Constructing a Discipline: 5 Points of Emphasis

Ch.1 Qualities of Effective On-the-Job Communication:
Usability and Persuasion

5 Main Points of Emphasis from this Chapter
• Writing as an action (p.10)
• Technical Documents as Useable and Persuasive.
• Meaning as a situated, dynamic interaction.
• Technical Writing as Reader-Centered.
• Writing as an Ethical action.
Note: While the Introduction touched on these ideas without going
into a lot of depth, there is actually a whole lot to these ideas so……

We may want to pause for a minute before
we dismiss these ideas.

Writing as Action?
Writing as An Action? Wait a minute, I thought thinking was the action
and writing was something secondary. I mean isn’t writing the mere
collecting, organizing and recording of my thoughts or observations of
the world so that somebody else can understand my thinking and my
observations. After all the statue is called the thinker, not the
writer….right?

But in this picture Language has to DO something,
doesn’t? It is not like we just directly transmit our
thoughts into somebody else’s head. Is it?

Good point, we know that language not only
describes what we think or what we see but it also
actively shapes our thinking and our environment.
• Eskimos have many different words for snow, we have one. Do we see
the same thing as they do we look at snow? I seriously doubt it, they
must be seeing something different than what I see.
• When the words “Now I pronounce you man and wife!” are spoken,
they do not so much describe something as make something that did
not exist before. Wow! Language is an active force in the world.
• 1950’s Women’s magazine not only described the gender norms but it
also created them. These writings “acted” on women’s bodies. They
created anxieties, made them sit a certain way, maybe even told them
who to find attractive….

You’re getting all of this from the text? What book
were you reading? I didn’t see any of this stuff in
there?
• Check out page 10…..
• “[some writers] mistakenly think of writing as an afterthought, as merely
recording or transporting information they developed while acting as
specialist in their chosen field…Nothing could be further from the truth.
When you write at work, you act. You exert power to achieve a particular
result, to change things from the way they are to the way you want them
to be.”
• Note: Can you imagine a very intelligent person getting up and reading a
paper or writing a paper with this approach? He could be a genius but, if he
didn’t pay attention to the way that he was using language, to the effects
his language use had on people, then people may not be persuaded. In
fact, they could be confused, bored, angered, frustrated etc rather than
persuaded, right?....but this view of writing has consequences beyond
simply understanding….

Ethics
• We could get really into the ethics of writing (far beyond the book’s
suggestion that ethics is reducible to a company’s code of ethics. This
codes are important, no doubt. But there is more to it than this…)
• For now, lets just say that if writing is action that involves “using
power” as the quote from the text on the previous slide suggested
and if it involves acting on people, then writing and how one writes is
an inherently ethical act. More on this throughout the semester. But
for now lets just say if writing acts on people, then this ups the ante
in regard to the ethics of writing. This should be fairly obvious to
people I would think..

Persuasion? What is that? It sounds like
persuasion is ultimate goal of written action.
• When I went back and read the quote from the text on slide 7, it kind
of looked this way…
• Yes, the majority of the time in workplace writing it is not so much a
question of whether a piece of writing is right or wrong, since
someone can be right in their proposal but fail to persuade because
of HOW they communicated. The goal is often to persuade someone.
In short, to get someone to do something—think differently, listen to
me, accept a new policy etc..

Usability: You have mentioned a bit about
“language as action” and about “persuasion,” but
what about usability? What does that mean?
• Usability is, among other things, a buzzword that circulates
throughout almost all Technical Writing Textbooks. (It sometimes
appears as “readability,” which sort of simplifies it for you).
• For now, lets just say that when we write we need to make sure that
we appeal to cognitive patterns and conventions of your audience.
This will allow them to “use” the information it contains.
• Usability goes along with the idea Technical writing as Reader-
centered prose. But what does that mean?

Reader-Centered Writing
• For now, I would say that reader-centered writing is writing that takes
the affect that it has on its reader/audience very seriously and
attempts to connect with their habits, patterns of thinking and
knowledge as much as it can so that the material will be understood
and be persuasive to them.
• We can think of it as specific style of writing. (Hence, the nee for a
style manual for the course.)

So are we going to learn how to write reader-
centered documents?
• Lets see….
• Ch. 22 is called “Writing Reader-Centered Prose.”
• Ch. 23 is called “Writing Reader-Centered Proposals.”
• Ch. 24 is called “Writing Reader-Centered Empirical Research
Reports.”
• This pattern continues in chapters 25, 26 and 27. So the idea of
reader-centered writing seems to be pretty important. We will need
to find out how to produce it!

Constructing a Discipline: 5 Points of Emphasis

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