University Advancement (UA) is a lesser-known yet vital part of the California State University, Channel Islands campus. The department’s vitality comes from its dealings with money. All scholarships, donations to the school (of which there are several different types), major campus funds, and community relationships are the jurisdiction of University Advancement; hence the very vague and philanthropic department name. Without this department, the university would not be able to build new buildings, give out scholarships, install courtyard benches, or participate in fun community events.

UA’s complex tasks require a complex set of values. The department needs to be quick and efficient with handling money and records while simultaneously cultivating personal donor relationships with community members. John Swales, linguist and scholar, would call these two values “goals” (24). These goals permeate both the day-to-day activity and discourse of UA which allow the department to become a cohesive community. These values are expressed in a few different ways.

UA relies heavily on technology to assist with the department goal of being quick and efficient. So much so that the department has an I.T. person on-call during business hours. Each employee (including student assistants) has two monitors to make the amount of on-screen work easier to maneuver. All meetings, luncheons, fundraising events, time out of the office, and other calendar events are consistently updated through Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Outlook also facilitates the majority of correspondence among employees. All nineteen employees and five student assistants utilize donor information from the database for all tasks from making a phone call to giving a tax deduction. All paperwork, event plans, and donations are stored on a shared online folder. No access to technology means no work gets done.

However, this addiction to technology is only the operational face of UA. Being a part of UA also requires a personable attitude because they frequently deal with wealthy donors on a day-to-day basis and, as previously stated, attempt to cultivate relationships with community members. In order to properly “assist the University by creating strong relationships” with members of the community, employees must be able to communicate and relate effectively (About CI Foundation).

This mixture of information technology and relatability extends past external relations and is expressed in intra-departmental communication. As a form of practice for external communications, UA employees’ discoursal communication is more personable than technical—despite the technical platform. While records, emails, calendars, meeting notes, and event plans are clean and formulated, they also have personal touches that are explanatory and beneficial to cultivating a sense of relationship among coworkers. I know this because I am one of the five student assistants. Even though I am a novice compared to some of the employees who have worked in the department for 15 years, I feel that I am a valuable part of the department because of the personable discourse of the department. For example, here is a typical email that I would receive from one of my bosses:

*click on email to enlarge
This situation—a boss giving a student assistant a task—occurs often and thus a specific format that helps to “ease communication” by allowing students to quickly see the needed information has developed over time (Dirk 252). There are two technical aspects of the email that support the quick and efficient value of UA. First, the name of the record to be updated is the tagline of the email (not shown here for confidentiality). Second, the task that needs to be performed and the information that needs to be updated are within the first sentence of the email.

Even though I receive about twenty-five of these emails a day, it is very personalized and polite. As you can see in the enlarged photo, my boss (Diana, in this case) has written the email in letter format. Even through Microsoft Outlook inserts both the recipient and sender into the email, my bosses choose to write a salutation and valediction in order to be more personal. The language that Diana uses is also polite. She asks me to perform the task instead of tells me to do it when, in reality, if I didn’t perform the tasks she sent, I would most likely be fired.

Why is Diana so polite in her emails to me? Well, if we take a look at Swales’ Genre Analysis, Swales states that genres assist in “the communicative furtherance of [a community’s] aims” (26). In other words, Diana is polite in her emails to me because one of the top values of the department is to cultivate relationships. This value is so integral to the department that it is noticeable in even the most common and informal discourse like this email.

This also explains the uniqueness of UA’s emails in comparison to another department’s emails which tend to be more technical. In her Navigating Genres, Kerry Dirk explains that the purpose of discourse overrides the format of the discourse (254). Diana’s email may seem ridiculous if the format were the only aspect taken into consideration because of the formality of the language and the informality of the platform, but another aspect must be taken into consideration: the “rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 1). What is the rhetorical situation of this email? If the email platform is removed from the situation, what is left is a conversation between an employer and employee. If “the situation…prescribe[s] the response which fits” best, and the situation is a relational one, then, according to the value of cultivating relationships that UA holds, Diana’s polite response is fitting (Bitzer 10). Her language is the type of language that can easily make a community member feel welcomed. This proves Kerry Dirk’s theory that “knowing a genre [is] about much more than simply knowing its form” because, outside of UA, a more technical language would probably be assumed rather than the language chosen by Diana (Dirk 255).

Even though I am a novice, I have assimilated into the discourse community by learning the genre and using it myself.

Here is a typical response to an email from Diana (*click on email to enlarge):

The similarities and differences between my email and Diana’s email are very important when trying to understand the roles of novices and experts in a discourse community. There are two differences that stand out between the two emails. First, I wrote no salutation. Second, the body of my email is much more concise and less formal. The rhetorical situation is still the same, so why are these differences occurring?

As a novice on the job, I don’t deal with donors or community members face-to-face like the experts do. Due to this, between the two values of UA–being quick and efficient and cultivating relationships–my focus is more on the side of being quick and efficient. The salutation and polite language are ignored in my email because it is not necessary for efficiency. My efficiency is only increased by my use of a genre because it eliminates the need to decide how to format an email every time I write one (Dirk 259).

Now, it is important to note that even though I am ignoring aspects of the genre that does not mean that I am ignoring the goal of cultivating relationships. In fact, I am supporting it. My quick and efficient response to Diana allows her to more easily access records and gifts to then cultivate relationships. Swales supports this relationship between novices and experts. He believes that the “survival of the community” is based on the relationships between novices and experts (Swales 27). That is true in this case because I am vital part of Diana’s ability to perform her job. Also, I am beginning to bring in the relational side of the email as evidenced by my inclusion of a valediction. The novice genre is just a less-comprehensive version of the expert genre.

*click on email to enlarge
That being said, when I email one of the employees that I have irregular contact with (as shown here), I follow the format of the expert genre because that is the common genre of the employees. If I were to use the harsher novice genre, the employee would probably be taken aback since they are not used to being spoken to (or written to) in that way.

The justification for the difference between my responses to employees is found in Navigating Genres. Dirk explains that genres are developed through a series of similar responses. Responses to a rhetorical situation are similar because the newer responses are based off of the old ones, thus creating a genre (Dirk 252). Diana and I have established our expert and novice genres with one another whereas my responses to some other employees vary because I base my response to them off of their initial response. I use their expert genre so that I am in accordance with their expectations for my return email.

Writing within the email genre inside of the UA discourse community serves as practice for correspondence with community members and donors. Unfortunately, for confidentiality reasons, I can’t show you the similarities between the emails and donor correspondence, but I can tell you.

If you were to look at a letter that we send out to our donors, you would see:

• a proper salutation
• an expression of gratitude for donation (whether it is $1 or $1,000)
• a hand signed valediction
• a hand written expression of gratitude near the end of the letter
• a clear and concise update on how the University is doing and what the donor can do to get involved.

All of these aspects serve the same purpose that the aspects of the email do. The proper salutation, expression of gratitude, hand signed valediction, and hand written expression are all intended to cultivate a relationship with the donor. The concise update is evidence of the departments efficient organization. The practice putting the values of efficiency and relationship in the email genre within the discourse communities leads to the installment of these values in the discourse with outside community members.

While the genre of University Advancement is a significant aspect of the department’s day-to-day actions, they exist only as a result of the department’s goals. Without any purpose, there would be no need for the genre.

 

 

 

Works Cited

“About CI Foundation.” About CI Foundation Impact CSU Channel Islands. CSU Channel Islands, 2014. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation”. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1.1 (1968): 1–14. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Dirk, Kerry, “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Eds. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Parlor Press, 2010. 249-262. Web. http://writingspaces.org/essays.

“PRCEC Meeting Minutes.” Message to Elizabeth Rubalcava. 17 Nov. 2015. E-mail.

“RE Update.” Message to Diana Smith. 25 Sept. 2015. E-mail.

Smith, Diana. Message to (Madison Guynn). 21 Sept. 2015. Email

Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.