I agree with Jamie entirely that a great deal of epistemic or
knowledge-generating writing happens in the workplace. The Bank of
Canada, as a research and policy institution is certainly a clear
example of this. To direct Canada's monetary policy, the Governor and
his senior colleagues need to know what has happened, is happening, and
likely will happen in the country's economy. And much of this knowledge
is generated inside the Bank by its economists through text-centered
activity. Similarly, as in any large organization, the people at the
Bank responsible for making decisions about its administrative
operations need locally produced knowledge of diverse and complex kinds,
and again much of this knowledge is produced through text-centered
activity. And while such writing is definitely instrumental, it's also
epistemic.
And not only is writing in the workplace frequently epistemic, but it
can in certain instances be highly creative, exploratory, heuristic, and
collaborative. I'd also argue that every time an economist or business
analyst or manager participates in knowledge-producing writing, they're
learning (as well as sharing with others) something important to their
work, and that this knowledge, or knowing, grows and evolves over time.
And given the implications for the organization and for individual
careers, the writers are personally connected--indeed, very
connected--to the activity as knowers. Further, in keeping with situated
learning theory (particularly Lave & Wenger, but also Orlikowsky and
Brown & Duguid and others), in organizational communities-of-practice,
knowledge-making and learning are happening continuously, both on
individual and collective levels.
I think in general that many of the distinctions made between
knowledge-making in workplace writing and knowledge-making in school
writing tend to break down when you look carefully at what's actually
happening in a particular classroom or worksite. More specifically, for
this discussion, I'd argue that the instrumental vs epistemic binary
isn't a very useful way to look at workplace writing.
Graham
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Marcy Bauman wrote:
>
> Thanks, Jamie, that helps. I'm having to revise my previous stance, but
> I'd like to hold it for a moment longer in order to respond to this:
>
> > But now that I write this, I find myself puzzled at your puzzlement
> > ("hard time imagining"). If business needs knowledge (axiomatic, I
> > think), and knowledge needs language (cf Aristotle, John Gage), why
> > wouldn't a good deal of writing in businesses be epistemic? Surely you
> > don't think that knowledge creation occurs exclusively in schools?
>
> Nope, it's not that I think knowledge creation occurs exclusively in
> schools. It's that I (almost) think that epistemic writing in school serves
> the function of connecting the writer with the knowledge, of helping the
> writer assimilate knowledge (writing-to-know). This process (and its
> artifacts) seems much more tentative than what I imagine you'd find in
> "recommendation reports, proposals, contracts, pharmaceutical trial
> documentation," all of which seem to me to be examples of writing whose
> possible outcomes are much more severely constrained or curtailed. In
> school writing,it's much easier to be off-the-wall, as it were, because
> nothing is likely to happen as a result of the writing. In a workplace,
> the audiences and purposes for producing the documents are more pragmatic
> and many more conclusions are therefore rendered unreachable, many more
> opinions unsayable . . .
>
> I don't mean to sound paranoid or to denigrate the knowledge-making that
> you have shown does go on, only to say that it isn't as free-form as the
> knowledge-making in school and so it seems to me to be something else. The
> knowledge created in schools strikes me as far more personal than the
> knowledge created in workplaces.
>
> Marcy
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Marcy Bauman
> Media Consultant
> College of Pharmacy
> University of Michigan
> 734-647-2227
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