Social Cognition and Written Expression Disorders

Abstract

Written expression requires not only content knowledge, linguistic competence and metacommunication skills but also an awareness of an audience (reader) and a sensitivity to a reader’s needs. Indeed, coherence and cohesion in writing result in a large part from intentions that are appropriate to a specific audience and genre. Audience awareness must be coupled with linguistic competence to allow a writer to be effective in communicating ideas. Researchers are just beginning to investigate the relationship between an individual’s sense of audience in written expression and his or her social cognitive abilities (Rubin, 1984; Rubin & Dodd, 1987). It is felt that individuals who think in more complex ways about other people (audiences) ought to be better writers since they can produce text adapted to a reader’s needs. A writer’s ability to identify and remain sensitive to a specific audience influences almost every aspect of written communication. Students who demonstrate little audience awareness often supply few details and/or elaborations of their ideas (Flower, 1979; Shaugnessy, 1977). The manner in which writers organize their text has also been found to be dependent on audience awareness (Berkenkotter, 1981; Flower, 1979). Several researchers have discovered that the choice of syntactic structures is audience dependent (Crowhurst & Piché, 1979; Rubin, 1982; Smith & Swan, 1978). Shaugnessy (1977) provides evidence that ambiguous pronoun reference and confusing predication are often the result of a writer’s inability to take the reader’s perspective.