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/04\/18\/flower-et-al-19\/","url_meta":{"origin":6122,"position":1},"title":"Flower, et al., 1987, “Strategies of Revision”","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"April 18, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0Flower, Linda, et al. \"Detection, Diagnosis, and the Strategies of Revision.\" On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin's, 1999. 191-228. Big Idea Over two years, five contributing researchers sought to refine the key intellectual actions in revision. The study dealt with both\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/reading_notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7109,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/21\/flower-scriver\/","url_meta":{"origin":6122,"position":2},"title":"Flower, Scriver, Stratman, Carey, and Hayes, "Cognitive Process in Revision"","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"August 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Flower, Linda S., Karen A. Scriver, James F. Stratman, Linda Carey, and John R. Hayes. \"Cognitive Processes in Revision.\" Advances in Applied Psycholinguistics. Sheldon Rosenberg ed. New York: Cambridge, 1987. 176-240. This team-authored article advances the cognitive process work done by Flower and Hayes in the early 1980's by modeling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Models"","block_context":{"text":"Models","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/models\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Revision Model, p 185","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1252\/1196475574_b9a5eada12.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7047,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/04\/post-1-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6122,"position":3},"title":"Bazerman, “Discursively Structured Activities”","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"October 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Bazerman, Charles. \"Discursively Structured Activities.\" Mind, Culture, and Activity 4.4 (1997): 296-308. Bazerman is concerned with accounting descriptively for the roles of discourse in structuring systemic activity. He notes that discourse is a fundament to social structure; it provides a \"regularizing force.\" As such, Bazerman folds together Vygotskyan principles of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tools-in-use"","block_context":{"text":"Tools-in-use","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/toolsinuse\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6090,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/16\/dangelo-1977-in\/","url_meta":{"origin":6122,"position":4},"title":"D’Angelo, 1977, “Intelligible Structure”","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"May 16, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0D'Angelo, Frank. \"The Search for Intelligible Structure in the Teaching of Composition.\" On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. New York: Bedford St. Martin's, 1999. 51-59. Big Idea Look!\u00a0 We, compositionists, are disciplinarily vital. We have an epicenter, proven radials, recognizable and defensible structures holding our work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/reading_notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6902,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/19\/second-subseque\/","url_meta":{"origin":6122,"position":5},"title":"Second, Subsequent Streams","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"February 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Revisions have been challenging. Having resolved myself to more drafting before squaring with revisions, the commented drafts of my dissertation's introduction and first two chapters tend to taunt me. I haven't figured out how to fit it in, how to make room for it given the other regular paces. I'd\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rhythms"","block_context":{"text":"Rhythms","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/rhythms\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}