From the article, Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces, by Elizabeth Wardle, I learned that writing in and for new situations/workplaces is complex in ways that go far beyond texts and cognitive abilities. It depends mainly on the type of authority you have in your writing and your ability to adapt wherever you are. Wardle describes it as having a sense of identity where you know yourself but not being so stuck in that, that you close yourself off to other people who don’t have that the same perception of you. When you do this, you open new abilities in yourself. Some writers find writing for new environments difficult because of this as they struggle with their identity. Finding where you fit into this new workplace can be hard especially if you don’t know the way they do things. Asking questions like, do you have any common ground, are there values completely opposite of you, and can you use each other’s imagination to come up with new ideas? Sometimes we struggle with whatever identity we have of ourselves versus others and what they want us to do. It might go against our values and what we’re used to. “If new workers fail to write in ways that a workplace community of practice recognizes as effective and appropriate, the reasons may be related to identity rather than ability.” from personal experience, I agree with this statement.
Authority is the confidence you have in your writing. If you are new to a way of writing, it’ll take time to get used to it but if you don’t eventually familiarize yourself, you lose your authority. People see that lack of confidence and won’t take what you say seriously. In the text, they gave a man’s name Alan’s story as an example: He had a lot of authority in his new job and felt like no one was above him. You could sense his confidence in his knowledge of computers and his position at work. But his coworkers thought he was Ignorant and didn’t want to work with him so he never learned their way. They weren’t able to work together and saw his way of writing as inappropriate. He eventually left and found a job somewhere else.
It’s important to keep all this in mind whether you’re starting a new job or even a class.
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