Walking a Fine Line

This limited case study examines the situated-language practices associated with the production of negative letters in an insurance company. Using genre and sociocultural theories, the study combines textual analyses of a set of negative letters together with writers’ accounts of producing these letters to identify effective (as defined by the company) strategies for composing this correspondence. These letters are examples of generic action, and they demonstrate that genres function as constellations of regulated, improvisational strategies triggered by the interaction between individual socialization and an organization. Moreover, these constellations of resources express a particular chronotopic relation to space and time, and this relation is always axiological or value oriented. In other words, genres express space/time relations that reflect current social beliefs regarding the placement and actions of human individuals in space and time. The article identifies some of the strategies that characterize effective negative messages in this organization. It also critiques this text type for enacting a set of practices and related chronotopic orientation that are against the interests of its readers and writers.

[1]  John M. Swales,et al.  Genre and the new rhetoric , 1995 .

[2]  G. P. Mohrmann,et al.  Lincoln at cooper union: A rationale for neo‐classical criticism , 1974 .

[3]  M. Holquist.  Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World , 1990 .

[4]  Marcia V. Mascolini.  Another Look at Teaching the External Negative Message , 1994 .

[5]  W. Sasser,et al.  The profitable art of service recovery. , 1990, Harvard business review.

[6]  M. Halliday,et al.  Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective , 1989 .

[7]  Kathleen Hall Jamieson,et al.  Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action. , 1978 .

[8]  N. Denzin,et al.  Handbook of Qualitative Research , 1994 .

[9]  C. Schryer.  Genre Time/Space: Chronotopic Strategies in the Experimental Article , 1999 .

[10]  J. Lemke.  Textual Politics: Discourse And Social Dynamics , 1995 .

[11]  Jack D. Eure.  Applicability of American Written Business Communication Principles Across Cultural Boundaries in Mexico , 1976 .

[12]  John M. Swales,et al.  Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings , 1993 .

[13]  Rhetorical Organization of Chairmen's Statements. , 1996 .

[14]  P. Bourdieu,et al.  Language and Symbolic Power , 1991 .

[15]  Brenda Lynn Hoke.  Comparison of Recreational Reading Books Levels Using the Fry Readability Graph and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. , 1999 .

[16]  P. Bourdieu,et al.  实践与反思 : 反思社会学导引 = An invitation to reflexive sociology , 1994 .

[17]  Peter Medway,et al.  The rhetoric and ideology of genre: strategies for stability and change , 2001 .

[18]  Glenn Stillar,et al.  Analyzing Everyday Texts: Discourse, Rhetoric, and Social Perspectives , 1998 .

[19]  D. Holland.  Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds , 1998 .

[20]  R. Harker,et al.  An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu , 1990 .

[21]  Carolyn R. Miller.  Genre as social action , 1984 .

[22]  M. Bakhtin,et al.  The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays , 1981 .

[23]  David J. Cooper,et al.  Business Planning as Pedagogy: Language and Control in a Changing Institutional Field , 1998 .

[24]  Rachel Spilka,et al.  Writing in the workplace : new research perspectives , 1994 .

[25]  Ulla Connor,et al.  Linguistic Analysis of Grant Proposals: European Union Research Grants , 1999 .

[26]  Amy J. Devitt.  Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept , 1993 .

[27]  T. L. Wiseman.  How to avoid the transitional ax in indirect bad news messages , 1991 .

[28]  Edward B. Fry,et al.  Fry's Readability Graph: Clarifications, Validity, and Extension to Level 17. , 1977 .

[29]  P. Cassell.  Problems of Action and Structure , 1993 .

[30]  Consulting in an Insurance Company: What We as Academics Can Learn. , 1988 .

[31]  B. L. Ware,et al.  They spoke in defense of themselves: On the generic criticism of apologia , 1973 .

[32]  Jone Rymer,et al.  Defining the Genre of the "Case Write-Up" , 1999 .

[33]  Kim Sydow Campbell,et al.  Explanations in Negative Messages: More Insights from Speech Act Theory , 1990 .

[34]  Edwin Black.  Rhetorical Criticism: A Study In Method , 1978 .

[35]  Conversational Implicature and Unstated Meaning in Professional Communication. , 1988 .

[36]  W. Orlikowski,et al.  Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media , 1992 .

[37]  T. Windt.  The diatribe: Last resort for protest , 1972 .

[38]  Gunther Kress,et al.  Language as Ideology , 1997 .

[39]  Carolyn D. Rude,et al.  The Report for Decision Making , 1995 .

[40]  J. Swales,et al.  Discourse and the Projection of Corporate Culture: The Mission Statement , 1995 .

[41]  Douglas Salerno.  An Interpersonal Approach to Writing Negative Messages , 1986 .

[42]  M. Bakhtin,et al.  Speech genres and other late essays , 1986 .

[43]  Catherine F. Schryer,et al.  Records as Genre , 1993 .

[44]  B. Cope,et al.  The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing , 1993 .

[45]  Kitty O. Locker.  Factors in Reader Responses to Negative Letters , 1999 .

[46]  Stephen Doheny-Farina,et al.  Writing in an Emerging Organization , 1986 .

[47]  Valerie J. Janesick.  The dance of qualitative research design: Metaphor, methodolatry, and meaning. , 1994 .

[48]  Writing Skills in Business: Implications for Teachers of Technical Writing. , 1989 .

[49]  Patrick Dias,et al.  Worlds Apart: Acting and Writing in Academic and Workplace Contexts , 1999 .

[50]  D. Robbins.  The Work Of Pierre Bourdieu: Recognizing Society , 2020 .

[51]  Anthony Giddens,et al.  The Giddens Reader , 1993 .

[52]  Richard Holmes.  Genre analysis, and the social sciences: An investigation of the structure of research article discussion sections in three disciplines , 1997 .

[53]  N. Fairclough,et al.  Language and Power , 2009 .

[54]  Elizabeth A. McCord,et al.  The Business Writer, the Law, and Routine Business Communication , 1991 .

[55]  British Perspectives on Organizing Bad-News Letters: Organizational Patterns Used by Major U.K. Companies , 1992 .