Re: Lingua Franca Today
For the record, my comments about how language is used in academia come from within academia. I'm mostly just repeating the standard rhetorical analysis of academic discourse. It's true that I find much of academic discourse distasteful, while rhetoricians tend to be more neutral in their observations, but you could think of the analysis itself as being academics engaging in academic-bashing.
Yes, you're right. It doesn't matter whether it comes from inside or not, it's still pedestrian, as you acknowledge. ("I'm mostly just repeating....).
It performs two functions. One, when coming from within, it allows one to set oneself off from the masses of colleagues who are incapable of seeing the error of their ways, in this case academics. And there are, indeed, entire conferences about what poor writers and communicators academics are. I do it all the time! Two, when coming from without, from the position of tech writer, it is also an unavoidable ritual, on my view, because it it performs the function of informal gate keeping.
Academics are notoriously snobby gatekeepers. As teachers, we put down tech writers who seem to write awful textbooks that seem to be responsible for our students inability to read and comprehend.
TWs inevitably engage in the same. Why shouldn't we? Professionalizing can only enhance the pay rate. Occupations that professionalize establish formal training programs, professional association, codes of ethics, etc. They do so for practical reasons, higher salaries and well-deserved, but too often denied, respect for what we do. They also professionalize under the mantle of noble service to the public good.[1]
Tech writers engage in a similar discourse, at times. Plato's concerns about the competitiveness of business and the corporate good. Chastizing Elna--and the debate that ensued--is a way of informally marking the boundaries of acceptable professional behavior. The claim may be contested, and rightly so, but the debate is important to have. It makes the members of the occupation self-aware, a characteristic of professions concerned with their influence on others. Members of professions or aspring professions need to have these debates.
By maintaining that not just anyone can do techwriting, we aren't just maintaining an objective reality, but making sure it's conveyed to an audience: established tech writers, aspiring techwriters, and especially outsiders who doubt our claims. Unlike physicians and pilots, no one dies if tech writers aren't trained in formal programs. No one sits in prison for life because the writer used the term lingua franca in documentation. Corporations might not be competitive, but, as folks have noted so often here, getting them to see that isn't easy.
The downside to a process I see as inevitable is that in order to do advance the status of the occupation, we typically put down other forms of writing, as we've seen here. :) The same gate keeping takes place in other occupations and among other writers who work in and through different genres.
To be fair, in those formal and informal debates that occur in other occupations and professions, there are always putzes such as myself who raise these issues, often because they're uncomfortable with what they perceive as intolerance. On my view, though, I am not worried that it is intolerant and marginalizing to those who write in and through different genres. I happen to think the process is inevitable, though I bet we can make it more judicious and self-reflective than we tend to do.
kelley
[1] In academia this is institutionalized in the criteria used to assess a candidate for tenure: research, community service, and teaching (valued in that order).
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References:
RE: Lingua Franca Today: From: kelley
Re: Lingua Franca Today: From: kelley
Re: Lingua Franca Today: From: Bruce Byfield
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