Literacy, as we have come to understand and teach it, is currently in a situation of critical change. New and increasingly complex electronic technologies are creating new literacies; however, our present concepts of literacy are heavily grounded in Gutenbergian print. This traditional understanding is inadequate for the new and complex literacy of digital discourse. This dissertation foregrounds the issue of how literacy, as manifest in the writing process, is affected when composing in hypertext, most especially in the context of the Internet. This research takes the form of an emergent, field-based, modified case study approach. It is shaped in response to the overarching research question: How are writer's perceptions of the new rhetorical situtations presented by hypertext affecting thelr attitudes towards writing and the consequent decisions they make in response to these perceptions? Information was collected in the form of interviews, observations, journals, correspondence, and artefacts. Methods for collection included both personal contact and technology-assisted remote contact, including email, instant messaging, telephone, traditional mail, and fax. The experiences of seven major informants form the central focus of this study; the experiences of approximately ninety minor informants are included in a more peripheral way. This study offers a detailed description of the complex and dynamic ways in which these writers perceived hypertext as a new rhetorical space, and the consequent writing decisions they made in response to these perceptions. It interprets their experiences in the immediate context of writing theory and hypertext theory, suggests practical applications based on these interpretations, and projects a direction for further study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.42297 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Mason, Jean S. |
| Contributors | Anthony Paré |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Educational Studies) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001778653, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest., Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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