Genres in Technical/Professional Writing

In my internship with Dr. Jamie McDaniel at Pittsburg State University I have done a fair amount of writing for the program website and social media sites. However, writing for a professional writing program is seemingly different than writing about PW. It's like the difference between coaching and playing in sports--coaching is a form of interaction from an outside and external perspective, whereas playing a sport is internal and centered around each individual player involved. Although I enjoy the work I have done for my internship so far, the writing is more geared towards a perspective that is centered on providing advice and helpful tips for other PW majors. I stand from an outside perspective looking in to solve problems. 

In my professional experience (I worked with a nonprofit organization), the daily writing tasks I completed showed how I was a more interactive player in that kind of writing--even if it was daily emails, manual revisions, or statement letters. The fact that they were daily shows the internal processes that are tied to each set of writing. Professionals in the field like Carolyn Miller  and Anis Bawarshi consider this genre writing--a style of writing, rather than copy about a specific topic. In Miller's piece, "Genre as Social Action," genre is defined as something that is "rhetorically sound" and "must not be centered on the substance or the form of the discourse, but on the action it uses to accomplish." In other words, writing technical copy involves explaining the actions and the processes involved in constructing such copy. It may seem confusing (trust me I know), but technical copy is not necessarily about the style of PW (although this knowledge is important), it's about the processes that go into such. Let me give an example:

The Department of Homeland Security has recently posted a job listing for a technical writer who has the ability to communicate effectively for incoming immigrants of various nationalities. Now, one would expect this  kind of writing to encircle various languages; instead, this kind of job applicant would need to demonstrate how to speak "globally"-- that is, in a type of style and word choice that any nationality coming into the English language can feasibly comprehend. This kind of writing deflects any kind of phrases, coined terms, or idioms. Further, and more importantly, this type of writing will show what it means to be mindful of others and how other people interpret certain kinds of copy. 

In such instance, Bawarshi and Reiff's explanation in "Rhetorical Genre Studies" that genre is limited to it's most common and everyday uses is exemplified by the demands of that job listing--the job listing shows that everyday communication, is not only essential in technical copy, but an effective part of any human-to-human interaction. These kinds of writing ensure that the writer is a central player--an internal force, rather than just an outside hand with a specialized perspective.