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Forgive me for blurting and stumbling in here - this has been a really thought provoking discussion - and I hope this is not an interruption or a spoke in the wheel of sorts. I have been following this thread of discussion this week, and wondering at the workplace writing that is done by mainly service sector workers which would not be considered "professional" but nevertheless has powerful economic, social, medical and political implications for the writers and the "objects" or subjects of the writing, and yet is not considered elite, high status or qualifies for US VISA status -- this writing is highly literate, is situated in complex social and human contexts, I am thinking of the writing that is done by child-care workers, youth workers, lay mental health workers, street workers, transitional house workers etc. - many of these occupations require a considerable amount of reading/reporting documenting/summarizing in a deeply situated manner as well as interacting/ negotiating/ advocacy with hierarchical "regulating bodies" which supply the "official" genres and technical and literate authority about official textual accounts of things. It seems to me that most of the workers in these occupations are mid-aged women, or younger men and they may typically hold a BA or some other semi-professional certificate. I wrote my MA thesis on the workplace writing that was done by mental health workers in a community mental health boarding home, ( I think I fell into the job because my artist friend Polly said it would give me "flex hours so I could do my "real" writing as a "poet", this thesis was based on my own experience as a mental health worker and in it I tracked eleven years of daily documentation in a massive archive we called the daily log. most of us "nonprofessional" mental health workers were reasonably to highly educated folks, with backgrounds in the arts, community based education , theatre, and social activism, advocacy, etc. - and in our workplace we wrote daily progress notes in the day to day care of adults in transition from total institutions of the psychiatric warehouses of the late 70's early 80's to "independent living"/ abandonment in the community . I think one of the most remarkable findings for me was to realise the degree of literate practice that went on in the day to day maintenance of our community, but which remained almost entirely taken for granted - invisible, as a form of consciously acknowledged "writing" - "its not real writing" it's just log notes!!!" I remember someone declaring, but others of us wondered at this writing that was so vital to our daily care of others, so powerful and evocative of the lives lived within the walls of our community - that we kept writing in a particular "fieldnotes/anecdotal" manner because we felt it was a better way to provide care for our residents -- despite having institutionally and finally forensically mandated edicts to write in a medical model progress notes style. when the workers in the house unanimously decided to maintain two sets of texts, one to satisfy the licensing board and the forensic authorities, and the other in order to remain connected as a community and workplace, because it seemed a more accurate, "safer" and ethical form of writing, I knew we were onto to something quite profound. . Perhaps at the university and elsewhere - we lose sight of the immense privilege that our particular writing/reading practices hold, ( for example now I sometimes laugh a wee bit ironically perhaps, when I talk about my 'work" when it means I must devote the weekend to some reading and writing), meanwhile as I settle in at my desk to do this work - somewhere over the other side of town - someone else is sitting down to read twenty pages of hand written progress notes about what happened in the community boarding home that week, and after she reads this text she will be faced with "understanding" the subjects of this writing, providing care, food, crisis management, medical supplements, dinner and social interaction to fifteen psychiatrically marginalized adults for the next 8 - 12 hours - after which she will sit down and write an account of "what happened" in order to communicate sometimes life-critical details to her fellow workers coming onto the next shift later that day/week -- her work is highly literate, textually sophisticated and yet she is paid slightly about minimum wage and is not considered "technical, academic, or professional" So to answer in a kind of rambling way - professional writing is the kind of writing that certain people do where the focus of their labour becomes a recognised textual product that has cultural capital in some form, because the text can be seen as a active agent of some kind -- also there seems to be a conscious apprenticeships where this genre of writing is refined whereas other people's workplace writing is not defined as professional - and the writing is done as a part of the work that is done - it is perceived as instrumental - a means to an end, and I suspect that learning the writing of the workplace is part of learning how to become a "mental health worker" - much as Lave and Wenger speak of in "Situated Learning" -- therefore this form of writing does not have status or capital value mainly because the labour falls into that mediated space where the focus in upon the services of the body ( even when that service in for the care and welfare and comfort of many other people) and the textualization of that labour is rendered invisible in the services of the bodies. I imagine that pay equity legislation will begin to draw attention to the textual and literate practices of this invisible but essential sector of under-valued workers. For anyone interested -- I think Dorothy Smith has made a huge contribution to this "curious eclipse" about the differences between "professional" texts and what she calls documentary text in her writing about "the active text" and the "textual relations of ruling" in her two books - The Conceptual Practices of Ruling -- and Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. cheers kathryn ********************************************************** People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls L.S. Vygotsky Kathryn Alexander ( a now redeemed formerly recalcitrant child) Doctoral Candidate, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University Burnaby, B.C. 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