Degrees and Institutions
PhD, Northwestern University, 1974
MAT, Johns Hopkins University, 1966
BA, Northwestern University, 1965
Research Interests
Writing, discourse, language and learning.
Research at a Glance
Language and learning; history of theories about
writing; dialogic and ecological perspectives on
language and learning.
Selected Publications
Nystrand, M., & Duffy, J. (eds.), Towards
a Rhetoric of Everyday Life: New Directions in
Research on Writing, Text, and Discourse,
University of Wisconsin Press (2002); Opening
Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and
Learning in the English Classroom, Teachers
College Press (1997); The Structure of Written
Communication: Studies in Reciprocity between Writers
and Readers, Academic Press (1986); What
Writers Know: The Language, Process, and Structure of
Written Discourse, Academic Press (1982); editor
and contributor, Language as a Way of Knowing: A
Book of Readings, The Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education (1977); Nystrand, M., Greene,
S., & Wiemelt, J., Where Did Composition Studies
Come From? An Intellectual History, Written
Communication, 10, 267-333.
Personal Statement
My research focuses on the dialogic organization
of discourse in both writing and classroom
discourse.
My writing research examines the role of reciprocity
between writers and readers as the semiotic basis
shaping their communication and the process of
learning to write (The Structure of Written
Communication: Studies in Reciprocity between Writers
and Readers, 1986). In critical historical work,
most notably, "Where Did Composition Studies Come
From?" (Nystrand, Greene, and Wiemelt, 1993), I have
examined contrasts of ideas about writing, text, and
meaning in composition studies, literature studies,
and linguistics. More recently, I have sought to
understand the social and cultural contexts which
supported the emergence and development of these
perspectives and the resulting ideas. This research
will be found in and Towards a Rhetoric of
Everyday Life: New Directions in Research on Writing,
Text, and Discourse (University of Wisconsin
Press, 2003) co-edited with John Duffy. Currently, I
am working on The Semiotics of Influence: On the
Emergence of the New Discourse about Writing ca.
1970, a monograph examining the rhetorical
phenomenon of influence as a sociocultural and
dialogic process of social change.
My research on language and learning extends the
dialogic foundations of my work on writing by
investigating the role of reciprocity between
teachers and students as it affects students'
understanding of literature in eighth- and ninth-
grade literature instruction. See Opening
Dialogue: Understanding the Dynamics of Language and
Learning in the English Classroom, 1997) and
more recently: Nystrand, M., Wu, L., Gamoran, A.,
Zeiser, S., & Long, D. Questions in time:
Investigating the structure and dynamics of unfolding
classroom discourse (Discourse Processes,
35, 135-196), the first-ever use of
event-history analysis to study discourse.
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