WRITING ON THE JOB : AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF WRITING IN AN ORGANIZATION

Abstract

The social perspective on writing is a recently emerging one which views writing from a broader context than traditional rhetoric did. However. only a few studies have been conducted so far on writing in nonacademic contexts, even though these contexts provide insight for professionals and student writers. Thus, this Academic Exercise aims to contribute towards this new strand of research. Being concerned with writing on the job, it provides an ethnographic study of writing in an organization. Chapter one introduces the concept of ethnography and distinguishes between the larger social perspective and the more restricted rhetorical context. This is followed with a review of case studies of writing in nonacademic settings which, in turn, highlights the uniqueness of my study. Finally, the nature of the specific organization under investigation is examined. Chapter two concentrates on methodology. The importance of triangulating research methods is discussed, highlighting various strategies like text analysis, direct observations, interviews and a reader survey. Chapter three presents the findings of the ethnographic research. The emergence of the written product is first traced, followed by a survey of the social structure and the organization's culture. The findings show that the organizational context influences the writers' conceptions of their rhetorical situation and their writing strategies. The concern is with ensuring structural unity vis-a-vis contextual configuration, coherence and layout considerations. Chapter four presents the results of the reader survey and IMPACT organization's responses to the results. In Chapter five, the study concludes that the influence of the social context on writing in nonacademic settings cannot be dismissed. It proposes that this study has implications for composition theory and pedagogy, where teachers should consider teaching writing in a way that gives students access to social context.