Abstract

LILLIS, Theresa. Resisting Regimes of Evaluation in the Study of Writing: Towards a Richer Imaginary. Signo pensam. [online]. 2017, vol.36, n.71, pp.68-83. ISSN 0120-4823.  https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.syp36-71.rree.

This paper puts the spotlight on the dominant ‘imaginary’ (Castoriadis 1987) governing writing research, focusing in particular on the way in which evaluation regimes shape analytic orientations towards writing as a phenomenon. Drawing on data from three different research projects- student writing ( e.g. Lillis 2001), scholars’ writing for publication (e.g. Lillis and Curry 2010) , writing in professional social work (e.g. Lillis, 2017)-the paper has three objectives: 1) to illustrate the normative evaluative approach towards writing evident in practises of uptake within the evaluation regimes, that is by teacher, reviewer, manager/inspector; 2) to signal that some widely used analytic categories/frames used across writing research traditions may mirror features of evaluation regimes and lead to a misrecognition, rather than an illumination of what is going on; 3) to illustrate the value of ethnographically oriented approaches, in particular work which explores writing through a focus on trajectories (of texts and of people) for opening up our research imaginaries and for making visible key dimensions to the phenomena we are exploring.

Keywords : writing; normative orientation; ideology of correctness; ethnography.

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