Over the past decade, an interest in collaboration has
been coming to the fore in composition studies. Whereas once
we were primarily interested in investigating the cognitive
processes of the individual, we now seek to understand more
about the social dynamics of writing in groups to improve our
teaching of composition in the classroom. To that end, this
dissertation looks at the real world collaborative activities
of business proposal writers within a high technology company.
Writing in the workplace is often undertaken in groups, and my
work at Cerebellum, Inc. with computer professionals (who
wrote as part of their jobs) reveals complexities hitherto
unsuspected in the social writing process.
The importance of a detailed understanding of
collaboration has been called for in the literature by, for
example, Ede and Lunsford (1990). My dissertation surveys
current literature in composition, including a review of
investigations into collaboration during business writing as a
salient behaviour of such a discourse community. In order to
accomplish my research, I used a video camera to record the
activities which embodied the writing process at Cerebellum
Inc. I found that the use of the video camera in an
ethnographic manner not only helped me to gather detailed
data, both verbal and nonverbal, in the continuous and
comprehensive detail so vital to communication research, but
also assisted in initiating better understanding within the
business community of the aims and approaches of academic
research. Video technology gave me a chance to participate in
as well as observe situations, and also opened the door to
conversation concerning my methods and my findings with both
researchers and informants.
I propose a model of the varying levels of engagement
undertaken by the writers of a business proposal. I then
suggest the educational value of the representation with a
discussion of implications for the teaching of writing in the
workplace and in more traditional school settings.
Detailed research into collaboration offers us a window
on the social processes which constitute writing for our
students now and in their futures in the workplace. Such work
is vitally important to ensuring superior levels of advanced
literacy which will be in continuing demand now and in the
next century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6843 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Begoray, Deborah Leslie |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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