Multiple text comprehension: Perspectives and possibilities for transdisciplinary research

Abstract

Reading multiple texts in an integrated manner is a typical feature of twenty-first century academic and professional literacies; it involves a number of information evaluation, integration and synthesis activities. Different disciplines and schools of thought are involved in characterizing the cognitive processes behind these activities and the discursive resources of intertextuality. Among them are the Documents Model, Appraisal Theory - an offshoot of Systemic-Functional Linguistics -, and enunciative polyphony. However, these perspectives have not been examined contrastively despite the possibilities that their principled integration may offer for researching multiple text comprehension from a more psycholinguistical integrated manner. Therefore, this paper aims at comparing and contrasting these three schools and outlining a transdisciplinary research program on the matter. In order to accomplish this goal, we review and contrast the theoretical foundations and principal findings of the three perspectives, with special attention to Latin American studies. Finally, we outline possibilities for future research as well as theoretical and methodological challenges in furthering our understanding of the discursive phenomena associated with multiple text comprehension.