Introduction: Rhetorical Preparation
The majority of this resource is designed to help prepare you for the writing expected of you at the end of the course and post-graduation. You’ll note that the backdrop of each chapter is a critical awareness of the way market logics (or capitalism) expect certain behaviors, performances, and workplace practices. Specifically, we will discuss—
- what “professionalism” looks like and how it’s defined
- how to take a more care-ful approach to collaborative writing
- tactics not just for writing to or on behalf of specific audiences, but also for recognizing and honoring a wide range of stakeholders’ communicative needs and expectations
- tactics for motivating stakeholders from different backgrounds and with various abilities to do, think, or act differently
- tactics for remaining responsive to local material, economic, and interpersonal conditions that shape communicative practices and expectations
As you use this resource to think critically about the world of work, we encourage you to think critically about the resource, itself. For example, you may notice that we are using avatars to illustrate each of our professional writers who are featured throughout each chapter. Start there. What assumptions are implicit and explicit in the design of these avatars? Beyond the avatars, consider the examples each chapter asks you to check out. How might those examples change in six months, a year, or ten years from now? Toward the end of this resource, we ask you to think critically about designing accessible arguments. In what ways does this resource contradict itself with regard to accessibility? How do we fail to live up to our own accessibility standards?
In other words: This resource ought not to be impervious to the kinds of rhetorical critique it asks you to perform.
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.
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.
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.
A unique, localized, context-specific approach to a problem.