Glossary
- accessibility
- The degree to which multiple users with a wide range of abilities and expertise can access something (e.g. a document, a mobile application, etc.)
- affordances
- The ‘pros’ of a particular approach, medium, or genre, given your goals. When deciding about how to present information or compose an argument, consider both the affordances and constraints of that approach. For example, a spoon is much more useful than a knife for eating soup, but that doesn’t mean a spoon is perfect for every kind of food. One of Twitter’s affordances is that tweets are great for disseminating short and timely updates about an evolving situation; but Twitter is not the best way to share and sign a contract. Different approaches have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the task at hand; you always want to have a sense of them when choosing how to tackle a problem or achieve a goal.
- agility
- An organization’s iterative approach to react and adapt to environmental changes, rather than predict them. Derived from software development where a product undergoes incremental adjustments with overlapping testing and programming stages. Such an approach privileges the delivery of a single product, rather than the values or long-term goals of an organization.
- ambient rhetoric
- Extra-textual contributors to a rhetorical situation. When you walk into some clothing stores, for example, there may be a strong signature scent in the air. That scent is part of the clothing store’s attempt at persuading you to identify its clothing with a particular smell, feel, and way of being. That scent is a kind of ambient rhetoric.
- audience
- The listeners, viewers, readers, or those who otherwise encounter your compositions. Not just those you are persuading or informing, an audience can and should be engaged such that their input helps develop your thinking about how you approach and craft textual and multimodal compositions.
- body-mind
- This term reflects the idea that mental and physical processes affect and condition the body simultaneously, not separately.
- capitalism
- A political/economic model of organizing production around private ownership and wage-labor. Characterized by working class exploitation where individuals sell their labor to those who own and control capital. Though it has roots in class-based market economics of the past, modern industrial capitalism is 200-300 years old, with its strongest characteristics emerging from the industrial revolution. This model affects not only economic interactions, but social and political ones as well.
- charter document
- Articulates an organization’s goals, stakeholders, and strategies to guide resource allocation and predictive decision making ahead. This document can help frame an organization’s work in terms of its values; however, those values are not necessarily reflective of a work force’s values or the values of all stakeholders.
- collaboration
- An approach to labor where individuals work together, distributing their effort on a project. The organization of this labor can be explicitly decided by collaborators themselves (horizontal, collective) or with managerial input (vertical, hierarchical), but is also implicitly affected by cultural expectations and norms.
- collectivity
- An organizing principle of horizontal collaboration where individuals work equally and in pursuit of a shared goal. Orienting work towards collectivity means valuing and including the diverse skills and perspectives of your peers and constantly pursuing self-organization in labor. That is, adapting to the needs and abilities of yourself and your coworkers.
- diversity
- The presence of various identity groups in an organization or audience.
- email
- Written communication for both internal and external audiences, the platform for which can differ depending on workplace. Email is a medium of communication, rather than a genre, since it can look very different depending on workplace norms, management expectations, audience, and security/confidentiality.
- external communication
- Letters, proposals, press releases/kits, and mission statements are just a few examples
- genre
- Typified rhetorical action, or a set of officialized conventions for communicating information that, because the rhetorical situation repeats itself so frequently, becomes routinized over time.
- grit
- The persistence in pursuing a goal or learning a skill over time. Like resilience, this attribute assumes cultural norms and ability.
- identity
- The cultural, ethnic, or racial backgrounds, as well as the sexed, gendered, abled, classed and otherwise politicized categories individuals and groups identify by or are identified with. Can mark both privilege and vulnerability
- implicit bias
- The beliefs, ideologies, traumas, or life experiences that color how we view a topic, approach a conflict, or otherwise inform our decision making.
- inclusion
- The representation and compensation of those from vulnerable identity groups. Not only acknowledging their presence, inclusion means valuing diversity both monetarily/materially and culturally within a workplace.
- internal communication
- Memos, emails, group chats, and collaborative writing platforms – the ways in which we collaborate with one another inside an organization. Not fully private, these are still forms of public writing where a communicator must adapt and be mindful of different audiences, cultures, and differences in power within artificial managerial hierarchy.
- logics of recognition
- That which is required to be recognized in some kind of official capacity—e.g. as a citizen, a colleague, etc.
- market logics
- The rules of efficiency, productivity, austerity, and competition that inform corporate behaviors in a free market economy. These logics permeate other institutions when we take up their values in our practices and behavior.
- marketing proposal
- A document used to pitch to an organization (externally) or to those with decision making power (internally). Often composed multimodally – text, images, and even audio are used to illustrate prototype materials or project goals. Can be written in response to RFPs, but can also be directly elicited within an organization.
- memo
- A genre of communication that varies wildly depending on purpose, audience, and context. Can be persuasive, but typically used to spread information internally or externally, informing stakeholders about organizational decisions. This genre is not limited to any one medium or platform – it is usually written with a degree of formality and in textual form, but it may include visual components or be more short-form depending on workplace norms.
- participatory design
- Designing a product, research study, document, or prototype with participation and direct input from all stakeholders involved – employees, communities, users, and anyone else who is affected or involved in the design process. Solving a problem with those that design is meant to help, not for them, in other words.
- performance
- A constructed act; that is, not necessarily a behavior that is natural, unmediated, or innate.
- pitch
- A genre of persuasive communication that describes and convinces an audience to enact a strategy, support a proposal, or otherwise make an organizational decision. This genre is not limited to any one medium – it can be an informally spoken conversation piece with or without accompanying slideware, or as formal as a written proposal presented to either internal or external audiences.
- productivity
- Producing a high amount of surplus value in return for a low cost of labor input. A metric of business efficiency, productivity means that capital is accumulated and secured with as little “loss” as possible. As organizations become more efficient, productive, and profitable, workers’ conditions and pay don’t necessarily improve.
- professionalism
- Expectations and standards for behavior in professional settings, including timeliness, ability, and efficiency in producing work. These standards are culturally informed; that is, they vary depending on workplace environment, leadership, and the cultural background those around you and you yourself carry.
- resilience
- The ability to persevere through failure or adversity. Like grit, this attribute assumes cultural norms and ability – being resilient often means working in the face of unsafe or harmful conditions.
- rhetoric
- A field of study that both practices and investigates meaning-making’s effects; that is, the consequences of making sense of the world vis-a-vis a wide range of sign systems (e.g. alphabetic text; numbers; gestures). Despite the bad press that the word “rhetoric” seems to get, it is not synonymous with empty speech, lies, or deception.
- sender-receiver model
- An early theory about how communication between two or more people worked; specifically, the speaker was known of as the “sender” and the audience was characterized as “receivers.” This theory has been proven to be terribly reductive and incorrect, as it doesn’t account for varying contexts, audience needs and expectations, among other things.
- slideware
- Power point, Prezi, Keynote, or some other medium for presenting information in short-form slides. This genre’s affordances are its accessibility, concision, and ability to be presented multimodally – that is, with textual, visual, and/or auditory parts.
- social media
- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. – the privately owned, for-profit digital platforms we publicly post on. These are also mobilized by organizations for marketing, branding, and communication reasons, which can lead to overlaps in who you represent on your personal profile — yourself, or your organization.
- spreadable media
- Flyers, buttons, and laptop stickers are just a few examples of media produced by an organization to advertise an initiative, raise brand or mission awareness, or otherwise convey information externally to an audience. Can be presupposed, or designed participatorily.
- strategic plan
- A formal statement about a team or organization’s priorities, which may help with managing both human and monetary resources. Strategic planning involves coming to an agreement about values, goals, methods for achieving goals, observable outcomes/results, and how those outcomes/results will be assessed. Some organizations conduct a SWOT analysis as part of their strategic plan.
- strategy
- A generalizable or universalized approach to a problem.
- tactic
- A unique, localized, context-specific approach to a problem.
- teamwork
- Working and communicating with co-workers, managers, and other stakeholders. Can mean working equally, or being a small part of a larger organization. Teamwork functions on things going ‘smoothly’, prioritizing productivity and efficiency over the needs and values of workers or stakeholders.
- text message
- An informal form of communication, texting is typically used internally among coworkers around or outside of official communicative channels. Norms for texting differ depending on management expectations and security/confidentiality.
- tokenization
- An individualizing approach to inclusion, tokenization means an organization includes a representative of diversity without changing workplace values, rather than center the experiences and perspectives of those from a variety of cultures or backgrounds.
- Toulmin’s model for argumentation
- A strategy for both producing and analyzing an argument that includes attention not just to a person’s claim, but also to how they back their claim up with field-specific assumptions and generalizable knowledge. The model also attends to an argument’s potential rebuttal and the degree to which the claim is generalizable.
- universal design
- An approach to the design of spaces, products, and project workflow or organization that prioritizes accessibility for all possible individuals. Proactive, rather than reactive or accommodating to disability, this approach aims to eliminate barriers to access at the core of design.
- viral messaging
- An approach to spreadable media with the explicit goal of tapping into existing, digital social networks. When designing with this goal in mind, an organization’s uncompensated audience will share media to advertise an event, product, or initiative, or expand the social networking potential of said organization.
- visual rhetoric
- The ways in which non-textual, non-auditory images, symbols, or designs can connect with a viewer and enact affective change. That is, the ‘arguments’ formed by visual design resonate or connect with an audience – usually in a way that text alone cannot. Can be thought of in tandem with text and sound when designing media.
- work/life balance
- The idea of separating work from one’s personal life. Loaded with cultural expectations, the measure of what a ‘healthy’ balance looks like shifts over time, skewing towards hyper-productivity and being ‘always on the clock’. Work/life balance can be valued by management, but it often must be negotiated in conflict with market logics – individuals must protect their time and create boundaries.