For this assignment, I chose the instructions genre. I thought about my major and the jobs I have had, and decided that the most interesting and instructional thing to do revolved around working on my grandfather’s farm in the summer. I wrote my instruction set on how to prepare corn for freezing. I thought that I should write this as an instruction set because people who are interested in reading about this topic are most likely actually going to do what is being talked about.

There are many similarities and differences in an instruction set and a process description. One of the most basic similarities is that both the instruction set and the process description are telling a person how something is done. The difference is that with a process description, the audience is not actually going to be doing what is being described. With an instruction set, however, the audience is using the instruction set because they are actually performing the steps being written. An instruction set uses direct actions while a process description uses passive language. An instruction set may say such things as “go to www.blah.com and click on the log-in icon.” A process description would say “after going to the website, the user logs in.” The directions are more direct on an instruction set because the reader is actually going to be doing the steps.

While doing this assigment I encountered several of the course objectives. I communicated effectively with diverse audiences by making my document clear and easily understood by a diverse reader population. I also designed convincing and usable documents by including different styles of design in my document, including bold type, differing size type, and graphics. Also, I analyzed communication contexts by understanding my audience, purpose, and situation.

kerninstructionset2.pdf

            In my claim letter, I wrote to the Dell Corporation requesting a new printer to replace the defective printer that I had purchased.  My original claim letter is culture specific to the
United States in several ways.  First of all, the U.S. is a low power distance country.  Because of this, I put “Dear Customer Service Manager” in the greeting instead of “Dear Dell Corporation”.  The
U.S. is also highly individualistic.  Because of this, I used more “you” language and did not emphasize my family.  In my letter, I used direct language and did not focus on how my family and I use the products or the corporation’s reputation because the United States has high masculinity.  I did not give the company separate options for how I wanted to be repaid, but since the U.S. is in the middle of the uncertainty avoidance scale, I could have either told the company exactly what I wanted or gave them an option of two different things.

           
Thailand is my country for the multicultural revision of my claim letter.  Thailand is located in Southeast Asia in a region that has been populated for the last four thousand years.  The Thai are a very collectivistic society, putting the needs of the group ahead of the needs of the individual.  The Thai are also a country with a high power distance score.  This can be seen through the different ways in which it is customary to greet friends as opposed to greeting elders and religious leaders.  For example, Buddhist monks do not return wai, or greeting, because there is a great social distance between monks and non-monks.  On the masculinity scale, Thailand ranks low.  They are a highly feminine society.  One way that this is seen is through the custom of the youngest daughter receiving the parents’ home.  In more masculine societies, the first-born son usually inherits such things.

            Because of Thailand’s high power distance and uncertainty avoidance scores and its low individuality and masculinity scores, I changed some aspects of my claim letter.  The first change in my claim letter came in the greeting.  Instead of saying “Dear Customer Service Manager”, I changed the greeting to “Dear Dell Corporation” to accommodate the Thai’s high power distance and low individuality.  The second change came in the introductory paragraph.  I used the first paragraph to talk about how my family and I use the Dell products and about the company’s great reputation.  I did this because of the country’s collectivistic nature.  The Thai put the needs of the company before the needs of the individual; therefore, I talked about the company as a whole.  I also used “my family and I” instead of just “I” to appeal to the femininity of the Thai.  Because Thailand has high uncertainty avoidance, I tried to appeal to this by stating twice in the letter exactly what action I wanted the company to take.  It might make the company feel uneasy if I gave them different options to choose from, so narrowing it down to only one should make it easier for the company.

           

Plain English Revision       

         Original Paragraph

I am disappointed because the printer does not function at all when hooked up to the computer.  The power button lights up, but the printer does not produce any prints.  I have read through the online trouble shooting guide and contacted the technical support technicians.  The technicians and I ran through different scenarios but cannot seem to remedy the problem.

          Plain English Sample

The printer does not function when connected to the computer.  The printer does not produce any prints.  I read the online guide and contacted technical support.  Technical support applied different scenarios but did not remedy the problem. 

In my plain English sample, I left out the “I am disappointed” because it adds unnecessary words to the sentence.  It is not necessary to know that I am disappointed to know that the printer is not working.  I also changed “hooked up” to “connected” because it is harder to misinterpret the work “connected”.  I took out the words “at all” because they are extra padding that are not necessary.  I revised the second sentence by changing “technical support technicians” to “technicians” because the first way is redundant.  I changed “ran through” to “applied” in the last sentence because “applied” is easier to understand.

Works Cited

CultureGrams, World Edition, 2005.  Kingdom of
Thailand.

kernclaimlettermulticulturalrevision.pdf

For this assignment, I had to write a memo, a letter, and an email. For each style of correspondence I had to alter my tone in order to better reach each specific audience. For my memo, I had to deliver bad news to the people in a company. At the first of the memo, I had to show some good will towards the employees to essentially soften the blow coming up in the next paragraph. In the first and last paragraphs, I used words like “you, we, us, etc.” in order to make the reader feel like I was truly appreciative of what they have been doing for the company. In the second paragraph where bad news was given, I was careful not to use direct tone and instead made the copy machine or the budget the subject of each sentence instead of the employees. For my claim letter, I was writing to a company in order to fix a problem I had with their product. In this letter, I tried to use direct tone in order to let the company know that I was upset and to let them know what I wanted them to do in return. I also put in some good will at the beginning and end of the letter in order to show that I really did appreciate their company and that I am a loyal customer. While writing my solicitation email, I tried to write in a persuasive style in order to get people interested so that they would sign up to volunteer with my group. I tried to make volunteering sound like a very fun and exciting thing to do in order to get people interested. I tried to change the style in different ways. For example, instead of saying you could meet people, I said that you could meet new and interesting people. Hopefully using this style will make people more inclined to come volunteer for my organization.

I think that certain genres are easier to write than others. I think that the claim letter was probably the easiest to write because I felt that I was in the right. I felt that the company truly owed me a new printer, so it was easier to be more direct with them. The solicitation email was the hardest for me to write because I know how many times I go through my email and delete things like the one I had just written. It’s hard to try to convince people to give up their time because it is one of the things that people think they have the least of to give. I think that the bad news memo was the most limiting thing to write. It’s hard to write indirectly when what you really want to do is to blame the employees for making you go over-budget. It’s hard to write nice when you really want to just yell. However, I do think that the memo is a good way to present this information because then you won’t be tempted to yell at your employees.

Through doing this project, I feel that I have encountered some of the course goals for the semester, including: communicating effectively with diverse audiences, creating technical documents that solve problems and improve situations through communication, and writing effective technical prose.

kernclaimletter.pdf

kernsolicitationemail.pdf

kernbadnewsmemo.pdf

According to Johnson-Sheehan, ethics are systems of moral, social, or cultural values that govern the conduct of an individual or community.  Basically, ethics is doing the right thing.  What make ethics such a gray issue is that the “right” thing to do can very from person to person.  Some people think that as long as no one gets hurt, what they are doing is all right.  As we have seen in class, ethics play a very big part in the workplace.  We’ve learned that ethics plays a part in such things as resumes and job letters, and also in other forms of communication on the job.  In class we talked about employers monitoring their employees by reading e-mails and monitoring their computer use, but also by installing GPS monitors on the employees company phones and cars.  I think that there are two major ethical issues to consider here.  First of all, the company may think that what they are doing is ethical, whereas some employees may disagree.  Employees should be made aware that they are being monitored, not to make them paranoid, but to allow them to make an informed decision about whether a company that does this type of thing is one that they would like to work for.  This is an example of balancing your ethics with those of your company.  If a company that you work for has ethical standards that are our of whack with your own, you have to decide if maybe some other company would be better for you.  The other side of this issue is that employees shouldn’t give their employers any reason to have to monitor them.  An ethical employee would not abuse the company’s car, phone, computer or time.

Even outside of the workplace ethical dilemmas can play a part in communications.  For example, while working on my resume for class, it was very tempting to “beef up” the things that I had done in order to make myself look better.  However, one must stop and figure out whether what they are doing vibes well with their personal standards.  If it does not, they should not do it.  Doing one unethical thing, no matter how small it may seem, could lead to bigger issues in the future.

In conclusion, ethics can at times be a very complicated issue.  It is very important to establish your own ethical code and work very hard to comply with it.  It is very easy to think that one time won’t hurt or that adjusting your ethical standards to get something that you want will be okay.