Foundations for a Multi-Agent Transactional Theory of Literacy

Transactional theory represents one of the most significant frameworks for conceptualizing reading and writing developed in the twentieth century and continues to have a powerful influence on literacy researchers and practitioners. At the core of transactional theory is the notion that meaning is produced in the transaction of a reader with a text. In contrast with other models that “locate” meaning within the text and conceive of reading as the extraction of that meaning, transactional theory defines meaning as an emergent property of a reading transaction, requiring simultaneous attention to both reader and text as the reading process unfolds. Transactional theory has, however, been motivated primarily by a concern with aesthetic interpretation of literary works, while research focusing on efferent interpretation (i.e. expository reading) has continued to be dominated by more traditional text-centric frameworks, often relying on text propositionalization as a basis for analysis (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; Graesser, 1985; Meyer, 1985). The purpose of this paper is to outline a general transactional theory of literacy that seeks to more effectively integrate aesthetic and efferent forms of reading, as well as providing a basis for the principled integration of formal methods, including those based on text propositionalization.