Research and Writing

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Think of the typical fast food drive-thru experience as one big, complex reading experience. As a “workplace writing” instructor, I can’t help but think about the fact that someone – or some team – wrote everything about that experience. What a writing challenge! Worthy, perhaps, of reverse-engineering.

During my week, I teach undergraduate English classes centered around “workplace writing.” For reasons I am ever pondering, I also assign the occasional traditional essay. This pondering process carries over into my lunch break, and I often find myself looking at and thinking about all of the writing that exists in the real world – writing that exists in real workplaces – writing that looks nothing like essays.

What I continue to find is that real-world writing is more than just words. It includes, as an essential counterpart, systems of symbols, signs, and designs. And increasingly, I am feeding such observations back into Academia.

For example, in a manual published by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration, you can find Pantone color specifications for road signs and the yellow paint used to separate driving lanes. As it happens, the same hue graces the feet of McDonald’s Masterbrand Golden Arches logo; at my local McDonald’s, where I go regularly for coffee between teaching classes, I am surrounded and guided by this color. It tells me where to go and what to expect.

When we write, for example, in an academic context, we receive similar messages in the form of notebook dimensions, software-based page guides, and assignment parameters. But in the fast food drive-thru, there is really never any confusion about where to go and what to do. No one needs a textbook to navigate these lanes.

Furthermore, I notice more and more the use of meta-writing: for example, a message painted on the pavement that says something like, “Both lanes open,” or hanging, printed signs that say, “Please have payment ready.” If, experimentally, we think of the average McDonald’s drive-thru experience as a complex document, then already we are looking at a few interconnected messages and distinct purposes designed as a kind of interactive reading experience.

I’m not anti-essay. Let’s be clear – I believe that the essay can be useful, instructive, and artistic. But I can’t help but notice that the traditional approach to the essay, arguably, provides no real choices to the reader. The Drive-Thru Document does.

One of the more common buzzwords in writing pedagogy is “technology-mediated,” as in, “technology-mediated writing” or “technology-mediated reading.” Scholars and educators have long expressed an active interest in the complicated interrelationsh

We don’t get to know the intended message. The only thing we can do is guess. When a good guess at the intended message seems worth the analysis, there are a few things to watch for. They’ve been part of writing (and speaking) for a long, long time.

Logical patterns are fairly easy to spot in the wild; they contain any of the following.

When you see these words, you are very likely seeing the surface feature of something logical – some potential clue about an intended message. The thing to remember is that, for example, in the case of an “and” statement, you are seeing a sometimes-implicit, sometimes explicit claim about the truth of at least two statements.

statement one is true AND statement two is true

E.g., It is cool and breezy outside today. 

This could be translated into:

It is cool outside today AND It is breezy outside today.

If, just for the moment, you represent each of these provable statements about the weather as variables, then you’ll start to see why paying attention to logical patterns can be useful when dealing with more complex statements. We can even use a symbol for the “and” feature.

A = It is cool outside today

∧ = and

B = It is breezy outside today

So, we could represent this innocuous claim about coolness and breeziness as: A ∧ B. And, if we can assume that this statement was not preceded by something like, “The following is a lie,” or by a sarcastic facial expression, then we can safely assume that each statement is true. If they are each true, then we can confidently go forth knowing that the entire original statement is true. If it’s cool out, but not breezy, then the whole original statement – because of the “and” – is not true; if it is breezy and hot, the original statement is false.

Intuitive, right? For simple sentences that no one really cares too deeply about, this kind of logical reconstruction is, well… a breeze. Cool.

I leave it to you to experiment with the rest: the either/or statements, the if/then statements, and the rest. Find out firsthand how words can signal (or how they can explicitly be) claims about truth. Soon enough, you might find yourself thinking about true-for-me versus true-for-you or true-for-someone-else. Oof. This is a problem.

Could we, for example, agree on a definition of “truth”? I heard a definition once, somewhere long ago, that I liked: Truth is correspondence with reality. But as concise as this definition may be, it really just points out, in a tidy way, the underlying mystery of “reality;” are we talking about my reality? Yours? Someone else’s? Arg! Back to square one!

When I am attempting to understand – to make, for some reason, an intelligent guess about – an intended message, I need to at least understand that logical patterns exist and use specific truth-related rules. As readers and listeners, we may not get to a 100% rock solid place in such analyses, but I think you need to at least be aware of the way these core communication elements function. When people write and speak, they often make implicit statements about truth and reality, and there are systematic ways to perform an analysis. This, for me, is step one: comprehend the statement. You have to decide how much context and how much depth is sufficient for your purposes.

If English were just math, we’d be done

Readers notice transitions when they are ineffective. Consider replacing yours with big, gaping holes. A “suspended” resolution may generate stronger engagement with your words.

What has made you the kind of thinker that you are? What has made you the kind of reader that you are? I believe you need to have an answer for this question before you can do useful research – and I think the answer has something to do with overlapping information systems.

Every sentence matters. This episode of “Research and Writing” introduces the functions of the first nine.

All texts begin and end for the reader, but that does not mean that you have to start the composition process by writing “the beginning. In fact, don’t.

This episode takes as its premise the notion that a “text” is a system of functional components, designed for a specific purpose and structured in a way intended to achieve this purpose. I believe, therefore, that composition can begin with the arrangement of ideas and motives – and that that, in turn, begins with something I call, “the delineation of scope.”

Writing, even in an academic context, can be approached as a system of functions to which language choices can be applied. In this recording, I talk about how a structural/functional approach to writing can be applied to the standard, 5-paragraph essay.

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