Showing papers in "Journal of Business and Technical Communication in 1996"

Learning to Write Professionally: “Situated Learning” and the Transition from University to Professional Discourse

Abstract: Drawing primarily on theories of situated learning, this study compares novices learning written genres in two different institutional settings within similar disciplines: university students in public administration courses and graduate student interns placed in government agencies. Observational and textual analyses of novices learning to write the genres necessary for these settings point to differences in writing goals, guide-learner roles, text evaluations, and learning sites. The results show that when students move from the university to the workplace, they not only have to learn new genres but they need to learn new ways to learn these new genres.

Communicating Risk in a Cross-Cultural Context: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Rhetorical and Social Understandings in U.S. and British Mine Safety Training Programs

Abstract: This article analyzes how culture influences the rhetorical strategies writers employ to represent expert knowledge in the workplace and the underlying values and assumptions in a culture that enab...

Narrative and Research in Professional Communication

Abstract: This article explores narrative theory and research in fields closely allied with professional communication to clarify the value of narrative to our discipline. It addresses the move in many fields to reconceptualize research as narrative. Placing narrative within a postmodernist frame, it examines the centrality of ethnography within a postmodernist view. The importance of ethnography in research is related to two key narrative questions that ethnographic theorists in other disciplines are addressing: Who is telling the ethnographic story? For what purposes is the story told? This article supports the importance of taking a critical stance toward these questions and discusses the implications of postmodernist ethnographic theory for research in professional communication.

Some Assessments of Business Communication Scholarship from Social Science Citations.

Abstract: This article reports Social Sciences Citation Index®citations of six periodicals, three that cover business communication explicitly and three that address related areas. The results indicate that business communication articles are cited by many different journals—primarily in the areas of written communication, social sciences and education, and business and economics—but are not cited frequently. The results also indicate that business communication periodicals compare favorably on several indexes of impact with 10 communication journals studied by Clement So. Some differences are noted between the six journals, and the most-cited business communication articles are identified.

Patterns in Transition A Writing Teacher's Survey of Organizational Socialization

Abstract: Research in organizational socialization outlines a common process of transition making. Newcomers first anticipate what the workplace and their involvement there will be like and then adjust these expectations upon encounter with organizational reality. Encounter often brings some disappointment, so struggles with motivation must be resolved before the initiates are ready to settle in and become contributing members. A survey of this research, illustrated with case study excerpts from undergraduate student interns, suggests that classes intended to prepare students for workplace communication can do so more effectively if they make students aware of this adjustment process and if they help students explore the possible writing implications of such nonwriting issues.

Power and Politeness: Administrative Writing in an “Organized Anarchy”

Abstract: In addition to reflecting the social and power relationships between the writer and the reader as well as the degree of imposition, politeness strategies in administrative writing also reflect the values of the organization. Operating in the egalitarian climate perpetuated in a university setting, administrators obscured their legitimate power when they wrote nonroutine memos to faculty. Hiding and de-emphasizing their empowerment by using indirectness, tentativeness, indebtedness, and personalization, academic administrators achieved a high level of politeness. This intensified politeness contrasts with the moderated politeness used in a corporation that openly accepts hierarchy and promotes efficiency. This study, therefore, offers a context-based approach to analyzing administrative writing, an approach that can be used to uncover discourse strategies in other organizational sites.

Competence and Critique in Technical Communication: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Journal Articles

Abstract: This study uses qualitative content analysis to discuss current perspectives in technical communication pedagogy. It examines the 1990-94 issues of five major scholarly journals—a collection of 563...

Multimedia and Hypermedia CBI: A Multidisciplinary Review of Research on Early Design Stages.

Abstract: Computer-based instruction (CBI) using multimedia and hypermedia is a new approach to teaching that is becoming increasingly popular in academic and nonacademic settings. Because the technical communication profession has developed a disciplinary culture uniquely suited to evolve along with communication technology, technical communicators experienced in creating instructional materials for technical products are well-positioned to become effective designers of this innovative form of instruction. However, as designers, they must become proficient in the early design stages of audience analysis, goals analysis, and control analysis to master multimedia and hypermedia CBI. In this article, the authors review findings from several fields to help technical communication teachers and practitioners (a) explain the value of audience analysis, goals analysis, and control analysis; (b) accomplish those analyses effectively; (c) use the results of their analyses to create effective multimedia or hypermedia CBI; an...

The Perils of Defective Documentation: Preparing Business and Technical Communicators to Avoid Products Liability.

Abstract: Because of our increasingly litigious workplace, it is theoretically, educationally, and pragmatically imperative that business and technical communicators become familiar with and informed about the legal issues surrounding products liability. This article explains the products liability theories of negligence, breach of warranty, and strict liability in relation to the publication of defective product information. It also examines the legal implications of printed media and written communications (such as safety, instructional, and promotional information) as integral parts of marketed products. Finally, it cautions all professional communicators concerning their personal legal responsibility for the accuracy and effectiveness of product documentation from the perspective of the ordinary, uninformed consumer, and it offers several guidelines for writing and organizing to avoid products liability lawsuits.

Technology, Community, and Technical Communication on the Internet: The Lotus "MarketPlace" and Clipper Chip Controversies.

Abstract: Computer-mediated communication on the Internet offers new challenges and opportunities for technical communication. The cases of Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper chip illustrate the specialized nature of technical communities on the Internet and suggest that when technical messages are not overly complex, the process of reposting may widen community appeal but also promote inaccurate information. Yet, when technical messages are highly complex, audiences may not repost such messages; this preserves accuracy of information but at the same time limits how many people will read the information. Finally, these cases strengthen recent arguments that rhetorical delivery is an increasingly important component of technical communication.

Victor W. Pagé's Early Twentieth-Century Automotive and Aviation Books: “Practical Books for Practical Men”

Abstract: Victor W. Page was either the first or one of the first to make a living primarily as a technical communicator in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. His 33 automotive and aviation books published by the Norman W. Henley Company were popular with both the public and critics because they contained timely, comprehensive coverage of novel technology; profuse illustrations; occasional analogies; easy-to-access information; well-established expertise; and sophisticated employment of task orientation. Page was able to publish many books quickly because he reused manufacturers' and his own material and methods of organization. He was also able to communicate his novel information effectively because he had both extensive firsthand experience with early automobiles and planes and because he was continually involved in teaching. Victor Page's early twentieth-century work demonstrates both what have become mainstream techniques in technical communication and a number of unique rhetorical strategies.

"Cover Your Tracks": A Case Study of Genre, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Two Psycholegal Reports.

Abstract: Expert legal reports exhibit what Carolyn Miller calls the “pragmatic dimension” of genre, namely, a capacity to engage in two very different kinds of discursive activities simultaneously: The first, what I call the strategic function, “helps virtual communities, the relationships we carry around in our heads, to reproduce and reconstruct themselves,” and the second, what I call the tactical function, “help[s] real people in spatio-temporal communities to do their work and carry out their purposes” (75). This article examines two psycholegal reports, showing how these strategic and tactical activities work together in a way that is complementary and ideological: complementary, because the relationship is one of foreground to background, with the strategic activity of the report predominating—and thus covering over—its tactical operations; ideological, because both activities serve to naturalize and reproduce the status of experts and of the law generally.

Extending the Boundaries of Rhetoric in Legal Writing Pedagogy.

Abstract: In the study of law, postmodernism's interpretive turn has given rise to a wealth of scholarship analyzing the relationship of law's rhetoric to its social, cultural, and political contexts. This s...

A Legal Discourse Community: Text Centered and Interdisciplinary in Social and Political Context

Abstract: This article reviews recent studies of legal discourse and nonacademic writing and presents the results of a historical case study of an environmental public policy. The author examined the rhetoric of public sector communication to show how an Indiana water quality standards administrative law was socially constructed as it was written collaboratively in two cycles by members of a text-centered legal discourse community. Key findings describe a dynamic discourse community with changing writing roles among government employees, lay members of the audience, and water pollution control board members. The social and political context surrounding this collaborative effort delayed formal adoption of the water quality standards in the public sector. Controversial provisions of the law stimulated social and political actions, including legislation, and in the process delayed rulemaking.

Effective Litigative Writing Harnessing the Wild Spirit of Stephen Dedalus

Abstract: This review of the relationship of law and art in the litigative context explores ways in which the methodologies of the novelist and other artists can be invoked by the lawyer in structuring and developing a case and presenting it to a court To the litigators who transcend the form books and stereotypes and see their cases with a fresh eye, neither the law nor the facts are fixed in stone but rather created to meet the deepest realities of the case within the context of our most fundamental values and beliefs Litigators, by the way they define and project the issues, can affect, even determine, what law and facts are legally relevant and dispositive They must devise and write the story that threads the client's way out of the labyrinth Mastery of the formal requirements of litigative writing is only a necessary first step Freewriting; Hemingwayesque choice of words and syntax; harnessing the symbolic, often hidden, power of language; achieving the dramatic potential of case presentation—all these an

Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Writing:

Abstract: Training in legal writing is a vital part of a lawyer's education both because it is a skill required by the successful practitioner and because learning to write as a lawyer is an integral part of the process that turns laypersons into lawyers. As writing teachers we find that paying attention only to process obscures an important lesson: No rhetoric is effective except to the extent that it is devised for a particular audience and occasion. The author discusses James Kinneavy's suggestion that we offer students the broader version of process implied in Heidegger's concept of “forestructure” and suggests that students be given a context in which to write, a context that contains strong clues as to audience and purpose.

Legal Literacy and the Undergraduate Curriculum

Abstract: Teachers of professional writing should try to integrate legal literacy into undergraduate writing courses in order to provide students with the kinds of literacies that many instructors and researchers want to promote in classes today. On one level, the almost complete exclusion of legal writing from most undergraduate professional writing classes should be reconsidered. This practice fails to meet the needs of a significant number of students who are considering careers in the legal profession. This neglect allows the legal system to remain a mystery to our students. This article analyzes how current literacy theory supports the integration of legal writing into the undergraduate curriculum and examines some of the relationships between rhetoric and legal writing pedagogy.