Writing the Economy; Activity, Genre and Technology in the World of Banking; Graham Smart

Graham Smart [+–]

Carleton University

Graham Smart is an Associate Professor in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He has published studies of writing in workplace and academic settings as well as work on interpretative ethnography. His recent research also focuses on public-policy discourse and environmental rhetoric.

The first part of the book describes how the Bank’s economists employ a set of written and oral discourse genres in combination with computer-run economic models to create specialized knowledge about the Canadian economy that is applied by the organization’s senior decision-makers in directing national monetary policy. The book then examines the economists’ use of another set of technology-mediated discourse genres to orchestrate the Bank’s external communications with government, the media, the business sector, financial markets, labour, and academia. The book also explores the way in which the economists’ discourse practices facilitate individual and organizational learning and includes extended commentaries on the author’s use of the methodology of interpretive ethnography.

In a foreword, Charles Bazerman describes the book’s contribution to our understanding of organizational discourse and knowledge-making, situating this contribution in the study of economic rhetoric and the social formation of economy.

Series: Studies in Communication in Organisations and Professions

Preliminaries

Acknowledgements [+–] xi

Graham Smart

Carleton University

In recent years the economic policies of major financial institutions such as the European Union Central Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve and other countries’ central banks, and the International Monetary Fund have received growing media attention, reflecting increased public awareness of the impact of these institutions on the global economy and, more immediately, on the material conditions of our everyday lives. Writing the Economy: Activity, Genre and Technology in the World of Banking takes readers into one such site, the Bank of Canada, that country’s central bank and monetary-policy authority. Drawing on qualitative data gathered over two decades (1984-2005) and employing theories of activity, genre, narrative, and situated learning, the book provides an ethnographic account of the role of technology-mediated discourse in the Bank’s knowledge-building, policy-making, and public communication. The first part of the book describes how the Bank’s economists employ a set of written and oral discourse genres in combination with computer-run economic models to create specialized knowledge about the Canadian economy that is applied by the organization’s senior decision-makers in directing national monetary policy. The book then examines the economists’ use of another set of technology-mediated discourse genres to orchestrate the Bank’s external communications with government, the media, the business sector, financial markets, labour, and academia. The book also explores the way in which the economists’ discourse practices facilitate individual and organizational learning and includes extended commentaries on the author’s use of the methodology of interpretive ethnography. In a foreword, Charles Bazerman describes the book’s contribution to our understanding of organizational discourse and knowledge-making, situating this contribution in the study of economic rhetoric and the social formation of economy.

Foreword: Persuasive economies [+–] 1-5

Charles Bazerman

University of California at Santa Barbara

View Website

Department of Education
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA
USA

Chapter One

Introduction [+–] 7-19

Graham Smart

Carleton University

In recent years, the economic policies of major financial institutions such as the European Union Central Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve and central banks of other countries, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank have received growing attention in the news media, reflecting increased public awareness of the impact of these financial institutions on the global economy and, more concretely, on the material conditions of our every-day lives. As a consequence, public interest in the goals, economic analyses, and decision-making processes that guide these institutions’ policy actions has greatly intensified. This book takes readers inside one such site, the Bank of Canada, that country’s central bank, to look at its knowledge-building, policymaking, and external communications, revealing significant socio-rhetorical, ideological, and technological dimensions of this work. Topics include; The study; An overview; The research site; The methodology: interpretive ethnography; The theoretical orientation; The organization of the book.

Chapter Two

The monetary-policy process: the big picture [+–] 21-34

Graham Smart

Carleton University

This chapter begins with a discussion of knowledge-building in the profession of economics, and then moves on to portray ‘the economy’ as a site-specific, symbol-based representation that is created, maintained, and revised through the discourse practices of economists collaborating for specific occupational ends. Looking at the particular representation of the Canadian economy created by economists at the Bank of Canada to accomplish their work of economic research, analysis, and policy-making, I suggest that this ‘economy’ permeates the economists’ thinking, speaking, and writing, and is instantiated in the mathematical equations of the Quarterly Projection Model. With this background, and also drawing on inscription theory, the chapter then provides an overview of the Bank’s ‘monetary-policy process’ – a broad writing-intensive activity that encompasses knowledge-building, policy-making, and policy-related communications with outside groups. Topics include: Knowledge-building, ideology, and rhetoric in economics; ‘The economy’ as a cultural construct; Knowledge-building, policy-making, and external communications; Methodological reflections: foundations of interpretive ethnography.

Chapter Three

Genres of knowledge-building and policy-making [+–] 35-84

Graham Smart

Carleton University

In this chapter I bring together, in Clifford Geertz’s terms, ‘experience-distant’ concepts outlined earlier in the book – disciplinary theories of discourse, genre, activity, distributed cognition, and situated learning (here supplemented by modelling theory) – and ‘experience-near’ concepts embedded in commentary from the Bank’s staff economists and senior executives to present a detailed account of knowledge-building and policy-making, a writing-intensive activity mediated by four cultural tools: the Quarterly Projection Model, the Projection Exercise, the White Book, and the monetary-policy story. In this account, we will see how the output from economic monitoring and analysis by junior economists is used by more senior economists to develop a broad, forwardlooking view of the Canadian economy and a set of policy recommendations for the Governor and his colleagues on the Governing Council, who in turn draw on this view of the economy and these recommendations in making decisions about the direction of the country’s monetary policy. A central aim in the chapter will be to examine closely the relationship between written and spoken discourse on the one hand and knowledge-building on the other (Barron, Bruce, & Nunan, 2002; van Dijk, 2003). At the same time, the chapter carefully traces out the ways in which written and spoken discourse genres are enmeshed with the technology of computer-assisted economic modelling. Topics include: Mathematical models in disciplinary knowledge-building; The Quarterly Projection Model; The Projection Exercise; Issues Meeting; Starting Point Meeting; Projection Rounds Meetings; Chiefs’ Meeting; Presentation Meeting; Management Committee meeting; The White Book; End-of-quarter input to policy-making; Benchmark for current analysis; Reference point for sequence of meetings; Friday Presentation and Tuesday meeting; Governing Council meetings; Inter-projection monitoring exercise and meeting; Management Committee meeting; The monetary-policy story; Constructing the monetary-policy story; Variations on genre conventions; Methodological reflections: research questions, data collection, and data analysis; Probing key terms; Examining life-cycle narratives; Identifying converging perspectives; Applying disciplinary theory.

Chapter Four

The interplay of discourse genres and economic modelling [+–] 85-136

Graham Smart

Carleton University

Topics include: What is the Quarterly Projection Model?; Building, ‘selling,’ and enhancing QPM; What QPM does; QPM as a tool of reasoning; Representing the Bank’s paradigm of the Canadian economy; Enabling research to develop the Bank’s paradigm of the economy; Interpreting economic data; Performing policy analysis; QPM as a tool of intersubjectivity; QPM’s influence on written and spoken discourse; The QPM vernacular; Logical rigour; Constraining the tendency to hedge; Providing a communal standard of logic; Tying reasoning to consensual macroeconomic theory; Encouraging precision; Making reasoning explicit and visible; The White Book; Methodological refl ections: engagement and detachment

Chapter Five

Genres of external communications [+–] 137-185

Graham Smart

Carleton University

Topics include: The Communications Strategy; Written genres – published; Oral genres – involving participants outside the Bank; Written and oral genres – behind the scenes; Two key features of the genre sub-set; Practitioners’ genre knowledge; The relationship to organizational change: The role of genres in the Communications Strategy; Coordinating intellectual work; Producing and communicating public information; Acting as a site for organizational learning; Methodological reflections: issues of validity, reliability and generalizability.

Chapter Six

Conclusion: addressing the ‘So what?’ question [+–] 187-208

Graham Smart

Carleton University

In this final chapter I address the question invoked above by Judith Goetz and Margaret LeCompte. The first part of the chapter presents a summary of the ethnographic account presented in the book. The summary begins with a wide-angle description of the Bank of Canada’s monetary-policy process and then focuses in on the discourse genres that mediate this activity. The second part of the chapter considers the study’s various implications – for discourse theory, for research in organizational discourse, and for the teaching of organizational writing. Topics include: A summary of the account; The Bank’s monetary-policy process; A genre-mediated activity system; From knowledge-building to policy-making and external communications; A focus on discourse genres; Genre chains, genre set, and genre system; Functions of the genre set; Genre knowledge; Genres, analytical practices, and representations; Genres, change, and learning; The duality of genre; Implications for discourse theory; A socio-epistemic theory of organizational discourse; An activity-based genre theory; Functions of a genre set; Aspects of written genre knowledge; Genres, change, and learning; Implications for research in organizational discourse; Implications for teaching organizational writing; A few words of conclusion.

End Matter

Appendices [+–] 209-232

Graham Smart

Carleton University

Endnotes [+–] 233-239

Graham Smart

Carleton University

References [+–] 241-253

Graham Smart

Carleton University

Index [+–] 255-267

Graham Smart

Carleton University

Reviews

This book is unquestionably an important addition to a small but growing collection of large-scale longitudinal studies of discourse in specific workplaces. Adding to our understanding of how organizational discourses are constructed, Smart’s book effectively demonstrates how certain theories — most notably activity theory — can be usefully applied to the study of workplace communication. It will serve well as a template for the would-be researcher in the field.
Stephen Bremmer, City University of Hong Kong, in Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Volume 22, Number 4, 2008

It is a compelling, smooth and topical read about the discursive means with which economists at a financial institution negotiate, inscribe and disseminate knowledge about Canada’s monetary policy. This book is a welcome contribution to ethnographic theory, organizational discourse and applied linguistics.
Tom Van Hout, Ghent University, Journal of Writing Research

Writing the Economy is a timely, well-researched, and well-presented analysis of an increasingly critical national and international institution. It is clear, readable, and engaging. I recommend it highly.
Deborah C. Andrews, University of Delaware, in Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 46, No. 2, April 2009

Writing the Economy makes several contributions in terms of advancing theory, applying ethnography to the study of work, and examining relationships among texts. It’s a solid book, and one that I expect I’ll read again.
Clay Spinuzzi, University of Texas

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Writing the Economy

Activity, Genre and Technology in the World of Banking

Graham Smart [+–]

Carleton University

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