Faigley, Lester. “Nonacademic Writing: The Social Perspective” Writing in Nonacademic Settings. Ed. Lee Odell and Dixie Goswami. Guilford Press: New York. 1985. 231-248. Print.
In this article, Lester Faigley focuses on three different theoretical perspectives commonly used in professional communication (as of 1985). He develops definitions for the textual perspective, individual perspective, and social perspective of technical communication. In this work he explains how each perspective is developed and how each perspective is commonly used within technical and professional communication work. While dated, Faigley’s work shows us that each of the perspectives that the field uses are formed, often, in academic departments outside of professional communication departments. While these definitions that Faigley gives his audience can help create a better understanding of conversations in the field of technical communication, it is most important for my potential research to use his work to understand that he focuses on the social perspective and claims that it is the most useful for the field (arguments that he echoes or is echoed by research such as Mary Soliday, Mike Rose, Carolyn Miller, and many other researchers over the years).
Leaning into the social perspective that Faigley discusses, he developed his perspective through the framework of Mikhail Bakhtin as a way to show the usefulness of the social perspective. He also uses this framework to also show various flaws in the textual perspective and the individual perspective. Through this use of Bakhtin’s work (as many social focused technical communication researchers do), he shows that technical writing should be built on social foundations because of its more specified role that it plays outside of the academy. To do this he shares a series of main foundations that discuss the social issues that has importance for my work in professional communication. Those foundations are communication is linked to the culture of any particular society, writing is focused on the forms and genres (and discourse communities), academic and non-academic writing have overlapping communities, and that discourse competence allows entry into the community. These are important to Faigley (and my work) because they are all foundations that are built on larger implications outside of an individual course, program, or person.
Leaning into how this text works well for my work, it becomes a potential article to help operationally define, and prove the importance of, the social perspective in my research, which I often focus on issues of the social construction of power or the use of power in communication. Many of the other works that I have begun selecting for my potential research are focused on the social needs of professional communication (such as Soliday’s or Millers work) and Faigley’s work gives a clear definition and one that gives foundations that meet my own understanding of the work in the field. By using Faigley, Miller, Driskill, and Grabill and Simmons as foundations to guide the social needs of the field that I am working in, I can develop my own research project that may be able to help better define the role of writing within or to a community outside of the technical communicator.
