Current Situation (Draft)

Due to the comprehensive nature of this study of profiles, this literature review presents cases for the use of profiles, their connection to organizational communication, and their status as a genre of communication. Like the nature of profiles themselves, it can only sketch a partial picture at this point, since research on the profile genre has only skimmed the surface of its salient features. Though the profile has risen from the pages of such publications as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, the abbreviated, local manifestations of profiles on university websites provides a more accessible site of study, yet the evolution of the genre and a review of its status in the journalism profession and the writing classroom are necessary first steps to gaining insight into its adaptation and purpose in strategic communication of organizations.

Profile Writing

The origins of written profiles lie in their spatial counterpart. As recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word profile was first used in 1656 to denote a painting seen in cross-sectional contours. Contemporary, general usage of the term refers to the outline of a physical object or a representation of the object, which in its visual form could be a silhouette, particularly of a person’s face or head, and it its written form could be a short biographical sketch or a character study (“profile” 1a, 10a). Whether visual or written, the word carries a connotation of a partial or side view, where the position of the subject is often turned away from the viewer. In the case of the first written profiles, coined and copyrighted by The New Yorker in 1926, words are the means of taking a sidelong glance (Kaufer 764). In these lengthy life stories, writers take an ironical approach to their biographical task, yet, as reflected in the current definition of profile, they typically sketch the life of public figures. The celebrity approach to profiles also proliferates the advice to future profile writers and journalists (see Whitman; Phillips), yet students may find examples closer to their work.

For many students, their first profile writing experience will take the form of a cover letter or what Kaufer identifies as a self-profile. In his articulation of types of personal profiles, he lists cover letters but concentrates on a comparison of descriptive or New Yorker style profiles with classificatory profiles, specifically profiles of people-on-the-move (765). Because this third type of profile typically centers on achievement and accomplishment, he is able to analyze personal profiles written about Indian Americans for signs of a model minority ethnic identity. For comparison purposes, he asks students in an advanced writing course to compose character sketches of other students, an assignment resulting in a corpus of descriptive profiles. Other instructors have used similar profile assignments in first-year composition and technical writing courses, with a goal to have students learn more about a profession by interviewing a person in that career and by sketching the salient features (Loehr, Beidler and Mackes, Duerden et al). Taken one step further, profiles might allow students to learn more about specific organizations, including universities, yet instructors and researchers have not focused on this level of discourse.

Related narrative research at other levels of the organization is readily available however. For instance, Barge outlines theories for narrative and antenarrative, where organizational members collectively tell stories. Through social construction, “systemic stories” become a part of managerial strategy (117). Similarly, in the more specific case of profiles, Kaufer finds that for the third category of classificatory profiles, “the functions of these profiles are public relations more than personal acquaintance, a way of extending credit to the companies and regions whose economic agility and nimbleness have provided the wherewithal to hire and advance people on the move” (765). Thus, for the purposes of connecting profiles with their sponsoring organization, this study will consider them a form of strategic communication, encompassing their public relation function.

Strategic Communication

As strategic communication, profiles would be a facet of an organization’s marketing or public relations activities. Furthermore, through this paradigm, as defined by Hallahan et al., such communication works to advance an organization’s mission. Yet, this categorization is not to say that profiles should only be directed outward toward external audiences, as several scholars have integrated organizations’ internal and external communication under the umbrella term of strategic communication and more specifically brand identity (Cheney and Christensen; Nandan). In particular, Faber notes that in traditional notions of organizational narrative, “narratives are constructed internally as manisfestation of ‘insiderness’ within in the organization. Images are constructed externally by competitors, clients, customers, and other interested groups. At any point in time, an organization’s identity is reflected in the convergence of its narratives and images” (31, see also Nandan). Thus, the overall goal of strategic communication is to promote a consistent message, epitomized through concepts of integrate marketing, corporate identity, or corporate visual identity (Firat and Christensen; Melewar and Akel).

For universities in particular, corporate visual identity (CVI) has resulted in new logos, revised color schemes, and an overall concern with the image or face of the university, even when multiple identities might exist. Within this tension, several scholars have noted the normalization and difference in constructing brand identity in higher education, particularly along the lines of Foucault’s theories of discourse (Lowrie; Leitch and Motion). Through this theoretical lens, we can view an organization’s identity as constructed within a context of power and ideology. Such a position is necessary for the study of profiles as well, to connect the text to its context and to analyze the public product in relation to its production or construction.

Genre Theory

Genre theory and the related study of activity systems provides the necessary link between textual forms and their rhetorical situations. Miller first advanced the view of genre as social action in an article of the same name, thus asserting that “as action, [genre] acquires meaning from situation and from the social context that the situation arose” (163, see also Bitzer). The textual form we associate with genres is simply the resulting conventions from recurring situations. Instead of texts as static forms, genres become dynamic, relational to their discourse communities, communities of practice, or activity systems (see also Russell; Bawarshi). This view of genres also allows us to reverse the relationship and “to investigate the roles that genre plays in the constitution not only of texts but of their contexts, including the identities of those who write them and those who are represented within them” (Bawarshi 335). In addition, genres extend to multimodal texts, as Kress incorporates images into Foucault’s notion of discourse (38-40).

An analysis of multimodal texts within the specific context of organizational communication also requires an extension of genre theory to the situation at hand. Yates and Orlikowski provide the groundwork for this proposed study through their situation of genres within processes of organizational structuration. In their words, “A genre of organizational communication is a typified communicative action invoked in response to a recurrent situation,” and they characterize such genres according to substance and form (301). However, their concept of form only refers to linguistic features such as structure or text formatting, communication medium, and language formality. To apply to multimodal texts, the characterization must account for document design. Accordingly, this research will expand their genre characteristics, while exploring the narrow example of profiles within the situation of university strategic communication activities.