30.40, Review: Applied Linguistics: Bremner (2017)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-40. Sat Jan 05 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.40, Review: Applied Linguistics: Bremner (2017)

Moderator: linguist at linguistlist.org (Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté)
Homepage: https://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Jeremy Coburn <jecoburn at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2019 14:55:57
From: Pejman Habibie [phabibie at uwo.ca, habibiepezhman at gmail.com]
Subject: Workplace Writing

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36407557


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-3937.html

AUTHOR: Stephen  Bremner
TITLE: Workplace Writing
SUBTITLE: Beyond the Text
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Pejman Habibie, University of Western Ontario

SUMMARY 

Drawing on Stephen Bremner’s research and teaching experience over a period of
ten years, “Workplace writing: Beyond the text” presents a multifaceted
picture of some of the key issues  and discussions surrounding different
aspects of workplace writing. The book consists of ten chapters which are
thematically independent but all together weave a narrative about writing in
the context of the workplace. It begins with a preface where the author
elucidates the mission of the volume and highlights a number of its
limitations. 

In Chapter One, Bremner highlights the key differences between writing in the
academy and writing in the workplace as two distinct contexts. He advocates a
context-driven approach to understanding the nature of writing in workplace
settings, one that goes beyond the confines of the text. The significance of
discourse communities and cultural considerations, resources involved in text
construction, and learning and socialization into workplace writing are also
dealt with in this chapter. Finally, the author outlines the scope of the book
and its structural organization and provides an overview of the key
discussions of the constituent chapters. 

In the next chapter, the author discusses three central notions underlying
writing practice, including social constructionism, discourse community, and
genre. He provides a detailed explanation of each concept. Then, drawing on
studies that illustrate their interrelationships in various workplace
contexts, he indicates how interconnected these concepts are. In doing so, he
aims at shedding  more light on the reasons why these concepts are pivotal in
socializing students into the world of work as well as on the implications for
classroom practice; he also addresses the question of how specific one should
be in teaching the discourses of different communities.

Chapter Three is developed on the assumption that genre knowledge is pivotal
in workplace writing ability.  In this chapter, the author briefly considers
the ways in which the scope of the study of genres has expanded. He then
embarks on a discussion of various professional and socio-pragmatic factors
surrounding the text that shape genre (Bhatia, 2004), dealing with key issues
such as intertextuality and collaboration. Finally, he wraps up the chapter
with a focus on the pedagogical implications of a thicker description (Geertz,
1983) and more complete understanding of genres, addressing the question of
how the complexities of genre and genre construction processes should be dealt
with in pedagogical contexts.

The concept of intertextuality is the focal point of Chapter Four. In this
chapter, the author starts with the definition and categorization of
intertextuality and looks at the relationships among genres for fulfilling
organizational purposes. He lays out different ways in which intertextuality
takes place in workplace contexts, and then surveys the recent scholarship
that has used the conceptual lens of intertextuality to analyze workplace
discourses. The chapter also talks about the implications of intertextuality
in workplace writing for the writer and the pedagogy of  writing. The
concluding section of the chapter presents a recent study that brought
intertextuality to the centre of student writing assignments, examining the
challenges students faced and the implications for designing pedagogical
tasks.

Chapter Five deals with interactions among people in the collaborative process
of text production. It starts out with an array of the definitions of the
concept of collaborative writing and the taxonomies  developed to explain the
enactment and practice of such a writing practice. Next, it surveys a number
of longitudinal ethnographic studies of collaborative writing, highlighting
the less structured and ordered nature of the processes involved in writing.
Focusing on issues such as teachability and portability of skills, it also
examines the ways in which collaborative writing has been addressed and
approached in classroom contexts.

Chapter Six addresses power and politeness, and examines how the relationships
between these notions plays out in language in light of the relevant theories
and research in this area. It starts with a brief discussion regarding
politeness and spoken discourse before switching its focus on writing. It
looks at the challenges and difficulties that students and novice workplace
writers encounter when framing their writing in the context of the power
relationships they have with their target audience. At the end, it discusses
pedagogical implications and different approaches and tasks that can support
students in coping with the power and relationship management aspects of
workplace writing. 

Chapter Seven concerns the principles and issues pertinent to the use of both
technology-supported and more traditional communication channels in workplace
writing. Acknowledging the influence of organization on writing practice, it
brings to the fore the individual writer within the organization. Taking a
brief look at issues regarding multimodality, the managing of corporate image
through social media platforms, and the handling of collaborative writing in
virtual space, the chapter underlines the tension between the affordances of a
number of technologies such as promotional emails, instant messaging, and
web-chat and certain expectations and challenges that they pose to the
individual writer.

Chapter Eight deals with factors that form and project culture and
organization. It highlights the significance of understanding the
organizational culture for successfully socializing and assimilating into the
organization and writing within it. It explains the distinctions between the
notions of organizational culture and discourse community. It looks at
different definitions and perspectives on organizational culture in the
context of workplace, and examines both prescriptive and descriptive
approaches and their implications. Finally, adopting a pedagogical
perspective, it talks about an assignment developed to raise students’
awareness of organizational culture and its implications.

In Chapter Nine, the author revisits some of the discussions of the previous
chapters including the differences between academia and the workplace. He
focuses on the pedagogical aspect of workplace writing, highlighting the key
questions of how and where the knowledge of the written discourses of
workplace contexts must be acquired and developed. He explains the nature of
language socialization and then draws on two studies to highlight academy and
workplace as two contexts for learning to write. He underlines the role of
context and the issues of aim and audience in the formation of written
product.

In Chapter Ten, the author presents his concluding thoughts on workplace
writing. First, he provides a summary of a wide range of factors that
influence the processes of text construction in workplace contexts and the
resulting texts. Then, he discusses the ways in which workplace writing is
approached and dealt with in textbooks. 

EVALUATION 

Stephen Bremner’s book provides a multi-dimensional view of workplace writing
highlighting rhetorical, contextual, and socio-political aspects of writing
practice. The book is an interesting and colorful tapestry of hot topics in
the area of workplace writing including: discourse communities and
organizational cultures, genre, intertextuality, collaboration, power,
politeness, enculturation, multimodality, and pedagogy. It weaves together
theoretical discussions with current research in this domain, draws on the
author’s personal history and experience, and puts forward significant
pedagogical implications for the interested audience. The simple and eloquent
language of the book and its reasonable size make it a fast and interesting
read. Although the book reads like a review of the literature for professional
scholars in this domain at times, it promises to be an interesting resource
for those who intend to familiarize themselves with workplace writing and gain
insight into its current discourses and discussions.

Given the extensive focus of academics and researchers on scholarly writing,
this volume is an outstanding contribution in that it examines issues related
to writing in mostly organizational contexts. However, most of the concepts
and discussions presented in the book, such as genre, discourse community, and
power, are similarly of interest to scholars who investigate writing in
academic contexts. Considering that the pedagogy of workplace writing is one
of the under-represented areas in this domain, the book presents a
theoretically-informed orientation to educational aspects of workplace
writing, and highlights that different pedagogical approaches need to step
beyond technical and discursive issues and address socio-contextual dimensions
of writing practice as well. 

“Workplace writing: Beyond the text” is an interesting and insightful resource
for those involved in the research and pedagogy of writing in work settings,
especially novice researchers. The book has successfully contributed to the
knowledge base on this domain, and presented a state of the art survey of the
relevant literature and research.

REFERENCES 

Bhatia, V. (2004). World of written discourse: A genre-based view. London:
Continuum.

Geertz, C. (1983). Local Knowledge: Further essays in interpretive
anthropology. New York: Basic Books.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Pejman Habibie is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty
of Education, The University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research areas
and interests include English for professional academic purposes, writing for
scholarly publication, and academic discourse.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:

              The IU Foundation Crowd Funding site:
       https://iufoundation.fundly.com/the-linguist-list

               The LINGUIST List FundDrive Page:
            https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-30-40	
----------------------------------------------------------