Orality and Literacy in the Workplace: Process- and Text-Based Strategies for Multiple-Audience Adaptation

Rachel Spilka

doi:10.1177/105065199000400103

Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jan 1990

Orality and Literacy in the Workplace: Process- and Text-Based Strategies for Multiple-Audience Adaptation

Rachel Spilka University of Maine

Abstract

What is the role of interaction, or, more generally, orality, in multiple-audience analysis and adaptation? How does orality relate to literacy in the evolution of corporate documents? A qualitative study of how seven engineers in two divi sions of a large corporation wrote for multiple audiences revealed that, in the more rhetorically successful cases observed, interaction was the central means of analyzing and adapting discourse to multiple audiences, fulfilling rhetorical and social goals, and building and sustaining a corporate culture; and orality was more potent than literacy in the engineers'composing behavior and the au diences' acceptance of the engineers' ideas and documents.

Journal: Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published: 1990-01-01
DOI: 10.1177/105065199000400103
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Topics: rhetorical criticism discourse analysis qualitative research literacy studies
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Citation Context

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Spilka, Rachel. (1988)

The Technical Writing Teacher

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Orality and Literacy in the Workplace: Process- and Text-Based Strategies for Multiple-Audience Adaptation

Abstract

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (12)

References (10) · 2 in this index

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