A Dialogical Model for Business Correspondence

Abstract

Despite the fact that letters and memos are the most prevalent forms of written discourse in the business community, there has been little theoretical study of professional correspondence as a distinct rhetorical genre. A theory of correspondence as a form of dialogue can, however, be constructed with the help of two very different scholars, Erasmus and Bakhtin. Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist, offers a pragmatic guide to the practice of dialogue in correspondence, and Bakhtin, the twentieth-century Russian philosopher of language, provides theoretical concepts that define the nature of dialogical communication. The present article combines the ideas of both scholars into a unified theory of business correspondence and then presents both a set of guidelines and a model for the practice of dialogical correspondence.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
1993-07-01
DOI
10.1177/1050651993007003001
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Rhetoric Society Quarterly

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