Journal of Business and Technical Communication Oct 2001

Writing as an Embodied Practice

Christina Haas ; Stephen P. Witte Kent State University

Abstract

This article explores the role of embodied knowledge and embodied representation in the joint revision of a small section of a large technical document by personnel from two organizations: a city government and a consulting engineering firm. The article points to differences between the knowledge and the representation practices of personnel from the two organizations as manifested in their words and gestures during the revision task, and it points to the gestures of the city personnel as a principal means by which their greater embodied knowledge of channel easements becomes distributed across the group as a whole. The article concludes by pointing to some advantages of considering acts of writing as embodied practices and by indicating a number of related questions that should be pursued in subsequent investigations of literacy in modern workplaces.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
2001-10-01
DOI
10.1177/105065190101500402
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality revision

Citation Context

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  11. Swacha (2018)
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  12. Clayson (2018)
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  22. Evia et al. (2012)
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  23. Wickman (2010)
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  24. Thompson (2009)
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  25. Newman (2009)
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  26. Sidler et al. (2008)
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  27. Koerber et al. (2008)
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  28. Burnett et al. (2007)
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  29. Wolfe (2005)
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  30. Bracewell (2005)
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  31. Anderson (2004)
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  32. Bracewell et al. (2003)
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Cites in this index (6)

  1. DUNMIRE (2000)
    Genre as Temporally Situated Social Action
    Written Communication
  2. SAUER (1998)
    Embodied Knowledge
    Written Communication
  3. Sauer (1994)
    The dynamics of disaster: A three‐dimensional view of documentation in a tightl…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  4. SAUER (1993)
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  5. WITTE (1992)
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Show all 6 →
  1. Rose (1980)
    Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Anal…
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Also cites 16 works outside this index ↓
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CrossRef global citation count: 61 View in citation network →

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