Narrative has been neglected in the education of professionals. The persuasive power of narrative is essential to all the sense-making activities that govern the lives of professionals, for in sense making, they are regularly using narrative. The central example here is the O. J. Simpson legal defense that was organized within the narrative frame of Simpson's story. The authors compare his story with a famous Norwegian folktale to illustrate the role narratives play in amplifying the values of a community. Using Propp's structural analysis of the folktale, they deconstruct the Simpson trial, which reveals implications of the narrative paradigm for the professional.

This article calls for a rhetorical perspective on the relationship of gender, communication, and power in the workplace. In doing so, the author uses narrative in two ways. First, narratives gathered in an ethnographic study of an actual workplace, a plastics manufacturer, are used as a primary source of data, and second, the findings of this study are presented by telling the story of two women in this workplace. Arguing that gender in the workplace, like all social identities, is locally constructed through the micro practices of everyday life, the author questions some of the prevailing assumptions about gender at work and cautions professional communication teachers, researchers, and practitioners against unintentionally perpetuating global, decontextualized assumptions about gender and language, and their relationship to the distribution and exercise of power at work.

This article proposes a model of organizational change by describing change as a discursive process, sparked by a conflict in an organization's narratives and images. As such, change is the process of realigning an organization's discordant narratives and images. Several implications that the model has for organizational communication and for the study of organizational change are presented.

This article describes the writer's experiences teaching American business writing in Russia and attempting to find documents for comparison of Russian and American approaches to business communication. She discovered that most documents common in the United States are rare or nonexistent in Karelia, where in many ways organizational culture is oral culture; documents exist largely to show to officials rather than to communicate with customers, clients, superiors, or subordinates. Although Hall's model of high-context communication accounts for some cultural differences between Americans and Russians, it is important to note the differences between Russians operating in official mode and in personal mode to understand the amount of explicitness and directness appropriate in various situations.

In this article, the review process is described as a method of formative evaluation of texts. The description is based on three empirical studies of professional writing practices. It includes the goals of review, the actors involved in the process, the moments in the text production process that review is taking place, and the procedures followed. The studies make clear that review serves more goals than just improving the text. For improving the text, other methods than review probably produce better and more reliable results, especially when the goal is to improve the usability of the text. But review also has the function of having the information checked by experts and of building consensus and commitment in the organization. Because in most organizations review is taking place anyway, all remarks about the quality and acceptability of the document that are collected in the review process can be considered additional information that writers could use—with caution.

A new orientation toward intercultural and international communication will demand a redefinition of the professional communicator and professional communication: Translation—understood in a broad sense—will become a crucial skill. Analyzing what is absent from contexts and messages will become just as important as editing and refining what is present in them. This article considers the process of translation in the framework of the postmodern debate about language and reality as well as the economic, cultural, and social phenomena that have transformed the communication landscape during the past 50 years.

This article uses the cross-cultural concepts of context and time to examine the rhetoric of German university students in an English business writing course. This participant-observer account, which includes numerous student examples and observations, provides a fresh perspective for American teachers in increasingly multinational, multicultural classrooms. It also suggests how Aristotle's concepts of ethos, logos, and pathos together with the case method and group work can help teachers respond to the challenges in such classrooms. The article concludes by suggesting that understanding the rhetoric of culture is an important step in accepting and negotiating cultural differences.

This article argues for the long-term value of client-based group projects in an introductory technical communication course. Survey results are presented from 73 former technical communication students with two to seven years of workplace experience. Lasting five to six weeks, these projects are a compromise between a briefer conventional case method and a more lengthy individualized internship or cooperative education experience. The projects reinforce research, analysis, and reporting skills, such as interviewing specialists and conducting survey research, that graduates continue to value highly even after years of workplace writing. When framed as such, client-based projects also encourage students to define and debate public policy issues.

Many technical writing programs across the country have their students go out into the community and do writing projects for local businesses, campus organizations, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations. Few, however, take advantage of the increasingly popular pedagogy known as service learning. This article describes how to set up such service-learning courses and how to anticipate certain types of problems. Also discussed are some of the many benefits, both pedagogical and civic/humanitarian, that this truly real-world approach brings to the teaching of technical writing and, potentially, to the teaching of other forms of professional writing.

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.

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.

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.

An MA student in professional writing and editing undertook ethnographic research on ghostwriting in the military headquarters where he has worked as a civilian writer for 18 years. He investigated the ways in which the military's review process (or “chop chain”) influences writer psychology and the final written product. His findings shed light on writer psychology and on bureaucratese as a cultural discursive product and lead him to propose changes in local writing and reviewing practices. To suggest innovations in teaching and curriculum, this article traces the MA student's academic authorship as he drew on the disciplines of ethnography, folklore, social psychology, and composition and as he used cultural theory from Foucault and textual theory from narratology.

Scholars in professional communication have called for a reexamination of pedagogy, asking that it instruct students not simply in the forms of workplace discourse but also in the connections between that discourse and socially responsible communicative action. This article posits that narrative can provide a basis for a pedagogy of social action—for a pedagogy, that is, that enables students to understand the workings of power and cultural reproduction in professional settings and that fosters reflection, critique, and dialogue. The article first reviews narrative theory supporting this claim, then discusses ways that teachers can use narrative to help students critique examples of professional discourse and their own composing choices. The article closes by discussing both the concerns about and the possibilities for such a pedagogy.

What roles does writing play in larger communications also involving physically discrete but related texts of other media? How may the properties of what we normally consider writing be modified in such communications? The intermedial context of much workplace writing has been largely overlooked. This study of an insurance company's communication department describes how (a) three written products served as parts of larger messages in multiple media campaigns, (b) an attempt to combine composing processes for print and video failed, and (c) conflicting generic and stylistic properties of other media caused an intermedial graft to fail. The author's study shows that in the right circumstances, a multiple media “overtext” can override some of the rules that govern what and how one communicates in an individual medium. When a written text is involved, its nature may change as it forms symbiotic relationships with texts of other media.

Visual design has played an important role in the historical development of professional communication. The technology of laser printing has reestablished the importance of visual language in functional communication, transforming contemporary document design and redefining its relation to the traditions of handwritten, typewritten, and printed text. During this period of transition, three factors will shape the new visual language: (a) the development of a visual rhetoric that represents design as an integral part of the message rather than merely as external “dress,” (b) the rediscovery of aesthetics as a legitimate factor in text design, and (c) the use of empirical research—particularly context-specific research—to guide the document design process.

This article reviews selected gender scholarship that informs the study of professional communication as well as some recent articles on professional communication that make use of gender studies. The article also suggests future research directions that include a merger of gender and professional communication scholarship. Topics covered include gender and communication and gender identity, along with gender and writing, reading, speaking language choice, visual communication, collaboration, content analysis, management, history and case studies.

What is the role of conventions in business writing? Too often, textbook samples of business writing are removed from their original contexts. If we invite students to analyze these models for specific textual features, we teach them methods of formalist evaluation, but we fail to teach them ways in which they can learn to analyze and respond to specific contexts, see the subtle ways in which texts are inflected with many voices, and actively participate in the cultural conversation of the business community. This article moves from a critique of conventions to theories of context and intertext; these theories are applied to case studies of both professional and student business writing practices to analyze how rhetorical exchanges shape conventions and communication.

Most discussions of disciplinarity start by claiming an emerging group as constituting a discipline or a profession and authorizing that group by locating appropriate research foci, programs for graduate education and undergraduate certification, professional societies, and central professional meetings. Our discussion examines the field of professional writing, focusing not so much on defining it as a discipline as on working out its curricular geography, an activity that will affect its status in both academy and industry. To that end, we explore the status of professional writing within the department of English by (a) briefly examining the problem of defining professional writing; (b) reviewing several theoretical positions within English that have provided a status for professional writing—literature, rhetoric/composition, business and technical writing—to expose the competition for control of the term and to surface the implications of accepting these various groups on their own terms; and (c) considering the curricular status to which professional writing might aspire by sketching a geography that positions professional writing in a new space within English.

Business and technical communication have conventionally been separated in academe—a separation that formalist rhetorical theory has supported. Epistemic rhetorical theory, however, suggests that this separation does not reflect the profession's current understanding of workplace discourse. This article demonstrates that the labels business and technical communication are not helpful in understanding two workplace documents: a memorandum and a report. The article then explores the increased explanatory power in two epistemic theoretical approaches, social construction and paralogic hermeneutics, after which the article discusses the radical implications of these approaches for a curricular dialogue concerning workplace writing. Finally, the article describes interests inside and outside academe that preserve the status quo and thus mitigate against curricular change, positing that such change would be difficult, but not impossible, to achieve.

Writing and speaking rhetorically means directing one's words to a particular audience for a particular effect; teaching rhetorically includes appealing to students' interests and experience. Writing teachers frequently use scenarios for that purpose. In this article, the author introduces the unified case method as an improvement on the traditional case method and reports on the use of this rhetorical method in a professional writing class. Specifically, the author used a single, complex scenario throughout the semester so that all the writing assignments were situated in the same fictional world. The students reacted enthusiastically to the method, and their writing was more successful.

Technical writing theory and research about communication in large organizations mostly ignore from-the-top control of rhetoric. The usual emphasis on an individual writer negotiating with a known audience and generally free to decide on matters of style, organization, and so on can hide the ways that power relations often silently control internal rhetoric. Conclusions are based on two case studies: In the later Middle Ages, professional letters had to conform to a rhetorical format that necessarily foregrounded unequal power relations. In a contemporary nuclear power station, similar power relations purposely obscure writer and audience while procedures dictate format and content.

The teaching of ethics in professional communication courses for non-English majors is problematic because teachers of those courses are usually trained in literary studies, a profession that has traditionally viewed with suspicion the ethical orientation of science, technology, and business professions. This article examines the history of this problematic, focusing on the “Engineering Publicity” program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1920s. The article suggests that students may be empowered to enter and transform their professions more through examining ethical critiques of science, technology, and business carried on within and among the professions they will enter than by examining ethical critiques from the profession of literary studies.

Technical-professional communication as praxis, or social action, is extended beyond skill or amoral art into the realm of phronesis, concerned with reasoning about ends rather than means. However, praxis and phronesis are sociologically constructed and, like social-epistemic rhetoric, ideologically defined in the political context by the ethic of expediency enabling deliberative rhetoric. Hitler's use of propaganda to construct praxis and define phronesis in Nazi Germany is examined in terms of the rational but open-ended nature of Aristotle's political-ethical thought, and the implications for our understanding of Aristotelian praxis is discussed. Finally, the failure of professional discourse surrounding the siting of a low-level nuclear waste facility to create a persuasive reality and yet ideologically construct praxis is examined, raising questions concerning the possibility of a deliberative technical rhetoric in U.S. democracy.

Although communication is widely accepted as central to the construction of organizational culture, researchers in organizational theory and in rhetoric and professional communication have focused primarily on traditional spoken and written texts, overlooking the vital role that new technologies—especially film and video—are now playing in socializing members of organizations to organizational life. This article examines corporate videos as cultural texts and develops the claim that videos function as rites and ceremonials in modern organizations, facilitating organizational socialization. Drawing on videos produced by a major national financial services firm, the article defines and analyzes four types of rites: integration, passage, renewal, and enhancement.

Previous research in computer-mediated communication in both the classroom and the workplace has found that patterns of interaction may differ between individuals communicating face-to-face versus communicating via a computer network. This present study, using a case study methodology, sought to analyze and compare the language of groups of business writing students as they communicated both face-to-face and on a real-time computer network. The study found that during network meetings, participation was more equal, responses tended to be more substantive and text specific, and students were more willing to offer direction than during face-to-face meetings. In addition, students reported a more positive evaluation of their network sessions.

As in the fields of composition and technical writing, the emphasis on hierarchical organization of texts in business writing has led to a devaluation of narrative, perhaps because the kind of knowledge that narrative creates has been insufficiently understood. By elucidating the special properties of narrative as a mode of discourse and as a cognitive instrument, this article argues for the potential power of narrative in many common business writing situations.

This study is the result of personal interviews with 17 writers in four departments at a major insurance corporation. The writers, most of whom began as journalists, share their frustrations and challenges in working for a large corporation. They explain why they rarely collaborate, why they do not need written standards for each department's writing, and their document approval process. Because these writers may have an audience of 50 million readers at a time, the experiences they share about writing in the workplace should be of interest to anyone who teaches professional writing.

As more business writing instructors begin implementing collaborative writing and learning in their classrooms, few descriptions exist that show how collaboration might work in the context of an entire course. This article describes a course that integrates individual and collaborative group assignments while requiring students to work through multiple drafting processes involving teacher and peer intervention. The course was designed to encourage students to become self-reflective, flexible writers who can make themselves aware of their writing processes and then adapt them to both individual and collaborative writing tasks. Along with outlining specific assignments and the rationales behind them, we address issues such as establishing collaborative groups, analyzing group dynamics and writing processes, and the roles teachers might play in a collaborative classroom.

Rhetorical categories can and should be developed by scholars of professional writing to identify how values held within professions constrain the ways discourse is interpreted in organizational settings. Empirical research (conducted by the author and others), discourse theory, and pedagogical practice in professional writing strongly suggest that at least three categories of professional writing exist: engineering, administrative, and technical/professional writing. The author demonstrates this claim and distinguishes the characteristics of these three categories. Engineering writing is shown to respond to professional values of scientific objectivity and professional judgment as well as to corporate interests. Administrative writing reflects the locus of decision-making authority and promotes institutional identity. Technical/professional writing aims to accommodate audience needs through complying with professional readability standards. Future research should focus on defining the characteristics of these varieties more precisely. Articulated definitions of these three varieties of professional writing can help scholars and practitioners better understand how discourse is framed and interpreted in organizational settings.

To help students enter a professional discourse community, teachers must assess how accurately they both understand the community's discourse practices. Our research investigated how job recruiters seeking to fill positions in mechanical engineering or marketing were influenced by the quality of writing in student résumés. The résumés varied in elaboration, sentence style, mechanics, and amount of relevant work experience. The recruiters rated the résumés to indicate their willingness to interview the students. We found that recruiters in the two fields—engineering and marketing—valued quite different writing features. When we subsequently asked students in business writing and technical writing classes to rate the same résumés, we found that they underestimated the importance of various writing features. Generally, however, students' ratings resembled those of the recruiters in their respective disciplines. This study documents how students can improve their résumés and provides insight into the variations of discourse practices in professional disciplines.

A script-based semantic theory is used to examine selected professional writing textbooks published during the 1930s through the 1950s to show how they reflect and perpetuate sexual stereotypes. In these textbooks women are portrayed as subservient, emotional, and frivolous. Men, on the other hand, are portrayed as decisive, logical, and strong. These stereotype-based scripts suggest that men are more suited than women for positions of authority within the business world and have played an important role in relegating women to low-level positions.

To study the possible impact of feminist theory on technical communication, this article discusses six common characteristics of feminist theory: (a) celebration of difference, (b) impact on social change, (c) acknowledgment of scholars' backgrounds and values, (d) inclusion of women's experience, (e) study of gaps and silences in traditional scholarship, and (f) new female sources of knowledge. Three debates within feminist theory spring out of these common characteristics: whether to stress similarity or difference between the sexes, whether differences come from biological or social forces, and whether feminist scholars can avoid reinforcing binary opposition. The article then traces the impact of these characteristics of feminist theory and debates within feminist theory on the redefinition of technical communication in terms of the myth of scientific objectivity, the new interest in ethnographic studies of workplace communication, and the recent focus on collaborative writing.

The study demonstrates the language skills value added by business writing instruction. Descriptive Tests of Language Skills of the College Board (DTLS) covering sentence structure and usage were administered as a pretest/posttest assessment to students enrolled in two business writing courses. Instruction in business writing resulted in improved language skills as measured by the DTLS.

Although the number of comprehensive studies that outline methods for incorporating collaborative writing into the professional writing classroom has increased, most studies discuss only one or two assignments throughout the term. This article describes an entire course focused on shared-document writing. Over a four-year period, students indicated that they valued the time allowed to coordinate groups and to understand and complete assignments. Structuring such a course necessitates assigning work that is related to a single topic and providing students with choices, including a voice in group formation and evaluation.

During the 1980s, studies about stress in academia and business indicated that jobrelated stress is a serious problem. The purpose of this exploratory, correlational study was to examine the nature and extent of job-related stress among collegiate business-and professional-writing faculty members in the United States. The stress scale developed by the author was consistent with the framework on stress and burnout suggested by Pines and Aronson. Results indicate that job-related stress is associated with faculty members' rank, type of institution, and sex. Job-related stress tends to increase with greater expectations of publication and service, the total number of courses taught, and the number of writing courses taught. Job-related stress tends to decrease with increased maturity—age, years of teaching, years postdegree, and years teaching business and professional writing. Analysis of two open-ended questions indicates that paper grading is a significant stressor.

The technology of in-house publishing is radically shifting the responsibility for document design from the graphic specialist to the individual writer. To apply the new technology, professional communicators need to understand the principles underpinning typographical design and their origin in the functionalist aesthetics of modernism, particularly as articulated by the Bauhaus. While some of the key concepts of modernism—strict economy, uni versal objectivity, intuitive perception, and the unity ofform and purpose—are well-suited to business and technical documents, these concepts are bound to an historical and intellectual milieu. By understanding the influence ofmod ernism on typographical design, professional communicators equipped with the new technology can adapt design principles to the rhetorical context ofspe cific documents.

A growing concern about ethical behavior in business suggests that profes sional communicators, often major players in the business community, ought to be aware of the ethical dimensions of their writing. Teachers can prepare fu ture professional communicators to consider the ethical dimension of their writing activities by using Lawrence Kohlberg's hierarchy of moral develop ment. When Kohlberg's hierarchy is applied to fictional business settings, stu dents have the opportunity to investigate the relationship between action morality and agent morality. This type of investigation is an essential part of teaching professional communication because the written language used in business transmits values.