Elizabeth Tebeaux

Toward an Understanding of Gender Differences in Written Business Communications: A Suggested Perspective for Future Research

Empirical studies of gender-based language differences have provided con flicting, discreet conclusions that have little relevance for business- communications instruction. This paper presents informally collected obser vations of male and female students in undergraduate and graduate business- and technical-communication courses. Calling for future formal studies to verify its findings, this study concludes that people-intensive work experience modifies gender-based language differences in written business communica tions of undergraduate and graduate students. However, instruction in audi ence analysis, tone, content design, and style also modify these gender differences. If formally supported, these observations would help teachers argue for the value of business-communications instruction in helping stu dents develop varied and androgynous communication styles important for job-related communications.

Designing Written Business Communication along the Shifting Cultural Continuum The New Face of Mexico

The increasing importance of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) to the US economy makes understanding Mexico important. Because the histories and cultures of the United States and Mexico differ significantly, written communications also differ. Rhetorical strategies for written business communication in Mexico reflect the countrys bloody, cyclical history and its resulting culture characterized by collectivism, high power distances, fatalism, and emphasis on building trust and relationships. Despite Mexicos economic problems, it is a country in transition. Because of the increasing presence of US business entities in Mexico, communication protocols are changing as US technology and ways of doing business infuse the traditional Mexican culture. Understanding how to communicate effectively in Mexico requires understanding its history and culture as well as changes occurring there. US writers must know where any Mexican company is situated along this changing cultural continuum and how the continuum shapes the design of written business communication.

Technical writing by distance: Refocusing the pedagogy of technical communication

Advancing technology, demands for cost control, and world‐wide expansion in distance education programs challenge technical communication teachers to find ways of delivering quality technical writing courses by distance. One distance platform, described here, is working successfully at Texas A&M University. Examining, applying, and testing existing distance theory in developing distance versions of technical writing courses is an emerging research field in technical communication.

Images of women in technical books from the English Renaissance

Technical books written for women in the English Renaissance are shown to provide a rich source for furthering knowledge of the literacy of women, particularly middle-class women, and the roles these women assumed. These show that Renaissance women assumed active roles, were generally as literate as men, and needed books to help them execute major responsibilities in home medical care, home and estate management, animal husbandry, cooking, and gardening. They also show that womens literacy increased rapidly by the end of the Renaissance and that the increase in the demand for books was most certainly due in part to demands by women for technical and other forms of how-to books. The effectiveness with which Renaissance technical writers adapted content and style for women readers is cited as a reminder to the modern technical writer of the value of gender considerations in designing content and style. >

Expanding and redirecting historical research in technical writing: In search of our past

This study suggests an approach for expanding and integrating research to produce a history of technical writing. The study defines problems that reside in writing such a history, suggests research premises and questions, and then applies these questions to technical writing as it existed in the English Renaissance, 1475–1640.

Visual Texts: Format and the Evolution of English Accounting Texts, 1100–1700

Emphasis on page design, as an aid to visual accessibility, did not receive attention in modern technical writing until the 1970s. However, accounting documents and instructional texts utilized format and document design strategies as early as the twelfth century to enhance the organization of quantitative data and linear bookkeeping entries. Format in text was used to reflect the arrangement used in oral accounting practices and to produce uniform documents. Thus, format was integral to the rise of pragmatic literacy of the commercial reader. During the Renaissance, these early format strategies received impetus from Ramist method. The result was design strategies that attempted to capture the rigid principles of organization fundamental to commercial accounting. These early accounting documents also illustrate the plain style that would become the focus of the later decades of the seventeenth century. Clarity in language paralleled clarity in page design for the sole purpose of eliminating ambiguity on the page and on the sentence level. Plain style was thus nurtured by financial forces long before the advent of natural science.

Studying the History of Business Communication

THE HISTORY OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION is a H promising field for research and a congenial research area for anyone with expertise in the analysis of texts. In the colloquium that follows, five scholars working in the history of business and professional communication examine some of the questions facing the would-be researcher. Together, we determined the questions we wanted to address. Each person wrote answers, which were then compiled. Then we had two rounds of revision, enabling us not only to clarify or expand but also to respond to issues the others had raised. The result is a &dquo;conversation&dquo; conducted by e-mail and floppy disk. The following comments come from our answers to five questions:

Technical Writing in Seventeenth-Century England: The Flowering of a Tradition.

English technical writing clearly emerged during the Renaissance and the first decades of printing, but during the 1641–1700 period technical writing gained credibility and prestige. It was a valued tool for achieving the utilitarian ends of an age in which practical goals were valued more than aesthetic ones. Technical writing can be found in a range of disciplines, such as agriculture, medicine, science, as well as the major English trades and crafts. As a valued form of discourse, it illuminates the world of work in seventeenth-century England and the problems faced by the early experimenters of the Royal Society who sought to use science to solve major human, military, and economic problems while seeking to expand understanding of nature. Studying technical writing of this period allows us to track the continued development of technical writing as a distinct form of discourse.

Visual Language The Development of Format and Page Design in English Renaissance Technical Writing

Studies in the history of technical writing have only recently begun to study the development of technical writing. Pollard and Redgraves Short-Title Catalogue, 1475-1640 contains a number of English Renaissance technical books that reveal that Renaissance printers and authors were aware of the need for readability and visual access in technical reference and information books. An examination of these books shows evolving use of many contemporary page design techniques: partition, clearly worded headings, visual aids, enumeration and listing devices, and choice of font for emphasis.

From Orality to Textuality in English Accounting and its Books, 1553-1680 The Power of Visual Presentation

A survey of English accounting, its origin, its development, and its first books (1553-1680) provides another insight into the shift from orality to textuality in English society. The shift to sophisticated textual expression of accounting occurred as a result of the confluence of the rising English Renaissance trade economy, increasing literacy, and improving typography—all of which made the need for extensive financial records necessary and possible. The shift to a highly sophisticated textual/spatial presentation was nurtured by Ramism, Renaissance Italian art, and the rise of capitalism. Ultimately, this spatial presentation destroyed the oral-aural aspect of accounting. Spatial presentation was essential to the development of accounting techniques for an expanding economy, but spatial, rather than verbal, display led to abstraction in presentation that today makes accounting difficult for the nonaccounting reader to understand and for the expert accountant to verbalize.