What work does writing do in particular (business) contexts?
Professional communities use writing to accomplish a wide range of tasks, from recording conversations (e.g., taking minutes at meetings) to motivating people to take action (e.g., urging management to modify a company policy). These tasks inevitably influence many people who are entirely removed from the writing community itself. When we enter new writing communities, then, we need to figure out when they tend to use writing (as opposed to phoning, for instance), for what purposes, and with what social consequences. Our second group of readings raises a series of questions related to what work writing does in the world. 3. What elements mediate the work that writing does? Certain basic elements come into play in any writing community; what changes is the form those elements take. For instance, all writing communities develop “genres” or styles of documents; what changes is the way these lookâso that a writer trying to persuade someone could produce a letter of recommendation, a direct
