Tracing Genres Through Organizations


Book Description

A sociocultural study of workers' ad hoc genre innovations and their significance for information design.




Annual Review of Information Science and Technology


Book Description

ARIST, published annually since 1966, is a landmark publication within the information science community. It surveys the landscape of information science and technology, providing an analytical, authoritative, and accessible overview of recent trends and significant developments. The range of topics varies considerably, reflecting the dynamism of the discipline and the diversity of theoretical and applied perspectives. While ARIST continues to cover key topics associated with classical information science (e.g., bibliometrics, information retrieval), editor Blaise Cronin is selectively expanding its footprint in an effort to connect information science more tightly with cognate academic and professional communities.




Genre Studies Around the Globe


Book Description

Genre Studies around the Globe: Beyond the Three Traditions exemplifies rich and vibrant international scholarship in the area of non-literary genre studies in the early 21st century. Based on the Genre 2012 conference held in Ottawa, Canada, the volume brings under one cover the three Anglophone traditions (English for Specific Purposes, the Sydney School, Rhetorical Genre Studies) and the approaches to genre studies developed in other national, linguistic, and cultural contexts (Brazilian, Chilean, and European). The volume contributors investigate a variety of genres, ranging from written to spoken to multimodal, and discuss issues, central to the field of genre studies: genre conceptualization in different traditions, its theoretical underpinnings, the goals of genre research, and pedagogical implications of genre studies. This collection is addressed to researchers, teachers, and students of genre who wish to familiarize themselves with current international developments in genre studies.




Together with Technology


Book Description

This book examines the complex roles that texts serve as parts of an organizational cognitive infrastructure. Texts make knowledge and experience tangible and durable. They help shape interactions between people. As professions have become more writing-centered in recent decades, many organizations have instituted writing review practices to help newcomers produce better writing and thus become more effective organizational citizens.Dr. Swarts examines those writing review practices and questions whether available supportive technologies adequately prepare professional writers and professionals who write to appreciate the complex functions their texts serve. He reports on a study of the impact of two technologies (paper text and textual replay) on writing review. Unlike paper, which presents texts in a static form, textual replay presents texts as the products of writing practices. Textual replay records onscreen writing activity and creates a video that writers and reviewers use to supplement their discussion of revisions.




Handbook of Writing and Text Production


Book Description

Writing matters, and so does research into real-life writing. The shift from an industrial to an information society has increased the importance of writing and text production in education, in everyday life and in more and more professions in the fields of economics and politics, science and technology, culture and media. Through writing, we build up organizations and social networks, develop projects, inform colleagues and customers, and generate the basis for decisions. The quality of writing is decisive for social resonance and professional success. This ubiquitous real-life writing is what the present handbook is about. The de Gruyter Handbook of Writing and Text Production brings together and systematizes state-of-the-art research. The volume contains five sections, focussing on (I) the theory and methodology of writing and text production research, as well as on problem-oriented and problem-solving approaches related to (II) authors, (III) modes and media, (IV) genres, and (V) domains of writing and text production. Throughout the 21 chapters, exemplary research projects illustrate the theoretical perspectives from globally relevant research spaces and traditions. Both established and future scholars can benefit from the handbook’s fresh approach to writing in the context of multimodal, multi-semiotic text production.




Science and the Internet


Book Description

The essays in Science and the Internet address the timely topic of how digital tools are shaping science communication. Featuring chapters by leading scholars of the rhetoric of science and technology, the volume fills a much needed gap in contemporary rhetoric of science scholarship. Overall, the essays reveal how digital technologies may both fray the boundaries between experts and non-experts and enable more collaborative, democratic means of public engagement with science. --Lisa Keränen, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Communication, University of Colorado Denver




Digital Literacy for Technical Communication


Book Description

Digital Literacy for Technical Communication helps technical communicators make better sense of technology’s impact on their work, so they can identify new ways to adapt, adjust, and evolve, fulfilling their own professional potential. This collection is comprised of three sections, each designed to explore answers to these questions: How has technical communication work changed in response to the current (digital) writing environment? What is important, foundational knowledge in our field that all technical communicators need to learn? How can we revise past theories or develop new ones to better understand how technology has transformed our work? Bringing together highly-regarded specialists in digital literacy, this anthology will serve as an indispensible resource for scholars, students, and practitioners. It illuminates technology’s impact on their work and prepares them to respond to the constant changes and challenges in the new digital universe.




Keywords in Writing Studies


Book Description

Keywords in Writing Studies is an exploration of the principal ideas and ideals of an emerging academic field as they are constituted by its specialized vocabulary. A sequel to the 1996 work Keywords in Composition Studies, this new volume traces the evolution of the field’s lexicon, taking into account the wide variety of theoretical, educational, professional, and institutional developments that have redefined it over the past two decades. Contributors address the development, transformation, and interconnections among thirty-six of the most critical terms that make up writing studies. Looking beyond basic definitions or explanations, they explore the multiple layers of meaning within the terms that writing scholars currently use, exchange, and question. Each term featured is a part of the general disciplinary parlance, and each is a highly contested focal point of significant debates about matters of power, identity, and values. Each essay begins with the assumption that its central term is important precisely because its meaning is open and multiplex. Keywords in Writing Studies reveals how the key concepts in the field are used and even challenged, rather than advocating particular usages and the particular vision of the field that they imply. The volume will be of great interest to both graduate students and established scholars.




Genre Networks and Empire


Book Description

This book argues that political persuasion expanded in early imperial China through diverse written genres, and that what ancient Chinese called wenti jingwei, or genre networks, provides the central means to understand rhetoric and government at the time.




A Genre Analysis of Social Change


Book Description

A Genre Analysis of Social Change contributes to current scholarship in rhetorical genre studies and discourse analysis in contexts of social change. Diana Wegner explores the ways that historical genre systems can be transformed through the process of discursive uptake across genres and their spheres of activity. In this study such cross-genre uptake is pursued from its beginning in advocacy genres to its incorporation into higher-level, institutional genres. It represents the summation of Wegner’s work over many years on how systems of genre can adapt to change as groups and institutional systems negotiate the uptake of solutions to major social challenges, in this case study the Canadian “Housing First” solution to ending homelessness. Her study shows how rhetorical genre analysis can offer insight into issues related to social justice for marginal groups within society. Introducing the concepts of “deep” and “shallow” genre memory, Wegner analyzes why uptake is problematic and disturbing for those participants in the homelessness genre system who find that the receiving genre does not “remember” the historical moorings of its antecedent contexts. Genre provides an explanatory framework for these uptake dynamics, and for both the re-inscription of power relations and the incremental progress of the shared struggle to help homeless people. The book includes an introduction by Heather Graves.