Browsing by Subject "Dutch"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Agency, socio-cultural context, and the role of the technical communicator during IT adoption: a case study in innovation diffusion across cultures.
    (2010-07) Coggio, Grace Leinbach
    This dissertation examines the diffusion of an innovative information technology system across multiple cultures between 2000 and 2006. Developed and implemented by technical communicators in the technical communication department of a global medical device company, the Advanced Single-Source Authoring and Publication System (ASAPS) brought profound changes to documentation processes and was not wholly embraced by all of the writers in a position to use it. Employing the case study method, this project explores the influence of socio-cultural context and agency on the decision to adopt the new system, as well as the role of the technical communicator as change agent during the diffusion process. The inquiry is guided by an adapted hybrid theoretical framework incorporating Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations Theory, Engeström's Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, Hofstede's Culture Dimensions, and the Cultural Studies Perspective. Using online questionnaires, the study examines the adoption decisions of technical writers and translators in the following three locations: Minnesota in the U.S.A., Gelderland and Limberg in the Netherlands. In addition, three technical communicators identified as the change agents instrumental to developing and implementing ASAPS are interviewed face-to-face. The most notable finding concerning the role of technical communicators as change agents is that a pro-innovation bias coupled with multiple levels of culture differences can hinder the change agent's ability to engage more reluctant users in reciprocal, adoption-conducive meaning making during innovation diffusion. This case suggests that by engaging their rhetorical agency during IT adoption, technical communicators can empower users to participate more fully in the adoption-decision process. One of the more notable findings concerning agency is that users can be empowered both actively and passively during the adoption-decision process, particularly when elements in the socio-cultural context open a window of agency for more silent resistance. Finally, this study suggests that national culture differences can influence adoption decisions by demonstrating that Dutch management tends to reinforce collaborative decisions while U.S. management tends to reinforce individualized decisions.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Prescriptive Politeness: How Eighteenth-Century British and Dutch Periodicals Influenced Public Perceptions of Prescriptive Language Movements
    (2022-08) Alexander, Amanda
    In this project, I argue that the eighteenth-century periodical is an early form of popular culture. Periodical critics envision their advice as a foundational part of a rising and evolving public because they view themselves as mediators of taste and politeness. Through this position and the popularity of their essays, periodicals both explicitly and implicitly shape perceptions of media, culture, behavior, and language. The periodical as imagined by Addison and Steele dispenses advice for an audience more general than it is academic, though the text presumes a level of cultural and textual literacy necessary to participate in the emerging public spaces of the early eighteenth century. Foremost for this project are the ways in which periodical essays use conversation as a medium to prescribe conventions of politeness and sociability, the ways they deploy fashion metaphors simultaneously to dismiss cultural and linguistic changes while still upholding the power of the critic to shape what is fashionable, and the ways they project a nationalistic desire to protect language and culture from foreign influence.Yet while scholars have analyzed the renown and influence of early periodicals, few critics have surveyed the relationship between the popularity of these texts and their depictions of the English language. I respond to this gap by examining the role that periodical essays played in the representation and understanding of English during this period. Periodicals draw together an emerging eighteenth-century popular culture with critiques and concerns about the state of language. Unlike traditional grammars, whose genre narrows their scope and audience, the periodical essay makes public conversations about language part of the national culture itself, akin to fashion, literature, music, and socializing. Consequently, I posit that periodical commentary on language marks the first time that language itself becomes an object of study for a popular, broad audience in that language becomes recognizable as its own part of popular culture. In emphasizing the popularity of the genre, I contend that periodicals both overtly and covertly influence language change throughout the period and that the cultural attitudes that gain traction from the popular press influence how individuals imagine themselves as part of a literate public.