Blog #3: The Research Gap

You could drive a van through the gaps in my research topic: women in professional and technical writing, how they're treated in the workplace, and what effect "feminine" writing/communication traits have on women's/writers' credibility. To be fair, this topic ended up being pretty broad because of how few sources I could find on just "feminine" writing styles/structures. There weren't even any articles that connected hedging with feminine language except in one article that only mentioned in briefly--this was very surprising to me, as I've heard several English and Communication Studies professors make the connection between hedging in speech/written language and women's tendency to do it. I ended up improvising as best I could and sort of made a 2 1/2 pronged literature review out of the sources I was able to connect to my main idea. I think I was able to synthesize them well enough, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to write a more specific proposal. The advantage to having to really dig for sources was that I found a handful of studies that I think I'd like to include in my proposal to try, so maybe in my qualitative aspect, I'll be able to better connect all the research pertaining to women in PTW.

Comments

  1. AshtonOctober 12, 2020 at 8:57 PM

    I like the focus that you're going for, Emily. It's crazy to me that even our field, with its focus on social progress, wouldn't have something on women writers in the workplace. Are they more often treated as secretaries, receptionists, or typists than they are professionals? Maybe your research will be a focus group with women technical writers on their workplace experiences and/or a textual analysis of how often these "feminine" writing structures appear in workplace documents compared to "masculine" structures (although you would likely have to be blind to the gender of the document's author so it doesn't affect the outcome). It would be an interesting contribution to the field.

    Of course, professional and technical writing seems like a mostly female-dominated field, but maybe that doesn't make much of a difference in the way women are treated anyway. It might be a good idea to look at those stats if you haven't already.

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  2. Kelsi-Ann TullinenOctober 13, 2020 at 1:21 PM

    I'm very surprised you couldn't find more sources on this topic. I feel that PTW is a female dominant section of English, but that's strictly based on my own experience and I've never actually looked at any statistics. I'm also surprised there aren't more studies done on woman's experiences in PTW or related fields. I think this is a great topic to research. I know there's a pay gap between genders in a general basis in the employment industry. I'm excited to see what other sources or information you find from your study.

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  3. Dr. Florence Elizabeth BacabacOctober 14, 2020 at 11:05 PM

    Hi Emi,

    Am quite excited of the direction you've taken for your research project! Indeed, there are so many possibilities (and openings) this type of investigation might take. In this regard, the idea of reflexivity comes into play where as researchers, we might want to allow our backgrounds, motives, perspectives, affordance/accessibility, etc. to influence our decisions. After reading your lit.review, I have to say you are on the right track. Though she has more leaning in sociolinguistics, see if you can find work by Deborah Tannen that can be applied to women in PTW. The same goes for one of the authors for my prezi presentation last Wed. -- this time, a female scholar in PTW: Lisa Meloncon

    Best,

    Dr. B

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