From Signs and Signals to Artifacts and Assumptions:

1
From Signs and Signals to Artifacts and
Assumptions
A Student of Management Observes Communication
Culture in Los Angeles

• Wayne Smith, Ph.D.
• Department of Management
• CSU Northridge
• ws_at_csun.edu

2
Motivation at theAcademic-level

• Middleton, D. (2011), Students Struggle for
  Words, Wall Street Journal, Mar 3. B8
• Schools
• Stanford, Berkeley, Northeastern, Rutgers,
  Cornell, Univ. of Penn
• Students are having trouble with multiple writing
  issues (e.g., sometimes too casual, sometimes not
  concise, sometimes not valuing writing at all)
• Firms
• Booz Allen Hamilton, Morgan Stanley, General
  Mills
• Need to train or re-train professionals on how to
  communicate
• GMAT
• The writing scores on this exam have dropped in
  the past three years (this could possibly be due
  to the number of international students)
• But the WSJ should come and see the high quality
  of the written work submitted by my students!

3
Motivation at the Organization-level

• Ramstad, E. (2008), CEO Broadens Vistas at LG,
  Wall Street Journal, May 21. B1
• SUMMARY LG is a very large, Korean company in
  transition thanks to the efforts of its CEO Yong
  Nam. The company is trying to reinvent itself as
  a 21st century multinational. This requires a
  major shift in the corporate culture to encourage
  employees to ask tough questions. Another shift
  is the use of English as the company's language.
  The goal of the company is to become a global
  powerhouse in appliances and electronics.
• WSJ You're requiring English to be used more at
  headquarters and to talk to the rest of the
  organization. Why?
• Mr. Nam English is essential. The speed of
  innovation required to compete in the world
  mandates that we must have seamless
  communication. We cannot depend on a small group
  of people who are holding the key to all
  communication throughout the world. That really
  impedes information sharing and decision-making.
  I want everybody's wisdom instead of just a few.

4
Motivation at the Professional-level

• Beason, L. (2001), Ethos and Error How Business
  People React to Errors, College Composition and
  Communication, 53 (1), Sep.
• 1. He provided sample writing errors to
  businesspeople.
• 2. He then classified the responses and images
  of the writer
• Error Category I image of writer as a writer
• Hasty, careless, uncaring, or uninformed
• Error Category II image of writer as a business
  person
• Faulty thinker, not a detail person, poor oral
  communicator, poorly educated person, or
  sarcastic/pretentious/aggressive
• Error Category III image of writer as a
  representative
• Cant represent the company to customers and/or
  cant represent the company in court

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Most Widely Spoken Languages (numbers in millions) Most Widely Spoken Languages (numbers in millions) Most Widely Spoken Languages (numbers in millions) Most Widely Spoken Languages (numbers in millions)
Language Number of First Language Speakers Number of Second Language Speakers Total Number of Speakers
English 340 1,000 1,340
Chinese 873 178 1,051
Hindi 370 120 490
Spanish 360 60 420
Russian 167 110 277
Arabic 206 24 230
Portuguese 203 10 213
Bengali 207 4 211
Indonesian 23 140 163
Japanese 126 1 127
German 95 28 123
French 65 50 115
Source Meyer, C. (2009), Introducing English
Linguistics, Cambridge University Press.
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Some Errors Beyond the Reach of Current Technology

• Hacker, D., and Sommers, N. (2011), A Writers
  Reference 7th ed., Bedford/St. Martins
• Current word processors have difficulty
  withwriting context and culture, appropriate
  style of discourse, degree of assertiveness,
  faulty parallelism, misplaced and dangling
  modifiers, homonyms, missing words and omitted
  verbs, shifts in verb tense or mood, coordination
  and subordination, sentence variety and
  fragments, run-on sentences, common redundancies,
  unnecessary wordiness, jargon and abbreviations,
  clichés, sexist language, irregular verbs,
  pronoun agreements and references, missing or
  misused commas, semi-colons, apostrophes,
  hyphens, quotation marks, capitalization, and
  problems with emphasis.

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• Lunsford, A., and Lunsford, K. (2008), Mistakes
  Are a Fact of Life A National Comparative
  Study, College Composition and Communication, 59
  (4), Jun. p. 795

Rank Error or Error Pattern
1. Wrong word
2. Missing comma after intro. element
3. Incomplete or missing documentation
4. Vague pronoun reference
5. Spelling error (including homonyms)
6. Mechanical error with a quotation
7. Unnecessary comma
8. Unnecessary or missing capitalization
9. Missing word
10. Faulty sentence structure
8

• Lunsford, A., and Lunsford, K. (2008), Mistakes
  Are a Fact of Life A National Comparative
  Study, College Composition and Communication, 59
  (4), Jun. p. 795

Rank Error or Error Pattern
11. Missing comma w/ nonrestrictive ele.
12. Unnecessary shift in verb tense
13. Missing comma in a compound sent.
14. Unnecessary or missing apostrophe
15. Fused (run-on) sentence
16. Comma splice
17. No pronoun-antecedent agreement
18. Poorly integrated quotation
19. Unnecessary or missing hyphen
20. Sentence fragment
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Punctuation mult. Errors 2
Language Use Errors

1. Possessive pronoun form exception
2. Parallel inflection
3. Comma splice
4. Missing definite article
5. Wrong Word
6. Pluralized Adjective

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The Bottom Line

• --. (2004), Writing A Ticket to Work or a
  Ticket Out, A Survey of Business Leaders,
  National Commission on Writing, Sep.
• http//www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/wr
  itingcom/writing-ticket-to-work.pdf
• Summary Excerpts
• Writing is a threshold skill for both
  employment and promotion, particularly for
  salaried employees.
• People who cannot write and communicate clearly
  will not be hired and are unlikely to last long
  enough to be considered for promotion.
• Costs
• Based on the survey responses, it appears that
  remedying deficiencies in writing may cost
  American firms as much as 3.1 billion annually.