Content area
Abstract
This study investigates the processes used by writers of varying degrees of expertise in constructing and developing a persona for the narrator of a personal experience narrative essay. The study works from a base in cognitive-developmental research and uses writers' thinking-aloud protocols and completed essays as a data base. From an analysis of the data, the author argues that: (1) writers produce multiple personae during the protocol-gathering process, (2) activities performed in the construction of narrators' personae are hierarchically structured, and (3) the activities at the upper reaches of the hierarchy are available to expert writers but not to novice writers.
The author places the actvities devoted to development of narrators' personae within the model of composition developed by Drs. Linda Flower and John R. Hayes and casts the results of the study within a framework for a cognitive science research program for composition designed by Robert de Beaugrande.
