Wardle Summary

Elizabeth Wardle, in her 2004 article Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces, discusses how inculturation of new workers occurs through learning how to write in new workplaces. She argues that learning to write in and for new situations goes beyond just text and cognitive abilities.

In order for workers to successfully adapt themselves to new communities of practice, they need to learn how to operate and write in line with appropriate conventions, codes, and genres. The ability to inculturate depends on how much a person chooses to follow the ways of thinking and writing generally accepted in new workplaces. The authority, identity, and cultural capital are important factors that determine the newcomers’ success or failure: their identity and authority are either reinforced or degraded within new organizations depending on which interrelated mode of belonging they choose: engagement, imagination, and alignment.

Engagement involves establishing interpersonal relations between newcomers and oldtimers and mutually shaping their identities; when engagement lacks mutuality, however, the identity of newcomers can be marginalized. Imagination helps newcomers to engage and develop new identities appropriate in a new workplace, but imagination can be too removed from reality resulting in detached identities and the sense of uprootedness with the newcomer. Alignment involves finding common ground and helps reconcile a person’s identity with that of the institution, but it also can violate the person’s sense of identity.

To illustrate her point, Wardle reviews a case study of an IT person named Alan who had a hard time conforming to the conventions, codes, and genres universally accepted in a university department where he worked. Alan’s cultural capital was associated with his technical knowledge, but the department staff did not view Alan as an authority because of his lack of compliance with communication conventions. Alan imagined himself as having authority over the department staff in IT issues but did not identify himself with the work of the department. Due to his imagination being far removed from the reality of the situation, he failed to align and engage with the rest of the department.

Part of the problem was the lack awareness on both sides. Alan neglected the discourse conventions, hence he was not recognized as authority. The department, on the other hand, failed to make adjustments in its work to help a newly employed Alan understand how communication worked at the department. The author comes to the conclusion that as new activity systems influence a writer’s identity, so the writer’s identity impacts the system, not through the writer’s self-will but through contradictions individuals experience in their new positions.