So that from joint action in encounters with other people we build a shared social world. I want to see that in two steps: take it first at a momentary level. In any encounter each member of the group interprets the situation in his way and acts in the light of that interpretation. To act, which include speaking, of course, is to present oneself. So in this encounter, each member of this group is presenting himself. To act is also to modify the situation. But interactions means that these interpretations and self-presentations embodied in action are offered like pierces in a jigsaw, and it’s the fitting together of the jigsaw that in fact confirms and modified the individual interpretations and shapes the outcome of the encounter. And now, very briefly look at the cumulative process. Day by day year by year, we classify, further interpret, and store these interpretations and these self-presentations and so construct a social world and an individual personality within it” (103). He also argues that we come to an encounter with our selected, interpreted past experience and interpret the new encounter in light of the experience. Sometimes, that means that we shift our past interpretations to include and take account of the new encounter (102).
Britton uses the following chart to explain writing and experience as meaning making.
He also states that there are two listener roles – spectator and participant. “In the spectator role, we are free from the need to interact” and from an obligation to act (104). The participant, on the other hand, is either acting in the encounter or, listening to an encounter, as asked by the speaker to complete some action. “Free then from the need to interact, we use that freedom, I suggest, first of all to pay attention to forms in a way that we don’t when we participate. And the forms of language, particularly” (105). More, “we take up the spectator role out of need – when we need to go back and come to terms with undigested experience” (105).
Britton believe that the writer is alone without an audience. “You have to imagine your audience and hold him fully in mind if you are to take his needs into account” (97).