Writing the Economy - Activity, Genre and Technology in the World of Banking - Graham Smart
Conclusion: addressing the ‘So what?’ question
Writing the Economy - Activity, Genre and Technology in the World of Banking - Graham Smart
Graham Smart [+]
Carleton University
Description
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.