The Psycholinguistics of Readable Writing: A Multidisciplinary Exploration [Paperback]

This book reviews research in linguistics, psychology, reading and writing, and brings this work to bear on the problem of readable writing. The research supports the theory that two factors in text are crucial to its readable quality: psycholinguistic redundancy and cohesion. The book also reports the results of three empirical studies and a case study that further illustrates this theory. The findings have important theoretical and practical implications because they shed light on the nature of reading and writing processes from both linguistic and psychological perspectives, and suggest practical approaches to the production and comprehension of readable writing. The book also draws on research in second language acquisition and is pertinent to readable writing in both first and second languages.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
READABLE WRITING
Varied Perspectives on Readable Writing
Defining Readable Writing
Cohesion in Writing
Cohesion, Writing, and Coherence
Redundancy in Reading
Redundancy in Writing
Relating Cohesion and Redundancy
Plan of the Book
RELEVANT RESEARCH I: LINGUISTICS
The Linguistics Corner
Halliday's Systematic-Functional Linguistics
Coherence and Cohesion
Texture in Texts: Cohesion, Sentence Structure, Discourse Type
Types of Cohesion
Analyzing Cohesion: Cohesive Harmony
Review and Preview
RELEVANT RESEARCH: PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Psycholinguistic Research on Text Processing
Propositional Analysis of Texts
Connecting Propositional Analysis to Cohesion
Psycholinguistic Research on the Role of Redundancy
Redundancy and Prior Knowledge
Psychologists' View of Redundancy
Personality Type and Text Processing
Preferences, Reading, and Writing
Implications of Type for Composing and Comprehending
RELEVANT RESEARCH III: READING
Models of the Reading Process: Print vs. Meaning
The Interactive Alternative
Complexity of ReadilC$