ITRI-01-22 Rhetorical structure analysis as a method for understanding writing processes

Observation of writers producingg non-trivial texts suggests t hat most spendd time generating andd organisingg content prior to draftingg full text. Resear chsuggests a linkk between time spent inn these activities andd the quality of the resulting docume nt. Very little is known, however, about either the nature of the representation that is c reatedd during this planningg phase (the writer's " plan ") or the relationshipp between this plan andd the finishedd text. Transcripts of what writers say when they are askedd to think-aloudd whilst pla nningg combinedd with any roughh notes that they might produce should, if analysedd appropriat ely, provide insight into the structure of the resultingg plan. In our paper we present an approachh to annotatingg planningg proto cols that identifies rhetorical structure in the writers plan and thus, allows direct comparison with the rhetorical structure of the finishedd text. The analysis is basedd inn Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mannn andd Thompson, 1988). We illustrate our findings with an analysis of the plann andd final text from one writing process. This suggests that the relationshipp between plann a ndd text is not adequately captured by existingg accounts of writers' plans as control struct ures.