Transcript ppt - Wayne Smith

From Signs and Signals to
Artifacts and Assumptions:
A Student of Management Observes
Communication Culture in Los Angeles
Wayne Smith, Ph.D.
Department of Management
Woodbury University
Communication
Motivation at the
Professional-level
• Beason, L. (2001), “Ethos and Error: How Business People
React to Errors”, College Composition and Communication, 53
(1), Sep.
• 1. he provided sample writing errors to businesspeople.
• 2. he then classified the “responses and images of the writer”
• Error Category I: writer as a writer
– Hasty, careless, uncaring, or uninformed
• Error Category II: writer as a business person
– Faulty thinker, not a detail person, poor oral communicator,
poorly educated person, or sarcastic/pretentious/aggressive
• Error Category III: writer as a representative
– Can’t represent the company to customers, or can’t represent the
company in court
Some Errors Beyond the
Reach of Current Technology
• Hacker, D. (2007), “A Writer’s Reference 6th ed.”, Bedford/St.
Martin’s
• “[Current word processors have difficulty with]…writing
context and culture, appropriate style of discourse, degree of
‘assertiveness,’ faulty parallelism, misplaced and dangling
modifiers, homonyms, missing words and omitted verbs,
shifts in verb tense or mood, coordination and subordination,
sentence variety and fragments, run-on sentences, common
redundancies, unnecessary wordiness, jargon and
abbreviations, clichés, sexist language, irregular verbs,
pronoun agreements and references, missing or misused
commas, semi-colons, apostrophes, hyphens, quotation
marks, capitalization, and problems with emphasis.”
Lunsford, A., and Lunsford, K. (2008), “Mistakes Are a Fact
of Life: A National Comparative Study”, College
Composition and Communication, 59 (4), Jun. p. 795
Rank Error or Error Pattern
1.
Wrong word
2.
3.
4.
Missing comma after intro. element
Incomplete or missing documentation
Vague pronoun reference
5.
6.
7.
Spelling error (including homonyms)
Mechanical error with a quotation
Unnecessary comma
8.
9.
10.
Unnecessary or missing capitalization
Missing word
Faulty sentence structure
Lunsford, A., and Lunsford, K. (2008), “Mistakes Are a Fact
of Life: A National Comparative Study”, College
Composition and Communication, 59 (4), Jun. p. 795
Rank Error or Error Pattern
11. Missing comma w/ nonrestrictive ele.
12.
13.
14.
Unnecessary shift in verb tense
Missing comma in a compound sent.
Unnecessary or missing apostrophe
15.
16.
17.
Fused (run-on) sentence
Comma splice
No pronoun-antecedent agreement
18.
19.
20.
Poorly integrated quotation
Unnecessary or missing hyphen
Sentence fragment
“The Bottom Line”
• --. (2004), “Writing: A Ticket to Work or a Ticket Out, A
Survey of Business Leaders,” National Commission on Writing,
Sep.
– http://www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/writing
-ticket-to-work.pdf
• Summary Excerpts
– “Writing is a ‘threshold skill’ for both employment and
promotion, particularly for salaried employees.”
– “People who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be
hired and are unlikely to last long enough to be considered for
promotion.”
• Costs
– “Based on the survey responses, it appears that remedying
deficiencies in writing may cost American firms as much as $3.1
billion annually.”
Welcome to English
• Same Spelling, but Different Pronunciation
– through, rough, dough, plough, hiccough and trough
• Different Words, but Same Meaning
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
1950s (“hot”)
1960s (“groovy”)
1970s (“cool”)
1980s (“bad”)
1990s (“the bomb”)
Early 2000s (“phat”)
Late 2000s (“sweet”)
• Apparent Synonyms, but Real Antonyms
– Cancelled Check (US)
• Cleared (and paid) just fine
– Cancelled Check (Great Britain)
• Voided (and not paid) for some reason
The First Sentence on the
Label
“The crises over the shortage of potable
water is occurring; this waterless
urinal technology is addressing the
problem.”
The “English of Business”
• Sentence Economics
– Do I know what counts as value and impact for
the reader?
• Sentence Accounting
– Has message waste and message noise been
minimized?
• Sentence Law
– What are the rules and patterns governing
sentence structure?
• Sentence Statistics
– Has systematic uncertainty (and therefore
ambiguity) been controlled for in the sentence?
Punctuation – mult. Errors 1
Punctuation – mult.
Errors
2
Language Use Errors
1. Possessive
pronoun form
exception
2. Parallel inflection
3. Comma splice
4. Missing definite
article
5. Wrong Word
6. Pluralized
Adjective
Punctuation - corrected
Punctuation
– side-by-side
SFV
store
LA store
Motivation at the
Organization-level
•
Ramstad, E. (2008), “CEO Broadens Vistas at LG”, Wall Street Journal, May. B1
•
SUMMARY: LG is a [very large, Korean] company in transition thanks to the
efforts of its CEO Yong Nam. The company is trying to reinvent itself as a
21st century multinational. This requires a major shift in the corporate
culture to encourage employees to ask tough questions. Another shift is the
use of English as the company's language. The goal of the company is to
become a global powerhouse in appliances and electronics.
•
WSJ: You're requiring English to be used more at headquarters and to talk to
the rest of the organization. Why?
•
Mr. Nam: English is essential. The speed of innovation required to compete in
the world mandates that we must have seamless communication. We cannot
depend on a small group of people who are holding the key to all
communication throughout the world. That really impedes information
sharing and decision-making. I want everybody's wisdom instead of just a
few.