Brenton Ellison Professor Jessica Schley English 1101 November 1, 2013 Talk is Cheap: Communication Among Accountants When

you think of an accountant, you probably think of a boring job. Spreadsheets and the thought of gray cubicles piecing out space to professional number crunchers is the environment your mind immediately refers to, and you can really see nothing beyond the balance sheets. I am here to tell you that all of those baseless assumptions are completely true. But maybe there is something else within the job of an accountant, something that lies a little deeper, a little ways past cell A7. Could there be an element of humanity in the job of an accountant? To say it more expressly, do accountants need more than their paper tape calculators, their printers stocked to the ream, and their industrial staplers; do they need each other? Does communication and social behavior play a critical role in team effectiveness, as accountants are arranged in teams, or is the team structure merely a formality, whereby the team members operate by operating by themselves? In pursuing this question, I am exploring a new discourse community, and before I go into this analysis, it is important that I explain what a discourse community actually is and how it can be defined and recognized. Literacy and Contemporary Theory A discourse community is a community or group of individuals who all share and participate in a recognizable set of rules, both explicit and implicit, which are mutually agreed upon by the group. And to follow these rules and to possess these habits which the group demands of its members, if its members are to be members, is to have, as James Paul Gee put it, a Discourse. Gee defines a Discourse as a sort of identity kit which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize. Swales defines a discourse community to have six elements. He posits that a discourse community must have common goals, participatory mechanisms, it must

have an information exchange, a genre or genres, a lexis, or highly specialized terminology, which is unique to the community, and it must have a high general level of expertise, which describes who does what in the community. Common Goals The common goal of this particular accounting team is to make corrections and reconciliations. Those terms are foreign to you now, but Ill get into those later. In essence, their job is to fix any accounting mistakes which have occurred during the process of number-crunching that has been done by other departments within the company. Participatory Mechanisms In order to communicate effectively with each other, the team makes ample use of telephones, email, IMs. Typically, telephones are only used within the team when team members may be working out of the office, otherwise, telephones are mainly used for communicating with outside departments. The usefulness of emails and IMs is mostly restricted to situations when team members are already on the same page and simply some quick communication to send them a file or give them an update. The most frequent and most vital forms of communication utilized by the team are face-to-face conversations and team meetings. Information Exchange The participatory mechanisms present within the team are used to allow details about a project to be communicated throughout the team or to facilitate collaboration among team members. Collaboration is crucial to the success of the team. Many times throughout the workday, members find it necessary to recruit their team members to help with problems they may be encountering or to brainstorm ideas. Community Specific Genres and Lexis To understand what is meant by the term Genres, I am going to refer to a discourse ethnography written by Tony Mirabelli, which focused on the discourse communities of those in the food service industry and particularly on those of waiters and waitresses. In it, he identifies that the main genre used by waiters and waitresses is that of the menu. He says that The menu is the most important printed text used by waiters and waitresses and that The menu is the key

text used for most interactions with the customer This helps us understand that a genre is, in the context of a discourse community, some text or medium which facilitates human interaction. The principle genre used by this particular accounting team is a computer system which is known to them technically as Transaction Control Requests. This is a computer system which allows the team to receive requests for reconciliations and corrections from other departments within the company, providing the basis for their existence. But what do I mean when I say reconciliations or corrections? To be honest, Im not really sure, at least not as sure as the accountants themselves. But thats the point. These terms make up part of what is known as the groups lexis. Their terminology or their special set of vocabulary that sets them apart and makes them unique from any outsiders or those not recognized as members of the team. Now for an accountant to say that they are making corrections simply refers to the act of fixing accounting errors, but the term reconciliation describes the balancing of accounts between a trust system and a record keeping system, a trust system being a system which shows the monetary transactions at a company level, while the record keeping system shows the transactions at an employee level. As is the case with many pieces of an accountants lexis, several terms, in their description, summon up new terms which themselves must be decoded. Because of this the speech of the accountants can be dense with jargon nesting inside of jargon. It is due to this that accountants are highly specialized individuals whose jobs are very much insulated from the terms of the everyday world, making their practices and purposes almost impenetrable to the non-accountant. High General Level of Expertise Eric is the official leader of the team, as he holds the position of manager. However, due to his relative newness to the team, he does not maintain very strong control over the group. Generally, members of seniority possess authority within the team due to their abilities given them by their many years of experience. Such members include Annette, Susan, and Tanya. One member who has gained significant authority among the team is Joe, who although he is as fresh as Eric, is often given higher levels of responsibility and relied upon due to his ability to manage the computer systems the team uses. The weak link lies in Matt, whose incompetence and inability to effectively communicate with the team strains the other members.

Methodology I began my research by interviewing Annette, asking her how long she has been working for Wells Fargo, what it is that her job requires of her, what her teammates are like, where she is positioned within the group, and how the members in her group communicate with each other. I also found it necessary to ask her what kinds of different programs her team used in their day to day work and what kinds of terminology they used in their field. I asked her these questions not only to understand her as an individual, but also to get a hold on the characteristics of the group so that I would know what to look for in doing my observations. In actually doing my observations, I sat in Annettes cubicle and observed what she was doing and what her teammates were doing, and made special note when they came together to communicate with each other how they interacted and what they spoke with each other about. The fact that Annette is my mother was in fact the main reason for my deciding to research this group, as my connection with her gave me easy access to the group. Without some kind of connection within a group, it can be very difficult to get close to them, and with this group, access without a connection would have been impossible. My Community This team was formed originally ten years ago with the purpose of creating a team who would be wholly devoted to the task of handling reconciliations and corrections, rather than having all the departments fix their own errors by themselves. The team members were gathered according to their abilities and their work backgrounds in an effort to amass a multifaceted team that featured diverse talents and skill sets. The team itself consists of about ten people, but a few of the members who I got to know the best were Annette, of course, Eric, Matt, Susan, and Joe. Eric is the de facto leader of the team, as he is the appointed manager and the only one with any official authority, although it would be difficult to spot this due to the fact that he works in a cubicle alongside the rest of his team. And although he is the manager of the team, due to his relative inexperience of five years with Wells Fargo, he often defers decisions to his more experienced teammates. Annette and Susan are much alike in terms of their positions on the team, both senior members who do not hold any official authority, but still maintain some by way of their experience and knowledge. Joe, like

Eric, has not been with the company long, but unlike Eric, is extremely competent within his area of expertise, computer support, and as such, has found some authority within the team simply by way of ability. And then there was Matt. Matt is viewed as the team incompetent, often unable to act according to the social expectations of the group and lacking the ability to contribute meaningfully to the team, Matt is usually viewed by his teammates as an expendable extra who more often than not make life more difficult for the team. Observations Being accountants, it was expected that the members of this team would spend time at their computers, doing the kind of work that one would expect. But, after carefully observing the problems the team was confronted with, and asking questions concerning what they were doing and what their objective was, it became apparent that the problems they dealt with were not onedimensional tasks which required little more than an index finger and a half awake mind. But in fact, the problems they were dealing with were actually complex, dynamic problems. And the interesting thing about these problems was that because of their complexity, they required the multi-faceted effort of the team; they necessitated the work being split up among the team, ideally according to skill type. This splitting up of the work meant that the team had to communicate with each other, not in a simple way, but in a manner that involved detailed collaboration. Individual teammates would often visit each other in their cubicles to brainstorm problems they were facing, and all throughout the day, teammates would IM each other when they needed quick communication, and email when they needed to send more detailed information to each other. Conclusion After realizing how complex the tasks of these accountants actually were and how they demanded communication and coordination among the team, it became apparent that there is much more to the functioning of an accounting team than passive interaction with machines. It is actually the communication between the teammates that is pivotal to team success. If the teammates chose to all keep to themselves, it is doubtful whether any work would actually get done, in fact, it is doubtful any work would actually get started, as delegation and a certain amount of coordination are required just to get started. Perhaps some team members would be able to work their way into part of a project, but at some point, everybody needs somebody, and

every team member would find that they needed the input of every element in their team, and ideally the careful coordination of these elements, if they wanted to be successfully accomplish any assignment.

Works Cited Paul Gee, James. Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction. Writing About Writing. Ed. Leassa Burton, Alexis Walker, Jessica Scrocki Gould, Virginia Perrin, Karen S. Henry, Shuli Traub. Boston, MA. Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. p 481-497. Book. Swales, John. The Concept of Discourse Community. Writing About Writing. Ed. Leassa Burton, Alexis Walker, Jessica Scrocki Gould, Virginia Perrin, Karen S. Henry, Shuli Traub. Boston, MA. Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. p 466-480. Book. Mirabelli, Tony. Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers. Writing About Writing. Ed. Leassa Burton, Alexis Walker, Jessica Scrocki Gould, Virginia Perrin, Karen S. Henry, Shuli Traub. Boston, MA. Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. p 538 -556. Book. Branick, Sean. Coaches Can Read, Too: An Ethnographic Study of a Football Coaching Discourse Community. Writing About Writing. Ed. Leassa Burton, Alexis Walker, Jessica Scrocki Gould, Virginia Perrin, Karen S. Henry, Shuli Traub. Boston, MA. Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. p 557-573. Book.

Annotated Bibliography Swales, John The Concept of Discourse Community Genre Analysis in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print. Summarize Six characteristics of a Discourse community Expanded definition of a Discourse community Distinguishes between speech communities and Discourse communities

Assess The author points out that Discourse communities are much more complex than speech communities in that they are defined not just by what they talk about but how they say what they say, what their body language is, what the overall personality of the community is. Also, a Discourse community has shared public goals. Reflect This article helped me to understand what a Discourse community is, what its characteristics are, and how they can be identified and separated from mere speech communities. Branick, Sean. Coaches Can Read, Too: An Ethnographic Study of a Football Coaching Discourse Commnity. Writing About Writing 557-573. Print. Summarize Assess The author of this ethnography describes the different characteristics of the Discourse Community within a football team. He shows that coaches must possess qualities as laid out by Traits and habits of an effective coach Genres, Goals, and lexis used in a football team Discourse community Literacies of a coach

Sandra Short in order to be effective coaches. They must be a teacher, they must be organized, they must be competitive, they must be a learner, and they must be a friend and mentor to their players. Branick shows that coaches must manage a very complex system of communication with their players which is all directed towards pulling the most out those that they coach.

Reflect This source was extremely helpful to me in helping me to see what a discourse ethnography should actually look like and how it should be laid out. It also showed me what the goals of a discourse ethnography should actually be and gave me ideas about what things I should look to write about in my discourse ethnography.

Mirabelli, Tony. Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers What They Dont Learn in School. Ed. Jabari Mahiri. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. 143-162. Print. Summary Assess Mirabelli focuses on the stereotype that those working in the food service industry, mainly waiters and waitresses, are unintelligent and low-skilled. He proceeds to provide a variety of examples and arguments, using the restaurant menu as the centerpiece, to show that on a deeper level, the job of the service worker is actually very complex socially and notes the unique and creative ways they use language to accomplish their jobs. Reflect Negative Stereotypes of food service workers Underlying complexity in food service workers communications Menus are catalysts for other modes of communication between many participants

As this article focused on stereotypes held against Discourse communities, it will be a very beneficial reference for me in determining what stereotypes are held about those working in the banking industry and will also be helpful in determining how to analyze this Discourse community to decide whether or not those stereotypes are accurate or deserved.