Genres in Technical/Professional Writing

My internship taught me quite a bit about smaller corporations and how they operate. Technical writing operates in many vast outlets, and even within each genre of writing, no individual job is quite like another. This is particularly true when your internship incorporates a “work-from-home” quality into it. Miller makes an excellent point when she states, that archetypes “are those fundamental logical operations or symbolic reasoning procedures which persons use to detect or generate patterns in the sequences of events” in her Genre as a Social Action. I found this to be particularly true when I worked with Depco LLC. There certainly are the levels (archetypes, episodes, speech acts, propositions, and stream of behavior), and being exposed to those levels repeatedly helps with the understanding of said levels and how they work within each unique workplace. Yates’ research also goes in-depth with this topic, coming to the conclusion that “As business philosophies and functions changed, new genres—such as letters, manuals, forms, in-house magazines, and meetings—emerged in order to meet the changing needs and roles of participants in the organization.”

Because I was not a daily presence at my internship, I believe that I missed out on some of this important communication. Often, I would go two or more weeks without interacting with my employer face-to-face, instead simply working on the projects given to me without interaction. If I had a question, I would email one of my supervisors. If they needed me to turn something in earlier, they would reach out to me. I have interacted with other employees, but very little. For my “interview”, I met several employees and talked to them as much as I could in the time that I had, but even in that instance I was not able to fully grasp the hierarchy or rhetorical genres in which the company functioned. The environment was very relaxed, but I left my first interview still unsure of what was wanted from me. After an hour of training for my job, I understood what my job was, but was still somewhat confused about how I would be accomplishing said job. I knew I would be editing manuals, but the style guide was not exactly helpful in the editing process. The most useful thing I experienced by far was working with one of my supervisors on editing a couple of pages of a manual. By watching and actively participating in the process, I was able to grasp it in a way that made sense. However, I believe that I might have had a greater understanding had I been actively involved in the workplace culture, being in the office on a daily basis. Watching my supervisor edit the manual showed me how there were unwritten rules to the editing process as much as there were written rules. Many of the applied changes were not listed in the style guide; yet, they seemed obvious when she made them. I feel like interacting with your employers face-to-face on a daily (or at least weekly) basis definitely helps establish a genre as opposed to receiving emails and working alone. With that being said, the best communities are established when all of these forms of communication are present.

Miller, Carolyn. "Genre as Social Action."

Bawarshi, Anis, and Mary Jo Reiff. "Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Contexts."