Reflections on Workplace Studies Articles, Continued

Moving on to the other two articles in this week's reading.

"What We Learn from Writing on the Job" (Faigley and Miller). This article is the oldest of the four readings for this week: it was published in October 1982. To put it mildly, writing on the job has changed a bit since this was written. As Rebecca points out in her blog, reading this piece is anachronistic. Personally, I find it quite a blast from the past. I was working as a secretary before the dawn of the word processing and computer eras, and I remember having to retype one or more pages of a document every time my boss made so much as a one-word change. Plus, there was still a lot of carbon paper being used, which was a whole 'nother nightmare in itself. When Liquid Paper and photocopiers appeared on the scene, it was like a gift from above! And then they came out with those newfangled typewriters that would store a whole line of text so you could go back and fix typos before hitting "return" at the end of the line. Such progress!!

Anyway, enough bashing of the bad old days of technology. It really floored me to read about how some universities had abolished their writing programs before the mid-1970s because "high-school graduates no longer needed such training" (Faigley and Miller, 557). Good lord! That was my era, and I remember the frustration my high school English teachers used to suffer over their students' writing abilities. One thing I thought was odd, even at the time, was that grammar and punctuation went by the wayside by the time I reached eighth grade (1967-68). That's the last time I remember having to diagram sentences, at least until my undergrad linguistics classes. It was awful, boring stuff, but I did learn quite a bit about structure.

I enjoyed Faigley and Miller's passage that stated "Journals and diaries do not seem as prevalent as they once were, judging from the extensive nineteenth-century diary collections in some historical libraries" (562). I agree with that observation, but only up until the recent birth of social networking (a.k.a. blogs). After all, what is this I'm writing if not a journal entry? Of course, I rather doubt it will show up in any historical library collection a couple hundred years from now. ;-)

I also loved this gem: "Codified rules will not teach proper writing skills. Reading good writing finally ingrains good practice" (Faigley and Miller, 564). I believe this wholeheartedly, and I often advise people who are less than confident in their writing skills to READ, READ, READ. The more often we see things written properly, both from a grammar and a punctuation perspective, the more we absorb through "osmosis." I truly believe that it was my voracious reading habit -- as opposed to any formal education process -- that really taught me to write.

Another point I thought was important is "...college graduates need to know more than just the basics. They need to be able to write well in novel situations and to master a number of different styles. They especially must be able to write for different audiences" (Faigley and Miller, 564). When I hire communications professionals, I include as part of the interview process both an editing test and an impromptu essay. The editing test is a bear, because not only do applicants need to be able to correct an error, but they need to be able to explain why it was an error in the first place. (Wicked, ain't I?) But I've found that it's the writing test that really throws people. One woman I interviewed a couple of years ago for a mid-level communications job took herself out of the running because she wasn't comfortable with composing a simple one-page essay. And she was an experienced professional writer!

"Frameworks for the Study of Writing in Organizational Contexts" (Harrison). I found this article to be the most fascinating of the four. I work for a large health care organization with 55,000 employees in eight states. Harrison's discussion about the idiosyncrasies of organizations could have been written about my employer. Because we're a Catholic organization, and a non-profit to boot, we have a vested interest in maintaining our "we provide the very best care because we're carrying on the work of Jesus Christ and we don't need to make any money for doing it" image. The organization's non-profit status means we're exempt from paying taxes (which makes it a little less difficult to stay in business, especially in the current economy), but it also means we have an obligation to provide a great deal of charity care and other types of community benefit -- and prove that we're doing so.

To help project that "vow of poverty" image, about four years ago we adopted a rhetorical stance that uses terms such as "Unified Enterprise Ministry" to describe the organization as a whole, and "Ministry Organization" to refer to individual hospitals. "Employees" have become "associates" and the "Corporate" Office has changed to the "Home" Office. When we write, we use "dot" points instead of "bullet" points, and we "implement" rather than "execute" plans. We have "reflections" before every meeting, and we structure each meeting around one of the six "Guiding Behaviors" (notice the initial caps). We refer to the December festivities as "Christmas" parties rather than "holiday" parties, even though we pride ourselves on our commitment to diversity and inclusion. One of the first things I did after being hired four years ago was to attend the organization's annual Fall Conference, and was rather startled to learn that we have own song!

It's true that, in my organization's case, we "...invent ideologies...that encompass expectations about the organization, its environment, and the probable success of alternative actions and then use these ideologies to justify why certain courses of action are needed to solve a particular problem" (Harrison 12). In fact, my employer has a whole department called Mission Discernment that is responsible for reviewing important business decisions before they're implemented in terms of the organization's mission, Catholic sponsorship, and nonprofit status.

As you might expect, my employer's specialized ideology mandates a very specific framework for organizational discourse. As Harrison suggests, we "are conscious of and accommodate the idiosyncratic constraints imposed by [our organization] in the production of...documents, as well as the expected constraints of subject matter" (4). It took me, as a newly hired writer, some time to understand and internalize the rhetorical traditions of the organization, but after four years I can honestly say it's deeply ingrained. If I find it necessary to take a job with another company in the future, I believe it will be easier for me to understand the concept of the organization as rhetorical context, but perhaps a bit difficult to shake off my employer's own peculiarities.