Rhetorical Theory and Praxis in the Business Communication Classroom

Kristen Getchell, Paula Lentz, Kristen Getchell, Paula Lentz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351132855
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Winner of the Association for Business Communication's 2019 Distinguished Book Award

Rhetorical Theory and Praxis in the Business Communication Classroom responds to a significant need in the emerging field of business communication as the first collection of its type to establish a connection between rhetorical theory and practice in the business communication classroom. The volume includes topics such as rhetorical grammar, genre awareness in business communication theory, the role of big data in message strategy, social media and memory, and the connection between rhetorical theory and entrepreneurship. These essays provide the business communication scholar, practitioner, and program administrator insight into the rhetorical considerations of the business communication landscape.

1

Early Penmen, Secretaries, and Gmail Templates

A Critical and Historical Approach to Business Communication Genres

Marcy Leasum Orwig

Examining Pedagogical Influences in Business Communication Scholarship

The field of business communication has a long and interesting history, but it has historically been told from a pedagogical approach. Locker, Miller, Richardson, Tebeaux, and Yates (1996) explain how the “business communication researcher used to teaching and thinking only about letters, memos, and reports would not be well prepared to think of very different kinds of documents—say, the logs written by ships’ captains—as business documents” (p. 199). The focus, then, of researching our history only through the classroom lens limits the boundaries of published research on other topics such as genre that provide theoretical support for what we do in the classroom.

Cyphert’s (2009) article in the Journal of Business Communication speaks to the source of disciplinary identity of our field. She presents survey results from members of the primary association for business communication instructors—the Association for Business Communication (ABC)—regarding disciplinary identity. In it, the members responded most favorably to pedagogical topics relevant to the classroom. The association’s unique institutional history does generate “some resistance to abandoning the original business education mandate to teach practical workplace skills in favor of research” (p. 267). But, as Cyphert also notes, the association is attracting more research-active academics. While ABC began with a membership comprised of mostly a practitioner/consultant/instructor base, the number of such members has dropped by half in her cited survey.

Graham’s (2006) article on the disciplinary practices used in business communication gives a good example of the tension between practical and research skills in the ABC membership. While the conference is usually a congenial space for all presenters, Graham explains how one of her colleagues spoke on Mikhail Bakhtin and was consequently accused by an audience member of using “high theory to distort practical work” (p. 271).

That preference for the “practical work” of teaching letters, memos, and reports is even evidenced in Du-Babcock’s (2006) article on the past, present, and future of the field. Of the past she writes, “the teaching of business communication as a formal and distinct discipline originated in the United States. Business Communication has established itself as an important subject area and has become an integral component of business school curricular” (p. 254). Du-Babcock also notes how the general approach (e.g., form, structure, and process) is used in business writing courses to fit what the practitioner can apply. She writes:

As a result, teachers of business communication could focus on teaching a general communication process and were not required to have specialized knowledge of professional disciplines and the communication approaches and styles of the professional genres of these disciplines.

(p. 254)

For instance, a quick glimpse at the 1961 book titled Informal Research by the Classroom Business Teacher speaks to the types of research suggested to educators teaching communication, with topics relevant to courses taught such as “Shorthand and Transcription,” “Typewriting,” and “Office Practice.”

Yet Du-Babcock offers that our past is rooted in rhetoric and the study and use of genres, which presents opportunities for our present and our future for research on the impact of technology, globalization, and culture on our discipline. As mentioned above, only researching, though, the history of business communication genres from a pedagogical approach limits us as an academic area. Cyphert notes how “if teaching is the thing that does bind this diverse band, we might do well to investigate better ways to leverage our common vocation toward the professional legitimacy we seem to feel we lack” (p. 270). Indeed, she notes that business schools are accepted in the academy not because of the professional training they provide but because of their “theoretical contributions” to their discipline (p. 271). A recent study by Moshiri and Cardon (2014) speaks to the lack of professional legitimacy that Cyphert highlights. In their article, Moshiri and Cardon explain that today not all courses are taught in business schools and that only 40% of the instructors have tenure or tenure-track positions (p. 316). If the research of our tradition took a more historical or theoretical, then, perhaps business communication would gain more legitimacy in the academy. However, according to Cyphert’s survey, the “construction of theories and models was near the end of the [members’ priority] list, with research on the ‘historical evolution of business communication’ rated dead last, a politely neutral 3.0 on a 0–7 scale” (p. 268).

One of the most well-known researchers in business communication, though, focused on that least popular topic of the “historical evolution of business communication.” Locker published voraciously on topics ranging from early dunning letters (1985) to a history of business jargon (1987). In fact, the “Outstanding Research Award” that is presented each year at the ABC conference is named after her. The description for the award states, “The Outstanding Researcher Award recognizes and encourages excellence in business communication research. The recipient is an ABC member whose research has made an outstanding contribution to the business communication discipline.” Interestingly, she herself noted:

Understanding the historical, political, social, and material context in which earlier documents were created also helps us be more aware of the web of influences and constraints that affect business communication today and thus helps us be better able to assess and, if need be, work to change them.

(p. 123)

Why does it seem, then, that we still want to tell our history from a pedagogical approach?

One answer lies in the fact that, as mentioned earlier, our disciplinary identity has the classroom as its one common denominator. But, as Cyphert notes, “If we see ourselves as drudges teaching remedial writing skills to students who should have paid more attention in high school, others will too” (p. 271). The second answer lies in that conducting historical research has its challenges. As Locker explained above, there are different approaches to such work. For example, will historical research focus on the theory of what experts in different eras said, or will it focus on the practice of what business communicators were actually doing in a specific time period? Further, basic understanding of the researched time period is important, and knowing what texts are available in which archive or library is similarly challenging to researchers. And many documents are a-contextual, so anyone who knew about their creation or use is probably no longer around to answer questions. But such research is necessary, since “if we focus instead on the research and theory that ground our instruction, we can earn the respect of our peers as well as the gratitude of our students’ prospective employers” (p. 271).

A history-based approach to examining our discipline offers a way to understand, as Jim Dubinsky says in his foreword to this book, the DNA of the genetic map of our field. That map is based on how the discipline originated as different workplace genres developed. As with all history, there are uncomfortable truths to how certain types of writing done by certain people become privileged over others. The next section, then, traces the history of business communication through the lens of workplace practice. After that, the following section will compare the tracing of the history of business communication to that of the other, more well-defined tradition of technical communication that influences our work today. Finally, the end of the chapter discusses how a historical approach to understanding business communication allows us to look toward the future for ways to become more relevant and relatable as new communication challenges arise in the workplace. The point of this chapter is to consider one approach to historical research and inspire others to consider how they might contribute to the body of research in our field on topics such as historical studies and rhetoric.

Understanding the History of Business Communication

Jacob Rawlins shows us in Chapter 2 that good business communicators are flexible and adaptable across the genres they encounter. The history of our discipline throughout nearly the last three centuries establishes flexibility and adaptability as hallmarks of our discipline as we continually adapt to, adjust, and create genres. As the United States was formed, commercial education was not very different from that of the mother countries of Europe. The teachers were largely trained in Europe, and the textbooks were written and published there, too. The earliest mention of business education dates to the year 1635. This reference is made when a school was established in Plymouth, where a certain “Mr. Morton” taught students “to read, write, and cast accounts” (Knepper, 1941, p. 5). In the New World, businesses needed to keep track of the many goods, articles, and machines imported from the Old World. As a result, records needed to be kept in Europe as well as in the Colonies to maintain proper accounts of these transactions. In order to record these transactions in a legible manner, excellent penmanship was necessary. Knepper makes interesting comments about these early penmen:

Many penmen were public scriveners, and the public scrivener was a very important individual. His services were in constant demand for drawing up wills, deeds, contracts, and for making “true copies” of documents for public record. He must be master of a large assortment of “conventional hands” and also of the “art of flourishing.”

(p. 9)

In other words, the penmen of this era, wittingly or not, were the keepers of the genre knowledge through which they applied their skills.

By the mid-nineteenth century, private business schools began to form and fill the need to educate people to work in growing industries. The development of business schools in the United States during this time period was no coincidence. The economics and demands of commercial enterprises were also changing from generally small family affairs to large organizations—which needed educated employees. Yates (1993) claims that this transformation began with the railroads and spread to manufacturing firms, such as DuPont, beginning around 1880. She explains, “During the years from 1850 to 1920, a new philosophy of management based on system and efficiency arose, and under its impetus internal communication came to serve as a mechanism for managerial coordination and control of organizations” (p. xix). Systematic management developed theories and techniques that transcended the individual by relying instead on the system. It had two primary principles: “a reliance on systems mandated by top management rather than on individuals, and the need for each level of management to monitor and evaluate performance at lower levels” (p. 10). Coupled with changes in management style were changes in how businesses were financed.

Porter (1973) explains that the typical American business establishment of the first part of the nineteenth century was financed by either a single person or by several people bound together in a partnership (p. 9). Since the business was comparatively small, it represented the personal wealth of just a few persons. Similarly, most manufacturing enterprises (with the exception of some textile mills and iron furnaces) were also relatively small, involving little in the way of physical plant or expensive machinery. It was relatively easy to enter business because the initial costs of going into trade or simple manufacturing were within the reach of many citizens. Corporations were rare, and business had a very personal tone. Since managers saw employees frequently and usually lived with them in the same town, they could at least be expected to know their names, the quality of their work, and perhaps even some things about their personal lives (p. 9).

As large business organizations of the late nineteenth century stitched regional networks together to create national markets, they altered both the form and meaning of local autonomy (Zunz, 1990, p. 12). Additionally, the nature of relationships between the labor force and the managers, as well as the highly individual identification of persons with their firms, underwent considerable change in the big businesses that had evolved by the turn of the century. The bureaucracy became more impersonalized as “complex administrative network[s] created a social and economic gap between men on various levels of hierarchy” (Porter, 1973, p. 21). As the operations of a single business grew larger, more involved, and more widely separated, individual employees often had no knowledge of the distant, almost invisible people who controlled and manipulated the business and, to some degree, their lives. Many workers had little or no understanding of their part in the overall operations of the giant organization, and work itself, as well as their relations with others in the organization, grew increasingly impersonal.

As a result of management’s new way of interacting with employees, Yates explains how business communication changed from a system that was informal and primarily oral to one that was more formal, depending heavily on written documents. For example, old communication technologies such as quill pens and bound volumes gave way to typewriters, stencil duplicators, and vertical files that aided in creating and storing documents. New technologies also affected the function and form of communication within the firm. These new types of communication, such as orders, reports, and memoranda, developed to suit managerial goals and technological contexts. In doing so, “the management changes created new rhetors and buried them under layers of bureaucracy, created new interests that in turn produced new exigencies and constraints, and altered the means of persuasion” (Miller, 1998, p. 297). Who were those new rhetors, then, and how did they impact business communication genres?

As Yates (1993) asserts, while organizations used various genres in an attempt to control communication and their workforce, secretarial schools and business schools (and thus, by extension, the secretary) became both an influence on this control and simultaneously an agent through which genres were adapted, created, and maintained. A report from the 1876 US Commissioner of Education writes about business schools, noting that “to supply the increasing demand for stenographers, schools of shorthand and typewriting have been established in various parts of the country, and, with few exceptions, all business colleges now have a ‘department of shorthand’ ” (Knepper, 1941, p. 90). The first shorthand writers were male, interestingly, because they would test the emerging techniques associated with the invention of typewriters. An 1893 circular from the Bureau of Education explains an increase in the use of shorthand.

As a result, between 1871 and 1890, there was a four-fold growth in the number of institutions that handled such courses.

As Knepper notes, for this new use of shorthand a new type of stenographer was needed—someone who was younger, had less experience, and had training to fill the enormous demand of growing businesses. So, of the enrollments in the emerging shorthand courses, the percentage of female students increased from 4 percent to 28 percent (p. 91). Knepper writes the following:

The influence o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Business Communication at the Intersection of Rhetoric and Pedagogy
• 1 Early Penmen, Secretaries, and Gmail Templates: A Critical and Historical Approach to Business Communication Genres
• 2 Inventio through Praxis: Connecting Competencies with the Canon
• 3 Rhetorical Grammar in the Business Communication Classroom: Cultural Capital vs. Privileged Rhetoric
• 4 Examining the Role of the Writer’s Self in Business Communication Pedagogy
• 5 Invention in Business Communication and Community-based Projects
• 6 The Occasion to Post: Connecting Kairos to Entrepreneurship in an MBA Business Writing Blog Assignment
• 7 It’s Complicated: The White Paper as Exemplar within Complexes of Rhetorical Delivery
• 8 Expressing Accountability and Organizational Ethos: Business Dress as Visual Rhetoric
• 9 Theorizing the Role of Big Data Visualization: Moving Visuals from Delivery to Invention
• 10 “It Felt Like Something the World Needed to See”: Organizational Social Media and the Collective Memory
• Index