In Elizabeth Wardle’s article “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces,” Wardle emphasizes the importance of “identity” and “authority” when trying to communicate among a discourse community. As I was reading about these concepts, I realized that I recognized many of the points that Wardle was making because of my own mother who has worked in the Oil and Gas Industry for over 20 years. The idea of your identity in the workplace being a “negotiating experience” and the importance of building up credible authority is something that has been ingrained in my head due to the fact that she herself has had to do the very same thing for years. For my mother, her work experience has been a tiring fight as she was a female who worked in a white, educated male dominated profession. The amount of pressure that was put on her and the difficulty to build her identity and authority was probably more so than if she were in any other profession just considering the time that she started and the demographics of the industry. Although my mother’s advice to my sister and I about going out into the workforce has been helpful and appreciated, I think that one detail that my mother fails to forget is that I am going into a profession that is dominated by female musicians which means that my identity and authority in the profession will most likely be very different than what my mom’s was.

 

Nonetheless, I think that it is extremely important as a college student to learn how to be a “chameleon” in the workforce and therefore be exposed to different professors and be expected to write in different ways. In this day and age it appears that out in the workforce we still have communication that is considered to be formal and old-fashioned while there is also an increase in communication that is considered informal and updated. As a student I think what will most help me with that is to always remember to consider the audience. Just like we have talked about this semester when considering the rhetoric of a piece of works, the writer or creator had a certain audience in mind and did what he did in order to most effectively convey the information.

 

Communication is essential in order for any institution or workplace to function and in order for there to be clarity and effective communication the participants or participant if it is an unfortunate situation like my mother’s will have to compromise and meet in the middle in order for there to be any success.