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There is a venerable tradition in rhetoric and composition which sees the

composing process as a series of decisions and choices.1 However,it is no

longer easy simply to assert this position,unless you are prepared to answer a

number of questions,the most pressing of which probably is:"What then are

the criteria which govern that choice?"Or we could put it another way:

"Whatguides the decisions writers make as they write?"In a recent survey of

composition research,Odell,Cooper,and Courts noticed that some of the

most thoughtful people in the field are giving us two reasonable but some-

what different answers:

How do writers actually go about choosing diction,syntactic and organi-

zational patterns,and content?Kinneavy claims that one's purpose-

informing,persuading,expressing,or manipulating language for its own

sake-guides these choices.Moffett and Gibson contend that these

choices are determined by one's sense of the relation of speaker,subject,

and audience.Is either of these two claims borne out by the actual prac-

tice of writers engaged in drafting or revising?Does either premise ac-

count adequately for the choices writers make?2

Rhetoricians such as Lloyd Bitzer and Richard Vatz have energetically de-

bated this question in still other terms.Lloyd Bitzer argues that speech al-

ways occurs as a response to a rhetorical situation,which he succinctly de-

fines as containing an exigency(which demands a response),an audience,and

a set of constraints.3 In response to this"situation-driven"view,Vatz claims

that the speaker's response,and even the rhetorical situation itself,are de-

termined by the imagination and art of the speaker.4

Finally,James Britton has asked the same question and offered a linguist's

answer,namely,that syntactic and lexical choices guide the process.

Linda Flower is a member of the Department of English at Carnegie-Mellon University,and

John R.Hayes is a member of the Department of Psychology at the same university.Together

they have pioneered the application of protocol analysis to the study of composing processes.

The research reported in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the National Insitute

of Education,U.S.Department of Health,Education,and Welfare,Grant Number IIE

G780195.

365CollegeCompositionand Communication

It is tempting to think of writingas a process of makinglinguistic

choices from one's repertoireof syntacticstructuresand lexical items.

Thiswouldsuggestthatthereis a meaning,or somethingto be expressed,

in the writer'smind,andthathe proceedsto choose,fromthe wordsand

structureshe has at his disposal,the ones that best matchhis meaning.

But is thatreallyhow it happens?5

To most of us it may seem reasonable to suppose that all of these forces-

"purposes,""relationships,""exigencies,""language"-have a hand in guiding

the writer's process,but it is not at all clear how they do so or how they

interact.Do they,for example,work in elegant and graceful coordination,or

as competitive forces constantly vying for control?We think that the best

way to answer these questions-to really understand the nature of rhetorical

choices in good and poor writers-is to follow James Britton's lead and turn

our attention to the writing process itself:to ask,"but is that really how it

happens?"

This paper will introduce a theory of the cognitive processes involved in

composing in an effort to lay groundwork for more detailed study of thinking

processes in writing.This theory is based on our work with protocol analysis

over the past five years and has,we feel,a good deal of evidence to support

it.Nevertheless,it is for us a working hypothesis and springboard for further

research,and we hope that insofar as it suggests testable hypotheses it will be

the same for others.Our cognitive process theory rests on four key points,

which this paper will develop:

1.The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking

processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of com-

posing.

2.These processes have a hierarchical,highly embedded organization in

which any given process can be embedded within any other.

3.The act of composing itself is a goal-directed thinking process,guided

by the writer's own growing network of goals.

4.Writers create their own goals in two key ways:by generating both

high-level goals and supporting sub-goals which embody the writer's

developing sense of purpose,and then,at times,by changing major

goals or even establishing entirely new ones based on what has been

learned in the act of writing.

1.Writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes

which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.

To many this point may seem self-evident,and yet it is in marked contrast

to our current paradigm for composing-the stage process model.This famil-

iar metaphor or model describes the composing process as a linear series of

366A CognitiveProcesTsheory

stages,separated in time,and characterized by the gradual development of

the written product.The best examples of stage models are the Pre-Write/

Write/Re-Write model of Gordon Rohman6 and The Conception/

Incubation/Production model of Britton et al.7

Stage Modelsof Writing

Without doubt,the wide acceptance of Pre-Writing has helped improve

the teaching of composition by calling attention to planning and discovery as

legitimate parts of the writing process.Yet many question whether this linear

stage model is really an accurate or useful description of the composing pro-

cess itself.The problem with stage descriptions of writing is that they model

the growth of the written product,not the inner process of the person pro-

ducing it."Pre-Writing"is the stage before words emerge on paper;"Writ-

ing"is the stage in which a product is being produced;and"Re-Writing"is a

final reworking of that product.Yet both common sense and research tell us

that writers are constantly planning(pre-writing)and revising(re-writing)as

they compose(write),not in clean-cut stages.8 Furthermore,the sharp dis-

tinctions stage models make between the operations of planning,writing,and

revising may seriously distort how these activities work.For example,Nancy

Sommers has shown that revision,as it is carried out by skilled writers,is not

an end-of-the-line repair process,but is a constant process of"re-vision"or

re-seeing that goes on while they are composing.9 A more accurate model of

the composing process would need to recognize those basic thinking pro-

cesses which unite planning and revision.Because stage models take the final

product as their reference point,they offer an inadequate account of the

more intimate,moment-by-moment intellectual process of composing.How,

for example,is the output of one stage,such as pre-writing or incubation,

transferred to the next?As every writer knows,having good ideas doesn't

automatically produce good prose.Such models are typically silent on the

inner processes of decision and choice.

A CognitiveProcessModel

A cognitive process theory of writing,such as the one presented here,

represents a major departure from the traditional paradigm of stages in this

way:in a stage model the major units of analysis are stages of completion

which reflect the growth of a written product,and these stages are organized

in a linear sequence or structure.In a process model,the major units of

analysis are elementary mental processes,such as the process of generating

ideas.And these processes have a hierarchical structure(see p.379,below)

such that idea generation,for example,is a sub-process of Planning.Fur-

thermore,each of these mental acts may occur at any time in the composing

process.One major advantage of identifying these basic cognitive processes

or thinking skills writers use is that we can then compare the composing

367CollegeCompositionand Communication

strategies of good and poor writers.And we can look at writing in a much

more detailed way.

In psychology and linguistics,one traditional way of looking carefully at a

process is to build a model of what you see.A model is a metaphor for a

process:a way to describe something,such as the composing process,which

refuses to sit still for a portrait.As a hypothesis about a dynamic system,it

attempts to describe the parts of the system and how they work together.

Modeling a process starts as a problem in design.For example,imagine that

you have been asked to start from scratch and design an imaginary,working

"Writer."In order to build a"Writer"or a theoretical system that would

reflect the process of a real writer,you would want to do at least three things:

1.First,you would need to define the major elements or sub-processes

that make up the larger process of writing.Such sub-processes would