Weekend Review

I'm utterly and completely sure that the community aspect of rhetoric plays an important-- if not the MOST important-- role in how effective a text is at achieving its intention. It also takes on a high degree of importance in that the social aspect of rhetoric is not just a factor to consider in terms of the audience... it also directly influences the writer's biases and background, going so far as to determine the sort of textual techniques any given writer will use in constructing any sort of text.

What I am unsure of to this point is exactly what is meant by "Discourse Community." While I understand that, by and large, this refers to any group of people that are differentiated from other groups by the way they speak or write in terms of the language and techniques they use, I still feel as if I'm missing a larger point. So I suppose my question would be, "Can we better define discourse community and make a better effort to fit it into practical contexts to help us in understanding the concept as a whole."

The Continuous Process of Communication

In order for a professional writer to actively and effectively participate in the continuous loop of communications that pulsate through a workplace, they must be able to identify three key factors:

Topic
Purpose
Recipient

In terms of identifying the topic, a professional writer must make use of efficient and concise language in order to address a given subject in a manner that is effective both for the writer and the reader. For example, if a professional writer is writing a memo concerning the need for several shifts in a production schedule, straying from this initial topic and mentioning minutia such as company picnics or other nonsense will do nothing but skirt the original point and create a less effective text.

In much the same vein as Topic, a professional writer must be able to adequately identify and convey a Purpose in their writing. If the purpose of a communication is to encourage, then it will only weaken the communication if that purpose is lost through straying to less encouraging issues-- "Your department has turned out an amazing amount of work this quarter and all of you should be proud of yourselves. Just try to make sure the work is on time from now on." In terms of professional writing in more technical fields such as engineering, this is all the more important. A communication outlining the requirement for a new building project will be infinitely weaker if it is peppered with updates concerning office politics and other such minutia.

In correlation with Topic and Purpose, a writer of any sort of communication or prose must have a good handle on the recipient. If a professional writer is communicating with an engineer about technical specification of a project, it will be unnecessary for the writer to explain what the specs mean-- the engineer went to many years of class to learn that before. By the same token, if the same professional writer is communicating the same technical specs to a sales or promotional professional, the opposite is true-- taking the time to fully explain what technical specs mean in practical terms will help the promotions employee better understand the selling points of a product or service.

In Class Discussion: August 21st

Query: Why did Selzer want to study the composing processes of an engineer?

Ostensibly because the sort of writing done during the ordinary daily dealings of an engineer is not typically the sort of writing that one would tag as "professional" writing at all. The occupation of engineer carries with it many years of study and many more years of dedicating the lion's share of one's time and energies to numbers and formulas-- not the nuanced approaches needed to wield adequate professional verbiage. The fact that the two intermingle is an interesting one, and certainly draws one's attention to the variety of writing that can and should be considered "professional" writing.

Query: What did you find interesting/unique/surprising about Selzer's answer to the question: "How do engineers plan, arrange, write, and revise?" Also, how is he able to convince the reader that he is/was on target with his findings?

Perhaps the most surprising of all of Selzer's findings is that Engineers organize their proposals and writing in general in a very different way than those that write in other fields-- journalism or academia in specific-- perhaps as can be expected due to the utter dichotomy in methodology and subject material in which the two operate. Engineer writing tended to focus more on brainstorming and, once things were fleshed out, plowing through the creation of the proposal, sometimes reusing the old documents.

To discover this, he was simply studying all materials possible to analyze for patterns and/or tendencies, as well as simply questioning Nelson directly and observing him directly.

Professional Writing: Careers and Types of Writing

Despite the common connection between the phrase "professional writer" and the image of the bespectacled social misanthrope grinding away at a typewriter to produce a novel or journalistic text, to analyze what sort of careers require and/or make use of professional writing as a key aspect of the field is much like analyzing what sorts of mammals make use of oxygen in their biological functions; an absence is infinitely more noticeable than not.

Let us, then, leave for now the discourse concerning journalistic and aesthetically literal professions as one well enough covered, and dive instead into professions that, on the surface, seem to have little to do with profession writing, yet rely upon it heavily. A prime (if obvious) example of this would be any position relating to the managerial side of business enterprises. This field carries with it canalized imagery of its own-- the puffed three piece suit with head sticking out of its collar, conducting dealings in brandy bars one moment and analyzing the hard, cold bottom line of a spreadsheet the next-- which tends to focus more on appearances, number$, and curly lipped rhetoric than on any sort of endeavor of endeavor of the written word. However, while there will always remain a certain truth in the assumption that most businessmen make more use of bluster than they do concise writing, this is to assume that their correspondence is limited only to others in the business world. To have gotten their initial enterprise off the ground, for example, it is a certainty that a written proposal and outline of that establishment was submitted to a bank or private investor. Moving on, as a business grows and money tends to flow in more directions, it is unavoidable that, even after a handshake and a spoken proposal to other potential partners and affiliates, more written proposals will need to be submitted to the variety of potential clients or colleagues one must woo in order to expand that business.

This essential principle-- that any effort to take or expand one's work to a wider audience/clientèle will inevitably require cooperation and, therefore, much written correspondence-- can be applied to absolutely any field or profession to flush out the role that professional writing plays within them. Mathematician? If he wants his new formula published or that fellowship at the best institution, he had better know how to write about his theories, policies, and resume' in order to convince others that he's on to something. Musician? Be it his organizing a tour, setting up relations with representation, or simply pitching his services to local venues, he's going to need to use professionally written materials to convince others that he's the next Bob Dylan and worth the time and effort. Baker? If that baker plans to shill his confections to more patrons than just family and friends, he's going to need to expand distribution of his goods to private functions or private businesses, which, of course, means writing rather persuasively to convince the newlyweds that his wedding cake is worth that extra C-note.

If skirting over the role of professional writing in industries such as journalism, education, publishing, or entertainment has left me with an incomplete assignment, I apologize. However, if some simply applies the same principle to these fields, the answers are quite self evident.