Business and Professional Communication Quarterly Jun 2024

A Rhetorical Approach for Reimagining Business Writing Instruction in the AI Age

Emily DeJeu

Abstract

Generative AI could disrupt professional writing instruction, but banning AI tools seems unproductive. This article outlines a rhetorical approach for adapting business writing instruction for the AI age: It suggests AI use cases that align with the rhetorical canons, illustrates each with real-world business examples, and ends with suggestions for using AI to build students’ critical genre awareness. This approach should prove useful for business writing instructors who want to ground their AI-related instruction in enduring pedagogical theory.

Journal
Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
Published
2024-06-10
DOI
10.1177/23294906241255301
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Topics
writing pedagogy genre theory artificial intelligence professional writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (5)

  1. Gupta et al. (2025)
    The Evaporating Cloud as a Business Communication Tool: A Systematic Framework …
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  2. DeJeu et al. (2025)
    “Don’t Ban, Teach”: Two Pilot Studies on AI Instruction in Business Communication
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  3. Wilson et al. (2025)
    A Genre, Scoring, and Authorship Analysis of AI-Generated and Human-Written Ref…
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  4. Lookadoo et al. (2025)
    AI-Based Writing Assistants in Business Education: A Cross-Institutional Study …
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  5. Phan (2024)
    AI Integration for Communication Skills: A Conceptual Framework in Education an…
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

Cites in this index (25)

  1. DeJeu (2024)
    Using Generative AI to Facilitate Data Analysis and Visualization: A Case Study…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. DeJeu (2024)
    <i>Topoi</i>of Nonprofit Proposal Writing
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  3. DeJeu (2023)
    The <i>Topoi</i> of Small Business Entrepreneurship
    Written Communication
  4. Gere et al. (2021)
    Communal Justicing: Writing Assessment, Disciplinary Infrastructure, and the Ca…
    College Composition and Communication
  5. Driscoll et al. (2020)
    Genre Knowledge and Writing Development: Results From the Writing Transfer Project
    Written Communication
Show all 25 →
  1. Brown et al. (2017)
    Elaborated Specificity versus Emphatic Generality: A Corpus-Based Comparison of…
    Research in the Teaching of English
  2. Wolfe et al. (2016)
    Grammatical Versus Pragmatic Error
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  3. Wolfe (2015)
    Teaching Students to Focus on the Data in Data Visualization
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  4. Aull et al. (2014)
    Linguistic Markers of Stance in Early and Advanced Academic Writing
    Written Communication
  5. Wolfe et al. (2014)
    Knowing What We Know about Writing in the Disciplines: A New Approach to Teachi…
    The WAC Journal
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    Transfer, Transformation, and Rhetorical Knowledge
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  7. Wolfe et al. (2011)
    Teaching the IMRaD Genre: Sentence Combining and Pattern Practice Revisited
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  8. Porter (2009)
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    Computers and Composition
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    Research in the Teaching of English
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    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Writing, technologies, and the fifth canon
    Computers and Composition
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    “The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism” Revisited
    Written Communication
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    Factors in Reader Responses to Negative Letters
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  16. Freedman (1993)
    Show and Tell? The Role of Explicit Teaching in the Learning of New Genres
    Research in the Teaching of English
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    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Written Communication
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    The Topic Sentence Revisited
    College Composition and Communication
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    Written Communication
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CrossRef global citation count: 7 View in citation network →

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