Viewpoints: Transaction versus Interaction--A Terminological Rescue Operation.

Abstract

This article differentiates the usages of and interaction as reflections of differing paradigms. transactional theory of is dissociated from information-processing and implications for research of various concepts basic to the total transactional theory of are discussed. This paper might perhaps have been subtitled The Pleasures and Dangers of Being Cited. Ultimately, it has been prompted by the realization that the term, transaction, which I apply to the reading-act or reading-event, and the term, transactional, by which I designate my theory of reading, are being increasingly encountered in publications on reading, writing, and literary theory. (A further indication: A professor at a midwestern university reported that several people had remarked on the number of times the term had been invoked at the May, 1984, meetings of the International Reading Association.) I would be very churlish, indeed, if I did not feel some satisfaction at this development. It was also pleasant, for example, to find confirmation in ERIC/RCS Report: An Examination of the Construct of 'ReaderText Relationship' in the May, 1984, issue of English Education (Koenke, 1984). This stated that the Dictionary of Reading and Related Terms (Harris & Hodges, 1981), although it does not contain entry for the concept of reader-text relationship, does include entry for transactional theory, with a quote from my 1978 book, and, as I discovered, entries for my concepts of efferent reading and aesthetic reading. However, I must admit that I began to feel somewhat uneasy when information-processing and literary criticism were presented as cognate theoretical sources. And the impulse to write the present paper was triggered when I found my transactional theory being said to share with information-processing, and top-down and bottom-up processing being shown as squatters on that common ground under the rubic of interactive processing. This model, it is explained, presents comprehension as an interaction between the processing of the text and the use of the reader's experiences and expectancies. Interaction and transaction seem to be accepted as interchangeable. For example: It is at this point that the information-processing theory and the literary criticism theory of at least one recognized authority, Louise Rosenblatt, Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 19, No. 1, February 1985